Customer Service

Fortunately, I sounded a little groggy, having just leapt out of bed to pick up the phone. Yes, I was quick to respond, at the beck and call of whatever is in-coming. Furthermore, it could be someone in actual need of my attention these days, with my loved one not yet and my looked after one no longer living with me. Unable to pick up who exactly it is on the other end, I basically hear, generically, that all too familar polite intonation and careful diction, most of us are only too familiar with.

Confirmation

I only really hear the words “Microsoft Windows” in a lilting Indian voice, and am briefly transported to a sunnier clime and the fragrance of cardamom and sandlewood swirls about my nostrils to the dulcet tones of a morning raga my chilly bones summon up for me in my mind’s eye.

For that vibe:
A morning raga by the inimitable Hariprasad Chaurasia Raga Ahir Bhairav. For more clues on "what you are listening to" or "how to listen to"(the technical framework) I recommend you consult Deepak S. Raja, here for: Raga Ahir Bhairavi or the rare (mid-morning) Ahiri.

• More pictures to go with this vibe: North-West India

I wait for him to ask me to turn on my computer before I tell him in my hoarse voice, that I wouldn’t know how to turn on the computer, which I have left off ever since my son and husband died in that plane crash. I hear myself and worry to what lengths I might not go to shake up this world. Almost relieved to hear, the man on the line doesn’t pause after this cruel counter-attack, but rather, instantly picks his option in response: “So, Madam, you don’t own a computer?”
I guess that will do, and I assent.
The phone call is ended abruptly without any further persuasion that I might do well to get a computer (running on Windows naturally) or something to that extent; was the young man missing up on a golden opportunity? Vulnerable woman, clueless about how to reconnect to the world after a catastrophic tragedy wrecked her life? Couldn’t he help to set her up in a community that would never crash on her? No, that would be a different deparment, of course. Not everybody in the world is trying to sell you something.

Additional:

Read up on Bovine Economy in India and cow vigilante attacks

Listen to find what can be heard

I rub out my Karmic scratch to my day’s beginning with a white lie and write it off to a step in the dance this customer service employee dances the live-long day. The insults this guy must not already have had slung his way, by my time 9 am! How immune he must have become to verbal abuse or clever time-wasting retalliations for this job. I am not sure this thick skin is so great for the rest of your karma work, but that is another subject concerning all of us who work for the System.

I am prompted to turn to my dear Deepak Raja's world of Hindustani Music, and find instantly what I am looking for: a Raga Mudhuvanti, suited to listen to when watching the sun go down

I don’t have an example of the Mudhavanti, I don't think, in my raga collection, but I do know the Raag Multani, which never fails to make me yearn for what I once had and lost in love but painfully, perhaps somewhere on th Indo-Gangetic plains, or otherwise En-gedi.

Please enjoy the lyrical and poignant mood that lies embedded in the oppressive heat by Indrani Mukherjee

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You, too, can be sublimely pregnant with the hope whose value you yourself guard and grow.

"The Raga-ness of Ragas" by Deepak S. Raja, in combination with his other works are pretty thorough and definitive in regards of all you would ever want to know about Hindustani music, and furthermore offer personal and more innovative approaches alongside the traditional ones. Reading about the Raga, however, may require no small amount of musicology, or at least the basics of solfège. However, lacking such technical know-how, I am soon transported, anyway, by classical Indian music into a deeper layer of our potential as Healers and Knowers (of Healing) by Deepak’s blogs in combination with listening to the examples of the ragas performed by musicians who often are in service as amplifiers to the quietly Ever-Present cosmic Great Resonance (of the Logos).

Setting the Pace

I take mental note of how one needs to break up business strategies into fragments and compartmentalise them; operating on people’s consciousness takes time. Easy does it, step by step. Doctors and priests know all about the time it takes.

I learn the Madhuvanti is an “orphan” raga. Are we not all without parents, without children, compressed into a single author of our destiny in the twillight of our life, headed into the darkness of the Unknown, or but faintly recollected accepting the Invitation to be Renewed (into a New or Healed Man)?

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Warning: And now for something completely different. (Not Indian.)

Alternative listening for my more open-minded readers who won’t find India, Africa or USA divided by any tags.

For some positive steps in the direction of intertwining inclusion and individuality for a better sense of community from our youngers: Own STEP