Our Beliefs make up our Reality

'Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India' - By William Dalyrmple. I read this book couple of weeks back. It is a wonderful travelogue where the author has presented 9 different stories of 9 ordinary Indian people who follow separate religious beliefs. I was immediately engaged in the stories of the people because of the writing style, giving adequate attention to mundane things in their daily lives as well as the sacred rituals and traditions.

The book for me was more than learning about the different cultures.
Why do people follow certain traditions? What is their definition of God? Did the God they hold so dearly protect them from all evil?
One thing was clear from all the stories. The cause or the reason why a person ended up following a God or the sacred tradition was more than just something that got passed on from generation to generation. Most of the stories in the book were of people who chose to become a Theyyam dancer, or a tantric, or a sufi singer or a monk.
For people of lower castes and those lower in socio economic ladder, the tradition of dancing or giving blessing as if they 'become' God is a source of food and some extra money. It is also a source to gain respect from other portions of the society who otherwise would not even look at them in their real life.

There is some kind of conflict between the day to day lives of the people and the special days or nights when they were in their avatars. Or there was a conflict in what they believed as part of the faith and what they really felt inside.

The Theyyam dancer for example digs well for rich people in town who would not allow them to touch the water of the same wells after they are complete. The Tibetan Monk who follow teachings of non-violence and love, have to pick up swords and guns to fight the Chinese army. The deva-daasis are bitten by the deadly disease of aids from people who come to them to wash away their sins. The Jain Nun is looking forward to moksha, a form of suicide which would unite her to a friend who died at an young age.

So what is real? The pain of the Nun or her belief that she will meet her friend after death? The well digger's belief that he is God for few months of the year?
I think it doesn't matter to us, as an audience. Our belief system becomes or reality. For the Sufi singer, or the tantrics, the beliefs they hold is their reality.

And as for us, it goes along the same line. It bothers me to see how my family and relatives follow traditions and religious beliefs which most don't know the meaning of or the importance of. But again, it doesn't matter. For people who do those acts, they make that their reality.

Conversations with God - Book

I picked this book - 'Conversations with God' by Neale Donald Walsch from the library. This is the second time I picked it up. The first time round I could not read beyond couple of pages. A friend had suggested this book to me, and at that time it seemed artificial and something I could not comprehend.
This time I was looking for answers. More than answers to specific questions, I was looking to explore and understand this explanation of Life and  God.

The language used in the book is very casual - not something we imagine God can talk to us.

Below are some lines from the book, which I had noted down. 

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. (Thoughts, word, action - that's how).

There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory. The soul knows all there is to know all the time. Yet knowing is not enough. The soul seeks to experience.

Judge not, then, the karmic path walked by another. Envy not success, nor pity failure, for you know not what is success and failure in the soul's reckoning.And know that what you do in the tune of your greatest trial can be your greatest triumph. For the experience you create is a statement of who you are and who you want to be.
You life is always a result of your thoughts about it - including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose. Your life proceeds out of your intentions for it.


In the largest sense, all the "bad" things that happen are of your choosing. The mistake is not in choosing them, but in calling them bad. For in calling them bad, you call your self bad, since you created them. This label you cannot accept, so rather than label self bad, you disown your own creations.You cannot change the outer event (for that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively), so you must change the inner experience. Nothing is painful in and of itself. Pain is a result of wrong thought. It is an error in thinking.
Pain results from a judgement you have made about a thing. Remove the judgement and the pain disappears.

Affirmations do not work if they are merely statements of what you want to be true. Affirmations work only when they are statements of something you already know to be true.
If, now, there is something you choose to experience in your life, do not "want" it- choose it.

The actions of the body were meant to be reflections of a state of being, not attempts to attain a state of being.
In true order of things one does not do things in order to be happy - one is happy and hence does things. One does not do things in order to be compassionate, one is compassionate and, hence, acts in a certain way. The soul's decision precedes the body's action in a highly conscious person. Only an unconscious person attempts to produce a state of the soul through something the body is doing.

Your life work is a statement of who you are. If it is not, then why are you doing it?
Do you imagine that you have to? You don't have to do anything.

If "Man who supports his family at all cost, even his own happiness" is who you are then love your work, because it is facilitating your creation of a living statement of Self.
If " woman who works at a job she hates in order to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is who you are then love love love your job for it totally supports your self image, your self concept.
Everyone can love everything the moment they understand what they are doing, and why.
No one does anything he doesn't want to do.

City of Djinns

I am very lucky to have come across this book called the 'City of Djinns'. It is a travelogue by writer William Dalrymple who visited Delhi in the nineties and lived there for 6 years. This book has opened my eyes to the lost history of the great capital of India. I am still not even half way through the book and I cannot keep it down. The characters are very beautifully portrayed and each one of them tells an era of Delhi or a story which I would never have otherwise known.
All Indians should read this book to know more about the great city. The book is more like a novel than a history lesson and is very entertaining.
I feel so proud to be part of such rich history just by being born in this great country.
Reading this book, one can realize and live through the most elegant and pristine heights the city has experienced and also the most nasty downs and ruins.

Coincidentally one of my best friends is also reading a book by Williams Dalrymple called the 'Nine Lives' and she tells me how awesome that one is.

This weekend I got a movie named 'Amu' in the Netflix mail. I must have added the movie long time back. But the interesting part was that the movie is a story of a girl returned from US who is visiting her relatives in Delhi (coincidence once again). She has been told that she was an adopted child all her childhood. During this visit to the city she goes to many lengths to find out about her parents and her past. The movie does showcase the lives of people in Delhi during the 1984 riots after Prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. The book however I found to be 10 folds better than the movie in depicting the gruesome reality during that phase.

Violet Dawn

Got our new Kindle Yayy! Been 2-3 weeks and read 2 books already. It is a very proud moment for me because I have always found it difficult to keep interest in a book and complete it and then pick another one again. First one I read was the Jungle Book :)
And today I finished the Violet Dawn. It is a very intuitive mystery where the author keeps you on the edge all the time. I am glad I came across this book which makes me interested in picking another of the mysteries by Brandilyn Collins.
What I liked about the book was how the book jumped back and forth between the main story and another story running in the past (well, only at the end do you realize the other story is in the past). Both the stories are beautifully narrated giving due attention to each character. You will love this book, if you want a quicker.
I do have one complaint. The mystery around Paige just ends abruptly. I was hoping to see some drama once the true killer encounters Paige. But the story I felt just ends JLT. I would however, definitely recommend this book.

Nightfall

Recently I picked this book "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg from the library. I must have read 50 some pages only. But the story is very captivating so far. It is a fiction narration of a story on a planet with 4-5 or even more suns.


There is no night at all in this land with one or the other sun always shining in the sky. I can imagine how hot it must be for people living in a place like that. More interestingly, I find time to read only when I am in the Sauna. The temperature in there always shooting hundreds.
So it will not be wrong to say that I feel the story while I read it too.


More on it once I finish reading the book.




[June 9 '09] - Finished reading the book and I can definitely say that I am happy I came across this book and picked it up from the library. I remember I was looking for the book frantically for quite sometime and nearly gave up the thought of looking further. But somehow got drawn towards an aisle of books which was the SF section. And that was exactly what I was looking for.
The story is very well written; this is the only the second SF I have read after Michael Chrichton's Timeline. And I was completely drawn by its narration, the characters and ofcourse the story. The way a known, common fact of nightfall is made a devastation to the people who never saw darkness before is simply superb.

The story is about a civilization on a planet called Kalghash where there is no night. Every day there are 1-5 suns varying light beaming across the wide sky. People there have never known darkness; they go completely crazy when the planet experiences an eclipse and they see the stars for the very first time.
The characters in the story are interesting and while the authors narrates each of their stories separately, seamlessly they roll into the mainstream story line. Every character becomes alive in the mystic way.

I felt that the ending could have been extended. May be I felt this way cos I wanted to keep reading.

Thanks to people on Friendfeed; I picked the book from one of the 'best books' discussions.

Five people you meet in heaven

Last month I was reading this book called 'Five people you meet in heaven' by Mitch Albom. I am impressed by the way the author narrates the story, you just cannot keep the book down half way through. From reviews across the web, it looks like his other book 'Tuesdays with Morrie' is more appreciated, but this one was good enough for me to like his style of writing. Very simple way of story telling and very simple story.

The story is about an old man named Eddie who dies in an accident and goes to heaven. All life he lives with a sense of bitterness that he was tied down in one place because he had to take care of his parents. If not for this responsibility, he thinks he would have gone away to do better things in life. There are few incidences in his life which take the center stage in the story line. All of the people whom he meets in heaven are people he was connected to while alive and are waiting to tell him a story. A story that tells how their life stories are linked to his. Each tale has a lesson to teach for all of us. I don't want to narrate the story here; Mitch Albom has done a fabulous job in his book. So do read this one if you get a chance.

But I do like to share something interesting about the book. The first of the people in heaven is one guy who Eddie doesn't know. The story around this person is that as a kid Eddie was playing with a ball and he throws it on the road alongside a park. There is a car approaching which barely misses the ball by an inch. Eddie picks the ball and walks back in the park to continue playing with his brother. But the car driver looses control and somewhere down the road meets with an accident resulting in his death.
Lesson, the author says is that we all are connected. Knowingly or unknowingly we cross each others lives; we know the connection with people whom we interact and know how they impact us. But as part of this universe (in Hinduism we call it Brahman) we are all connected. The connection can be a relationship you share with a person, it can be an incidence you may have experienced together, or as part of a community or just that we are all alive.
I was listening to news one day; they were interviewing people who were survivors of the Hudson river plane crash. One of the people said, once they were off the plane everyone hugged and rejoiced and everyone felt connected to each other.
I was in the train traveling back home from downtown. As I was reading the book, I just looked up and saw around. I could not stop thinking what if some mishap happens while I was in the train? A train de-rail? Or some really physched guy had a bad day at work and decides to shoot down people in the train? In that situation may be all the people in the train compartment get together and put down the gun man. May be the people would then feel some kind of bonding between each other! But should an experience like that make me feel that there is a connection?
I looked around now. I saw some yawning, some reading newspaper, some sitting eyes closed, some talking out loud of their children, some talking of their bosses and some of their boyfriends. Everybody was having yet another day after work. But here I was having a new feeling, a feeling of oneness, that everyone around me are humans and part of the same one being. It was a strange and weird yet a good feeling. I smiled to myself.

Btw, I loved the suspense in the end of the book about the last person Eddie meets. Just as the book ends, you get feel 'Ah! Never expected this. Nice'.

Overall a good read. Most importantly the book has only about 300 pages. I easily get bored to read books, so a quick read is always preferred. And very few books are worth like this one.