30 pages a day

Since the beginning of this year, have been reading 30 pages a day before bedtime or first thing after waking up while making and drinking morning tea. It has become a good habit.

On days this is not possible, just going with the flow. Most of the days manage more than 30 pages. Then there are long flights and airport waits. Always have the book handy to just read when possible. 

Usually there is a topic or a recommendation from a friend. If the topic interests me, then one book leads to another, a series of books sometimes. Have become a "chain booker", for lack of a better term. One book finishes and the next one gets picked up. The latest topic is books on mental aspects of yoga, concentration, and Tantra. A lot of my friends have branded me "nuts" for even trying to read up on a topic that is considered "taboo" or "humbug" or a range of other words. 

One thing was certain as I am going through this topic. It is misunderstood. A lot of patience and persistence is required to try and even scratch the surface of this subject. A lot of basic terminology has to be learned in a step by step fashion. Picking up books in the wrong sequence can significantly slow you down with constant references to other books. 

The first books I read are the ones by Robert Svoboda. The first book made me want to throw up at the halfway point. Kept ploughing through it 10 pages a day at times and managed to finish it. Then there was a lot of youtube video watching, research articles etc. while reading the second and third books. 

My first thought while going through these books was a sense of deja vu while reading select paragraphs which reminded me of recent books by Sadhguru that I read during the pandemic. Good thing is I still have those books. Sadhguru (or his ghost writers) literally dumbed down Svobodas books 30 years later. That is my perception. Sadhguru did do a great job of summarizing the 1980's books in nicer easily readable fonts, in simpler language with smaller sidebar stories and analogies. My thought was "the audience for books has probably reduced in IQ over 30 years that he is dumbing down so much".  

While reading through Svoboda's books, there were references to another set of books 60 years older! This was fascinating. Sir John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon stumbles upon Tantra and becomes an expert in the early 1900's. If you have not read about him, please do. He had access to Sanskrit texts which most fokls did not have and translated them to the best of his ability word by word. While reading two of his three books, felt that Indian's have had a lot of greatness lost over the years. My Sanskrit is not that great so I am being patient and read the transliterated texts. The third book is in a ridiculous font. Thinking of returning it to Amazon and asking for a reprint in a larger font! 

Reading Arthur Avalon's books gave me yet another sense of deja vu from the previous month. A lot of the Svoboda books are literally 1980's dumb down versions of the 1919 books! 

To think that the 1919 books are a translated, interpreted versions of original Sanskrit texts from ~600 AD is interesting in itself. Those texts are said to be the first written down versions (writing them was supposed to be blashpemous and given the nature of some of what I read, it makes sense that this was taught by oral tradition from teacher to student with the teacher overseeing the student closely as they did the practical exams!). 

While posting snippets of these books on FB with friends, a classmate recommended I read Shri M's autobiography. It was an easy and intersting read and it was easy because of all the other books that had been read recently. Terminology and vocubulary was already there. No need to keep going to other references or googling! Then another friend recommended a series of books by another later day "mystic" called Om Swami. Read his bio book in a day. The other two books are intersting and slow. Alternating between them. The 2014 books seem to be over simplifications of all earlier books. 

At this rate in 5 years I can write "Tantra for dummies" and chances are it will be a best seller. Still there are points being crystallized to bullets that are reinforcing certain ideas from more complex reads and that is "refreshing" quite literally.

A few thoughts after reading these books..

1. We know so little of our own bodies, our minds and what we can do with this equipment we have been given.

2. There are ways to fast track certain performance aspects of the body and mind

3. there are things beyond the body and the mind that have been consistantly observed by multiple folks and they try to explain it to people like me who simply cannot comprehend it. Why they have to try and explain these things to the general populace instead of fokls who are willing to put in the time and effort seriously, baffles me. Glad though that there are some markers these folks are leaving for aspirants. At least you know you are not nuts.

4. Our body is electro mechannical. Doing yoga over the years has taught me that things within the body are connected in ways that I did not know. It is a question of time before western scientists figure out exactly how to stretch a body, hold it still and put electrodes in the right places and turn on the voltage just right to make your physical and mental facutlies increase exponentially.  

5. Given we are also full of materials and materials are just molecules and atoms and those are vibrations with mass, it should not be a surprise that external vibrations have an impact on us. Be it light of different colors or waves of radiation across the spectrum. It is possible to recite certain sounds and press certain nerve endings to help the body do things using sound engineering. Somehow folks had figured this out a long time ago. How much experimentation went into it, is difficult to comprehend. This is also transferred word of mouth and taught teacher to student. This can be tricky as the side effects of doing this wrong are pretty bad. It is like jumping across the rooftops of two close sky scrapers. Know how to train and do it right, you land. Fall and you are dead. 

6. It is important to have a good teacher. If anything, reading books is fine. Do not try to replicate things mentioned in these books.. results vary! Reading them and moving on for now. No practical tests. 

There are a few other books that are still incomplete. One of them is to read sheet music in 30 says. It is stuck in Day 19 (when I went to India). Have to get back to it next month. 

Have not been feeling well since evening. Feeling randomly hot and cold. Dozed off in the evening and wide awake now. Disappointed and surprised my music teacher as I was off tune today. Will figure it out tomorrow morning. Have this weird uneasiness that I haven't felt in recent times. 

Books are amazing. You get to learn something new every day. The news and most of TV watching on the other hand, seems to be a waste of time. 

Wrote this post so people can start from 1920's and come to the 2017 books instead of going back and forth. All these books are good in their own way. They are targeting different audiences over different times. 

On a side note, if you are a newly minted self proclaimed "mystic" and would like a ghost writer for your biography, look no further. Can LCM and GCF all these biographies and write one for you. 

At this point ChatGPT should be able to write a generic mystic's memoir! 

There are somethings that I really want to learn. The Sri Yantra and tantra have definitely piqued my interest. If I am destined to find a teacher in this lifetime, would definitely pursue it. 

Good night! 

National Geographic Magazine - the bucket list generator!

In the late nineties, my cousin in the US gave a subscription to the National Geographic Magazine. The very first few issues that we got blew our minds. One was about the Serengeti National park. It is still being talked about in the house. The pictures, the occasional map that was packed inside the magazine, the posters, the big official looking certificate that stated that I was now an explorer.. not to mention the fact that the mail was actually addressed to me.. priceless!

That membership lasted two years and it was a window to the world for me and my brother! 

One of the things I learned in that magazine was that there was such a thing as a glasswing butterfly with transparent wings. It was to be found near a natural wonder of the world called Iguazu falls. 

Many years later I ended up in the US and got my own subscription to the bucket list generator magazine! There is a long list of places I told myself that would be visited in this lifetime. After getting married the wife was told about this long list of items. She was not aware of most these places. The kids would shake their head and go "no wonder you two are married.. there is nothing in common between you two! Appa raves about all these places and you have never heard of them!". Needless to say, when it came time to visit any of these places, the kids would give excuses to bail and it was my darling wife that would actually force them to come and also plan the entire thing.

She got tired of me mentioning Iguazu. She did her research, found that this was in the middle of the amazon jungle, part of this visit involved a boat tour that was dangerous, vegetarian food there was going to be a challenge and there were insect bites to deal with (which was a strict no no for the little one). In spite of all this, she did an amazing job booking everything. There were a few last minute twists but we handled them well as a collective, given our last day in Greece during Labor day!

This is going to be a series of blog posts on this trip to Iguazu.. as an added bonus, given we don't visit this part of the world that often, we decided to go to Rio to see "Christ the Redeemer" as well as the world famous beaches there. Then there was Buenos Aires, our first stop before flying into Iguazu at the Brazil Argentina border. 

Given my status as a frequent flyer is questionable, we had to go a week early. The kids were not thrilled with a 9 day international trip the day after they got back home from college. We had both taken the week off before Christmas to beat the crowds and it was a good move, except having to spend Christmas in the southern hemisphere where it is summer and it is not exactly festive like in the northern hemisphere. A summer Christmas is intersting! You start feeling bad for the mall Santa in 95 degree heat!

We made it back from South America in one piece and in good health. A new years party took some of us out. My throat is still recovering and I could not even speak for a few days last week. Thinks are just slowly getting back to normal. 

Word of caution to bay area peeps. Start wearing masks and sanitizing hands again! Did take the covid and flu shots in October. Know this is not COVID or flu but some other respiratory virus that takes aim at the throat. Trying to sing songs I like did not help either (given I sing them 50 times back to back till a version clicks). 

Right now all I can do is type.. hence the blogging to distract myself!

The travelogs follow..

Fun fact: We did not see the glasswing butterfly during this trip.. but we did see the falls in all its glory. Jr. and myself made it to the "Devil's throat" within the falls, which was the real core of that bucket list item!

My name is Thira.. and when in Thira.. don't be a D!^# !

The previous post in this series is here..

This is the last post on our Greece trip. 

After that all day bus tour and the last minute dinner plan change, the hangry family went to bed safe in the knowledge that we had a rest day of sorts. We had three back to back flights.. from Santorini to Athens on Agean Air with a 3 hour break then from Athens to Instanbul with a ~3 hour break and Instanbul to SFO! Almost a whole day of travel! So the plan was to stay in our Airbnb till 11:30 AM, leave our luggage with our host, then wander around the shops, have lunch, wander around some more, have dinner and be back at the Airbnb for the ride to the airport. 

We learned a lot of lessons that morning. The little one woke up with a migraine and didn't even want to get out of bed. I also got hit with a migraine and light sensitivity although at a much lower level. The clouds had moved in the previous night and the outside temperature and pressure had changed. Our sinuses were struggling. It had rained but the rain had stopped and the sun was in and out. We frantically called our host and told her the situation. She told us to go out and leave the little one in the Airbnb and come back at 11:30 and she will see what she can do. 

So the three of us wandered off through the one street and took some pictures.

The two donkeys!

We walked to the top of the hill past the shops and walked through a few art galleries. The art was fantastic. So was the price tag. One piece of art that could have funded 4 such trips for the four of us. The lady asked are you American and once we said yes, she said "we can ship to you, no problem".. the shipping cost made me smile, relative to the cost of the artwork. We admired the art and walked around some more and also saw a nice Church!

One interesting thing we observed was the hanging dicks and a blue eye looking stone in every store. We did not understand why and the meaning behind that.. one lady in broken English said "it is a good luck charm to hang outside your door!".. We figured hanging that eye would be a good idea instead of the dick and went with that!

When we came back to the Airbnb, our host said "it is okay, take a few more hours and leave the room as is" 

So we checked on the little one and then had lunch at what seemed to be a hookah place called "Bohemia, the Journey". They had Cheese pizza that was decent and some other vegetarian dishes. We all ate a decent meal there . There was a cannabis shop right close to it, so we went and sat inside. It was nice and breezy. 

Having seen dicks hanging everywhere all morning, it took me a second look at the pasties in our new favorite pastry shop( Svornos Bakery).. we got some for an early afternoon snack.

When we came back, all of us decided to sleep. Our host said we are good till 7PM as her other clients had not showed up yet. Apparently there were flight issues because of the storm in the Agean sea. That should have warned us, but nope! Given our situation, we were just happy that there were beds to sleep in. 

After a nap, it was decided that the best thing for the stomach before a long day of flying was desi food.. Rice and yoghurt had to get involved. We were told that the best Desi food in the island was almost a 2 mile walk away called the Jaipur Palace. 

We started walking there (thanks to Google Maps for once) and were not disappointed. A guy who had come there to study in Greece, decided to open an Indian place on this island instead with his wife five years ago. The food was good. The service was good. There were only three sets of customers as we were early. 

We ate to our hearts content and walked back and waited for the car. Said bye to our host, who will always be fondly remembered. Good people come in your life in tough moments. Fotini is "good people!".

Was saying bye on the way to the airport and it all clicked.. Whenever you call the island "Santorini" the locals give you a look. Santorini is the name the Italian occupiers of the island gave it. Thira is what the Greeks call it. Apparently the blue and white for all buildings was started as a way to show solidarity to Greece instead of the Italians a long time back and eventually the island got back its Greekness and now it is mandatory to paint in blue and white. 

Everytime you call it Santorini, you hurt a local's feelings! So here is a tip. When on the island, call it Thira !!!

A short video of our bye to Thira..

We made it to the airport and were in for a rude shock. There were 600 people waiting in the gate area. Apparently none of the incoming "rinky dink" flights made it to the island from other islands or mostly Athens because of the storm. 

There was no updates at all on when and if at all we would take off. Given this small 40 minute flight was on Agean Air, if we missed our flight at Athens, we would lose money on all four tickets for those two legs and would be stranded here or in Athens. Had to be at work, right after coming back. Fired up my work phone and sent a message that we might not make it back as planned. Then we just sat there for 6 hours. Finally a flight showed up and we left to Athens. It was the four of us, a family of three from Chicago who had come to attend a wedding on the island and two Greek folks from Athens. That was it on the plane. 

We landed in Athens to see waht our fate would be and saw that our outgoing flight also was delayed by an hour. Ran to the other gate and made it. It was 4AM and we were exhausted and we had long ways to go. 

Slept through most of the remaining flights to the best of our ability and made it back. Literally dropped the bags at home and drove to work. It was a never ending day!

The lesson we learned (not well enough) was to not book the last flight or one of the last flights out of small places with small planes. Another lesson was to always have accomodation covered for the entire day when we leave, so we don't have to be homeless between check out time and flight time. Third and not least, after three days in any international place, find a desi restaurant or make sure you can have rice and yoghurt ready!

These lessons after the most recent trip have been codified into our family law. 

Now that the whole Greece trip blog series is complete, will try to close out the other few things that happened between September and December.. so I can start writing about our trip to Iguazu falls, while my memory is still fresh!

Until then..