Life Experiences by Tilak

Diversity and Inclusion seems to be a topic of discussion everywhere. However, it seems that our forefathers had found solutions to it more than 5000 years ago. The Mahabharata talks about the contribution of Shikhandi, who was born a woman and later became a man, to the war in helping the Pandavas win by slaying Bhishma. The war would not have been won if Shikhandi was not present. The same could be the case with Ghatotkach, the son of Bhima whose mother was Hidimba. If he was not causing enough trouble for Karna to use the gift of Lord Indra on him, Arjuna would have been dead and the war would have been lost. Last but not the least, if Panchali and Amba were not present, the war would have taken a very different form. They both assisted Lord Krishna in helping the word become free of the Kauravas and adharm. When we are struggling today to find answers, may be it would be a good idea to refer the age-old wisdom we have in the form of mythologies, puranas and Upanishads. They may hel...

The last one and half years have been tough on all of us. The pandemic has cost us dearly - financially, physically, emotionally. It has given us scars that will remain for life. Lessons that will change us forever - for good or worse.... My one biggest learning from the pandemic is: surrender to the creator....mankind is nothing infront of nature. We can't survive a second without help from nature. Why are we trying to be God? When we are struggling to be even human? I'm getting tired of human intelligence. The mindless innovations and distractions like the spoilt billionaires who seem hell bent to pollute the space now that earth is almost totally polluted.  Why are we creating more toys? Smarter faster sleeker that makes us even more dependent on them? We need to step back a few decades. Go back to the times when we worked hard on the fields and factories. Spent time socializing with each other. Built communities and laughed together. This virtual world is so suffocating! Ar...

Indian scriptures always promoted and prescribed four stages of human life: the age of students, the age of family, the age of simple living in the forests and lastly the age of seeking Nirvana theough austerities.  As we became more advanced scientifically, we ignored these teachings and chased prolonged material gratification and longievity through artifitial means. This made us more dependent on the man made recipes of good health that took us away from nature. I think it's time to reverse that. We must move back closer to nature and consume less. Infact in the book Ikigai, the authors mention a lifestyle that is simple, organised, social and close to nature.  We have been straining the natural resources and depleting them really fast. This is giving rise to one calamity after other. Most of these calamities are manmade and triggered by mindless consumption fuelled by our limitless greed for more. It's time we pause. It's time we look at and refer the wisdom of our ances...

Let's shed a tear for all those trees we massacared to furnish our homes Let's shed a tear for all those animals we slaughtered in the name of sports Let's shed a tear for all the rivers we polluted In the name of prosperity Let's shed a tear for all the mountains we mercilessly chopped in the name of growth Let's shed a tear for all the pollutants we dumped in the seas and suffocated the life there Let's shed a tear for all the birds we made homeless to build homes for us Let's shed a tear for all the bees who lost their way, for us to check social media nonstop on our phones Let's shed a tear for all the forests that we burnt with the fire of our greed May be then, when all of humanity cries together for the sins we committed for generations, may quench the fire we ignited in the breast of mother nature.  Then may be she will cry for us too, like a mother who sees the repentence in the eyes of her devastated children. May be then, we will earn her forg...

We all dream of the good life The big cars, the big houses, the fast life  and grand parties Fuelled by the trash society throws at us In the name of civilization. And we start running. Faster, harder like fools Chasing dreams that are irrelevant But most of us realise that too late When we are totally spent, emotionally and spiritually Then we get the wake-up call From the hidden corners of our subconscious Questioning the usefulness of the chase we wasted half our life pursuing  And, the mind wakes up to see through the clutter and trash we have been seeing since born We start looking for ways to be happy as that is not a skill we learnt at school. But we learn fast. Because we are programmed to be happy. It's in our genes. And then the life changes for the better We start living for the greater good For things that make us truly happy Little things that we thought totally useless Becomes the centre of our life. And we start living, in happiness with joy in our hearts and sm...

  As the world today struggles with the Coronavirus Pandemic, paying attention to mental health becomes of utmost importance. While public health emergencies cause a great amount of emotional isolation, stress owing to economic loss, business closure, school closure, etc., COVID-19 itself gives birth to neurological and mental complications. This is the time when psychological support has gone virtual and for all the right reasons.   GoodLives is a mental health service organization that aims at helping people find the right guidance about keeping their mental health upright. The vision is to make mental health treatment “accessible” for one and all. The idea of GoodLives was born when Sakshi Shah and Lawrence Lovedeep, the co founders of GoodLives, encountered people with emotional issues in their personal life journey and realized how essential it was to have someone you can share your problems with. They comprehended that a lot of people suffered in silence because they w...

I remember this peppy song from my childhood with these lyrics love is all around me, everywhere I go...I have forgotten the singer, the lyrics and everything about this song. But these few lines have stayed with me all these years.  Truly, if we look around, there is so much to love and be grateful for....from the view of the rising sun from my balcony, to the books I read, to the food I eat and the energy I feel within. It's beautiful. The whole universe is within us and there is so much to be happy about....only if we truly open our eyes and see. Life is so tiny. Today we are alive but tomorrow we may not be. So why not inhale all the beauty around so that when we close our eyes in the night, we feel the divine bliss within and cherish it, without a regret in the world. It's a beautiful life, I feel pity for thr people who waste it hating ! May God bless their souls and may they too learn to see the beauty all around, so that this earth can truly become a beautiful place to ...