Vanaprastha

Srini ...

This one is really a response to your blog , tucked away in mine ... !
This is because I hold a contrarian assessment  of what you really are seeking , when you write " I MUST move from Gruhastha stage to Vanaprastha " and elsewhere   "..not to seek monetary awards"

Ensconed in a guest house at MICAs wonderful Campus in rural Gujarat , with monkeys swaying across the huge tress and the ocassional shrill cry of the peacock, I do not want to enter into a debate ( origin Latin de "down" batuere "to beat") or a discussion ( Latin to disperse , shake up and, I suspect Greek to "throw " discus) - not even a dialogue ( Greek dia "through" :logos "spirit"). I never was good at convincing others and shy away from a fiery retort. Also... I do not want to mar your site with a contrarian viewpoint .

If you have got this far , and hopefully are interested to read on , then my time is well spent. Incidentally it is well spent even otherwise , since I have decided to do a spot of writing a day , and today it is this piece.

Vanaprastha- to me is not the suspension of one activity ( consultancy in your case) and giving up friends. Vanaprastha is literally a physical moving away to a forest and to begin a new phase of "living". Instead of time on social meetings one needs to fend for oneself with foraging the forest , in meditation inwards ( no TVs no internet) . Vanaprastha is a full time activity , performed at a pace in keeping with the age. It is, in my view a fantastic solution to the obvious development of one becoming irrelevant to society.

So, your moving to Kapra and our ( quite likely) moving to Shamirpet is not Vanaprastha. We  move with our TVs our Computers , our cars , our mobiles, our daily links with the children etc etc.!! In an earlier blog, you mentioned that it no longer worried you that people have stopped calling you. WRONG!! The very fact that you mention it , it is evident that you describe a "loss" which has not affected you. A loss nevertheless. If you truly did not care , this sentence would not even find a mention!! You understand? The fact that you reach out to students ( as a mentor) , that you send emails to friends about your blog, the fact that you even maintain a blog ( why else, if not to share?) , is a clear indication that you desire contact!

The reality Srini is that you need contact with society. The same society that gave you the opportunity to conduct your consultancy, the same society that admitted you to the Round Table -which I know you regularly attended..Replace them now with mentoring and blogging and playing bridge on the Net!

And a response to "not seeking monetary rewards" - replace it with "but seeking positive mental strokes.." Wanting those positive mental strokes is as selfish as creating wealth  - both actions being equally valid and justified. Both of us have our sense of failures (as would the richest guys from our respective IIM batches) , and both of us are really grappling with the problems of living in society ( NOT Vanaprastha) ,(1) coping with the huge time on our hands  as well as (2)  a near irrelevance to the society .

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