3 Shoes 1 Chappal - A happy ordeal

A month ago, there was a planned hike in Yosemite. Three days before the hike, San tore a back muscle and was in ER. So there was a "veri" to get back and do that hike. The replacement day was yesterday (without knowing there was a Cricket world cup final that India would play in!). Then again, permits are permits and plans are plans.

 So four of us started at 4:45AM and made it to Yosemite non stop. Given I was driving this time, wanted to be "comfy" and went in my chappals. Once we parked at the trailhead and everyone went to change to their hiking shoes, there was a horrible realization. My shoes were left at home! They did not make it to the car. 

There was a palpable disappointment on the faces of my fellow hikers and San turned into a navarasa nayagi that would have made Padmini give her a pat on the back. Me... I was just sad to let them down like this.

A decision was made that I would hike to all the waterfalls as planned in my chappal and if at any point it gave way or my feet became a problem, I would make it back to the van and sit out the rest of the hikes.

The first hike was to Wapoma falls on the side of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. It was a six mile round trip. The Bata chappals made it. Even led the way on the return without stopping so as to not let the group down. 

When Chappals become shoes, rocks can become benches!

 

Started this hike at 8:45 and came back at Noon. Then we drove towards Vernal falls. Took us an hour to get there and another 20 minutes to find parking. Started hiking at 1:30 PM and the plan was to see how Mr. Bata does at the top of Vernal and make a call to go to Nevada or turn back and go to Bridalveil on the way out. 

Some pictures from this hike..

Nature picture galleries..

portrait format photos.. 

THis was the first photo from the reservoir.. the still water and the reflections were motivation enough for me to keep walking!

San's smiling face was added motivation. She had calmed down and decided to temporarily forgive me till the return journey. . . it was like being granted bail. Gladly accepted that.

No shoes does have its advantages when trying Yoga poses on rocks, but that is about it for advantages

Wapoma falls is awesome! Glad we made it this time..

It was not easy to hike up Vernal as it was wet and slippery with the mist. At one point just went barefoot which was better! We got treated to amazing views and thoroughly enjoyed the waterfalls.

We had seen a dead snake on the Wapoma trail which started a discussion about my open feet. It was decided that hiking shoes might not make a difference and I could always use the slippers in my hand as a defense mehchanism.. 

we saw a live snake on the Vernal trail and there were no jokes this time. Just glad to have not stepped on this one! Bata might protect your feet from the ground, but not this. 

this would be a good place for a bench.. that was my thought.. might be iced out most of the year.. still..

The rainbows created by the mist were just amazing!

The next picture is nothing special.. but has an inside joke for our family.. it is left in this post as a memory jogger..

Saw a group of desi kids from Mountain View posing with an Indian flag. They told us India had won the game. Thanked them for that update as we had no cell signal since 9AM! The flag was borrowed and a photo was taken! 

By the time we made it back down it was already close to 5PM. So we decided to drive and do the very short walk to Bridalveil falls and then drive out. Bridalveil did not disappoint. Just enough water to be amazing and not get us drenched. 

Folks came up to me and said "that was cool what you did on that rock".. for once San didn't scream when I tried balancing on one leg on a rock.. 

The BYSJ 60 day challenge got a lot of talk time on trails is my guess.. which reminds me that it starts again tomorrow!!! 

Had some well deserved tea and started driving back. Managed to drive the last 2 hours of the return once the feet calmed down. 

Here is a video highlights reel..

Friends make everything special!!!

The feet are pretty roughed up from the walking in sandals and being barefoot but did not let the group down!

Call me waterfall crazy all you want. Happy to be just that!

30 pages a day

Since the beginning of this year, have been reading 30 pages a day before bedtime or first thing after waking up while making and drinking morning tea. It has become a good habit.

On days this is not possible, just going with the flow. Most of the days manage more than 30 pages. Then there are long flights and airport waits. Always have the book handy to just read when possible. 

Usually there is a topic or a recommendation from a friend. If the topic interests me, then one book leads to another, a series of books sometimes. Have become a "chain booker", for lack of a better term. One book finishes and the next one gets picked up. The latest topic is books on mental aspects of yoga, concentration, and Tantra. A lot of my friends have branded me "nuts" for even trying to read up on a topic that is considered "taboo" or "humbug" or a range of other words. 

One thing was certain as I am going through this topic. It is misunderstood. A lot of patience and persistence is required to try and even scratch the surface of this subject. A lot of basic terminology has to be learned in a step by step fashion. Picking up books in the wrong sequence can significantly slow you down with constant references to other books. 

The first books I read are the ones by Robert Svoboda. The first book made me want to throw up at the halfway point. Kept ploughing through it 10 pages a day at times and managed to finish it. Then there was a lot of youtube video watching, research articles etc. while reading the second and third books. 

My first thought while going through these books was a sense of deja vu while reading select paragraphs which reminded me of recent books by Sadhguru that I read during the pandemic. Good thing is I still have those books. Sadhguru (or his ghost writers) literally dumbed down Svobodas books 30 years later. That is my perception. Sadhguru did do a great job of summarizing the 1980's books in nicer easily readable fonts, in simpler language with smaller sidebar stories and analogies. My thought was "the audience for books has probably reduced in IQ over 30 years that he is dumbing down so much".  

While reading through Svoboda's books, there were references to another set of books 60 years older! This was fascinating. Sir John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon stumbles upon Tantra and becomes an expert in the early 1900's. If you have not read about him, please do. He had access to Sanskrit texts which most fokls did not have and translated them to the best of his ability word by word. While reading two of his three books, felt that Indian's have had a lot of greatness lost over the years. My Sanskrit is not that great so I am being patient and read the transliterated texts. The third book is in a ridiculous font. Thinking of returning it to Amazon and asking for a reprint in a larger font! 

Reading Arthur Avalon's books gave me yet another sense of deja vu from the previous month. A lot of the Svoboda books are literally 1980's dumb down versions of the 1919 books! 

To think that the 1919 books are a translated, interpreted versions of original Sanskrit texts from ~600 AD is interesting in itself. Those texts are said to be the first written down versions (writing them was supposed to be blashpemous and given the nature of some of what I read, it makes sense that this was taught by oral tradition from teacher to student with the teacher overseeing the student closely as they did the practical exams!). 

While posting snippets of these books on FB with friends, a classmate recommended I read Shri M's autobiography. It was an easy and intersting read and it was easy because of all the other books that had been read recently. Terminology and vocubulary was already there. No need to keep going to other references or googling! Then another friend recommended a series of books by another later day "mystic" called Om Swami. Read his bio book in a day. The other two books are intersting and slow. Alternating between them. The 2014 books seem to be over simplifications of all earlier books. 

At this rate in 5 years I can write "Tantra for dummies" and chances are it will be a best seller. Still there are points being crystallized to bullets that are reinforcing certain ideas from more complex reads and that is "refreshing" quite literally.

A few thoughts after reading these books..

1. We know so little of our own bodies, our minds and what we can do with this equipment we have been given.

2. There are ways to fast track certain performance aspects of the body and mind

3. there are things beyond the body and the mind that have been consistantly observed by multiple folks and they try to explain it to people like me who simply cannot comprehend it. Why they have to try and explain these things to the general populace instead of fokls who are willing to put in the time and effort seriously, baffles me. Glad though that there are some markers these folks are leaving for aspirants. At least you know you are not nuts.

4. Our body is electro mechannical. Doing yoga over the years has taught me that things within the body are connected in ways that I did not know. It is a question of time before western scientists figure out exactly how to stretch a body, hold it still and put electrodes in the right places and turn on the voltage just right to make your physical and mental facutlies increase exponentially.  

5. Given we are also full of materials and materials are just molecules and atoms and those are vibrations with mass, it should not be a surprise that external vibrations have an impact on us. Be it light of different colors or waves of radiation across the spectrum. It is possible to recite certain sounds and press certain nerve endings to help the body do things using sound engineering. Somehow folks had figured this out a long time ago. How much experimentation went into it, is difficult to comprehend. This is also transferred word of mouth and taught teacher to student. This can be tricky as the side effects of doing this wrong are pretty bad. It is like jumping across the rooftops of two close sky scrapers. Know how to train and do it right, you land. Fall and you are dead. 

6. It is important to have a good teacher. If anything, reading books is fine. Do not try to replicate things mentioned in these books.. results vary! Reading them and moving on for now. No practical tests. 

There are a few other books that are still incomplete. One of them is to read sheet music in 30 says. It is stuck in Day 19 (when I went to India). Have to get back to it next month. 

Have not been feeling well since evening. Feeling randomly hot and cold. Dozed off in the evening and wide awake now. Disappointed and surprised my music teacher as I was off tune today. Will figure it out tomorrow morning. Have this weird uneasiness that I haven't felt in recent times. 

Books are amazing. You get to learn something new every day. The news and most of TV watching on the other hand, seems to be a waste of time. 

Wrote this post so people can start from 1920's and come to the 2017 books instead of going back and forth. All these books are good in their own way. They are targeting different audiences over different times. 

On a side note, if you are a newly minted self proclaimed "mystic" and would like a ghost writer for your biography, look no further. Can LCM and GCF all these biographies and write one for you. 

At this point ChatGPT should be able to write a generic mystic's memoir! 

There are somethings that I really want to learn. The Sri Yantra and tantra have definitely piqued my interest. If I am destined to find a teacher in this lifetime, would definitely pursue it. 

Good night! 

An eventful weekend - A year of college, 25 years of marriage, Father's day

This week marks 25 years of our marriage.. the original events happened between 10th June to 16th June.

Everything we did and are doing in this time frame is being called a celebration! I am happy with that. 

We also had the kids finish another year of college and celebrated Father's day!

On Friday both San and me had to take the day off to go vacate the little one from her freshman dorm. Thankfully she goes to live in an apartment with three friends starting next year. 

Given so many schools along the coast all having graduation ceremonies this weekend( as well as dorm vacation deadlines the same weekend), we expected 101 S to be a zoo.. and it was!

Started driving before 5AM, made it to Santa Barbara by 9 AM, got the kids room cleaned out and van loaded in under 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for elevators on a 10 story high rise building where everyone has a cart with stuff loaded and waiting for one of two elevators.  The eleveatorshold two carts and two people max at one time, and serve a gazillion students and parents. 

Then the little one had to go study for her finals. We got her something from Chipotle, dropped her off at the library and had time to kill till she finished her finals. 

The kid suggested we go to Apna kitchen and hang out in State street. So off we went. The food and chai were excellent in this place. We also had some ice cream from a local ice cream place right near the restaurant that was downright yummy (McConnell's) . We still had time to kill.

Gandhiji providing some quality cognitive dissonance... 

There was a movie theater near the restaurant and we decided to sit down in air conditioning for two hours. My legs were killing me after that morning drive and I had to do the entire drive back. San was still recovering from her muscle tear!

We saw a Will Smith movie. I dozed off in the middle of the movie and it was too slow moving for a supposed action flick. Then I got a kick in the ribs right in time to see some action scenes. Apparently she loved it. At least one of us got paisa vasool.

Did I mention that we were the only two people in the theater for the entire movie!!! They ran a movie and trailers just for us!

We left the movie and literally picked up the kid right as she got out of the exam hall and drove back. Had a 20 min stop to eat the tamarind and curd rice that San had made. It tasted so good.. we had to gobble it up and start driving. We made it back by 11PM.

Legs are still recovering from driving 11 hours and walking around all day. That movie was a good decision!

Apna was interesting.. Gandhiji wearing coolers and endorsing beer... Kaliyuga is well and truly here was my thought. The bay area is overrun with "kudigara pappans".. something I tell my wife all the time. It is the times we live in. That is not the topic for this post.. so will leave it at that. The food was great! 

Jr. drove back from Irvine by herself without a stop! Was very worried but happy when she pulled into the driveway. The best 25th anniversary gift is that we are all in one place!

We went to an Italian place (Rollati in downtown San Jose) to celebrate this morning. The little one had scouted this one out. The food was delicious. Ate a full pizza and am in python mode right now as this post is being typed. Strongly recommend this place. Great food and great service! 

After this we decided (San did) to walk around SJSU as she was showing us where she went to school, her library, her cafeteria, where she had her graduation etc. etc. The kids have not seen this nostalgic side of San. Neither have I .. it was fun while it lasted. We did take a "bench photo" at SJSU. 

We wrapped it all up with a dinner at Sri's kitchen. The dinner was simple but great! Also ended up visiting my first ever job location which used to be a walk from this strip mall. The whole place has changed as have we over the years.

It has been a great week of "celebrating". Let's see what the next Quarter has in store for us.. 

In the middle of all this I did work on a collage for my dad to wish him.. not sure if he can see it properly! Pretty much all highlight photos of him (from the photo of his wedding) to the last one we took with him during our visit to Chennai in February on his 85th birthday. 

Spent a lot of time looking at pictures today! If anything, hope my kids keep taking pictures every now and then and store them!

This should go without saying.. but the credit for us rolling on smoothly for the last 25 years completely goes to Sangeetha. I was hired as the #2 employee of Sangeetha Inc. 25 years ago and the small startup has released two successful products and the company is still going strong under her leadership!

I lucked out big time in this birth!