Sambara got furious at this and created 3 demons(Daama,Vyala, Kata). They were exact replicas of himself with the only difference that they were robot-like projections. Sambara sent his army led by his three Robot-like projections to fight with the Gods. Fierce battle ensued in which both sides suffered heavy casualities. However, the 3 demons of Sambara fought so well that the gods had to flee. Feeling helpless, the gods approached the creator Brahma and sought his help. Brahma, instead of helping, gave a long lecture on the merits of Sambara’s demons: “Sambara’s army led by the 3 demons can’t be defeated because they are robot-like projections with no feelings. They are fearless, have no preconceived notions and no belief system. They have no doubts in their minds and are enjoying complete freedom. For that matter they don’t know what is war, victory or defeat. In other words they are completely unconditioned and therefore invincible”.
The Gods got frustrated with the lecture and wanted to know what was the way out. Brahma then advised the gods as follows: “Keep engaging the demons in repeated wars, but wisely retreat each time. By fighting the wars repeatedly, some ego sense will gradually arise in the three  demons. The sense of ego in turn will create latent tendences(‘VAASANAAS’) and psychological conditioning in them.

Once conditioning sets in, they will become weak, fearful of death, confused to fight etc. You must take that opportune moment to strike hard without let up and surely victory will be yours”.
Needless to say, the gods implemented the game plan suggested by Brahma and eventually emerged victorious.

The story beautifully illustrates how conditioning can make a huge difference between victory and defeat in any field of endeavour. Isn’t it then worth making an effort?

P.S: Those of you interested may now access my posts on ENERGY MATTERS – SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS @ www.narasimhancs.com

The Delhi episode:
The taxi driver was a young guy from Haryana who settled down in Delhi as a driver for the past 5 years. His education is nothing much to speak of. Let me explain how I got into his taxi. I attended a one-day conference in Delhi having taken the morning flight from Mumbai. Having finished with my meetings by 4 pm  at the Habitat centre on the Lodhi road, I was in a hurry to get to the airport. I went to the security watchman’s cabin of the building and sought his help. He promptly offered his services to fetch a cab. He made a call on his cell and instantly a Wagon R zoomed in front of me. I got into the cab expecting that he would switch on the meter. After travelling a kilometer or so, I reminded him to put on the meter. He refused and quietly demanded a fare of 750 rupees. I cried foul and took pains to explain to him that only in the morning I paid 450 rupees from the airport to Lodhi Road by a more luxurious LOGAN (Surely a LOGAN is a much superior vehicle in comparison to a WAGON R). After a heated argument he realized I was not going to budge and came down to 600 rupees, which was still way above the normal fare of 450 rupees. I had to agree for the revised fare since I had no choice and accused him of rank dishonesty. That was enough provocation for him to come up with an elaborate explanation and a honest confession. He said – ‘Yes sir I am fleecing you – but then in Delhi I can’t survive if I am honest, as everyone around me is dishonest and corrupt. kya karega saheb, mujhe security watchmen ko sau rupya dena padta hai- uske baad maalik ko bhi paisa dena padta hai- mujhe kya bachega?’

His point is that the security watchman and the owner of the vehicle are both exploiting him which forces him in turn to exploit me!  But then if one were to probe the matter further and question the security watchman, I am sure he would tell you stories of how badly his employer exploits him. So it’s a chain reaction which is triggered by the rich class after all, to start with. Under the circumstances who is to judge whom? Frankly, I think we are all partners in crime blaming each other of dishonesty!

The Chennai episode:
The encounter I had in Chennai on the following week was somewhat different. I took an auto riksha from Triplicane to the airport. The driver was around 55 years old. He quoted a fare of 300 rupees and finally settled for 275. As I tried to strike up a conversation on the way, the guy made a number of confessions. He said he was a drunkard at one point of time and neglected his family and children. His family got frustrated and finally left him for good when he was in his early fifties. He continued with his old habits for some more years. His health turned very bad and eventually all his drinking friends also abandoned him. Suddenly one day wisdom dawned on him. Apparently he completely stopped drinking as he realized that there would be no one to look after him if he fell ill. Then he went on to share with me his future retirement plans. He would like to work as a lorry driver for a few years, make a few lacs of rupees(!) and then retire with that money. I asked him how on earth could anyone make a few lacs within a few years driving a lorry. He claimed that one could make up to 60000 (yes,sixty thousand rupees per month)as a truck driver. As I listened to his story with an incredulous smile, he gave the following explanation:
I quote-
“I will take ‘cutting’ loads(‘cutting load’ is a Tamil expression for unauthorized part loads on the way), I will make money by taking loads of passengers on the way as I pass through small villages and towns, I will cook up accounts to show high expenses on truck maintenance (isn’t this pretty much the equivalent of ‘creative accounting’ practiced by dishonest corporates)and finally I will take out valuable stuff from the truck loads, sell it and replace the same with fillers(this is what we refer to as pilferage)”

I asked how he could do such atrocious things. He countered me with a strong defence: “Sir, who will take care of me in my old age otherwise. My family has abandoned me. Friends and relatives can’t be relied upon. The transport company is not going to pay me a fair salary. Govt will not care either. I am a driver and all I know is how to drive a vehicle. Under the circumstances, I will be forced to make money only by such means”.
I was at my wit’s end to respond.

Given such a scenario, how can we complain about dishonesty at lower levels(poor class),when the rich don’t care to be honest. The poor have a compulsion to make money by any means, but do the rich have any justification for being dishonest except of course for reasons of their greed?

The concert of TM Krishna that I attended at Mylapore Fine Arts was not free from controversies. He made an elaborate rendering of the main Raga Thodi but to everyone’s surprise chose to take up a trivial Varnam (Kanakaangi…)as the ‘Kriti’, which can not offer much scope for elaboration. What is more, he chose to do ‘NERAVAL’ with the most insignificant part of the Varnam – ANUPALLAVI starting with DHANADUDAINA..SARAFOJI… RAJENDRA… etc, which has neither depth of meaning or nor the inherent strength of bringing out ‘Raga Bhava’. In a typical NERAVAL, there is invariably a beautiful convergence of RAAGA BHAVA & SAHITYA BHAVA.
Choosing to sing a Varnam for the main Raga ignoring so many ‘weighty’ Kritis of VAAGGEYAKAAARAAS can only be termed immature!

Bombay Jayasri’s concert was exceptional. Her music can only be described by phrases such as divine, soulful or Blissful. One can really relax and become blissfully unaware of the surroundings, listening to her music. The quality of divinity only got enhanced as she began to slow down her tempo of music for the past more than an year. The slow tempo,perfect Sruti and Bhava together make her music captivating. And one gets completely soaked and absorbed in her music as a concert progresses.
Ranjani & Gayatri, whose music is usually fast paced, also shifted to slower pace – again with a good effect.
Sudha Raghunathan’s concert was, on the other hand, full of VIDWAT and the manner in which she glided smoothly from one Raga to the next during the main raga presentation was simply superb (She handled with complete ease the transition from SANKARABAHRANAM to Thodi to Kalyani to Darbar and back to Sankarabharanam). Besides exhibition of technique, it was also melodius.
We had a great beginning to the New Year thanks to Music Academy organizing a Flute concert by Shashank.
Among the upcoming artists, I must make a special mention of Abhishek Raghuram and Sandeep Narayan. Abhishek certainly has all the ingredients in his music to make it big in the future. However, I felt he needs to tone down on BHRIGAS and use adequate ‘karvai’(effective silent periods) between SANGATIS while presenting a RAAGA Or a KRITI.

I will conclude my review of my music season with an interesting incident for the benefit of those who may not be familiar with the various Sabhas(Halls)of Chennai. On 24th Dec, I went to Krishna Gana Sabha in T Nagar with great enthusiasm to listen to the concert of TV Sankaranarayanan. I paid 200 Rs and in my anxiety to ensure a seat for the next day, bought another ticket for 200 Rs for the concert of Sanjay Subramanyam. To every one’s shock, TVS’s concert was completely spoiled by the very poor sound management system of the organizers. TVS was 15 minutes into the concert and tried in vain to reason with the sound engineer. At this point, the artist was so upset that he wondered whether he should continue with the concert. The secretary of the Sabha, however, forced him to continue anyway. I came out of the Hall and protested to the secretary and demanded refund of both the tickets. In an unprecedented develpment, the secretary refunded my money, while blaming the artists of coming in late and confusing their Sound engineers!
I came to know later that this hall is notorious for mismanagement.
I think it is advisable to stick to 4 or 5 good Sabhas – Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Mylapore Fine Arts, Parthasaradhi Sabha and possibly Brahma Gana Sabha on Luz Church Road.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an endorsement of this principle from a completely unexpected quarter – YOGA VASISHTA, which is a very ancient Hindu scripture. The entire text is in the form of a dialogue between Rama and his ‘Rajaguru’, the sage Vasishta. Rama raises a number of philosophical issues and Vasishta answers them all through philosophical discourses as well as parables. I will very briefly narrate the relevant story below:

Once upon a time there lived a demoness called KARKATI in the Himalayan mountain range. She had a huge body and was always hungry. No amount of food would satisfy her hunger. Therefore she sat in penance to seek a boon. Brahma, the creator was immensely pleased and appeared before her. She wanted a boon which would transform her to a very small, invisible insect( a virus?) which could enter any body without effort and devour the same. Brahma granted the boon saying that she could enter anybody with unclean habits through their fingers. The demoness got the form she wanted and began invading bodies as ordained by Brahma. But soon the demoness realized that with such an invisible body, she was not in a position to eat large quantities. Therefore, she sat in penance once again. Brahma appeared again and blessed her with another boon. Brahma made her regain her huge form once again. A strange solution to her hunger problem was provided by the gods. The demoness could eat only the ignorant among the human species! In justification the demoness was told: “It is NOT A SIN to kill the ignorant for the sake of food. The ignorant serve no purpose in the world as they are condemned to suffer. They would always feel miserable and spread the same to others as well”.
Having got the boon, the demoness now went around looking for the ignorant. She found a king and his minister relaxing near a pond and threatened to kill them. The king was wise and responded to the situation with calmness. When the demoness explained to the king about the boon she obtained from Brahmaji, the king proposed to the demoness to eat all the ignorant subjects in his kingdom leaving behind the wise ones. Needless to say the demoness lived happily ever after devouring the ignorant and miserable people in the kingdom.

The story above is illustrative of how ignorance is NOT protected or supported even in our scriptures. One need not take the story as a sanction to kill the ignorant and the miserable. The story has to be viewed in the right context. It is to provoke and inspire people to rid themselves of ignorance for the purpose of happy living.
The basic point to note here is that in a kingdom, if killing is inevitable to accommodate the demoness with her boons, the ignorant are among the first ones to be sacrificed. Besides ignorance, uncleanliness is also condemned in the story.

Postscript:
My daughter discussed the story with me and she was unable to reconcile with the fact that the king was prepared to sacrifice the ignorant among his subjects. I explained that the story is merely symbolic. Ignorance itself is the demoness within which will eventually consume the ignorant. That is the law of Nature – ‘NIYATI’.
Charles Darwin,the well known English Biologist of the 19th century in his famous book ‘Origin Of Species’ talks about ‘Survival of the fittest’. Who are the fittest? The species which is blessed with evolutionary intelligence.

This was my first ever visit to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Before leaving for Hanoi, my daughter was joking that I should get used to eating sea food if I wanted to survive in Hanoi. Yes, indeed my short stay of 3 days turned out to be a battle for survival!
We(myself and my Marketing colleague) reached Hanoi airport by lunch hour on a Thursday and drove straight to Sheraton Hotel. My lunch consisted of ‘paruppu podi’ and pickles that I carried with me which went reasonably well with rice and yoghurt served by the Hotel.
Evening dinner hosted by our customer in a posh Sea food Restaurant in Hanoi turned out to be my biggest challenge. In fact it was equally challenging for my host and the hotel waitress who were informed in advance about my vegetarian ways! I must, however, thank the waitress immensely as she came up with interesting suggestions on what to eat. The starter was a creamy Mushroom soup which turned out to be delicious. This was followed by cooked vegetables and fried noodles enclosed and packed exquisitely in a thin and tight film made out of rice. The waitress took pains to explain the contents of each packet to set at rest my suspicions.The third dish was an insipid mixture of boiled vegetables without any trace of spices. A couple of glasses of delicious fresh mango juice was my substitute for the wines which flowed freely during the dinner. And finally a great mix of seasonal fruits was served for dessert to complete my meal. At the end of the meal,I didn’t have much to complain, although I did miss my traditional Curd rice.
My Marketing colleague,on other hand, had to play ball with the hosts as he was forced to down several glasses of wine during the dinner. The most obnoxious scene during the dinner was the manner in which the sea food was served. The lobster , for instance, was shown alive to the guests before cooking. I believe it is their tradition to show a live lobster and cook it in the presence of the guests in a stove conveniently placed close by! Mercifully, I was saved from such a sight on that day. It was hard to imagine that the lobster which was alive and kicking only a few moments before would end up on the dinner plates of the greedy guests.

Vietnam, today, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world with an industrial growth of 15-19% for several years in the past decade. Vietnamese are not fluent in English and therefore our customers were always accompanied by an interpreter. In fact my entire technical presentation was quite skilfully translated by a freelance translator, who claimed that he had to do a lot of hard work for several days in order to do a decent job of translating.

Hanoi is a city of lakes – all natural. There are as many as 10 lakes within the city. Our hotel itself was located adjacent to a beautiful lake and it was such a pleasure to take long walks around the lovely lakes.The lakes are reasonably well maintained too.

On the day we left Hanoi, I decided to take a long walk early in the morning. Even as I was admiring the city administration for the manner in which they maintained the lakes, something bizarre happened. I noticed a couple riding on a bike stop by. They were carrying a bagful of some black muck which looked like some sort of a toxic pollutant. To my horror, they quietly walked towards the lake and dumped the whole thing into the lovely lake. I shouted in vain to stop the atrocity. They gesticulated back at me and disappeared from the scene as quickly as they appeared.

We had very little time for sight seeing. In the limited time available, we visited a place known as the ‘Temple of Literature’ or Van Mieu (in the local vietnamese language). The place displays ancient Vietnamese architecture and patronage of the scholarly. It’s an ancient university with a significant influence of the great Chinese philosopher Confucius. It has five courtyards to denote five essential elements of Nature. It is said that the central path which divides the premises into two parts is symbolic of the Middle path preached by Confucius.
The place has stone turtles(I guess that is their National Animal)in a yard. These turtles carry the names of students who graduated or completed their studies with Honors or distinction. They also carry important teachings of Confucius.

The following morning we took our flight back to Mumbai.

The Sage Kasyapa’s descendant Indu gave birth to 10 brilliant sons through the blessings of the Lord Siva. The sons became distressed when their parents died and wanted to do something to become immortal like the creator Brahma. Therefore, they set out to do penance and meditation. In their meditation they kept repeating: ‘I am the Creator Brahma – The entire creation is within me – all the rivers, mountains, Gods, Goddesses, celestials and so on…’.
They continued their ‘Tapas’ for an entire epoch and beyond (one epoch is equivalent to Brahma’s cosmic night).The contemplation and power of concentration of their mind was so intense that they indeed started creating parallel universes. At the end of the epoch, it was time for the real Brahma to retire to sleep in his cosmic night. He got up early at the dawn of the next epoch, said his morning prayers and began to meditate before starting his next cycle of creation. Just as he was meditating, he noticed in his mind the parallel universes under creation by these 10 brilliant sons of Indu. Brahma got depressed and confused as to what he should do now. He summoned a Sun from one of the parallel universes and wanted to know all about the mysterious competing creation.
The Sun narrated the story of the 10 young men and how they initiated their act of creation. Brahma sought the advice of the Sun on what he should do. Sun said: ‘There is nothing you can do about their creation. Just as you are creating the universe by sheer strength of your Mind and its capacity to concentrate, these young men have also attained the merit due to the tremendous efforts of their Mind(SANKALPA SHAKTI). Trying to destroy their creation is akin to attempting to destroy a reflection formed in a crystal or mirror.No one can destroy anything created by the power of the Mind just as one cannot destroy an image formed in a crystal. In any case what do you lose if they are engaged in their own creation? “

Then Brahma asked,’Should I carry on with my work?’. The Sun replied – ” You gain nothing either by doing or not doing your act of creation. You are NOT creating because you get something in return. What will you gain by abandoning your natural function? Doesn’t the Sun’s light get reflected in a pool of water without the Sun nor water intending to reflect? Therefore, irrespective of what these young men are doing, you keep creating as many worlds as you wish, which is your natural function . There is beauty in doing what is natural to you. Wise men neither desire to act nor desire to abandon action.”
Listening to the insightful advice from the Sun, Brahma got back to his work of creation.

Saint Thyagaraja gave a similar message in one of his musical compositions. He said:
“Is my desire to sing in praise of Rama going to be fulfilled just because Valmiki had written wonderful poetry in the glory of Shrirama”.(He poses a rhetorical question,’NAA AASA TEERUNA?, meaning ‘Will my desire to sing in praise of the lord get fulfilled?)

The message is pretty simple and clear enough. Comparing and competing is NOT the way forward. Everyone of us is blessed with a unique talent(or a ‘skill set’ to use an IT jargon)and there is beauty and satisfaction in utilizing it to the full instead of comparing and feeling miserable.

Vasishta started off with his own personal story. The story goes back to the time when Brahma started his act of creation. As he went about his job, Brahma was highly displeased with himself as he found that majority of the human beings were suffering and in great misery due to extreme greed. Brahma became compassionate and somehow wanted to solve the problem. Thus he instituted a path by following which people could get what they wanted. The path required human beings to follow certain auterities, charity(YAJNAS), truthfulness etc. People could use these as instruments to satisfy their desires. However, this did not solve the basic problem as people continued to remain miserable with ever increasing craving for material objects. Therefore Brahma created the all knowing sage Vasishta and brought him onto the earth so that he could teach the ultimate Truth leading to final liberation. Surprisingly though, as soon as the ‘all knowing Vasishta’ was born, Brahma covered him with a veil of ignorance. The ignorance plunged him into misery and he also began struggling like others. Vasishta begged and prayed earnestly to his father (Brahma) to bless him with the knowledge and wisdom which would liberate him out of the misery. Brahma obliged and revealed to him the True knowledge. Brahma explained to Vasishta that he spread the veil of ignorance on him deliberately so that he would truly appreciate the glory of true knowledge and understand the misery of ignorant masses and help them with compassion.
Having narrated his personal story, Vasishta declared that Contentment, Self control, enquiry and ‘satsang’ are the 4 gatekeepers to complete liberation. As a concession he prescribed the practice of any one of the 4, which would automatically lead to the attainment of the other virtues.

For the entire week, the atmosphere in all offices in Mumbai is pretty much like an unofficial ‘Bandh’. Suppliers don’t care to supply, customers don’t bother you with questions about delivery, employees are in their own blissful world and finally bosses don’t ask inconvenient questions about projects or targets with the simple understanding that it is after all a Diwali week.

Then I settled down to checking e-mails and SMSes. It wasn’t not at all easy to filter out the unwanted messages from the genuine ones, since there was a flood of colourful greeting messages from known as well as several unknown people.

During Diwali time, there is another problem to deal with – the menace of people(various service providers)barging into the office to offer gifts. You politely say ‘No’ to some but are forced to accept a few for the fear of offending them.

Finally I headed home to celebrate the festival over a really long and relaxing weekend. As usual Sweets were distributed among friends, candles were lit up, Floors were decorated with ‘Rangoli’ , phone calls were made to chat with close friends & relatives etc. In the midst of all this postmen, drivers, car cleaners, garbage collectors, servant maids etc turned up one after the other to collect their share of Diwali ‘Bakshish’. We had to be ready with abundant supply of 100 rupee notes because these days no one would accept anything less than 100 rupees.

Today is the last day of the long weekend and thank God it will be Business as usual again from tomorrow onwards in the offices!

Incident #2:
We reached ‘Nachiar temple near Kumbhakonam. As we were waiting for ‘darshan’, I happened to overhear a telephonic conversation of the priest. The priest kept so many people waiting as he took more than 10 minutes on his cell phone cribbing and complaining. This man stunned me as he brought the deity of the temple into his conversations. He said he was doing his work in the temple without any involvement whatsoever and added that he was simply moving around the temple like a dead body without any feelings. He went on to blame the God inside the temple for his misfortune.(He referred to the deity as a lifeless stone). Closing his conversation abruptly he came inside and performed ‘arti’ for us.

Incident#3:
On another day, an auto riksha driver was cribbing endlessly while justifying the exorbitant fare demanded by him. His point was that with all the complaints of so called fleecing by auto drivers, they are merely making 100 to 150 Rs per day, which is a rediculously low sum considering the cost of living. If one takes into account the loan repayment also, he said, the net take-home would be around 100 rupees. On exceptionally busy seasons like the wedding seasons, they would make over 200 Rupees per day.

Incident #4:
A Tourist taxi driver also had similar sob stories to share on another day. Apparently, these drivers work long and irregular hours(more than 12hrs per day) and make 250 rupees during busy seasons. During the lean season they would work only for half a day and make just half that amount.

Incident #5:
In another remote temple, a retired school peon cribbed about his lowly pension and extracted some money from us.

I should add to the above list my driver who borrowed heavily from me. I have no clue as to when he is going to repay considering that he has very recently added one more young member to his family. By borrowing from me, he has made sure that we are stuck with each other for good!

What is common to all these episodes? Utter poverty, deep frustration and restlessness to come out of it.
‘Beg, Borrow or Steal’ – seems to be the ‘mantra’and the guiding principle for survival for most of them. It is a matter of time before the restlessness turns into a rebellion similar to what we are witnessing in the Arab countries.

Most of the people I am talking about would fall below the Poverty Line even as per the latest Guidelines of Planning Commission, which fixed a rediculous limit of 35 rupees per person per day as the criterion.

Our nation is following the model of development of the West which is ‘welfare capitalism’(minus the welfare part). This social contract creates 1% of super rich minority supported by a large aspiring middle class. But this model of development does very little to alleviate extreme poverty at the bottom of the pyramid – the working class. We can feel the symptoms of their restlessness in all town and cities.