A Magic Potion called Moksham

Moha + KS = Moksha,
seen on the back of a car

This morning, had to take Niki to Dr. Beliappa at RxDx as she wasn't feeling too well. There i ran into A Srinivasa Rao Gaaru, an old devotee of Swami.

Srinivasa Rao Gaaru told me that he visited Puttaparthi way back in 1968 along with his elder bro, for five days, when he had his first interview with Swami. His elder bro was suffering from night blindness and Swami assured him that he'd look after him all the way ("even if a thorn were about to enter his foot, he'd prevent that"). It turned out as Swami promised.

I was more interested in his own XPs and he said that Puttaparthi was a very difficult place to stay those days:

• To have a bath, you had to pay a పావల (25 pips) and step into a room with a transparent sari covering the entrance
• To answer calls of nature, you had to go to the Chitravati river!

During his first interview, Rao Gaaru said that he wanted to see his favorite God, Shiva. Swami said that he (Rao Gaaru) himself was Shiva (but he hadn't realized that yet).

Rao Gaaru had no doubt that Swami was God himself (he spelled it out: G…O…D), who gave him the loveliest definition of moksha(m):

Moha + kshayam = Moksham.

That is, attachment (moha) to nothing (kshayam) is liberation (moksham).

Swami is a past-master at this sort of word play. Some examples:

• Puttaparthi = Put apart the i
  
• Properties are not proper ties
• Don't worry about the interview, but the inner view.
  

~@~*-*~@~

In the 1990s, when my in-laws were at Kakinada, i recall a trip during the day from Vizag to Kakinada. I met the sweetest guy in the train. I was in the zone that morning as it was an exhilarating trip and and we talked a bit of philosophy.

I asked him, a bit naïvely, "Sir, one should not desire anything, but then can we desire moksham?"

He exulted: "But that state of not desiring anything itself is moksham!"

Miracle Month

ಓಂ ಮಹಾಗಣಪತಿರ್ಬುದ್ಧಿಪ್ರದಃ ಕ್ಷಿಪ್ರಪ್ರಸಾದನಃ |
ರುದ್ರಪ್ರಿಯೋಗಣಾಧ್ಯಕ್ಷಃ ಉಮಾಪುತ್ರೋ ಅಘನಾಶನಃ ||

Swananda Bala Ganapati

It's 10 years to the day we did the ground-breaking ceremony for our house at Palm Meadows.

That month (NOV.1999) was the first time that we visited Swananda and the number of nice miracles after our visit there still zaps me.

On Friday, November 5, there was an exhibition on Ganesha at, of all places, ICICI Bank in Jayanagar. Due to some reason, i happened to be on leave that day and went over. Met Raavel there, among all the Ganesha. He invited me over to Swananda, saying that the Bala Ganapati there (now the Moola) was very good for kids.

So we went over that long four-day weekend, with the Diwali holidays on 08-09.NOV. On the last day of the holidays, we found a photo of a Ganesh outside our bathroom window. Quite mysterious that was as our Adarsh Gardens flat was on the fourth floor!

~@~*-*~@~

Then there was the ground-breaking ceremony. What i remember clearly are the open fields (there were hardly any houses then) all the way to the east.

Contrast that with the cluster now (Palm Meadows in WikiMapia).

~@~*-*~@~

The Infosys folks were making plans to convert Adarsh Gardens to guest houses for Infoscions on travel and the 50+ families out there were asked to vacate by the end of the year. We had fallen in love with the complex and were wondering how to get another one for rent. It seemed quite impossible as Infosys itself had some 25% of the flats there.

On 29.NOV, a Karthik Somavar, i had gone to drop my kid at his playschool when i saw a huge moth on the numberplate of a car (later on, i came to understand that this presaged a miracle from the Old Moth-er). After some time, WiFi called to say that one of the three-bedroom flats in the E block was available for rent. Others hadn't come around to hearing about it as it was a company guest-house and the company was quietly canceling its lease by the end of the year. I asked her to snaffle it w/o any further delay.

~@~*-*~@~

Swami says:

The miracles are my visiting cards.

That's what we found in the case of Swananda as well.

Swananda in our Stairwell

ಓಂ ಮಂಗಳಮೂರ್ತೇ ವಿಘ್ನಹರ |
ದುರಿತನಾಶನ ಕೃಪಾಕರ ||

Kakabali Prasad

Charity isn't giving a bone to the dog; charity is sharing the bone with the dog.
—Jack London

The cook was on the blink and, since it was the b'day of Swami, i thought of having a simple meal at home itself with some leftover sambar and rajma. After the puja, i heated a wee bit of rice in the smallest cooker we have. But, even after 20 minutes, the whistle wouldn't blow. When i checked, the rice was all nicely burnt ("signed" all around the edges, as Peter Sellers would have put it).

So i put one more round in a medium-size cooker and was wondering what to to do with the burnt rice. I hardly feel like throwing away things, esp. food (see There's Plenty of Room in the Itsy Bitsy), so i thought of feeding the crows with all of it. But, due to the Jack London quote above, it was niggling me: "Hey, how can you offer stuff that you yourself won't eat?"

Guess it's important to go through with stuff, because the Old Mother has Her own way of doing things, as i found out. The important thing is the faith. As it turned out, when i upended the cooker on the pillar, i saw that it wasn't just the edges that were burnt, but all around. So i peeled off the entire blackened rice and put it back in the cooker, so that the crows got around to eating the nice white rice.

Needless to say, i couldn't throw away the blackened rice. So i ate it up, adding some ghee for taste. I wouldn't say "avidly", but in three parts. Guess that's one of the good things about being poor while growing up; you hardly have much choice and end up being able to eat almost anything (vegetarian).

~@~*-*~@~

Weirdly, even the second-round of rice didn't turn out OK; it wasn't properly cooked. So i transferred the hot bowl, with much difficulty, to the largest cooker we had and got that done.

When i finally got around to eating what i wanted about an hour later, the words of 15# K Srinivas were ringing in my ears:

చిన్న పామునైన పెద్దకర్రతోనే కొట్టాలి!
Even a small snake should be hit with a big stick!

Chakra Chamatkara

Had another visit from Dr. Shamsundar last afternoon; he has been researching his stuff some more with clairvoyants and wanted us to benefit from his findings

• Accentuate the positive energies/forces from the North and East
• Attenuate the negative energies/forces from the South and West.

Most of the stuff goes above my head, but i don't really care as long as it works. It's a black box that gives nice results, so i go along with the flow. It's a tad costly, but when you look at the "RoI", there's really no comparison. The only thing is whether one's up to spending so much up front.

During the discussion, he had a call on his mobile. The startling thing was that it was from Don Ø, which just shows that Dr. Shamsundar is in some other league!

~@~*-*~@~

Chakra

Later we had a nice discussion on materialization/manifestation (of ideas), wherein he tied up the five elements to the seven chakra. Like so:

Chakra—Elements and Rulers

The materialization starts with the sankalpa (thought) in ether/space and passes through the successively grosser elements, before ending up on Mother Earth!

However, for the same to actually fructify, there are two mandatory ingredients: Joy and Bliss, corresponding to the sixth and seventh chakra, ruled by Maha Vishnu and Shiva respectively.

All the success stories in The Secret have these necessary components added to the mix.

Update

Here's a nice bhajan (MP3) on the chakras: Jai Ambe Gauri Mata.

Smile, You're in a Chimera

The true test of spirituality is a constant cheerfulness.
—SMile…

Of late, i have been thinking of this line on Sri Brahmachaitanya from The Saint of Gondawali: (page 181, middle)

He always had a peculiar smile on his face which revealed a state of inward bliss and inward comfort.

I was thinking whether that was the best way to go forward, as it reminds me of that beatific/seraphic smile of Meher Baba:

A Seraphic Smile

The morning was so much more enjoyable with this viewpoint. Keep smiling for no reason. Some smile quotes:

• A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home.
• A smile is a powerful weapon; you can even break ice with it. ~Author Unknown
• If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it. ~Andy Rooney
• If you don't have a smile, I'll give you one of mine. ~Author Unknown
• Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. ~George Eliot
• Wear a smile - one size fits all. ~Author Unknown
• She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. ~Raymond Chandler
• A laugh is a smile that bursts. ~Mary H. Waldrip
  

~@~*-*~@~

As if to illustrate that The Alchemist was all true, Michelle sent this absolutely-rocking video:

Bodhisattva in Metro

Bodhisattva in Metro

Guess that's what you can call an infectious laugh. Have heard of instances when entire African villages end up laughing like crazy. Appended my two bits to it and sent it off to a whole lot of folks (on various Google Groups):

Laughter is good for the thyroid—Edgar Cayce.

Can't seem to forget the manner in which Sajan laughed at this, during a sort of send-off to him in the early 1990s; we were all feeling nicely happy with some vodka in us!

~@~*-*~@~

It also brings to mind a profound insight that my sis-in-law shared with us; it was the same night that we had the sighting of a mysterious brilliant white light in our bedroom. From Mammoth Mystery and then some:

"I don't ask you to avoid sin, I ask you to avoid sorrow".

~@~*-*~@~

To me, this appears to be The Secret.

Sunday Musings

Of late, the curtains are out for dry-cleaning at our shuttle courts. But that hasn't deterred us from playing, even though the foliage of the Palm Meadows Club is in full view. The curtains are off, but it ain't curtains for us; like Arjuna of the Mahabharata, we have trained ourselves to see, in this case, just the shuttle ;-)

~@~*-*~@~

After some exhausting battles last Sunday, Naren was commenting:

Don't know what happens to us once we get on the courts. Off the courts, all of us have some issue or the other. N. is limping around…

At the Telugu Karaoke session at Naren's house last evening, i had a mild bout of vertiginous migraine. At home, i descend the steps one at a time (even getting both feet on to each step before going further) like an old geezer, but that doesn't stop me from flying about the court (more in Airy Fairy).

Sri Ramakrishna gives an interesting allusion in the Gospel: (page 632, middle)

Visit To The Sinthi Bramo Samaj
…
They say that when you plunge into the holy waters of the Ganges your sins perch on a tree on the bank. No sooner do you come out of the water after the bath than the sins jump back on your shoulders.

Or probably it's like what Roald Dahl writes of Stuffy in Madame Rosette:

On the ground he moved slowly and lazily like a tired person and he thought slowly and lazily like a sleepy child, but when he was up in the air his mind was quick and his movements were quick, so quick that they were like reflex actions. It seemed, when he was on the ground, almost as though he was resting, as though he was dozing a little in order to make sure that when he got into the cockpit he would wake up fresh and quick, ready for that two hours of high concentration.
…
He was a young concentrator, this Stuffy; an intense athletic concentrator who moved towards what he wanted in a dead straight line. He took hold of winding roads and carefully he made them straight, then he moved over them with great speed and nothing stopped him.

~@~*-*~@~

While walking back, Naren had a sudden attack of nomophobia, wondering where his mobile was. That had happened to me many times, so i keep wondering about this:

Is it possible to design a Bluetooth (wearable) ring that dings whenever you're out of bounds with your mobile?

Then goodbye to all those fears of wondering where your mobile is.

Swananda Laksha Deepotsava 2009

Evening of Monday (02.NOV), had a nice visit to Swananda along with Prem. It was Kartika Pournami, full moon night in the month of Kartika and Swananda was celebrating the Laksha Deepotsava (100,000 lamps).

He had dropped in in the afternoon to get his cycle tires pumped with air, when he saw the Swananda in our garage:

Swananda comes Home

This is one reason i like the yesteryear. If everyone has everything, where's the scope for the accidental social intercourse? Only Mother Earth will end up getting screwed!

~@~*-*~@~

We started around 6 PM and tried a slightly different route. Instead of the congested Outer Ring Road, we wanted to go into Varthur, take the road in front of Greenwood High and TISB, double back on to Sarjapur Road at Dommasandra, take the left turn that takes you past Electronics City, turn towards CSB, and take the NICE road till Kanakapura. Here's the entire route in MapMyRun.

Overall, it turned out to be ~52 km as compared to the regular 36 km :-(

Anyway, the road was excellent in most parts, though i was going too slow for it; a sedate 70 kmph, where Prem was saying that 120 kmph was par for the course in his Merc-Benz.

We landed up there around 7:40 PM to this wonderful sight:

Laksha Deepotsava at Swananda

Ravel must have been surprised to see me, but all i need is company to visit Swananda; otherwise the distance is too much to do it alone. We visited the MahaGanapati Panchayathana Temple (more on it) and clicked a few photos:

Prem at the MahaGanapati Panchayathana Temple

Later, we hung around this temple for a while and went back to the original—now called the Moola—Ganapati temple to find the Siva bhajans in full swing. Ravel was a lead singer with Swami and it shows. I particularly liked the way he ended one bhajan: holding the "krupa karo" for a very long time.

Bhajans at Moola Ganapati Temple

After the bhajans, bhojan! And it was a very nice repast. Never shy of digging in to the sweets at a religious function; the Fat Man will take care of digesting that extra bit of sugar, i feel ;-)

Here's the entire set of photos of Swananda Laksha Deepotsava 2009.

~@~*-*~@~

Soon we were winging it back on the regular (36-km route) road. Prem told me two interesting anecdotes from his machine-tooling days:

The Accidental Occidental

A Frenchman who visits India and starts believing in God! His viewpoint: Life in India can only be by accident.

The Zapped Jap

According to the Japanese, the worst sin one could commit was *not* to be born a Japanese (Michael Crichton mentions a similar thing in Rising Sun).

Prem was doing some business with a Japanese company through their rep (J). They had supplied some plates for the foundation before installing their machine. But the plate wasn't milled properly. When he raised this point, J wasn't willing to believe it till he was shown the same on a CNC. After that, his entire attitude changed: after all, the honor of his company was at stake. So major discounts and freebies followed.

When the time came for J to leave, Prem asked him how he (J) found the illiterate Indian workers that he worked with. J made a profound comment:

One Indian = Two Japanese;
Two Indians = One Japanese!