Treks transform us every time in its own way!

Trekking is always a rich experience, when embraced with open arms it has the power to transform us physically, mentally & emotionally.

Gearing up!

When we planned our first mother-daughter duo trek to Chopta-Tungnath-Chandrshila trek, I was certain that I needed to be double prepared to have my 10 year old daughter climb a Himalyan trek, though a beginner friendly trek. We started preparing ourselves for the trek 20 days before with a 30 minutes daily fitness routine comprising of fast walk, jog, cycling and climbing stairs.

Whenever anyone enquire us about vacation plan, my response would be "We are planning to go on a trek, hope it goes well", Meera would ask "Why are you not replying as we are going on a trek and always say planning to go". Smilingly I would reply, "It's always a plan, making it happen is in Bhagavan's grace." Though we prepare physically, the mental & emotional preparation is much more needed for a trek to happen successfully. This trek made us understand the real meaning behind these statements.

Two weeks before the trek had tense war situation of Operation Sindoor by India, so we were not sure if we could go ahead with our trek. By God's grace, it became normal and got informed by the Trekking organization "Trek The Himalayas" that the Trek is on as per the plan. It's a 3 days trek, we reached Dehradun airport, went to Rishikesh after a 45 minutes taxi drive and stayed in Swami Dayananda Saraswati Ashram.

On the first day morning, TTH trek team picked us from Rishikesh and took to Baniyakund. It was a slight descent hill drive of approximately 6 hours. We stayed on a Swiss cottage tent and went on a stroll to nearby meadow. Meera enjoyed the weather, new place and excited about the trek. There were totally 10 trekkers of which 8 were ladies. Our trek leader briefed us about the trek and asked us to get ready for the trek by 1 AM the following day. You read it right - early morning 1 AM, which will let us see sunrise from the summit among snowclad Himalayan mountains. Both of us ate dinner, packed backpacks and slept early at 8pm. We woke up at 1 AM got ready and reached the base camp. Trek team gave us some cooked black Chenna dhal which would give us energy during the trek. Meera liked it and ate a full bowl.

Twist on the trek!
Geared with head torches, hand gloves & jackets to cope up with below 10 degrees, we started our trek at 2 AM from Chopta village offering our prayers by ringing bells on the Tungnath arch on the entrance. It was quite dark, cold and silent without even birds chirping sound. While I was the last one on the group to climb, Meera joined others before me. After 20 minutes, I could see Meera slowing down a little and a bit uneasy. She started complaining of stomach pain and sat on a stone. With initial symptoms I could understand it to be gastric problems and gave Digene tablet to chew. We both walked together accompanied with the trek leader. Within another 15 minutes, she again sat down with stomach ache. We gave her something to drink, comforted her and started the climb again. 

Can we make it?

After an hour, she had tears in her eyes because of stomach ache and just sat on a rock. While I soothed her, trek leader gave her medicine. We were halfway through the 5km trek. It was quite dark and cold perhaps 5 degrees. I prayed to Bhagavan Shiva from the bottom of my heart to give strength to Meera to climb up and reach Tungnath, for we cannot rest here in an open freezing dark mountain place. We can neither go down nor stay there as it would worse Meera's health. The only option is to keep going and reach Tungnath which has some dhabas (hotels) to rest. 

Grace of Bhagavan Shankara

While I asked her to chant "Jai Sriram" and motivated her that she can climb up overcoming this challenge, I chanted "Jaya Jaya Shankara, Hara Hara Shankara" deeply with a bhava that He alone brought us here & He alone can take us to reach Tungnath. By taking breaks every 20 minutes, with silent prayers going inside, we reached Tungnath around 5.30 AM. The dhabas were open then and we both sat inside a dhaba just 100 metres away from the temple. While rest of the team went to Chandrashila summit which was another 1 km climb from Tungnath, Meera slept on my lap inside the dhaba. Cool breeze made me shiver a little and I realized from a visiting customer that the temperature was  -1 degrees. 

Birds chirping sound, snowclad mountains amidst beautiful ochre sunlight, warmth of the hot piping tea made two hours go in a jiffy. Around 7.30 AM Meera woke up and after she went motion she felt a bit relieved of gastric problems. Tungnath temple got opened at 6AM and I cajoled Meera to walk 100 meters more to have Tungnath darshan. She agreed and extended beyond her pains to climb up to the temple. She could not remove her shoes and walk as it was freezing -1 degrees, she had darshan from outside, while I went inside temple and offered my deep pranams to Tungnath Mahadev for blessing us to reach his abode in Tungnath - the highest Shiva temple in Kedar range and prayed for everyone's welfare.

Thrilling solo horse ride

On our way back, Meera ate few spoons of Khadi Chaval (buttermilk & rice) and agreed to hop on a horse back on her way back downhill. Thankfully our local guide accompanied the horse and Meera as the horse climbed down very fast. While the horse ride took 40 minutes to reach the entrance bell, I took 3 hours downhill and eager to see Meera. She was feeling better and waiting for my arrival.

When asked about her experience she chuckled and replied, "It's the early morning trek that I could complete even with stomach ache & the solo horse ride on the hills that made this trekking special!" For me, the trek certainly developed endurance to handle emergency health situations with poise and developed a deep and strong bhakti bhava towards Bhagavan by connecting through prayers.

It is these situations that makes trekking a rich experience that transform us in physical, mental & emotional aspects. This first Mother-Daughter duo trek certainly will be etched in our memory forever. Meera also understood the meaning of my response,

 "We plan to go on a trek and Bhagavan's grace makes it happen".

Here is a short video on our trek and Rishikesh ashram stay made by Meera 

Ganga Arti - 

@Pujya Swami Dayanand Saraswari ashram, Rishikesh

Ganga Arti @Swami Narayan ashram, Rishikesh

Ganga Maa flowing mellifluously

Om Tat Sat

Transition from building Great Products @Cisco to Building Great Minds @GYM Foundation

It has been one year since I left Cisco to support my kids and family during the pandemic. Being in the industry & working for around 18 years, I was certain that I cannot be idle & I should not be idle. So, when I took the critical decision of leaving a great company like Cisco, I also had the plans of what I am going to do in the coming years, like

1. Enrich the thinking process of NOT ONLY my kids BUT kids at large.

2. Spend dedicated time to understand & imbibe our Indian Shastras from revered Guru Pujyasri Swami Omkarananda ji.

3. Volunteer and give back to society.

The first plan of enriching the thinking process of kids did not occur all of a sudden. Being a curious kid during my childhood, I used to scribble down many math patterns, small findings about shapes, formulas etc in a red colour diary! Unfortunately, I did not get a handholding or environment on how I can build that math interest further. So after few years, the board exams & marks took over & my interests faded slowly. During my Engineering studies, the math interest sprung again, however I could not relate my interest with real life or subjects I learnt. With the advent of Internet, I slowly built my passion on math over a period of many years.

Thanks to open resources offered by many renowned Universities, Educators around the world, I understood how math concepts are linked to real life and how it can be shared with children in an engaging way. The main goal of making kids "Think and Enjoy Math Learning" paved way to start "The Growing Young Mathematicians Foundation". The focus of the programs offered by GYM is to make kids think systematically; enjoy exploring and finding patterns & formulas on their own; get the skills & confidence to solve math problems. The monthly once open to all "Math Everywhere" event showcases how math concepts are related & applied in the environment around us.

It has been 10 months since I conceived the idea of GYM Foundation and took it to execution. Thanks to the parents and kids who believed in the STEPS in MATH concept (Systematic Thinking Exploring and Problem Solving) and enrolled their kids. When I hear below messages from the kids, I am glad that GYM Foundation is serving its purpose of cultivating "The Joy in Guided Discovery Based Learning" among kids.

From kids own words,

"I found this pattern & came up with the formula by myself & enjoyed the AHA moment!"

"I never thought Math is related to Music! Math pattern can be seen in plants! Now I want to know more about Math & how it's seen in Nature!"

Personally my transition from Building Great products @Cisco to 
Building Great Minds @GYM has been a satisfying & enriching experience.

If you are interested to Volunteer or Share your knowledge with GYM Community; Support this cause and help in taking it to wider kids community & build Great Young Minds, please comment or send mail to thegymfoundation@gmail.com

Learning is always a pleasure - this time car driving

Few years back, I was not interested and also reluctant to drive a car myself. As with every other thing in our lives, there was a change in my attitude towards car driving. Recently, I thought I have to learn car driving for very many reasons like to be capable of driving car during emergency situations, to be a good grandma cruising around the city with grandchildren in car (well, futuristic thinking that in future, car driving becomes indispensable like two wheeler now).
Okay, jokes behind, I thought it is high time to learn a new skill especially car driving which needs confidence and courage to maneouvre in a city like Chennai. So I decided to join car driving school during my maternity break. Thanks to my mother in law who encouraged me to learn and told she did not get those opportunities then.
So finally with a month's time frame I took car driving lessons and also got driver's license. The test for license was easy - just we need to start the car, pace it down slowly to pause and start again without stopping it. I thought how can they determine driver's capability with this simple test. Indeed it is a simple test, however, after cruising around the Chennai city, I could completely understand how the test is evaluating us if we are ready to really drive in the congested roads of Chennai.

So now that I have my driver's license am I courageous enough to start driving on my own? No, obviously not and that is because of the sheer traffic and the unpredictable circumstances that are happening on the road. Without confidence on us that we could handle these unpredictable circumstances (for example, while driving on a side a bike or a person from another side appears all of a sudden and goes in the wrong direction), I strongly recommend not to drive car. Nevertheless, confidence comes from practice, but practicing alone in this case is risky. So having a good car driver as my husband, I had to look up to him to guide me in driving.

I used to hear from some doctors, that they may not be able to do surgery for their own family members because of emotional attachment. Also, I have heard that astrologers would not prefer looking into his children's horoscope because emotional bonding may conceal foreseeing the negative things that are going to happen. On the same lines, I can say, having my husband as a guide to car driving comes with a coin having two sides. He knows your strength, weakness and can guide you appropriately. However, with personal attachment, he may want to prevent accidents, damage to car etc and therefore may not give you leeway to attempt car driving on own.
My husband though guided me well in handling many situations, his sudden out pour during my small mistakes made me more tensed and gets my brain blanked out. One such was in a signal that even after many attempts I could not start our car and get it moving (now remembering the simple test during driver's license!), his repeated high tone instructions made my brain blank and we had to swap seats. I became embarrassed and resolved to learn driving well and drive confidently.

Without time & focus, learning a new thing and especially mastering it may not be possible. So I decided to take 20 days off from my work (before I would join new company) and  learn car driving to the level I can drive it on my own. Found a good driving instructor who can guide and teach me in our own car. His first few words are "When I am driving, I should not damage others/properties even though they are wrong. However, I should also be assertive and display confidence." So with that thought instilled in my mind and the instructor's able guidance get me going. Within few days, I got confidence on myself and could also predict which places are prone to violation of rules. Therefore one fine day, when my instructor could not come for the class, I thought its time for me to venture out. I did take the route which I was familiar with, and could drive back home safely, albeit the car did stop at some places. But I gathered courage now on how to handle it. The moment, I reached safely, I called to my husband and asked "Do you know what I just did?", to my pleasant surprise he replied, "You drove on your own, right?". Thanks to the instructor.

After this training and venturing out on my own, my husband provided his consent to start doing the driving on my own and these days I drive to work and other places. More than my learning of car driving, I would like to share the most important highlight of what I liked during my driving, which is

Being on car, I stop and stop others to give way

         * The thanks sign shown by an auto driver with many school children on his auto, when I    slowed down my car and gave him the way to cross
         * A smiley thanks displayed by a husband who was waiting to cross the road with his wife        having injured and stitched legs, when I stopped on the main road and gave them the time to cross.
         * I think I have the power now to stop not only my car, but also the vehicles behind me, to give  time and way for others. :)

As always, it is indeed a pleasant journey and experience while you attempt to do some new learning. Have to think what I would like to learn next from my long list of "To Learn"

PS: Btw, I had to say that the 20 days off I took from joining new job, gave me an opportunity to join another big company. God's grace always showers best.

Sensors in Nature

I am always interested in gardening and it is one of my favorite hobby to grow plants and flowers. I still remember the days when I grew "sanghu pushpam (in Tamil)"  (English name: Butterfly pea, Biological name: Clitoria ternatea) flowering plant. It was like my pet plant and I used to talk with it everyday.
While adoring the plants I also developed a skill to observe it closely and recognize the way they grow.

Now I have some plants in our yard and on close observation I found something interesting which I would like to record and share. It is about the plant "sweet peas" which is a climber plant. It took some days for me to arrange some stick lines for it to climb. But by that time, it had grown well and it seems was already in search of something to climb.. It can be seen from this picture how the tendrils reach out to see if it finds something to climb on.

So in fact, the tendrils act like proximity sensors and react based on some physical object nearby. Once these tendrils finds some physical objects like stick, grass, stones or other plants nearby, they curl themselves with the object and starts growing over them. Like this sweet peas plant whose tendrils have identified the nearby grass and got a hold of it.

That was indeed wonderful isn't it.. I am sure that I am not the first person to recognize this "search and hold" activity of these climber plants. But for me personally, it is interesting to observe them growing.

As a person who has learned some Electronics, I can say that the proximity sensors work based on the amount of light that fall on the sensor and react to the intensity of light. They have some transistors and diodes which does these kinda work. The climbers as proximity sensors made me think how they do this search and more importantly what ingredient in it is doing that logic?! (as equivalent to transistors or diodes)
Perhaps some one well versed in botany studies and has expertise might know the answer.
If you, readers have some ideas or thoughts about this, please do share them with me here.

Nature is full of wonders and I wish I do not stop just wondering, but go ahead to find the truth behind it.
And, that can happen only with God's grace - Nature's creator.

Learning - The outcome of toughest times!

Being with my son Barathraam has made me retrospect more about life values.
There is a famous saying in Tamil which goes as "மீன் குட்டிக்கு நீந்த கத்துகுடுக்கனுமா?" - Does new born fish needs to be taught swimming??
Its surprising that how new born babies know sucking which provides them food.. Certainly, God has blessed us with some innate skills which is essential to our livelihood. Even a small baby does work to earn his meal. (Ofcourse sucking milk is a big job for a baby who has been getting his food automatically when he was in his mother's womb!) That would mean, working is inevitable for humans and all living organisms to run their livelihood. Work is worship and performing work to our best by submitting it's results to God will help us to realize the Ultimate Truth.

Another wonderful thing that I observed from Barathraam is Learning. When he has grown a little and needs more milk, he did not know how to suck milk from bottle. Perhaps, God has blessed us to suck naturally from mother.
He has been crying a lot for more than a week, when we were trying to give him milk through bottle. The two weeks was tough time with baby's crying. The difficult part here is that, he cannot be given any training or something on "how to suck bottles!". He has to learn by himself and slowly one day he learnt it. It took 2 weeks crying and his efforts to learn it. But the outcome of 2 weeks crying is the skill he learnt on "how to suck bottles!"

Ah, how many times in life, we were depressed and down because we are going through some tough times. And some of us do think that it happens only to us. If we retrospect how we were as babies, we would get more strength during tough times. All we need to say to us during tough time is "I am going to learn something from this tough situation and let me learn it.", instead of worrying on why its happening so to me! If a baby thinks why something new to me is forced, he cannot get his food. Similarly, we should not think why something bad is happening to me. Everything is for good :) (I know it is easier said)

I sincerely hope, Barathraam will make me understand many of life's values.

A forward I received about changes...
Changes for Survival...
EAGLES can live up to 70 years. But to reach this age, the eagle must make a hard decision in its' 40's .

Its' long and flexible talons can no longer grab prey which serves as food. It's long and sharp beak becomes bent, It's old-aged and heavy wings, due to their thick feathers, become stuck to it's chest and make it difficult to fly.

Then, the eagle is left with only two options: die or go through a painful process of change which lasts 150 days.

The process requires that the eagle fly to a mountain top and sit on it's nest. There the eagle knocks it's beak against a rock until it plucks it out.

After plucking it out, the eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back and then it will pluck out its' talons. When it's new talons grow back, the eagle starts plucking it's old-aged feathers.

And after five months, the eagle takes it's famous flight of rebirth and lives for ...

30 more years.

Why is Change Needed?
Many a time, in order to survive, we have to start a change process. We sometimes need to get rid of old memories, habits and other past traditions. Only freed from past burdens can we take advantage of the present.

Change is the only consistent factor in life!
Credits: Radhi

One of the forward mail I received...

An interesting reflection : Slow Down Culture
It's been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It's a rule.
Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to posses a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.
Said in another words:
1. Sweden is about the size of San Pablo, a state in Brazil.
2. Sweden has 2 million inhabitants.
3. Stockholm, has 500,000 people.
4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies the NASA.
The first time I was in Sweden, one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn't say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, "Do you have a fixed parking space? I've noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot." To which he replied, "Since we're here early we'll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don't you think? Imagine my face.
Nowadays, there's a movement in Europe name Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing.

Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.
Basically, the movement questions the sense of "hurry" and "craziness" generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of "having in quantity" (life status) versus "having with quality", "life quality" or the "quality of being". French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US's attention, pupils of the fast and the "do it now!".
This no-rush attitude doesn't represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time.
Taking the "now", present and concrete, versus the "global", undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans' essential values, the simplicity of living.
It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do.
It's time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.
In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there's a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, "I can't, my boyfriend will be here any minute now". To which Al responds, "A life is lived in an instant". Then they dance to a tango.
Many of us live our lives running behind time, Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said,

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

Credits: Arun

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html - some of the ideas are quite different..
One of which I liked is
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins
Have a look..