Govinda Goooovinda

This was long overdue. I still can't believe that it had been more than 2 years since I last visited Thirumala. It definitely had to happen before I started one of the most important phases of my life.

So on a beautiful Saturday morning, Bala and myself left from our house in my SX4. We picked up Srinath and Pande in Malleswaram and then Lakshman at Krishnarajapuram. By the time we left Bangalore it was already 7 AM. The weather was excellent and the traffic was sparse. Perfect driving conditions. These conditions spurred a range of topics from politics to cricket, and the discussions were as usual well balanced and informative.

After our breakfast at Palamner, our next stop was in Kanipakam Vinayaka Temple. The temperature was in the higher 30's by now and our darshan was also delayed. But all of us were really patient, and in the end we had a very good darshan.

Our next stop was Srinivasa Mangapuram, on the way to Tirupati. Legend has it that, if you pray for a life companion here, you will immediately find one. Since I was in no hurry to find one, I prayed for a wonderful life for my brother and sister in law. The deity was wonderfully decorated. And the place was so clam that my mind was almost instantly in peace. This deity infuses a lot of "bhakti" in a person.

We were slightly behind schedule due to bad roads and we were trying to play catch up. We reached Tirupati around lunch time, and immediately went into Bhimas restaurant for a completely authentic Andhra meal. After lots of rice and pappum, we started to look out for accommodations. Either they were expensive or dint have car park. Since I was very particular about the car park, we kept on searching.

After looking a few places, we were fed up and decided to visit Govindaraja patna. Surprisingly Tirupati was so less crowded, we almost felt we were in the wrong place. There was minimum queue for everything, nothing more than a Saturday queue at Ragigudda. So every Darshan was super quick. After Govindaraja patna, we continued our search for a accommodation. Finally we landed up on one with both a car park and also well within our budget. The rooms were decent, nothing much to mention about it, although the mattresses could have been better. But the room search had eaten into our plans and we were so behind that we had to drop Sree Kalahasti.

We next went to Tirchoor Alamelu Mangamma temple, wife of Lord Srinivasa. Yet again we had a super fast darshan and started to hope that the crowd is sparse in Thirumala too. It was night by the time we came back from Padmavati. Our hotel was on a one way. And we dint know how to reach it. Due to our arrogance and stupidity, we decided to find the way on our own without local help. And that was a BIG mistake. We ended up in a dead-end on the 10 feet road, with heavy two wheeler traffic. SX4 being a shockingly big vehicle, reversing it out for 100 meters or so in that traffic was an achievement. After that we asked for directions and reached the right road. We had light dinner, owing to the lunch in Bhima's, which was equivalent to 3 normal meals in terms of quantity. Since we had to get up early next day, we all crashed as soon as we reached the room.

Next day morning we got up at 3:30 AM. As usual Srinath was the lazy bugger who got up last. Everyone was ready by 4:45 AM. And we reached Alapiri by 4:55. And as per our plan we started the climb by 5 AM. We were at the Galigopuram by 6. The climb till Galigopuram is the toughest. But it is the most beautiful climb too. Although you are surrounded by people, you feel alone. It is the time I always use for introspection. You can feel the first sun rays filtering through the clouds, experience the wonderful chirping sounds of the birds, listen to your own breath. The smell "kunkum" and camphor is solacing. This climb will take you to your pinnacle of devotion. It can make an atheist a God loving person.

We were there at Galigopuram by 5:45. Now TTD is giving free darshan tickets to climbers, so that they can have a darshan as soon as they finish the climb. I personally felt it was a great gesture. After getting the ticket, we continued our climb. The rest of the climb is realtively easy and we asked each other a lot of lateral thinking questions. We reached the top at 7:45 AM. It was a decent paced climb. Once on top, we found a room to take a quick bath (through influence :( ) After that we headed to Mayura restaurant for a breakfast which later turned out to be brunch.

We headed for the Free Cloak room, which turned out to be heavily crowded and took almost 1 hour to deposit our bags. Next we joined the darshan queue. We instantly knew that it was not the normal Tirupati crowd and our darshan would be super smooth. And we weren't wrong. The whole darshan took just 2 hours. We got a couple of lucky breaks in the queue which helped us save atleast 40 minutes. But the entire trip was more than worth for the 10 odd seconds. The prasadam was as usual mouth watering. We collected the laddus and took a jeep back to Tirupati.

Once back in Tirupati, we checked out of the room, and headed straight towards Bangalore. The drive was by itself uneventful. It took approx 6 hours with half hour break. I reached home by 10:30 and had the most amazing sleep ever.

Brain Power - Am I fully utilizing it?

I was talking with one of my friends recently, and he came up with an interesting statistic:

Humans use only 10% of their brain power. And that too this 10% is used by the most brilliant, falling in the Einstein category. The rest, mortals, like me use even less.

I hadn't heard of this statistic before. Understandably I was bemused. Much later I came to find that this was a pretty common knowledge. Even my mom knew about this rather absurd statistic. So this one is not a thing that is cooked up in one of the thousands of senseless mail forwards that we get. And my mom also confirmed that this was known to my grand-mom too! So this is definitely been passed since ages. But I consider this to be a myth. And I'll list out my reasons for the same.

The idea that we only use 10% of our brains is probably such an enduring myth because it's comforting to think we have spare capacity. The 'unused' 90% could take up the slack after brain injury or offer the possibility for miraculous self-improvement. These were some of the thoughts that were passing in my mind to refute this myth.

• If we only use 10% of our brains then damage to some parts of our brains should have no effect on us. As most of you will agree that this is patently not true.
• From an evolutionary perspective it is highly unlikely we developed a resource-guzzling organ, of which we only use 10%. This doesn't make any sense.
  
• Brain imaging such as MRI shows that even while asleep there aren't any areas of our brain that completely 'switch off'. Seen this in one of the episodes of 'House M.D'. I know, it is still a TV show. But it might be true too.
  
• Parts of the body that aren't used soon shrivel and die. Same goes for the brain. Any neurons we weren't using would soon shrivel and die. Its just principles of evolution.

Anyone who still maintains we only use 10% of our brains after all these facts, has to come up with a counter-argument for each one of these. Actually, you might argue that imaging technology is rubbish or the neurons are only working at 10% capacity, but refuting all four, taken together? Now that's tricky.

Whatever its provenance, the 10% myth is certainly a slippery customer. The reason is two-pronged: first, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist and second, people like to believe it. If I say I've seen God, or visited Mars, or that all our brains have huge untapped potential, you can't definitively prove me wrong.

Perhaps putting it the other way around might deliver the knock-out blow. Instead of talking about the 90% of untapped potential, just ask people why they only use 10% of their brains. Would anyone seriously admit to that? I, for one, am working at maximum capacity. Well, most of the time anyway...

The Enigma called 'MIND'

Let me start this with a short story.

Across a crowded room your eyes lock with an attractive stranger. You look away, you look back. The first hint of a smile plays across their lips. Suddenly you're nervous, your mind goes blank, you want to go over and you want to run away, both at the same time. You try to make yourself look busy in some other chore, but your mind is only thinking of that gorgeous stranger. You turn around too fast, bump into someone, almost spilling your drink. 'Wow,' you think as you recover, 'What am I doing!'. Its more of a amazement rather than a question.

And...cut.

Unfortunately I have to bring you out of this little scene to ask a question. Do you think you'd be able to accurately describe why you find this person attractive? Indeed how good are we in general at pinpointing what it was about others that attracts us? That is, the inability to describe what is attractive about another person. That's probably why we end up using such vague words like 'energy', 'magnetism' or 'electricity'. Perhaps we genuinely don't know. This, along with many other questions are simply mind-boggling.

How do great artists create? How do brilliant scientists solve the hardest problems in their field? Listen to them try to explain and you'll probably be disappointed. Artists say mysterious things like: "The picture just formed in my mind." Writers tell us that: "I don't know where the words come from." Scientists say they: "Just had a hunch."

Of course, not all scientists, artists and writers give such mysterious answers. Some talk about the processes they went through or what inspired their conceptual jump. But their explanations are almost invariably unsatisfying. They usually can't really explain how they made that vital leap of the imagination. This is strange. Why is it that otherwise brilliant and articulate people seem unable to adequately explain their thought processes? Don't they know how they did it?

What is true of great scientific and artistic leaps of imagination is also true in everyday life. When people are asked why they chose one career over another, one partner over another or one flavor of ice-cream over another, the same problems emerge. Often, people's answers are unconvincing or they just don't know.

The process of human creativity is both fascinating and, at the same time, mystifying. Understanding the mental processes of great thinkers offers an enormous reward to any who can replicate them: immortality. Perhaps if we really understood what was going through their minds, we too could create an object or idea that would live long after our deaths.

There was a study conducted some time back in a shopping mall:
"For this study researchers set themselves up in a mall pretending to carry out a consumer survey on nightgowns and nylon stockings. Passersby were asked to evaluate what they were told were four different nightgowns and four different pairs of stockings. In fact, all four items were identical.

Quite by accident they discovered a positional effect for the identical goods: people seemed to prefer the item that was on the far right. In fact this effect was really obvious for the stockings. The right-most pair, although identical to the left-most was preferred by a factor of four to one.

When asked why they had chosen a particular item, no one mentioned its position. Even when experimenters suggested to people that the position might have an effect, most participants looked at best very confused and at worst utterly dismissive.

Result: these people didn't have a clue why they preferred one identical pair of stockings over another. "

This study shows us exactly how how little access we have to unconscious processes during everyday activities. This also shows how we often fail to spot effects that are really there.