Jay

Jay arrived in Ahmedabad last Saturday. For the past couple months I've been eagerly anticipating his arrival. I was so anxious that up until only a few days ago I thought he was coming two days earlier than he actually was. He couldn't get here fast enough.

Jay has come on an open-ended visit. No specific return date, he bought a one-way ticket. There are many goals. On a day-to-day basis, he will be working on Awaaz.De. He has several titles: CFO, VP of Business Development, VP of Marketing, and VP of Sales. The idea is for him to disrupt the company to get it to the next level, and to stabilize it there. Besides that, I want to have him connect with friends here, especially Nimo and rest of Shreeji Krishna. He will also bond with family, plug into the MS ecosystem as he is moved, improve his Gujarati, travel, unwind, reflect on his next life steps, and have fun. So he has a lot on his plate.

As soon as he touched ground I got him working on AD. The first day we had several meetings that got him up to speed with company status, his roles, and responsibilities. It was clearly way too much to dump on him at once, he was still battling jet lag and a new environment he hadn't been to in years. But I couldn't help it. I had a ready todo list of all his tasks, he is going to be a big help to the company.

Jay has taken a vow to go vegan for 2012, which is a challenge even while living in India. Already he's had to curtail meals because of some trace dairy product incorporated into a dish. Me and Nimo are dairy cows (pun intended), we look for every opportunity to insert cheese, milk, yogurt, etc. into our diet. We put paneer in our Khichdi. So it will be an adjustment. But that's part of the challenge Jay signed up for. It's very admirable.

In general I am finding many things admirable about him. Since his 10-day self course in January, I've sensed a shift. It's most noticeable in conversation with him. His mind has really opened up. Stubbornness and hard-headedness runs in our family, we all have it. But Jay has really shown a resilience of mind that comes through developing a deep-seeded balance. A brittle-minded person easily gets trapped into confrontations and defensive positions. A resilient mind absorbs and responds rather than reacts. That person is a net-positive to a conversation. They hold the space, rather than being a force for collapsing it. I've found several instances recently where Jay has held the conversational space where I threatened to collapse it. It's so valuable a skill, and takes a commitment to patience, equanimity, empathy, and egolessness. Underlying all of the weaker-level mental states is the ego. And meditation is at essence an ego-shattering exercise.

To say I'm excited to have Jay here is an understatement. Over time I've come to feel that not being close by him is an unnatural state of living for me. An incomplete, limbo existence. Now that he's here, I'm home.