1.Exploring the deep mysteries of life and death

I was in Gaya during pitra paksha or shraddh time, Gaya is a place in Bihar, primarily known for performing a ritual called "Pitra Tarpan".According to Hindu beliefs, performing this ritual in Gaya helps in liberating the souls of our deceased loved ones and ancestors.Many of us will dismiss this ritual straightaway, and I am no exception to this.

However, we can't deny the significance of this place as Gaya is same Bodh Gaya, where Lord Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.He discovered profound insights into life's enduring questions about human existence.He unraveled the mysteries of human sufferings and the true causes behind it.

So definitely this place come with a great value specially from cultural standpoint, as we give a lot of emphasis on the spirituality, contentment and final destination.And this final destination is not about Death.Because we believe that Death is just a milestone, our journey continues even after death.Still the question is, Why I was in Gaya ?

After my father's painful and sudden death, life appeared empty and within empty me, solitude weighed heavily on me , ending with severe anxiety.

Prior to this, I had no idea about how Anxiety feels like.After some research I figured out that Anxiety is the natural response of body when you are unable to find satisfactory answers to certain questions and you can not correlate a few instances of your life and the reasons of those taking place.

Questions like why do we take birth and die?Are we part of a bigger network like a matrix?Is someone controlling us?Is someone actually finding joy in seeing us suffer?

Having a quick and easy access to a lot of information can sometimes be a problem.Because you start to expect quick answers to any kind of problem, and you get out of practice to show patience and go deeper to find out your versions of answers.And thus we feel anxiety when ready-made satisfactory answers are not found.

So I explored all possible avenues to alleviate my distress.Which included medical help, counselling, reading bhagwad Gita, meditation etc.Over a span of three years, my anxiety gradually reduced.But I still had lingering questions.So one priest also suggested Gaya Visit to get rid of Ancestral Dosh if any.

In Gaya, I saw a massive fair of people who were performing these rituals for their gone family members.I was surprised that how the relatives of gone souls are ready to perform all that difficult looking pooja from brahma muhurt or early dawn to sunset with all sincerity, including cooking and donating their gone family members' favorite dishes to priests, dresses as if it will satisfy the needs of gone souls.

While people were alive we do not pay this much attention to their needs.Am I any exception?No, I wish I could have done some meaningful and constructive discussion with my father before he left us.

I did these rituals with all my sincerity, but deep down, I knew that these rituals at such a crowded surrounding wouldn't do any magic to provide the answers I sought.Hence, I was looking for serene destination so I decided to spend next week at a serene destination like Kerala, to contemplate the root causes of my questions.I reached to Aleppy Kerala.

I was in search of these questions and 5 days were already passed.I wish there was a quicker way to get direct answers to such complicated questions, Because I could not afford to get answers staying in the resort for months, I just received a few clues as the answers of why we come and go as living beings.

So I thought of tricking my brain by giving justifications of clues to make them full-fledged answers, so that it gets satisfied, irrespective of the fact that whether those are real answers to my question or not.

So, I created this blog by putting everything together to trick my brain using the clue I received during those 4 days.And that Clue is the theme of my BLOG.Leaving a Legacy could be one of the reason we come and go.

But Its not convincing enough as a reason, so I went for a quick shortcut wherein I just have to justify that Clue is only answer I was looking for since last 3 years and I began to explain why the legacy we leave behind, is the reason we enter and leave this world.

How the Leaving behind a Legacy influences our existence and why it matters.How it can shape our entire journey even after we are dead.Let's look at the legacies of following names and think about the first thought that comes to your mind on knowing the name.

Mahatma Gandhi Lata Mangeshkar  Major Dhyanchand  Mother Teresa  Steve Jobs

Now the first thought which comes to our mind is synonymous to these great people and I am sure they have really worked hard to become synonymous for all these powerful positive words.

A person's legacy is defined by the kind of work that they do and the contribution they make to the world.If you make a difference in the lives of others, then your legacy will not only motivate and inspire those around you, but also those who are coming after you.

We leave a legacy behind not only to preserve our own memory but to illuminate the path for future generations.By sharing our wisdom, experiences, and values, we empower those who come after us to learn, grow, and make a positive impact on the world, ensuring that our influence endures long after we're gone.

2.Embracing Death - My Mom's taboo topic

My mom believed that if we don't talk of death, it will not touch us.

Steve Jobs who was scared of death as a child read this quote, which changed his perspective about Death.

If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.

If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

No one wants to die.And yet death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it.And that is as it should be, because Death is Life’s change agent.It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.

Fearlessness is the essential quality needed to break barriers, overcome obstacles, and ultimately leave a memorable and influential legacy.

3.Legacy finds its way

On my way back from Kerala, I was little disappointed as my Blog wasn't complete, and as I strolled through the airport, I spotted a Café Coffee Day (CCD), and a rush of nostalgia flooded over me.It instantly took me back to the year 2004 when I began my professional journey at my first organization, IBM, in Bangalore.The sight of that CCD triggered memories of doing project work and job interviews, friends' reunions, candid heartbreak discussions, farewells.

CCD was founded by VG Siddharth in year 1996 at brigade road Bangalore to offer Coffee for rs.25 when coffee was available outside at Rs 5.But the exciting part about this coffee shop - it combined the joy of surfing the internet with the love of coffee!This clever idea took advantage of the internet's popularity at that time, and it ended up being a big hit.

I shifted to Gurgaon in 2008 but still CCD remained the fav destination for casual and business meetings.But I stopped noticing CCD post 2018, when we shifted to Dehradun.I was aware of downfall of CCD because of loss in the business and other emerging cafés in India like Barista, Costa, Starbucks.

Encountering Cafe Coffee Day became the final and missing piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve in the form of a blog.

4.Missing piece of my Puzzle

Not sure if you are aware about the sudden and painful suicide of its founder VG Siddharth in year 2019, jumping from a bridge in the river, due to huge debt of 7000 Cr on CCD corporation.

On one side it was nostalgia and the other side surprise to see the Café coffee day's revival after all the negative news floating in the media about its bankruptcy after VG Siddharth's death news.

I entered the café and thought of completing my blog there, so I delayed my cab to Dehradun from Delhi.

I went through the survival story of CCD and got so inspired knowing  the survived Wife Malvika Hegde daughter of Ex-CM Karnataka SM Krishna, bravely took responsibility for CCD all by herself.Instead of giving up and letting the company fail, she chose to carry on her husband's work and keep his legacy alive.

She sold off few loss generating outlets and very strategically she could reduce the debt of 7000 crores to few hundreds of crores transforming her from a broken Wife to a successful CEO, who could save the legacy of her husband which otherwise was appearing near to impossible .

But surely her journey from 2019 till 2023 wouldn't have been easy.In a very similar situation, I found myself unable to carry on my father's work of running a Sanskrit newspaper after he suddenly left us without any notice.Not because this newspaper was running in some kind of losses or debt, but there were other reasons.

5.Final answer

My father started a Sanskrit newspaper in year 2002, to make more people aware of the secret gems of our culture.He believed that unlocking the treasure required knowledge of Sanskrit.With his newspaper, he aimed to emphasize the usefulness of the language and transform its perception from being traditional to being the most scientifically designed language.

However, once he departed, his dream was on the verge of extinction completely.I was restricted by my limited understanding of Sanskrit and lacked the same level of passion as my father.I was clueless.

But after he left, I decided to read his articles to understand his final thoughts.Those were in Sanskrit, but thanks to technology and Sanskrit literates who could translate the articles for me.

After reading one of his post, I was reminded of my discussion with him on the significance of horoscope matching before marriage.I was debating that we should focus on the compatibility of 2 individuals rather than focusing on the horoscope match, which he considered an important step before matching a groom for my younger sister.

While our culture sees the marriage from a different angle, which is very well aligned with the nature's law of survival of best.According to our culture marriage brings a responsibility in the hands of families of bride and groom to do a match which can produce the best offsprings to the next generations, and that is possible when we follow the gene pool theory to have medically fit and best produced children out of the marriage.

Another post compared how Ayurveda treats a disease taking a holistic approach as apposed to modern medicine which does not have cure to many diseases , it only manages a patient or recommends of removing the problem area.And this post needed no justification, as I myself had witnessed the painful death of my father in ICU with all modern medical facilities.

He wrote some posts that encouraged the Indian startup community to take inspiration from our ancient texts and use technology to bring those ideas to life for the benefit of society.

All his beleifs which earlier I dismissed as old-fashioned and out of touch with the modern world, started to appear scientific.Feasible in today's time or not is a different debate.

More I went through his writings and delved into the teachings, they opened more questions.

I decided to revive the Sanskrit newspaper  but How ?because  I had not learnt Sanskrit even in my school, but with the help of team of newspaper I enrolled my self for a sanskrit learning course and after 8 months of my father demise I was able to publish next edition of the news paper.We also launched Mobile App for digital readers, which gained the dedicated following not only from India but also few european countries.

This marked the final piece of my blog in café coffee day.Sometimes, a painful and unexpected loss can jolt us into a renewed sense of purpose, propelling us to continue the mission and carry forward a legacy for the benefit of future generations.The commitment to fulfill the mission of a departed soul demonstrates that 'Legacy finds its way', and you only become a medium.Where You, your existence, taking birth and dying becomes secondary only making missions important.

As Steve Jobs says, you can never connect the DOTS looking forward.And Blogging has helped me in capturing abstract Dots by looking backwards and finally connecting them.Your anxiety will come to rest, when you realize that You are not that important as you imagined, only missions are important.