Who Does?

Who Sees?

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxWhoDoes

O Mother, all is done after Thine own sweet will;
Thou art in truth self-willed, Redeemer of mankind!
Thou workest Thine own work; men only call it theirs.
Last Visit to Keshab,
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Earlier on, i used to find it corny to read stuff such as:

Not my ability, but Your grace.

But, of late, i think that's all there is to it. When i look back, all the momentous things in my life seem to have happened on their own.

One area where the sayings of Sri Brahmachaitanya Maharaj, that venerable incarnation of Lord Hanuman, have really helped me is in leaving all doer-ship to Rama. He has a lot of things to say on who actually does things in His Discourses:

• 21.FEB: Cast Away all Pride of Doership
• 12.MAR: Never Forget "Rama is the Real Doer"
• 05.MAY: Do Your Duty without Pride of Doership
• 01.JUN: Discarding Doership Constitutes Spirituality
• 10.JUN: Trust in God, the Sole Doer
• 30.JUL: Saints Act with Faith in Doership of Rama
• 06.SEP: The Faith that Rama is Doer Gives Contentment
• 27.OCT: Ascribe Doership to God and Anxiety will Vanish
• 15.NOV: Worry Arises out of Doership.

Reading them over the last few months has at last penetrated the "stony soil of the recalcitrant human mind".

Needless to say, i put in my best efforts on anything. After all, there's the Great Infinite Spirit within me as well, like in everyone else:

Shri Maharaj used to say that in the heart of every human being is hidden a spot of mystic beauty, the luster of which never withers, the flavor of which is never spoiled.

But if those efforts don't work out, so be it: that's the will of Lord Rama. One is much more in sync with that idea.

This has made life so much more enjoyable. And more time is available to put in some more effort in other areas :-)

~*~*~

In the very last chapter of the Shri Sai Satcharita, we encounter an instance of a Pundalikrao receiving a coconut from Shri Tembye Swami in Rajahmundry to be presented to his "brother Sai", but inadvertently eating it on the way to Shirdi. When Pundalikrao, trembling, offers to replace the same with another, Shirdi Baba refuses. But He pacifies Pundalikrao as follows:

Shri Tembye Swami
…
"Now you need not worry yourself any more about the matter. It was on account of my wish that the coconut was entrusted to you, and ultimately broken on the way; why should you take the responsibility of the actions on you? Do not entertain the sense of doership in doing good, as well as for bad deeds; be entirely prideless and egoless in all things and thus your spiritual progress will be rapid."

~*~*~

One of the best things that has happened from leaving all doership to Rama [no pun intended ;-)] is the following:

• One tends to live in the present moment much more; no regrets about the past and no fears about the future.
• Guess this is the way to become a superior devotee, as alluded to by Sri Ramakrishna in the Gospel: (page 265, middle)
  

  The Festival at Panihati
  …
  The inferior devotee says, "God exists, but He is very far off, up there in heaven." The mediocre devotee says, "God exists in all beings as life and consciousness." The superior devotee says: "It is God Himself who has become everything; whatever I see is only a form of God. It is He alone who has become maya, the universe, and all living beings. Nothing exists but God."

Note: Shri Sai Satcharita Grid updated.

Date Inn8

The other day, i ran into SangeethaC of NIIT at The Forum Value Mall, Whitefield. As usual, my pattern-matching algorithm was in fine fettle and i surprised her. Zapped her some more by recalling her b'day (and that of her hubby as well). She was mentioning that she had just met Sandeep ten days back; the same dude that i shocked in The Date Warehouse.

Even though i find this a useful ability, i am not that comfortable about it as i don't know how it works. It's a black box for me.

Today there was an article that shed a glimmer of light on it:

Scientists see numbers inside people’s heads
…
When it came to small numbers of dots, the researchers found that brain activity patterns changed gradually in a way that reflected the ordered nature of the numbers. For example, one might be able to conclude that the pattern for six is between that for five and seven.

In the case of the numerals, the researchers could not detect this same gradual change. This suggests their methods simply might not be sensitive enough to detect this progression yet, or that these symbols are in fact coded as more precise, discrete entities in the brain.

LiveScience has more on the same at: Scientists See Numbers Inside People's Heads.

When i think of any number between 1 and 25, i am immediately taken to the place, Sea Sands, where i was for the first twenty years of my life:

Sea Sands in WikiMapia

It had 25 houses (and then some, including a booth bungalow for a while) and that's how the first 25 numbers are stacked in my head, in an oval (1-14 on the right and 15-25 on the left)!

And when i meet a person and get around to knowing his date of birth, the slotting happens almost automatically: (months omitted)

• Gopa, PS: 11
• Nani: 9
• PSM: 25
  
• Sammy: 17
• Naren: 7.

A Unique Dasara

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxUniDas

There's something very nice about this Dasara:

• It started on a 1 (19), so it's very easy to figure out the tithi. If it's 25.SEP, the tithi is saptami (2+5 = 7). Also, each tithi ends in the night so that there's no confusion at all whether the tithi changes during the day.
• Dasami falls on 28.SEP. According to Swami, this is the date on which Shirdi Sai Baba was born in the year 1835. More in Shirdi Sai Baba's Birthday.
• Shirdi Sai Baba attained samadhi on Dasami in the year 1918. More in Seemollanghan of Shirdi Baba.

Thus, this year, it's Shirdi Baba's b'day by the Western calendar and His day of samadhi by the Indian (lunar) calendar.

To celebrate this unusual coincidence, i created a grid of all my posts on the Shri Sai Satcharita, which has fundamentally changed my view of the world.

Shri Sai Satcharita Grid

Fib-all-onacci

Have been thinking about this for some time, and noticed one more occurrence of it at ZBB.

When we nudged the football down the steps there, it bounced on the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 5^th, and 8^th steps. Don't know whether it hit the 13^th step, but it sure was weird. Of course, the size of the ball and the width of the step matter, but i am talking of a general case where these are not too out of the ordinary.

If there are more steps, one can do a "scientific" check on whether it hits more numbers in the Fibonacci series: 21, 34, 55, etc. One place that comes to mind is the steep flight of stairs between the AU Basketball Ground and the Zoology Department.

If it doesn't come out that way, guess we can call it a fib ;-)

The Inscrutable Mother

We had an interesting ride in a catamaran during our visit to the Zest Big Beach at Pondy.

The chaps took us out 3-4 km into the Bay of Bengal, cut the throttle, and allowed the willing folks to swim. I wasn't too crazy about it as i was wearing/carrying too many things and WiFi wasn't so keen as well. But i goaded the kids into the water. Life is all about XPs, n'est-ce pas?

The kids swim quite well at our club, so they were quite cool about it. Marty was more worried about some shark coming from the depths (70 feet there) and biting off his leg! As it turned out, we could hardly see anything in the murky water and nothing menacing ever came out of it. The kids now have a cool XP to talk about.

Kids in the Bay of Bengal-IV

This morning, Naren was wondering how i let them get out of the boat in the first place. I guess their having that XP was more important than my attachment to them. Read a wonderful observation by Sri Brahmachaitanya towards the end of June:

Paramartha is a Practice-oriented Discipline
…
Duty done with complete selflessness is its own reward. A mortgagee is not entitled to put a mortgaged article to use; treat your wife, children, everything you have, as a mortgage to you by God; do your duty in everything, but keep off the idea that they belong to you. Protect them dutifully, but be unconcerned, detached, about them in your heart of hearts.

Also, a long time back, a couple of days before that epic QF clash between India and Pakistan during the 1996 World Cup (on 09.MAR.1996), something happened that showed how puny one's own efforts to look after one's kids were. It happened this way.

Niki was less than three years old and i was carrying her, drinking a steel glass of coffee. My brother-in-law took the finished glass and, as i turned around, lost my balance due to a small step in the walkway. As i flailed to hold my balance, i was thrown headlong towards a coconut tree and a planter, separated perhaps by a foot of space. Niki was hurled from my arms and landed in the gap between the two. If she had hit either the tree or the planter, her head would have cracked open. I learned very clearly who was looking after us then: it's the Old Mother.

Sri Ramakrishna sings in the Gospel: (page 818, middle)

Visit to Nanda Bose's House
…
O Mother, all is done after Thine own sweet will:
…

~*~*~*

It's running Dasara and one could keenly feel the spirit of the Old Mother. Somehow i could empathize a bit with the Holy Mother's ability to keep cheerful while doing mundane chores this morning (as we just back from Pondy, there were more of them). As if to keep me going, She manifested Her self-created son, Ganesha, in the first slice of bread that i toasted:

Ganesha seen in a Bread Slice

The word Durga means Inaccessible.

But the word that strikes me the most about Her is: Inscrutable.

Visit to Zest Big Beach, Puducherry

Had a nice trip to Pondy the last few days. Even though we planned for the stay at Zest Big Beach till this Friday, we got back this evening as there wasn't really much to do there. The heat between 10 AM to 5 PM was quite oppressive for us folks made delicate by the Bangalore weather, so we hit (it) back.

Still in the process of uploading and annotating the photos:

• Bangalore to Puducherry
• Zest Big Beach, Puducherry
• Trip to Auroville
• Puducherry to Bangalore.

But there were many mental images that couldn't be captured as they were too fleeting to shoot with the camera. As it is, WiFi drives quite fast between 90-110 kmph, while i am more sedate at 60-70 kmph.

One thing that stood out for me was a photo of Sri Ramakrishna on a cart on the stretch between Tindivanam and Pondy! Right after that, a lorry went past with the name RAMAR on it. Ha, that reminded me of this ditty that i composed some time back and reworked a bit to get:

The one-r Rama, he's a God
The two-r Ramar, he's a fraud
And I'll bet a silver armor
That there isn't a three-r Ramarr.

with apologies to Ogden Nash, who wrote:

The one-l lama, he's a priest
The two-l llama, he's a beast
And I'll bet a silk pyjama
That there isn't a three-l lllama.

Twit or Tweet?

With apologies to fans of Halloween ;-)

The other day, one of my Kotak friends called me. He was wondering what kept me busy. Of course, it's blogging and photography, with tweeting added to the mix of late. I told him to get onto Twitter, as messages can be brief and light-weight (no heavy baggage in the form of attachments—chinna samanu periya sukamu!)

He said: "yes, Tweeter".

Ah, the intricacies of the English language. It's Twitter, but what you post on it is a tweet, as twit has got its own negative connotations: (define twit from the Google Deskbar)

twerp: someone who is regarded as contemptible
tease: harass with persistent criticism or carping; "The children teased the new teacher"; "Don't ride me so hard over my failure"; "His fellow workers razzed him when he wore a jacket and tie"
aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing

On cue, saw this report in the ToI front page last morning:

Tharoor’s tweet has Cong hopping mad

New Delhi: UN diplomat turned-Congressman Shashi Tharoor might well be tempting fate with his unplugged comments on his party’s austerity drive.

He has shown little taste for the rules of politics that often require a discreet silence. In keeping with his view that he was hardly in the wrong as he was paying his bills of his five-star digs from where he was eased out, Tharoor wrote on Twitter he would definitely travel “in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”
…
Natarajan averted a direct response when asked if “our holy cows” in Tharoor’s twit had an allusion to Rahul.

Had a good laugh over that "Tharoor’s twit". In this case, "twit" is more appropriate than "tweet".

Accordingly, here's a small suggestion to add one more definition to twit:

A tweet that blows up in your face.

Airy Fairy

One shot that i particularly love in the morning shuttle badminton is what Navneet refers to as the Flying Dutchman; you dive across the court towards the net, racquet extended, and smash the bird, just above the net, down the line.

This morning, i was in the zone and launched into one more of those F…D… shots. I even had the time to change the smash into a cross-court one. Man, that felt good. D., who was sitting out, was applauding it and, in the heat of battle, out came a self-gloating comment: "Hanuman".

D. observed: "Only the tail is missing". Had to kill that response: "Tucked it in", as there was a good possibility of Naren, my partner on court, wondering: "What?"!

~*~*~*

Incidentally, have been quite amused by the gender bender in a couple of movies.

In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, an atrociously-funny Jim Carrey uses that funda to ID the crook.

The recently-deceased Patrick Swayze had to resort to that while acting as a drag queen (Vida) in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. In an interview he said that he was scared to death that it would result in gangrene or whatever.

My response to Swayze would be the same as that of that Scotsman: (from Out of Kilter)

"…everything is in very very good condition"!

TWINet—The Whitefield Initiatives Network

Folks at Palm Meadows are involved in a lot of social causes, so we thought of setting up a site:

• For all programs that do not have a web site
• Linking to all programs that have a web site. Taking a cue from Google FastFlip, screen-shots of external web sites were added to our pages :-)
  

Here's the home page that we set up for TWINet—The Whitefield Initiatives Network today:

The Whitefield Initiatives Network

Mahar-astra

One saying from all those lovely ones in Chapter 15 of Sai Baba The Master that has been resonating in my head the last couple of days is this one:

There’s a low-born one (mahar) in the body; he should be evicted.

I have read about such a (physical) presence in quite a few cases.

The first one is from the Gospel: (page 16, top)

Introduction
...
One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the destruction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre cloth of a sannyāsi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.

From Sai Baba The Master:

The Off-shoots of Sai Baba
…
Upasani Baba Maharaj
…
The spiritual training Sai Baba gave to Kasinath was mainly through a number of significant visions which served in wiping out human fragilities like lust, greed, etc., from his heart. For instance, once Kasinath had a vision that he entered a house. Sai Baba who was seated inside beckoned to him with a view to whisper some instruction into the former’s ear. When he was about to do accordingly, a shabby counterpart of Kasinath himself pulled him away and asked him not to heed Sai’s words. After repeated warnings to the shabby figure Sai Baba beat him, took him to a stream and burnt him on a pyre. Then Sai returned and told him that the shabby figure was the personification of his (Kasinath’s) sins; “You are now free from sin. By our united effort much is to be accomplished. You will yourself understand everything without any word from me.”

Swami Ashokananda narrates a very unusual instance of coming face-to-face with the ego in his own body: (A Heart Poured Out, page 21, middle)

One day while walking slowly to school, I felt that I had cornered my ego in one part of my body. I tried to get hold of it and throw it out. It was like a living thing. It went with lightning speed from one part of my body to the other, and with lightning speed I pursued it. I couldn't catch it. And then suddenly it became dispersed again through my whole body; it was no longer a separate thing that I could put my finger on. I have never read in the books of an experience like that, but it was very definite, very real.

"That was a very illuminating experience", Swami Ashokananda once said years later, attributing the experience to a friend of his, "and one which accords with our whole system of Vedantic thought. It not only gave him the sense that the ego was something different from himself; it also gave him a sense of what he really was-not the ego, but the Self…. Once you have grasped this truth, once you have brought about a little of the severance between the 'I am' and the predicate, the rest will come easily. It is as though you made a breach in a tremendous dam; it is just a matter of time before the waters themselves will sweep the whole dam away."

~*~*~

How are we going to get rid of this dark dude from ourselves? What is the astra that we can use on this mahar?

Once in a while, climbing the mount for the fount at the top of it seems so arduous that one is tempted to just sit tight on Steinbeck's crag: (from Ramana on the Mount)

"The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't any virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things people do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say."

Saiమయ స్పూర్తి

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSaiMS

Presence of mind, with a twist

One issue with being an asynchronous guy is the lessening of the ability of thinking on one's feet (of course, the lack of it might have been the reason for becoming asynch in the first place). So when i see it in action, i am filled with admiration.

Today, in the Shri Sai Satcharita parayana, there was one that amused me quite a bit: (Chapter 24)

Anna Chinchanikar vs. Mavsibai

Hemadpant, now describes another witty incident, in which Baba played a peace-maker's part. There was one devotee by name Damodar Ghanashyama Babare alias Anna Chinchanikar. He was simple, rough and straightforward. He cared for nobody, always spoke plainly and carried all dealings in cash. Though he looked outwardly harsh and uncompromising, he was good natured and guileless. So Sai Baba loved him. One day, like others serving Baba in their own way, this Anna was, one noon standing prone and was shampooing the left arm of Baba, which rested on the kathada (railing). On the right side, one old widow named Venubai Koujalgi whom Baba called mother and all others Mavsibai, was serving Baba in her own way. This Mavsibai was an elderly woman of pure heart. She clasped the fingers of both her hands round the trunk of Baba and was at this time kneading Baba's abdomen. She did this so forcibly that Baba's back and abdomen became flat (one) and Baba moved from side to side. Anna on the other side was steady, but Mavsibai's face moved up and down with her strokes. Once it so happened that her face came very close to Anna's. Being of a witty disposition she remarked - "Oh, this Anna is a lewd (bad) fellow, he wants to kiss me. Even being so old with grey hair he feels no shame in kissing me." These words enraged Anna and he pulled up his sleeves and said - "You say that I am an old bad fellow, am I quite a fool? It is you that have picked up a quarrel and are quarreling with me". All the persons, present there were enjoying this encounter between them. Baba Who loved both of them equally and wanted to pacify them, managed the affair very skillfully. Lovingly He said - "Oh Anna, why are you unnecessarily raising this hue and cry? I do not understand what harm or impropriety is there, when the mother is kissed?" Hearing these words of Baba, both of them were satisfied and all the persons laughed merrily and enjoyed Baba's wit to their heart's content.

The one that takes the cake for for on-the-spot thinking must be this: (we had a real good laugh over it at dinner the other night)

Words from the Master
…
In the villages in Tamil Nadu, during the yearly temple festivals, there will be a temporary stage constructed in the open, where famous drama troupes will enact plays, mostly scenes from the great Hindu epics like the Mahabharatha and the Ramayana. I used to go and watch those dramas.

On one such occasion, they were enacting the scene from Mahabharatha were Draupadi is disrobed by Duryodhana (sic) and she is ultimately saved by Lord Krishna.

The Draupadi character was played by a man dressed in a saree.

As per their plan, he would wear seven sarees, one on top of the other and Duryodhana would pull them out one after the other keeping a count.

When the seventh saree is reached, Draupadi would scream to Lord Krishna for help and Krishna would appear.

Somehow…the Draupadi character missed out one saree while getting dressed, and wore only 6 sarees.

On stage, Duryodhana started pulling and suddenly when the 6th saree was being pulled, Draupadi realized the mistake!

He started screaming, “Hey leave it! Hey leave it!” to Duryodhana.

Duryodhana thought that Draupadi was playing her role so beautifully and continued to pull!

Finally, Draupadi was standing on the stage with just half trousers and a blouse, with make-up of a woman!

But he had good presence of mind, and he screamed, “Oh Krishna! How gracious you are; you changed my gender to save me from shame!”

For folks who can read Telugu, here's another delicious one:

సమయ స్పూర్తి

based on Einstein's driver:

The Albert Einstein Experience
…
The story is that Albert Einstein's driver used to sit at the back of the hall during each of his lectures, and after a period of time, remarked to Einstein that he could probably give the lecture himself, having heard it several times.

So, at the next stop on the tour, Einstein and the driver switched places, with Einstein sitting at the back, in driver's uniform.

The driver gave the lecture, flawlessly. At the end, a member of the audience asked a detailed question about some of the subject matter, upon which the lecturer replied, 'well, the answer to that question is quite simple, I bet that my driver, sitting up at the back, there, could answer it...'

"Uncle Moon is everybody's uncle"

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxUncleMoon

My favorite uncle, URK Murthi Gaaru, completes 77 years tomorrow.

Every family needs an uncle like that: cheerful, humble, high office, and that quote by Dame Fonteyn very much in evidence in his approach to life:

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Certainly, he was a godsend to us.

After retirement, he settled down in Kashi. With his b'day coming up, i called him and was amazed: I had never heard him sound so cheerful. If you hadn't known him, you'd have thought that he was like, say, 55.

He told me the secret: he meets so many Indians and foreigners and, after seeing their many quirks, has stopped all judgment and gets on with life!

He has an interesting funda in his horoscope: Ketu in the 12^th house.

~~~*-*~@~

When i was staying with CPKK, the numerologist in Chennai, in the early 1990s, he happened to mention that Ketu in the 12^th house indicates that folks are in their last life, and that his friend, PVR, had that combo.

Ketu in Navagraha Mandir

Anand explains the reason for this:

From what I have read, Ketu in 12th in the rashi chart shows spirituality, especially if placed in benefic signs. If placed in say Scorpio (as 12th house), Ketu may give interest in mysticism. So, while moksha cannot be predicted, Ketu gives a different view of life, a more mature vision, and a rejection of that which is mundane and material. One may say, how Ketu, who is headless, can give such elevated thinking? The cause for rebirth is desire. The seed of desire is placed when we see something with our eyes (physical eyes or mind's eye), and desire leads to rebirth and the attendant problems of maya, ego, etc. Since Ketu is headless, he has no eyes ! So kahan se rebirth !!? Hence Ketu is the significator for moksha.
To see moksha one has to look into some special vargas, and for that the birth time has to be rectified. But broadly, Ketu in 12th at least makes you want to pull away from maya. The same can be said for Jupiter in 12th or Moon in the 12th. With the caveat that all these planets must be in dignity and the connected dharma houses are strong.

So i told CPKK about my uncle's horoscope. His wife's reaction zaps me even after ~20 years: "No, no, he can't be in his last life", and she doesn't even know him.

Once i was narrating my Ganesha XP to a fellow devotee of Sri Ramakrishna and he pooh-poohed it.

Mind-games/hubris in spirituality. Who are we kidding, the Great Infinite Spirit?

Whatever bugs i might have, i have been spared jealousy (even though i was called by my initials, NVS, at IIM-A) and competition in spirituality. I always feel happy to meet another on the spiritual path (భక్తి బాఠసారి).

As usual, Sri Ramakrishna encapsulates this idea pithily in the Gospel: (page 699, top)

The Master's Birthday
…
"Everything happens by the will of God. If your spiritual consciousness has been awakened at this place, know that I am only an instrument. 'Uncle Moon is everybody's uncle.' All happens by the will of God."

Thinking of this intoxicating idea in the morning's puja made me soar in some other plane altogether.

Sri Brahmachaitanya Pravachan Grid, Completed

This post is dedicated to Sri Raghunath Ganjur

It gives me great pleasure to mention that the Sri Brahmachaitanya Pravachan Grid was completed this morning.

Got up at 5:15 AM with a frisson of excitement to see that, as he had been doing for so many days and months, Sri Ganjur had already posted the pravachan for the day. So it was a 2-minute job for me to add the same to the grid that i had been maintaining since February.

Here's the completed grid:

Complete Sri Brahmachaitanya Pravachan Grid

To me, this is a prime example of that African proverb:

Slowly, slowly, the snail climbs up the tree.

Sri Ganjur had started the process last September and moved an entire book (Discourses) of more than 365 pages to the Internet in the process of a year.

For my own reference, i had created the grid and shared it with those who want quick access to their own favorite pravachan for the day (mine are on 17.JAN, 04.SEP, and 18.SEP).

Sri Ganjur's focus on the task rubbed off on me as i also ensured that the grid was updated more or less daily. The most important part of this (asynchronous) partnership was the predictability—when i checked the Sadguru Sri Brahmachaitanya Maharaj blog, the pravachan for the day would be there. Ensuring that over a period of time is not a joke.

Thank you, Sir, for this excellent compilation!

Sri Raghunath Ganjur and Sri Brahmachaitanya Nilaya

Golden Moments

According to Me—Harry Golden

A long time back, read Only in America by Harry Golden, from which the above was featured as a book section in the RD of May, 1959 (India Edition). Some of the incidents that stayed with me were:

• The incredible library system in the United States that allows anyone to borrow a book from across the country; we had a taste of that when my Dad subbed to the British High Commission in Chennai and got all those lovely hardbound Alistair MacLeans such as The Golden Gate (who can forget that heroine, April Wednesday, and lines such as: "There were those who were lost without their code books, but Paul Revson wasn't one of them"!)
• His medicinal whiskey bottle popping out of his briefcase during a meeting and Golden making a dive for it before it hit the floor. Golden goes on to say that some of his best friends were made in that meeting.
• Bouncers challenging wedding gatecrashers with "So you're from the boy's side or the girl's?" After the 'crashers hazard a guess, throw them out: "Get the hell out. This is a Bar Mitzvah"!
  

To me, the best of those incidents is the following one: (pp. 161-162 of the RD)

The Show Must Go On!

I love the theatre and everybody connected with it, from actor to stagehand. I believe, however, that this business of "the show must go on" has been overdone a bit. Not that I doubt the truth behind this tradition. I know that performers have faced their audiences with deep sorrow in their hearts, with news of some terrible personal disaster. I rise up to applaud.

But I do not applaud actors alone. I applaud people. All people. Life itself. For everybody, the show must go on. How many working men have come home from the cemetery where they had just buried a child and sat right down at their workbenches, machines, and lathes? How many housewives pitch in to get the children ready for school, do the household chores, with breaking backs, migraine, and perhaps a personal sorrow, too?

Sir Rabindranath Tagore tells us a story in exquisite poetry. His servant did not arrive on time. Like so many philosophers and poets, Tagore was helpless when it came to the less important things in life, his personal wants, his clothes, his breakfast, and tidying up the place.

An hour went by and Tagore was getting angrier by the minute. He thought of all sorts of punishments for the man. Three hours later Tagore no longer thought of punishment. He'd discharge the man without any further ado.

Finally the man turned up. It was midday. Without a word, the servant proceeded with his duties as though nothing had happened. He picked up the master's clothes, set to making breakfast and started cleaning up. Tagore watched this performance with mounting rage. Finally he said it: "Drop everything, and get out."

The man, however, continued sweeping and, after another few moments, with quiet dignity he said: "My little girl died last night."

The show must go on.

Navras / नवरस / నవ రసాలు

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxNavras

It being a 9/9/9, WorldSp"i"ce* had a very nice program on their Telugu Spandana channel this morning on the navras (నవ రసాలు), the nine basic emotions. They had songs such as:

పాడుతా తీయగ…

That took me back many years to Club Mahindra Munnar, where this wonderful Kerala artiste enacted the various rasas for us. I could get five of them in reasonably good detail: (please click the image—screen-shot from the Flickr set detail—to see larger versions of the photos)

Navras / नवरस / నవ రసాలు

I chatted with the artiste for a while after the program; his b'day was the same date (including the year) as NSR, one of the founders of Infosys! That killed me. Not surprisingly, i don't remember his name.

* Fittingly, the WorldSpace program ended with a reference to the nine types of bhakti. More in The Square Root of Nava-vidha Bhakti.

9/9/9—Start of Sade Satti

Main Deity in Gunjur Shani Temple

Time to hunker down and batten down the hatches.

There was a detailed report in the Bangalore Times last Sunday about Saturn entering Virgo on 09.SEP.2009 (and staying there till AUG.2011!), which starts the Sade Satti. I thought the Sade Satti varied from individual to individual, but this is a different view. Can't be too careful anyway.

Here are the predictions for each Zodiac sign, from Anupam V Kapil, a 46: (click the image for a readable version)

SToI—BLR—06.SEP.2009—BlrTimes—Page 5—Top—Sade Satti

Even Masters such as Sri Brahmachaitanya weren't spared from the effects of Saturn. In The Saint of Gondawali, we read: (page 164)

The Ram Navami of April 1913 was the biggest which the Master celebrated in Gondawali. An astrologer attended the function. He studied the Master's horoscope and told him that he was passing through a very bad period of Saturn. The Master smiled and said, "May be that it is so. Saturn, however, moves his own way while I go my own way. How is he going to affect me who utters the Name of Him who is the Lord of the universe?" The astrologer had no answer but he said, "Yes, Master! What you say is right. But there is no temple of Saturn in this area. Why don't you be kind enough to build one?" The Master agreed and thus the temple of Saturn came into existence in Gondawali. Saturn, the Master remarked, is the Inspector of Police under God.

Keeping that last point in mind, here are some suggestions from Anupam V Kapil: (bottom right of the above image)

Speak the truth, avoid consumption of alcohol and non-vegetarian food and fast on Saturdays. Remember Saturn and feed flour to ants. Light a til lamp in the evening at the foot of a peepal tree, serve a black cow and feed monkeys with laddoos. Jaap of Shani mantras, especially Dashrath kavach is beneficial. Reciting the mantra Om Aeem Hreem Shreem Shannescharaye Namaha or Om Pram Preem Praum Sam Shannescharaye Namaha or Om Hram Hreem Hraum Suryaye Namaha 108 times daily will help.

See Did you know that Saturn solves the Jigsaw Puzzle called "Life"? as well.

Shani Deva

~*~*~

Suzanne White was also mentioning that Mercury (the quicksilver antithesis to the slow Saturn) is in retrograde from 06.SEP, though that would get over by the end of this month. The High Priestess writes:

On September 6th, 2009 the planet Mercury goes retrograde. It will stay that way until September 29 when it starts to go "direct' again. Of course Mercury retrograde doesn't really indicate that the planet is actually moving backward. But because of various scientific phenomena of which I am utterly ignorant, it appears to be in reverse. We call these times "Mercury Retrograde".

For some reason, we also attribute certain undesirable effects to Mercury's recalcitrant shenanigans.

During Mercury Retrograde, astrologers like to warn us, we should not sign contracts, make promises, take up with new lovers and expect their seductive promises to mean longevity beyond next Tuesday. During Mercury retrograde we should also refrain from expecting electronic equipment to function at full capacity. Computers and the like seem to sense Mercury revving up to back up and begin pulling all manner of tricks and engendering glitches and spikes guaranteed to drive us all bats.

Incro-yabla

Saw a very neat demo on learning French, fast and fun.

Head to French Yabla and click on the demo.

Man, that lady was speaking nineteen to the dozen (dix-neuf à la douzaine?), but the best part of the demo was that you could slow her down and make sense of what she was saying using the French and English subtitles. Good fun it was. Btw, that motor-mouth reminded me of the mantis-eating girl!

In The Drifters, James A. Michener writes of how he learned French in five days flat. His teacher spoke only in French. After a while, he figured out.

AQLBQ

The other day, i was wondering about the Alliterative Quotient of Languages on Basic Questions (AQLBQ).

Since most of the basic questions in English start with W, its AQLBQ is quite high at 5/6 (How is the exception).

I ran the same through the other languages i know and found that both the Indian languages i know reasonably well score a 6/6. French comes in last at 3/6.

Here's the table:

Alliterative Quotient of Languages on Basic Questions

If you feel like it, please send me the AQLBQ for your language (along with the six basic questions) and i'll update the table. Thanks!

A Mess-aging Infrastructure

You don't have to be in physical contact to disseminate.
—GS in an IIM-A Finance class, in the mid-1980s

I am a big fan of asynchronous stuff as it increases productivity. More in Steinbeck's Knife.

So it was nice to see that our cook got the hang of it easily. Whenever stuff gets over in the house, she doesn't tell me; all she does is leave the wrappers of the items to be reordered on the counter.

Items to be reordered

Later on, at my leisure, i call the Vitan/Food Zone folks with the order (including the package size) and they deliver the stuff home*.

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck writes of examining the waste-paper baskets of consumers to see what they are buying. In our case, you just have to look at our counter ;-)

* There was another idea on this aspect; blogged in: Making Mobile Payments Remotely.

A Day of Chaitanya

This post is dedicated to Prakash Suratkar,
a friend in spirit

While getting up was recollecting a lovely trip that we did to Srirangapatna this day five years back. Had blogged about it the same day last year in:

Trip to Sai Seva Trust, Srirangapatna

While reading and reminiscing about the same, there was an email on the Brahmachaitanya Yahoo Group about today's pravachan:

[brahmachaitanya] Vivek and Vairagya redefined

Jai Shree Ram,
As I am going through today's 'pravachan', I am amazed to see how SHREE MAHARAJ has simplified and redefined the two terms which often comes in the life of a humble Sadhak' and he/she keeps wondering what exactly is it?

I looked up the pravachan grid and this is what i found: (no frills, no fuss)

Be Prideless to Achieve Devotion
…
To renounce all that leads to forgetting God is vairagya, and to follow only such things which help in remembering God is viveka.

Nice and simple, n'est-ce pas?!

It stilled my mind and put me in a tremendous mood for the daily puja; i started crying even before starting it, which, IMHO, is the best way to do it.

The icing on the cake was the Shri Sai Satcharita parayana for the day turning out to be on Cholkar's sugarless tea (Chapter 15):

Baba meant to say, "If you spread your palms with devotion before Me, I am immediately with you, day and night. Though, I am here bodily, still I know what you do; beyond the seven seas. Go wherever you will, over the wide world, I am with you. My abode is in your heart and I am within you. Always worship Me, Who is seated in your heart, as well as, in the hearts of all beings, Blessed and fortunate, indeed, is he who knows Me thus."

The Mantra Comes Full Circle

Sometime back, i had blogged about getting a mantra from the Gospel: (page 104, bottom)

In Search of the Nama
…
"There is nothing in mere scholarship. The object of study is to find means of knowing God and realizing Him. A holy man had a book. When asked what it contained, he opened it and showed that on all the pages were written the words 'Om Rama', and nothing else."

Due to some reason, the Om Rama didn't sound "complete", so i was wondering whether that was it.

Sometime later, i was reading the Shri Sai Satcharita: (Chapter 27)

Then she make a bow and began to shampoo Baba's legs and Baba began to talk with her and knead her arms which were shampooing His Legs. On seeing this reciprocal service Shama began to joke and said - "It is going on well, it is a wonderful sight to see God and His Bhakta serving each other. "After being pleased with her sincere service, Baba asked her in low and fascinating tone to chant 'Rajarama, Rajarama' then and always, and said - "If you do this, your life's object will be gained, your mind will attain peace and you will be immensely benefited."

This i appended to the one earlier to get the complete mantra.

Though there are nine types of Bhakti, Sri Brahmachaitanya says that the third one (nama smarana) is enough, through a lovely allusion: (also used in The Square Root of Nava-vidha Bhakti)

Nama and the Other Sadhanas
…
Imagine that a person wanting to meet another living nine miles away, starts for that place; when he has walked three miles he sees the very person he had set out to meet; it is then unnecessary for him to walk further.

The thing i like most about it is that i got it from my two wonderful gurus:

A Mantra

The icing on the cake is that it adds up to 32, one of the lucky numbers in numerology.

Itsy bitsy, but super-duper, Redux

Itsy bitsy, but super-duper

Jeffrey Wright has a new fan.

Was very amused by his rendition of Peoples Hernandez in Shaft, but the cameo that he did in The Manchurian Candidate blew me off.

Video: Al Melvin in The Manchurian Candidate