Why Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard is a mountain of a book

…and why you must scale it, at least once in your life.

The Snow Leopard was lying on my bookshelf for more than five years before I picked it up. In those five years, it beckoned me often. But somehow, the silent pull wasn’t strong enough for me to make a physical move.

Until now. Beset by a strong desire to go visit the mountains, especially the Himalayas, but unable to do so for multiple reasons, I possibly did the next best thing: Picked up the book and traveled with its author, Peter Matthiessen, on a mystical journey of self-discovery to the Crystal Mountain on the Tibetan Plateau, near the border with Nepal.

When I was almost finished reading, a combined sense of fulfillment, dread, sadness, and joy took hold of me. Sadness at the knowledge that a wondrous journey was coming to an end; joy at the treasure chest of beauty and wisdom Matthiessen opened up, scattering its pearls all along the way, for countless readers like me.

The author undertook this journey along with the field biologist George Schaller in the 1970s, walking hundreds of mountainous miles for a little over two months. They wanted to study bharal, the wild blue sheep-goat of the region, with a faint chance at being among the lucky few to spot the amazing, revered cat, the snow leopard.

The book, The Snow Leopard, at first appears to be a diary-like account of that journey (date-wise entries of varying lengths double as chapters within sections). It is that but, thankfully, much more.

I’m in agreement with this blurb taken from a review by Jim Harrison for The Nation: “A magical book: a kind of lunar paradigm and map of the sacred…The book has transcended the usual limits of language.”

The Snow Leopard is indeed transcendental, and not just on account of language. It is a timeless travel classic that can very well serve as a spiritual refuge in times of distress and doubt.

Besides Schaller, Matthiessen is accompanied by a curious mix of porters (Sherpas and Tamangs) to help with their load, cooking, and other routine tasks. Throughout the journey, he portrays these characters in witty detail and draws your attention to the rich variety of life ever-present in nature in a way that makes you feel as if you are right there, witnessing all this firsthand. His writing is not grandiose or lavish but simple, natural, endearing.

The most important bits, if you ask me, are his inner detours in which he talks about the workings of Buddhism’s various streams, the revered figures like Milarepa and Avalokiteshwara, what it means to seek one’s place in the universe, and what truly gives us peace and happiness. Profound as these things are supposed to be, Matthiessen makes them come alive and within easy reach as he melds his noble thoughts effortlessly with the daily ‘step and stave’ of walking on snowy, alpine paths, and surviving with barebone necessities in the company of strangers that seem to be living in another century yet whose simple acceptance of life and its harsh ways are so disarming, so uplifting at times.

Among the most charming, intriguing parts I found are the ones where Matthiessen describes Tukten, the enigmatic sherpa, and his equally enigmatic relationship with him throughout the journey (and possibly beyond it in another life).

Take this early passage, for instance: “Tukten has elf's ears and a thin neck, a yellow face, and the wild wise eyes of a naljorpa, or Tibetan yogi. He radiates that inner quiet which is often associated with spiritual attainment, but perhaps his attainment is a dark one. The other Sherpas are uneasy with him; they mutter that he drinks too much, uses foul language, is not to be trusted…This disreputable fellow is somehow known to me, like a dim figure from another life.”

Despite his “reputation,” Tukten exerts an extraordinary influence on Matthiessen—without actually doing any exertion. For he is an effortless, easygoing being who seems unperturbed in the most trying of circumstances.

Toward the end, when Matthiessen is parting ways with Tukten, shaking his hand and watching him go in the cab, he draws parallels between the sherpa and himself: “Without ever attempting to speak about it, we perceive life in the same way, or rather, I perceive it in the way that Tukten lives it. In his life in the moment, in his freedom from attachments, in the simplicity of his everyday example, Tukten has taught me over and over, he is the teacher that I hoped to find…”

There appears to be a fine, mystic example at one place in the book of how some Tibetans “live” what most ordinary folk merely “perceive.” It occurs when the traveling party needs to pass a narrow stretch of cliff about a hundred feet above rocks at the edge of a lake. Matthiessen, who has been walking ahead, pauses at this point, leaning into the cliff to let the nine porters in his entourage pass by. What he witnesses next is nothing short of surreal:

“At that dangerous point of cliff, an extraordinary thing happens. Not yet in view, the nine fall silent [the porters were chattering before that] in the sudden way that birds are stilled by the shadow of a hawk, or tree frogs cease their shrilling, leaving a ringing silence in the silence. Then, one by one, the nine figures round the point of rock in silhouette, unreal beneath big bulky loads that threaten each second to bump the cliff and nudge them over the precipice. On they come, staring straight ahead, as steadily and certainly as ants, yet seeming to glide with an easy, ethereal lightness, as if some sort of inner concentration was lifting them just off the surface of the ground. Bent far forward against the tump lines around their foreheads, fingers wide spread by way of balance, they touch the cliff face lightly to the left side, stroke the north wind to the right. Light finger-tips touch my upper leg, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine hands, but the intensity is such that they seem not to distinguish between cold rock face and warm blue jeans. Mute unknowing, dull eyes glazed, the figures brush past one by one in their wool boots and sashed tunics, leaving behind in the clear air the smell of grease and fires. When the bad stretch is past, the hooting instantly resumes, perhaps at the point where they left off, as if all had awakened from a trance.”

I read the above passage a couple of times, as if in a trance myself.

Later on, Matthiessen wonders about the incredible incident, thinking it to be a form of lung-gom, a Tantric discipline that permits the adept to glide along with uncanny swiftness and certainty, even at night. He also compares it to the yogic concept of prana: lung-gom literally means wind-concentration and prana is the vital energy or breath that permeates everything.

There are several passages in the book where Matthiessen shines a light on meditation—both by dwelling on Tibetan-Buddhist teachings and by his own sincere attempts at its practice.

What I really liked is the author’s openness in not restricting his writing to any one particular sect but embracing multiple streams and cultures. So, even as he is talking about Tibetan yogi Milarepa’s teachings, he doesn’t shy away from dwelling on meditative experiences as varied as those of bushmen and dervishes. Consider the following excerpts:

“Meditation has nothing to do with contemplation of eternal questions, or of one's own folly, or even of one's navel, although a clearer view on all of these enigmas may result. It has nothing to do with thought of any kind—with anything at all, in fact, but intuiting the true nature of existence, which is why it has appeared, in one form or another, in almost every   culture known to man. The entranced Bushman staring into fire, Eskimo using a sharp rock to draw an ever-deepening circle into the flat surface of a stone achieves the same obliteration of the ego (and the same power) as the dervish or the Pueblo sacred dancer. Among Hindus and Buddhists, realization is attained through inner stillness, usually achieved through the samadhi state of sitting yoga. In Tantric practice, the student may displace the ego by filling his whole being with the real or imagined object of his concentration; in Zen, one seeks to empty out the mind, to return it to the clear, pure stillness of a seashell or a flower petal…

“Like the round-bottomed Bodhidharma doll, returning to its centre, meditation represents the foundation of the universe to which all returns, as in the stillness of the dead of night, the stillness between tides and winds, the stillness of the instant before Creation. In this "void", this dynamic state of rest, without impediments, lies ultimate reality, and here one's own true nature is reborn, in a return from what Buddhists speak of as "great death". This is the Truth of which Milarepa speaks.”

In November 1971, before Matthiessen started his Crystal Mountain journey, he and his wife (her name is Deborah but he affectionately refers to her as D), who was suffering from cancer, attended a Zen meditation retreat in New York. In one of the meditative sessions, they both happened to sit opposite each other. Just the night before, Matthiessen had quietly perceived his wife to be dying and on that morning when they both meditated, his heart was full of compassion. He chanted the Kannon Sutra, which is dedicated to the Bodhisattva of Compassion who is known by several names, including Kanzeon, Guanyin, Avalokiteshwara and, of course, Kannon (an aside: the popular Japanese company Cannon derives its name from it.)

Matthiessen recalls, with incredible grace, what happened in that deeply-moving session during his Himalayan journey:

“Before dawn on Sunday, during morning service, D chanced upon to sit directly opposite my own place in the two long facing lines of Buddha figures—an unlikely event that I now see as no coincidence. Upset by what I had perceived the night before, by pity and concern that this day might be too much for her, I chanted the Kannon Sutra with such fury that I “lost” myself, forgot the self—a purpose of the sutra, which is chanted in Japanese, over and over, with mounting intensity. At the end, the Sangha gives a mighty shout that corresponds to OM!—this followed instantly by sudden silence, as if the universe had stopped to listen. And on that morning, in the near darkness—the altar candle was the only light in the long room—in the dead hush, like the hush in these snow mountains, the silence swelled with the intake of my breath into a Presence of vast benevolence of which I was a part: in my journal for that day, seeking in vain to find words for what had happened, I called it the “Smile”. The Smile seemed to grow out of me, filling all space above and behind like a huge shadow of my own Buddha form, which was minuscule now without weight, borne up on the upraised palm of this Buddha-Being, this eternal amplification of myself. For it was I who had smiled; the Smile was Me. I did not breathe, I did not need to look; for It was Everywhere. Nor was there terror in my awe: I felt “good”, like a “good child”, entirely safe. Wounds, ragged edges, hollow places were all gone, all had been healed; my heart lay at the heart of Creation. Then I let my breath go, and gave myself up to delighted immersion in this Presence, to a peaceful belonging so overwhelming that tears of relief poured from my eyes, so overwhelming that even now, struggling to find a better term than “Smile” or “Presence”, the memory affects me as I write. For the first time since unremembered childhood, I was not alone; there was no separate “I”.”

Peter Matthiessen died in November 2014, a little over a year after I started my own meditation practice. My only “interaction with him” has been through reading The Snow Leopard—and yet, I can see some of my own experiences reflected in the crystalline waters of many of its passages. How gladly I would have treated him “as my own Tukten” were we to meet somehow!

When Matthiessen describes nature and the birds and the streams and his own presence in their midst, he does so with an effortless mastery over words, stringing them together in a beautiful, fragrant garland:

“The ground whirls with its own energy, not in an alarming way but in slow spiral, and at these altitudes, in this vast space and silence, that energy pours through me, joining my body with the sun until small silver breaths of cold, clear air, no longer mine, are lost in the mineral breathing of the mountain. A white down feather, sun-filled, dances before me on the wind: alighting nowhere, it balances on a shining thorn, goes spinning on. Between this white feather, sheep dung, light, and the fleeting aggregate of atoms that is "I," there is no particle of difference. There is a mountain opposite, but this "I" is opposite nothing, opposed to nothing.

I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and homespun boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles—the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all do. We have had no news of modern times since late September and will have none until December, and gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely: I am returned into myself.”

Matthiessen’s is one of the few books I’m sure to return to more than once—one of the few, too, I cannot recommend highly enough. There’s so much more I wanted to excerpt from the book, but I must pause now and content myself with what follows (and no, there’s no conclusion to this; only continuity):

“Near my lookout, I find a place to meditate, out of the wind, a hollow on the ridge where snow has melted. My brain soon clears in the cold mountain air, and I feel better. Wind, blowing grasses, sun: the dying grass, the notes of southbound birds in the mountain sky are no more fleeting than the rock itself, no more so and no less—all is the same. The mountain withdraws into its stillness, my body dissolves into the sunlight, tears fall that have nothing to do with “I”. What it is that brings them on, I do not know.

In other days, I understood mountains differently, seeing in them something that abides. Even when approached respectfully (to challenge peaks as mountaineers do is another matter) they appalled me with their "permanence", with that awful and irrefutable rock-ness that seemed to intensify my sense of my own transience. Perhaps this dread of transience explains our greed for the few gobbets of raw experience in modern life, why violence is libidinous, why lust devours us, why soldiers choose not to forget their days of horror: we cling to such extreme moments, in which we seem to die, yet are reborn. In sexual abandon as in danger we are impelled, however briefly, into that vital present in which we do not stand apart from life, we are life, our being fills us; in ecstasy with another being, loneliness falls away into eternity. But in other days, such union was attainable through simple awe.

My foot slips on a narrow ledge: in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the centre of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us, what one lama refers to as "the precision and openness and intelligence of the present.'' The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. To be anywhere else is "to paint eyeballs on chaos". When I watch blue sheep, I must watch blue sheep, not be thinking about sex, danger, or the present, for this present—even while I think of it—is gone.”

Before I bid adieu, just one more thing, which rings like a divine chant throughout the book: Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus.)

Namaskar! Thank you for reading :)

There is something special about chai

There’s something about chai that no other beverage offers by way of sukoon—just as there’s no word, other than sukoon, that describes the supreme feeling of contentment it induces in those who take a deep, soulful sip.

Chai (called tea in English with not exactly the same flavor) is like a divine gift for its hundreds of millions of lovers around the world.

Global it may be, but chai has a special connection with four countries: India, China, Japan, and England.

Legend has it that Bodhidharma, the renowned 5th century monk who taught at the Shaolin monastery in China, once took it upon himself to meditate for a long time. But he fell asleep before his avowed period of meditation could end. When he woke up, he was so enraged that he cut off his eyelids in repentance and threw them to the ground.

Tea leaves grew for the first time at the very spot where the monk’s eyelids fell.

And from then on, tea is said to have become the favorite drink of monks who wanted to stay awake in their meditation practice.

Another Chinese legend attributes the origin of tea drinking to the mythical emperor Shen-Nung (also called Shennong or the Divine Farmer)—several centuries before the Christian era. It says that he discovered the medicinal properties of tea when some leaves from a wild plant accidentally fell into his pot of boiling water.

It was not until the Tang dynasty (618-907), however, that tea consumption became widespread in China. It was also during the Tang dynasty that Lu Yu wrote one of the first authoritative books on this subject, The Classic of Tea.

Japan, too, saw the introduction and spread of tea drinking through monks. In the Heian period (794-1185), Saicho and Kukai were among the first to bring tea seeds to be planted in Nippon—though it is the Zen monk Eisai who is credited with popularizing the drink in the late 12th century. Eisai also wrote a book, Record of Drinking Tea on Health, whose Japanese title, if you ask me, has a cute Hindi ring to it: Kissa Yojoki.

By the 15th century, the tea ceremony in Japan had evolved into a highly refined art form, reaching its pinnacle under tea master Rikyu a little later. Chanyou, the Japanese “Way of Tea”, has four key principles to the whole regimen of serving and drinking tea: Wa (harmony), Kei (respect), Sei (purity), and Jaku (tranquility). Applied together, they guide you to a more balanced and mindful way of celebrating tea.

The term “Teaism” was coined by the Japanese scholar and art critic Okakura Kakuzo to describe the unique worldview associated with the Japanese way of tea, going beyond the presentation aspects that Westerners usually focus on.

In his celebrated classic, The Book of Tea, first published in 1906, Kakuzo writes:

“The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao-tse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.”

Beautiful words that evoke the serene, profound imagery that nothing but tea can encompass in its majestic sweep of history.

There are not-so-elegant aspects of history associated with tea as well, to put it mildly. In Europe, tea consumption remained confined to the elite after Dutch and Portuguese traders first brought it to the continent in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Soon after, the British East India Company established a monopoly on the tea trade from China. When taxes were reduced to make tea more accessible, its popularity exploded, requiring huge imports from China to satisfy demand.

But massive imports of tea [besides porcelain and silk] from China caused a silver deficit, prompting Britain to smuggle opium from India to China (When the Chinese tried to stop it, this led to the Opium Wars.)

To reduce over-reliance on China for their tea, the British went about setting up tea plantations in the Indian states of Assam and Darjeeling (the first one was set up in 1837 at Chabua in Upper Assam). The first few chests of Assam tea arrived in London from India in 1839; by 1888, the British imported more tea from India than from China. By the turn of the century, Chinese tea imports were just a pale shadow.

As for its consumption in India, tea was initially shunned by the people. This was partly because of the crushing, sub-human conditions under which the indentured laborers used by the British colonists worked, and partly because of tea’s high price. Besides, the majority of Indians had never tasted the beverage. After the Great Depression brought down the prices and created a surplus of tea waiting to be exported from India, however, the British rulers turned their attention to the market within India. They undertook what’s arguably the largest marketing campaign in Indian history, using hundreds of “tea propagandists” and “tea vans” that dispensed millions of free cups of tea to anyone who was interested in tasting it.

The marketing tactics used in the campaign were later duplicated and built upon by private companies, including Brooke Bond and Lipton. But it would take several decades of concerted, persistent effort to make the foreign tea into local chai, the unofficial national drink of India.

As of today, the sound of “chai-chai-chai” forms the ubiquitous buzz at thousands of bus and train stations across India. The banter and gossip of the milling workers, laborers, and good-for-nothings over chai at countless tapris and tea joints mingles effortlessly with the silent march of a nation perpetually suspended in motion.

I think that’s more history than our brains can handle at a given time!

So let’s get back to chai and sukoon.

The Japanese ceremony is marked by elaborate rituals, the art of arranging flowers, attention to details regarding the utensils, and the performative steps for serving, drinking, and washing up.

But for me and, I suspect, millions of Indian chai-lovers like me, it’s fairly simple and straightforward.

Boil some tea leaves in water. Add milk and sugar to taste. (A hint of ginger for ginger tea aficionados would be great!) Serve with an ear-to-ear grin and unmistakable warmth.

Within minutes, the server and the served are co-travelers to a land where worries dissolve in the vapor-mist wafting from the cups. Where stories are shared with loving memories or unrestrained laughter. Where you can nod your head with understanding or shake it in disbelief with equal ease.

Be it the scorching summer of mid-year, the freezing cold of December-January, or the redeeming drizzle in between, if you have chai at hand and someone to share it with, there’s nothing much else to ask for.

Bun-maska or biscuits, perhaps. But that’s about it.

To borrow a line from Chaayos, “Wo sukoon se jeete hain jo chai peete hain.”

Yes, there's nothing quite like chai.

The divine, magical sound of gurbani

 

I have been listening to bhajans since early childhood but it is only in the past couple of years that I fell under the divine spell of shabad gurbani.

And once I began listening to the heavenly voices of ragis such as Bhai Harjinder Singh Ji, Bhai Satvinder Singh Ji, Bhai Joginder Singh Ji Riar, and other blessed souls, I just couldn’t stop. 

It is as if amrit (nectar) in the form of sound is flowing into the very core of my being. No wonder gurbani is also known as amritbani.

“Tohi mohi, mohi tohi, antar kaisa?…” (You are me and I am you—what’s the difference?)

“Sawal sunder Ramaiya, mera mann laga tohe…” (My dark and beautiful Lord, my heart belongs to you)

“Aao sakhi har mel kareha…” (Come my friend, let’s experience union with the divine)

“Aisa naam niranjan hoye, je ko mann jane mann koye…” (The name of the Spotless One is enshrined truly within a devotee’s heart)

These and many more soul-stirring shabads have filled my life ever since. They are the words of saint-poets and gurus like Kabir and Guru Ram Das and mainly taken from Guru Granth Sahib.

Sometimes, I’m unable to decipher the meaning of individual words but the whole composition, often playing on loop, makes perfect sense. 

Before long, feelings of harmonious balance, abiding peace, and deep gratitude take root in my heart. The mind’s petty objections give way to a more exalted existence. Compassion and understanding flow freely.

I come away drenched in bliss.

Here are some YouTube links you may want to try or share with your loved ones: Mera mann laga tohe, Aisa naam niranjan, Bhinni rainarhiye chamkan taare, Tumri sharan tumhari aasa, Kabir tu tu karta tu hua

The many joys of doing ‘walking meditation’

 

The image of Buddha sitting in meditation is etched in our hearts. But there’s another way the Enlightened One practiced meditation, and he enjoyed it greatly: Walking meditation.

After tens of thousands of mindful steps, I realize why it’s such a lovely thing. You are doing two of the best things a human being can possibly do: walking as well as meditating.

How can it be? Aren’t you supposed to sit still while doing meditation?

True, that’s the usual way meditation is practiced. But walking meditation is a bit different. Let me share a few observations from my own experience.

There are different ways and purposes of walking. You could be walking because your car broke down and you didn’t get a ride. You might be walking to school, which is not far away. Or maybe you are just hurrying to the market to pick up groceries.

In such routine acts of walking, our focus is mainly on the task at hand: to reach our destination, to get something from a place, to fulfill an objective.

There are some other reasons to walk as well, like when you are hiking. That’s like a sporting or outdoor activity you enjoy.

So, what does it mean to walk and meditate?

It means infusing your walk with the ease, simplicity, and bliss of meditation. It means to practice mindfulness while walking.

How you do that is by taking quiet, slow steps and observing your breath.

By not being in a hurry to reach anywhere but enjoying the very act of walking.

By looking around you in peace, even if you happen to be in an otherwise chaotic city.

By keeping this in your mind even as you take the next step: we are all connected to each other and to objects and phenomena in the universe. By seeing some of these connections happen or transform into another connection.

By being full of gratitude for the life you have been given, for your ability to walk, for the wonder of observing things that are nothing short of miracles: a bird singing, a flower in bloom, a tree swaying in the wind, a star-spangled sky, a horizon full of possibilities.

By simply walking at a pace that’s in harmony with your soul’s yearning.

By observing the joy rising inside you as you keep walking, not keeping track of time.

By smiling at the thought of having the better sense to have left your smartwatch back at home.

By wishing all sentient beings the same peace and happiness you are feeling right now.

That, my dear, is how you do walking meditation, IMHO.

Happy walking.

Happy meditating.

Happy doing walking meditation.

Totally useless reflections of a somewhat useful man

Image by Amariei Mihai on Unsplash

 

Where does time go? 

And what have you done in all that time?

Could you have done more?

After thousands of years of civilization and centuries of creating clocks, we still haven’t figured out “time”.

So, why do we allow this ungraspable beast to be one of the most defining measures of our life?

As I look back on my years on Earth, the fabric of time appears tattered, full of visible stitches.

“Mujhko bhi tarkeeb sikha koi yaar julahe,” Gulzar’s soulful yearning for the weaver’s ability to stitch the warp and weft of life as if it was never torn echoes in my mind as I embark upon these musings.

I had a thousand reasons to do the things I did, to take the decisions I ended up taking—landing exactly where I am today. Some of them were logical, most now seem illogical, driven primarily by the need of the moment or the less-than-perfect context we all operate with.

But there’s one single reason to rule them all: destiny. 

“Aakhir destiny bhi koi cheez hai,” I recall the words of Dhirubhai Ambani spoken for an occasion I forget. (Translation: After all, there’s something called destiny.)

I used to have many regrets but, ever since I started on my meditative journey a few years back, they have more or less melted away in the sea of existence. Waves come and go, come and go…until all I see is a tranquil ocean of happy peace.

Happy peace? What’s that? (Let's keep it for some other time, dear.)

Well, what perhaps still riles or amuses some of my friends is the innumerable number of job-switches I made in my career.

Career. What a funny word, loaded with effort, time, and tricks of fate.

There you go: time to face “time” again. Sometime back, I had written a post on “a quarter century” of my career and the lessons I learned along the way.

This time around, I’ve got news for you. There’s no longer any career as far as I’m concerned.

While you could attribute some of that to ChatGPT and its ilk, it’s mostly about reaching an age (and a stage) where you want to pick a few things out of the many thrown your way—and see what gives.

For me, one clear benefit of all those frequent “career moves” is that I’ve made lots of friends (In fact, I’m notorious for turning my bosses as well juniors into friends over time). 

Thankfully, they all throw something or the other to me every once in a while: “Catch, Sanjay!”

So, I catch some of those opps and let others bounce off.

But isn’t that an unpredictable, risky way to earn a living, you ask?

In reply, I would just say, from experience as well as some foresight, “Well, have you heard of the best laid plans of mice and men?” (The phrase is courtesy of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.)

All in all, people and most gods have been kind to me. Why, I have lived a fairly good, interesting life—and continue to look forward to the full-tosses and googlies in equal measure.

By monetary yardsticks, I have been moderately successful. Which is perfect for a guy who never ran after money and possibly never will (In retaliation, money didn’t run after me either, which is okay, for we both took a little walk together nonetheless.)

Besides, how much money would anyone need if they want to spend it on books, chai, and music?

Now, coming back to time, I don’t know how much of it is left—in absolute terms or for me per se. 

And, by the way, what happens to time when our crazy ways have brought apocalypse to the human race? (I have this hunch that not all species will go extinct before we do.)

Will the insects and the birds and the horses worry about where the hell did all the time go?

No, time will not tell!

Neither can I.

Let’s “circle back” in a few years, shall we?

Buh-bye for now.