The Deep Blue Seas

In India it was not uncommon for people to go to the forest in search of God or the supreme being, it was more of a customary practice where a person would renounce the living pleasures and go to the forest to meditate. They would adopt a simple life with no belongings and eat off the forest or visit the neighboring villages to seek alms once a day to satisfy the hunger. One person from a particular village   named Gopal decided it is time for him to move onto the forest in search of God, so just as any good man would do he renounced all his wealth - passed it onto his family , charity and for other noble causes and with no baggage enters the forest. He finds a big tree which looked very comforting so cleaned up a small area and setup camp. After a few hours of meditating he opened his eyes to the faint roar of a Lion, terrified he quickly climbed up on the tree and saw that a mighty lion dropped a piece of meat on the ground and starts to walk away. Few minu

The anticipation kept building up in the last week of the holidays before starting back to school, new shoes, uniforms, books,pencils,erasers have all arrived and decorated the study table. All the notebooks have been covered with standard brown paper and neatly labeled but jut not assigned toany subject since it was the teachers call to ask for a 200 page ruled or white notebook. The text books however have been passed down from elder siblings and the task of erasing all answers from the endof the lessons got serious. An occasional sneak peek at the first lesson or a glance through all the pages of the text book for images was a common thing throughout the holidays. I can recollect the beautiful picture of the earth in color in the Geography book was a favorite specatale.It was as if I couldn’t wait to get back to school. First day of class 7 section C, a huge classroom with many new faces and finally we got to meet our new class teacher once her introduction was done and the roll nu

The Three Questions A king was well learned in all the Vedas and governed his people very well. There was no dearth or want of anything but three questions always bothered him, he visited many places and met many scholars in vain to find the answers. One day he decided to assign this task to a great scholar who was very learned in literature and philosophy, he summoned the scholar and gave him the questions bothering him. Where is god? Which way is he seeing? What is his work? The scholar was given six months to find answers to these questions and in return was provided enough money to last , If he was successful in providing answers he would be treated well in gold and silver otherwise be banished from the kingdom. The scholar went home worried and tensed, he was a learned man but not very practical and with this task at hand he was worried and fell sick. This man’s farm was taken care by a little boy who would graze the cows, he was very clever and blessed with knowledge. One

And I was getting late as usual to work and battled my way across the construction signs on the local roads and finally managed to get on freeway not before giving the “I was here first look” and the occasional honk and now that I was comfortably moving at the Needle on the 20 mph, I had the comfort of taking a sip of the freshly brewed coffee my sweet wife had handed me before I left home and then pushed the decibels up to a comfortable level on the radio. That’s when I thought I heard something familiar and yes I was correct it was the distant voice of the street hawkers vibrating in distant harmony with an occasional tinkle on the bell and this one was apparently one who would sharpen kitchen knives. It was the Morning edition on NPR and the program was about the “The Lost Sounds of Old Beijing” and how family run older professions are being given up for more advanced and less labor intensive work for higher pay. But the melodic noise and cries made by the knife sharpening hawker on