India Of My Dreams Quotes

After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?' I'd asked. 'Do you really need to know?' my father had asked back.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not language but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Knowing India was only in the next bedroom to mine had given me some lucid dreams where I made her scream and then held her on my lap while she curled around me and batted her lashes with that minxy little smile and I gave her anything she wanted.

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of, magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.

The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves.

it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.

I do not dream anymore, nor do I sleep. My days are empty, my nights endless. My only thought is of her, this murderer. But despite what you say, she brings me life.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

You can die for it - an idea, or the world. People have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light. But this morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn, I thought of China and India and Europe, and I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many! What is my name? What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.

because we have two legs and travelling on foot is the right speed for human beings. Walking sorts out your problems and anxieties, and calms your worries. Living from day to day, from inspiration to inspiration, much of what I have learned as a Jain has come from wandering. Sometimes, even my dreams are of walking.

In India, there are thousands of girls who kill their true loves just because of their family respect. But we still don’t value their feelings, dreams, and emotions.

If there be good in that I wrought Thy Hand compelled it, Master, Thine – Where I have failed to meet Thy Thought I know, through Thee, the blame was mine.... The depth and dream of my desire, The bitter paths wherein I stray – Thou knowest who hast made the Fire, Thou knowest who hast made the Clay.

The songbirds chirped her poetry through the cracks of his broken dreams

It is a cherished dream of most Bullet owners to do the classic Manali to Leh ride. A sort of pilgrimage or initiation into the cult that is ‘Bulleting’. So there are plenty of Bullets in Manali during these months, some with number plates from as far away as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa and Kerala. The local mechanics are experts in servicing Bullets and preparing them for the arduous road ahead, and I got my bike serviced here. The rear brakes had taken a fair share of wear and tear, and the setting of the clutch had to be readjusted.

That night my mother had what she considered a wonderful dream. She dreamed of the country of India, where she had never been. There were orange traffic cones and beautiful lapis lazuli insects with mandibles of gold. A young girl was being led through the streets. She was taken to a pyre where she was wound in a sheet and placed up on a platform built from sticks. The bright fire that consumed her brought my mother into that deep, light, dreamlike bliss. The girl was being burned alive, but, first, there had been her body, clean and whole.

54. Every time you touch me It teeters on that edge between pleasure and pain. Is it a daze? A dream? Poison swirling in my veins? Or is it madness? Your every touch blurs my senses with a numbing cold and a searing heat all at once. What Rama Did Next, Bhavabhuti, 700 CE, Kanyakubja

As I have often said later, I was thrown into this little dusty town in Gujarat and into the lives of the dairy farmers of Kaira district by what I consider to be a sheer accident of fate – what turned out to be a strange pre-planned act of destiny. I had always imagined that I was cut out for ‘bigger and better things’ – for a glamorous, fast-paced life in a big city, a job with a prestigious firm and the pleasures of the luxurious lifestyle that go with it. Anand did not figure anywhere in my scheme of things. But I had to honour the contract with the Government of India which had enabled my higher studies in the US and therefore, here I was in Anand, a fish out of water.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Nature cure does mean a change for the batter in one’s outlook on life itself. It means regulation of one’s life in accordance with the laws of health. It is not a matter of taking the free medicine from the hospital or for fees. A man who takes free treatment from the hospital accepts charity. The man who accepts nature cure never begs. Self-help enhances self-respect. He takes steps to cure himself by eliminating poisons from the system and takes precautions against falling ill in the future.

Self-government depends entirely upon our internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds. Indeed, self-government which does not require that continuous striving to attain it and to sustain it is not worth the name. I have, therefore, endeavoured to show both in the word and deed, that, political self-government, that is, Self government for a large number of men and women, is no better than individual self-government, and therefore, it is to be attained by precisely the same means that are required for individual self government or self-rule.

He rolled onto his side, head resting on his elbow, and he grinned suggestively at Avani. “How about it, Canada? I kinda dig the whole nerd thing. Nerd is the new hot.” “Dream on,” said Avani, rolling her eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Is this, like, the land of your people?” “My dad’s parents are from Kenya,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “And my mom is from Delhi.” “Where’s that?” asked Joey. “Arkansas?” “India, you moron.” “Do you, like, sit down and memorize dictionaries every day?” “No,” she said. “Only on weekends.” Joey stared at her, looking perplexed, then suddenly his face split into a grin. “Wait a minute . . . You made a joke!” Avani’s lips curled into a small smile. Sam caught my eye, then traced a heart in the sand between us. My throat tightened and I blinked at it, then looked at him in alarm. He pointed at the heart, then made an exaggerated glance from Joey to Avani, and then wiggled his eyebrows at me.

My Father mapped out the perfect blueprint for how to treat a woman. He caters hand and foot to my Mother. Even showers that love onto my sister. He never had to tell me how to treat my woman because his actions spoke louder. Did I cling to my woman? Absolutely. Being up under soft melanin skin pleased me. You want to read a book? Cool, what story we reading? Wanna go shopping? Take my card if you promise to model everything for me. Those females at work bothering you? Let’s get animated in the mirror and act like we about to tag team. Your period on? Baby, want me to rub your belly? You need me to get those diaper looking pads with the wings? How about some lemon ginger tea? What are your dreams? You want to sell weave? Let’s catch a flight to China or India and figure out how we can become wholesalers. You wanna make cute Snapchat filter videos? What filter do you want? Are they not liking your pics? Fine. I’ll blast you all over my page. Your Mother threatening to kick you out. Where you wanna move? Better yet, move in with me. Just focus on school and building your brand. I got everything else. You got finals coming up. Pick a tutor. Heck, can I pay for the answers to the quiz? You think those stretch marks make you unattractive? Come here and let me show you how much I appreciate your stripes of glitter. Do you want to go to Dr. Miami? Absolutely not. We going to the gym. Gym grown not silicone. We are working out together. Go ahead and hashtag us as #baegoals #coupleswhoworkouttogetherstaytogether. You want to switch the hair and get a tapered cut? Let me call my barber and see when we can go. Stressing and worrying? You keep hearing whispers while you’re sleeping? Nah bae, that’s not a ghost. That’s me praying for you.

it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it isn’t true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only blesses rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India, China, South America, Russia, rural Appalachia, inner-city America, and everywhere else a sincere believer remains poor. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If doctrine elevates a woman’s married-with-children status as her highest calling, it isn’t true, because that omits single believers (whose status Paul considered preferable), widows, the childless by choice or fate or loss, the divorced, and the celibate gay. If these folks are second-class citizens in the kingdom because they aren’t married with children, then God just excluded millions of people from gospel work, and I guess they should just eat rocks and die. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. Theology is either true everywhere or it isn’t true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God Narrative and sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long. It lends restraint when declaring what God does or does not think, because sometimes my portrayal of God’s ways sounds suspiciously like the American Dream and I had better check myself. Because of the Haitian single mom. Maybe I should speak less for God. This brings me to the question at hand, another popular subject I am asked to pontificate on: What is my calling? (See also: How do I know my calling? When did you know your calling? How can I get your calling? Has God told you my calling? Can you get me out of my calling?) Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory.  In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me.  There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

Somehow, I seem incapable of holding memories of everyday drudgery of my life in India, in my head. Some subconscious process filters it out and makes the pleasant bits of living in India stretch out and become more vibrant as the days pass by. 

Compare it with water – which flows freely and naturally. Taking the shape the situation requires. “To grow my business, I need to become free-flowing and flexible like water.” In practical terms, what this meant was losing one’s ego. Seeing more in other people. “Mujhe log dikhai dene lage…unki capability dikhai dene lag gayi.” (I became more sensitive to the capabilities of my people.)

Day by day, week by week, the dreams, the visions, came oftener, grew deeper. They were not occasional now, but occupied most of the day. We would see her rapt, as if in a trance, her eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open but unseeing, and always a faint, mysterious smile on her face. If any one approached her, or asked her something, as the nurses had to do, she would respond at once, lucidly and courteously, but there was, even among the most down-to-earth staff, a feeling that she was in another world, and that we should not interrupt her. I shared this feeling and, though curious, was reluctant to probe. Once, just once, I said: ‘Bhagawhandi, what is happening?’ ‘I am dying,’ she answered. ‘I am going home. I am going back where I came from – you might call it my return.’ Another week passed, and now Bhagawhandi no longer responded to external stimuli, but seemed wholly enveloped in a world of her own, and, though her eyes were closed, her face still bore its faint, happy smile. ‘She’s on the return journey,’ the staff said. ‘She’ll soon be there.’ Three days later she died – or should we say she ‘arrived’, having completed her passage to India?

Circulation of Song after Rumi Once again I'm climbing the mountain Circle on circle like a winding rose Below me the mountains fall away like rose-petals I wish to be at the centre of the mystic rose Where I shall meet Him He shall greet me: Beloved! So long in coming -- He shall be the lonely pine tree On the flattened promontory And I, the spider clinging to Him by a mere thread, against the sun and the wind Each dawn the sunrise tinting gold the burnt Sienna houses Each dusk the alpine rosy glow on the mountain Each afternoon such darkness in the glen Fold on fold in a foliage all the shades of green: They have crept into my dream He is the air I breathe Purest mountain-air: I'm cleaned He is the lark's descant And in the evening, the nightingale He is the star's ascent and the moon's cloud-hiding He is all the circles and in this circulation of song: I read you / you read me circulating In my blood from head to heel He is the fruit of my unfulfilled life The peach pooped with juice And running with the Argentine waters, the pear In the Chinese nectarine flecked like a child's cheek with red And in the sour loquat and the sweet cherry In the fragrance of the jasmine of India And the Shiraz rose that makes the bee mad for them In the grape that becomes wine to suffuse my cheek In the olive that becomes a lamp to shine through my cupped hands In these and not only in these does He circulate Pouring from the sun at 5' o'clock as if at noon Dancing on the lake, pure honey And all the chatter over tea! But in the quiet you find me out You find me out Plucking myself from Me So that I become you The breath in my nape-nerve Sweetly saying: I bow to the God in you

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

Ruhi blushed. She had a peculiar way of being embarrassed. She would restrain a smile and look at my wrist, or my ring, or my sleeves, or my shirt collar - just about any place that would keep her gaze away from my eyes.

In 1956 a rather delicate assignment came my way. I visited Switzerland at the invitation of Nestle but with a very specific brief from the Ministry of Industries, Government of India. Industries and Commerce Minister, Manubhai Shah, wanted me to ask the executives at Nestle what they were up to in our country. Under the excuse of producing condensed milk, they were importing not just milk powder, but also sugar and the tin plate for the cans! On my arrival at the airport at Nestle’s headquarters at Vevey, a Nestle car, about a mile long, was waiting to whisk me off to the best hotel in town where they put me up. I met with Kreeber, one of their two managing directors, and some other officers. The discussions turned pretty heated. I told them that my government had given them a licence to set up a plant in India so that they would produce condensed milk from Indian milk, not from imported ingredients. The Managing Director told me that it was not possible to produce condensed milk from buffalo milk, which was available in India. I said to him, ‘If you don’t know how to make it, come to me. I will teach you because I believe we can make it out of buffalo milk. I know it is more complicated than making it from cow’s milk and there are problems, but they are not insurmountable problems.’ When I assured them that it could be done, they said that their experts would have to come and set up their plant. Then they wanted the entire share capital in their hands. In those days government allowed only 49 per cent share capital to foreigners; 51 per cent had to be Indian. Kreeber said they could not agree to that. So I showed them a way out of that too. I said that 49 per cent could be with Nestle Alimentana and 51 per cent could be owned by Nestle India and in this way the entire project could stay in their hands. I was, in fact, facilitating their entry here. Ultimately, the Director agreed to set up a plant in India. At this point I told him that they could bring in any number of foreign experts they liked but my government hoped that, in five years, Indians who would be trained for the purpose would replace these experts. Kreeber’s response to this was that the production of condensed milk was an extremely delicate procedure and they ‘could not leave it to the natives to make’. At this, I lost my temper. Getting to my feet, I thumped the table loudly and said: ‘Please remember that you are speaking to a damned “native”. If you are suggesting that even after five years of training, the “natives” are not fit to occupy any position of authority in Nestle you are insulting my country. My country knows how to do without you.’ And I stormed out of the meeting – which I hope was what any self-respecting Indian would have done.

When Operation Flood was sanctioned I knew that it was a massive and extremely complex operation and we would need all the help we could possibly get from all quarters. It was in this connection that, one day, I called on J.R.D. Tata, Chairman of one of India’s largest industrial houses, one known for its commitment to quality and for its patriotism. I met him and explained to him the entire concept behind Operation Flood. I told him that such an enormous task would be extremely difficult to pull off alone and I requested him to spare six managers from the house of Tatas for one year, to help us improve the nation’s dairy industry. I could pay them only public-sector salaries, but within that, I assured him, I would pay them the best that I could. At the end of that year, his managers would return to his company, far richer for their thorough understanding of cooperatives and of agriculture. I was confident that it would be an extremely valuable experience for his managers. J.R.D Tata listened to me very patiently and then told me that since this was not a decision he alone could take I would have to present it to the board. I agreed to do so and met the board and once again explained the intricacies of the entire project to the members. They, too, listened very politely, smiled and nodded. But that is as far as they were prepared to go. To this day, I do not know whose decision it was, but we were loaned not even a single manager from the Tata Group. After all, would it have so adversely impacted the Tatas if they had deputed six managers to the NDDB and that, too, for a brief period of one year? The incident left me with a bitter taste and justified my belief that, in the ultimate analysis, the corporate world and the cooperative world are distinctly different. I

Meanwhile, when the Under Secretary realised that I was John Matthai’s nephew he recommended a higher salary of Rs 600 a month for me. This required the finance ministry’s approval, which the Under Secretary felt would certainly not be difficult. Little did he know my uncle. ‘The finance ministry will never agree,’ declared my uncle. My aunt asked him why it bothered him if I was going to get a better salary. ‘It is my job to see he does not get it,’ replied John Matthai. Such were the principles and standards of the Government of India those days.

It made the sheer incompetence of my colleagues at the research creamery in Anand even more intolerable to me. I could see that they had no interest in doing anything, not even the most elementary of jobs. They employed twenty people to run two small roller-dryers when in any other country twenty such roller-dryers were run by one man. I was the new dairy engineer to the Government of India Research Creamery and I realised very soon that I had no work at all. My frustration at this deadening job began rising and I started to write to the Ministry of Agriculture in Delhi every month, submitting my resignation, saying that I was drawing a salary of Rs 350 for doing no work and instead of wasting government money I should be allowed to go. After some eight months of this they must have felt that I was becoming a nuisance and they finally wrote back accepting my resignation.

I had not yet gotten around to the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. When I did read it, I discovered on page 286 that people follow religion because it is “easier” than empiricism. That struck a nerve, and provoked a response I shall be candid enough to report. Mr. Wilson: When you have endured an eight-day O-sesshin in a Zen monastery, sitting cross-legged and motionless for twelve hours a day and allowed only three and one-half hours of sleep each night until sleep and dream deprivation bring on a temporary psychosis (my own nondescript self); When you have attended four “rains retreats” at the Insight Buddhist Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts, for a total of one complete year of no reading, no writing, no speaking, and eyes always downcast (my wife); When you have almost died from the austerities you underwent before you attained enlightenment under a bo tree in India; When you have been crucified on Golgatha; When you have been thrown to lions in the Roman coliseum; When you have been in a concentration camp and held on to some measure of dignity through your faith; When you have given your life to providing a dignified death for homeless, destitute women gathered from the streets of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), or played out her counterpart with the poor in New York City (Dorothy Day); When, Mr. Wilson, you have undergone any one of these trials, it will then be time to talk about the ease of religion as compared with the ardors of empiricism.

In the 1970s, Mumbai (then Bombay) was a whirl of motion, noise and colour. A million kirana stores lined the streets (this hasn’t changed much), with honking Ambassador cars, trolley buses and autos jockeying with cycles for space on the narrow roads. There was music, art, literature. People with big ideas and hopes for the future. Then, as now, the city was a crucible for a young entrepreneur with a dream. As a boy, I soaked in every aspect of vibrant Mumbai like my life depended on it. Back then, India was much more a manufacturing and agricultural economy, and I paid special attention to the economics of business—how family businesses

Nowhere in the world has a church been given for scientific research; it has happened only in India.

I know i can build the most powerful and capable India in a decade and this is the only vision that drives me to wake up everyday and work towards my dreams

I am not worried about the immortality of my country Bharat because I know that I am alive and if I die then many more patriots will be born to keep my country immortal forever

The First Water is the Body (excerpt) The Colorado River is the most endangered river in the United States—also, it is a part of my body. I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not metaphor. When a Mojave says, Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum, we are saying our name. We are telling a story of our existence. The river runs through the middle of my body. --- What threatens white people is often dismissed as myth. I have never been true in America. America is my myth. --- When Mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. A great weeping is how you might translate it. Or a river of grief. --- I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me right now. --- The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. An ecstatic state of energy, always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement. Energy is a moving river moving my moving body. In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by the letters ‘ii and ‘a: ‘iimat for body, ‘amat for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care. You might not know we mean both. --- What is this third point, this place that breaks a surface, if not the deep-cut and crooked bone bed where the Colorado River runs—a one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-mile thirst—into and through a body? Berger called it the pre-verbal. Pre-verbal as in the body when the body was more than body. Before it could name itself body and be limited, bordered by the space body indicated. Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue energy greening, greened and bluing the stone, red and floodwater, the razorback fish, the beetle, and the cottonwoods’ and willows’ shaded shadows. Pre-verbal was when the body was more than a body and possible. One of its possibilities was to hold a river within it. --- If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing inside me, if the very shape of my throat, of my thighs is for wetness, how can I say who I am if the river is gone? --- Where I come from we cleanse ourselves in the river. I mean: The water makes us strong and able to move forward into what is set before us to do with good energy. We cannot live good, we cannot live at all, without water. If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is it too difficult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a sidewinder or your own mother or your beloveds? If I could convince you, would our brown bodies and our blue rivers be more loved and less ruined? The Whanganui River in New Zealand now has the same legal rights of a human being. In India, the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers now have the same legal status of a human being. Slovenia’s constitution now declares access to clean drinking water to be a national human right. While in the United States, we are teargassing and rubber-bulleting and kenneling Natives trying to protect their water from pollution and contamination at Standing Rock in North Dakota. We have yet to discover what the effects of lead-contaminated water will be on the children of Flint, Michigan, who have been drinking it for years. America is a land of bad math and science. The Right believes Rapture will save them from the violence they are delivering upon the earth and water; the Left believes technology, the same technology wrecking the earth and water, will save them from the wreckage or help them build a new world on Mars. ---

Each of those relationships ended because the love I gave was considered too hard… too suffocating. My father mapped out the perfect blueprint for how to treat a woman. He caters hand and foot to my mother. Even showers that love onto my sister. He never had to tell me how to treat my woman because his actions spoke louder. Did I cling to my woman? Absolutely. Being up under soft melanin skin pleased me. You want to read a book. Cool, what story we reading? Wanna go shopping? Take my card if you promise to model everything for me. Those heffas at work bothering you? Let’s get animated in the mirror and act like we about to tag team. Your period on? Baby, want me to rub your belly? You need me to get those diaper looking pads with the wings? How about some lemon ginger tea? What are your dreams? You want to sell weave? Let’s catch a flight to China or India and figure out how we can become wholesalers. You wanna make cute snapchat filter videos? What filter do you want? Are they not liking your pics? Fine. I’ll blast you all over my page. Your mother threatening to kick you out. Where you wanna move? Better yet, move in with me. Just focus on school and building your brand. I got everything else. You got finals coming up. Pick a tutor. Heck, can I pay for the answers to the quiz? You think those stretch marks make you unattractive? Come here and let me show you how much I appreciate your stripes of glitter. Do you want to go to Dr. Miami? Absolutely not. We going to the gym. Gym grown not silicone. We are working out together. Go ahead and hashtag us as #baegoals #coupleswhoworkouttogetherstaytogether. You want to switch the hair and get a tapered cut? Let me call my barber and see when we can go. Stressing and worrying? You keep hearing whispers while your sleeping? Nah bae, that’s not a ghost. That’s me praying for you. There are no stipulations with me. I gave it all. I had to. It was a part of my DNA. I needed to give the love I had in me unconditionally.

North India Vs South India, I have nothing to say, this Dravidian - Aryan concept, context specific nature, Tamil Vs Sanskrit concepts, who came first? who was first? these are all never ending questions, Even If I tell the answer , there is no solid proof for that, but for proving my words If I tend to use those palm leaves it may go against morality and ethics as everyone has their rights to say what they believe as truth, Tamil came first but it was not Complete language and it was shaped by Visitors, Sanskrit came from visitors is not originated from Mother Earth, Sanskrit originated from Another Planet, As Ganapathy, I have to Support Sanskrit, but As Ganapathy born in Tamilnadu I have to Support Tamil, But As I have dream of becoming Biological researcher cum Astronaut, I can not support anyone - Because If I support some one, others may get affected, so my simple solution is go context specific solutions based on that location and law and order. And for my research study Career, I have listed few institutions and colleges in my mind but will finalize the decision after completing trekking this week, wherever I study, I will be neutral in politics regards, not in scientific or Nature related issues , because scientific and Nature related issues I will talk for sure, In politics I will talk only wherever humanism is attacked, Still I believe Choosing Karnataka(I do not care about girlfriend - it does not even matter to me if Ranjitha/ Swathi Naik/ Shwetha are becoming unknown to me) and YRC will 100% right decision(Because Karnataka Has all dimensions in right and correct amount not at all exaggerated and not at all immoral) but Still I give some time to think and decide after completing trekking

So I am an Indian who's mother tongue is Tamil and Ancestral language is Telugu, Intellectual legacy from Palm leaves is in Vatteluzhuthu (Tamil + Malayalam Mixture), So wherever I go for research studies on Environment/ Ecology/ Biology, I represent myself as INDIAN (Who is comfortable in English) unless I marry a Non - Indian girl, and I represent Tamil Philosophy for defense mechanisms, science, business and all other possible spiritual, social and all other dimensions that are focused. The thing is learning Hindi, Sanskrit, Kannada or any foreign language is not a big deal, if i put effort for 3 to 6 months I can easily grab a language from grammatical foundations to advanced speaking but even after learning another language, at some point of my time in future, either I have become a biological researcher and/or astronaut as I dream of , but at that moment If I do not have the attributes of my current birth place, then there will be a guy or a girl or a leader or even a child who would easily question me that you have forgotten your mother tongue either for money or for women or for passion, so how can we trust you that you will protect/ guide us? So previous life carnation was Rajput and before that was time frame Europe, those things are in my mind and I will never forget, but in this very life I have to represent Tamil Philosophy and Ideology, As English is a common communicative and International language in science and technology, there is no one can deny English, Even lord Krishna was embarrassed just because he was Yadav. So although I have knowledge of all Indian gods and Goddesses and respecting all religions, castes and customs within India, within earth, within universe and beyond, I represent in English with Tamil Philosophy. So wherever I go for research studies on Environment/ Ecology/ Biology, I represent myself as Indian unless I marry a Non - Indian girl, and I represent Tamil Philosophy for defense mechanisms, science, business and all other possible spiritual, social and all other dimensions that are focused. Now choosing Guru is important before starting your passionate journey (Mine is science), so while choosing Guru, three things to remember, 1) Guru must be Knowing context specific problems, 2) Guru must not have lived immoral life 3) Guru must have withstand enormous pressure and opposition to show his/her potential on specific subject in his/her time 4) You can also choose more Guru as you move on in your life but starting point or First Guru must be from your Place My Gurus That I really Consider as my gurus 1) Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar 2) Tholkappiar 3) Carl Sagan 4) Stephen Hawking 5) Bear Grylls 6) Siddhartha 7) Lord Ramachandra 8) Lord Shiva 9) Lord Dasarat (Indra) 10) All goddesses 11) Lilith (She was portrayed as bad but she was not bad) 12) Lord prometheus 13) Lord Surya 14) Lord Krishna (Sometimes because I hate him) 15) Sita

Rape is a controversial topics in western countries and punishable topic in arabic counties and India. But Rape is a crime that opens many question. Generally when it is coming to sexual assault, men are primary targets, but women also take part in this regard. Why it happened? how it happened? who is responsible, when it happened, where it happened and many question will arise that will make the victim to have peaceless nights, peaceless life. So better solution is criminals whether it is boy or girl should be punished strongly and if they are given humanitarian values , then it is better to teach them. My personal better solution is love without expectations whether it is boy or girl or kid or old people, just love without expectation and don't let them to expect anything from you in return, if you do then you need fulfil their dreams and you can not live on your own. But some expectations are and should be accepted upto certain level in order to maintain that familial nature but that limit should not exceed.

Whomever had/have dreams to achieve should go on that path only and should not deviate at all. Whether they are good or bad comes second, going towards what they truly love and what they are and what they are really passionate about matters. See for my goal as you know Medicine, biology, environment and astrobiology it touches all important and every aspect of human life. That is why I had to explore a lot, through out India and India is with lots of colors and lots of hopes in each and every organism I see, each and every human I see. India has a lot to offer but discriminations based on caste, religion and race as well. I am surviving may because I am some so called upper caste or may because north Indians have a love towards me. But the people without any identity? people that are scheduled and isolated? who will support them? they loss their dreams and follow natural path which in turns may give them money but they loss their values completely. Even for scheduled people, they have culture whether they are good or bad. Although according to manu smiriti, they have negative karma and may lead to problems if they rule, but isolating them is inhuman - Parvati to shiv - Refer legends

WISDOM KEEPER: My Extraordinary Journey to Unlock the Sacred Within “Chloe’s heartfelt journey is the real deal here to inspire us all. She takes the reader on a journey of darkness to light, struggle to freedom, fear to love. Thank you, Chloe, for this incredible ride. A must read for all who want true transformation.”— Dr. Shannon South, Award-Winning Therapist, Best-Selling Author, and Founder of the Ignite Your Life and business programs “There is a healing purpose in every experience written by Chloe in this spiritual memoir. She shares processes for healing in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms, showing us our ability to use all levels of energy to achieve deep and lasting healing. Chloe reveals to us the importance of connection—with the spiritual and physical world, and our past lives to the present. She reminds us we are essential in the Universe; when we heal, our loved ones, people around us, and the Earth also heals. Chloe inspires us to do the same thing. Well done. I appreciate it very much. This book is truly for everyone. — Eduardo Morales, Shamanic Curandero, Tepoztlán, Mexico “WISDOM KEEPER is filled with wonderful personal experiences on the power of healing, visualizations, dreams, and listening to our inner voices. Chloe Kemp describes encounters with others on a multitude of levels, including sacred beings, shamans, and other deep-souled humans. This book inspires the reader to go deep within themselves and invite their own personal self-healer to emerge. Chloe helps us to understand that anything is possible.”—River Guerguerian, Sound Immersion Healer, Musician, Composer, and Educator  “Having met and worked with Chloe personally, I know she is a genuine woman with a mission and clear determination to fulfill her purpose in this life. She has followed the call from Spirit to share stories from her life and wisdom she has gained, weaving energies and expressing a frequency of consciousness that has a way of bringing readers to a deeper state of awareness and potency upon their own unique journey. Chloe's book shines a light on our ability to reconnect with the origin of what makes us each a special part of the Divine plan, and she does it in a very humble and approachable way."—Michael Brasunas, Holistic Energy Healer and Bodyworker “Your inspiring memoir is engaging and thought-provoking throughout. It brings together the highest spiritual insights and practical frameworks that everyone can understand and apply.”—Louise, Australia  “A fascinating read!”—Caleb, USA  “The narrative is immensely raw and deeply personal. It engaged all of my emotions completely.”—Abantika, India   “A remarkable story.”—Michael, USA “The writing style is amazing.Your life experiences are so unique.”—Taibaya, Pakistan  “You have a gift for spiritual healing and telling a story. You created a hopeful, sincere, compelling, interesting, and important story.”—Jessica, USA “You tell events, dreams, and moments in your life in a very engaging and thought-provoking way.”—Josh, USA  “Very entertaining, awakening, and engaging; as well as informative, practical, motivating and inspiring.”—Susan, USA      

In Conversation With The Earth! Hello I am Earth , your home, Hello I am human from Climate summit at Rome, Pleasure meeting you today, Well I thought you met and saw me everyday, Nevermind, human mind is a curious creation, Look at the devastation and your numb sensation, Water levels rising, Frequent wildfires are least surprising, Landslides burying people alive, For the poor Earth is no longer a place to thrive, CO2 emissions creating a blanket of doom, The world looks like a planet draped in agony and gloom, Deforestation has left me naked, By your callousness I feel raped, you humans are so ungrateful and wicked, The rising heat will kill us both, I will manage drifting in the universe but imagine your plight in the cosmic broth? You are the cause of your own extinction, And you seek mercy from me for this inevitable destruction, I am part of the universe the universe is not a part of me, And if there is a cause, an effect too there shall be! But I am wondering why you are still procrastinating, You are more interested in Mars’s Terraforming, Instead of saving your present home, Where there is Italy, Germany, India, America, Russia, China, many others and Rome, You seem to ignore my pleadings and warning signs, And somehow your conscience resigns, Into a slumber of thoughtlessness, And you seem willing to endure this perpetual feeling of restlessness, But refrain from acting now, Sometimes you just need to start, without wasting too much time on thinking how, This maybe my last conversation with you , my dear human being, It is time you believed in what you are seeing, A ravaged soul of mine, I fret and fume, yet you convince yourself I am fine, Because you can still breathe in my air, But how long, because you are offering me a bargain that is unfair, Very soon you may need protected air zones to survive, And then only those with a penny in the pocket shall be alive, Where will your less fortunate brothers and sisters go? I think after the great fall, today humanity has fallen really too low, Not placing restraint on their acts so ignoble, Although you see my scars so fresh and palpable, Anyway, why shall you care as long as you can breathe, And not realise the irony, the day you feel choked I too shall no more be able to breathe! Mars is a distant dream, Pay heed now when I yell and scream, Mars is just a reflection in the mirror, But I am the mirror, you just need to be a heedful observer, And act now before it is too late, And stop wasting time in a bureaucratically complex debate, Maybe this will be the last summer for you and me too, But I am still believing and expecting the best from you! By: Javid Ahmad Tak

Far greater than all warriors who led armies to battle was this little man, the bravest, the most triumphant of all . . . May the soul of my master, my leader, my father rest not in peace, not in peace, but . . . let the powder of his bones be so charged with life and inspiration that the whole of India will, after his death, be revitalized into the reality of freedom. My father, do not rest. Do not allow us to rest. Keep us to our pledge. Give us strength to fulfill our promise, your heirs, . . . the guardians of your dreams, the fulfillers of India’s destiny.

Despite all the solo vocals, each using the others as a back-up group, the White Album still sounds haunted by memories of friendship—that “dreamlike state” they could still zoom into hearing each other sing. They translated Rishikesh into their own style of English pagan pastoral—so many talking animals, so many changes in the weather. One of my favorite British songwriters, Luke Haines from the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, once told me in an interview that his band was making “our Wicker Man album.” He was miffed I had no idea what he meant. “You can’t understand British bands without seeing The Wicker Man. Every British band makes its Wicker Man album.” So I rented the classic 1973 Hammer horror film, and had creepy dreams about rabbits for months, but he’s right, and the White Album is the Beatles’ Wicker Man album five years before The Wicker Man, a rustic retreat where nature seems dark and depraved in a primal English sing-cuckoo way. They also spruced up their acoustic guitar chops in India, learning folkie fingerpicking techniques from fellow pilgrim Donovan, giving the songs some kind of ancient mystic chill.

There are more restrictive rules for girls than for dogs, cats or cows. Everyone knows these common boundaries, ‘boundations’. These restrictions often continue through college and even till the day girls get married. Curfew hours range from 6 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. For Abhisha, 20, studying commerce, the curfew hour is still 6 p.m. or 6.30 p.m. She says wistfully, ‘I have a lot of dreams, like sometimes to hang out with my friends, but my mother and father allow nahin karte , they don’t allow it. Because they think it is not safe for women. I feel they won’t allow me sleepovers, so I never ask, I feel anxious that they might refuse. Hesitation hoti hai , there is hesitation.’ Once she hesitatingly asked her father permission to go somewhere and he did not allow her. She did not talk to her father for a year, but she did not defy him or fight back. She says, ‘Now I have let it go. It was something small. But it affected me a lot.

Perhaps one of the greatest jokes of my life is that I first went to India to be spiritualized, and I came home humanized.

At the age of five, she was forced to flee an area of the world that is now Pakistan. It was during the time of the bloody Indian subcontinent partition. Along with her family, my mother joined one of the largest human migrations in history. After arriving in India, she lived as a refugee for the next several years, struggling to survive. People in those refugee camps didn’t have the luxury of hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Yet her mother (my grandmother), Gopibai Hingorani, a woman who had completed only the fourth grade, told her she was going to make sure her daughter received something that no one could ever take away from her: an education. It still gives me shivers to imagine a young girl trapped in a camp being told she would one day become someone who mattered. By keeping her promise, my grandmother initially gave my mother her sense of purpose. My mom completed engineering college in India and made history as the first female engineer there. It was just the beginning of her life in a male-dominated space. After reading a biography of Henry Ford, she dreamed of working for the company that he’d built. Again, my grandparents came through. They took their savings of a lifetime to send my mom to the United States in 1965. At age twenty-four, she became the first woman hired as an engineer at Ford Motor Company. My parents are now retired in Florida, but they stay active, playing a lot of bridge, singing karaoke, and traveling. My mother spends a lot of time with her five granddaughters, teaching them the value of a life lived with purpose.

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.

I've been on the warpath for forty years. I've probably put a thousand men in the ground. Women too. Hell, probably some kids mixed in along the way, although I can't say for sure. And I know some good guys got caught in the crossfire, too; cops, security guards, watchmen, even your run of the mill innocent bystanders. Wrong place at the wrong time and all that.” I stared off into space. “Why are you telling me this?” “Because you need to remember I'm not a nice guy. I'm not far removed from that thing in your dream. Call me a war criminal and you'd probably be more right than wrong. I always thought at the time I was working for the good guys, fighting for the right reasons. But the Cold War was still a bloody business and I was always there at its bloodiest. Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Iran, India, Brazil, Russia...I've been all over, always where the fighting was the dirtiest. Tore up some places here in the States as well. Things the press was threatened to keep quiet about, or bribed into silence, or worse.” “Just keeps getting better and better,” I said. “And just remember, I'm one of the good guys. Some of the animals I worked with, they make your run of the mill concentration camp guard look like he's gentle enough to run a daycare center. Some of those older guys, they probably were concentration camp guards back in the day. Plenty of the grey-hairs I went into the field with, those were the war addicts, the guys who couldn't go back home. Saw it after 'Nam, too; men who lived for death, lived for the blood and the thrill of the kill. They weren't much better than the dummies we were gunning after. Matter of fact, most of them were probably worse. At least the guys at the end of my gun usually died for a cause: communism, Islam, even plain old fashioned world domination. Some of the savages I fought with, they killed simply for the fun of it. The money? That was just gravy.” I turned to look at Richard, slouched in his rocker, hat pulled down low over his blue eyes. “So what about you? Killing for a cause, or was it the fun?” Richard finally turned and looked me square in the eye. “You ain't figured that out yet? I killed for profit, kid. And back in the day, business was good. Business was really good.

] The real trouble is not the mere difference of opinion, as between one scholar and another, but the fact that Graves (like myself) refuses to treat his subject as dead. A scholar only feels secure if he is sure that the subject of his study is not one day going to get up and look him between the eyes; and nothing could be in worse taste than a suggestion that anything more is required of him than a chaste rational disinterestedness. Both the Buddha and the White Goddess, it is felt, have been safely dead these two thousand years and more, and the professors of these subjects congratulate themselves on having chosen such admirably extinct fields of study. (Quite the last thing that a professor of Buddhism would dream of doing is to profess Buddhism—that is left to mere amateurs like myself.) But what happens? Here comes Graves and myself shouting out one, that you cannot know the Goddess unless you worship her—and in the flesh, to boot (or, should I say, to buskin?)—, and, the other, that you cannot understand the Buddha unless you practise his teaching—in the jungle, preferably, and barefoot. If I have my way, these comfortable scholars will have to exchange the fleshpots of Oxford for the almsbowl of India; and if Graves has his, their dutiful wives will become Bassarids, dancing naked with Dionysian fury on Boar's Hill, and tearing the Vice-Chancellor to pieces and devouring him raw at the summer solstice. And that would never do, would it?

Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence.” My companion glanced at me quizzically. “The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears nearby.” I silently agreed, recalling my prayer in the Benares hermitage, followed by the meeting with Sri Yukteswar in a crowded lane. “Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be alone?” “Yes.” I reflected that this saint descended from the general to the particular with disconcerting speed. “That is your cave.” The yogi bestowed on me a gaze of illumination which I have never forgotten. “That is your sacred mountain. That is where you will find the kingdom of God.” His simple words instantaneously banished my life-long obsession for the Himalayas. In a burning paddy field I awoke from the monticolous dreams of eternal snows. “Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you.” Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances. The saint seated me on the umbrageous bamboo platform of his small cottage. After giving me sweetened lime juice and a piece of rock candy, he entered his patio and assumed the lotus posture. In about four hours, I opened my meditative eyes and saw that the moonlit figure of the yogi was still motionless. As I was sternly reminding my stomach that man does not live by bread alone, Ram Gopal approached me. “I see you are famished; food will be ready soon.” A fire was kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and dal were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. ‘The guest is God,’ a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial. In my later world travels, I was charmed to see that a similar respect for visitors is manifested in rural sections of many countries. The city dweller finds the keen edge of hospitality blunted by superabundance of strange faces.

Before going to sleep I lay looking at the stars and seemed entangled in the boughs above my head and thinking of the good fortune of my life that had brought me into places the like of which many people have never even dreamed of, places that would convey nothing to many I have met; but I did not forget to remember those who would give anything to see what I was seeing and would never get the chance.

In my study, next to my desk, is a locked bookcase that contains a collection of volumes I value more than any of the hundreds of other books that fill a multitude of shelves in our home. Of these precious publications, the most prized and well-guarded is a slim first edition of 104 pages, simply titled Jungle Stories by Jim Corbett. The cover is of plain brown paper, with no illustrations or colouring. This thin little book was privately printed by Corbett, for family and friends, at the London Press in Nainital in 1935. Only a hundred copies were produced, of which very few remain. My copy came to me through my parents. They were given it by friends, who had once been Corbett’s neighbours in Nainital. By the time I received it, the book had been covered with a protective sleeve of clear plastic. The title page is signed by Jim Corbett, in a neat, fastidious hand. Several years after Jungle Stories was published, Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936-43, requested a copy. He had met Corbett, who assisted in organizing viceregal shoots in the terai and was already regarded as a legendary shikari and raconteur. After reading the book, Linlithgow recommended that it be published by the Oxford University Press in Bombay. Jungle Stories is, essentially, the first draft of Man-eaters of Kumaon. Several of the chapters are identical, including stories of ‘The Pipal Pani Tiger’ and ‘The Chowgarh Tigers’, as well as an angling interlude, ‘The Fish of My Dreams.’ Corbett expanded this book into its present form by adding six more tales, including an account of the first man-eater he killed in 1907, near Champawat. This tigress was responsible for the deaths of 436 victims and her destruction helped cement Corbett’s reputation as a hunter. In recognition of his success, Sir J. P. Hewett, Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces, presented him with a .275 Rigby-Mauser rifle. An engraved citation on a silver plaque was fixed to the stock. Corbett later bequeathed this weapon to the Oxford University Press, who sent it to their head offices in England. Eventually, the gun was confiscated by the police in Oxford because the publishers didn’t have a licence. For a number of years, John Rigby & Co., gunsmiths, displayed the rifle at their showroom in London, along with a copy of Jungle Stories. In February 2016, Corbett’s rifle was purchased at auction by an American hunter for $250,000. Following this, the rifle was brought to India for a week and briefly displayed at Corbett Tiger Reserve, as part of a promotional event. The editor at OUP, who shepherded Man-eaters of Kumaon to publication, was R. E. ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, himself a legend, who contributed greatly to India’s canon of nature writing. In his introduction to a collection of Corbett’s stories, Hawkins describes how this book came into his hands:

There is an ancient saying in India: ‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.’ I now understand my role in the universe. I see what I am. I’m no longer in the world. The world is in me.

I FIRST CAME UNDER THE TIGER’S SPELL FIFTY-FOUR years ago, at the age of ten, sitting astride an elephant in Corbett National Park in the Lower Himalayas of north India. It was early in the morning and ten elephants were sweeping through high grass in an attempt to spring some tigers into a clearing on the far side. I remember looking down from my perch and seeing a tigress snarling up at the elephant and then darting away with two large cubs at her heels. I was struck by that experience and continue to remember it vividly. It was thirteen years after this encounter that I saw my next tiger in Ranthambhore. The year was 1976. That was the year my life with tigers truly began. This book is not only about my favourite tigers but also the very best of my encounters with one of the most magnificent animals to walk the face of the planet. Over the past forty years I have tried to serve them as best as I could. It was a dream for me to publish my first book nearly thirty-five years ago and to share my experiences with tigers with people across the world. This is my thirtieth publication and I have loved every minute of my time as an author. Through my books I have shared some of the best photographs showing the diversity of tigers in the wild. This time around I have used only a bunch of sketches. I have to thank Rose Corcoran for her brilliant sketches. My Ranthambhore journey would not have been possible without Fateh Singh Rathore, the wildlife warden, welcoming me into the folds of the park.

My secret name for the annex was "the hen-coop". Glued to the nesting boxes of their favorite wicker chairs, the inmates sat click-clacking knitting needles, hatching balls of wool, their silence pierced only by an occasional frail voice of meaningless conversation. Flapping imaginary wings, "Cock-a-doodle-dooing," and "Chook-chooking", I ran through crowing, but not so loudly as to frighten them or be rude. I see now the old women's pinched faces, stiff and severe as the potted aspidistras beside them, only masked despair. With nothing to do but breathe, they knitted and crocheted memories and lost dreams into tangible objects. On the hour as though on cue, the old chickens roused, froze suddenly still, before exchanging smiles and nodding some shared secret to one another as the wild music from Bruges' church bells rang out the time from the many belfries, rattling teh panes and vibrating through the "hen house" with deep echoes. And I'd leap to the wild music - a dancing puppet pulled by unseen strings.

Jayalalithaa [then chief minister of Tamil Nadu] sent me an email saying, “I always knew you were going to get this,”’ AR remembers. He adds, ‘I always wondered when I was younger: when is an Indian actually going to win an Oscar? I really wanted that. I never thought I wanted to win an Oscar. I wanted India to win an Oscar. I never thought I would be one of the persons to win it for my country. I just wanted us to get that global recognition for the Indian film industry.’ Sharada Trilok sums it up best: ‘He won us an Oscar, man. He actually won us a damn Oscar.

Grace Patel…” Bradley wiped his mouth with his cloth napkin, “that’s an Indian name, right?” “Yes. My father’s parents were from India.” He nodded. “Interesting. Do you plan on going into engineering or computer science?” Sara hissed, but she didn’t speak up. She’d barely said anything since Bradley had come into the room. Sebastian’s leg jiggled under the table so hard, his silverware rattled. I gripped his knee as I flashed Bradley a smile when I really wanted to stab his racist ass with my salad fork. “No. My dad didn’t pass any of those genes onto me. I’m an artist, but my plan is to study both art and graphic design in college. I have dreams of making a living from my sculptures, but since I’m a pragmatist, I want to have a marketable skill along with it.

How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories Sudha Murty What do you do when your grandmother asks you to teach her the alphabet? Or the President of India takes you on a train ride with him? Or a teacher gives you more marks than you deserve? These are just some of the questions you will find answered in this delightful collection of stories recounting real-life incidents from the life of Sudha Murty, teacher, social worker and bestselling writer. There is the engaging story about one of her students who frequently played truant from school, the account of how her mother’s advice to save money came in handy when she wanted to help her husband start a software company and the heart-warming tale of the promise she made—and fulfilled—to her grandfather, to ensure that her little village library would always be well-supplied with books. Funny, spirited and inspiring, each of these stories teaches a valuable lesson about the importance of doing what you believe is right and having the courage to realize your dreams.