Do it Yourself

I had landed in America – the land of dreams – in the year 1994. It was perhaps not the right time to dream! I had just crossed 40 and in retrospect, I think why would anyone take such a risk? But then people have done crazier things. And I landed in the first week of January in St Louis, probably the worst time of the year to begin your life in a foreign land, especially coming from Chennai where my mother used to pull out her sweater if the temperature hit a low of 23 degrees Celsius!

The initial days were quite amazing. How can two countries be so different? A small thing like switching on the light was exactly the opposite – and it took a while getting used to. The vocabulary being used was different for even the normal things – like the signal became the lights etc. I really came to understand the meaning of XXXL size after meeting a few folks in the sprawling malls. And I realized why my US born nephews were a bit disappointed with the ice cream cups in India – I could eat a single scoop for days while my US friends ate double scoops in a jiffy. And for the first time, I saw people crunching ice cubes with their teeth! And later I came to know that dentists had a whale of time in the US! And why not?!

I was given a rental car and I started driving in a few days much to the amazement of some of my US friends. Had they driven in India they would have understood – everyone follows the rules unlike in India where if you follow the rule, you are dead. You need to be more skilled and more aware of the emerging scenario(s) while driving. I had a flat tire (that is how a tyre is spelt!) one day. A garage chap came in a flash and replaced the tyre in no time. I was astounded to see him use a power spanner to remove the tyre. My mind raced to the scene in India, where young boys literally stand on the spanner to disengage the tyre! What a waste of manpower.

Technology was all pervasive even then (what expression can I use for the pervasiveness today?!). Everything was process driven. I posted a mail to my friend who moved out of my apartment which we shared. After a few days, much to my amusement, I found the parcel back in my mail box. I took it to the post office only to be told that I should write the from address at the top left hand corner and the To address at the centre – and not as I had done – one on each side. The post office chaps scanned the wrong side and it was sent to the from address! I just imagined the letters being delivered in India – Mr. Mani, Behind Hanuman Mandir, Moradabad or the 9 line addresses that you commonly find in India – especially in Bengaluru with all the thousands of “palayas” and “nagars”. Like driving, our postmen also need a lot more skill and a mini google maps tucked in.

And I bought something from one of those huge malls – only to be given a “do it yourself” kit. At the gas station (petrol pump for the uninitiated) you need to fill in your petrol. And if you shift your house, you hire a “U-Haul” truck, load your belongings and drive down to another city and leave the truck there! What a great idea, Sir ji. No need for packers and movers and transport operators like GATI.

I soon realized that this was a country that believed in the supremacy of the individual, privacy, freedom et al. It was a culture, as Dev Dutt Patnaik says –“If you live only once, in one-life cultures around the world, you will see an obsession with binary logic, absolute truth, standardization, absoluteness, and linear patterns in design. But if you look at cultures which have cyclical and based on infinite lives, you will see a comfort with fuzzy logic, with opinion, with contextual thinking, with everything is relative, sort of–mostly!?!” And all of us know where we belong.

If this is so, I started wondering does the US have anything on “How to Live?” After all it is a “do it yourself” culture and there are manuals for almost everything – including how an operator has to answer his / her telephone at the Post office! But my search was in vain as I could not find anything remotely connected with the subject in question, though there were a multitude of self-help books by psychologists, authors on subjects ranging from “Your Erroneous Zones” to “Think and Grow Rich” and classics such as “How to win friends and Influence people?, “How to stop worrying and start living.” How could that be, I pondered. But is there a “do it yourself” type of book on the most important activity in life – “living” available anywhere? Am I being too naïve or stupid?  

RESILIENCE

I was born with three older sisters and have been married for over 30 years. These ladies, who have had a great influence in my life, gave me the impression that selecting their clothes was a simple affair. My wife selects her dresses in a jiffy and my immediate elder sister pushes my limits of patience a bit – that is about it. Then imagine my surprise when my niece called me from the US and asked me to talk to her “tailor” on 5^th for an appointment to meet him. Well, amused as I was, I did call the “tailor” on 5^th evening and he graciously agreed to meet us on the next day evening. He was very polite and sounded sophisticated. He rattled off an address in Royapettah, Chennai which I was not familiar. When I enquired about the route, he asked me a plain question” Will you be coming by car or scooter?” Knowing Royapettah and its by lanes, I would have preferred a scooter but considering the “US” niece, I said I would be coming in my car. He respectfully added that I cannot drive my car into his street! When I further quizzed him about the route, he asked me “Are you on Whatapp?” A “tailor” asking me this – I was dumbfounded. Once I responded in the affirmative, I got his directions in a minute.

The next day I set out with my niece following his directions meticulously. During the course of the drive, my niece told me that the “tailor” was Joy and he was also a dancer! We reached a place where I parked my car and then went looking out for Joy walking into those lanes. Forget my car, I could not have driven my scooter there. Then I called him as I was going in circles and he came out of an even narrower lane and called me waving at me. I saw him and with great trepidation entered his “shop”.

An American, after his first visit to India, once said, “India is like a snake holding its own tail. The head is in the 21^st century and its tail in the 17^th!” Well, I could now understand what he meant. Joy’s place, though in the midst of a noisy and crowded by lane, was tastefully decorated. I could see the sign “J O Y Boutique” with the tag line “Clothes that speak!” I never knew clothes could speak. The lighting bulbs were covered with tastefully designed bamboo coverings, with the partitions to the tailoring area decorated using jute screens. There were stacks of stitched clothes neatly packed and waiting to be delivered to customers. I was impressed. He certainly had taste.

We introduced ourselves and he was a very pleasant man, may be in his forties, I guessed. He was smartly dressed in a shorts and a kurta – perhaps a designer one. He spoke impeccable English. My niece wanted to stitch a few blouses and had brought one for measurement that had a few glitches. He wanted her to wear it and point out the defects. As she went about her business, I, the compulsory conversationalist, started a dialogue with Joy. What I heard in the next 10 minutes left me astounded.

Joy was a Bharathanatiyam dancer from the Kalashetra School of dance. He had performed in many countries and had been to the US also several times. Once, a few years ago, while performing in Sri Lanka, he fell off a trampoline and hurt himself very badly and was almost paralyzed neck downwards. He suffered from what is medically termed “quadriparesis” He had to be airlifted to Chennai and was in a hospital for close to three months. He was in rehabilitation for over 2 years and slowly regained strength in his limbs. Though dance was his first love, he could not go back again. Hence he started his own boutique designing women’s clothes.

The psychologist in me popped up the question “Were you not depressed?” He replied with a gentle smile “Yes, at times, but I did not allow it to get the better of me. My family and close friends supported me to the hilt. But for their love and the Grace of Lord, I would not have made it. I don’t dwell on the past but am grateful that I am back and doing my best for my customers”. I had tears in my eyes, as here I was seeing a man who was dealt a cruel blow by fate and there he was resilient, strong and cheerful as anyone can be. Hats off to you Joy, I told him. I was reminded of Rudyard Kipling’s beautiful poem “If you can keep your head …you’ll be a Man my son!” I rarely get to meet people like Joy. More often than not, I meet people who crib about small things – how life is unfair to them. As he went back into the tailoring area, I could see him walk with a very slight drag of his leg – remarkable mobility for a man who probably would not have even walked!

My niece gave instructions and then gave about 6 or 7 blouse pieces for stitching. Then I saw Joy, the master designer at work. For each of the blouses he sketched on a notebook a new design based on the fabric colour and patterns. This was sheer magic for a person like me who cannot even draw a straight line for all the money in the world. Within no time he completed the designs and then I knew this “tailor” was no ordinary “tailor”. He was a master craftsman who really brought “Joy” to his customers. And Joy is a classic example living the adage “The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and tribulations!"

May your good work continue, Joy! God bless you.

You can know more about Joy and work in his FB page (yes he has a FB page as well!).

As I took leave of him, two things became apparent – clothes do speak and stitching women’s clothes is after all no ordinary matter! 

LIVING ON AUTOPILOT

Sherlock Holmes, the legendary fictional detective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his faithful chronicler Watson were once in the forest camping. Late into the night after an invigorating discussion about the brilliant celestial bodies, they retired for the night in a make shift tent. In the middle of the night, Holmes suddenly woke Watson up and asked him an innocuous question “What do you see?” Watson, the simple soul that he is, despite feeling sleepy, started to reply enthusiastically “I see the constellation of the Taurus..” when Holmes rudely interrupted him and said “My dear Watson, someone has stolen our tent!” The moral of the story, as often Holmes puts it, is  “We see but don’t observe!” How true!

Assume that we are driving to our office and we see a BMW car in front of us. Here is how our thoughts might wander .. BMW what a great car – the Germans are marvelous in engineering – but how did they obey the orders of such a devil as Hitler.. Poor Jews so brutally terminated in Auschwitz … Good that they fled to Israel..   And Israel is such a small country but they produce such outstanding software especially in the area of security … and presto you are already in office! You have driven 5-6 Kms without observing what is happening on the road in a mechanical way oblivious of the surroundings – the cyclists, the buffaloes on the road et al! This is living on auto pilot. Is this abnormal? – Not at all. But the sad part is you miss out on a lot of stuff that is happening around you besides putting yourself at risk. This becomes a difficult habit to get over.

It is not only when driving but most of our activities from morning till we go to bed is done in an mechanical way without really experiencing what we are actually doing. I go for early morning walks and I see people invariably with their ipod’s plugged in and plodding along. They don’t enjoy the birds chirping, the beauty of a sunrise, the milkman peddling his way on the road or the paper wallah throwing the paper very deftly into the balconies! Are we really living?

This extends to all our activities. The worst among them is our eating habits. We have no idea what we are eating – we eat while driving, dressing up, seeing the morning news, reading – you name it and someone does it that way. What happens then is we do not “enjoy” our food in the real sense of the term and at times unable to even recall what we ate a while ago. I have been at the receiving end on many occasions on this count! And the modern malady of the need to upload photos to FB has made things worse. The folks who take photos are not really enjoying the scene but want to “capture” the moment to post it on FB. So much so, the Chennai city police have put up warning signs on busy intersections with the message “Your FB updates can wait. Please watch where you are walking!” Even without FB updates crossing the road in Chennai is a catastrophe – what to say about crossing the road while updating FB! But this is precisely what people are doing.  

Why are we all doing this? Is this normal? Norman Farb and his six other colleagues at the University of Toronto studied this phenomenon and discovered that we experience the world in two different ways using two different set of networks in the brain. One is called the “default” or “narrative” network. When you use this network, you take in information from the outside world, process it through a filter of what everything means, and add your interpretations. This default network is effective for most of the waking moments and doesn’t take much effort to operate. This network perhaps operates when we live on an autopilot!

There is nothing wrong with this network, but there is a whole other way of experiencing experience. Scientists call this as one of “direct” experience. When the direct network circuit is active, different parts of the brain are activated. We do not think about the past or the future but take in information from the outside world in real time. In other words you are in the “Here and Now” – the holy grail of all religious practices! How do we switch to this direct network more often? 

ACTION AND REACTION

Viktor Frankl, the existentialist philosopher, said “Between a stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and happiness”. Are we aware of this space at all times? I am afraid not. The word “responsibility” means ability to respond. But are we always in a position to appropriately respond? My personal experiences say otherwise.

I was driving one morning to work and had to drive through a narrow lane to reach the building entry gate. As always, people were walking on both sides of the road and I was literally crawling at 5 Kmph speed. I accidentally brushed a person – perhaps his trouser – and I immediately raised my hand in apology and moved on as it apparently did not bother him. As I moved past him, he suddenly opened the passenger side front door with raised fists and shouted at me “I am going to thrash you. You hit me and are driving ahead!” However, I calmly looked at him and told him in a gentle voice “Please get into the car” as I did not want traffic snarl that being a peak hour. He was taken aback and he profusely apologized for his behaviour. I gently urged him to sit in the car which he did. Till I entered my building which was only a couple of minutes away, he was pleading sorry for his behaviour.

Once inside the building, I stopped the car and asked him gently “Are you going for an interview?” He replied in the affirmative. I told him “Imagine what will happen if you come to my company for an interview?” He was now literally in tears and continued to plead. I patted him on his back and told him to calm down and advised him to take rest for 15 minutes before going for the interview. All this happened in a few minutes and even now I am amazed at the way I handled the entire episode with full awareness, clarity, calmness and compassion. I could have also shouted at him and created a scene etc.

Now fast forward to another incident. The same Zen master “me” drove to a wedding hall. The entry gate was farther away from my house and I took the easier way out and tried to enter the hall through the exit gate as it was nearer to my house and as there was no traffic at all. The security chap, quite rightly, refused permission stating the obvious and I would have turned back the car when he let a scooter pass through the same gate – perhaps it was an employee for all you know. On seeing this, big “ME” was hurt and I exploded at the poor chap shouting expletives at him. And if you have your wife by your side at such scenes, you know what happens. She feels deeply embarrassed and as always tries to drive sense into you. But the big “ME” could listen to sagely advice when so badly hurt. I parked the car outside and stormed into the hall still fuming and menacingly looking at the security as I went past him.

Now, if you are with me so far, such incidents do make your day unpleasant and the whole atmosphere becomes vitiated, if you know what I mean. I went through the motions in the wedding and as I returned home, better sense prevailed. The Zen “me” took over and blasted “ME” as to how I could behave in such a fashion at a hapless security chap – perhaps he was doing his duty. He must have been earning a few thousand rupees to secure his livelihood. And you are right – I did not sleep well. I got up in the morning drove down to the hall and there he was discharging his duties. I hugged him and profusely apologized. He was magnanimous and said “It is OK sir. I would have let you in but if my supervisor sees me, I will lose my job!”

Now if you look at both incidents, the former was action and the latter was reaction! Unfortunately most of us react and hardly act. Once you act you are in control, focused and your chances of succeeding in an endeavor are pretty bright. More than anything else there is peace and happiness all round. And your life is but a series of actions (or reactions) and this determines your quality of life. As Jean Paul Sartre said “You are your choices!”

Do you normally act or react? 

STORY TELLING - TO YOURSELF

“I am always at a loss as to how much to believe the stories I tell myself!” said Washington Irving. How true! While we may not be great story tellers like our ancestors of the yore, we are adept at telling stories to ourselves – and negative ones at that. There is a constant chatter in our minds and if you step back and analyze these thoughts, you can see a familiar pattern. Most of it would be repeating things that you need to do (doing nothing about it and increasing your tension!), and a lot of it would be some “scripts” that you are playing out repeatedly. It could be some perceived injustice done to you in the past or how the world is unfair to you or how you were denied opportunities to grow and the list is endless. Unfortunately, by repeating the same thing over and over again, we perpetuate these stories thereby making them more and more real. This is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Cheri Huber said “That voice inside your head is not the voice of God. It sounds like it thinks it is!”. The worst critic you will ever encounter is the one who lives inside your mind. The way you talk to yourself has a profound impact on your emotional state and the resultant behaviour. For example, when you make a mistake, consider the tone of voice you use when you talk to yourself. We never say “Great, it has been a good learning experience!” Instead, it invariably would be “You, stupid idiot, you really screwed up this time” or “You will never learn” or words to that effect! Most of it would be critical or angry or sarcastic or even resigned. This is one of the primary reasons for low self-esteem, globalizing local events leading to depression etc.

In corporate life, it is next to impossible to avoid people who come up and say “Why does this always keep happening to me?” or “People only hurt me” etc time and again. There is lot of self talk going on in their minds and by repeating them time and again, it impacts their behaviour and the way people perceive them. Hence it is important that such negative self talk and scripts are avoided and rephrased so that we do not manifest circumstances that would fulfill our script!

I am sure all of you have seen “The Lion King”. It is a brilliant movie. The lion cub “Simba” leaves the forest and lives with a meerkat and warthog – Timon and Pumbaa. It lives a carefree life of “hakuna matata” meaning “no worries”. It starts to think and behave like other animals with which it is associated forgetting its true nature. Then Rafiki, the wise monkey adviser to Simba’s father tricks him saying that his father is alive and takes him to a pond. Simba sees his father’s apparition in the sky which tells him that Simba was born to rule and that he must take his pride of place among the lions. This changes Simba and he later claims the kingdom which is rightfully his.

Do we see parallels between this story and our life – at least I see a lot of truth in this narration. We do not rightfully understand who we are, nor the world around us – primarily because we are constantly running the “wrong scripts”. All we have to do then is to rewrite the faulty script just as Simba did. Is that possible – yes it is. Is it easy – maybe not? But remember that "One of the greatest of all principles is that men can do what they think they can do!"

How and when do we get our “Rafiki”, the wise one?

STORY TELLING

Last week I sat before the idol of Lord Ganesh – one that was made of clay – to perform Ganesh puja. As I started looking at the idol, I was amazed at the features of the idol – the sharp eyes, large head, small mouth and large ears et al. I recalled, with amusement, the number of stories that I had heard about Lord Ganesh. I instantly admired our forefathers who were great story tellers – who wove facts, fiction and spun stories with lot of inbuilt symbolism so that we remember them forever. The fact we regale children with such colorful stories even today, after aeons, is quite remarkable.

Looking again at Lord Ganesh I wondered at the symbolism embedded. The large head symbolizes his enormous wisdom and the large ears – quite obviously because he has an elephant head – indicating that we need to listen more and be very attentive and correspondingly a small mouth, perhaps signifying that we need to talk less! One of his tusks is broken reminding us to retain the good and discard the bad and also representing that sacrifice is necessary for learning and gaining wisdom. His small eyes ask you to concentrate and focus on your goals. His large trunk represents the discrimination and the ability to discern between good and the evil. In modern parlance perhaps it signifies flexibility and adaptability! His large stomach conceivably contains all things the known and unknown universes or possibly indicative of the fact that we need to digest the good and the evil! Funny enough, a mouse is supposed to be his “vahana” or vehicle. The rationalists may taunt at such an impossibility but again remember all this is symbolic and allegorical – it symbolizes all our desires. Just as a mouse is restless and keeps running all over the place, our desires run amok and if we are to be at peace with ourselves and the world, we need to keep this under control! I can go on and on – but I guess you get the drift.

Stories about Lord Ganesh abound and who can forget his ingenious move of going round his parents thrice and claiming the coveted mango fruit? Lord Ganesh came to my rescue once – albeit in unusual circumstances. I was in an overseas location to attend a difficult project meeting with the client (who said project meetings with clients were fun?). I had to defend some bad deliveries from our side. We introduced ourselves and one of the clients asked me “what does Ganesh mean?” That was my chance and I immediately replied “It means remover of all obstacles and I am here to remove all the obstacles in solving your project issues!”  Most of them at least had a smile and the meeting, needless to say, went off much better than what I had anticipated.

Like I said, our forefathers were great story tellers – I love to watch Mahabharata on TV even now. It is still fascinating and several people have written different interpretations of that epic. A modern story teller like Craig Jenkins says Epics are holistic depictions of life – and continues that stories in The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are metaphors and allow us to raise questions! However, have we now lost that art of storytelling?  Is it meant only for grandmothers to narrate stories to their grand children? I don’t think so.

Robert McKee in a HBR article entitled “Story Telling that works” says “Trying to convince people with logic is tough for two reasons. One is they are arguing with you in their heads while you are making your argument. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.” Recent studies have empirically shown that people’s beliefs can be swayed more effectively through storytelling than through logical arguments. The researchers say that persuasion is most effective when people are "transported" to another place using a story. And corporate world is getting onto this bandwagon in a big way. Our forefathers knew this all along. So if you are not a good story teller, start right away!

And coming back to our Lord Ganesh, after completion of the celebrations, I was saddened to bid him farewell. It was no ordinary farewell for I will be immersing him and losing him. But again on second thoughts, I marveled at the symbolism of this whole ritual. The idol that was worshipped as GOD the previous day is completely dissolved – maybe it signifies that this entire creation is nothing but names and forms behind which there is an unchanging essence. The names and forms are ephemeral and we need to transcend these and look for that unchanging reality.

What is that unchanging essence? 

FAITH

After the advent of Internet and emails, we receive a spate of mails enclosing a whole lot of material – most of them that you can trash after a desultory glance. However, a few of them are worth preserving and reading time and again. I am reproducing one such material – a conversation purported to be between a Professor (Pro) and a Student (Stu). It unfolds as follows:

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with GOD, The Almighty. He asks one of his students to stand and asks him:

Pro    : So you believe in God?

Stu    : Absolutely, Sir.

Pro    : Is God good?

Stu    : Sure

Pro    : Is God all powerful?

Stu    : Yes

Pro   : My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is God good then?

Stu    : Student is silent

Pro    : You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again young fella. Is God good?

Stu    : Yes

Pro    : Is Satan good?

Stu    : No

Pro    : Where does Satan come from?

Stu    : From… God

Pro    : That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Stu    : Yes

Pro    : Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything, correct?

Stu    : Yes sir

Pro    : So who created evil?

Stu    : No Answer

Pro   : Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Stu    : Yes sir

Pro    : So who created them?

Stu    : No Answer

Pro   : Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me son, have you ever seen God?

Stu    : No, sir

Pro    : Tell us if you have ever heard your God?

Stu    : No, sir

Pro   : Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of your God for that matter?

Stu    : No, sir I am afraid I haven’t.

Pro    : Yet you believe in him.

Stu    : Yes, sir.

Pro   : According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that son?

Stu    : Nothing sir. I only have my faith.

Pro    : Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.

And the fun really starts now.

Stu    : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Pro    : Yes

Stu    : And is there such a thing as cold?

Pro    : Yes

Stu    : No sir. There isn’t

The entire class becomes quiet at this turn of events.

Stu    : Sir, we can have lots of heat, even more heat, super heat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is not heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. It is a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat sir, but the absence of it.

There is pin drop silence in the class.

Stu    : What about darkness Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Pro    : Yes, what is night if there isn’t darkness?

Stu    : You are wrong again sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light…but if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it is called darkness, isn’t it? In reality darkness isn’t. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Pro    : So, what is the point you are making young man?

Stu    : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

Pro    : Flawed? Can you explain how?

Stu   : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue that there is life and there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing God as something finite that we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of life. Now, tell me Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Pro    : If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Stu    : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes sir?

Pro    : The professor shakes his head with a smile realizing where the argument is going.

Stu    : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an ongoing endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist, but a preacher?

Pro    : Silence

Stu    : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain?

The class is in an uproar now!

Stu    : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt it, touched it or smelt it? … No one appears to have done so. So according to the established empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

Pro   : (The room is silent. The Professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable). I guess you will have to take them on faith, son.

Stu   : That is it sir. The link between man and GOD is faith. That is all that keeps things   moving and alive.

This may be an imaginary conversation, hilarious at times, but certainly has some profound messages that need a deeper contemplation and discussion. It is a good exposition of dualistic thinking, a malady which all of us are afflicted with. A closer scrutiny is warranted!