ChirpyQuill

Don’t miss a beat! It was a Thursday evening and I was on my weekly Skype call with my music teacher from Mysore, India. Since our last class,I had practiced the krithi I learned pretty well and I was excited to share my singing with her. As I went through reciting my krithi, my teacher didn’t seem that impressed. At the end she told me my singing and thala were not in sync. Thala also known as metronome in the music world or beat/rhythm in common language. To learn Carnatic singing is a hard task in itself but making sure it follows the predetermined thala is whole another story. It’s a framework under which the song has to be performed, a time stamp for every phrase, note and verse.  So I asked my teacher naively why is it so important for my singing to follow the “thala”? She patiently explained metronome keeps you from running fast, or dragging at certain places or getting caught up in the composition itself. It’s like having a guru with you at all times.  As a ...

  It is a typical January morning. I look up and out the window after collapsing a digital one. The sky is gray, the street bare as are the branches. Nothing seems to have shifted in the outer environment.   I was feeling good after a very productive class I just finished. It was the last class in a series of 7 I had signed up for. The information provided by the teacher, the sharing by participants and the a-ha’s I experienced from being in that container had the potential to be truly transformative.  As I sat reflecting, I became aware of this feeling that I can best describe as a resistance; a non-readiness to fuse or integrate with what I had learnt in such earnest. I felt a sense of separation from all of that great information that I seemed to connect with so much ease on a mental level. I was able to consume it all intellectually, but there was something lacking in the full integration of it which is required to power any meaningful transformation.  A connecti...

  Lonely Planet  There is a documentary called “Lonely Planet”, that I have enjoyed watching on an off. It is about unique places to visit around the globe, which are many. For a docu-series that extols the diversity of and uniqueness life’s richness on Planet Earth, I found the title a bit of a misnomer. That is, unless you see it in context of the known Universe and how lifeless it is. Then you appreciate how indeed we are a Lonely Planet in all of the heavens.  American society is a bit like that I think. Relatively speaking, it is brimming with material riches which an individual has access to, but at the human level the individual is rather lonely. The society seems to systematically isolate individuals from the fabric of the “whole” and render them alone. While many of us are blessed to have found ways around it, I speak of the structure of the social contract we seem to have created amongst ourselves. The work culture, the privacy each household cultivates and bree...

  You are free, I do not judge I might just be a friendly nudge I am still but I flow along I sometimes whistle to your song I watch you happy sipping tea I sit with you in company I pray you hold the rails when you walk down As healing knees might need more ground As you learn and as you grow You instill me in your flow  When I am present you are free You can enjoy eternity We meet in that field at quiet dawn When all the barriers are forgone  With open hearts and quiet minds In serenity and out of time

Two kinds of love,  in our hearts they live the one we get and the one we give the one we get keeps us strong the refuge we seek in times of storm it swaddles our heart keeps it warm a blanket woven that we wrap around scaffolding built keeping us intact bracing us from life’s impacts the one we give  has a different beat doling it out  even a greater need it lifts us up while we give yet those who receive  feel better still love we give multiplies from heart to heart  as it flies it never stalls or stays in place all around the World it makes its way but none can force it none can demand it can only be given at our own command there is a little twist  in here this tale about the game that the two loves play it happens so that the only way we can get any love is when we give it away as if someone somewhere  keeps an account in the giving realm  how we perform that score than multiplied manifold brings us love that even our heart’s can’t hold the h...

One of the hardest things for me in this writing journey has been to call myself a writer. I can easily identify with all the other roles I play, such as being a professional, a parent, a brother and even being a runner, which I do as a hobby. But to call myself a writer was always a stretch. Hemingway was a writer, Munshi Premchand was a writer.. other folks whose books are published are writers, people who write for a living are writers.. but me? someone who plucks on the keyboard on and off.. with no direction or agenda, how do I put myself in the category of serious people, as those mentioned before?  But I was missing the point. To call oneself a good writer is a privilege that only readers can assign us, but to call oneself a writer is an obligation and a duty if we want to move ahead in this field. All we need have, to accord ourselves that status, is to have written one essay, poem.. what have you, which all of us have done, and many times over.  The point is that we n...

    As perspective changes, behavior changes.   With regards to writing, there are a few concerns I have come across thus far, in terms of what holds back people. Let’s see what we can discover about these perspectives as we navigate them together.  I don’t write because writing is hard.  Response : Yes, writing is hard. But not any harder than thinking. Thinking is hard. That, we have thoughts is not thinking. That we process those thoughts and arrive at neat inferences is thinking. That we use the inputs we receive from the senses and collate and synthesize them into insights is thinking. That we bring together unrelated subjects and find interesting common grounds further elevating our insights into the material and non-material world is thinking. We all have cluttered minds. That is just the nature of this instrument that draws billions of inputs from the senses and manages them. The world we live in has a thousand vectors from which inputs come. Unfortunate...

You really don’t “become” a writer,. You always were. You just drop the bad habit of not expressing yourself fully. We all think thoughts. Beautiful,, ugly, memorable, inconsequential, magical, banal, all sorts of thoughts. What is interesting about them is that they are completely unique to us, like our fingerprints. However more often than not, we don’t think of them worthy enough to be shared with others. We need to change that, don’t we? There are three reasons for everyone to write, to build that muscle of self expression that we so often have let atrophy away.  Self Expression:  It is the holy grail of good emotional health. We struggle to find avenues of self expression in our daily lives. Yes we express at work, at home, with kids, family etc all the time. But those are functional communications. What about the person whose feet touch the cold floor or soft carpet in the morning, one who feels the cool air and warm sunshine on their face, that person…the you in you tha...

Swing back… swing forth;  Swing back …swing forth For when are we ever present  without a mind full of discourse Present in presence, not  verbose but in essence When a fragrance is felt in the pores and senses Not depictions, descriptions or refracted lenses Can life really be felt in ravines;  amidst raging emotions and intoxicating times Where every sense is hijacked in currents; and the  desire is just to live irreverent   Some will question this paradigm; where  “magical moments” have become the prime When we feel alive only at the behest of time; when  anything can influence and shift our shrine   When have we felt a wave of peace; of  expansive spaces and gentle ease When a breeze is felt in its floating wings; a  smile is felt in its melting strings When no back and forth have lent a line; to  the birthing moment in present time When gaps expand to fill in moments; is  when we experience the magic of presence ...