God' own country with its own music!

I am catching up with some of the old stories, here are some photos from my recent trip to India, and these are taken by my friend Micha, who was travelling with me for the first time to India. Actually I was suppose to show him around, but this Mikipedia(as we fondly call him) knew everything about the place we were visiting and ended up giving directions for us. To start with here are some photos of god’s own country, Kerala. First time in India, travelling like a tourist with the camera …..taking photos in the street…. staying in holiday resorts, it was bit strange experience for me.
Well! I today I was experimenting with a movie making software, as a result here are some photos of Kerala mixed with Ravi Sankar’s ‘Chants of India’ music. Do you like my first experiment?
And here are some more photos of Kerala taken by me!

Om Shanti Om

My boss, who is a big fan of India, Indian food and its culture etc.etc, Once told me that in his image of India and Indians , the bollywood concept never fits into that frame. How can the people, who have mastered the ancient yoga to the present IT , who believes in the mastery over the five senses and hence the mind, using meditation can enjoy such ridiculous bollywood movies? I was not able to justify my love for bollywood that weekend, but I feel after this weekend I can answer this question. Last few weeks I was in a heavy mood, rainy days kept us away from my usual sports waking, biking and roller blading , This weekend also ended up in indoors , watching ‘Om Shanthi Om’, a recent bollywood movie made as a tribute to all the ridiculous aspects of bollywood with holy the mantra for Spiritual Peace as its title….what a contradiction!!! The hero of this movie sings a dreamy disco song to overcome his breakup with his beloved …. Where on earth is that possible??? This reminded me of one of the concept we learned in our meditation classes; We often treat Darkness (sadness) and light (happiness) as two different entities when we are in dark we do all big intellectual discussion, run to psychologist to understand this source of darkness and desperately try to catch up with things going around us and the reality in spite of the darkens, but the darkness is just the absence of light …Right? So … just adding some light, it can be through such ridiculous stuff may help us to get out of darkness. Once we are out of darkness the things around us, the reality will start reveling itself. I ended up bringing out the kid inside me and did some really ridiculous stuff with the group of friends, laughed sooo much…never laughed that much after coming to Paris…. Now I am back to my regular routine of meditation, blogging, to get back to my duties on time. Laughter is a good medicine; sometimes we have to come out of intellectual prison to buy this medicine.

Night and Death(Life)

What happens when the life is filled with anxieties, less than year to finish my PhD, again putting myself in a cross roads, big decisions to take… Again I may have to leave behind the friends with whom I have my Sunday lunch and chai. Leave behind the friends who can read me like a book… Will I be back to the country where I belong or will I go on exploring new lands… How warm these places will be? Last few weeks when I disappeared from my blog, I was thinking about it, sometimes these thoughts explain me the uncertainty of the life and depress me. Today morning when these thoughts were coming again, I was recalled a poem from my school days, a poem called “To Night” by Joseph Blanco White. The poem about the first human (Adam and Eve’s) anxieties about the night they are going to face, just a thought that that they are going to lose the sun, totally ignorant about all the pleasant things of night, filled their evening with anxieties, The following line still touches me in the same way as it did 20years before!

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

-Joseph Blanco White

With this optimisitic thought that my nights are also going to be as pleasent as my days, I promise to be more regular in my blog.

I don't know ...

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver


If I know to compose poems,I might have written something like this to describe the last few weeks as I was spending alone to over come my "India Blues", the silence of Paris and in the struggle to settle back in Paris after the 3 weeks trip to India. For godsake, I finished three years in Paris, by this time I should feel at home here..Hoping not to to complain any more, when I have such wonderful friends to fill weekend with fun and laughter...(who)hhu, the new Chinese member of our lab made a delicious Chinese dinner for us(the best Chinese I ever had)...after the dinner the whole lab landed in the boss' kitchen, hiding there to give him a surprise for his birthday. That was the most exciting and successful surprise party that I ever had. ... thanks to little Martha and Giorgio... not only helped us with the surpise party but also helped us to revist our childhood with their Pictonary, word game. French movie,Indian Lunch,Italian Coffee,Chinese Dinner and British Birthday...All in a day!

Happy new year... again!

Before I start writing my stories about India, once again New Year wishes! this time the Chinese new year! Came back to Paris last week and Paris welcomed me back with a big silence and this colorful Chinese New Year Parade and a nice lab outing (after a looong time). Thanks to the new members of the lab, again adding more diversity to our 'international lab' ;now we have new Italian,Indian, Chinese and basque country ...above all thank Buddha its all boys...so less problems in future...you may not hearing me complaining about my lab too much... we already started planning to have a international dinner party... seeing all good signs for the new year and for the last year of my Phd.