Chapter 4 - You complete me, A team

THE FIRST PARAGRAPH IN MY WELCOME MSG IS ALWAYS THE SAME. WHICH IS…

Hello fellow citizens of Planet Earth, listen up! I’m going to try and put a positive spin to what’s happening around us and to us, every day, and one day at a time. So look to this link either at the beginning of your day to wake up refreshed to be ready for the day ahead, or at the end of your day to be ready for a good night’s sleep. Ahhh...sounds good, hopefully. Here goes...

कैसे कर रहे हैं वहाँ, तीसरे रॉक? (How y'all doing out there, Third Rock?)

You guessed it...Songs Of the Day coming forth. Y’all need to get used to my SODs.

From two of the greatest cats that played the Hungarian Rhapsody...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1JKd1C7izQ

And...shut up, get up, and move it. Ahhh...classic Bollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PquZBLuFmwA

To complete our A in pArtee-ing we need the other important “a”. Which is acceptance. There’s so many versions of acceptance so I’ll try my best to parse them one after the other. If you hear yourself snoring I’ve done a terrible job. If you’re wiping a tear off your eye I’ve done a fairly good job. If you’ve got a big lump hanging on to a thin thread at the bottom of your throat and find yourself hiding in the bathroom, sobbing to yourself and nodding and going “yes, yes, that’s exactly what it is, I just need to do more of this” then I’ve actually done something good. As Samwise would say “there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for”.

Now for our stories. My classmate from college started meditation sessions in 2016 after our twenty-fifth year reunion (yep dated myself there again but do I care anymore?). We continued these thirty minute sessions with him over Zoom video, which seems to be rocking it now with so many people, to the point where zoom’s a verb not really for zooming into an image but for having a video chat. One of the key things that he’s been telling us is to “accept everything” while we meditate. What does this mean? I’ll give you my thoughts on it. You need to accept things the way they are, without feeling compelled to react to every situation and to every affront, every personal attack or even opinions expressed by everyone you know; and sometimes these may be positive too. There’s no need to react - you'll be wasting your mental energy on reacting to every little thing. “Accept everything” I can hear my friend say in his deep soothing voice in our guided meditation session (check it out! I think his sessions are awesome... https://insighttimer.com/rajeshsengamedu/guided-meditations/vedantic-meditation).

There are a few other aspects of acceptance, some of which are funny if you’re willing to indulge me with some nostalgia. So, one of my friends, let’s just call him Altaf alright? We were ten years old and Altaf and I used to play cricket quite often during the weekends. And these used to be long, hot tropical afternoons (real Indian summers mind you). One evening Altaf decided he wanted to join the teenage crowd that played matches in the neighborhood grounds. They were the high school crowd, over fifteen and played some tough, tough cricket, with real cricket balls (our cricket had been with tennis balls till then, ironic as that may sound).

So Altaf goes up to one of the guys (their captain) and says “I can hit any of you here out of the field for four or six runs. Can I join you guys?”

The captain smiles; it’s more of a smirk actually, and goes “sure Altaf, let’s see which balls actually go for a four or a six” and puts his hand on his crotch, feigning a grimace of pain.

Of course, Altaf faces the first ball from one of their star bowlers and guess what? He hits the first one hard between two fielders. It’s a four! I remember jumping and screaming “Altaf, Altaf, Altaf...” and clapping my hands, a gleeful ten year old.

The bowler looks at the captain who’s signaling to him not to fool around anymore, and here comes the second ball. The bowler swings and releases the ball. Altaf lifts up his bat. The ball comes from outside and swinging in air towards the middle; a classic in-swinger as it’s called (if you haven’t seen cricket balls swing, think curve ball in baseball, or look it up!). And before Altaf’s bat comes down to defend and protect his stumps the middle stump goes cartwheeling. The bales launch themselves like Challenger, looking for the stratosphere.

Altaf looks at me in dismay, tears welling up, quickly forming a critical mass. One of them starts slowly dripping down his lower left eye, slowly, slowly down to his chin. By then I knew Altaf had accepted his limitation on joining the “teenage cricket gang”.

There’s yet another version of acceptance, or should I say un-acceptance. Let’s just say that acceptance is a super-set which includes things we do NOT accept as well. Let’s assume you’re in college and passionate about pursuing journalism as a career, but parents, friends and relatives all advice you against it. And you know you’re good at it! But they feel you need to make a “real living” - the audacity! This is the point in life you’ll require a lot of fortitude, or in layman speak, let’s call it like it is - balls! It requires a lot of courage and self-confidence for you to lay down your arms, lay it on the table and just go do your journalism thing. Yes sir. And you know what? (this is a secret I’ll let you in on right now and I’ll keep bringing this up) until YOU experience a fork in the road in YOUR own situation, you’ll never really feel the pain (or pleasure) of taking a bold self-confident decision. Refusing to accept the status quo or refusing acceptance of an expected norm and going about it with your strong conviction - in my book that’s a special form of acceptance!

I’ve got one more story to wrap things up today, and have got to go on. Another form of acceptance. This is acceptance in the guise of defiance. One of my uncles was growing up along with my father in their grandfather’s village home, attending the local village school. While my dad and several of his classmates were hardworking and trying to get through school and being a minimal burden on their families, my uncle was a special one. He wanted to test the limits of his family’s tolerance for what Matt Damon’s shrink in Good Will Hunting calls “tomfoolery and ballyhoo”. He played pranks on people and was having the time of his life, possibly thinking what all his peers were missing out on. Sounds familiar? Because that sounded awfully close to my childhood when I first heard this story!

I digressed again there didn’t I. So one late tropical afternoon my father and uncle get back home and see their grandfather waiting for them to check their grades. Do I even need to go on? I will, assuming you’re still curious. My father had done OK, while my uncle, you know, he hems and haws and gives the bad news. My great-grandpa loses it and lets loose a tirade on both of them that to this day when I hear it from my dad sounds like a earful, and I can imagine how it would have landed on my uncle - that he would be a good-for-nothing dud, roaming the streets, destitute and desperate, broke and depressed; life would be a downward spiral. The story then goes that my uncle lost it too! He gives it back to grandpa and vows to come back and shower him with money, prove to him that he was completely wrong about him and he better place his odds elsewhere. And while grandpa looked on with “shock and awe” he storms out. And doesn’t come back till after he scores at the top of his accounting class, about seven years later, and shock and awe are now tears of happiness for grandpa. What else could he have hoped for? My uncle’s defiance was the acceptance of those circumstances and the un-acceptance of the future by taking purposeful action. Sound familiar? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Concluding these stories today gives me a small crack in my heart; just recollecting them put me in my mood of melancholic nostalgia, like the Happy Prince by O. Wilde. But the avatars of acceptance are beautiful in their own respect, and these avatars complete the A in our pArtee. As we take purposeful action with the appropriate avatar of acceptance, our partee begins to take shape, doesn’t it? Let’s go for paR tomorrow by looking at the “r”!

Until then y’all stay a Bright Corona, because you ARE one!

Chapter 3 - Bring your "a" in Partee-ing

Comment ça va la planète Terre!

Here are my SongS of the Day. I’m changing to one song in English and another in a different language everytime!

This is why we’re brighter than the corona!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM

(oh can’t you see what I meeeeaan???)

And this is why we’re brighter than the corona in French...you go Mylène!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYiXJN-FIh8

The lyrics are terrific and you can look up some good sites to translate them. One of them I found to be quite good:

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/desenchantee-disenchanted.html

OK I get it. Didn’t write to y’all the last two days, and it feels a bit...awkward and disconnected. But I got a lot to talk about. For starters we talked about partee-ing, correct? I want to continue our conversation.

Now that we’ve understood that purpose is the raison d’etre or reason-for-being for anything or for any action, the immediate thing that comes out of this epiphany or understanding is? Action! So, in my mind what follows an understanding for WHY we need to do something, is to actually DO it - action! In many cases action is the toughest part of partee-ing. Why? As always we’re going to do this with a story. Of a friend of mine.

And this “friend” is my grandfather. About thirty years ago (ugh...dated myself there), I was chatting with him about the winter Olympics. And he became quite curious about these strange winter games, a lot of which happened on ice such as figure skating, ski jumping and luge. Having grown up in tropical environs his new quest was to understand why the heck humans would want to do stuff on ice, though he was pushing on ninety years. Oh yes that didn’t deter him one bit alright. And I was all in, eager to explain to him the beauties of watching figure skating while munching away on fritters or biscuits and alternately sipping on a coffee to complement the iciness of the event itself.

As usual, I digress - you've realized that I do that a lot by now so I’ll shut it and continue. Back to figure skating. So my grandpa, you know, he was a curious person and had taught me the importance of focus and the energy it brings to acting on something. When he got this curious about figure skating he wasn’t going to let go. So during those holidays he made me explain how figure skating works, what was so special about it and why people watched it...you get the drift. What I didn’t tell him about was the folks doing the skating itself and how beautiful they were on ice - the grace of movement, the balletic movements, the gyrations of body to body and the faces full of expressions of happiness, sadness, eyes showing passion, desire, lust and so much more. As my friend and I kept watching away, he became so engrossed in them. That was the first day.

The next day I go out for some tennis and cricket and come home that afternoon (it was the holidays...without smartphones and TVs, OK?). And what do we have here? My friend checking out the new babes on ice dancing around with their partners, some of them skimpy enough that left you wondering if they weren’t feeling a bit too cold out there? But my grandpa? No sir, he was feeling warm as ever and his eyes were gorilla-glued to the screen, he didn’t even hear me walk in. And my gaze was super-glued on him! He had shown me he could take action and focus on these beauties of figure skating at ninety, because he knew his purpose! I wasn’t going to deny him that. He had taught me something.

My point is (yes, my story’s a bit out there I know), action can defy age and when you understand your purpose and have the desire to intensely focus, you need to take action and DO it. If my grandpa (my BFF) did it, so can you! So...a large part of the “a” in partee is following your understanding of purpose with Action.

But there’s another “a” in partee-ing which we will pick up tomorrow in earnest. Until then, y’all have a swashbuckling time at home. You’re the brightest corona, mind you. Remain one!

Chapter 2 - Our partee begins

Good evening Americas, good afternoon Middle Earth (after you wake up and are up and about), and good morning Eastern Earth!

From today I’m going to start with my Song of the Day. Choose to play it in the background while you read on. Or keep it to play after you’ve finished reading - whatever suits your fancy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU

I was wondering how to begin today’s story, and then it struck me that my day is rolling to a close and there’s lots to share anyway. Like I mentioned earlier we’re going to learn to partee from today. I’ve essentially added that word to my dictionary and hopefully you will when we get through this. It’s simple to explain, complex to practice.

So...first things first. To partee, we’ll first need to talk about the “why?”. What do I mean by that? I mean purpose. Being purposeful about the things we do, about the things we think about, and having a “reason for being”, and like my French teacher used to say (and one of the very few instances of French I do remember to this day), the “raison d’etre” for thinking about something and doing something. So in essence it’s like a piece of us asking us WHY, whether it’s something we want to do, or it might be something as simple as ‘why do we exist’ or ‘what’s the reason for me to exist?’ or ‘why should I be doing what I’m doing right now’. Now that I’ve beaten that horse till that super massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way, let’s talk examples!

We had our company chief executive officer give us a State of the Business this morning. I’ll tell you one thing - this is the time when leadership’s true colors shine forth. It certainly did with him this morning. You know why? He just kept repeating this over and over in different forms...that there were two things that make us who we are - our culture, and our people. Well those two are connected and influence each other. Our people create, develop, nurture and uphold our culture. And our culture make our people who we are. Simple ain’t it? Not quite! Firstly, we need to have our own “culture”. And what is that?

There once was a great statesman in India called Rajaji; he was quite a close associate to Mahatma Gandhi. And he defined culture a certain way which has stuck with me for a long time. And he goes “Civilization is the development of restraint. And civilizations have two instruments to achieve their purpose” (ah, that purpose word again!). “One is government, and the other is culture. Culture is the habit of successful self-control. Culture is a subtle instrument...” Look at how beautifully described that is. Again, “kissing” always works...keep it simple, stupid!

But I digress, folks. Where I was going with that was to bring the core of that message of our chief executive to you - which was, “don’t worry folks; we’re going to get through this crisis. You know why? Because we know our purpose, and we will continue towards our purpose through our people and our culture.” And when we have the right culture, we understand our purpose, and we have our reason to exist. We know WHY we work in our company, for what, and we care for each other. And, therefore, our culture takes us forward through good times and bad. Q.E.D. Got it?

And similarly, the p in partee is simple, the purpose behind everything we do - whether its thinking about going to graduate school, or going to the gym, or planning to manage our time better, or spending more time with the family, or planning to eat that stuff and not this stuff, or just plain vanilla relax. Know what I’m saying? Like we ask where I live. To give more flavor to this let’s take a simpler example and keep getting simpler as we go. So this morning I wake up right? I kept looking at the ceiling and the fan going. And going. And going. Yeah, yes, energizer bunny. Nope that’s not where I’m going. I keep looking at the ceiling and feel this frikking emptiness in my mind. And feel that this is stupid. Why? I ask myself. The answer flashed in front of me. My poetic self (yeah I got that too) goes...’twas because I wasn’t thinking yonder. My normal self said I wasn’t thinking what I needed to do right then, and why. Oh yes, (the ‘what’ coming up) I needed to go to the bathroom, remember to wash my hands with soap and water for at least twenty seconds (sing happy birthday and whatever), and (purpose coming up) this would avoid infecting myself and my family.

A bit more simpler...I needed to climb down the stairs; to go downstairs! Even simpler...I had to switch on the lights - to see, dammit. Even simpler...I had to wake up - to live the day. Want to keep going? I had to think, to tell myself I exist. More...I had to tell myself there’s a reason I exist, because I do, and I have a purpose!

We got there, ultimately. And hope you’re still with me and not going “enough already!” We do have a purpose. And there’s a reason I wrote this about the “p” word in partee, because it stands for purpose, the core of why we’re going to get through this, like we have been through lots of crises and we will be through lots more. We’re civilization’s cultural instrument, remember? J

So here’s my parting shot for the day...purpose defines purpose. It’s the beginning of the partee, and its foundation. It’s the heart of why we’re here, and it’s at the core of our being. It IS the core of our being. Enough already! Give me a smile and get on with life. You’ve got your purpose. You’ve always had it. You’ve got plenty of time to think about it. So, sit your ass down, take some time for yourself and think.

I’ll leave you again with my Song of the Day...check it out and sing along if possible. Every one of my songs of the day will be the bright corona of our eclipse. And make it brighter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU

Chapter 1 - The corona and the eclipse

Hello fellow citizens of Planet Earth,

Hearken! I’m going to try and put a positive spin to what’s happening around us and to us, every day, and one day at a time. So look to this link either at the beginning of your day to wake up refreshed to be ready for the day ahead, or at the end of your day to be ready for a good night’s sleep. Ahhh...sounds good, hopefully. Here goes...

You know, I know how you feel. Because today I went out for a walk with my child and we were avoiding everyone on the road. We were smiling at each other, though. Sometimes when we go out for walks and when I go for my run I’m so engrossed in my frikking music blasting through my headphones and I’m either looking up or down. And there’s so many people you see, and I know they try to give me a smile. Sometimes I do, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of times I don’t. Today I found myself looking at every face, looking for a smile. Six feet away. I got a smile every time I looked today. I just came out from six feet under.

Today was a long day, as the expression goes. There were back to back meetings and Cisco WebEx proved that she reigned supreme. All over again for the ninth day in a row. What kind of a friend puts up with your shit continuously for nine days, huh? But this lady, this woman like Scarlett in Her, she knew exactly what I wanted. When I logged into every meeting, there were choices to make. Only audio or video too? Should I wear my office clothes like I’m at the office, or do the shirt with shorts? Or just my “lawnmower vest” that my wife hates but I love? Do I feel lucky today, punk? Then again, Cisco WebEx kept chugging along and I kept going with my meetings.

After the meetings were done I went and looked at the markets. Whoa. Largest % gain after 1933. You know the first thing that came to mind? 1933. Oh. My. Gawdawful God. Al frikking Capone. Bootlegging. Robert de Niro saying “you don’t got nothing!” to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. Yeah, that was more like it. Climbed upstairs and went for that walk with my kid son. And he decided to do the Capone scene, where he says “you ain't got the bookkeeper...you got notheeng!” etcetera. We did a fist bump and walked out onto desolate, happy, nature. Back to that walk I was talking about.

Came back from our two miles of chatting with my son about Clash Royale and all the arenas, the four elixirs and how to beat Sparkky with Electro Wizard. I felt so baptized and initiated into the world of my son, it made me feel so dad! And then you know what, we just decided to watch Instant Family. You know why? My wife, she heard it from our friend and thought it would be a good idea. And I says “WTF...I suggested we should all watch it together, like, four months ago. And y’all looked at me like I was a bloody alien!”

Anyway, we watched it. Good one to watch with the family, lots of laughter and a beautifully crafted script. Shows how you become a family not with hairbrushes, cars, peace and quiet but with noise, screams, fights, quarrels and attitude, with a bit of love sprinkled in here and there. Actually, a lot of love that builds over time. Then I sat down, put on the “Calm” playlist on Spotify and started to type away, so I could connect with you all. With a little bit of love sprinkled in and with the hope for it to build into lots of it as we get to know each other. 

As we head into March 25^th tomorrow, I can tell you today was a bright corona in the midst of the eclipse we’re in. We need to make it shine brighter and eclipse the eclipse. Tomorrow we shall discuss how to partee. That’s right, I spelled that right. More on that tomorrow J.

I want you to think of this every moment. Why did we get here, why we do what we do every day, and why we’re going to get back to living our imperfect lives. Let’s make it brighter tomorrow. Until then, y’all have a good night, morning, afternoon and evening!