In Ask the Monk, celebrated monk Nityanand Charan Das lucidly answers over seventy frequently asked questions—by young and old alike—on topics such as karma, religion versus spirituality, mind, God, destiny, the purpose of life, suffering, rituals, religion, wars and so on.
Have questions? Intrigued to know more?
Read this excerpt from Ask the Monk and find out the answer to a very critical question—doesn’t spirituality demand blind faith?
*
No. Spirituality does not ask for blind faith, but ‘reasonable faith.’
Reasonable faith means, ‘I hear something. So let me try it. If it does not work, I can always give it up’.
Blind faith means, I hear something and straightway reject it without verifying.
Blind acceptance is bad, but blind rejection is equally bad. In fact, it is worse because we might miss out on a rare diamond, considering it to be a broken piece of glass.
And this reasonable faith is not something new. If we carefully examine, we will find that we have been applying it in every aspect of life. In fact, our life starts with reasonable faith. When we are born, we do not know who our father is. We hear from our mother and we trust her. Now if we talk about blind faith, then isn’t this also blind faith because we were not there earlier? Not at all. This is called reasonable faith. Now if we want, we can do DNA testing to verify it.
When we get into a cab, we never check whether the driver has a license and knows how to drive. We have faith that he will take us to our destination.
We go to hotels and restaurants after hearing the food at a particular place is good. We go and try and then conclude based on our findings. We believe that the food is not infected, although chances are that it could be. But we have faith.
So the point is that we cannot move even an inch forward without this faith, else we will live in constant fear and go insane.
The best way to move forward is to have a certain degree of faith in everything despite it all. It’s reasonable, since we cannot keep checking everything.
The same logic applies to spiritual life as well. We can hear from the right authority and move forward thinking, ‘If someone is teaching something, let me try and apply it in my life and test the authenticity.’
Sometimes some people reject the spiritual truths as bogus or illogical, saying they are students of science. However, they are not scientific at all because science also says that before we accept or reject a theory, it must go through six steps; aim, apparatus, theory, observation, calculation and conclusion. Only when we have tested do we have the right to decide whether it’s real or not.
Thus, just like we apply reasonable faith to everything in life without immediately rejecting it, spiritual life must not be an exception. We can apply the principles mentioned in the scriptures and see if they work. If they do not, give them up. But giving up without trying is totally unscientific and illogical.
The proof of pudding is in eating.
When we experiment based on what we hear, we get realizations and those realizations increase our faith. Spiritual life requires the same logic of faith that we apply everywhere else in our life.
**
Get your copy of Ask the Monk from your nearest bookstore or via Amazon.
In a world of several success stories, many starry-eyed, entrepreneur aspirationals buy books and watch numerous videos on what formula will make their own start-up stick. It takes a real expert like author Dhruv Nath, to know that the real lessons come from a comparative study of what worked and what didn’t. Compiling the journeys of the ideas that saw the light and went beyond, as well as those which ended before they even began, The Dream Founder is a must-read on what happens after the lightbulb switches on.
You can get your copy now from the nearest bookstore or visit Amazon to order.
*
One More Book on Start-Ups? Why?
Good question. There are several books on start-ups out there. Just get on to Amazon or Flipkart and you’ll see lots of them. So, why did I write one more?
Well, for a start, most of the books in the market talk about American start-ups—the Facebooks, the WhatsApps, the Ubers and the Airbnbs of the world. But hang on—aren’t you planning to create a start-up in India? In which case, you would want to learn from Indian start-ups, wouldn’t you? Sure, you can learn from Airbnb and Uber and all the rest of them—and you should. But isn’t it far more important to learn from companies in the Indian context? All of us are aware that the Indian environment is very different from what exists in the western world. Most western countries, such as the US, are developed. We are a developing country, which clearly means that both the opportunities and constraints will be different. Small-town and rural India—often called Bharat—offers a huge, untapped market, with no parallels in the west. Language is a major issue, with the future perhaps belonging to start-ups that cater to vernacular languages. I can go on and on, but I’m sure you get the idea. While you should learn from start-ups in the US, it’s much more critical to learn from start-ups in India. And that’s why this book is all about Indian start-ups. One of the few in this category.
Next, even if you were to look at the Indian books out there, all of them talk about huge success stories, such as Byju’s, Flipkart, Paytm and Ola Cabs. Whose founders are spoken about in hushed whispers, even at paan shops. And, of course, in bars, with alcohol warming the insides. I’m sure you would want to learn from these phenomenally successful guys. But let me ask you a frank question. Can you really identify with such start-ups? These aren’t start-ups any more. They are giants—in many cases, multinational giants. Who do you really identify with? The smaller guys, isn’t it? Those fledgeling start-ups which are just a few years old and are perhaps facing the same problems that you are. Wouldn’t you also want to listen to the founders of these young start-ups? Of course you would!
So, which ones do we discuss in this book?
Aha, that’s the best part. We discuss both. On the one hand, the book has stories about young start-ups which you can identify with. But it also has advice from the real giants in the business—the likes of Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Naukri.com, Deepinder Goyal of Zomato, Dr Annurag Batra of BW Businessworld and Meena Ganesh of Portea Medical. And then, we also have a highly successful investor—Sushanto Mitra of Lead Angels. They have all been happy to share their gyan, which I’ve promptly included in this book. So, you are in the happy position of learning from both the big guns and the smaller guys. And that makes this book truly unique.
But it gets even more unique, so do read on. You see, you can get lots of write-ups about start-ups that succeeded. Stories about their founders are plastered all over the Internet, the TV, the papers and, in fact, on virtually all kinds of media except possibly posters on public toilets (thank god!). But what about those that failed? Shouldn’t you be learning from them as well? To take an analogy from the film industry, if you want to be an actor, it is good to learn from Amitabh Bachchan. But isn’t it even more important to learn from those who came from their villages to try their luck and are still pottering around as extras in Bollywood? Or worse, those who got fed up and went back to their villages?
Agreed? So, how often have you read about failures? How often have you heard founders bragging, ‘You know, I’m really proud of the fact that my start-up was a failure, and I’d be delighted to have this come out in print’? Never happens, does it? Obviously, no one talks about failures. These things are never written about, which means you don’t learn from them.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where this book gets really exciting. As I mentioned earlier, I have spent several years with young founders, investing in their start-ups as well as mentoring many of them. There have been some really successful founders, but there has also been a fair share of failures. And I decided, in all my wisdom, to write about both the successful guys as well as the failures. Founders who were simply not able to build and grow their start-ups. And whose stories have remained under wraps and, therefore, unavailable to mankind. Of course, in some cases, liberal doses of alcohol—duly funded by me—had to be supplied to get these founders to open up.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes this book really, really unique!
When the Galwan Valley clash happened in June 2020, the Indo-China conflict became the centre of the world’s attention. As shown in this excerpt from India’s Most Fearlesss 3, journalists Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh have succeeded in recalibrating the narrative from speculative headlines to the real axis of the stories: the Indian Army soldiers. Read the full story of these bravehearts as well as many others in this thought-provoking book on real-life military bravery.
*
‘I Had Never Seen Such Fierce Fighting’
The Galwan Clash of June 2020
Even above the loud, steady roar of the Galwan River, he heard the thundering footfalls. The sound of over a thousand men reverberating through the darkness, amplified by the tunnel effect of a narrow valley flanked by steep rising mountains on both sides. Peering into the black void beyond Patrol Point 14, lit only a few metres forward by hand-held torches, the reality of those sounds dawned on Havildar Dharamvir Kumar Singh of the Indian Army’s 16 Bihar infantry battalion. He clenched his eyes briefly shut to soak in every vibration. When he opened them again, he knew that the huge horde of men advancing towards his position was not marching.
They weren’t even jogging.
They were sprinting.
‘There were less than 400 of us,’ says Havildar Dharamvir. ‘We would soon discover that the number of Chinese Army soldiers running towards us was maybe three times that. We had been fighting smaller numbers of Chinese for two hours before that. But this was their main force. The all-out assault that the Chinese side was launching against us.’
An all-out assault.
Unarmed, as stipulated by decades-old protocol between the two armies, Havildar Dharamvir quickly glanced around at the soldiers with him. Even in the darkness he could tell their expressions. A curious mix of determination and fearlessness, but tinged with an edge of foreboding.
As the soldiers steeled themselves, rallied by their commanding officer and a group of younger officers, Havildar Dharamvir knew what lay ahead would need every ounce of strength the smaller force could muster. But it also made one particular man in the team even more crucial.
A non-combatant with a white suitcase.
Wading through the group of soldiers with him, Havildar Dharamvir emerged on the banks of the gushing Galwan, right where he had last seen the man he was looking for now.
With a big, unmistakable red ‘plus’ sign painted on to his parka, Naik Deepak Singh wasn’t standing. On his knees, his suitcase open with bandages and bottles of tincture, he was crouched over what appeared to be a small group of injured men, all groaning in the darkness. Three were Indian soldiers being administered first aid.
The six other soldiers receiving emergency ministrations from the young Indian Army medic weren’t Indian soldiers. They were Chinese Army personnel. Two People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers and four jawans.
‘They are badly injured. They need to rest,’ Naik Deepak said before Havildar Dharamvir could ask. An hour earlier, the injured Chinese soldiers had been left behind by their retreating force. Naik Deepak, the young nursing assistant, had been summoned to Patrol Point 14 by his commanding officer two hours earlier. Not he, not Havildar Dharamvir and not his commanding officer knew then how crucial his crouched figure would be in the events of that night.
‘Is that your blood?’ Havildar Dharamvir bent down over Naik Deepak, inspecting a gash just above the nursing assistant’s right eyebrow.
‘It’s nothing. A piece of rock hit me. It’s superficial. Main theek hoon [I am fine],’ said Naik Deepak as he finished bandaging one of the Chinese soldiers, a young man whose face was covered with streams of blood from a head injury.
A short distance behind, at a point where the north-flowing Galwan River abruptly bent westward, Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu, commanding officer of the battalion, had been alerted to the sounds of the Chinese advance. As he began to summon reinforcements and rally his much smaller force to face the arrival of the much larger Chinese advance, one thing was certain to him. No matter what transpired next in that desolate, ravine-like valley at 13,000 feet in Ladakh’s Himalayan heights, history had already been made with blood and bone that day.
As word of the lethal Galwan Valley incident shocked the world at 12.21 p.m. the following day, most would see it as a spontaneous flare-up that had ended a healthy forty-five-year run of zero fatal casualties on the India–China frontier. But waiting in the darkness on the banks of the Galwan River the previous night, Naik Deepak and Havildar Dharamvir knew that nothing, including that advancing horde of Chinese soldiers, was unplanned.
In the early twentieth century, a Bohemian writer called Franz Kafka released a strange story. The absurd but existentialist tale of a man who transforms into a huge insect is the reason we now have the term ‘Kafkaesque’. More than a century later, Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, who last published Exit West has adapted the trope to suit contemporary anxieties about race and identity. His protagonist, a white man named Anders, wakes up in a darker skin colour. Soon, the world around him descends into chaos as more such transformations take place.
The following excerpt is the first chapter of The Last White Man. Get your copy from bookstores or Amazon.
*
One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown. This dawned upon him gradually, and then suddenly, first as a sense as he reached for his phone that the early light was doing something strange to the color of his forearm, subsequently, and with a start, as a momentary conviction that there was somebody else in bed with him, male, darker, but this, terrifying though it was, was surely impossible, and he was reassured that the other moved as he moved, was in fact not a person, not a separate person, but was just him, Anders, causing a wave of relief, for if the idea that someone else was there was only imagined, then of course the notion that he had changed color was a trick too, an optical illusion, or a mental artifact, born in the slippery halfway place between dreams and wakefulness, except that by now he had his phone in his hands and he had reversed the camera, and he saw that the face looking back at him was not his at all.
Anders scrambled out of his bed and began to rush to his bathroom, but, calming himself, he forced his gait to slow, to become more deliberate, measured, and whether he did this to assert his control over the situation, to compel reality to return through sheer strength of mind, or because running would have frightened him more, made him forever into prey being pursued, he did not know.
The bathroom was shabbily but comfortingly familiar, the cracks in the tiles, the dirt in the grouting, the streak of dried toothpaste drip on the outside of the sink. The interior of the medicine cabinet was visible, the mirror door askew, and Anders raised his hand and swung his reflection into place before his eyes. It was not that of an Anders he recognized.
He was overtaken by emotion, not so much shock, or sorrow, though those things were there too, but above all the face replacing his filled him with anger, or rather, more than anger, an unexpected, murderous rage.
He wanted to kill the coloured man who confronted him here in his home, to extinguish the life animating this other’s body, to leave nothing standing but himself, as he was before, and he slammed the side of his fist into the face, cracking it slightly, and causing the whole fitting, cabinet, mirror, and all, to skew, like a painting after an earthquake has passed.
Anders stood, the pain in his hand muted by the intensity that had seized him, and he felt himself trembling, a vibration so faint as barely to be perceptible, but then stronger, like a dangerous winter chill, like freezing outdoors, unsheltered, and it drove him back to his bed, and under his sheets, and he lay there for a long while, hiding, willing this day, just begun, please, please, not to begin.
Anders waited for an undoing, an undoing that did not come, and the hours passed, and he realized that he had been robbed, that he was the victim of a crime, the horror of which only grew, a crime that had taken everything from him, that had taken him from him, for how could he say he was Anders now, be Anders now, with this other man staring him down, on his phone, in the mirror, and he tried not to keep checking, but every so often he would check again, and see the theft again, and when he was not checking there was no escaping the sight of his arms and his hands, dark, moreover frightening, for while they were under his control, there was no guarantee they would remain so, and he did not know if the idea of being throttled, which kept popping into his head like a bad memory, was something he feared or what he most wanted to do.
He attempted, with no appetite, to eat a sandwich, to be calmer, steadier, and he told himself that it would be all right, although he was unconvinced.
He wanted to believe that somehow he would change back, or be fixed, but already he doubted, and did not believe, and when he questioned whether it was entirely in his imagination, and tested this by taking a picture and placing it in a digital album, the algorithm that had, in the past, unfailingly suggested his name, so sure, so reliable, could not identify him.
Anders did not normally mind being alone, but as he was just then, it was as if he was not alone, was, rather, in tense and hostile company, trapped indoors because he did not dare to step outside, and he went from his computer to his refrigerator to his bed to his sofa, moving on in his small space when he could not stand to remain a minute longer where he was, but there was no escaping Anders, for Anders, that day.
Sarojini Naidu kept the beacon fire of national life aflame. Naidu played an important role in the independence movement by showcasing her oratory skills. With her revolutionary ideas and constant efforts to speak for the rights of women, she made her place in everyone’s hearts. To date, Sarojini Naidu remains to be an inspiration for men and women all around the world.
Find out why is reading about Sarojini Naidu essential with this extract from her speech given in Essential Reader: Sarojini Naidu.
We often hear, not without a taunt, that the education of girls during the last three generations has been a failure. It could not but be so, it would have been strange if it had not been so. It could not be fruitful because it went away from our traditions and ideals. Our educationists are now awake to the fact that education should and can only be on national lines. We have produced exceptional women and brilliant women, too, not because of the present system of education but in spite of it.
If we want to reconstruct our educational system, it must be along a course which would continue to preserve the best traditions of the East and West. Our standard of education of Indian women should be a normal average. Not that one of our women should be pointed out with admiration as a wonderful and brilliant woman for her culture and attainments, but rather people should point out with horror at an illiterate woman in India.
Only this morning I was reading in one of your daily papers of what Lord Haldane recently said in connection with the granting of voting rights to the women of England. He said that the day is not very distant when people in England would wonder at their refusal to grant the parliamentary rights to women just as they now wonder as to how people kept slaves in the past. I think that time would also soon come to India when we too would wonder how we could keep out women in ignorance.
Remember that woman does not merely keep the hearth-fire of your homes burning, but she keeps also the beacon fire of national life aflame. It is she who keeps the soldier-heart in time of battle and the priest-heart at the time of peace (cheers). The power of self-surrender and self-realization had been the typical characteristics of Indian womanhood. This dual capacity of the personal and impersonal in her relation to man had always marked the Indian women. In this institution, too, I find manifest that spirit of self-surrender, joyous self-surrender, and self-realization. These are the qualities that make Indian women great and these are the qualities that l am glad to find in this Vidyalaya.
Today, we who dream dreams of the coming women of India have our hopes centered round institutions like this (cheers), institutions like that of Professor Karve at Poona, nor the institutions that only slavishly imitate men’s college but the institutions that would send forth to the world women not merely brought up and fed in the dry pages of lifeless books but rather women trained in the beauties and necessities of life. These women would go forth not bearing the burden of dead knowledge but culture transmuted in the services of humanity.
The historic significance of this crowd gathered here today lies not in its number for I have addressed crowds five times larger than this; but its significance lies in the presence of the very large number of women that are gathered here. Their presence here is the indication of the coming comradeship between men and women in India. The old partition between Mardana and Zenana is broken down forever. It is in the comradeship of sexes that future India shall come out man and woman working hand in hand and supplementing each other.
Friends, tomorrow again, I shall fare forth as a singing wanderer with my two bundles of hopes and dreams but never, never shall I forget this institution of yours which is destined to take its legitimate place in the history of the regeneration of India with the promise, the guarantee, almost the realization of the high ideal that it stands for.
The spiritual awakening of Sri M and his journey into a yogi’s life has inspired people worldwide. Rather than focusing on a singular concept, Sri M and his foundation, Satsang Foundation, believe in generosity, faith and helping spiritual seekers no matter where they have come from.
The following are glimpses of his extensive bibliography, starting from Apprenticed To A Himalayan Master to Yoga Also For The Godless. His latest book The Friend is written in the guru-disciple style of conversation with Mohini Kent.
*
Apprenticed To A Himalayan Master
Both my sister and I went to the Holy Angels’ Convent, which was walking distance from home. As soon as we came back from school, it was our usual practice to wash up, eat something light, and play in the backyard till sunset. At sunset, we were supposed to wash our faces, hands and feet and sit for a short Arabic and Urdu prayer with our grandmother. After that, we would finish our school homework and have dinner. Sometimes my grandmother would tell a ew stories from the Arabian Nights, or her own experiences, and then off to bed.
That particular day, my sister who was more studious than me (no wonder that she became a senior Indian Administrative Services Officer), cut short her playtime and went back into the house earlier than usual. I was wandering around the courtyard doing nothing in particular. Dusk was not far from setting in. The light had mellowed to a soft golden yellow. I thought I would go home too and perhaps find some snacks in the kitchen. So I turned towards the house. However, for reasons I cannot explain to this day, I turned instead and walked towards the jackfruit tree at the far end of the courtyard. There was someone standing under the tree and was gesturing for me to come forward.
The normal instinct would have been to bolt, but instead I was surprised to find I felt no fear whatsoever. A strange eagerness to go closer to the stranger filled my heart. I quickened my steps and was soon standing in front of him. Now I could see clearly. The stranger was tall, extremely fair and his well-built muscular body was bare except for a piece of white cloth that was wrapped around his waist and reached just above his knees. He was also barefoot.
I was intrigued by this strange man who had slightly brown and thickly matted long hair gathered over his head in a big knot that looked like a tall hat. He wore large, brown, probably copper earrings and carried a black, polished water pot in his right hand. By far, the most striking of his features were his eyes: large, brownish black, glittering and overflowing with love and affection. He put his right hand on my head without any hesitation and his kind voice said in Hindi, ‘Kuch yaad aaya,’ which means, ‘Do you remember anything?’
I understood the stranger’s words perfectly, for although our family had settled in Kerala for generations, we spoke a peculiar dialect of Urdu known as Dakkhini, very similar to Hindi. ‘Nai,’ no, I said.
He then removed his hand from my head and stroked the middle of my chest with it, saying, ‘Baad mein maalum ho jaayega. Ab vapas ghar jao.’ (You will understand later. Go home now.) I still did not understand what he was trying to convey, but instantly obeyed the command to go back home. As I hurried back, I felt as if his touch had made my heart lighter. Reaching the last step to the rear entrance of the house, I turned around to have a last glimpse of the stranger under the jackfruit tree, but he was gone. There was no one there.
*
Shunya
For well over sixteen years, Sadasivan had to pass the old, abandoned cremation ground at midnight on his way back home from his toddy shop.
He prided himself on the fact that he didn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls and other superstitions and yet, every time he passed the gate of the crematorium, an unknown fear gripped him and his hair stood on end.
That night, too, as he whizzed past the gate on his Royal Enfield motorbike—an upgrade from his old bicycle which he had felt took ages to clear the distance—Sadasivan followed the simple rule he had devised to make things easier: ‘Don’t look in the direction of the crematorium. Go as fast as you can.’
He had almost passed its gate when he distinctly heard a voice calling him out by name. Try as he might, he couldn’t resist the temptation to turn and look. A shiver went up his spine.
A figure clad in white leapt out of the gate and, in the bright light of the solitary street lamp, Sadasivan could see him coming in his direction.
He lost control of his motorbike which hit a protruding flagstone, skid sideways, and sent him flying across the road.
As he picked himself up, he was scared stiff to see the white-robed figure right by his side.
‘Umph! Not bad. No major damage, Sadasiva. Get up and go home. Don’t be frightened. I am not a ghost, ha ha!’
Sadasivan got up, dusted his clothes and picked up the motorbike which had fallen a few metres away. The bike seemed fine except for a dent or two and one broken rearview mirror. Then he noticed that the skin on both his elbows and his left knee had peeled off. No other damage.
The stranger followed him to the bike.
‘Who the hell are you,’ shouted Sadasivan, angrily, ‘popping up from the cremation ground at midnight like a ghost? Haven’t seen you in these parts and how do you know my name?’
‘Sadasiva, I’ll see you tomorrow at your toddy shop, okay? We’ll talk then. Now go home and take care of yourself. There are no ghosts—go home.’
Sadasivan started his bike and rode home wondering who this crazy man was. He had seen him at close quarters: a single piece of unwashed white mundu was wrapped around his waist with an equally unwashed, loose cotton shirt; he was barefooted and fair-complexioned, with a pointed Ho Chi Minh beard. Who was he? Didn’t Sadasivan notice a bamboo flute in his hand? Where did he spring from? He was certainly not a local and yet he spoke Malayalam. By the time he reached his house his anger had vanished and, for some strange reason, he was looking forward to seeing the stranger the next day.
*
Yoga Also For The Godless
Some years ago, I met a smart young lady who said to me, ‘M, I believe you are a yogi. I think you might be able to shed light on a question on yoga. I was very keen on practising yoga after I heard about its health benefits. The fact that many celebrities practise yoga to keep in shape also influenced me.
‘I approached a yoga teacher. He started teaching me Sanskrit shlokas in praise of God and insisted that I chant them. I tried convincing him that I was an atheist. I was born a Hindu but do not think it necessary to believe in God. He strongly felt that without invoking Lord Ganesha, I could not begin my yoga practice and insisted that the aim of yoga was God-realisation.
‘I told him that there is no God and, therefore, learning yoga for me was not to reach something that, according to me, did not exist. He was adamant and asked me to find another instructor’.
‘What do you think?’
This yoga teacher, the girl referred to, is not an exception. Thousands of people labour under the mistaken notion that yoga is a theistic philosophy and is not for atheists and agnostics. Some yoga teachers admit that mere postures can provide health benefits, but the higher aspects such as the expansion of consciousness and the attainment of Kaivalya, freeing the consciousness from the limitations of conditioned thinking and awakening to its infinite potential, is not realisable by the godless.
This book is meant precisely to change such misunderstood notions about yoga, while serving as a practical guide to practise yoga to perfection, without the ‘God crutch’. You will understand that ancient yoga philosophy has almost no interest in the concept of a creator or an all-powerful God, who controls you and throws you into heaven or hell according to his whims and fancies.
Even the great Patanjali, considered the foremost and earliest exponent of systematic yoga, in his masterpiece, The Yoga Sutras, uses Ishwara (God) only twice in the entire text and only as a useful adjunct to the main practices. Whether Patanjali’s Ishwara denotes an omnipotent ‘thundering God’ or the tranquil Purusha of Sankhya philosophy is an age-old question that needs a healthy debate. We will look into these and other points of view because to practise yoga well, an understanding of its philosophical roots is important.
Lastly, this book is an attempt to save the purity of yoga from being adulterated by religious cults and politico-religious outfits keen to exploit the masses and use them to their advantage.
*
Get your own Sri M collection from the nearest bookstore or visit Amazon.
There have been many vantage points to the Dhoni story, but how about one that encapsulates his unseen essence? From behind-the-scenes stories to radically attentive analyses of iconic matches, Joy Bhattacharjya and Amit Sinha have created the ultimate handbook for M.S. Dhoni fans.
Here’s the first chapter of Do Different: The Untold Dhoni, ‘Glimpses of a Superstar’.
*
On 19 August, two days before the senior team’s first match of the tri-series against Pakistan in Amsterdam, a young MS Dhoni was greeted by chants of his name in a small Nairobi ground. This was the result of a knock he had played against the same opposition a couple of days ago where he had scored 120 runs out of a total of 330 in India’s first innings. Today, the situation was different as India had lost a wicket early in the innings in the pursuit of 235 runs when Dhoni walked in. For Dhoni too, who had gotten this chance largely because Dinesh Karthik had been selected to play for the senior team in Amsterdam, this was an opportunity to show that the 120 in the previous outing against Pakistan was no flash in the pan.
Waiting for him at the other end was the familiar sight of Gautam Gambhir, with whom he had stitched a 207-run partnership in the earlier match. Commentator Atul Wassan introduced him as the ‘find of the tour’ even before Dhoni faced his first delivery and went on to discuss his purposeful walk with fellow commentator Javagal Srinath. The Jharkhand cricketer, despite having been overlooked for the senior team promotion, was making quite an impression in Nairobi.
Facing his fourth ball of the innings, he cut fast bowler Riaz Afridi for his first runs of the innings. Javagal Srinath was just beginning to talk about how young cricketers need to be put through the ‘process’ despite having displayed their talents. The powerful cut seemed like an assurance sent to the commentary box. Such was the impact of the youngster on the audience that had been watching him for so long, the discussion revolved around his talent and how to ensure it didn’t get wasted. On the panel was Saba Karim, a prodigy from the same region whose career didn’t really blossom despite all signs of it at the corresponding age levels.
Facing Iftikhar Rao in the sixth over, Dhoni misjudged the length and edged the ball to the slips. However, luck was on his side that afternoon as Pakistan skipper Misbah-ul-Haq grassed a tough chance. In Anjum’s next over, Dhoni was back to his attacking self as he picked the length early this time and pummelled the short ball to the mid-wicket fence. In the same over, the ball found itself in the same place again, although this time it was pitched full and on the batsman’s legs.
The Nairobi Gymkhana, one of the highest cricket grounds in the world thanks to its location 5,500 feet above sea level, saw Indian cricket transform four years ago when an unheralded Indian team made it to the final of the ICC Knockout Trophy, only a few months after the match-fixing scandal. What started in that tournament reached its peak with India’s success in the 2003 World Cup and on tours of Australia and Pakistan. By mid-2004, however, the wheels had stopped turning for Indian cricket as the team suffered losses in both bilateral and multilateral competitions. The mantra that had worked for John Wright and Sourav Ganguly for four years seemed to be missing the mark now and it would all culminate in all the drama that unfolded in Indian cricket in the subsequent year.
Strangely, as the senior team was giving another listless performance in Amsterdam, on the rugged grounds of Kenya, the story of Indian cricket’s future was being forged by two men who would play a huge part in taking Indian cricket to its peak seven years later.
Riaz Afridi, the elder brother of current Pakistan sensation Shaheen, was a nippy customer who was the star of Pakistan’s win of the U-19 World Cup that year. However, against Dhoni and Gambhir, he found the going difficult. In the 11th over, Dhoni rocked back to hit him for a 4 through covers that proved the man was more than a spinner killer. He was quick to punish any error from the fast bowlers, be it Afridi or his bowling partner, Junaid Zia. The first lofted shot from the youngster’s bat came in the 15th over when Iftikhar made the mistake of pitching it right in the slot for Dhoni to send it flying over covers. The small crowd gathered at the stadium was overjoyed. They seemed to have come exactly to witness this kind of shot making from the long-haired batsman. Even the commentators could barely hide their excitement.
Once the half-century mark was crossed, Dhoni went after the Pakistani spinners and hit both Qaiser Abbas and Mansoor Amjad for massive 6s that went out of the ground. A mere teaser of what was to follow in the next one and a half decade. Neither pace nor spin could trouble the duo as even Gambhir crossed his half-century and took India A closer to the target. Batting on 96, Dhoni decided to go for the glory shot against Junaid Zia, a bowler who had shoulder barged him earlier in the innings. The straight hit over the bowler’s head came off spectacularly and another century was reached in 124 balls, the second in two matches. With 11 runs needed of the remaining 32 deliveries and a leg spinner bowling, even those who had not seen him before knew what was coming. Mansoor Amjad, the leg spinner, was launched into the stands for Dhoni’s fourth and fifth 6 of the innings. The match was won. With two centuries in two matches against the Pakistan A side, the required stamp of confirmation was acquired. Everyone who watched Dhoni on those two days was left enamoured by his nonchalance and power play. In the unlikeliest of places, a star was born.
Two days later, the senior team suffered a defeat against Pakistan in the tournament opener. The wheels of change had started moving again in Indian cricket.
Perhaps the most stigmatized aspect of mental illness is talking about suicide. This is why spreading awareness about mental health is even more important today than ever. Even with a large amount of information and resources like counseling constantly at our disposal, there are small steps we can all take towards unlearning myths about mental illness. This is where stories like that of Aparna Piramal Raje step in.
On this World Suicide Prevention Day, we’re sharing an excerpt from her memoir Chemical Khichdi where she candidly talks about suicidal ideation.
*
Turning Point
There are no headlines today
No cocktail launch parties, or awards ceremonies
No business-class seats and frequent-flier miles
There is the private knowledge,
That today was a day
Where nothing was written
Which would later be regretted.
That today was a day
Where it didn’t occur to me
How easy it would be to jump off a building.
Today, I didn’t have to dismiss the thought.
Today, there’s a London bus made out of a cardboard box.
There is camping under a blanket
Strung between two wooden dining chairs, in the living room.
Today, there are
No moments of despair
No delusions of grandeur
Instead, an attitude of gratitude
Moments of simplicity and spontaneity
And the promise of purpose.
One of my favourite poems, I wrote Turning Point to mark a personal milestone: after several weeks of struggling with depression, and waking up every day to a sense of hopelessness, I finally managed to rid myself of suicidal thoughts. Of course, I sat at the edge of my bed and cried, but I also felt much better after writing it. It felt like a private milestone.
I have never actually harmed myself or made any attempt to do so, but there was a distinct period of my life, for a large part of 2013, in which I was confronted by a large, bleak void, every morning. Life seemed just – empty.
Given that my manic episode at the ashram was one of my most lethal, it was little surprise that I had to contend with depression for as long as I did. I knew I could get onto additional medication to elevate my spirits – and there were several sleepless nights when I nearly called Dr. Sharma and asked him to do so – but Amit and I were committed to finding a solution without additional medication, and we did.
I didn’t lie around on the sofa, or in my bedroom – my days were fairly busy with work and family commitments. There were interviews to be conducted and copy to be filed. My colleagues were friendly and stimulating.
Home life was also a pillar. Our apartment in Mahim had a rare view of the Arabian sea and of one of Mumbai’s nicest public parks, a hidden gem called Dhote Udyan. The rhythm of the waves and the canopy of greenery outside my windows were enough to lift any melancholy spirits. But I felt unhappy and vacant. I couldn’t find joy or happiness in anything around me.
And in a city full of skyscrapers, jumping off one of them seemed more preferable than wrestling with this inner black hole every day. I remember, at one point, mentally comparing the available building options to see which one seemed the most viable, my parents’ home or mine. I even once made it to my building’s terrace before turning back, scowling at myself for even having come this far. I rejected the option every time it crossed my mind, because I knew I didn’t want to be defeated by my illness.
Any well-intentioned onlooker would have urged to me to consider my obligations to my family, and to desist from this line of thought. It is not that I was ready to abandon my family. It was just that my self-esteem was so low, during those months, that I honestly didn’t think it would make a big difference to anyone in the long run, if I wasn’t around anymore. I really felt they wouldn’t notice my absence, or it wouldn’t matter – when the truth is, of course, that they would be devastated. Depressed and despairing, my duties to my family were not motivating factors at all. Perhaps I am not alone in making this admission.
In fact, it was the other way around – it was my family who helped me to overcome my black hole, even though they may not have gauged its true depths. I think I was quite good at concealing it. As I will explain in more detail a little bit later, they helped to see the daily joys of simple family life.
But it took several months before I could rid myself fully of semi-suicidal notions, as can be seen from the timing of the poem. Luckily, they haven’t returned; a fact I know my family and friends will be most relieved to hear.
Slowly, over the course of a few months, I left the black hole behind. And then one day in November, I found myself writing this poem, to celebrate the fact that I had, actually, much to celebrate in life, and even more to look forward to. As the first paragraph suggests, I was also finally ready to shed my preoccupation with all the markers of a successful business life – the seemingly glittery lifestyle, the award ceremonies and the hoopla. Something just as meaningful, if not more, was waiting to be discovered.
*
Get your copy of Chemical Khichdi from your nearest bookstore or visit Amazon to order.
Dhiren is completely absorbed by how animatedly she is laying out her theory. Not just with her words, but also her eyes, her hands, her body, like she’s doing a puppet show with characters, voices, songs. She becomes a sabre-toothed tiger by flashing her canines and a giant sloth by lumbering on the table menacingly. When she mentions wars, she swings her hand around and grunts as if she’s a medieval warrior, and looks around scared when she’s on the Silk Route.
She can go on the entire night and he will be right here, listening, bewitched by this gorgeous storytelling gypsy who knows everything.
‘You’re suggesting genocide. But if that’s so obvious, why didn’t it happen till now?’
‘Men are clever. They realised their need would be limited in the future. So, the ancient ones—kings, nobles, religious men, traders—all the powerful men came together, worried, scared, and in a moment of brilliance, they invented the rules of monogamy. One man, one woman. Suddenly, all men were needed. Every single man was important. Legends of love were told, romantic books were written, movies were made, Hallmark cards were printed, weddings were celebrated, pregnancies were made important, and women were told that they should want these things—love, wedding, romance, families. But it’s the men who need these. If you’re genetically ungifted, the only way to survive is romance. Without romance, only the strong, the disease-resistant, the tall will survive.’
Her storytelling is wizardry. She can move her large pupils around and put a man into a hypnotic trance. Dhiren hangs on to every word of hers. He feels he has to agree with what she’s saying. How can her eyes lie? Dhiren wonders if this is how a religion comes into being—a ravishing person with a great story.
‘Romance is a conspiracy?’ asks Dhiren.
‘Romance, once strictly optional, was now mandatory. Romantic love didn’t make women whole, it saved men from oblivion and extinction. Children were now meant to be god’s gift, brought into the world after the blissful union of a man and a woman. But it’s all a lie concocted by ancient rishis, priests and prophets—all men! Think about it, why not get children off the assembly line? Why not make sure they get the best of genes from a man and mix them up with a little bit of the woman who carries them and raises them as truly their own?’
‘I mean . . .’ Dhiren can’t finish the sentence.
She continues. ‘Think climate-wise too. We waste precious food in sustaining bigger bodies of men, with higher metabolism rates for the same contribution to society. How much can we save by not having so many men? We already do that with cattle, thirty cows to one bull. We only keep the best bull.’ The three whistles and two minutes on low flame are up.
‘Wow,’ mumbles Dhiren.
She breaks out of her own train of thought. ‘Sorry, I’m talking too much, no?’
‘I mean . . . you did call me a bull and most men useless cattle, worthy of slaughter, and keeping the good ones in a cage.’
Aishwarya giggles. Dhiren unlocks the pressure cooker. He serves them on two plates with raita and pickle. They move to the sofa.
‘When did you make the raita?’ asks Aishwarya.
‘You were talking at length. I had time.’
Aishwarya lifts the plate to her nose, takes in a deep breath like a coke addict and asks, ‘Do you want a review?’
‘I’m sure it’s great, MasterChef Aishwarya.’
Aishwarya takes a bite and closes her eyes. ‘Your overconfidence is not misplaced. It’s like my tongue’s wrapped in flavours. It’s amazing. Let’s be quiet and eat this.
Will Dhiren and Aishwarya, recognise the love for each other. Get your copy of When I Am With You by Durjoy Datta today!
The widespread popularity of Krishna Consciousness can be traced back to the very man himself. While a memoir about an Indian guru is commonplace today, Hindol Sengupta’s Sing, Dance and Pray creates a narrative framework that is at once meta-cultural and biographical. This is in part made up of the diverse lives that Srila Prabhupada encountered—and embraced—during his unique lifetime.
The following is an excerpt from the chapter titled ‘Downtown Monk’, marking the American chapter of Srila Prabhupada and the Hare Krishna Movement.
*
The conflict in Vietnam had already dragged on for about a decade since the mid-1950s by the time Bhaktivedanta arrived at Boston Harbour. In the early 1960s, American President John F. Kennedy pushed more resources into battle in Vietnam, and the failure of a breakthrough victory only meant greater angst and protest at home. With the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, chances of a third world war or at least conflict using nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union had become a real possibility. ‘The risks to world peace seemed so significant at this time, that an extensive peace movement developed throughout the 1960s, particularly through the intervention of young people and students. Young people wanted autonomy and self-determination. They did not want to live in a world involved in major armed conflict.’
Within America, the response to this war-addicted climate was the rise of subcultures which would experiment with everything from Eastern mysticism to psychedelic drugs, poetry, music and—importantly—massive protest rallies for peace, and against war.
If you distil the messages of the movement that came to be known through many varying names over the years from ‘Beat’ to ‘hippie’, a few are immediately apparent. There is the desire for a different way of life, a different way of thinking, of freedom from the oppression of society and government and even the economic system. There is the determined refusal to authorize state-sanctioned violence (though ironically some of the protesters clashed with the police and became quite violent), there is the attempt to create building blocks of a ‘non-commercial world’ in everything from the focus on handmade things, like tie-and-dye clothing (another element borrowed from India), vegetarianism and natural birth, the focus on meditation and non-Abrahamic forms of spirituality, and importantly, music.
When you look at all these elements carefully, you understand something that is rarely ever said about A.C. Bhaktivedanta, that like Vivekananda, he was in many ways the right person, at the right place, at the right time. Vivekananda gained from the flowering of interest in Eastern philosophies led by scholars like Max Mueller and others in the late nineteenth century, and therefore his message found a certain influential, academically elite, audience that helped it spread across the English-speaking world. His key early benefactors were the educated wealthy, including a Harvard professor who introduced him to the Parliament of Religions. In A.C. Bhaktivedanta’s case, his earliest followers were unemployed hippies attracted to the sonorous sannyasi to find a refuge from the tumult all around them, and in their head.
Bhaktivedanta’s early life in the United States is usually described in terms of the difficulties he had in finding appropriate shelter, often having to share space with people who did not quite understand his calling or his message. But the way to really think about the story is that he appeared to give the right message to the right people at the right time.
His first days were spent with Gopal Aggarwal and his wife Sally, an American, at Butler County, Pennsylvania, where the famous four-wheel drive, the Jeep, had been invented in 1940 as a vehicle for tough-haul jobs of the US Army. It was a time when A.C. Bhaktivedanta was under the impression that he would remain in America maybe, at most, for about a month. Even though he was clear about his mission in the West—propagating the good word of Krishna—several of his early hosts imagined that he had merely come to raise funds for his publishing and would soon return.
But it is here, at Butler, Pennsylvania, that A.C. Bhaktivedanta found his first audience. It is here that one of the most written-about spiritual figures in modern times, first appeared in the American local press. The Indian ‘swami’ who had come to America to preach ‘bhakti yoga’, said the Butler Eagle. Even in that very first article, there were clear signs of why A.C. Bhaktivedanta would start to attract followers in America.
*
Sing, Dance and Pray is available at your nearest bookstore. You can also order a copy from Amazon.