Waking from a deep slumber

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz

2009-12-23T00:48:00.000-08:00

An article by William Deresiewicz,
My favorite line from the article is "the first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you."
Few lines from his article,
"It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house." Full article

Stories from the farm

2009-08-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

For the last 4 months I have been spending more and more time in farms, talking to farmers and silently sitting with them. The experience has been ecstatic, so as I try to relate myself to the farm I take the time to cite some of the happenings and stories from the farm.
Nature has an incredible ability to rejuvenate: Prof RadhaMohan is a very unsual man , in his dhoti he resembles a traditional farmer in more ways than one.His farm Sambhav is in Nayagarh(100 Km from Bhubaneswar). His farm was started 20 years ago and is a hallmark of excellence all over India.During the initial days of the farm, one season there was a very good rainfall and grasses started growing, with the grasses came the grasshoppers and they were all over the place.To be cont...

A stream of self realizations

2009-07-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

The last year had brought with it a continual set of self realizations... I wonder, whether being action oriented is conducive to this stream of self realizations....

Still in a deep sleep

2009-07-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

Finally I did start a new blog...... and maybe I will be better able to relate to my own self through these blogs.I am very happy living the life of a nomad ... for 14 months I did that and stumbled upon infinite richness......I have started recommending the same (living like a nomad) to my siblings and friends...hope they are able to join me in this beautiful journey.