A key to happiness

We recently bought a Jaguar sports car, and it puts a smile on my face each time i drive it. Last week, i went kayaking for the first time in four years, and arrived at the kayaking club in the Jag.

There i met Bob - an old member of the club in his sixties - who has Alzheimer's disease. Bob had been an adventurer in his younger days and traveled to Africa by bicycle from the Netherlands. He loves fixing things, and one often sees him welding broken rudders at the club. When asked what was new, I told Bob about our new house, new child, new jobs etc., and my friend added: "and a new car". "Which car", asked Bob. I sjowed him the key, with the picture of an angry feline on it.

"I don't know this brand, which one is it?"

"What do you see on the key fob, Bob?"

"A tiger."

"Which other big cats can you think of?"

"A jaguar.. jaguar.. you've got a Jaguar!!!", Bob was delighted to have finally solved the mystery. And his joy was contagious. 

Despite his handicap, and the knowledge thereof, I have always found Bob to be one of the happiest people I know. He has never been bothered by things he cannot do, but does everything he can to the best of his ability, and to the utmost enjoyment.

My best friend and i often talk about the meaning of happiness. Walking along a canal a couple of days ago, i had an epiphany: one of the keys to happiness is to celebrate possibilities rather than mourning what one might perceive to be impossible.

Both poles are as cold!

It is unlikely that global warming was the cause, but my frosty relationship with Fritzie had begun to thaw. But like climate change, the warming was erratic and yielded some tempestuous interactions, two of which stand out.

Meditation

Writing my PhD was an intense experience in which I meditated on how some things worked and how they did not. I meditated on what was intended and what was being achieved - what the gaps were, and what were their causes. And a cause is key to a solution. 

At times, I could not sleep for days at end, finding nothing. And when, out of sheer exhaustion, my consciousness slipped away,

Law in a democracy: an eventual choice between elective dictatorship or mob justice?

As a lawyer, one is hardwired to distinguish between what is legal and what is illegal. One is hardwired to defend those who society may view as despicable for their actions, which may be repugnant to one's sensibilities, but are not illegal. After all, as defenders of democracy, lawyers are hardwired to jealously defend the rule of law, against the rule of sentiment. Aren't we?

Racist Gandhi?

Recently, I invited a Donald Trump admirer (who has the honesty to admit that she would have voted for certain elected dictators had she lived in those times) to read Gandhi's 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth'. But she said it was too long for her. So she tried German Wikipedia instead. Soon I received a text message from him: "Hey Dhruv, I have read the part where he is in South Africa - he seems to be a thorough racist."  She followed it up by some corroboratory evidence in an email which said: "They must have read Wilipedia: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34265882".

an exceptional traffic story (the discovery of India road trip)

22 December 2015

Fabian was very keen to visit one of the waterfalls near Khajuraho, but Tim was not, since he wanted to write postcards. So Fabian, Joline and I decided to go. The drive lasted a couple of hours, but we never made it to the waterfalls. We did not correctly insert the address in the GPS device, and it took us to the end of the street on which our Ashram was situated. But that part of the street was perhaps the most chaotic little street I had seen. Scores of motorbikes, bicycles, feral cattle, bullock carts, busses, hand carts, hawkers selling vegetables. So we decided to properly enter the address for the waterfalls in the GPS device and we were set in motion. Very slowly.

Khajuraho (the discovery of India road trip)

22 December 2015

Of all the places we have visited so far, Khajuraho was the most overrated destination so far. I had expected to discover many more nuances about this city and its culture, but it seems to me that there isn’t much more than what has been published about it already. The only other culture on display was one in which touts chased tourists to sell their wares. The city is essentially a dust bowl, and a few temples from the Chandela Empire. The temples are pretty, no doubt, but the few that have remained have been so overexposed that there is almost no sculpture one hadn’t seen before in pictures. The sculpture of Varaha – the third avatar of Vishnu as a wild boar – was most impressive. One that I had not seen before, the sculpture was a stylised representation of a boar. The stone is minutely sculpted to bear distinct representations of about a thousand gods, goddesses over its body.

Koliwada (the discovery of India road trip)

Sunday, 13 December 2015

Incredible as it was, the last bit of the lawsuit work had spilled over, and I had to go to notarise my affidavit at 08:30, this morning – a Sunday morning. But once this was done, it was done, and finally, we were able to go to Elephanta. It took us all day and we took one of the last ferries back to Bombay. We were rather tired and hungry when we returned home at about 19:00.

Salty breeze from the Arabian Sea & Prince of Wales Museum (the discovery of India road trip)

Writing from memory at dawn on 18 December 2015

Friday, 11 December 2015

I am a witness for my father in a court case, and I was supposed to spend the morning at the lawyers’ offices. The plan was to thereafter visit the Elephanta Caves, and see some of old Bombay. However, the morning extended into the evening, and I returned home only at about 18:30. I was afraid that JF&T would be bored, and annoyed with me. But it seemed they were quite happy to have found the time to relax, and recover from the fatigue.

Thespo (the discovery of India road trip)

Thursday, 10 December 2015

I have a rather close bond with Thespo - my favourite theatre festival. It provided me with great relief in what I see as the dark years of my identity crisis. Those were the days when parents worried about what I would make of my life. Keen on helping, they pressured me to choose between Chartered Accountancy and a Masters of Business Administration. I did occasionally cave into these pressures, but only to drop out of the various coaching classes I enrolled with. They realised that I would often miss my CA coaching classes to hang out to the office of Q Theatre Productions, which were the Thespo headquarters on 26 July 2005 – the day when torrential rains flooded Bombay like never before or since – and I had to stay there for a few days. They warned me not to waste my time with theatre thereafter. When I decided to not head their warnings, and to be part of the production team for the festival anyway, they asked me to choose between staying at home and Thespo. The choice was obvious. It was going to be the place where I had the space to think for myself, be respected for who I was, and which let my creative energies freely flow. I chose Thespo.

As luck would have it, we arrived in Bombay during Thespo, and there was no way I was going to miss it. Braving jetlag and fatigue, I decided to go watch a few performances at Prithvi Theatre, which is one of the festival venues. Curious about the cultural scene in Bombay, Joline, Fabian and Tim (I will collectively refer to them as JF&T) decided to join too. So, after the walk, we were off to Thespo.