Caught In The Change Trap? The Times of India (What's Hot), New Delhi, 13th November, 2009
Our life is a series of changing situations. Every moment heralds some change or the other... So, do we give into change or adapt ourselves to it? Osho, tells us more...
We are being subjected to too much change in too short a time. Even though the changes are transient, we are taking several jumps in different areas simultaneously. As Alvin Toffler points out, we are suffering from ‘the disease of change’. Even before we register and see the meaning of a fast breaking story and its implications, we face another fast breaking story. Toffler says, “Today, the whole world is a fast breaking story.” And this is the bitter story of our lives.
A major force behind the acceleration of change is today’s knowledge industry. Francis Bacon’s statement, ‘knowledge is power,’ was never so true as it is now. Combined with increasing diversity and sophistication of technology, knowledge is power because knowledge is the driving force behind change. Obviously, change is inevitable and it is the only permanent thing; however, it can prove to be disastrous if, along with the speeding change, we fail to recognise its psychological implications. As mentioned by
Osho, the phenomenally growing change has terribly disturbed our inner world. It has adversely affected our inner balance and equilibrium. It has made us helpless and incapable of experiencing real life.
The challenge now is that, with the accelerating change outside, we have to constantly keep on adapting to it inwardly with clarity. It is this challenge that requires us to seek one’s roots in the insights, teachings, pointers and pathways we may call as wisdom. So, the choice before us was never so clear in the past as it is today: Whether to give in blindly and totally to the transient world or to bring in a balance by valuing the eternal, experiencing the everlasting—the non-disposable, the non-returnable.
One thing is clear, as Osho explains, “Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed, it can be gathered from a library. The heavier the load of knowledge, the more ignorant one becomes. Wisdom comes from the heart, it is the voice of the inner world.” OSHO
A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Ch.2
Striking A Bal-ance Shonali Muthalaly, The Hindu, 13th November, 2009
Plenty of people chop onions and dream about becoming glamorous actors. Aditya Bal, however, posed under the arc lights and dreamt about chopping onions. “I felt I was doing something that wasn’t giving me any real returns. I was looking for something real in life to pursue... Somewhere down the line, food was always on my mind,” he says, over a tall glass of cold coffee at the Accord Metropolitan hotel.
Aditya was in town recently to announce Lay’s “Give us your dillicious flavour” competition, in which consumers across the country are invited to come up with the new flavour for the company’s potato chips. Though a lanky ex-model seems like an unusual choice to promote potato chips, considering how obsessively celebrities tend to count their calories. He says with a laugh, “I’ll be honest with you, male models are always eating. Much more than most people think they do. And working out. It’s a vain existence!”
He should know. A model turned actor turned chef turned TV presenter, he’s spun around the social circuit: ramp-walking, air-kissing, partying… the works. “I did it for 8 to 9 years,” he says. However, Aditya seems faintly embarrassed about his celebrity uncle, Rohit Bal, insisting he’s essentially a small-town boy. “I grew up in Kashmir. It was a simple life,” he says. “We left in the Nineties when the problems started. Then I was in boarding school in Himachal, in Sanawar. I just did my college in Delhi.”
Meanders into modelling
Aditya tripped into the modelling industry by accident. “I was 21 and wanted freedom. I fought with my father and ended in Mumbai.” From here, he says, he just meandered into modelling.
“Then movies, because everyone else was doing that. I didn’t have a plan.” However, he says he was restless. “You get to the stage where it’s all about luck. You curse your luck. Meet people who can supposedly see your future. You put your life and destiny in the hands of everyone but yourself.”
Cooking, on the other hand, was surprisingly satisfying. “My grandmother was a legendary cook… She used to supply the only big supermarket in Delhi with home made jams. And she had a pasta machine, so we would make fresh pasta together.”
So, roughly three years ago, he quit modelling and moved to Goa to intern at Starco, a friend’s restaurant. “I wanted to see if I had the aptitude to shift from a home kitchen to a professional one.” “At first they thought I was just messing around. But inside the kitchen, I finally felt ‘this is my zone. This is it. I’m happy.’ Six months later, Aditya moved to My Place, run by an Italian man who was Osho’s head cook in Pune for 40 years. “At the ashram, he used to make lasagne every Sunday — for 10,000 people!” says Aditya, adding that he learnt to make all kinds of intricate pastas from here. “It’s a super high… There’s something about manual work that is soothing. It’s different from working with your head. More peaceful.”
Living in Goa, dividing time among the restaurant, his home kitchen and piles of cookery books, Aditya made the transition from model to cook. “If you want to learn about food Goa’s the perfect place. Everyone’s talking food. The French are there. The Israelis. The Russians. The English…. It’s like travelling around the world. And you’re still in your own backyard.”
However, once he was back in Mumbai, he realised that the doors of the hotels were firmly closed to self-trained cooks like him. “The industry is like that now. Not just the kitchen industry. Most industries.” However, he didn’t want to go to school “I’ll be 34 now,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Also didn’t want to unlearn everything I knew. Professional training is — I won’t call it cloning — but it doesn’t give you ability to cook with intuition.”
Cooking, he maintains, should come naturally. “You need a basic understanding. You must derive pleasure from it. That must be the best thing that has happened to you in a day.”
Fortunately, even while hotel doors were slamming shut, there was an unexpected opening. NDTV Good Times was looking for a food anchor, and he fitted the role perfectly, thanks to his chaotic career so far, blending modelling, acting and food. “You don’t know what you do in life — when it comes together. Or how,” he smiles, “That’s what they say, in the end, it all works out.”
Wake Up! Inner Self The Times of India (What's Hot), New Delhi, 27 th November, 2009
We are constantly searching for answers to our problems outside our lives. But, these answers are in our consciousness, which we conveniently sidetrack. Osho asks us to wake up to our inner life...
Consciousness can be seen as a clear pool of water in which all our experiences, interactions and activities are reflected. When our consciousness gets disturbed, all that’s reflected in it, begins to rattle. But, when our consciousness is calm everything that is reflected in it also becomes calm and silent. In short, all that is reflected in the consciousness is essentially the mind. So, with a disturbed consciousness, the mind is in full manifestation and consciousness invisible. However, when our consciousness is calm and silent, the mind is invisible; and it ceases to manifest its presence. In order to figure out the newly emerging realities of our life, we need a new understanding. Einstein calls it a “new consciousness.” For such consciousness,we essentially require, what Osho calls ‘formidable courage to look at personal and global realities’. For this, Osho tells us, “to stop finding answers in the past for the problems of today. No ready made answers will work, we need to question all answers given so far to see if they work. If not, then we should have the courage to throw them away and find new answers regardless of how uncomfortable the search may be.” Sages remind us that only a calm and silent consciousness can help us find new answers. Essentially a search guided through meditation, which means becoming conscious of our unconscious patterns of thinking, seeing and behaving. Looking at reality with an alert mind brings better understanding and a coherent andgreater sense of fulfilment.
Consciousness is not restricted to humans. Cows, dogs, cats, horses, elephants also “know” they feel. But they aren’t conscious that they are conscious. A human is unique, a person has what, Osho says is a self-reflective consciousness. The person, he or she, knows that he/she knows. Unfortunately, humans are conscious of all else except our own unconscious world within. Meditation helps us become more conscious of our unconsciousness and that is true self-empowerment.
Plenty of people chop onions and dream about becoming glamorous actors. Aditya Bal, however, posed under the arc lights and dreamt about chopping onions. “I felt I was doing something that wasn’t giving me any real returns. I was looking for something real in life to pursue... Somewhere down the line, food was always on my mind,” he says, over a tall glass of cold coffee at the Accord Metropolitan hotel.
