Time of my life....

We are witnessing a great time and a great transition. In the last decades of my life, I am witnessing lots of changes - positive ones, quite astounding. I will cite some of this with examples. In Kolkata, there are lot of things are there that I dont like, and many times I wished silently that all of these go away. And as I watch some of them really go away!! This is not about mysticism,  this is about changing times. This may be because many more people thought about it acted upon it and made it happen. Of my wishes that were fulfilled were:

1. Cleanliness in the lake park near my house. As I see now there, people are cleaning it everyday :)
2. There was a guy selling green coconut near the park, but his cycle ricksaw is always parked on the road blocking the traffic. One fine day I saw he has permanently moved to the pavement, unblocking the road and keeping his surrounding clean.
3. There are homeless people on the street on my way back home. As winter approaches, I always think of donating them blankets. One fine morning I saw all of them already having blankets :)
4. Our apartment complex campus is much cleaner now.
5. Traffic stops way before their traffic lines giving way to pedestrians.
6. People clean up the road after selling puchkas etc.
7. There is stadium near my house and every time there is a program, the noise is quite disturbing. Now I see they are building walls around  it and we hear much less noise.

Among the things that has not happened so far is:

1. Spitting on the road. I wish this stops completely.
2. I hope there are no homeless people.
3. I hope there are no street children.
4. I hope there are no street dwellers.
5. I hope the encroachment goes away.
6. I hope there are vending zones all over....

Apart from all these, it is heartening to be in an era where there are a number of great people are around. I call this as renaissance. The great people we are contemporary with are: Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravishankar, BK sister shivani, Narendra Modi. All of them work selflessly beyong their personal agenda. Hope our country will be prosperous one of these days in my lifetime. 

Does metta bhavna(loving kindness) meditation really work?? - YES IT DOES...

Exactly about 27 days ago, we walked into the buddhist temple opposite my house during an evening aarti. The aarti ended and there was a gentleman who started discoursing on meditation. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that he started teaching it and described the benefits of doing this particular meditation.Meditation was not new to me. I have been doing some general meditation for the past 6 months, on and off while I was yet to really feel any specific benefits of meditation. But nevertheless I used to feel very good about it. Now, about metta bhavana meditation. the monk said the following things:

1. Start with a close eye and smiling face (If you smile you will be happy and vice versa!!!). Imagine yourself in a very happy and pleasant state. Think that all is well with you and all is going to be well with you, no matter what.
2. Imagine your very inner circle (the immediate family members). Imagine their happy faces and tell that all is well with them and is going to be well with them. While imagining the faces continue breath deeply and gently. Dont allow any other thoughts to sabotage this feeling.
3. Slowly expand this to distant family members. Imagine their happy faces. Go slowly to your friend circle, acquaintances etc. Imagine any unhappy soul on the street or anywhere whom you want to give this special loving kindness. Then continue to people in your office building, apartment building, city, state, country and entire universe. All this while keep a very smiling face.

This may last between 5-7 minutes depending on how many people you are specifically sending this loving kindness.

I have been doing this meditation may be every other day o n an average. Even I include the people I am not particularly fond of.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from a person whom I am not very fond of, but nevertheless I have included her in my meditation. She was speaking very fondly about me!!!! This is like a miracle. So, also another person, I am not very fond of also has been pleasant with me. So, I am assuming this is the result of this metta bhavana meditation. How nice it is! Hope this will work for you as well  

My Balcony Garden

After I moved to my official accommodation, there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed. The lights needed to be fixed, the wall fixtures needed to be added, water Reverse Osmosis needs to be in place, kitchen needed fixtures. I needed wall mounts for bathroom, screen rods and many more things. As finally all is done, I am now focusing truly on something that I enjoy as a serious hobby - that is gardening. I have a small balcony and an unsightly wall to work on. While I have had  my tryst with the wall and to some extent it is manageable, but I still have miles to go before I make what I really would like to make it. I am posting some pictures of my balcony garden and wall garden. I will catalogue and follow up after few months on the progress....

Mangalayan and India..

India has successfully launched Managalayan with a fraction of the cost than that what US has spent. I read many articles where people say several things like India should focus on alleviating poverty blah blah blah. I know the general perception people have about India is it is very dirty, bad roads, anarchy, no clean drinking water, poverty, standard of living poor etc etc. While I agree to most of these, but there remains a component that you will not find anywhere, that is humanity. By saying humanity, I am not talking about the rapists or the terrorists or the murderers, as their number is far too lower than the number of good people.

 I will share an experience here that I had recently. I was coming from New York airport by AirIndia. AirIndia allows you to carry two carry ons and one handbag. Now I just had one big bag and that weighed slightly more than the allowed limit (23 KG). There was an African American sitting on the counter and she was really brutal. She said I will not let you take this, take out your stuff! I said I am just carrying one bag and one laptop, so can you not adjust this. She said a big NO to that. So, I opened my bag and tookout whatever was there on the top. And unfortunately I had a ziplock bag carrying toileterris , so I took that out, packed in a separate polythene bag (Since I did not have an extra bag) and checked that in. To that, she asked her colleagues if a polythene bag can be checked in and they said NO. So I thought I will carry it in my hand not realizing that there were LIQUID IN THERE!! Now I was about to leave and suddenly realized this fact. Then I went to the same counter and told the lady that these are liquid stuff and I cant carry them in hand. She is like I dont care! I said OK can you give my bag back, so that I will exchange this liquid with something else. She then said, I am not going to get your back, you climb up the belt and get it yourself. I was on the belt and then people from other desks started shouting what are you doing? I said she asked me to do that!! Then they sent another person for me to get the bag. Then I tried to exchange the liquid stuff with some clothes. At that time, there were few ladies (Of Indian Origin) came near me, lowered their voice and soothingly said, hurry up, pack it this way and helped me. Then I suddenly realized the difference between the 2 sets of people. One is very rude, mean, rigid and the other is considerate, compassionate and ready to help. This kind of people you will find only in India. I was thinking while leaving also my luggage was slightly overweight and the lady thought I am just carrying one bag, so why not to let me go. On the other hand here this lady knowing that my extra weight (Fraction of a kilo) is not a problem, still created a big fuss. So, this is what I like about India. If you are in trouble, they will all come and help you like they are your own, but elsewhere there is hard to find this species.
So, in short, India is not about poverty. In India, people are rich in heart. People may be living in dirty conditions, but I know for sure that they are not starving to death. Everybody has food to eat and they dont live on drugs or alcohol or debt. So we are richer than what others think about ut.

Attending Genome Informatics Meeting at Cold spring harbour

[Between 29th October - 30th October Ensembl workshop; 30-2nd November GI meeting]

It was a last minute decision for me to come here and I am glad I did. The talks are simply exhilarating plus there is so much information. Everybody is a pioneer in their field. So no complaints there although I was hugely inconvenienced because of the schedule, travel time and my unfamiliarity with the place and railway systems in NY. Now if anyone is coming to New York on work or business I can advise. If you wish to book a place to stay for relatively longer, it is better to choose Airbnb site , since the houses are relatively cheaper and also you can cook if you want. We did this before also and that is why I chose it again. If you are going to Long island, then don’t stay in Bronx, rather stay somewhere close to Hicksville or Syosset. These are like small towns and you may get cheaper motels and rent a car if needed. But if you are coming for sight seeing then Bronx may be good for you depending on the locality. Bronx is uptown of manhatten, so most of the uptown trains go there. Carefully look at the MTA map and locate your train station and see which train goes there. In our case, it was train no 2, called as 2 train, that moves back and forth between the place I stayed to Penn station from where I can catch LIRR trains. For Bronx, there are other trains as well e.g; 1, 3,5,6 etc. But each of them go to different destinations. But there are stations where they all intersect (That is where they announce transfer is available). Choose the proper direction of the train. Usually the last stop of the train is announced as the destination, so accordingly go to the platform. Buy a weekly MTA pass that costs about 30 USD and is good enough to take you around the city.

For travelling to Long Island, the best way is to take the Long Island Rail Roads (LIRR). It is a separate line that connects Penn station to Long island. The main station in this line is Jamaica where you can get air train to JFK airport. The train starts from Penn station (34^th street- Manhattan) to Huntington or several other location. Huntington train is like a slow train stops at each stop, but another way to go to Syosset is to get down at Hicksville (By taking Ronkonkoma) and take Port Jefferson or Huntington train. Once you reach there cross the bridge and there the shuttle services to Cold spring harbor will be there.If not, just walk back and you may see Syosset taxi services that takes about 10 dollars to the Grace auditorium. Today I am venturing into going to JFK using public transportation system, I will write if there are any problem or issues.

Mentoring Talks and Social Interaction

We recently concluded our second Ramalingaswamy conclave at Pune (12th to 14th Sept 2013) hosted by NCCS at Mariott. I always liked to attend this event - partly because so far it has been a paid fun trip for me. I have not been asked to present my work so far. But the next one is going to be different I guess. They have already announced that in the next conclave we have to pay for our stay and food, which has been borne by DBT so far. I am not sure how many will turn up on that case. If I am not to present and asked to pay my travel and stay in a five star hotel off my contingency, I would rather skip the show. In this financial crunched state, contingencies sound more than a life savor. Now coming to the real business - the business of science. We had this time a lot of breakout sessions starting from issues dealing with purchases, writing grants, dealing with administrative issues and so on. Some of them were really useful and informative; some of them left me baffled as what is purpose of such a session could really be. I simply dont get it when people ask questions such as in our institute our purchase does this or that what to do. I just wonder how someone else will provide you with a solution when they have no clue on what the real nature of your problem is. Just hearing from ones side, does not really reflect the reality. Many of the questions asked easily has an answer either in the R award letter or in some manual. I simply dont relate to this. To me questions that are not found in a manual or elsewhere but with the person in front of you should be asked. I get tired hearing silly or useless questions by people. I guess probably that is just me. Everyone else in the audience seem to relate to everything said or talked.

Similarly, when in the lunch dinner breaks or tea breaks, I am unable to engage in a conversation with the stalwarts. I dont know why. I always feel that I have nothing to ask or know from them. I just end up talking with the people with whom I have some work or business. Casual conversation with strangers is something just out from my dictionary. I hope there are other people like me as well or I am just alone in this behavioral pattern paradigm??

Creativity flows in...

Creativity is the mother of invention. We in India now lack creativity these days, so we resort to copying from others. Today while on my daily ritual to the walk to the Nirvana park, this thought popped in me, so thought I will write it here. I have not been very regular in this blog these days as complained by one of my very good friends (she is one of the reasons I write here:)). In any case, I have noticed when I do a nice nature walk a lot of nice thoughts come in including very creative ones like on new research ideas, programs, topics for the blog etc. which I can't do even if I sit quietly for long hours on my desk or try to read an article. This gets me into thinking about the rationale behind pupils sitting under a tree and getting education in vedic era. Now also this practice thrives in Shantiniketan.

Today, I saw 2 street dogs walking slowly, then I heard a noise - a noise of a dog crying. Then suddenly one dog started running and the other also competed with this one. I was wondering what could be the motivation. May be there is some food somewhere. As I walked close to the place where they were running, there was this dog looking at the lake and crying. These two were just running to be by the side of this one!! We call this humanity (If humans do it), do we have a term called as doganity? There was incessant rain and the water level of the lake was all time high, may be this crying dog lost a loved one and all others were rushing to be by his side and were wagging their tail back and forth near the lake to draw attention for help. This type of things we only see in India I guess.

Ever since I came here, I think I have become more mean. Earlier I used to just believe the intrinsic goodness of people, even many instances I used to leave my door without locking. But now I am kind of suspicious on people. But then there is this amazing thing as going overboard and helping each other that I have seen with some street people and now with these dogs. After all we have not lost it all. Still there are remnants of good being lying within us. When I used to go to the office by car, for six months I felt really restless. I kind of missed the energy of people around me. That happens when you walk or take a public transport, you brush with people and get their energy. Now why I am writing all these things when the title is about creativity. There is a link. The spirituality of humanity (or doganity) can be the creative energy that we need at this hour. The feeling of bliss well being will start flowing if we just get past our self  loving self and step out, be with nature, be quiet, give some time to our own thoughts, introspect and meditate. Om Shanti.