Rahul Xavier Singh

The Pulse of a Nation.

Rahul Singh — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:48:58 +0000

Photo by Cary Scott Photography

On my way to work this morning during the early hours of the morning when the Sun was not yet to be found, I inadvertently found myself sitting in the midst of a group of people on the 36 Bus who were just as eager to get to work as I was. Each person’s story was so wildly different from mine. I could hear it without asking. Each person’s story was so wildly similar to mine. I sensed it without knowing. The bus ride took us through Pennsylvania Avenue, by the White House, by the Museums and Memorials, up Independence Avenue next to the Native American Museum and the Botanical Gardens. In the twilight arose the Capitol, a product of the great Experiment. I saw a glimpse of America. I saw the pulse of a nation.

In the bus, I saw the homeless, the weary, the restless. I saw the eager, the proud, and the hungry. I saw poor and the rich. The bus driver while doing his job, taking the first bus from all Friendship Heights to the Naylor Road station, must have at some point realized the importance of his duty. He must have at some point in his career seen how critical it was for him to get up earlier than everyone else to drive these commuters to their livelihood. I took the early bus because I wanted to be early, but didn’t expect the bus to be full.

I used to think that for every industrious person, there were 10 lazy people who didn’t want or need to work hard for others. Today, my mind has changed. Tonight I go to sleep knowing that tomorrow morning, there will be another bus load of people going from Friendship Heights Station to the Naylor Road Station and at 5:15 am it will pass through the village of Georgetown through Wisconsin Avenue and M. St. I’ll hopefully catch it as it goes by Thomas Jefferson St.

The Apple Seed

Rahul Singh — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 04:31:36 +0000

As humans we give our hearts and minds over to the stimuli that we observe for better or for worse in terms of results and consequences. I don’t know when I consciously started to “brown bag” my lunch on a daily basis. It didn’t happen over night. Like Rome, my habit wasn’t built in a day. For whatever numerous aspects of my life which contributed to this habit, there is one outcome which I am glad has happened.

The Apple

The apple I happened to be eating for my morning snack was special. It was like no other apple I found until then. The apple I held in my hand had a destiny beyond the normal apple. The normal apple as we all know comes from the supermarket, just like the cheese, and the ingredients for the beautiful hand crafted wrap I happened to have made for myself that day. Honestly, the apple actually comes from a tree. It is picked by an immigrant migrant worker who examines it to put it in a bushel that he or she carries on his or her back. The apple is then sent for inspection where it gets a little sticker of approval. Then, only the masters of the fruit supply chain know how it gets from the orchard through seven states and into my local grocery store. I know why it was in my brown bag. It made it’s way there because I felt like eating an apple.

The apple I was eating was not too ripe, not to raw. Since it was a golden apple, it wasn’t too our and not too sweet. It was good. I ate the apple and and I felt good that I had consumed something relatively healthy to satisfy my craving for some organic sugar in the morning.

The Apple Core

As I took bites, the juices flowed down my chin and on to my hands. This is not entirely new feeling when biting into a juicy apple, but I distinctly remember pausing. As a drop of juice fell down to my desk, I stopped to think. As most things edible in the developed world, especially from nature, the apple’s mass was on it’s way out of it’s life as an apple and on it’s way to being digested through my body and ending up in the plumbing system of the District of Columbia.

As I continued to eat, I bit closer and closer to the core. I tried to stay away from the seeds even while I ate because I know from past experience seeds aren’t too tasty. I paused again. This time I stopped because the hollow core was relatively expansive compared to other apple’s I had eaten.

The Apple Seed

This apple was special. Inside was a chamber of secrets. The core had an opening through which I sighted my find. Growing in my apple, there was a sprouting seed. This sprouting seed couldn’t wait to planted in the soil. It wanted to grow into a tree. It didn’t want to wait for the natural cycle of things. It wasn’t going to follow the destiny of all other seeds that resided in the apples at the super market. This seed was going to be different.

When I painstakingly extracted this delicate sprouting seed, I couldn’t help but be overcome with an indescribable feeling which gave me goosebumps. I held in my hand something so small that it fit on my finger tip. Something moved me to record the image. I used what I could to capture it’s beauty. Ironically the Apple iPhone couldn’t compare to the optical ability of the scanner in my office.

The Apple Seed

This image has inspired me to create a brand identity for one of my company’s future products and to apply a metaphor of spreading seeds of empowerment. Nothing so simple, yet elegant could have crossed my mind. A handful of us around the globe are working on a project which we hope will empower local, regional, and global markets to be more equitable to people through the democratizing element of the Internet.

Such is the beauty of God. Thanks, God.

The Song of America

Rahul Singh — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:36:06 +0000

During Martin Luther King Jr. Week, every year Georgetown University celebrates the memory of the American hero with a series of events which involve Students, Faculty, and Staff in addition to a concert at the Kennedy Center where the “Legacy of a Dream” award is given to an outstanding person who contributed to the community in the same spirit of justice and quality as Dr. King. I was honored to have been invited to reflect on how Dr. King’s and his legacy have impacted my life during the Spiritual event on Wednesday January 20th, 2010 at Dahlgren Chapel. The spoken words were nearly identical to this draft of the speech. Although I didn’t think to record or transcript what I said, this is more or less what I delivered.

Friends,

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am honored to be here in the presence of God to show you a reflection of my being.

The Song of America

In my adopted country of America, there is a song many of us sing. The song is not constituted of chords and rhythms. The song is not sung by voices of choirs, nor hummed by folks on their walks around their neighborhood.

The Song of America is a memory of our heroes, our legends, our movers and our shakers, our thinkers and our makers.

The Song of America is written by our Creator to show that a belief in God makes all things possible. We will live in a society where one day freedom will ring from every hilltop to every mountain, from every village to every hamlet, from every state to every city.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a melody in our great Song of America when he became the quintessential person who took up his cross for a dream. He had a dream in which all of God’s children would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

When I was a child, I lived in a small town of Culpepper, VA. In a town in which 300 people graduated high school, my older brother was the first Indian American to graduate. Needless to say we were different from everybody else.

Growing up, my parents asked me to read and would let me watch Public Television. And in reading books and watching Public Television, I encountered Dr. King.

I had and still have a love affair with books and although I don’t watch much television now, no human force could have detached me from PBS. Although I was familiar with the Martin Luther King Day Holiday, it was the television miniseries “Separate but Equal” which showed me who he was and what he did.

I have read a few books, but the first one I read on Dr. King had illustrations. I remember them very vividly especially the last page of the book. The last illustration showed people pointing away from the hotel balcony where the man was assassinated.

However it was the illustration of Dr. King speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial which inspired me and continues to inspire me today. The joy I felt when I first heard “I have a dream” in indescribable. Growing up in a non-Christian household, this was probably the first sermon I heard.

In Culpepper, people either knew about India or they didn’t. There were those that didn’t quite understand me because I talked in an English Indian accent.

Others didn’t understand how I had brown skin like black people, but a facial structure like white people.

I was called the n-word by black and white people. And the black people weren’t using it as a sign of respect. Ignorance is not bliss, but in wisdom there is sorrow. When I learned about the civil rights movement, it gave me newfound strength and hope that even if it wasn’t in my lifetime, in the country of America, with people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., there would be understanding. One day.

I became a believer in the Almighty nearly four years ago. My car slid on ice and rain over a cliff. I yelled out His name, and He came. Jesus Christ saved my life. This day and every day since, I have not forgotten of God’s presence in my life.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s message of service and doing for others has been a part of my life whether I knew it or not. God calls his children together to serve each other, so that we can share our lives and our dreams, so that we can share the good news of the coming of the Lord. When I became a believer, Dr. King was one of the exemplars of servant leadership whom I learned from.

Dr. King was a servant among leaders, and a leader among servants. God called King to be of service to America and the World. God called King to be of service to the meek, to the desperate and the weak. If it weren’t for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., my father would likely not have been able to have had the opportunity to come here. If it weren’t for Dr. King, I would not be here. I would likely not have heard the Gospel.

Today I want to be a leader among servants, and a servant among leaders. I want to be a melody in the Song of America.

Pens, Friends, and Providence.

Rahul Singh — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 19:09:31 +0000

There is a well known saying that has been passed from sage to sage, friend to friend, from one society to another. A picture is worth a thousand words. The reason why I believe a picture is worth a thousand words is because it took all of Creation to precede it in order for it to be. That being said, what is to be — whether to have an end or not to have an end or otherwise known as a finite point of existence — is unknown and unknowable to philosophers, and known to believers. That is a subject matter for another day, another season. That is not the reason I write this story. The image which you see in this story has existed in the number of places where this picture has been seen. Namely my phone, my computer, the readers who very few have caused it to come to being on their computer screens by clicking on the article. The picture itself is no longer unique.

I am. I will be. One Day.

I in some process of action or another arranged the pens for a purpose. I can tell you that the original intention was not to write this story. The process itself was my muse. My original intent was to separate the good pens from the bad pens. Almost all of the physical elements of the picture which are ordered as such are not unique. Just as the image you see has been recreated or regenerated in several places, the items have been regenerated a number of times. Everything you see is manufactured, in mass, for the consumption by consumers of the market economy wherever these items are distributed. The pens, the folder, and the back of the letter from Doctors without Borders which shows their 1999 Nobel Peace Prize.

There were a total of about 50 pens which you can’t see because the camera lens doesn’t have the capacity to record everything, just as this story can only tell you one perspective of the “Big Picture“.

Some of the pens, I’ve bought at the various stores around where I have lived. Some of the pens, I have unknowingly pocketed. Two from Dahlgren Chapel actually say “Stolen from Dahlgren Chapel ..” on the side. Some pens, were given to me at conferences, at hotels, and places too numerous and too unimportant to name. The portfolio itself, my employer Beaconfire Consulting graciously gives away. The pen bin is manufactured by some company which distributes through Ikea, the Container Store, and at least a handful of other retail distributors. The two pens in the middle are the most unique of the two. They both can share the same ink refill. One has “Men’s Warehouse” written on it, the other “Making life delicious“. I will admit, I did steal these two pens. They have a proper weight and feel just right in the hand when in use. I stole the “Making life delicious” pen because I thought it said “Making life beautiful.” :)

The only element in the picture you see that is unique, and unique to this singular universe that you and I inhabit is what I have written as words on the the back of the portfolio. I have repeated the words “I am. I will be. One day.” (Only I and the Living God know who I am, who I will be, and what One Day actually means.) The reason my writing is unique, is because I created it. I needed to test every pen in my home collection which usually sits in the aluminum cylindrical container.

Why did I need to test every pen in my collection? I needed to see whether the pens were good or bad. Good pens work. When they don’t work, they are bad. Simple enough? They work by providing a continuous stream of ink on paper and can write a sentence as legibly as the holder of the mightiest weapon on earth can write it. My test is a very selfish test. I attach no feeling whatsoever to any of the pens, probably because I didn’t pay much money for them, and they don’t have any sentimental value. Most of them have very cliche or mundane stories attached to them. The bad pens, I was going to and I did throw away. I the only guilt I feel is that these pens will not be recycled as far as I know. They might be somewhere down the line. The recycling industry is getting better and better at extracting recyclable items from waste. (I do consciously recycle glass, plastic, and paper, but separating the pen parts is too much work.)

The two pens that you see in the center of the image are unique because they are different from the rest for several reasons. They signify strength because of their heavy weight characteristics. They are both made from metal. They signify adaptability because if the ink runs dry, the ink cartridges are readily available and can be replaced. They signify memorability because I have had them longer than any of the other pens. With my own objective test, each of these two pens should have remained in my collection. I should have kept them both and bought a fresh pack of ink refills so that I could keep on using them for my all important post-it reminders, grocery lists, and the occasional entry in my private journal. I didn’t keep both. One pen didn’t work. One pen was bad. Rather the refill in the pen didn’t work. I took out the refill from the other pen and put it in the pen I liked.

I threw the other one away. Which one did I keep and which one did I throw away? They are simply, pens. Ball-point pens to be more specific. If they are simple pens, why did I write this story?

I saw in my action of separating the good from the bad, and the ones I like, a pattern of several allegorical purges of my life as I have known it. Whatever judgement I do have of good and bad, it may not be as objective as something working or not working, the concept is the same. As I have grown older, and hopefully a bit wiser, the process of elimination is constant. I always have to chose what to do next based on what is either good for me, or what is not bad for me, and sometimes what I want to do because I like to.

As each choice, action, and consequence can in my mind be abstractly connected to a “pen” that I kept, or thew away, the same has applied for me with people. I have met many people in my life. Many of them I consider aquaintances. Some of them are still friends. Few of them close friends. The others I have decided to be nonjudgmentally indifferent about. At some point or another, those people didn’t find any value in my life. The action of separating the good and the bad pens begat the question of why certain people were no longer a part of my life. Why they didn’t pass my personal test — which compared to my pen test, is the most subjective, selfish and self-centered test I could have ever conceived — somewhat eludes my mind. I am not naive to say that every lost friendship didn’t have a good reason. Certain friendships are seasonal as my friend told me yesterday. Friends come and go for a reason, and every season has a reason.

There is a certain balance which I see is attained as the soul grows older. For me at least, the balance comes with understanding my place in this world in relation to the others that cohabit this earth. Testing and throwing away pens, choices in finances, choices in my career, and the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom can all have objective means. Testing and throwing away relationships and friendships is not in my control. A powerful dynamic force that moves all things is shaping my destiny and my fate. I have been shown my end. I have known it for a while. It has many friends in it, and they are all smiling. This is a vision which I can continue working towards, without a doubt, with all my faith, all my heart, and all my soul.

The pens that I have thrown away, I do not miss. The friends which I have lost, I hope to reconnect with. With a new cycle of the human endorsed Solar year coming up, among other things, I hope to find my lost friends and rebuild relationships which should be strong, adaptable, and memorable just as the pens I intend to keep. I have to thank God for teaching me this lesson, giving me the words to write this story, and for continuing to be my Teacher. This story is my Christmas gift, and one I want to give to you.

Learning the As, Bs, and Cs of Guitar

Rahul Singh — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:49:29 +0000

I’ve always been enamored with music, it’s creation, and it’s existence in the universe. Why is it that certain sounds placed in a particular rhythm and sequence have such a pleasing effect on the human mind? I could say the same about language and poetry. The ability to interpret and create patterns of sounds such as words and music is one set of abilities which differentiates us from other beings. We are intelligent and emotional beings. Music especially invokes emotions and makes us dance, sing, and lose ourselves in the beauty of sound.

I started to play the guitar last week and as of yet have been able to learn only the basics after overcoming the hurdle of painful fingers on steel strings. I’ve learned how to play certain open chords and am limiting myself to the first three frets. After I can play a clean chord, or rather a chord without my fingers interfering with the resonance of a string, I will start to string them along to form sequences equivalent to word such as “cat”, “dog”, and “bat”.

The experience is humbling to the say the least.

Actions instead of words.

Rahul Singh — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:22:07 +0000

Many a wisdom tradition has said that thoughts turn into actions. Thoughts first into words, and words into action. Bad thoughts turn into bad words and subsequently into bad actions. Good thoughts turn into good actions.

The goodness of thoughts enacted are judged and weighed in respect to the benefit gained to the actor, and possibly those who were acted upon. In the event that good thoughts do surface in the mind, where does the hesitation lie in waiting for the thought to turn into words that need approval from others? At which point is the thought considered worthy of action? Is it the inner voice that helps us create the distinction between good or bad?

If God is the inner voice then the thoughts must be for the good of those around as well as the person thinking the thought. If the thoughts mean good for people, then the actions must be taken to bring the good to the people. Sudden prudence in bringing the good to the people is better than indecisive deliberation which results in no action, and hence no action.

Living for others.

Rahul Singh — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:20:26 +0000

Gather and give, so you can give to teach by example. Your time is your life, so what better way to teach than to give your life away.

As we grow into our future self — who we want to be when we grow up — we have a choice to do with our time what we please. That is mostly true in a country like ours. In America, the “blessings of liberty” are such that if we work for others and earn the money for our keep, we can do with our time what we please.

By virtue of working for money, we are working for others. Our toil and trouble — as Adam Smith might say — results in the money which buys our freedom. This trade of our time — or rather a part of our life — results in the freedom we deem so dear to us.

Living is more than just working. True living cannot happen unless it is for others. Though true that one may work for others and live, they are not truly living if their life is always in toil.

In pursuit of a life worth living.

Rahul Singh — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:10:27 +0000

It dawned on me not to long ago that in the not too distant future I will need to make a concerted effort to be a better writer and a better speaker. I can’t get better at speaking unless I get better at writing, so this is why I have chosen to record my thoughts here. The paper journal is going to be the place for my private thoughts and this will be soap box on which I will broadcast my thoughts to the world. I will contribute here the thoughts God gives me as I learn, grow, and experience the new.