having a good time...

It rained all night yesterday, at least here in Andheri. So morning was extremely cool and as I wrote on FB, it was fun taking a walk on this hilly terrain, inside this quiet campus. The morning tea felt better than usual because of the weather. The people here are nice and the teachers tell us nice things as well. May be because the people have come here to become nicer than they are or may be its the ambience of the place, away from your routine life.

I exchange smiles with everyone, say my greetings to some. The 'Brahmavidya' session lasts from morning 6 to evening 6:30 with quite a few breaks, including a long 2 and half hour break during lunch. As I said, the teachers tell us nice things, some with good examples. Because you all insisted I tell something about what I am being taught, I'll try to put some in words. We are basically taught 'correct breathing' and 'correct thinking', the concept being that most mental and physical disorders arise because of incorrect thinking and breathing respectively. They teach us breathing exercises for the correct breathing part and give us a method to mediatate to channel our mind to correct thinking. I'll have a lot to say on both aspects, but right now I am short on time, so this is it.

We have no specific activity other than these sessions which are not exactly interactive. I usually prefer not to say much because it would lead to an argument. Its amazing to see how people start accepting the theories when they are told to keep their faith in it, with the key statement being, you will realize some day. Here too I see that people now have started 'believing' rather than understanding or deriving. They don't understand, consider it something abstract and therefore they believe. I'd probably accept the first two positions, but I'd rather not believe. What is amazing to see is the devotion with which the teachers and their assistants try to impart their knowledge to us, considering they son't get a penny out of all this. They believe in this. These things provide answers to questions we all at some point may get in our lives and probably till we die, we want all the answers. From what I gather, we humans don't want to leave this world without having all the answers. Pardon me for being a skeptic.

All said, I am learning a lot of good things here, as Nikhil said, the most important things cannot be taught. Everybody is extremely loving and caring here. The old lady I mentioned yesterday is simply awesome, full of spirit. I had a few more conversations with my room mate who I found had also given the GRE and had got many admits for a research in Chemistry. And yes, I did feel a little guilty about missing my scheduled dinner yesterday. So I came here, in the same cafe, only after I had my dinner at 7:30. I walked till the gates of the campus with 4 other particiapnts, the relatively younger ones, all females. They had ice cream, I had a five star. When I refused the Ice cream, one of the ladies told me to keep doing these breathing exercises as her one of her relatives had not got a cold for the last so many months since she had started doing these. I came here leaving them with their ice creams as I realized it would be late by the time I go back. It is 9:30 as I type this and I think I should get going now. The campus gates close at 10. I may not be here tomorrow as our teacher has scheduled a 'talk session' with the youngsters after dinner tomorrow, some interaction after all. So hopefully, day after. Bye bye.