Transcendance 11 ::: Review of a decade in wedlock.....

Dear Gowri
Today is quite significant for three reasons as of now....
First things first, I got married exactly on the same day (at 29th Apr 1998) exactly 10 years back. Second thing is that without any prompt (alarm clock) I have got out from bed after such a long time....I have been getting up in the midnights to write poems and to pen musings for the past one year - hence would like to record this as some thing quite significant...Third and the last as of now is that I have decided to go for a walking at 4.30 AM - which of course is the outer limit of the time that I will be spending on this posting....!!
Yes this posting could be quite big in size....which is becoming a pattern for me but I can just guarantee that it will be stopped the moment there is no urge to continue further.....and it will not get lengthier by any special volitions from my side..... (Pls dont get connected to my example on "intution" now.... )
Well 10 years of marital life..... I try to introspect and ask myself honestly few questions which obviously I am supposed to ask on such a important day - at least by social standards.... Do you carry a feeling that we are age-less and it is quite unbelievable that we are half past thirty and do you amuse yourself to think that we have seen our elders of our family (ambi and suppuni to be precise) at our age when we reached adolescent age & have clear memory of lot of incidents.... Couple of months back when it dawned upon me that Madhoo is going to reach III standard, I was thinking on a particular day the events that happened when I reached this age.....
Not that they are too bitter now....BUT III standard - particularly the II and III Quarter are very significant for me in my life as it is this period we were sent (or we walked out ??) of our chromepet home and stayed alone for close to 6 months back to our father...and I joined Vivekananda vidhyalaya chromepet after quarterly exams.....I had changed 3 schools in the first term (to be precise - they are (1) Oxford Nursery, Tambaram.....as we stayed in our Gopu Mama's home at Tambaram.....this schooling was perhaps max for a month.....; (2) Vidya Nursery, W.Mambalam .... again in my memory I stayed just for few weeks in this school & (3) Anni Besant school very close to Ashok Pillar...where I was staying along with one of our periamma's home alone and reached to our make shift home at Postal colony, Ashok nagar where my mother and others stayed....!! Now, by coincidence none of these schools exist = at least where they used to be...... WHILE I clearly remember the schools, and some of the incidents at these schools....!! I remember faintly by july / aug of that academic year (III standard) we got a summon from our Daddy (just for change....no malice intended) to come back to home...and we shifted our home at Postal Colony within couple of days (now I realise perhaps our mother was bit tired of the experiment and hence she in fact perhaps longing for this re-union....OR she decided to accept defeat as things were not improving....I dont want to think more on this...).
This period of 6 months - in many ways - had been quite significant in my life - and I dont really mean any thing in the nature of SELF PITY when I talk about this.....as except this brief span of life, my adolescent age...(even until I finished my college...OR exactly upto the entry of ISHA into mylife@ 1997 - when I was exactly 24 years) had been incident-free and as I had mentioned earlier in one of my postings in this same blog, I neither have any great memories nor deep rooted wounds about my life until now.... (I even remember when I wrote this...this is to respond to your musings about couple of your friends think in sep 2007 - one of them is Archagaa in a temple.....I was thinking loud on "purpose of life"....JUST TO remind you that this self perception is just being repeated by me....)
Now, why this long bragging when I wanted to write about "decade in wedlock" ?? Just to get connected to Madhoo's perceptions and thinking processes are some thing that I watch closely with lot of curiousity and glee...AND when I heard that she reached III standard, I realised, OK, I am getting old......!! Now comes the second reminder to me within few months......a completed decade of wedding anniversary.....
First things first, (as I have mentioned this too), I got married slightly earlier than many of others of my age group....(lets forget "exceptional" you - and consider other lesser mortals !!) much earlier than I had clarity and maturity to take a decision on such matters.... As Sadhguru puts it, it will be lot more beneficial if we make such decisions "if this is needed to me ?" before getting married....and not doing things just because all others are doing it for themselves !!!!
In my case, it was not done just because others get married but just because, the offer was too forceful AND there was no reason for us (me and our whole family) to refuse it...That was the time when I was jobless - back from New Delhi...searching for a job which I never got...(you remember many of NBFCs were closing down post 95....I was one of the victims)..with my confidence level going down and down, I was not getting even a sumaar job during whole of 96 (I came back from Delhi during March 97 & without much choice was helplessly doing a diploma course at SSI during III quarter...as any way I was not getting any employment offer).....
I even dreamt of career migration but again that was not too deeply felt....and I was aware that RDBMS was much more deep than my understanding at that point of time and it needed more passionate reasons to take a full plunge more than the simple reason that I did not get a job...in my own line...!! It was a period of Y2K and perhaps I missed an opportunity to migrate to a career where my connecting abilities could have taken to a much better career prospects than what I am today.... (I may appear to be bruding...actually I am quite happy that this did not happen....as I fear it could have made me lot more career oriented AND I would have written this musings today and if I would have got time to innumberable intense moments at Isha....which perhaps I would have never ventured).
Now I met Mr.Shankaran (the astrologer at Tambaram sanatorium about whom I spoke to you last week) with this confused state of mind some time in III Quarter.....of 1997 which is very significant meeting AND THIS GENTLEMAN NEEDS TO BE IN THE PICTURE WHEN I TALK ABOUT MY WEDLOCK....Yes, this wedlock and a decade of Anoo would not have happened without meeting him...
I dont know if I have spoken to you about these episodes (perhaps me could...OR some one at our home might have told you....YOU See, I am recording this for posterity only...and this cannot be a duplication) ... This radical astrologer had lot of contacts in software field too and I originally thought I am going to get a job through him...within couple of months, I got so close to him AND I remember he even took me (or brought me) to kodambakkam to one particular house of a big shot in software industry seeking to introduce me to him and to get me a job.....which I never got....!! He made a radical statement seeing my astrology map that some MIRACLE is going to happen to my life very shortly which made me quite excited and I was happy that at last I am going to have some solution for my long pause.... of confused state.....!!
I thought its going to be a job in some software company (I repeat, it is quite comical how I got connected to a job offer at software with a simple diploma in PowerBuilder...but that was the period when so many were migrating with similar qualfication....though I did not have the self confidence and the soft skills at that point of time, I was hoping for this "miracle"....). It so happened that in an insignificant afternoon at our Kamarajapuram home, my cousin sisters (present MIL and her sister, chandra) came quite casually .... and I was not sure what was there in their minds at that point of time....!! eventually the miracle turned out to be my marriage for which I was really not matured enough....but I now have a feeling my lack of firmness in refusing is one way influenced by SHANKARAN's proclaiment of a miracle...I was in a state not to go against some thing happening on its own (at this jucture, I thank God for enabling me to pen down the subtle thought processes so easily and effortlessly...as I write this down at the twilight of this momentous day....it really feels great to write without any thinking processs involved...at least consciously....!!)....
Though they were cousin sisters of mine, I never have seen Anoo....and saw her for the first time on Oct 19th 1997, got engaged exactly after 1 month and got married 4 months after that....without any second thoughts.... I got into a job thru the contacts of anoo's appa during Feb 1998...after a break of exactly 1 year ... after I quit the Delhi company.... (I actually got transferred in that delhi company to chennai... I just got bogged down by few things at their Granite factory at madhurandhakam...and resigned after reaching madras...thats one layer of the confusion that I deliberately skipped from writing...the person to whom I reported at Delhi was another great Boss in my life.....I think "bosses" by themselves account for a seperate posting from me...but thats later !!)
Now during the same time ie., II half of 1997, another significant thing happened which is equally important (mutually opposite ??) as I met Sadhguru and did the basic program.... I got a extra ordinary meditation on the initiation day....and I cried lying in the lap of an unknown volunteer (whose name was chithra...a mid aged woman...whose name is chitra...I was in touch with her for couple of years after this class....NOW SHE IS NO MORE...died of cancer 3 - 4 years back !!) and inspite of this, FATE did not allow me to take a firm decision on joining the Isha group.....The meditation simply exploded me and I started glaring at Sadhguru since then as I clearly knew this is not an ordinary person.... He was serving sweets to all of us sitting and eating at Dining Hall and I remember I was sitting angrily (yes really angry) as I felt he was trying to be too innocent and childish after showing up to me how extra ordinary he is....I am talking about my shunya experience.....!!
otherwise, believe me, I would be one of their teachers today.....perhaps, the temptation of expectation (courtesy :: Mr.Shankaran) was too much in me...that I did not have this strong urge...and more importantly I did not know about Isha as an organisation at that point of time...Perhaps there were just 50 people at aashram and such wide publicity was not there for Him...and my orientation into a simple meditation process (yes, Shunya is extremely simple process of meditation...though it is quite beautiful experience...I subsequently learnt that it was just an introduction in to the world of meditation) was not strong enough to say NO to Anoo's parents who made a decision to go ahead with their feeling to unite us....!!
Now, having put meticulously the background in which our marriage happened, is it time close this posting....Alas...I have not even started....!! But, time is 4.23 AM already and I have resolved to go for a morning walk....15 minutes from now.....!!
So, there will be a part II of this posting.....which will talk only about my marital life of these ten years...Not so much detail oriented....but surely it will be a long piece as I kept it as a self imposed challenge to churn out the "butter" in the part II posting..... Again, there could be a few things that I am going to write about which I have told you already / written already but remember this posting is supposed to be a independent posting and I am sure you will not mind reading few things that you know already..... In life too, many times, we do many things just as we are caught in it more than we want to do them, right ??
will come back before 12 Midnight of today.......
Will be dedicated to Krishnaa after the Part II posting.....just getting reminded to do it, right now....
Regards

suchoo