Gowda Sarswath Brahmins, We the People of India

When the routine life was getting totally stereotypic and mundane, life called me to be part of a brahmopadesham of my distaaaaaant cousin. I literally meant what I wrote. By “To be part of…” means, to be one important person for the event and not just a mere spectator sitting in the chairs meant for audience and stare at the people(mostly women) wearing what-not-types of jewellery and top-of-the-brand-list clothes.

 

My uncle wanted us(our family of me, my bro and parents) to be part of the function, especially with me, as I was required to get the Guy – who was getting the sacred thread put across his left shoulders thus marking his initiation into Vedic studies – to the mantap (the stage) by holding him up in my arms (like how one holds a child). This ritual has to be done by a person who is related to the guy in a certain way (brother I guess). I loved the lime light, the red carpet welcome, the sense of being given so much of importance – all of which fizzed out once the ritual was over :D

 

But nevertheless, it was a welcome change to my life which was otherwise not even least exciting on any count. On positive side, this function helped me to get closer to that fraction of my relatives which I knew existed, but never got chance to interact with – thanks to some age-old issue between the various families. It even gave me access to several facts and data, which my mind started processing and became busy with(a change for it too, it must have felt). The one which it constantly shooted to my conscious part of brain was this – I could be the only few fortunate guys in my community of GSB, where I have cousins from the own siblings of my dad as well as his half-siblings. Too much of a puzzle for your grey cells to decode? Well to put it plainly, my grandfather had married twice in his life time. Don’t be shocked, he didn’t break the Hindu marriage law. When his first better-half said bye to this material world after giving birth to their fifth progeny, My grandfather, not happy with his contribution to the Human resource asset of our nation, decided to go ahead and tie the knot once again and keep his good work going. Thanks to his good work, otherwise you wouldn’t have been reading this blog. You are right, I’m younger son of the eldest son of my grandfather’s second wife!!! Too much to decipher? Well that was precisely how I was feeling when my mind was cooking up all these stats for me in that function.

 

It was all a mixed bag of learning experience for me. I was interacting with my relative back here in Mysore after we returned. He was particularly disappointed about how this tradition of Upanayana (aka Brahmopadesham) has got transformed into a mere customary function. I got to know from him that actually one is supposed to visit the priest’s home (who performed the ritual for the guy) or any such elderly scholar (could be grandfather or priest of any community temple of ours) for at least couple of days and get to learn all the things from him – basics of our vedas, how to do sandhyavandhana etc properly. This is because there is so much to learn and it is impossible to do that in that short time available during the official function. More than anything, this step denotes that one has attained adulthood (not from biological sense) and is now responsible enough in life to stand up on his own and view all the things religiously – which includes the transformation of baby love to your mom into ardent respect to her as god.

 

Alas, the changing time changes everything and makes only the change as constant in this changing universe!! Modi recently informed the people of this country that to rule a State, the ruler has to be optimistic always and also wished that everyone in this country to be optimistic as well. I think I was a little pessimistic of sort in the previous paragraph talking about thinning up of the traditions and customs in people with time. So Let me see if I, in my capacity as author of this blog, can be optimistic here and see the other side of the things. In the town of puttur, where this function happened, I visited  our GSB community-maintained Lord Lakshmi venkateswara temple which is located in the heart of the town in main road.  The Temple was closed when I went there. But that didn’t stop me from glancing at the notice board put up at the entrance. It was put up to announce the scholarship schemes to the needy students  who are doing professional courses. I was overwhelmed with pride at once. I can list down numerous such charity events that our community trusts, organizations, temple boards, Mutts etc does in benefit of the people of community. This will have dual benefit of keeping up the pride of the people to stay loyal to our community values and traditions as well as community services.

 

Like anywhere, within our community also there are people who just love to sit behind and complain about anything under sun. But what makes me happy and proud is that there are equal number of people who don’t care for such things and come forward to serve the community. Either it is matrimonial services or educational support, you name them and we have it in our community. That drives home a very important point. To keep up with time, one has to ensure that they cater to the changing needs of the time. You cannot expect one to give his everything just in the name of religion. Sustainability comes with give and take policy and that is what our community has learnt so early in the time-curve graph.

 

Today, the IT city has not just bangalored the jobs of US to India. It has had one more effect within the country– migration of people to IT city on account of getting jobs. I call this bangalored too, in context of within our country. But in spite of this, come car festival of lord venkatramana temple of Mangalore, you can see the entire Gen-X standing in the front volunteering for the 5-day festival. Its sheer visual delight to watch them taking part in this with so much of enthu and dedication. We may have either cut short on few traditions or may be given a miss for few of them, but the mere fact that the crowd size keeps swelling year on year is a proof for the pride of our people about our community, our god and our religious heads.

 

So, to close this thread on an optimistic note, it makes me feel happy that we still do follow the rituals such a Brahmopadesham tradition, even in its compact form. It is nothing but these get-togethers which brings all the people of the families settled at different hooks and corners of the country, to meet each other and re-bond, either full siblings or half! And I am happy that I wrote this piece of blog precisely when the historic swearing-in ceremony of the 15^th PM of 16^th Lok Sabha is going on!!

 

Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa - A memorable trip to Sabarimala

There cannot be a better example than this to show how God gives us an opportunity for his devotees to have his darshan. Never in my dreams had I thought that I would get to see the Lord Ayyappa at his sannidhanam in Sabarimala. I'm writing this blog cum travelogue out of a sub-conscious promise that I made when I was overwhelmed to see the Lord.

After the success of our Trek to the abode of Lord of Spathagiri Hills - Tirumala, My friends planned another similar but more challenging trek to seek the darshan of Lord of Pattanamthitta Hills - Swami Ayyappa in Sabarimalai, Kerala. Since the temple is opened only for a couple of days every month, after the pilgrimage season of Nov to Jan end every year, we made the plan in a hurry. One of the friend got info from his parents that the temple will be opened in the month of Feb. 2014 from 15 to 17th (approx). And thus we chalked out our plan to visit the temple on 15th of Feb 2014. Tickets were booked to travel from Mysore to Kottayam on 14th.

14th Feb:

Bus left Mysore at designated time of 6pm. Thankfully, the highway was smooth throughout the journey due to which I was able to catch up with sleep for at least a couple of hours in that 14hours long journey. Dinner stop was @ Sulthan Battery at 9.30PM, after which there were only a few quick stops for nature calls.

15th Feb:

7.45 AM. Welcome to the "God's Own Country" - Kerala. We reached Kottayam with full 1.5 hrs delay. Kerala's humid climate made us oily and sticky all over the face. I felt the immediate need to find a decent accommodation to freshen up. At the exit of the Bus station, we took left turn heeding to the group's majority vote and by god's grace got accommodation at a decent tourist home for 675/- for a double bed room. As we were 4 people, he insisted that we should take 2 rooms and we reluctantly agreed after a failed argument to negotiate for one room.

9.00 AM. We got ready and left the room. Reached the Kottayam Bus stand and had a quick breakfast. The Language difficulty starts now. We were under impression that Sabarimalai is close by with good connectivity from here. But with the expression and explanation of the people at bus stand, we understood that we were wrong. Apparently the only direct bus is only at around 1pm or so. The other alternative was of course cut journey. We had a great difficulty to understand the name of place where the people were asking us to go by catching one bus. All I could hear was "Patham..." One good fellow pointed out the bus and without thinking further we got into it. Now the next challenge, how to pronounce the place name so as to buy the ticket? I quickly googled for the info and got to know the name - Pattanamthitta. After 2 hours of journey we reached the place.

12PM. It didn't take us long to find out which bus we need to take from here. We were well informed beforehand that the last stop where we need to get down en route to Sabarimalai is - Pampa (aka Pamba) river. There is no road further from here and one need to go by walk to reach the holy Sannidhanam.

The bus stopped in between for lunch. It was not a restaur or hotel but just a hut kind of place which you can call as mini dhaba. They served only two items - Ganji or the Gruel and Meals. It didn't take us long to decide. One guy among us sat down and ordered for Ganji. Another one ordered for Meals. The remaining two of us (Including me) opted for wait and watch technique. Once they were served, we sat down as well, after being assured of the quality. The fun started here.

2P.M. Destination reached. Holy Pampa River was flowing in a canal kind of structure. Like in any holy place, the river was polluted over and above one's imagination level. Democracy offers freedom in most of the things. But we chose to lose it by abusing it. Today, there are boards all over the place, requesting us not to pollute the river. Tomorrow, there won't be any boards, but the security folks, stopping us from taking bath.

After spending an hour to complete the chores like attending to nature call, stepping into the holy river to spray water over head, safe keeping the foot wears in cloak room etc etc, we finally started to ascend.

3.15 PM. Amid the loud cheers of "Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa", we started to ascend the hill. Let me make one point clear here. Unlike the Holy Tirumala where we have both Road as well as foot steps to reach the top, here there is only one option here - foot steps. The path is also not smooth like in Tirumala. At same stretches, it is neither cemented path nor the mud path, instead it's just smooth stones (huge ones) path. But thanks to the recent development works undertaken here, the path is much better than how it used to be half a decade back (as told to me by my friends).

There are Dholis available for those who cannot climb the steep hill. Dholi is nothing but a bamboo chair or light wooden chair to which long wooden logs are tied to both sides and 4 men will carry a person who is seated on the chair. Price may range between 3k to 4k depending upon how you negotiate.

I saw lot of people carrying Glucose powder with them. At regular intervals they mix water and consume it. There are water points along the path. Bio toilets are also available. Since women pilgrims are less compared to men, Gents toilets are more in number.

Also, lot of cardio hospitals are also present at regular intervals. But when we went, not many of them were open. I guess it functions only during the regular pilgrimage season of Nov-Jan.

5.30 PM (approx). We were at the top. The words "Sarnam Ayyappa" Written boldly on the wall of the temple complex made me overwhelmed with emotions. Though we were not allowed to climb the holy 18 steps, as we were not carrying the traditional Irumudi, we felt blessed just by looking at it. Huge serpentine queue of devotees waiting to climb the 18 holy steps had formed at my left side. We turned Right and asked for the direction for darshan of the lord.

There was no queue for darshan for normal visitors like us. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the sanctum sanctorum was just a small room sans the huge temple enclosure. We just had to pass along a line taking the darshan of the lord from outside. Felt really blessed after taking the darshan. The Lord's idol is very unique in so many ways. Unlike the idol of gods in other Hindu temples, here the Lord is sitting on a platform with right hand held in blessing position and left hand rested on the left knee. The Gold plated Idol of Lord was sight to behold. Since there was no queue as such, we decided to come back for another round of darshan.

6.00 PM. After spending some time around the temple premises, we started our journey back to the shore of Holy Pampa. It was getting dark already and we had to ensure that we reached the base quickly.

7.30 PM. We were at the base. Walking downhill is as difficult as climbing up. Legs need to keep the pace under control as the path is full of tiny stones. Once at the base, we got  back our foot wears and after roaming a bit(the sheer joy of wearing the chappal made us so happy that we were wandering a bit in spite of being tired!!), we reached the Bus station at 8PM. There was no bus in sight. A taxi walla (who we later discovered that he is actually an auto walla), was pestering us with the offer to drop us to Kottayam for 1500/-. But we unanimously decided that we will not opt for his service owing to security concerns. After a bit of enquiry, we found out that a bus will go to Chenganoor city around 8.30 PM.

8.15 PM. The bus indeed came to the stand and we all got inside. One of us enquired with the driver/conductor about the timings. Not sure what the crew told, but we took it this way - that the bus will not leave until it's full. So we sat down hoping that it will get filled up soon and we will reach the town quickly. But not a single soul came in for another 10mins. A dhaba was there right in front of the bus stand. Hunger, coupled with the gut feeling that the bus may take another 15mins to move; we decided to have quick-dinner and got down without informing the crew(who were standing at a distance from the bus). We were sure that we will have real quick dinner and be back in 10mins. But the moment we took our seats in the dhaba and the rice was served, the bus just zoomed off and we kept staring at it with mouth wide open and hands paused on its way to our mouth carrying food. I was quick to recover from the shocker and assure my friends that we may get another bus and there is no need to worry as such. We finished our dinner peacefully after my assurance.

9.00 PM. True to the words of one shopkeeper, another bus - supposed to be the last one that night - which goes to Chenganoor, came to the stand. This time, we didn't showcase our daredevil trait. In spite of feeling thirsty, not one of us dared to get down to buy a water bottle also! The bus left Pamba at close to 9.45PM.

16th Feb - Sunday

12.30 AM. The bus reached Chenganoor Bus Station. A couple of roadside shops were open and a few autos were there. After a bit of struggle, we understood that there is no bus starting from here but buses which pass via this town to Kottayam may give a stop at this place and we need to catch that to reach Kottayam. Though it was not an assurance as such, but we were too sleepy and tired to worry also. But by God's grace, soon a bus came and we all got into it. We reached Kottayam by travelling in that bus standing for 1 hour!

1.30 AM. Reached Kottayam. Everyone of us, half-minded, agreed to check out if there is any bus bound to Calicut in short while(as we had to gather our luggage from the lodge, buses leaving immediately at that moment were of no help to us). But to everyone's relief, we found that there are buses to only Trivandrum and some closer towns and the bus to Calicut will start only after 5am or so.

So we decided to head to the lodge and rest for a while and then come back after getting ready by taking bath and completing other work (read nature calls). All 4 of us promised each other that we will be up and ready by 6am. I went to bed only after answering all calls from nature and taking a refreshing cold water shower. Rest of the people were in deep trance (even if someone stole their kidneys also, they wouldn't have woken up I guess).

7.30 AM. Yes. Full 1.5 hrs delay from our promised time of getting ready. We were in Kottayam Bus Station. There was no direct bus either to Calicut or to Mysore. So we decided to take a bus to Thrissur (which is on the way to Calicut). At around 10 AM, we reached Thrissur where we had a quick breakfast and boarded a bus going to Calicut at 10.30 AM. We had the lunch in Calicut where we reached around 1.30PM. On my suggestion, the gang decided to venture out and try out the food in a decent restaur instead of having in the hotel in Bus Station. But the non-spicy veg biryani didn't meet the expectation of any of the 4 guys. Came back to bus station and boarded a bus to Mysore at 3PM.

9PM. Back to Mysore. We made it. A sense of achievement was overflowing inside me. Out of 60 hrs, we were travelling for 50(plus) hours - which includes the trek to the temple by foot also. When I had called up my mom after having Darshan, she sounded "Good Lord, you did it. I'm Happy". She is not the one who displays such emotions easily, at least to me. That made me to wonder why she sounded like that. Only after arrival, when I spoke to her about hardships we faced during the trek, she confided in me that she was worried all along those 2 days about my safety. Her prayers alone helped me and my friends to accomplish this without any major hardships.  Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa.

 

 

Learn to Earn

"Sir, I actually wanted to tell you one thing.....". On the way to our building inside the office campus, I came across this Fresher girl who had just joined our project. A few days back I had delivered a formal session related to project and software testing concepts to her and 2 more people. "Your session was really very good..". No need to mention that I was happy to hear that but I went ahead and asked her some more question  as I wanted to know my plus points and minus points.  "Why because...... Actually after we left university, we didn't listen such kind of session.... the Company training also was also not so good... they just focussed on completing the syllabus stuff..... so after a long gap we got to hear a session in which the concepts were explained so clearly... ".

I am not trying to boast about myself here(well not intentionally :P). All i wanted to point out was about the education system in place in our society today. Lack of good teachers is cause of worry for a long time now. Parents in Cities trying their best to get their children admitted to premier schools is common sight. In the name of providing good education, the way these so called premier schools charge the fees is also well known. What is the impact of all these? Quality education becomes a luxury that can be afforded only by Uber Rich class. Providing education to children becomes as expensive and as stressful as getting a house constructed on loan. Professional courses have already become super expensive. No doubt about that. What I'm talking about is the elementary school education.

The other day i was reading a article in a newspaper (or Mag i dont remember clearly). The author had presented a really nice solution for this potential-bomb. There is no other service or job in our country which is respected the way Civil services is respected. So why not have something called ITS - Indian Teaching service? Such that bright people don't loose the opportunity to achieve their dream career of getting into Civil services and also can contribute to the teaching fraternity. It may be difficult to do it at UPSC level taking into consideration the sheer number involved. But definitely it can be achieved by the state level public services (with a little bit of effort).

The Govt hardly cares about the root cause of any problem. It is only interested about the symptoms. There is this Food Security Bill in pipeline, waiting for parliament approval , which assures food grains for all BPL families at magical rates. There is a symptom prevailing in the society - malnutrition. Any 7th grade student will tell you that this symptom's root cause is illiteracy. But the govt and the people are interested only in quick-fix for the symptom. Nobody gives a damn to the root cause. What this Food Bill will do? Create some more burden on already strained coffers of the state. This inturn will be passed on to the tax-paying middle class people whose disposable income gets further shrinked, making it further difficult to afford the basic things. Finally it boils down to this - drag on GDP. The financial matter of this ill-concieved bill can be discussed with finer details. But that is not the point i want to talk about here. I just wanted to present the picture of what is happening at macro level .

During the recently concluded 93rd convocation ceremony of Mysore University, the Union Education minister gave a statement that it is impossible to make education available to everyone! It took considerable amount of effort on my part to fight back the anger that raged inside me when i read it in the newspaper. People with responsibility are giving as absurd statement as this instead of concentrating on putting some effort in the positive direction. There was this one more stupid Bill that was cleared a couple of years back by our parliament - RTE Bill. The Right to Education. The supreme court had to poke the govt to get it implemented after it was passed (somebody had filed a PIL showing the lack of interest on the part of govt to oversee the implementation of the bill). But alas, this was again a quick-fix for the symptom that was growing. Lack of enough schools is glaringly visible for everyone out there. But the Govt forced the(existing) schools (itself) to induct min % of students from BPL families. This in turn pushed the fee for the available seats (to others) further skywards. What did the schools do? They sold these reserved seats to rich-class people for exorbiant rates by fudging the records. A part of this money also went into the pockets of the BPL family which had applied for that seat!

The only Asset that our country has in abundant is Human Resource. The onus is on us to elect a responsible govt, or to do something effective such that the country's economy improves in a way that this HR asset's Capability can be tapped positively. Stagnant Economy has little to offer for the Educated youth. If Providing good Education is one half of the job then ensuring the growth of Economy is another half. Hope we see a sea of change in coming years which can make these two things happen.

The Q mentality

Wow, the first post of this year. Had completely forgotten that i had not posted even one blog this year. And what made me to post this? The same old too cliché topic, problems that our country face.

I was waiting in the gas station to get the tyre pressure checked. It is quite common to see that two-wheelers want to get their bike's tyre pressure checked first whenever there are 4 wheelers waiting in the queue. "Our's just two tyres ree.... your's 4 tyres... what??? "people would grumble when the car owner insists on following FCFS (first come first serve) rule. A typical indian would get "adjusted" to these sort of things after experiencing it for one or two times. So is the case with me. I didnt protest when a couple of 2-wheelers jumped the queue, overtook my car and insisted on getting their vehicles attended before the cars -including mine - standing in the queue.

So after attending to 2 - 3 such q-jumpers, the guy was about to attend to my car when out of blue a biker came from nowhere. It was quite natural for any normal-sane guy to tell point blank that the car deserved the turn since it was waiting for quite long time and the same the station guy also did. He then requested the biker to move ahead a bit so that the car can come in front and stand within the length of the air-pressure pipe. This infuriated the biker like anything who took it as an insult. He sped off from the place after shouting at the guy his heart content. I was amused.

I was reading a book called "Jack patel's Dubai dreams". The book started with the writer, a NRI, saying that if there is one thing he hates most about india, it is the lack of ethics in following queue rules which is contrasting to how it is in UK. I first attributed it to the population explosion. But slowly i learnt it is not the only reason. Recently there was a record breaking longest traffic jam in China outsied Beijing. The traffic had piled upto 300Km in length. But surprisingly, not a single soul tried to jump the lane or resorted to any dirty-shortcuts to come out of the jam. The traffic was held up in that situation for quite a few days!!

Compare this with our fellow drivers on Indian roads. Recently I was driving in Indiranagar 100 Ft road and had stopped in one traffic signal at a junction where 4 road meet. When the signal turned green, i tried to go straight. Suddenly a Car which was on Left lane, suddenly took a steep right turn with great speed. I applied the brakes hardly and was too taken aback to even react at that stupid car driver.

It is not limited to roads alone. People resort to dirty-tricks in any q that you see in any corner of the country. If someone asks me what is the one thing that you think is common among the people of entire India, i will say the mentality that we all have w.r.t  q-jumping-tricks. Be it temples, ticket counters in cinema halls etc. People want to break the rules with unique dirty tricks. I think they derive the joy out of it. When a person gets the task done before those who were standing in the line for more length of time than him, he feels great about himself. He is now owner of a great success story involving himself which he treasures and shares with his friends, family and even with unknown people if required. "Dukh bantne se kam hoti hai aur khushiyan bantne se badthi hai... " Paresh Rawal says in the epic movie "hera pheri". So this chap who defeated others in the line, has to share his story of "Success" so that he can derive more joy. Whatever time he saved in his life by jumping the q line, he will invest that in going around the town talking about his success.

Off late, i feel that the educated people are resorting to this more than the so called illiterate/less-educated ones. Just a few days before I was standing in q to get the tickets for the movie "Kai Po Che" which was being screened in our office Multiplex. In that one hour i was standing in the q, I was witness to so many dirty-tricks being played by so many "Educated fellas" that it left me ashamed that such people are all the part of same company that I am also in. You should see the smile on their face when they succeed in their attempt to squeeze into the line. This in spite of the fact that there were nearly 10 security people deployed to manage the rush. Having the security people to manage us itself has to be a shame on our part. Do we really need them to help us remember the mannerisms and to remain honest in the q line??

Compare this with the q lines in front of Govt fair-price shops (which normally we call as society or ration shop) in smaller towns and villages. People follow such good mannerisms while in the q. When we were in Chickballapur, there was one such shop in front of our house. Once in a month, the kerosone oil would be distributed to the people. One should see the discipline that they follow in maintaining the Q. No security, no police to help them maintain the integrity of the line. The long serpentine q used to reach till the end of the long road. Still nobody dared to play any tricks. And like the cinema tickets, even the supply of oil used to be limited. Hardly half of the people in line would get their quota of the oil. Those who didnt get today, have to come tomorrow and stand in the q once again. And they used to come if required.

Tailpiece : I didnt start writing this post as the last and final part of my "Time, Technology and generation" series. But when i was done and was reviewing it once before posting, i felt it has got relation with the topic coincidently. With all the advancement in technology, we tend to get everything as fast as we could and end up trading the good manners and honesty in bargain i think. Recently while i was waiting for my turn in Aadhar enrollment q, i was witness to one more such incident where a mother of 2 children used child-sentiment to get turn ahead of others with emotional melodrama. This is where it starts i felt. Parents and teachers, who are supposed to teach  good principles in children, end up doing entirely opposite.

Time, Technology and... generation. Part 2

(continued from previous post.. )

 

"ye naye zamane ke ladke... " every generation bollywood movie has got this dialog. I used to think that 70's and older movies would not have this line. But a little bit of research helped me to derive the correct fact - the dialog has been the asset of the bolloywood for many a generation now. Like the ancestral property, the line has been inherited by all generations. So the theorem thus proves that every new generation gets deviated from the rules-of-good-book by certain degree. And every deviation of every new generation is aided by a new change that is remarkable in that generation - Movie, computer, internet, fashion, and the latest spoiler of current generation - the mobile phone and tablet pc. Every new generation deviating  got drifted away from the complex business of understanding the religion and its underlying fundamentals.

Lord Krishna says in Geeta “I provide the intelligence to human beings, how they use it is left to them”. Why go till Geeta, in the hit Hollywood movie “Bruce Almighty” Morgan Freeman says the same line. Technology has been developed by the humans with the intelligence they r gifted with. How do we use it is again dependent on us. Mobiles are used by teens for what not these days. But the same can be used to access social networking sites and share useful information. Recently I happened to watch the movie Oh My God and I instantly shared the good dialogs and scene pics of the movie. Many a people liked it.

The movie tried to expose the dirty affairs regarding the self-appointed religious heads (swamijis, christian fathers and maulvis) and showed how foolishly people are getting duped by them. Huge sum of money flows into their fold due to innocence (if it can be termed like that) of people.. There are a lot of rituals which many people follow in various religions. With the change in time, people started to ask questions behind these. Unavailability of people who could provide proper answers has made the younger gen loose faith in their respective religion. The movie OMG had an excellent message. If you don’t understand the rituals, fine. Instead of going behind the magic-making-self-appointed-swamijis and wasting crores of money, donate it to the people in need. Help the human kind (or at least that is what my conclusion was after watching it). Both the movie and the book have helped me a lot for answering so many questions that I myself had.

Thanks to the authors like Amish and Ashwin Sanghi who have made good attempts to decode the mythology and making it an interesting topic currently in the market. Amish's books gave out a message that "Gods are human beings, who became god due to their good virtue". Lord Krishna in udupi turned around in diametrically opposite direction, to give darshan to his famous devotee kanakadasa, thus creating the famous kanakana kindi (the window of kanaka) in the holy temple in udupi. Recently, i happened to listen to the pravachana that is read by purohit during satyanarayana vrata. In that, purohit explains as to why the vrata is so sacred. It seems Lord Narada asked some question to the Lord Vishnu(forgot the correct question) for which the lord replied that "for the sake of simplicity of the people of kaliyug, who are under delusion and always pressed for time and dedication for god, it is enough if they worship me by doing this higly simple vrata. No need for them to do any difficult yaga and homa as this vrata will be equivalent of all of them".  There is plenty of opportunities around us to feel the god and get answers for anything related to mythology. Only dedication is required i feel.


While Movies such as OMG might have helped us build the faith, there are some movies which might have acted in negative way although unintentionally.  The way the divine weapons (or rather magical weapons as one gets tempted to say) are shown in the war scenes of certain mythological movies have been matter of fun for many people. I too had this question as to how come there could be weapon of this kind in that era. But I was proved wrong. With every new Yuga, the knowledge of people goes down, opposite of what we thought. So these technology products such as Mobiles, computers and weapons of modern times are not greatest as we have believed. Just consider this – the fact that sushruta - the father of surgery, existed such long ago itself is the proof of great knowledge that the ancients had. There could have been so much of science knowledge present in those times that all the things which we read in mythology such as a person coming out alive from near-death situation, passing thru fires, building highly sophisticated palaces are not because they are connected to gods in some or other way. But due to the help of science! The fact that science was present during that time has been ignored and thus when we read such miracles without keeping the fact (of existence of science) at the back of our mind, either of two things happen i.e. we may either get forced to believe them without any logic since we believe in god or one may loose faith completely since we don’t find any logical base for that.

(To be continued... )

Time, technology and ...... generation - Part 1

And one more bday came and went. Lots of wishes, lots of calls. Good to talk to so many friends on the same day. I feel good that at least on this day, my mobile battery gets spent on the actual functionality for which the mobile was designed - call and text, rather than on listening to FM and music.

Looking back, i feel quite amused as to how we manage to survive without this electronic gadget. These days, it doesnt matter where a person is located? just dial his mobile number and talk to him. If there s not much to talk, just text him to convey the short message. Cities has grown, it is practically not possible to go and meet friends and relatives easily. Not that it was easy before, but the lifestyle too has changed now. I still remember my first year of engg. Mobile was just making its entry into indian market then and it was a expensive device. Even the incoming call was as expensive as 16/- per min. Only Airtel was offering the service then. I was staying in a room in mysore. Owner was in ground floor and our room was in 1st floor. My mother used to call to the land line number in owner's house and the maid used to shout from the window. I had to rush down, wait beside the phone sitting on a sofa till my mom called again.

Monsoon season is very tricky in mysore. One can hardly predict whether it will rain on that day looking at the sky. It would start raining all of a sudden and sometimes wont stop for hours together. One fine day, when me and my roomate went out for first time after joining the college in 1st sem, it started raining cats n dogs. We had to wade thru knee deep water thru the center of city to reach the city bus stand (majestic of mysore), catch the bus and reach our room. It was not too late and so i wasnt worried much after reaching our destination. Vignesh, my roomie, quickly rushed upstairs and i was following him when i heard the maid shout out my name from the window. I was dripping all over and certainly didnt quite feel like taking a call from home at this situation. I stood in front of door. As soon as she opened it, she started questionaire. Apparantely, my mom had called some 3-4 times in eve and was eager to know where i had been. Being still new guys, and that too jst out of teenage, there was certain amount of apprehension in owner's mind. So there was a huge burden on us to convince them that we are not smokers/drinkers or making-merry-on-dad's-money kind of guys. I told her that i will change and come back. After 20mins, when my mom called, i spoke to her and there wasnt even a small degree of worry in her voice since she knows me very well. Since it was the first time i went out, she wasnt quite used to know that "I can/need to go out". If only i had the mobile then there was no need for the maid to show off her attitude, nor i had to listen to her and answer her questionaire.

It was only in 3rd sem that i got my first mobile. It was a great relief for me as well as my roomie since we could talk to our family sitting in room itself. All we need to do was give a missed call to dad's mobile and within a couple of mins, the mobile would ring. It was definitely a great relief. As time progressed, more and more functionalites got added to the small hand held gadget. Now it is hard to see people sans their earphones plugged to their ears. Whether they listen to FM/Music all day long? I wonder. And for girls, there are only 3 things. Either they will be talking to companion (girl/boy) who are with them, talking on mobile or listen to FM if they r alone.

(To be continued.... )

Along the way

Recently, I completed reading the 3rd book of Ashwin sanghi - Krishna Key. The book was brilliant. Lot of research was being done by the author around the Krishna-Dwaraka-Shiva. But at some corner of my mind, I felt that it didn't match the brilliance of his earlier book - Chanakya's Chant. The way he had structured that story, creating the fictional version of Chanakya's story which ran parallel with a contemporary story set against the current affairs in politics, the charm was missing in his latest offering. I thought I might have not concentrated properly while reading it (there were just too many proofs for various beliefs related to mythology) and hence I felt so. But when I browsed the net, I got to know that many shared the same opinion as mine.

That made me to think about myself. I was introduced to the Writing-hobby when the Newsletter team in the project in which I was working in my 1st company invited articles or other contributions from the project people. I just wanted to give it a try and submitted a imaginary story which if you ask me even now, I feel there was nothing special in it. Well the rest was history and I think I have discussed already about this in another post. I was a hero overnight and this overwhelming reaction made me to take up blogging where I made a promise of writing regularly, just to break that promise later.

None of my contributions to the newsletter received any special reaction after the stupendous debut I had. People started stacking it up in their To-do list of the day, since they knew that there would be something in the article but definitely not "That something" so as to give it first priority in the day. No, I'm not saying that I felt let down or that I stopped blogging. None of them happened (well, blogging went on to become more and more less frequent). But I wanted to pour it out from my heart here and tell to myself that it is really so hard to be a writer, to win people's satisfaction, to churn out that-really-interesting-story regularly, to deliver something fresh and new each time. And when I see this feat being achieved by so many authors out there, I feel so great about them. I just sit and admire about their creative abilities after finishing the last page of that book written by them.

For a writer to get new ideas, he has to be in touch with people. People from different walks of life. The more we converse with people, the more broader our ideas get. The more fodder for our brain. Recently, I  felt that I wanted to be in a profession where I could meet lot of people on daily basis - a doctor, a Public servant etc. MY friend who was working with Marketing division of a very famous MNC used to share stories about the people who he used to meet from Govt dept. owing to his sales responsibility. There are other friends who being doctors, have to meet so many people, whether they like it or not. "The toughest assignment while doing M.S is when you are posted to govt hospitals. So many people die daily just because they cannot afford the treatment cost in pvt hospitals, where we ask them to move the patients due to non availability of facilities in the govt hosp".  I asked him how it felt. "Initially there was lot of agitation inside... the urge to hit someone, shout at someone..... do something... something to save them...... but gradually we started to admit that we are helpless..... " A pause and then we force the smiles on our face and switch the topic.

My mom is an ardent fan of Sudha Murthy (not sure if I have made a mention of this in my earlier blogs). She just loves them for one reason - practicality. No other novels are so close to reality - she tells me. There is a reason for that. Being part of the Infosys Foundation (charity trust), she has met Millions of people, both good and other side of good. And her books are nothing but the reflections of her experience with them. My personal favourites are - Mahashwetha (I just love it. Had tears in my eyes at several junctions while reading it), Gently falls Bakula.

To put it more broadly, meeting people will give inputs - inputs turn to idea. IF you are not a writer, the idea can be learning lesson. There you are. This is nothing but the basic theorem of life. Meet people, watch good movies & TV programs, read books - everything that gives input for us to handle the different challenges that the life throws at us. "If you don't do now itself what you want to do , you will repent after 20 years about it..." My friend told one day while having lunch in my favourite Fish restaurant one day. I was discussing with her my desire to learn how to ride a geared bike and to own one. But my parents were totally against it. Apart from the desire to learn it, I wanted to switch over to a geared bike from activa to save on my monthly fuel bill. "I think you have to go for it... millions of people ride bike.... if you think you can ride it safely and have self control, what is stopping you? " My friend concluded. There I was, being firm on my decision to buy a good economical and "Safe" bike, I conveyed it to my parents. Though there was a slight reluctance, my mom agreed looking at my confidence and not without giving a disk full of safety instructions.

There is definitely lot to discuss... But I don't want to bottle up whatever I've written so far and work on it later and make it a lengthy and boring to read. Instead I will divide it and would make it interesting to read. If my decision doesn't change, I will come back with part2 of this.....