Notes to Self - On Travel

Don't overplan

Show up and see what happens

Talk to people

Trust Existence

Allow randomness and serendipity to happen.

Avoid tourist to-dos like a plague

Travel through People - traverse their minds - be curious.

Travel through Food - don't order what you recognize - ask what is good.

Meditate in every new place - feel the place through meditation.

Comments

Hotel California

I was dropping off S for one of her meetings. The conversation meandered into how some of our volunteer friends were talking about me leaving IYC. S was observing that we would have never got married if I was not a Isha teacher at that time. She also observed how my deciding to move to Blore was kind of thrust upon her. It was a fair observation yet painful for me to hear it. At some point, I felt the need to justify/explain/clarify that i am a seeker. Still a seeker. After I said it, I felt a moment of pause within me. Am I a seeker? I felt embarrassed that I have to claim me being a seeker in so many words. Am I really a seeker? What does being a seeker mean? Does it mean that I should be living in an ashram? Does it mean that I need to work 100% and more towards a larger-than-life goal? Does it mean that I am checking out of "Hotel California" ? i.e. I am done with the world and ready for something else? Does it mean to live a constant affirmation that I may not know every...

Reflections on Sandekphu and Salesforce

So I just reached back to Bengaluru and I keep thinking perhaps this is a good moment to write something. Some kind of mental snapshot is warranted. I am hoping to join a new company - Salesforce after working in Visa for just 1.5 years. I just completed another trek - some 80 kms walk in the park. During the trek, I wrote down a bunch of mental sticking points and the advantage of having such a list is to see which one of them are perhaps temporary and which ones might stick around for sometime and haunt one. During the trek, I kept reminding myself that I should not fixate on the destination - that lofty peak or that supposedly pretty valley. The trek itself was the prize that I have earned. And the one that I wanted to celebrate. And celebrate is the right word for it. There is nothing that comes close to describing what it was. Just stretching the body and mind and asserting its capabilities. During those walks, I got reminded of Illayaraja's song "Pitchai Pathiram" ...

Shringeri

You are my baby sister that I never had. You are my daughter that I will never father.. You are my mother that I had lost forever… Let the throes of my folly remind.. Let the rapture of your embrace sustain… The scheming vagabond that I am, For all my incessant intellection, You are the perfect foil… The cool breeze that sweetens the long toil. How did you smite me? I know not. The unruly curls of your tresses – a part of your plot? What happens now… Now that I have decided to partake in this little game? Your bewitching mane.. Will I ever tame? How long will I be absorbed in the uncharted crevices of your body? Comfortably numb, Will I fall on my face? Let the throes of my folly remind.. ...

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