Band Baaja baarat and friends

Growing up is a process involving lot of events, starts with when you are excited about your birthday and attending birthday parties is top priority , then comes a phase when you are dating and so are your friends , when you take out time from your busy late night local/std/isd calls and discuss what you like/dislike/love/want to love etc about your life, this phase is followed by a marriage phase and kids phase and a old age friends meeting in the park phase ( I have right now reached only till the dating and wedding phase and hence will reserve my comments about the future once I experience them).

Whatever be the phase of life, to be happy and sane while we are going through them , we do need a guiding force, this guiding force for me has majorly been my Guru ( Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) and my friends. So this blog post is about two of my best friends who share an very special corner in my life and have recently entered a new phase of their life called marriage.

Friend no 1: Sudeshna koka

There are friends whom you don’t need to talk to a lot, whom you do not need to see very often to maintain the quality of the friendship, whose mistakes you don’t take to heart, who are also your 2 am friends 🙂 This ideal stage of rosy cozy friendship is reached after a lot of tapsaya and commitment to be each others friend. These few lines more or less sum up how sudeshna and I define friendship 🙂 . I got to know that Sudeshna is getting married during my TTC (when i was undergoing the teacher training  of the art of living for 15 days and was cut out from the world what so ever for that duration ), my first feeling was of unhappiness, she was my first closest of friends and the idea of her migrating to the west (Canada) was disturbing. However being the lovely person I am 😉 I tried to be happy for my best friend and now she has been married for about a year. I see that the distance has actually brought a certain beauty and quality to our friendship. Thanks to whatsapp skype facebook we are in touch, but even otherwise once in a while when we talk , it is 50% information exchange , 30% cribbing about our life and 20% of when will we meet next , all done with a smile and at the end of the 100% conversation we are ready to live our own lives with joy and a smile 🙂

Friend no 2 : Jyothi Bohra

 

Jyothi and I have been friends for a considerably short time of 7-8 months, my friendship with jyothi has been made strong just because we were present and available for each other in the tough phases of each other’s lives. There is not much similarity in the way we think /like/dislike things but the way our friendship has been made strong is a mystery to me 🙂 Imagine scolding each other, shouting at each other, having seva-plans-and-setting-goals conversations with each other, confronting each other when things are not in place, giving harshest of feedbacks etc , such has been my semi professional and semi personal relationship with jyothi. All in all at the end of the deal I have a very beautiful and sincere friend , I feel very grateful for her to choose me as a friend to 🙂 Now that I have been trained to handle best friends after weddings  (Trainer : Sudeshna koka :D) I felt 100% happy for Jyothi stepping into this phase of her life . Also got like 0.75 tears in each eye during the wedding ceremony 🙂

Moral of the story : the place you stay may change, the people you live with may change, the attachments in your life to different people/objects/situations may change, but if you have a Guru and a support system of awesomely happy friends life is not so difficult after all 😛 Life is all about being happy and chilling 🙂

 

Love

Kullu

 

 

 

MY first Yes!+ in Hyderabad

So I left Chennai and migrated back home, the only prayer while leaving Chennai was to be more and more useful in making people happy and organise more of the art of living workshops to help the same cause.

Funda to get your wish fulfilled : “Make a wish, stop feeling anxious about will it get fulfilled or not, and work towards it “. This is exactly what happened with me.

I thought NIFT me course to hona chaayie yaar. Was planning how to make things happen there, and God sent this angel of a person Ramya di (recently married and migrated to hyderabad) . She was the driving force who got most of the things in place for the workshop to happen. To cut long things short here is a brief of how things happened and what came out of it . Read on

Ramya di, Riddhi bhabhi, Sneha Sethi, Ankur bhaiya (gave intro talks, followed up on registrations, closed the registrations, more or less coordinated stuff before the course actually began).

The magic that I got to see in this workshop was almost everyone working for the workshop had their own limitations (some in terms of time, some in terms of availability etc etc )

Ramya di : Shouldering responsibility of a home maker since the past 2 months

Riddhi bhabhi : Managing house, 3 year old baby, family etc

Sneha Sethi: Works like hell in Microsoft, was leaving for a business trip to the US when the course was supposed to begin.

Ankur bhaiya: Office timing 3 pm to 2 pm

Kulpreeth: Office timing 6 am to 3 pm.

Mitisha: Class, attendance, Projects etc

Jatin : Final year, looking for a good company to do a project in , classes etc

Sakshi: First year, Submissions, submissions, submissions

Everyone has their limitations but still everyone made time and made themselves available. It was team work, where each member of the team would come and do their part to keep the wheel rolling 🙂

In the end the course began and everyone had done something or the other to make it happen 🙂 End me sab khush.

 

The participants were a very dedicated lot, did everything sincerely, were very participative , Happiness was in the air from Day 1 of the workshop, really enjoyed these three days, got to meet some exceptionally talented people .

When I was in college, I used to often think, what am I here for on this planet, now when I see the smiling faces of people, who now have a way out of their problems, a place where they can come and let go off the worries, and  most importantly a Guru in their life, my purpose on this planet becomes more and more clear 🙂

 

Jai Guru Dev

Love

Kulpreeth

Hi there Haider

Strange are the ways of karma. They can make a pauper a king and vise versa in a flash. In short we don’t know how we will be rewarded for something good we have done or face consequences of something bad that happened through us. Sitting through this movie called “Haider” I am pretty sure some(actually lots) of my bad karma balance has reduced. Please note that all the comments made here after are what I think about Haider.

What a movie to watch!!!

1.Extremely pristine setting of kashmir is made to look glum and sad(dissapointment no 1).

2. There is excatly one joke in the movie. LOL

3. Everyone plays mysteriously confusing characters, you don’t know who is on whose side and why are they doing whatever they are doing ,till the end I was trying to figure out where the story is going (at last I find there is no story at all)

4. Unwanted romance and love comes and goes now and then (it is mandatory to have a kiss and a song involving hero heroine almost naked . BOLLYWOOD remember)

5. There is a bird dance song which makes the bird community look scary in a very creative way. I think the bird community should sue haider for 100 crores, because they are the animals who were harmed(besides the audience) in this movie.

6. At the end of any movie generally you feel that it was paisa wasool ,okok types , one time watch, boring, waste of time . But haider alters your perception in a  very sad way that you are left totally blank when it ends. It zombofied me at least for some time. 

7.SPOILER ALERT
Almost everybody dies in the movie . And those alive have nothing left to live for.

So urgent it was for me to write this now at 3:19 am for I feared I would postpone it and go to sleep and never remember that I watched something called Haider .

Love
Kullu

Typically typical

5:00 am it is, my alarm rings and still asleep I can listen to it, I wake up, reduce the fan speed by 2, mentally thinking that after 30 minutes of just lying down my alarm will ring and I will be awake, starting my day early and today all my work will get done 🙂

BANG BANG  !!

Get up ! its 7:00 am, shouts my dad while banging on the door. Wondering why my alarm did not ring at 5:30 am I wake up with a grumpy feeling and brush. Like a small child, who hates going to school, I carry my potato shaped body with more or less the same feeling towards the gym. After what feels like eternity ( 1.5 hours 😉 ) I walk out feeling more active, and proud to have survived one more day at the gym, short term pain and long term gain I think and smile heading home.

I come back home and ask mom what there for breakfast. Upma/Poha what do you want to eat is her typical reply. Anything will do is what I say daily and poha wins the bet almost daily 🙂 . After poha I sit to watch some TV. 10 to 15 mins into any channel and plonk, come 10:30 am and its time for the morning powercut. A novel occupies my time while the power is gone (till 12:30). While my mom walks towards the kitchen to prepare lunch, I head to my room for a blissful round of padmasadhana with Kashi bhaiya (on the audio). I stretch and be still for sometime, feeling cool and calm within, by the time I open my eyes, lunch is ready. I have my mid day meal. Then do some job search and web surfing in the afternoon.

Impatience, jealousy, prayer are dominant in the afternoon when I see my friends doing some awesome service activities and putting up pictures of their part in creating a better world, tears swell up when I see some of my facebook friends visiting Guruji or the ashram.

WHAT AM I DOING IN MY LIFE is the most dominant thought and I pray that my life moves from this inertia phase and I also start a job and start doing some seva or another soon. Soon my brooding leads to the evening when it is time to do the sudarshan kriya. Evening sudarshan kriya is the best part of my day when my mind rests. It really is a gift to be able to practise it.

 

Before sunset I have my dinner and watch TV till 10 pm (series of serials, please don’t ask)

Every night I read some pages of Yoga Vasistha and then praying for the alarm to ring again at 5:00 am I go to sleep again. Remembering Guruji and telling myself I that all good will only happen, I go to bed.

 

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This is how most of my days have typically been in the past few weeks… Yes I have been doing nothing at all, let alone anything interesting to put up here. I am giving my best so things move in my life, If you also reading this please pray and wish that things do move and I get to write more and do more in my life 🙂

 

Lots of love

Kulpreeth

Dil hai chota sa, choti si aasha . . .

I want to ….

1. be free (from bondages(read facebook , whatsapp etc) , financial responsibilities (read getting a job, pocket money,savings, drooling outside expensive stores), attachments(read forced to getting married, attending useless social Punjabi show off parties etc, etc))

2. be happy (smile never vanishes kind of happy 😉 )

3. have loads of money (for ever), make people smile, laugh (so that they remember me after Charlie chaplin )

4. feature on Koffee with Karan ( talk whatever crap I want , wearing whatever I like and people still watch me and clap, means like that , Yo Yo Kullu Singh 😛 )

5. evolve into a higher species of human being who does not need to give explanations/face consequences for his actions ( read free from Karma )

6. appear cool in front of anybody and everybody (Yo Yo Kullu Singh)
7. burn down kamdev with my third eye ( read be more centered and not let my bubbling enthusiastic hormones disturb me)

8. Silence is the mother of creativity ( I want to be the father of creativity, marry silence, hence there is no noise at home :P, haha )

9. be blessed by the art of disapparation (So I save loads of time and money in travelling, save myself encountering devils like irctc,  air india and horrible toilet less busses )

10. start a brand  of my own ( which sells cool creative stuff which the youth of today love to show off)

11. be same inside and outside. Just like my Guru ( read His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar )

MOST  IMPORTANTLY I WANT YOU TO COMMENT BELOW, WHAT YOU REALLY WANT IN THIS LIFETIME ( CAN BE 1 , 2 , 3 OR A LIST OF THINGS )… 

Because I want to help in any way for you to get it 🙂

not joking! Serious 😉  

Love

Kullu

Travelling karma … I have lots! Part-2

Life progressed and rail yatra, bus yaatra,  pad yatras ( walking), got converted to vayu yatras ( air travel). I started spending more time on makemytrip, yaatra.com etc in order to manage my office and life outside office . Few things are to be noted :

1. Once you click on the book-a-flight option and the payment is done are in for a ride in case any of your plans change ( this ride involves making a big hole in your pocket)
2. Airport has rules of checking in . You cant rush and catch a plane!

Some instances of my first few plane travels are noteworthy

1. Scene : I am to board an air India flight , its to depart at 7:30 pm something, I did not want to travel by this plane, I had heard about a ghastly experience that my friend had with air India read it here : http://priyax.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/and-my-travel-karma-continues/  , we were waiting at the airport , the time now is 8:45 pm . People are confused on why the plane is delayed. I got a very ominous feeling about the whole thing. They announced that we are to board a flight at 9:00 pm , I got this very strong feeling that I am going to die on this flight ( I remembered that astrologer saying that I will die during travel 😀 ). I do not know from which corner of my sub conscious this thought came up. But it was really strong and felt real. I wanted to walk back to the airport. It was drizzling slightly. I checked my nostrils while getting on to the plane. For one moment I felt scared that I will never get to see the people I love. I got tears, wiped them, took a deep breath in and let it out. Got into the plane in this intense state of fear. The air condition in the plane was not working, there were all drunk and drowsy people around my seat. After I got over my emotion, my inner voice got activated again and started to speak ‘ even if you die now it is ok, someday you have to die, you have a guru, not to worry, all will be fine’. Remembering Guruji reduced my fear little bit and with just a faith in Guruji that all that is good will only happen ( even if it is my death). I put my earphones (a talk of Guruji’s playing on the phone) on and closed my eyes blessing the whole world. All through the flight I had intense headache and pain in my ears. I did not open my eyes. When the announcement came, we are going to land. I felt new and fresh. Since then this near death experience in my mind has given me so much strength, to go on in life, and worry less about mundane things ( like money 😀 , girlfriend 😉 , etc :D) now I live life more fully . Although I am not completely over it, but it has reduced. Thanks to the plane yatra!
2. Getting off-loaded : I check in at the right time, I stand in line for clearance, and the line is really long, one guy from the airways comes ans says sir chennai flight??? I say YES. He says doors are closed, I say why did you not announce my name even once. He says  some problem sir etc. I run and run but the flight hits the runway and it goes away! I am off loaded and my luggage comes back. I have to take a flight tomorrow instead of today. Money waste, time waste.
3. Bhaag Kullu Bhaag: The flight is at 3:50 pm , I have a night shift in office and think ill just sleep off for some time, I wake up at 2:50 pm in my house in the city. STRESS. I have to be on this flight because my best friend is getting married that evening. I just grab whatever I see and run. I call for an auto. He says 400 ( I say ok 😦 ). I tell I have a flight in one hour and tell him to run. By God’s grace and my intense prayer it was a miraculous auto journey of 15 mins to the airport. He really drove like his life depends on it. I was too busy praying to see how many places in the journey I would have been killed (Again  I remembered that astrologer saying that I will die during travel 😀 ). However thinking about nothing but the flight, I ran with my suitcase. I reached the airport, again there was a long line for getting the boarding pass. It was already 3:20 and 3:50 is the departure. I announce to everyone in general that I have to catch a flight and if I can break the line and go forward. They do allow me. I get the boarding pass and they close the check-in just after that. I feel like I have climbed the mount everest!

 

Many such incidents have occured in a short span of my plane journey.I can go on and on about it. But I would like to stop here.

Jai Guru Dev

Kullu

Travelling Karma ! I have lots … Part 1

So I have finally come to the conclusion that in my previous lifetimes I must have been a very corrupt policeman who takes bribes from people who travel, or must have been some really mean travel agent. Because in this life time the amount of time, money and effort I spend planning my travel, during my travel, and as an aftermath of my travel are something that cannot be a coincidence.

Lets start from the start of life !

1.Travelled to the god of seven hills … to eat mud … ( when I was too young to distinguish food from mud and ate anything which came in front of me )

My parents took me to tirupati for the first time , we stand in line for many hours and its 11:30 pm in the night, I am happily resting on the shoulders of my dad, and just as we reach the main door, there is an announcement that, in the next half an hour there is going to be an eclipse. So Temple was closed . We came back and the next day we went to some park and I supposedly dug earth and ate mud in the garden ( I did not believe it till my parents showed me a picture). Till date I have never gone to tirupati, my friends say only if the God inside calls you then you get to go there. He is still not calling me I guess!

2. Went to the heart of the Himalayas, and fell off a cliff! –

We live in Hyderabad ( which is in Andhra Pradesh), There is a pious pilgrimage place called “Hemkunth Sahib “ its somewhere near Kedarnath and the travelling to that place involves mountain climbing, land slides, death etc… and guess what, which kind of a family  plans to go from some part in south India , to the heart of the himalayas by road with full khandaan ! MY FAMILY DOES ! We booked the then famous jeep and put a soft bed mattress on the back side of the jeep (seats removed ) . My mom being her normal self decided that her young children will not eat outside food. As a result a kerosene stove, ration for a couple of weeks, utensils, cerelac, milk bottles with sterile nipple equipment were packed. I do not remember anything of that trip except two things

a)      There was a land slide and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere for 15 days, my relatives who were laughing and mocking my mother  for carrying extra load of ration thanked her for she almost effortlessly cooked amazingly delicious food in a forest in the middle of nowhere, and she did it like she was in her own kitchen at home!

b)      The jeep was taking a reverse and I was playing on the back side, I stood on the part where we get on from the back side. It was a narrow cliff and the jeep was turning, my mom and everyone else was eating. As the jeep was going reverse someone told him to stop as if he went any further the jeep would topple in the cliff, he applied brake and due to the jerk I lost hold of the jeep and went down into the cliff. My head hit something and after that I don’t remember anything of the trip. ( But we did go to the pilgrimage temple and I am still alive ! ) I can still feel the spot where I hit my head but. Strong impression i think ….

3. School and life and college – Come school and college and I got a little lucky. My school was in street no 6 and I lived in street no 7 , and 11^th and 12^th was in street no 8. But in between I was put in a supposedly posh HPS ( Hyderabad Public School ) which was 10 kms away and I was to travel by a local bus daily. In the two years that I studied there, I lost many pairs of shoes, fell down, got super tired etc all during my travel. Then situations happened such that I got an admission into Manipal. A computer science course in a posh college in between the mountains and beside beach … perfect but the only glitch in the plan was it was 700 kms away from my home. And I got active with art of living then and instead of taking a direct bus from manipal to hyderabad, I would make it a point to go via bangalore to visit the ashram and spend some time there . After a point I was so tired of seeing bus stops and railway stations… I realized the fact that karma exists and I have lots to clear in one category… TRAVELLING !

4. After college till date : Its been 2 years and I have been travelling . To some nice places, to some not so nice. Pulled a chain in a train and stopped it, was made to sit beside a toilet in the train and people washed hands and water sprinkled on me and my mom :X, almost got hit by a policeman on the railway station, have been told by an astrologer that my death will occur while I am travelling, had numerous accidents (minor ones thankfully). Now I am an art of living teacher and situations happened thus that I have accepted travelling as a part of life. Travelling to far off places to make people happy, standing 2 hrs straight to reach a place , things like that… Situations have evolved, so have I, but this travelling karma still continues. Another set of adventurous stories exist since I have started travelling in planes also.. watch out for that in the next post !

 

Jai Guru Dev

Kullu