September 04, 2006 | 12:28 AM
Till the rains come.
Her grandson hung loosely from her hip. Lacking the energy to steady his head lolling from side to side. He was badly in need of food.
Yet as she implored me for some money I knew she had not been doing this for long. For the hundreds of beggars I pass every day have a permanent look carved onto their faces. A look to evoke pity. But her smile is warm. The shine in her eyes real.
Where are u from ?
Sholapur, she said. There were no rains and the fields were dry. No one was hiring labour, and there was no food or water. 20 of her community walked, hitched rides on top of trains and buses to come to Mumbai.
To beg for food, shelter and water. This is after all the city of dreams.
Where do u live ?
Wherever we find the space.
Which means the streets, the shelters under the highways. The narrow spaces on the dividers between the roads. Real Estate is at a premium here, even to put down your head to sleep on the streets
Her grandaughter walked upto me. Hand stretched out to beg, but her heart not in it. Not yet. anyway. It had not yet become a profession. She smiled the most stunning smile, eyes still sparkling with hope and optimism. All of sixteen.
We will go back soon to sholapur, she said to my question.
When ?
When the rains come. When the crops grow. When there is food and shelter.
That I knew, and she knew, would be not till the next monsoons a year from now. Would this community exist together for a year ? Would the warmth in her eyes, and the sparkle in her grandaughter's eyes survive that long ?
Or would this family be indistinguishable from the permanently etched and grimaced faces of al the others.
My daughter's school bus arrived and she stepped out laughing. The old lady laughed too. She asked for her name and blessed her. I gave her some money and she bent to touch my feet. I said no. In the same square mile we existed on different planets. But at this moment I wanted to be her equal. Equal in their hope. Equal in their dignity. Praying that somehow they may be able to survive the onslaught of the city.
I drove home, as Suresh, my driver laughed.
You really got taken in didn't you, sir. Have u not been watching TV ? There has been so much rain in Sholapur that their are floods everywhere !
He is wrong. He must be wrong.
Shekhar
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker
August 27, 2006 | 07:49 PM
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker
5 yeras ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos I met an amazing mind and soul. Piet Hut is Dutch, married to the beautiful Eiko, who is from Japan. His is Buddhist and a proffesor of at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University. The meeting led to an amazing series of e mail exchanges on the nature of reality ...
I then lost contact with Piet. On a whim I suddenly turned up at his house in NY and discovered he had just survived cancer, and his mind was more alive than ever. To my amazement he had a record of most of our conversations between July 2001 and August 2003.
I now plan to serialize these conversations on this website and then for Piet and I to continue the conversations both on his website and mine. They mostly are in the form of questions on the nature of the Universe I asked Piet from the point of view of an artist, and then he attempts to answered them from the point of theoretical physics. You will soon find a posting on the top of the blog page called 'The Astrophysicist and the Film Maker
For those that are interested in looking at all the correspondence at one go, should go to Peit's website :
http://www.waysofknowing.net/ShekharOldExchanges/OldExchanges.html
shekhar
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker
5 yeras ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos I met an amazing mind and soul. Piet Hut is Dutch, married to the beautiful Eiko, who is from Japan. His is Buddhist and a proffesor of at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University. The meeting led to an amazing series of e mail exchanges on the nature of reality ...
I then lost contact with Piet. On a whim I suddenly turned up at his house in NY and discovered he had just survived cancer, and his mind was more alive than ever. To my amazement he had a record of most of our conversations between July 2001 and August 2003.
I now plan to serialize these conversations on this website and then for Piet and I to continue the conversations both on his website and mine. They mostly are in the form of questions on the nature of the Universe I asked Piet from the point of view of an artist, and then he attempts to answered them from the point of theoretical physics. You will soon find a posting on the top of the blog page called 'The Astrophysicist and the Film Maker
For those that are interested in looking at all the correspondence at one go, should go to Peit's website :
http://www.waysofknowing.net/ShekharOldExchanges/OldExchanges.html
shekhar
Welcome to Eternity, bye bye Big Bang
August 21, 2006 | 05:59 PM
Welcome to Eternity, bye bye Big Bang
Have always struggled with the idea of the Universe actually having a 'begining' with the Big Bang and therefore by inference an 'end' ...
If the principles of Quantum Physics are to hold true, then surely time has absolutely no linear value. The concept of Timelesness is where the the new Quantum Theorists and the Spiritualists are finding common ground. In Eternity !
Now Neil Toruk, proffesor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at cambridge university has expounded that there was no single Big Bang. But millions of them. But Toruk goes further, as the London Times reported :
"If Toruk and his colleagues are right it would mean that "Time, Matter and Energy have always existed, and always will". There is no singular point in time where we can say that he Universe was born. So there was no begining of Time and no end. Time therefore cannot travel in one straight linear line.
So welcome to Eternity. The search for a 'begining' and an 'end' to all things is just part of our attempt to reduce the universe to something that can be contained within our limited comprehensions. If nothing ever began, then how could it end ?
The Universe is just infinite eternal potential. Where all possibilities exist, have always existed and will forever exist.. and the the non-possibilities to these events also exist. The Universe is an infinite idea, of infinite potential and infinite possibilities.
Shekhar
Welcome to Eternity, bye bye Big Bang
Have always struggled with the idea of the Universe actually having a 'begining' with the Big Bang and therefore by inference an 'end' ...
If the principles of Quantum Physics are to hold true, then surely time has absolutely no linear value. The concept of Timelesness is where the the new Quantum Theorists and the Spiritualists are finding common ground. In Eternity !
Now Neil Toruk, proffesor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at cambridge university has expounded that there was no single Big Bang. But millions of them. But Toruk goes further, as the London Times reported :
"If Toruk and his colleagues are right it would mean that "Time, Matter and Energy have always existed, and always will". There is no singular point in time where we can say that he Universe was born. So there was no begining of Time and no end. Time therefore cannot travel in one straight linear line.
So welcome to Eternity. The search for a 'begining' and an 'end' to all things is just part of our attempt to reduce the universe to something that can be contained within our limited comprehensions. If nothing ever began, then how could it end ?
The Universe is just infinite eternal potential. Where all possibilities exist, have always existed and will forever exist.. and the the non-possibilities to these events also exist. The Universe is an infinite idea, of infinite potential and infinite possibilities.
Shekhar
Ripples
August 15, 2006 | 07:33 PM
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
Ripples
August 15, 2006 | 07:33 PM
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
Ripples
August 15, 2006 | 07:33 PM
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
Ripples
Are we merely ripples created by a universal consciousnes eternally at play ?
And if before the ripple subsides, we have known eternal love and compassion, then the ripple perhaps has had some significance.
The essential element seems to be humility. So much humility tha it can wash away the ego in it's tide.
That then is my battle. But my ego and my sense of Induviduality fights back so hard !
It's exhausting,
Shekhar
The Ego and Context
August 05, 2006 | 05:01 PM
The Ego and Context
Can I see myself out of any context ? Can I just exist ? without contextualizing my existence ? I have been battling this question over the last few days and would welcome comments.
I am a father. A film maker. A man. A human being. I am one person for one moment and another the next. I am good and bad in the same moment, indeed good and bad at the same time in the same context ! But every thing that I am, is contextualized by something else. Every thought I have is contextualized by something else. Even a thought cannot exist on it's own.
Try it. Think of yourself and then try and remove all context. Not possible is it ? You always think of yourself in relationship to something else. Even when u say "I love", which are probably the two most powerful words in the universe, there is a context who or what you love, however enormous your love may be.
So when those that have immense Wisdom say "I am". Just those two words "I am", surely they are talking about an existence without context ? Because if Buddha talked about 'formlesness" and 'Shunyata', surely He was talking about an existence without contextualizing that existence. How can infinity have a context ? How could timelesness have a context ? How could shunyata have a context ? Non Infinity ? Non Shunyata ? Non timelesness ? Doesn't make sense.
How weak the Ego is then, how weak our induviduality is then, when we exist only in the imagined context of something else. And we live our whole lives based on imagined contexts ?
How do we get to a life without context ? Is that what consciousness means ?
shekhar
So I realize how weak the Ego is. It has absolutely no value without Context.
The Ego and Context
Can I see myself out of any context ? Can I just exist ? without contextualizing my existence ? I have been battling this question over the last few days and would welcome comments.
I am a father. A film maker. A man. A human being. I am one person for one moment and another the next. I am good and bad in the same moment, indeed good and bad at the same time in the same context ! But every thing that I am, is contextualized by something else. Every thought I have is contextualized by something else. Even a thought cannot exist on it's own.
Try it. Think of yourself and then try and remove all context. Not possible is it ? You always think of yourself in relationship to something else. Even when u say "I love", which are probably the two most powerful words in the universe, there is a context who or what you love, however enormous your love may be.
So when those that have immense Wisdom say "I am". Just those two words "I am", surely they are talking about an existence without context ? Because if Buddha talked about 'formlesness" and 'Shunyata', surely He was talking about an existence without contextualizing that existence. How can infinity have a context ? How could timelesness have a context ? How could shunyata have a context ? Non Infinity ? Non Shunyata ? Non timelesness ? Doesn't make sense.
How weak the Ego is then, how weak our induviduality is then, when we exist only in the imagined context of something else. And we live our whole lives based on imagined contexts ?
How do we get to a life without context ? Is that what consciousness means ?
shekhar
So I realize how weak the Ego is. It has absolutely no value without Context.
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