Wabi Sabi in Durga Temple with Lady D

My former law firm boss, Lady D is a woman who has been a great source of inspiration to me. She was in Singapore a few days ago. She is now based in London. A creative and inspired soul our friendship and professional connection was always a very special one. She laid a strong technical foundation and showed me what it means to be a sound corporate finance and M&A lawyer. I was fortunate to have met her at a critical time in my professional life - when I had just switched from litigation to corporate lawyering.

Lady D was exacting,diligent and an intelligent attorney. Armed with a law degree from Stanford she tolerated no fools. And she inspired some of my best legal work. More importantly she had class and finesse. She dressed and conducted herself with utmost poise and elegance. In their bid to outwit and outsmart the opposing side I have witnessed many lawyers degenerate into crass and cunning human beings. She showed me that law could either bring out your best qualities or your worst. Planting this awareness within me at that time informed, moulded and guided me in a profound way. This lesson and awareness shaped my approach not just to law but to life. To treat our fellow human beings with grace and elegance while we strive to fulfill our personal goals.

But given the intense time pressures that Lady D and I often confronted in the midst of doing multi-million dollar deals our lives and our friendships were compressed. Our friendship hovered at the intellectual level and never had the time to deepen into a more spiritual one. After working with her a few years we parted and went our different ways. We continued to meet occasionally in Singapore and London when out travel schedules permitted.

Recently I took her to the Durga temple in Little India. I was not sure if that would be her kind of thing. She was a sassy Californian. I knew not what faith she practiced. But she was well traveled and widely read. I felt that she would relish being shown an intimate and holy site in Singapore, better known for its shopping malls and urban sprawl. I had taken many many foreign artists, scholars and visitors to this beautiful Kali temple and many of my visitors were deeply moved. I sensed a profound shift in their energies once they step over into the temple. Like a gentle hand had passed over their soul and given them a reprieve from their daily grind. Its a magical experience when you tap into a quiet still place within you. And a temple with its incense, music, chanting and food is an ideal place to transport you into this quiet space within. With Lady D it was no different. She had arrived a little earlier and had spent some time admiring the saris of the temple going ladies. When I arrived we walked silently into the temple and offered our prayers.

Then we sat on the quiet floor and red a beautiful book on Wabi Sabi - the ancient Japanese value system of impermanence and imperfection. The beauty of aging and the transient beauty in nature. When we left the temple Lady D made a very profound observation - how the West values the intellect above the intuition and spiritual. And as a result how many of us become enslaved by logic. In contrast the older civilizations like India respected and celebrate the whole self - the mind-body and spirit. And how that was so very evident in our temple visit today. That was music to my ears. I had managed to transmit the essence of what I saw and felt in the temple to her. So many times I see temple guides cheapening the temple visit by focusing on the non-essentials. And flooding the new comer/tourists with cultural trivia and souvenirs. I wanted to share a spiritual experience. I wanted to share something elevated and poignant that I always felt in holy spaces like temples. And to share this I stripped away alot of the temple trivia. Words got in the way. Silence allowed my guests absorb the feeling and vibrations in the place. My role is to facilitate connections, not dictate rules or my spiritual preferences.