How do we balance our aura? Can we realize aura imbalance? Can we quantify Aura imbalance? How do we balance the Aura? how do we know and when do we know that the aura balance is just fine if not perfect?

REPLY: We spoke about Jesus doing miracles in healing people because his aura was very huge and within his electromagnetic field, which had high intensity and purity, bad energy of the disease got polarized and person was healed. In his consciousness, there was no room for misery, pain and suffering. And since he had more powers than normal human being and ability to reform, we called him god.More on it later.

So, to be able to balance aura, we shall know what is imbalance and to know what is imbalance, we shall know what is aura and to know what is aura, we shall be sensitive to it. Do we have sensors which can sense aura if not see it? This is what you need to develop first. How do we know temperature outside is very warm or cold which in stone age was also there but we probably were not sensitive to it. So first of all being sensitive to it is important to be able to perceive it. Job in hand is to develop sensors to perceive it if not measure it.

Aura is nothing more than diagnostic tool available in our hand. You can always go back to aura back and forth many times during the day to check your energy level. It is directly related to our known and unknown emotions, beliefs and conditioning of mind and we covered these aspects briefly in belief breaking and chakra science during workshop. So 7 colors of aura reflect 7 energy field and each one correspond to issues of life and if you can see them, you can discover the problems in specific area of your body and that is how our Vaidya and fakir used to tell us everything about our past and future and how to solve specific issues and it is exactly for this reasons for many traditions in India, we did not allow our ladies to go alone to priest because they had possibilities to get exploited because their aura on second chakra would show its vulnerability. But this is not the same reason why we created "Prada pratha". but more on it later.

But this is nice to know but does not help. We are neither fakir nor vaidya and even than no woman visits us alone so how do we take use of this science?

Color red( recall VIBGYOR which was so hard to remember during primary school days) is for physical survival based out of root chakra and it is also the chakra which connects you to your mother and in yoga, we have specific aasaan for this chakra and for that matter for every chakra. Navel chakra is orange is for all kind of relationship and sexual energy and if you are stuck in bad relationship or having no meaningful relationship then it is this chakra which is out of sync and you will see that in your aura that color orange is either dirty or dimmer than other colors or has become muddy color. And so on. All this info is available on internet and also in the material I gave out to all of you. Issue here is how to how to combine science behind chakra, aura and yoga and make more sense out of issues we face.

So let us begin like our modern day politics work. Issue based. Figure out issues and connect it to that chakra which is responsible. check out table in workbooks given. Then go on net and find out aasan for that chakra and observe subtle changes happening to your body and heart and also getting manifested in the physical reality. let us do it with an example. If for example some one grew up having issues with her mother or he/she has issues with mother or in case some one's mother died in childhood, then one will have issues with struggle in life. Mother are responsible for transforming us from energy to matter and hence material world would become a challenge and even if you live with luxuries of life, you will never be satisfied and would always feel hungry. You will achieve dollar salary and then think of abandoning everything and will start all over again. So to be at peace with materialistic things and material aspect of life, peace with mother is required and I know many of have misunderstood the meaning of peace with mother. We all love our mother for everything she did but would probably not make same statement for her shortcoming, she as human being and some will even go on to say, I love my mother but she spoiled life of my father.Similarly, each chakra would tell you some issues. identify them and work on it and your aura will come in balance.

there are some simple tests for checking out movement in your aura. Check out your emotions and become aware of your energy field and simple way to do that is to do your meditation ( horizontal one). there is a law of instrumentation which says that every time you try to measure something, it induces an error in it. You can right away check by bringing focus on your breathing and you will discover that the pattern of breathing changes the moment you start observing it. If you get angry check out your energy field. Check out after review with boss and check out your energy field every time you mobile rings at 6 PM when you wife calls. You will discover that your energy fields are changing and for sure, check your energy when you see your toddler sleeping peacefully. Try this out. Wake up one night when your child is sleeping ( also make sure your wife is sleeping) and you are alone and watch your child breathing and if you can capture your feelings at that time and remain in that state, you do not need any meditation ever. Check out energy field just after conflict or while driving in bangalore. All of it is disturbing your aura. What what happens when you reach home and change your dress and wash your face and have your first peaceful filter coffee. When you shower every morning, you refresh your aura and when you change dress, you leave bad energies out which got stuck up in aura and for this reason only we had tradition that when you visit some one's death ceremony, you come home and take bath and your clothes are washed separately. It is not because you are impure but because it has that aura of grief and fear which you went through in the ceremony.

So the best way to deal with your aura is to sit in meditation everyday and that will automatically balance the aura. You can also balance the aura of your child after sitting in meditation and we spoke about that method. Children are more prone to catching evil eye and then our grandmothers were always quick in healing the aura. I know in our family, we had chili burning sessions and we even had taking a cotton and dipping it in oil and taking 7 rounds around the body and then burning it. these were all different methods for different kind of application to balance the aura and to see impact on aura due to various events. If it is simple case where a child get cranky, just sit in meditation and balance and do it in multiple of 3 times. If your energy has senstivity, child will just get fine. If that does not work, try cotton stuff or the best is call your grandmother. She knows it. But do not try to balance aura of your wife. Wife's are always right and always in balance- you probably forgot it.Children catch negative vibration from atmosphere very fast and often complain of stomach pain and soon they get fine because their energy field can not keep any negative energy for long. Stomach is the place which is energy transformation house. This is where food is converted into energy and that is how Indian women developed art of communication through cooking ( for more on it check out my blog on cooking). You will hear people say, it is my gut feel and then they touch their stomach. Observe your stomach after you have taken interview or when a sales guy is aggressive with you and sells you. At mind level candidate convinces you with his credentials but the moment he goes, you do not feel good in your stomach about him. that is because he has strong red color energy and he messed up your aura and made a kill but the moment, you put yourself together, your comes back to normal, you realize he fooled you. In larger frame of things, this is the same art occultists in Europe and in Muslim countries could get away with anything by projecting energy of their will and capturing the aura of opponent. Do you recall those guys from bollywood who have a broom to chase the ghost away?? they are just taking out bad energy which has gone deeper than normal in you through more mechanical methods because it is emergency.

When you are driving back home in bangalore and yet humming your fav song, you will know your aura is in balance. When you forgot to do what your wife told you to do on the way back home and yet you remain unaffected when she politely reminds you, you know your aura is in balance and when you get these gooses on your body watching your child sleep, you know your aura is in perfect state and energy levels are highest.
there are lot of books by now on aura and huge content on net but honestly, do not pick those books till you have sensor within you and you know patterns of your energies else you will tend to make wrong and premature conclusion. It is a beautiful science and it works always only if we are aware of it. It is the same science which we can use to create our future and it is the same science which we can use to heal tomorrow....

There is a camera which captures your aura and does analysis. If any one of you visit Singapore, I would be able to tell you where to go for a shot. I did that in 1998 and I am sure by now they have more such shops with cameras. I know no one who does that in India and I wonder why it does not come to them as a business idea. How that camera works?? It asks you to put your palm on a flat device which has sensors to catch your electromagnetic field and it shows those field around your body.. simple.. let me check if I can scan that photo and send you.

Does it matter where you host your application as long as it is affordable, has infrastructure compatible with your application and provides you 24X7 access, support and security. If we take example of dedicated hosting, then we load OS, app servers, web servers & create an environment and connect an IP and a domain name to it. The key element, which every IT professional knows, is that we need everything compatible right from hardware to memory to OS, app servers, web servers, environment and they make NO mistakes in confusing app server with application and OS with web server.

But then, are we doing anything new in virtual world, which has not happened before in our life? Does it make this age and time any special over our ancestors? Probably not, except the fact that we are helping universe to come closer and become more interactive to create “collective consciousness” to move into higher octave of human experience.

Now you must be wondering what the heck is this?

While building modern day civilizations after the birth of religions and structured Gods, we did exactly the same in creating cultures, societies and values. Religion acted as an environment for hosting the culture and society. Every family or religion or environment had well-defined firewalls against people of other culture and religion. It goes for values at individual level and we did not integrate religions and cultures of another origins. At family level, hosting the values was defined by religion and caste were applications created to build competency and skills.

For sure, we created communication layers by building APIs at application level between various religions and co-existed within one culture. But at the core level we maintained the uniqueness of our application and hosting environment. It was technically not possible to integrate two religions and cultures in those days because at application level it was crashing. None of it was upgraded with time and we did not have anything in the name of open source. Societies with each generation kept creating patches but that deformed cultures and religions furthermore and thus impacted individuals of our generation.

Armed with skills in IT, we have the task to recreate the same old rules in digital world to create contemporary values and this is where religion is being evolved into spirituality, and globe is coming together to finally integrate at culture and religion level for the first time in the history.

If software engineers globally think that they are doing something great in creating virtual world and playing god, then this is the right way to look at it. It is about mapping old world into virtual world or digitizing the entire universe with contemporary values and socio-economic rules, which empower every citizen, as technology becomes increasingly a commodity. It requires new world vision for next one century and calls for rewriting entire social fabric with new paradigms- right from hardware to OS and applications. But then wait, before you show this to your spouse to get pat on your back. Why is it that we are still very miserable about our self and have very low sense of worthiness?

There has never been scarcity of reasons to be so, but there are two fundamental root causes, which act as a force in keeping us away from dancing to the nature.

One we have very limited view to the world and our self, and second we, in software industry, do not sleep with our spouse or mate but with our pay packets, our degrees and next possible jump in our salary after 6 months and both these forces are caught in cause and effect so much so that we get up next morning cribbing about lack of contentment and less sex. On the way to office, we call up friends to find out if any other company is doing better than our company.

It is a question of our unique identity. We are obsessed with our identity as engineer or manager or father or husband, which are merely an application of our physical entity and even our physical entity is not our real entity but an application server. We do not recognize that the miseries in our life is nothing but our application throwing bugs based on obsolete program written in the childhood, patchwork done in adolescence and compiled in adulthood and we continue to deploy old paradigms & values in web 2.0 environment, which were written for DOS by our forefathers in Cobol.

Before you read further, you need to decide if you are a worker in creating new virtual world or you think you are on your way to become architect of new virtual world, if not already. Stop reading this article, if you have decided to be a worker because it is meant for architects of new virtual world, which I know your best friends and juniors are.

If you are an architect-playing god, you need to stop thinking like an engineer or any other identity you carry at physical plane. Here the question arises if you are not what you think, then WHO ARE YOU? What is your unique IP address and what is your domain? What is your hosting environment? What is your roadmap and what kind of applications you want to host and for sure what shall be the next version (your kids).

Your unique IP address is stored at energy level before you took birth and chose hosting company (your parents) and then mirror image of your hosting (your immediate family and your children). You chose the OS and web servers in religion and immediate environment with the vision and roadmap for your future before you converted from energy to matter through 9 months long process in a dark tunnel. It was during the process of 9 months, you lost memory of your business plan, which consisted of your vision, and purpose of life. For all IT professionals worth their salt, it was definitely not writing the codes and enhancing the skills and pay packet, but to participate in creation of whole new world. Else, life even today is much simpler without IT.

It is really very simple to discover your unique IP address and your roadmap. The process is effortless and does not require you to change anything in your life. Go ahead and buy yourself a beer or visit a temple, this process will not stop you from any of these but would bring more meaning and joy to such activities. It only requires that you run this process as background task while doing your work. You can run this macro as many times as you breath and I know now you are counting how often you breathe.

So let us say you run this macro as many times you remember you are breathing or best still, as many times, you get phone call from your wife.

Start asking just one simple question: Who am I? And let your mind continue to reply back in various forms and shapes but do not be satisfied. Keep asking this question till you keep getting replies. This is where you need to take help from all your learning so far and use your cribbing attitude to good use by not being satisfied with any reply your mind gives you. Because it will begin to give you all those replies which you have programmed so far. You need to break those layers.

Once you mind is tired of giving you programmed replies, it will search for replies from the host server, which is your inner self. You will hit a stage when you will hear no answer and there will be just silence on this question. That is it. Once you hit that silence, listen to it because that silence has your unique address hidden in you together with your roadmap and source code. Once you have access to source code, you know how to re-program it to make it compatible in web 2.0 environments of today and make it contemporary. Then you know how to design the roadmap and new versions of your life. Do you still need some one else or you think you can write your own destiny now?

Statutory Warning: Now do not run to your HR and ask who am I? else do not blame me for not getting increment in next quarter.

Media, traditional and digital, has become integral part of our lives. More than 500 years with newspapers, 100 years with radio, 70 years with Television, less than 20 years of Internet and 15 years of mobile, and mobile is not yet a media. Today, we switch among all media seamlessly and even overlap one with another. We begin our day with newspaper as a habit, we find romance with radio in our car while we pretend to relax with TV in the evening but only as long as mobile allows us.

Newspapers evolved as a mass media because information was premium and there was curiosity for other part of the globe. Radio and TV accelerated growth to information market and added entertainment to it. Traditional media could thrive because it was subsidized by advertisement and advertisement was welcomed because it was information we needed.

Till 1990's we knew more global problems than solutions. We grew more on intellect and remained more upset on emotional level, because traditional media did not offer equally large platform to communicate and explore solutions for the problems it exposed us with. At collective level, it did raise general awareness but in the process at individual level, it did raise the bar of global negativity. We could argue, debate and agree to disagree, but life was better either 20 years back or would be lot more simpler and evolved after 20 years as we learn to integrate with interactive digital media using web and mobile. In fact we would not know the difference between web and mobile in the years to come.

Internet began where traditional media left us high and dry when Sabeer Bhatia brought email to add communication and interactivity to the media and this is where media became personal rather than mass media. Business model perfected by newspapers, where they subsidized subscription cost and inserted advertisements were very well scaled over to Radio and TV. However scalability of this business model as well as assumption that broadcasting of information was still a need began to end when Google made information available at a click. Brand managers linearly applied banner advertisement in same manner as they applied hoardings on highways. Basic premise of advertising is ability to reach masses to spread the information about a product and services and as information became commodity with digital media, there was a need to evolve advertising into marketing. A concept, which so far, our CXOs have successfully forgotten to take note of. They failed to understand that it is different media, different age, different consumer mindset and it is all together different game.

In last 20 years, we have made more mistakes with Internet & mobile. Businesses have so far looked at Internet and mobile as necessary evil, while consumers were enthusiastically adopting it. Connected communities, mobile generation and advent of Google turned the whole market upside down as markets became global and consumers began to interact with strangers on social networking and blogging sites and in the process consumer turned active than passive. Consumers using digital devices wanted to reach to logical end in decision making on products and services for which they needed all information placed in front of them on a click rather than being pushed through banner ads, thoughtfully designed by media planners on the promise of Yahoo's and MSN claiming to know the soul of the consumer.

What we did with Internet 1.0 so far was good but if we do not evolve, we would go wrong. E commerce was a big need for western markets for simple reason to enhance the life of people further and cut distribution cost but far bigger market have been for E- services specially in Eastern markets like India. Skype, Google, Naukri.com, Shaadi.com are examples of rise of E- services but for last generation of Internet. For E-services to take off, businesses needed to transform their mindset from internal processes driven approach to customer centric approach by integrating consumers to boardroom.

This has potential to change the landscape of politics and businesses in coming years. It was either traditional media or politics, which connected with such large audiences if at all we call that connected community. For the first time, as businesses are becoming global, it is possible to connect and serve huge masses in personalized form using web and mobile and if E- services are combined as value added services on the top of it, that is where we will see technology transforming life of common man at grass root level and businesses would have far more influence over our life than politics and traditional media has ever created. Imagine power in hands of people like Sunil Mittal and Arun Sarin vs. Bush or any other prime minister where they can reach masses on a single click effortlessly powered by E services. E-governance would face resistance beyond a point in every country as politics across the globe would resist transparency and it would evolve in the form of E- services run by private enterprises converging consumers into judiciary system which will further add to diminishing influence of government in our life. Hence next generation of mass media would be centered around E- services making such players as media companies of the future carrying out evolution of human life.

This is what we have tried combining in all our media properties so far in our own humble way. End to end processes to connect consumers with brands with complete workflow and time and event based status in public domain. It carries wisdom for brands to in-source media and carries respite to consumers that if brands fail to see wisdom, their investment is protected. One such example of our work is consumer grievances portal launched on 5th April, 2008 called www.whitelibra.com where brands have unique marketing and customer care possibilities at fraction of the their existing advertising budget.

It has been more than 7 years for us running this company. When it started in year 2000 in Switzerland, it was known as Dharohar InfoTech AG, 2 People Company running out of garage doing IT services.

We inherited more than 3000 customers doing mission critical alarming and notification business from our acquisition of MINICK AG's mobile application division in Switzerland way back in 2001 and that set the journey to migrate from services business to Product Company and from Product Company to Media Company. We served Police to fire brigade, banks, operators, retail, and education to almost any segment, which required communication and interactivity with larger audiences.

We connected consumers directly with businesses for customer service, lead generation & management. We then worked on building strategies for brand building, consumer marketing, Interactive communication, retention and grievances handling and each time, we innovated new processes and built them into our products. So, our product carries global learning, cultural disparity and our business model carries new paradigm converging old models of IT and Media and we are arguably the first company which in in-sourcing Media for companies.

In brief, we gained exceptional expertise to help companies with customer facing challenges and our consulting, products and solutions have helped them with almost instant ROI. We were talked in the media, we were nominated for awards and we were called digital media experts. All of it was scattered simply because we each day competed with ourselves and kept innovating. It is only in last 18 months, we began to launch our media initiatives.

Today, Mobile Mantra has built 3 media properties and in all these 3 categories, no one is around us in our space with scale, business model, value delivery and technology. We are all set to launch 3-5 more media properties in year 2008. With a team of just 15 people, we have the ability to launch a new portal every week and go live for any of our customer's digital initiative around connecting with large community within 2 weeks. You would wonder what are we trying to chase and how? Let me reveal our nice little secret.

Google was first successful technology company connecting consumers with brands and that made them first largest digital media company connecting brands with consumers and moving out of it. Yet they could only touch life of not more than 25% of the world population which has access to PC. New generation consumers, who are active on web, want to arrive on decision making after being connected to the brand and that has left huge space open for companies to digitize their entire marketing, sales and customer care processes to be interactive with consumers. Combine web with mobile and this can reach much higher numbers to create community on web and mobile. We are attempting to do so and that is reflected in 3 media properties we have created. Now you know what took us so much time. As you can guess, it was very exciting as much as it was painful to work though innovation tirelessly for all these years. These properties are www.campusyogi.com, www.saferindia.com, www.whitelibra.com

In my next emails, I would be sharing with you all the discoveries, insights, strategies and wisdom we acquired on the way and of course the mistakes we made. I am sure, if nothing else, we will make very interesting story to read. So do not unsubscribe it.

In early 90s, although Bill Gates spoke of his vision of automated homes at a time, when Internet was coming out of the labs and computers were beginning to show up in offices, it did not translate to reality in Microsoft. He got diverted by windows and products, which were immediate evolution of the society.

Around the same time, SAP did remarkable job and timing was right to create infrastructure for companies to operate globally but nucleus of innovation by SAP was to organize internal processes around manufacturing and optimize workflow across various departments and geographies. It created an ecosystem but forgot to see Internet is booming and consumer would become integral part of the ecosystem. SAP did create an ecosystem of the organization except integrating customers in it.

During all these while, Internet was silently growing and outside these organizations, it was being picked by likes of Yahoo, hotmail and Amazon.com to demonstrate what Internet could be used as a media to connect with consumers. It acted as media and media as known to organizations traditionally has been an activity of outsourcing for promotion, branding & marketing. Investment in technology stopped for organizations the moment chief marketing took over the product and services for launch and the best use of Internet was found by companies to create an online brochure, which most organizations did. They did not see this as an emerging media that is based on technology and connecting consumers to their boardroom.

While in late 90s, when companies were still struggling to understand adaptation of Internet for their integrated approach, consumers were quick and adopted technology. Suddenly they were communicating globally which accelerated globalization at incredible pace.

That gave birth to Google. An organization, which connected consumers with brands and began to make information a commodity. It did few innovations, which brought paradigm shift to various classical mindsets and business models.
a) It was demonstration of technology acting as media
b) Direct to consumer and forcing organizations to adopt- clear departure of classical way of developing technology first for corporate customers for internal use.
c) Pull based model for information- a clear departure from push based model of traditional advertising companies broadcasting advertisements to consumers using Print, TV & Radio.
d) Non intrusive business model of advertising against normal interruption based business model of traditional media companies

Being Stanford graduate and being deeply rooted as technologists, Google founders Sergey and Larry, began to make same mistake as Bill gates and SAP did. Obsession to technology made them blind about other emerging, more powerful phenomenon coming out of their innovation as consumer saw. Consumer behavior was changing because of Google; in fact, it was changing so fast that organizations were caught unaware and before they could get their act together, they were attacked by yet another evolution- mobile. A device, which began to give much-needed teeth to democracy.

Sergey and Larry fell in love with Microsoft and thought that they could bring another innovation to the market place by forcing consumers to change their behavior from desktop based to ASP based model for computing applications and began to compare themselves with Microsoft. Imagine further innovation of next generation company like Google trying to beat classical business model of last generation innovator Microsoft to force consumers to change their behavior from desktop based model to ASP based application.

With Internet, throughout 90s, consumer behavior went through massive evolution. Global information on a click, global communication, and rising economic power made consumers better decision makers and when Google gave them information on demand, they clearly were glued to it and started to discard traditional media for information. Traditional media thrived in last one century based on the fact that information, entertainment is premium and that brought advertisers to connect with consumers to promote their products.

While in beginning of 21st century, Google was chasing Microsoft on the western shores of USA; Sir Martin Sorrel of WPP walking on the street of London was quick to recognize what Google did to his business. He was quick to call Google its biggest threat and future competition. In fact, he saw early sign of death of advertising as consumers adapted to “on demand” behavior for information.

Can WPP drive innovation for next generation and evolve from advertising to become marketing company and yet find a business model where he can start where Google leaves a consumer high and dry.
As per metaphysics of innovation and pattern of evolution, it is quite unlikely that WPP can actually become next generation innovation.

What SAP forgot to do, CRM failed in doing it and Google missed out, having shown the path and WPP recognized was to build an ecosystem of all stakeholders around an issue and sustain a value proposition for all to create complete consumer engagement lifecycle management using digital media.

After connecting a consumer with brand, which traditionally WPP did using print, TV and Radio, Google left them high and dry and rest all activities between consumer and brands were carried out as offline engagement. Right from suspect stage to loyalty to a specific brand was done almost off line and this is where gap exist in the market place to create an ecosystem of all stakeholders around an issue and keep a consumer engaged throughout the lifecycle of his decision making, purchase & customer service. This is where ERPs, CRM and SCMs of last generations need to be rewritten to have community of consumers in the center of their architecture.
How can organizations create an online ecosystem, which essentially becomes media to engage a consumer? Is it as simple as creating web 2.0 based social networking, blogging based website or does it call for creating an end-to-end process to meet consumer needs throughout as they did internally with ERP??

At Mobile Mantra, we did work on innovation for last 7 years, spanning 3 continents, triggered by one acquisition of Mobile Application Company in Switzerland and few global angel investors and went empty stomach to transform a small It services company into a end to end consumer engagement lifecycle management application suits. All these years, we worked on creating innovation and finally succeeded in creating robust products to create ecosystem of all stakeholders around an issue. We begin where Google leaves consumers and we remain with you either till you file a consumer court case or become loyal customer or MIS gives CEOs good insight on why you left them. We demonstrated last year success of new age media in building ecosystem and turned out to be the finest example of e-governance. We took over www.core.nic.in - an initiative of ministry of consumer affairs, GOI, to turn an NGO into revenue making organization in 9 months. www.core.nic.in is an ecosystem of consumers, brands and government around consumer grievances and it helps companies build their brand around retention and avoid litigations.

Hence, time is ripe when technology needs to make life easy for people and solve their problems and business model for next generation companies need to be social entrepreneurs and this is where consumers, technology, governance, corporate would come together with holistic business model and yes, advertising would evolve into presenting information as matter of fact.

there are certain sorrows, I could never express, when I saw my loved ones have bigger ones........Today it comes in the form of this blog to remember one of the finest lady, I have known- my MIL, on her 5th death anniversary

My father would always tease my mother, with pride in his eye, whenever he was told by my mother in the evening, that phula aunty- our elderly neighbor lady had lunch with her. Instant reaction from my father was, whoever does a bit of a praise for your food, you start cooking.. how many people you want to feed? I grew up seeing my mother indulging in such acts more often with glowing eyes.

As recent as after marriage, I saw my mother in law, in small town of Moradabad cooking for such people every day who would arrive before my Father in Law came home to take some advice. It was a dhaba 24X7 and she would always crib about it later on to my wife and her other kids who would be very prompt is criticing their father and sympathizing with her, but most of the time, while discussing such issues, doorbell would ring and it would take her no time to swing into action to cook one thing or other for fresh consignment of guest of the day. FIL never believed in something called advanced intimation and worst still he had very healthy disregard for her health for such gatherings and meetings- well, sure enough they were not guests but people who generally came for admission of their children or for legal advice on dispute of property.

If you come from small city, large joint family and aspiring vision to growth and commitment to social structure, such episodes are very common with each house and we all grew with it but sad enough last 50 years, since the invention of microprocessor and new age movement, we are beginning to loose this in pursuit of economic freedom.

What is the connect between food and serving strangers and making it a ritual? A part of it can be attributed to our Indian culture and warm hospitality but then that was also developed because it was suppose to deliver certain values to the people, however, nowhere in our tradition, a daily affairs or frequent affair of such magnitude of hospitality for strangers has been cited unless feeding poor Brahmin or a lost traveler. Why did our women develop a system of cooking for strangers?

In case of my mother, she cooked for phula aunty for the sheer love for cooking and being recognized while in case of my mother in law; she did that for sheer love & devotion for her husband and that was the means of communication for her. With her cooking, she did extensive romance and would even tease him later on in the evening and he would listen to her cribs with lots of love in his eyes and mischievous smile on his face. It brings me back to the point that a lot more goes into cooking then just ingredients and masalas and this form of communication and a connect point between husband and wife was very pillar of arranged marriages in our forefathers days. So much so that this art over a period of time was developed to be so matured and made interactive that till last generation of our parents, our men also cultivated sensitivity about food being served not just for hunger but were aware that something has been communicated to them through food by their ladies and they often did reciprocate by listening to the message.
Middle class upwards, this form of communication was common among all economic sections of society. My MIL who came from a leading industrial house of Chandausi having 13 siblings and got married to my FIL whose father was “jamindar” of more than 40 odds villages in Sambhal and lived in a “haveli” consisting of around 50 rooms, from where I picked my wife in 1995 and in contrast to it, my father who came from a poor family having 7 siblings and worked hard to find a job in a city 400 km away from his home town teaching chemistry in a university and I had 4 siblings. But it did not matter till last generation and cooking was very mature means of communication and basic foundation of relationship between husband and wife.

In joint families, with parda pratha (veil) and hard work in the field or on front, men were often not available for a coffee together and that left our ladies with little time & means to communicate with their men in private and cooking grew up as a connect point for them to converse with their men and although it meant lot of work for women but it was acceptable for them to invest in it to create higher value out of their time and need for survival and love for their men. They saw their communication working and they could quantify their efforts and fathom return on investment. 3 times a day, dedicated resources, support system and affirmation to their religion, unlike any other form gave ample opportunities for women to cultivate cooking and create higher value out of it.

Hence when a man was eating, he could well guess how his woman has felt during the day, what she feels now and what she wants to communicate to him today through this specific meal. If a woman was upset, food would either have slight deviation in taste, aesthetics or the way it is served which was meant to sensitize men or if she wanted to get his attention and later on consensus on some issue, she would just add or delete one of the dishes from the plate without which food for the man was incomplete and that was an indication. It built very advanced system for sensitizing men on various issues and men grew up cultivating them from one generation to another.

Higher the disparity between men and women within a specific religion, family or a section of society, more advanced was this form of communication among them.

So where has it left us today with food being a casual activity, no joint families. We are all uprooted and all the time unconsciously searching for those connect points in our own married life wrongly asking questions like where is LOVE?? While in reality, what we are asking from our self and our partners is what is our connect point? How do we communicate love for each other in our relationship?? And why do not I get to eat what my mom cooked?

Let us start with the fundamentals of our emotional support infrastructure and it goes back to the days when we matured arranged marriage process, methodology and execution.
Questions related to LOVE, Marriage and relationships are not new but are becoming very relevant for us now as we transit into a very different world compare to our last generation. Let us track how we began asking such questions?? Did we ask these questions with same intensity as now centuries back?? Or did we have different challenges?

During Medivinal times, we were asking questions more related to mystery of life. Questions like who is god? What is life? Who am I?? What is my duties Etc…. and our national customer care help line run by temples (churches) in name of religion failed miserably to such questions and they rather exploited as middle man between us and god(mystery) ( now you know why property prices are high when we buy through dealers).
The failure to get replies to our fundamental question related to mystery, misery and pain of life, drifted us and we began to indulge in life and experiment with the mind to go on our own to find replies in trial and error. This cultivated mind and probably gave birth to materialism through industrial revolution. It all began from West while India having strong roots in spiritualism still lived with questions and accepted mystery of life as divine and gift of universe rather than questioning.

With industrial revolution, when we began to develop faculty of mind, we began to create logic and started doing analysis. We began to see worthiness in our living and rather than asking questions to solve mystery of life, we began to create whatever we could lay our hands on and achievements in life for the first time became yardstick to measure and quantify life which we could not have we tried attempting to answer life through religion. It created sense of purpose, worthiness of life for that era which went on to become legacy of creating wealth for next generation.

Till then, we did not question LOVE. We did not question marriage and we did not question any of our social norms to the extent that it becomes a burning desire to explore. It was given and granted and it was available in abundance to any one and every one. LIFE was acceptable, social fabric was strongly interwoven and intact making people live in harmony as dependent on each other and it has built in self regulatory system which was effective even till last generation of ours.

All these centuries, there was very little innovation or evolution was done in our basic social infrastructure as majority of work was done in the field of mental capabilities to be extended and to explore and concur the world and indulge and that created a tradition to build rat race.

Something has gone terribly wrong during all these centuries or may be the timing is just perfect to ask such questions as we move from interdependency to co dependency to independent living and then come back to old paradigms with new rules. The basics of living are challenged now as go full circle from denouncing the LIFE(Indian religions) to indulging in life to accepting the life.

We have lost center of gravity of our soul or rather evolution of mind has drifted the center and I find this very interesting time as we are now defining new social infrastructure for our children who would have very little generation gap.

Each society, each individuals is looking for balance point and center of gravity of his soul to be able to do justice to present life & present circumstances and this makes life and this is where we are asking questions on LOVE, Marriage, relationships and their longevity etc..

In the beginning of society, the acceptance of life gave birth to a state of being, which was full of love within. It was state of being for every one of us. Since mind was not any differentiator, marriage was accepted, we lived with love within and we gave the same.

So social currency for us was LOVE and love was for life and clearly since life flows through people, we rubbed them with LOVE and other person felt it. Marriage gave us life long opportunity to experience LOVE and LOVE was never talked about, because it was assumed that it exists and people focused more on their dharma, karma and strengthening the social fabric within the four cast systems to become vertically strong and support each other within the ecosystem so that life flows.

People of our generation are caught by surprise that we are suddenly left alone without any formal training in leading our life. Uprooted from our joint families leaving our cities and coming to metros, dealing with strangers, we are asking what is LOVE??? While actually what we are wondering is where have we reached in pursuit of economic freedom and independence… we lost ours elf somewhere and now suddenly LOVE has become need???

And this is where we are going wrong. LOVE has become need and the moment it becomes need, it becomes tradable commodity and you need a yardstick to measure and you need a currency to substantiate this??

While LOVE is lost within us, we are asking what is marriage and what does it give me??? We have seen it working for our parents and suddenly find it does not work for us to the extent that we expected LOVE to provide us that soft music to our soul all the time.

Over the years and more so in last 50 years, we are demanding a lot from ourself and that is good news as we question every aspect of life, However, more questions also making us do mistakes and we demand not only from us but also from our partners who is also struggling to find same questions and for sure in the bargain, we have forgotten to be honest with our self and our quest has become obsession rather than finding solution and replies for it.
Personalities of today are becoming more powerful to be able to handle emotions, spiritual and mental and physical aspects on daily basis and that puts lots of pressure on other person to perform ( na…na do not imagine.. I am not yet in your bedroom) to be able to fulfil the needs of ours.
What we see now is a trend that on daily basis we need to have multiple needs being satisfied by different people around us rather than one person being able to handle it all like old times and that broke marriages in the west where social fabric had already weekend and divorce was easy.

None of it has been a solution so far simply because we are not asking right questions?? More so, we are uprooted and have lost center of gravity for our soul and we our self do not know if we make any sense to any body.

If I were to sit down and say let us start-making corrections to our self and let us discover our self, I would go like this but would be brief on the risk of boring all of you.

First I would ask, who am I?? What is the purpose of my life?? Why am I born to the parents I am born to?? What is that which I need to carry forward and fulfill as legacy to be born to the family?? You will be surprised to discover that you are doing nothing new but carrying on the job your father/mother could not complete so we are nothing but extension of parents and if we believe we have achieved something on our own in spite of being born to the family, we are born to then it is confirmed that you are lost… then you need to go back to first question, who am I? And start all over again. By the time you know it, you are down by 5 years if not 10 and you would have lost on major part of your sex life but would have done great value enhancement to your neighbor’s, so be sure asking questions has a cost.
Once you discover purpose of life, then it is all about making sure that you bring those kind of energies to be able to walk on it and that requires lot of guts but has no rules on how many years it will take…generally by the time, you know it, it is time for your daughter to get married….and you realize that you did your dharma well and got your daughter settled… but you probably still have same neighbor and you want to make some changes in your life….