Intro: One coincidence can change your life, for better or for worse. Ask someone who survived a terror attack, or close ones of those who didn’t. Gayatri explores if your fate can speak to you
Can a coincidence change the course of your life? Survivors of terror attacks are finding it is so. This is what a source at the Mumbai police comissioner’s office had to say about the three top cops Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar a few hours after their death “It was sheer coincidence, almost as if it was pre-ordained. Nothing could have stopped it. They were not meant to be in that car, and certainly not together. They were armed but couldn’t reach their weapons.” The driver of a Honda City parked nearby had been shot and was pretending to be dead just as the terrorists were moving in, when the jeep laden with the cops drew up. Perfect timing? Or an ill-fated one, depending on where you were standing.
While some lost their lives to fate’s roll of dice, the tales of those who were saved by chance are equally puzzling. And these are not instances to be shrugged off lightly, notes spiritual guru Deepak Chopra, who insists there is no such thing as a meaningless coincidence. “We’ve all experienced coincidences that seem to be endowed with special significance. A synchronicity is a coming together of seemingly unconnected events. If you pay attention, you may recognise that your life is shaped by those moments of meaningful coincidence. You may even be able to nurture and participate in those moments in a positive way.”
Artist Nawaz Singhania, whose exhibition wrapped up at the NCPA located beside the Oberoi-Trident, believes coincidences saved her that fateful night. “My exhibition ended 45 minutes before the attack, and some friends from abroad wanted to go to the Oberoi to pick up some stuff. I usually bend over backwards to fulfill all their requests, but that night, for some reason I didn’t, so they too ended up not going! We had been going to the Taj every single day after my showing, but that night our friends wanted to take us to Shiro, a lounge bar at Parel. Of course, these coincidences saved our lives,” she says.
Singhania further adds, “Not just for this, throughout life, coincidences are a glimpse into the ‘master plan’ of a Higher Power. It proves that someone is watching over you. I’m devastated by the loss of those who went, but I feel gratitude for these instances that left us behind.”
Joey Jeetun, British TV actor most famous for playing the role of a terrorist bomber on Channel 5, was at Leopold Café when the attack began. “I was covered in other people’s blood. So they thought I was dead and moved on,” he said, shaken by his experience. Slain ToI editor Sabina Sehgal Saikia was at a dinner at the Colaba Agiary when she reportedly took ill and returned to her room at the Taj — a room she wasn't meant to be in, says a close friend of Sabina’s. “As she checked into the hotel, the staff who knew her so well upgraded her, putting her in the suite next to the GMs family.” It proved to be a fatal move.
The machinations of destiny have fascinated man for centuries. While it was met initially with awe, reverence, even prayer, it is now being studied and probed. The term synchronicity was first coined by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who said, “It is the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.” It was this cause and a twist of effect that saved the life of Apoorv Parikh who was dining with lawyer Anand Bhatt and builder Pankaj Shah, both of whom died.
His son, Rohan Parikh, describes how his father was saved by the bodies that fell on top of him. “On reaching the 18th floor landing of the Oberoi, the jehadis made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. He lay like that for several hours.”
Some call it God’s grace, skeptics shrug it off as coincidence. Either way, the tales pour in. The England cricket team was meant to check into the Taj the previous day; danseuse Mallika Sarabhai and her 25-member-troupe that had a last-minute reschedule of their performance and headed off to Indigo for dinner instead, is still too shaken to talk about it. Can you ignore a ‘coincidence’ that has just saved your life? “It’s not coincidence. It is destiny,” says actor Shilpa Shetty, “Some things are destined to happen. We are just living the course of our destiny etched out for us,” adding, “It’s sad, but true.”
Sad because, as astrologer Vipul Saxena explains, “Most coincidences that we observe are the negative ones. That is because when a positive coincidence happens, we rarely give it due credit. Coincidences are the fruit of our karma, the results of our actions that occur to pave the way for our success and failure. Astrologically, when the ‘time is right’ for you to receive, coincidences occur to put what is owed to you in your path. They also occur to remove what is to be taken away from you.”
Chopra believes coincidences are the way the universe speaks to you. “Once you put your mind into a state of relaxation and notice a coincidence, you begin to notice other coincidences that have brought you to where you are and who you are today. Science tells you the world is not organised by any external force. Coincidences are ways of revealing that there is a master plan.”
According to Vedic traditions, explains Guru Jaggi Vasudev, there are two signs of a person on the correct path to enlightenment; the first is a dissolving of obstacles, and the second is an increased occurrence of or awareness of coincidences around him.
Concludes Chopra, “People who are sensitive to events and stimuli around them will also be sensitive to coincidences sent from the universe. Clues may be as subtle as the smell of pipe smoke wafting through an open window, which makes you think of your father, which reminds you of a book he loved, which then somehow comes to play an important role in your life at the moment.”
The next time you come face to face with your fate, remember to take a minute to speak to it. Its language, is a coincidence.
Box: How to channel a coincidence
* Ask 'what is the significance of this?' Answers will emerge.
* Place yourself in silence in a peaceful environment and think back to an area in your life – health, money, love. List the coincidences that turned the course of each area.
* Keep a diary of coincidences in your life. Classify them as small, medium, whoppers and double whoppers.
* Cultivate an attitude of relaxed attention and intention.
* Simply by intending to create synchronicity in your life, you can nurture that result.
- tips by Deepak Chopra
Showing posts with label Unpublished/ Yet-to-be published article. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unpublished/ Yet-to-be published article. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Our Olympic shame/ Unpublished article
Must Abhinav Bindras be able to fund themselves for India to win golds not to mention take credit for his win? India’s potential sporting heroes deserve better says Gayatri
NOW that the country has weakened the pace of its Singh is King bhangra to Abhinav Bindra’s individual gold, perhaps it’s time to play spoilsport and remind everyone gently that Bindra’s win was ‘individual’ in the fullest sense – India, the country, the Olympic committee, the sporting heroes and the general public at large had no role to play in Bindra’s victory. He did not train at a government shooting range but at his private and privately funded one, and everything from his confidence-building course in Germany before the Games and his triumph over his debilitating spinal injury, which should have been at government’s expense, and would have been for an athlete of his merit in any other country. But they weren’t. He won because he practiced hard, funded by an indulgent and supportive parents’ substantial personal means. Transport him to any country QED (everything else remaining constant) – Bangladesh or Papua New Guinea – and the win would still have been Bindra’s alone.
Like with Abhinav Bindra, for 15-year old tennis sensation Yuki Bhambhri’s parents have felt the strain of supporting his sporting career. “It’s been very difficult for them. I keep thinking how long can they keep going? You keep thinking, if I don’t win this, I’ll be paying the money from my pocket and that’s so much money down the drain. That’s a lot of pressure to deal with on your game. If I was supported, the pressure would be off and I’d be playing more games.”
Contrast this with 14-year-old diving sensation Tim Daley, who was discovered when he was 8 and has been preparing for his role in grabbing England a diving gold yet. After qualifying for the Olympics as part of the British swim team, Steve Foley, the former Australian Olympic diver who has galvanised the sport in this country as the British performance director, warned newspersons “he may not go further than 2012 if the media and constant pressure on him to perform take their toll. Take the pressure off him.” Psychological mapping, steadying him, managing his endorsements, and caring for his teenage awe of the hype has been as much a part of the process as the actual hours of training. The teenager told the BBC : “Lots of people say ‘go and get the gold’ and I just think I’ve got no chance. I don’t think I am just going for the experience and hoping to do a good performance.”
Bhambhri says the training makes all the difference. “Almost all our international counterparts are supported. They travel with their coaches, both their parents. The government only steps in when it’s a grandslam, but otherwise you’re on your own. I’m happy that with Bindra at least now they have realised his potential. But I have to say if they had done this earlier, India would have had a lot more medals. This country has a lot of talent, if only there was someone to nurture it.”
Ask 28-year-old Viren Rasquinha, former captain of the Indian hockey team, and an Athens Olympics hopeful, threw in his colours in disgust after 6 years of playing for the country and headed out for an MBA at the prestigious Indian School of Business in April this year. “You begin believing it’s enough to love and know the game and you realise that at international levels you’re up against everything but the game,” he says. “At the grassroot level, our domestic teams don’t even touch an Astroturf, they play on grass and on maidans.” Under the mentorship of his coach ‘Bawa’, Viren often distributed hockey kits, shoes, shorts, socks to players on domestic teams. “Our players don’t even receive the funding for basics, let alone keep pace with international circuits. I was fortunate to be at the receiving end. But it doesn’t filter down. There’s no way we can win like this.”
Fed up, Viren left to do an MBA, averring, “Maybe when I return with a degree I can instill some professionalism into the system. I don’t know. I can’t promise anything. There’s no future in this for me.”
For Baichung Bhutia, now in his early 30s but a football sensation since his early teens, individual efforts are not enough. “That’s still fine for a sport like archery, where individual effort and famil support makes a difference. But for a majority of participatory sports in the country, like football, we need the support of the government.”
Although himself trained and supported by the government at various levels, Bhutia says there is still a lot left to be done. “If you compare us to international standards, we are way way behind. There’s no comparison. What we need are facilities, infrastructure, funding, training, competitive games… etc These are what will keep the spirit of the sport going and inculcate the drive to win.
At 22, Armaan Ebrahim, a promising young motor racing star, newly signed up for GP2, 2008, started his racing career at the age of 12. The youngest ever Indian to win the JK Tyre National Formula LGB Single seater Racing car championship, the prodigy would of course credit his father, ex Indian F3 champion Akbar Ebrahim rather than any government body for his potential growth. But probe and fear of invoking government wrath makes sportspersons back off. Akbar Ebrahim refused to comment on what the government could do or has done for nurturing talent for individuals who unlike his son, lack the privilege of a sporting background. Yuvraj Singh also shied clear of comment, for fear of invoking the captain’s wrath. “Everyone’s always afraid to talk about the situation,” says Viren Rasquinha. “That’s because in this country sports has a lot to do with politics and less to do with how you play the game.”
So where do the countries hopefuls go? Along with Bindra, Krishna Poonia in athletics, Joshana Chinappa in squash, Virdhawal Khade in swimming and Saina Nehwal in badminton are others making a splash in their respective sports and are all currently under the spotlight in Beijing. The common thread? All were privately trained, funded and sponsored by the LN Mittal Trust and don’t have so much to thank the Indian government for. Manisha Malhotra, administrative coordinator of the Trust speaking to Timeslife from Beijing takes the pride of the organization having mothered these youngsters. Exhausted after packing Bindra back home, but exhilarated, she says “Our aim is to put India on the medal grid by the 2012 Olympics and we have been focused on identifying champions and providing them the bets possible facilities to further their training.”
The alternative route to success for many then is private corporations who enjoy investing in sports as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. Youngsters such as Gaurav Ghei for instance on the golfing circuit gaining sponsors such as Deutsche Bank, early in their careers. The GVK industries chairman GVK Reddy who has stood shoulder to shoulder with Sania Mirza monetarily since she was 13. The Tata Archery Academy run by Tata Steel at Jamshedpur has been consistently supporting sportspersons and gainingsilent marches of victory that have failed to generate the kind of hype that more mundane achievements in cricket have. The trio of A Donda Raju, Rajib Basumatary and Ravinder Hembram created world archery history when they put a never before achieved combined score of 440 at the world archery championship in Mexico. In Chennai, Steria, a France-based multinational IT services provider, invests heavily in finding football geniuses. After successfully making the Mumbai Marathon an annual movement with momentum of its own, Standard Chartered Bank is now looking to empower women in villages through netball. Each corporation is on its personal quest that may lead to stray victories, but the fact remains India as a nation is ill geared for the quantum leap into a winning streak. That, remains in the hands of the government, aver sportspersons.
As Bhutia puts it, “Of course we are proud of Bindra and we have a right to take pride in the fact that he represented the nation, even if the merit of it was his own personal effort. Hopefully, his win will bring hope to the many talented kids around. What’s important is the whole package – the positivity about the sport, a good clean healthy environment. That’s what makes winners.”
NOW that the country has weakened the pace of its Singh is King bhangra to Abhinav Bindra’s individual gold, perhaps it’s time to play spoilsport and remind everyone gently that Bindra’s win was ‘individual’ in the fullest sense – India, the country, the Olympic committee, the sporting heroes and the general public at large had no role to play in Bindra’s victory. He did not train at a government shooting range but at his private and privately funded one, and everything from his confidence-building course in Germany before the Games and his triumph over his debilitating spinal injury, which should have been at government’s expense, and would have been for an athlete of his merit in any other country. But they weren’t. He won because he practiced hard, funded by an indulgent and supportive parents’ substantial personal means. Transport him to any country QED (everything else remaining constant) – Bangladesh or Papua New Guinea – and the win would still have been Bindra’s alone.
Like with Abhinav Bindra, for 15-year old tennis sensation Yuki Bhambhri’s parents have felt the strain of supporting his sporting career. “It’s been very difficult for them. I keep thinking how long can they keep going? You keep thinking, if I don’t win this, I’ll be paying the money from my pocket and that’s so much money down the drain. That’s a lot of pressure to deal with on your game. If I was supported, the pressure would be off and I’d be playing more games.”
Contrast this with 14-year-old diving sensation Tim Daley, who was discovered when he was 8 and has been preparing for his role in grabbing England a diving gold yet. After qualifying for the Olympics as part of the British swim team, Steve Foley, the former Australian Olympic diver who has galvanised the sport in this country as the British performance director, warned newspersons “he may not go further than 2012 if the media and constant pressure on him to perform take their toll. Take the pressure off him.” Psychological mapping, steadying him, managing his endorsements, and caring for his teenage awe of the hype has been as much a part of the process as the actual hours of training. The teenager told the BBC : “Lots of people say ‘go and get the gold’ and I just think I’ve got no chance. I don’t think I am just going for the experience and hoping to do a good performance.”
Bhambhri says the training makes all the difference. “Almost all our international counterparts are supported. They travel with their coaches, both their parents. The government only steps in when it’s a grandslam, but otherwise you’re on your own. I’m happy that with Bindra at least now they have realised his potential. But I have to say if they had done this earlier, India would have had a lot more medals. This country has a lot of talent, if only there was someone to nurture it.”
Ask 28-year-old Viren Rasquinha, former captain of the Indian hockey team, and an Athens Olympics hopeful, threw in his colours in disgust after 6 years of playing for the country and headed out for an MBA at the prestigious Indian School of Business in April this year. “You begin believing it’s enough to love and know the game and you realise that at international levels you’re up against everything but the game,” he says. “At the grassroot level, our domestic teams don’t even touch an Astroturf, they play on grass and on maidans.” Under the mentorship of his coach ‘Bawa’, Viren often distributed hockey kits, shoes, shorts, socks to players on domestic teams. “Our players don’t even receive the funding for basics, let alone keep pace with international circuits. I was fortunate to be at the receiving end. But it doesn’t filter down. There’s no way we can win like this.”
Fed up, Viren left to do an MBA, averring, “Maybe when I return with a degree I can instill some professionalism into the system. I don’t know. I can’t promise anything. There’s no future in this for me.”
For Baichung Bhutia, now in his early 30s but a football sensation since his early teens, individual efforts are not enough. “That’s still fine for a sport like archery, where individual effort and famil support makes a difference. But for a majority of participatory sports in the country, like football, we need the support of the government.”
Although himself trained and supported by the government at various levels, Bhutia says there is still a lot left to be done. “If you compare us to international standards, we are way way behind. There’s no comparison. What we need are facilities, infrastructure, funding, training, competitive games… etc These are what will keep the spirit of the sport going and inculcate the drive to win.
At 22, Armaan Ebrahim, a promising young motor racing star, newly signed up for GP2, 2008, started his racing career at the age of 12. The youngest ever Indian to win the JK Tyre National Formula LGB Single seater Racing car championship, the prodigy would of course credit his father, ex Indian F3 champion Akbar Ebrahim rather than any government body for his potential growth. But probe and fear of invoking government wrath makes sportspersons back off. Akbar Ebrahim refused to comment on what the government could do or has done for nurturing talent for individuals who unlike his son, lack the privilege of a sporting background. Yuvraj Singh also shied clear of comment, for fear of invoking the captain’s wrath. “Everyone’s always afraid to talk about the situation,” says Viren Rasquinha. “That’s because in this country sports has a lot to do with politics and less to do with how you play the game.”
So where do the countries hopefuls go? Along with Bindra, Krishna Poonia in athletics, Joshana Chinappa in squash, Virdhawal Khade in swimming and Saina Nehwal in badminton are others making a splash in their respective sports and are all currently under the spotlight in Beijing. The common thread? All were privately trained, funded and sponsored by the LN Mittal Trust and don’t have so much to thank the Indian government for. Manisha Malhotra, administrative coordinator of the Trust speaking to Timeslife from Beijing takes the pride of the organization having mothered these youngsters. Exhausted after packing Bindra back home, but exhilarated, she says “Our aim is to put India on the medal grid by the 2012 Olympics and we have been focused on identifying champions and providing them the bets possible facilities to further their training.”
The alternative route to success for many then is private corporations who enjoy investing in sports as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. Youngsters such as Gaurav Ghei for instance on the golfing circuit gaining sponsors such as Deutsche Bank, early in their careers. The GVK industries chairman GVK Reddy who has stood shoulder to shoulder with Sania Mirza monetarily since she was 13. The Tata Archery Academy run by Tata Steel at Jamshedpur has been consistently supporting sportspersons and gainingsilent marches of victory that have failed to generate the kind of hype that more mundane achievements in cricket have. The trio of A Donda Raju, Rajib Basumatary and Ravinder Hembram created world archery history when they put a never before achieved combined score of 440 at the world archery championship in Mexico. In Chennai, Steria, a France-based multinational IT services provider, invests heavily in finding football geniuses. After successfully making the Mumbai Marathon an annual movement with momentum of its own, Standard Chartered Bank is now looking to empower women in villages through netball. Each corporation is on its personal quest that may lead to stray victories, but the fact remains India as a nation is ill geared for the quantum leap into a winning streak. That, remains in the hands of the government, aver sportspersons.
As Bhutia puts it, “Of course we are proud of Bindra and we have a right to take pride in the fact that he represented the nation, even if the merit of it was his own personal effort. Hopefully, his win will bring hope to the many talented kids around. What’s important is the whole package – the positivity about the sport, a good clean healthy environment. That’s what makes winners.”
Real Men: Abir Karmakar / Unpublished
Intro: The pressure to be beautiful all the time gets to men too. In Abir Karmakar’s world, women aren’t the only ones being pushed to unreal standards of perfection says Gayatri
Men who choose to be seen naked, should have six pack abs. That is how it would seem. Look around you, even the ‘real men’ on the covers of health magazines, the average joe you would date, or the colleague in a boring pin-stripe shirt has something intelligent to say about health and works out at least twice a week, if he’s not ‘sporty’.
But not in artist Abir Karmakar’s world. He’s a little tired of the whole six pack thing, has been for a while now, and chooses to paint men real. It’s not just about exploiting the medium of oil paints for its god-given purpose; the exultation of tones of the human flesh in all its reality – stretch marked, dimpled, and belly-tiered, but it’s about finding the real man beneath all the hype.
“I’m not homosexual,” he candidly admits. “I’m straight. But because I’m not macho, and don’t fit into either the stereotypical standards of male and female, people are not able to slot me, so they struggle to find a tag for me.” The struggle affects the way people view his paintings too. His ‘Within The Walls’ is a body of work currently showing at curator Ranjana Steinrucke’s gallery in Mumbai. Siliguri-born Baroda-based Karmakar’s work has been tagged as having homosexual undertones by more than one casual reviewer.
“I’ve never struggled to deny or refute that because the confusion just adds to my social experiment,” says Karmakar quietly. “My men strike female poses, enjoy their bodies, look and feel and emanate an aura of having both genders within them. They are soft as well as strong, intuitive as well as logical, so the viewer cannot slot them. Making the viewer feel uncomfortable by not being able to find the tag that fits is the aim,” he smiles.
It is the anti-thesis to the world outside, he says. A world that beams images of perfect men, Greek gods in figure, impeccably dressed, perfectly wined, dined, suave with women and knowledgeable of the world. “Where is the space for the confused man? The awkward man? The man who can’t speak up for himself? The shy man?” he asks. The man who doesn’t win and who is yet not a loser? The man who is short and fat and probably balding too and is yet not pushing himself to perfection? “They don’t have space, they don’t fit. They don’t have a voice. So they get labeled by whatever suits the nearest observer,” he says.
But the space for him would now be in these paintings. Men in skirts, in silks, in heels, in make up and jewellery, men asking the viewer to challenge what they have seen and known of social concepts of men. Asking as Karmakar himself says, “Does this discomfort you?” It does. Very much. Because that is not what a man is supposed to be. But who is to say?
Times News Network
gayatri.jayaraman@timesgroup.com
Men who choose to be seen naked, should have six pack abs. That is how it would seem. Look around you, even the ‘real men’ on the covers of health magazines, the average joe you would date, or the colleague in a boring pin-stripe shirt has something intelligent to say about health and works out at least twice a week, if he’s not ‘sporty’.
But not in artist Abir Karmakar’s world. He’s a little tired of the whole six pack thing, has been for a while now, and chooses to paint men real. It’s not just about exploiting the medium of oil paints for its god-given purpose; the exultation of tones of the human flesh in all its reality – stretch marked, dimpled, and belly-tiered, but it’s about finding the real man beneath all the hype.
“I’m not homosexual,” he candidly admits. “I’m straight. But because I’m not macho, and don’t fit into either the stereotypical standards of male and female, people are not able to slot me, so they struggle to find a tag for me.” The struggle affects the way people view his paintings too. His ‘Within The Walls’ is a body of work currently showing at curator Ranjana Steinrucke’s gallery in Mumbai. Siliguri-born Baroda-based Karmakar’s work has been tagged as having homosexual undertones by more than one casual reviewer.
“I’ve never struggled to deny or refute that because the confusion just adds to my social experiment,” says Karmakar quietly. “My men strike female poses, enjoy their bodies, look and feel and emanate an aura of having both genders within them. They are soft as well as strong, intuitive as well as logical, so the viewer cannot slot them. Making the viewer feel uncomfortable by not being able to find the tag that fits is the aim,” he smiles.
It is the anti-thesis to the world outside, he says. A world that beams images of perfect men, Greek gods in figure, impeccably dressed, perfectly wined, dined, suave with women and knowledgeable of the world. “Where is the space for the confused man? The awkward man? The man who can’t speak up for himself? The shy man?” he asks. The man who doesn’t win and who is yet not a loser? The man who is short and fat and probably balding too and is yet not pushing himself to perfection? “They don’t have space, they don’t fit. They don’t have a voice. So they get labeled by whatever suits the nearest observer,” he says.
But the space for him would now be in these paintings. Men in skirts, in silks, in heels, in make up and jewellery, men asking the viewer to challenge what they have seen and known of social concepts of men. Asking as Karmakar himself says, “Does this discomfort you?” It does. Very much. Because that is not what a man is supposed to be. But who is to say?
Times News Network
gayatri.jayaraman@timesgroup.com
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