Zero Connectivity, Absolute Reflection

Those that may check up on my feeds regularly might've noticed I don't post as much, and that was in fact going to change roughly two weeks ago, but between some unbelievably frustrating and inconvenient power shortages, fluctuations and cuts (another day spent in India as the common man), as well a stroke of misfortune and badly timed public holidays that prevented renewal of our internet connection, my posts resumed their former inconsistency. Something I am looking forward to improving upon in the coming days and weeks. Though extremely inconvenient and static in the absence of internet availability, those slow, warm days that passed, some without power, most without the internet, and a few without both were something of an epiphany of sorts. It truly is marvelous how much one can contemplate and observe in life in the absence of the ever present, spontaneous and vibrant world the web connects us to.

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There are many schools of though on what meditation can accomplish for the body, some ranging into scientifically proven claims of stress reduction and controlled heart rate, while others branch into fields and possibilities most could only call mystic. However, whatever else people might say about whether or not meditation can accomplish any of that, it is not easily disputed that sitting still every once in a while, abandoning the rush and hubbub of one's everyday life, and just (maybe) closing your eyes and letting the world flow around you, experiencing it as an animal or inanimate object might...can often prove to be a truly relaxing and even enlightening experience for those who do not make a practice of doing so, as the mind's inner workings, when not bombarded endlessly by data and information being absorbed from the colourful and exceedingly occurent environment most of us reside in, can take on a vast variety of shapes and trains of thought, stunningly creative and refreshed in its liberation from its continual daily tasklist. Prolonged meditation, also a familiar concept to me, can contribute a great deal to balance of mind, body (and to those who believe), the soul. My indulgence of this relaxing practice yielded results no different.

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Coming back now, fresh, bright eyed and bushy tailed, the ol' noggin's looking a helluva lot cleaner and ready for action, inside out. If ever any of you out there find yourself forcibly deprived of an internet connection, do what you must to restore it, but take some time to enjoy the world as it is without the www. lens on it.

Apart from all this, I also got to watch something rather amusing this weekend while I was out this Saturday for a contact class. When returning from said class, I found myself at a bus stop waiting for the bus heading towards my part of town, on a very busy street, so chock full of students returning from school that they were overflowing off the sidewalk and onto the road itself, with buses, cars, bikes, bullock carts and horse-drawn trailers navigating around them in the heat of the two o'clock afternoon sun, when suddenly...I spot two cows.

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Now obviously this comes as little to no surprise to anyone who lives and traverses the streets of India on a regular basis, or even to anyone who spent anything close to two or three weeks here, but these two cows were plodding along in the midst of all this chaos and confusion, more or less side by side, when almost in the centre of the rather narrow road, they just stop and stand still. The cars are still maneuvering around all the obstacles in the road, the buses are still trying to slowly move around the kids and the animals, and the bikes are still weaving in between, and the noise of a train behind the bus stop on the other side of a wall separating the tracks from the road booms by...but the bovine twosome can give absolutely no f*cks.

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At this point I whip out my phone because I want to capture this on camera...unfortunately this rather amusing sight does not last too long, as the first cow, looking desperately in need of a good milking, starts to walk forward a short distance before the second one slowly follows. As if they were a couple on tour in a foreign land paused to gather their bearings before proceeding.

Credit: Me

So those were the highlights of a week and a quarter spent without an internet connection. Go figure...