Vedasri Siddamsetty

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Living it up .

  • Staying off popular social media!

    I didn’t know that I had it in me. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know it could be life-changing. I didn’t know it could have far reaching consequences. No I did not yet win the Nobel prize. For my life to change I literally didn’t have to travel the world, or have certain beings out of my life, I just had to delete three social media giants and battery draining (both my phone and mine) super houses from my phone and my life – Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And that was quite a revelation. Quite done with Insta filters I installed a couple of filters of my own!

    And then, for a month or so I managed to yearn to know what everyone was up to. In the next month I still had some level of interest to know, for after all knowledge is power. Finally in the third month it’s not knowing that keeps me going, in fact when someone speaks these days I actually listen cause most of my information now comes literary from the word of the mouth, or newspapers and podcasts, again word of mouth. And my that one filter itself, a lot useless information stopped coming my way, those include irresistible offers and crazy products pedalled by influencers that now I know nothing of.

    With that empty mind space, I have no clue about what my dear friends and dearer acquaintances have been up to, what they’ve been eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner, what they’ve been wearing as ootd and what milestones they or their kids have been crossing. That feels like I am a tad left out, in fact my Instagram page that I had happily been updating my recent work (as an architect, that was quite useful) has now halted, but I have moved my portfolio building offline and sometimes through a video on YouTube. I have begun doing a podcast on Spotify and would love for you to hear, but apart from that it has indeed been a lot of mindspace to get my stuff done in the day to day.

    In all that going, I have terribly missed news from Insta but have found newspapers carrying stories, citing sources as Instagram! Looks like people have been simply become their own broadcasters and Instagram is the touted press conference. So easy then to build one’s own brand. While I have not been influenced by the gram lately I have been influenced by books, real people and events in and around the city. I haven’t yet gotten back to myself just yet I must say, though in this time I have discovered 3 grey hair on my head. Now I don’t know if it were always there and I hadn’t noticed or they sprung up now with the anxiety of not being on the gram and hence not knowing the happenings!!

    Being the least informed person may have its ups, while we aren’t cramming the brain with information the brain gets a breather to make connections and hence get creative. Going by my painting output in the last three months, there have been creative juices flowing rather bountifully. In my six month challenge, given by my Dad, to stay off social media I am safely halfway through, and even with all the platinum blond flyaways quite comfortable and leaning towards keeping it this way for life!

    Anti-social media = fully social personality ?

    P.s this blog is still marketed by a tweet, just have not got to disabling the feature just yet. That is social media harakiri and would take a lot more of courage! Besides WordPress, YouTube and Spotify seem to have become my go-tos leaving images for my personal filing!

  • The paradox of life

    The blessed don’t claim to be blessed

    The wealthy don’t claim to be wealthy

    The beautiful don’t claim to be beautiful

    The talented don’t claim to be talented

    The stylish don’t claim to be stylish

    The fit don’t claim to be fit

    The intelligent don’t claim to be intelligent

    The happy don’t claim to be happy

    The sensible don’t claim to be sensible

    The wise don’t claim to be wise

    The well-read don’t claim to be well-read

    The lucky don’t claim to be lucky

    For more you know, you know

    There is a lot more to know

    And therein lies the paradox of life

  • If you find a Buddha, kill him!

    The most recent book I read by Shwetabh Gangwar, tries to articulate the insane benefits and affirming knowledge of knowing “How to think” rather than “What to think”.

    The Rudest book ever is actually not a rude book, but rather an honest account of what actually works in life. “Know thyself” is the premise of the book and the author champions the reader to actually know themselves and thus do away with a host of unnecessary thoughts pertaining to ego, jealousy, comparisons, desires and complications entailed in keeping up with the Jonases. When one knows oneself and well that too, then what others do or how the world functions may not be of concern. In that Gangwar asks the reader to limit external influences and to understand and be intelligent about analysing the perceptions obtained in life. But the most important thing is to know what to make of life based on one’s own individuality.

    And those thoughts quite echo with what the Buddhist students are taught at the end of their study of Buddhism. While different opinions or stances are good to know what is most crucial is to give up the crutch of a guru. A good master does not make the student dependent on him, a good master empowers the student to think for themselves and in that lies all the difference. All desire causes suffering and life is full of suffering so we might as well suffer for the things we’d actually like at the end of the day!

  • Star-factor.

    Do you believe in astrology? Do you agree that it’s all written in the stars? Do you feel that there is a divine connection to everything in the world? There probably is, but as mystifying astrology is, that much exhilarating astronomy is. And one just needs to take a trip to the planetarium, if not look up at the stars at night to feel not just how inconsequential we all actually are, but that puts astrology in perspective too.

    The sky full of stars!

    As celestial beings we are also filled of stellar matter, as physics goes, and that makes us stars too in our own right. With that knowledge and the know-how of how expansive the universe is, the stars are and how stars actually recycle themselves as stars making them beautiful in their own right. Life, as we know it came into existence over 4.5 billion years ago, and as the sun, our life-sustaining star slowly loses its might in another 5 billion years or so, burning out its presence, ceasing to be what it is, we may also not know of the universe or the multiple galaxies, losing out on being alive as a species, just as the dinosaurs did!

    With that information there comes a whole lot of humility, the reason for everything is most probably nothing but what we make of it could most almost be everything. Little did I know that a trip to the planetarium would spark a philosopher in me, but the sheer sense of beauty of witnessing the stars, the beauty does make one very humble. Knowing my love for travel, space travel is my ultimate dream, the expanse of the universe is absolutely beguiling. In modern Indian cities the stars are hardly visible with all the light pollution but the best of the nights I have ever seen has been at the Rann of Kutch, with hardly any lights around the night sky does come alive in all its regalia.

    While the scientists in our country, and NASA, are doing a splendid job bringing the stars and the know-how of the universe to us one day at a time, they are also doing a great job in bringing to our notice our very planet. It takes a satellite to be launched out of our space to pay heed to us, just as it takes an external perspective to understand ourselves better, mostly. The audacity of sending out satellites and trying to communicate with other alien specie has not come handy yet, nor do I think it is remotely likely even with all the sci-fi fiction and movies we make every year. But simply being able to witness the stars makes every figment of our imagination worth it. Tiny twinkling stars in the velvety night sky makes one realise a lot many things but the most significant one is probably the insignificance of it all. There is our solar system which we have over the years tried to make sense of, and then there are a multitude of galaxies in the world that we have only begun to discover. There are a host of factors that affect the future course of the earth which probably have nothing to do with us humans. Perhaps another reason to chill, and let the universe play its course out cause it definitely seems to have a plan!

  • A walk in the park!

    An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day said Henry David Thoreau, an American Naturalist. He probably walked all day but morning in a park are literally blessings, maybe at times for the whole week. This last week for four days in a row I headed to the Lalbagh Botanical garden that the government very charmingly keeps open for morning walkers, for free. Nature on it’s part puts on a spectacular show.

    So last morning, in a super rainy Bangalore week when I was on a fifth day of the week walk in Lal Bagh, the first day of the Lal Bagh annual flower show we were super excited to be the first ones at the event. After a climb on the Lal Bagh rock, not steep at all, and saying a lovely good morning to Bangalore, we headed to the Glass Palace to see a special show put on by the gardeners of Bangalore’s famous garden.

    As always, I’ve been visiting the flower show every year for the past 6 years, this years show displayed lilies, chrysanthemums, daisies, roses, dandelions, hibiscus and a spectacular bonsai arrangement among other flowers and greens. At the competition that they have every year the winning entry by HAL had on display beautiful and huge roses, worth winning the first place in. The butterflies surely looked happy!

    The theme of this years flower show was wound around the legendary Kannada actors Dr Rajkumar and his son Puneet Rajkumar. Displaying in flowers sets from their famous movies, and putting on the story of their lives with quotes from Dr Rajkumar across the display connected one to the theme. Apart from the flowers on display the market place set up facilitates gardening enthusiasts to stock up on plants, gardening tools or even seeds.

    The weather in Bangalore has always been renowned for providing the best atmosphere for a lot of specie of plants to thrive, and at Lal Bagh seeing the sheer collection and variety of plants just captures the essence of this once erstwhile Garden city.

  • Cooling heels and jeez!

    Is it just me or is the world spinning faster these days?! As I run from pillar to post, or rather tree to tree, I can feel the universe, or at other times it’s just my 4 year old, making me wait it out and jeez that’s quite a feeling. Just like I keep my son waiting sometimes deliberately, just cause research saying getting bored or impatient is a great in fact the best way to get creative and be creative. That and then walking and meditating. I am told there is literally nothing better to open up the mind than to take it out for a nice long walk. Mind wandering is a real thing. It is an act of suggesting a topic to the brain and then taking it out on a long walk where the mind wanders as you do, to connect dots and bring things up. For people who don’t get around to meditating, this is a wonderful alternative.

    What does one do while one is waiting then? One breathes and that brings me to the book I am currently reading, Breath written by James Nestor. Breathing is a rather natural phenomena and we all do it involuntarily, but sometimes we mind our breath and do it voluntarily. Here’s the thing when we do it voluntarily and modify the we breathe we can modify the way we feel and the body parts coaxing them to even healing. As when we are agitated the breathing pattern changes involuntarily we can even change the way we breathe and will ourselves into another level of agitation altogether. This isn’t news exacting and anyone with a little knowledge of yoga would be aware of how wonderful breathing exercises of Pranayama makes us feel. So elaborating on a serie of experiments, Nestor convinces the reader to one, breathe from the nose, the advice he precisely gives is SHUT YOUR MOUTH, in caps, two, to exhale completely, the advice he gives is to not let any residue air remain before breathing in again, three to breathe slowly taking in about 6 breaths per minute ideally or 13500 breaths per day as the ancient Chinese doctors prescribed or even levering up to 9 breaths per minute as the Tibetan monks do, four, to breathe even lesser air in those six breathes, he says one must sip the air through the nose and exhale atleast twice if not more the time taken to inhale, breathing less means to extend the length of time between inhalations and exhalations, the less one breathes, the more one absorbs the warming touch of respiratory efficiency. The next most crucial aspect of ensuing open airways, unconjested nose and windpipe is controlled through the act of chewing!

    Did you know?

    The lungs are the weight-balancing organ of the body. And all the fat that we lose is actually exhaled through the nose. The calories burnt as we colloquially say are actually calories exhaled, there is no burning of fat, just exhalation of fat. And in that regard even doing the nose breathing exercises of Pranayama are just as effective in raising the heart rate to in effect lose weight.

    The samurai warriors would check if a soldier is ready for war by placing a feather under his nostril. Only if the feather did not move was the warrior ready to fight. That calm would he have to be before he could be trusted to fight.

    When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic, yet all our cellular functions occur at a sweet spot alkaline acidic at a pH of 7.4

    Breathing, paced breathing is prayer. If one inhales for 5.5 seconds and exhaled for 5.5 seconds, one completes 5.5 breaths in one minute! That is the entire cycle required to chant, ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’, the Ave Maria, the Sa ya na ma chant of Kundalini Yoga, the Hindu hand and tongue poses called mudras through a technique called kechari. Incidentally the optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 liters. The optimum breathing rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute. That is 5.5-second inhales and 5.5-second exhales.

    Mammals with the lowest resting heart rate live the longest. They are also consistently the same mammals that breathe the slowest. The only way to retain a slow resting heart rate is to breath with slow breaths.

    The Yogis life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths said BKS Iyengar, India’s foremost guru on the practise of Iyengar Yoga. A sickly child, he learnt yoga and breathed himself back to health.

    The perfect oral posture means holding the lips together, teeth slightly touching, with the tongue on the roof of the mouth, holding the head up perpendicularly to the body without kinking the neck. While sitting or standing the spine should form a J-shape-perfectly straight until it reaches the small of the back, where it naturally curves outward. While maintaining this posture, we should always breathe slowly through the nose into the abdomen.

    Stomping on hard food as the molars grind up food chewing hard, stem cells actually grow bone at the back of our mouths. As our ancestors spent hours a day chewing they managed to steer clear of all orthodontic issues that impact airway systems in our bodies and hence had no issues with their teeth.

    Inner fire or Tummo meditation 🧘‍♀️

    Expression is the opposite of depression! ~ Chuck McGee III

    One can breathe themselves sick just as one can breathe themselves to health, the only criteria being the speed of the breath or how deep or shallow breaths are. The sympathetic nervous system receiver signals are located on the upper half of the lungs, the parasympathetic nervous system receiver signals are located on the lower half of the lungs. Hence deeper inhalations activate the parasympathetic nervous system and hence keeps the calm.

    Tummo breathing – lie down, breathe into the abdomen and then the chest, breathe out in the same order for 30 cycles. At the end of 30 cycles, exhale to hold a quarter of air and hold as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your threshold take a huge inhale and hold for another 15 seconds. Slowly exhale circulating the air all over your upper body. Repeat 3-4 rounds, adding in some cold exposure a few times a week. Conscious heavy breathing allows us to bend so we don’t break.

    Now, this was one book that I truly savoured or should I sipped, for I did not want these bits of information to slip through my mind at any cost. Plus the way Nestor presents facts is extremely charming and needless to stay I slowed down reading, slowed down breathing and in effect slowed down my life. So much that soon it felt like I wasn’t waiting for life anymore but life was waiting for me, to breathe on!

  • Around the world #🌏in83hours. Episode 5 – Uzbekistan with Chetna Ramachandra

    The home of Tashkent the foreboder of the silk route, the key of the Islamic Golden age, Uzbekistan, once a soviet country is ridden with gorgeous architecture, deep-rooted culture and a bounty of the earth, yes am talking about the fruits of the land quite literally. Most of the Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims, they comprise of a wide mix of ethnic groups and cultures including in minority Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Tatars and Karakalpaks. The country has an extremely high literacy rate with 99.9 percent of adults above the age of 15 being able to read and write. That’s a win for any country isn’t it. It is also one of the only countries to declare the International Women’s Day as a holiday. While soups are a popular meal, green tea is the national hot beverage consumed throughout the day unless it’s summer then it’s Ayran to the rescue. It is also home to Samarkand, the region that produces a range of dessert wines from local grape varieties. Their post-Soviet inheritance greatly emboldens their Armed forces. A very lesser known location, tourists who foray into this Central Asian country are treated to a beauty like no other. The doubly landlocked country presents architecture, nature, landscape, people and food like no other. It is artful, soulful and sometimes wistful. The music of the region is called Shashmaqam which took form in Bukhara, translates to six maqams containing six sections.

    And it is not everyday when one spins the globe and randomly decides on a place to go late in the middle of the night, then spending time till the wee hours of the morning to research about the place, before convincing the better half to accompany her on a trip to bang in the middle of Asia. I am talking of Chetna Ramachandra who followed a rather rare epiphany and got family along with friends like family including little kids to a pre-Soviet country that is not just hidden away but also was the mainframe of the Silk-Route. Listen in as she recounts a trip like no other, with kids eating up luscious fruits, never have to be told twice about it, or the domes in Tashkent that could have any architect drooling. A beautiful account about a trip to a faraway land. Chetna is an astute traveller if not an astute person and can be found globe-trotting or getting the average-joe to globe-trot. I for one have been on a couple of trips she planned and absolutely loved them. She can be contacted @rebootescortedtours

  • Around the world #🌏in83hours. Episode 4 – Scotland with Nishil Swamy

    Scotland is the home to golf! It houses the St Andrews Link, the oldest golf course in the world. It is also the most happy-go-lucky country there is, not listed on the happiest countries in the world, having their own share of rebels and personals, it is nevertheless a country in itself. A part of the United Kingdom, Scotland is inundated with castles, isles, fairways and rainy skies. It is also the home of the finest whiskies in the world. Scottish men wears skirts oops, kilts and women wear pants, can there be a nation more contended with that configuration! There are several things about Scotland which make it so very pretty, but most of all the sceneries are said to be so lovely even if the weather is not. Listen in to this episode as we talk about the fantasy that Scotland actually is. The place to film out of the world stories, think the Game of Thrones, think of stories that require a scene nothing short of wonder. With the twinkling of eyes and creases on the face that only add to jest, with cities that twinkle like Edinburgh to cities that shine like Glasgow, Scotland is a story waiting to unfold at every corner. It’s close to the North Pole, it’s the land of the Vikings and it boasts of Kings and Queens like no other. A delightful account of a delightful little place in the northern part of the United Kingdom!

    Travel is sometimes a bore for some people, or so they say, yet when they are on a trip they seem to be enjoying the most. Out of nowhere our conversationalist on this episode is my husband, Nishil Swamy who incidentally loves travelling but like most hate planning a trip, well luckily for him, he has me as his wife! Jokes apart, the country we discuss today is a lot like him, easy-going, couldn’t give a damn about whats happening in the world and sometimes rebels for rather intriguing reasons. While he sites his year in Scotland one of the best years of his life he has always championed Scotland was being extremely beautiful. Every other person who has been to Scotland happens to say the same. While the world is tuning in and fist slamming to the various Sea Shanties, I for one totally heart Nathan Evans, those that once got weary sailors through the stormiest of seas, has now having all us lesser mortals through the gravest of times. So till I get to make that much awaited trip to the northern parts of the United Kingdom, I agree heartily with, ‘Aye aye mate. Am sure its pure dead brilliant’. And with that Scottish phrase, here’s a conversation on Scotland!

  • Book Review: Around the World in 80 Trains

    While researching for my podcast that features #🌏in83hours that airs on Google Podcasts, Spotify, I was reminded of a book that I had been meaning to read, Around India in 80 trains. Just while I was looking up the new books rack at the Bowring Institute library, I found that the author had by now, written another book titled, Around the World in 80 trains. I didn’t wait long to begin reading,

    Monisha Rajesh does the unthinkable quite once again! After a much appreciated book Around India in 80 Trains she charts new territories with her fiancé Jem and forays into vast and hidden lands in her book Around the World in 80 Trains. Continuous train travelling can tire anyone out but this one seems smitten. She carries on through a chart of trains, obviously making some winsome and some not so winsome trips across the world. Witty and sparkling, this book is quite entertaining and journeys into lesser known lands of North Korea and Tibet are made to be very charming. In fact they are possibly the aspects of the joinery that Monisha seems to have like the most. Being an armchair traveler these days, travelling with the imagination is definitely much less burdensome if not extremely sustainable too. The air miles or even the train miles I have saved this year makes me very deserving of every single use plastic bag that I know for certain that I will not consume. Each time Monisha gives long rambling explanations on why she loves train travel I felt that much happier to be reading about this journey than actually going on this journey. And she gives a lot of these explanations almost in every chapter or even sometimes a couple of times in a Chapter in the book, and as tiresome as the explanations may be they did make me that much happier. But for the benefit of the average reader I hope those parts are edited out, it would save the reader a lot of time. We get it, that the author loves train travel, if not she wouldn’t quite embark on this journey so nattily.

    What I did thoroughly enjoy though is how she analyses people, trains around the world with so much wit, empathy and philosophy that this book could well be classified as a self-help book with the author’s philosophical meanderings. North Korea is a nation that is a hundred steps above Singapore in being a nanny state, where every move of every citizen is modified to suit the government. But it is also deeply enigmatic. Seriously we simply do not know what’s happening there. While the people of North Korea are not filled in on the world occurrences. We cannot really judge, when we do not fully understand, but Monisha here presents a first hand account, that is also first-rate. Well while the Kims in North Korea do not subscribe to my life philosophy of being an open book, I cannot be certain that they do not guarantee their citizens a good life. For if the people of North Korea are being manipulated by their government, we are being manipulated by the coders who write software’s for Google, Facebook, Instagram, influencing us to think a certain way and do certain things, really how different are we? We buy things are are constantly shown to us that remain in our minds, we do as our neighbours do, we form opinions through what is being told to us, the constant reinforcing that we do to small children is definitely being done to us by the Internet and media for sure. Monisha’s musings are definitely insightful and brimming with intuitive intelligence that keeps the reader glued. The Orient Express had me drooling while I wished she figured a bit of the Maharaja Express in India too in this book. When the trio of Marc, Monisha and Jem crossed Kazhakastan I felt so worried for them, thereby realising that I was quite invested in their journey and hence the book.

    But what tugged my heart is the part in Tibet, the people of Tibet are so heart-warming. The superstar in the journey is undoubtedly the Tibetan nun, who jumped into their cabin at the sight of an Indian, made a lifelong friend inspite of the language barrier and smiled so much! She not only taught Monisha to use WeChat, she also ensured sending her a Buddha emoji exploding in light every time or two, bounced in elation, erupted with joy every moment in Monisha’s company so delighted to see an Indian, the first Indian ever, with so much gratitude and thanks as Indians give help and support to the Dalai Lama, her guru. In an excerpt from the book, “I love how happy this woman is,” Marc said, “it’s amazing. She’s only got happiness.” And that brings me to another excerpt where Monisha writes, “There are certain faces so imbued with goodness that its impossible to look away. Warmed by the kindness of their thoughts and lined by moments of mischief and laughter, those faces compel the beholder to come closer and to trust. Jhampa has such a face.” This she says of their guide. If happiness is the purpose of life, the Tibetan nun clearly has her life in order. As for Monisha, getting home after 7 months seemed like quite a treat and we may not see another book on trains for a while! But this one was so good that I literally slowed down reading as I did not definitely want the book to finish too fast!!

  • Around the world #🌏in83hours. Episode 3 – Brazil with Roshan Swamy

    Brazil is famous, Brazil is gorgeous, Brazil is heart-warming. Talk about the parties in Copacabana or the carnival of Rio, talk about the Amazonian forests that are stunning in all their might or talk about the bustle of Sao Paolo. Join in to hear of lesser known hotspots of Brazil and indulge in some Bosonovian music as we zoom into a country so exotic and so distinct as no other yet as chill and laid back as no other. In a confluence of culture and breathing easy hear of a very real and a very recent account of a trip to Brazil as Roshan Swamy answers our 83 questions flying into the two mega-weight cities of Brazil and finally gliding into the furrows of the grandest tourist attraction and a man-made wonder of the world, the Christ the Redeemer. Wonder is as wonder does and we are equally awe-struck at the wonder that Brazil actually is. Inspite of all its natural and man-made wonders it is a country so deeply steeped in resources that are endearing, packed away in a continent that is less thronged by the average tourist! Brazilian coffee or the midnight life, there is more to Brazil than what meets the eye or should I say the eat gathers. A beautiful one of a kind account of a country so fine!

    A love for travel, is best caught young, cause catching the travel bug is the end of all reason. It is always better to be unreasonable from the start! It happened with me and it seems to have happened with @roshanswamy. From the visuals I see, I cannot decide what is the most beautiful part of Brazil, the people, the beaches, the Amazon river, the most talented footballers, the flora and fauna of the Amazon rainforest or the Carnival de Rio. After all my favorite superhero of all time, Wonder Woman, Diana is the daughter of Queen Hippolyta and princess of the Amazons of Themyscira. Fact or fiction, Brazil is here on this planet to inspire us all to live with abandon. Hear us in conversation about the party-sharty country of world, Brazil!

  • Around the world #🌏in83hours. Episode 2 – Morocco with Shilpa Mithun

    Morocco is a country of culture, of luxury, straddling between two continents, Europe and Africa. Join in as Shilpa answers 83 questions about the country that is at once rich and varied, swamped with the Mediterranean Sea, wrapped with the Atlas Mountains. The vibe is wondrous. The very country that has given every glam queen the indispensable Morrocon Argan oil, did you know that the best of this oil is extracted from the goat poop? Whether it’s Fez that charms one with it’s beautiful architecture, or Marrakech that stuns one with its people, or even Casablanca that has Hollywood besotted, there is something to do for everyone. I am for one hugely thrilled to explore this piece of land, standing out on the fringes of Africa while actually being Europe. There is no end to the dervishes or the feverishness of an ode to culture. While everyone is very well kept, Morocco may well be a secret very well kept!

    The classy and most likable @shilpamithun, a vital figure in my life these days, as she is the Chairperson of my Circle, the Bangalore North Ladies Circle – 14, a wing of the Ladies Circle India, an organization that binds women in the tenets of Friendship and Service. Each of the 15-member strong active Circlers and a dozen or so past Circlers, we are in absolute agreement on how it is an absolute pleasure to receive her calls. Shilpa I must say, makes an excellent leader, she is intuitive and intelligent in equal measure and her childhood to adulthood in Morocco I think only makes her stand out amongst others if not think out of the box!

    Link below!

  • Bend so you dont break!

    The last 16 months or so I kept replaying a particular incident in my mind, yes the twisting of my knee, the pop sound on the icy slopes of the Himalayas that led to a swollen knee, the sound in my head as soon as the pop happened, that I will be fine and then finally many months later discovering a rather annoying MRI. Like doing an MRI wasnt overwhelming enough but the results were a tad bit discouraging and that had me going to 6 doctors for various opinions. Now while a couple of them asked me to wait and watch, a couple prescribed collagen, while another put a stop to doing everything, and others genuinely enocuraging asked me to live life normally till well, push came to shove. And while I mulled over the thought of life being unfair I came up to the conclusion, with a whisk of coaxing from Sadhguru that life may be fair or not but it indeed is fantastic. Now with that particular word in arm I tuned into Yoga for humanity with the esteemed Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

    Conducted by the Moraji Desai Institute of Yoga under the Ministry of Ayush, championed by the Prime Minister, the 30-odd minute session was simple and basic in its type and the breathing was the main focus. While twisting my body and yanking the mind to place with every breath I am certain that bending everyday, whether we call it Yoga, or not, can literally help us not to break, physically if not mentally. The true ACL tear of mine I am certain happened not on the day that I took a giant fall, but it was literally when I saw the MRI results and the mind decided that it was a tear. For I had not an issue with my knee till I happened to go and get an MRI done, so how much of the pain is in the mind I do not know, mind-bending I did not try, but it would certainly be a win.

    As I carefully eased into the yoga asanas, every once in a while checking my vitals on the measuring device that has me hooked these days, I felt the mind ease just as much as the body. As Ian Faria, a coach and counsellor, said the other day at the Leadership Summit of the Ladies Circle India, disease is simply the condition or the result of the body not being at ease, or the mind not being at ease, bringing back a sense of ease in our lives could actually put a hold to any dis-ease. I would totally recommed Ian’s recommendation on how to be a leader, to simply be a Go-To person for people and how to become a Go-To person is well, to read a lot, on various subjects, to know by reading, he sums it up with a catchy phrase saying ‘Leaders are Readers’. I could not agree more because not only do I read a lot and hence in effect learn a lot, I also make an excellent leader, well thats not me being immodest, but me being real.

    As my thinking eased bending into the various postures, coordinating breath with movement, breathing in and out gently, I am sure that the ease that this morning routine gave me will ensure that I bend, throughout the day, Modi even says that Yoga is not to be restricted to the morning but can be applied throughout the day, well Sadhguru advises against practising yoga unless your last meal was not ingested 12 hours ago, but a minute or so of mindfulness or meditation interspersed throughout the day would only be of benefit. The core part of Yoga I am told is meditation, so putting in an aspect of meditation in a day is as good as doing Yoga. A friend of mine once told me, when I was pregnant with my son, that if you can do only one thing for your well-being let it be meditation. But I have increasingly found that YOGA is meditation in motion. Bend, all you can, so that you dont break! Mentally, Physically or figuratively!

    P.s. Happy 8th International Yoga Day!