Dead or Alive?

Ghost stories fascinate me no end. Consider this scenario:

B, D, and M study together in an Engg. college at Bangalore. B is from Bangalore, D from Delhi, and M from Mysore. After graduation ("passing out"), B and D start working at B'lore while M goes back to Mysore.

Much later, M and B meet up. M says: "I met D when I came to B'lore a couple of days back". B is shocked: "But D died last year". It's M's turn to be spooked.

So the next time you meet a friend from the past, be careful, very careful ;-) In fact, what's the proof that one is not a ghost oneself? M. Night Shyamalan made a pile (~USD 673 million) on the same premise in The Sixth Sense.

Anyway, the above example is based on a real-life incident:

My Dad once told me that one of my AU Engg. professors, a Mr. Subba Rao, had died. Later, when i went to meet Prof. NLN Rao, the head of my Engg. department, Mr. Subba Rao walked into the room. It was then that i understood the meaning of cold sweat!

Later, when i crosschecked, my Dad clarified that he was referring to some other Subba Rao.

If a person's Dead/Alive flag is set properly in the head, everything's OK. Otherwise, chaos might be just a blink away.

~@~*-*~@~

For those who came in late, here are my Halloween posts from earlier years:

• 2008: The Ghost Who Walks
  
• 2007: Unadhikakritamkritam (Underdone, overdone, undone!)—not for the fainthearted.

Sunny & Swami

The Infinite Spirit
Cannot be Understood
Only Experienced.

It was quite disappointing to read the diatribe of Rahul Singh against Swami in the latest issue of Outlook magazine:

The Spell Breaker
…
Kovoor’s particular target was the fuzzy-haired Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, whose millions of gullible followers include cricketer Sunil Gavaskar and the late constitutional expert, Nani Palkhivala.

Why should India's greatest opener, a stickler for detail, be any less so in other parts of his life?

Satyam Sivam Sundaram Volume 5 narrates the miraculous way in which Swami came into Sunny's life: (pp. 200-201 from the PPS; here's the PDF, if you prefer that)

Earthly Glamor with Heavenly Flavor (PPS/PDF)

And what about the other little master, Sachin Tendulkar; is he also as gullible?

Two Little Masters

And Shivkumar Sharma, that santoor maestro?

Shivji & Swami

Shivji narrates in Journey with a Hundred Strings: (paragraph with highlighted section above; here are the readable pages)

I also chanced to be present for Baba's sixtieth-birthday celebrations, where he invited me to perform before the massive audience of five lakh. As I heard Baba's words, my eyes filled with tears. 'Shiv Kumar Sharma is one of my truest followers, and if you desire to experience Nirvana in music, listen to his music.' This moment and these words have stayed in my heart, giving me solace in times of stress or sorrow. Playing before such a massive gathering, packed with Baba's worshippers from over all the world, is something I shall never forget. When I finished, Baba called me to his side before the august crowd and international press, and slipped a diamond ring around my finger.

Any day, i'd go with these maestros as well as my own XPs with Swami.

Swami's "Third Eye"

Sharing Dox in a Jiffy

It felt good to tweet the following a few minutes back:

Swananda Dhatri Havana & Laksha Deepotsava (ಧಾತ್ರೀಹವನ - ಲಕ್ಷದೀಪೊತ್ಸವ) on Monday, November 2, 2009 ( http://bit.ly/31UVTw )

After maintaining the Swananda web site for a while, have evolved a set of procedures to rapidly share documents through its web site as PDFs.

Normally, i get the invites and brochures as a set of JPGs from the Swananda printer folks. If the images are in:

• Landscape format (wider), put them all in a PowerPoint file
• Portrait format (longer), put them all in a Word file.

Then, "print" out the PPS/DOC to a PDF using pdf995. Voilà!

See Bootstrapping in a Jiffy as well.

The Catcher in Samalkot

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind,
our duty is to furnish it well.
—Peter Ustinov

I love this quote as in the process of going about Life, some funny stuff from something i have read/seen comes in to the head and changes the entire mood in a jiffy. This morning, there was something from The Catcher in the Rye. That's one crazy kooky book.

The Catcher in the Rye

It starts, at least in my memory:

The first thing you'd probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. That sort of stuff bores me and second my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything personal about them. They're nice and all, I am not saying that, but they're touchy as hell. All I am going to tell you is this madman stuff that happened to me at Pencey Prep and I had to come over and take it easy for a while. Anyway, that's what I told DB and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood….

It was Georgy "Porgy" Abraham who introduced me to it in the late 1980s and i, in turn, had the pleasure of sharing it with (even well-read) guys like DN; still recall him hightailing back to his place on his bike with the red Catcher in his back-pocket. He killed me.

Anyway, i like to think that i am the only guy who ever read The Catcher at the Samalkot railway station. This was taken just a few days after my wedding: (so don't go ballistic if you don't recognize me!)

At Samalkot Railway Station

The Monkey King and I

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxMonKing

Of late, i have run into a few instances of Ramana Maharshi and His simian friends that i thought it would be nice to put them all together.

The first one was this shot:

Ramana Maharshi: Surrender

The next one was a recent post:

Sage Of Arunachala
…
Once a group of monkeys were mourning the death of one of their group when Maharishi was on his usual walk. He went and sat with them and explained to them that death is only for the body and not the soul and that they should not weep. The monkeys kept looking at him while he was talking and then walked away.
…
It seems there were a lot of monkeys in Tiruvannamalai and news spread that scientists from some foreign land were planning to come and capture a few of them for their research work. News reached Maharshi and that day when he saw one of the monkeys he sat and talked with him and told him that people were coming to catch them all and if he is intelligent he should escape from here with his group right away. It is indeed amazing that when the scientists did arrive and search around for monkey's they could not get even a single monkey all around Tiruvannamalai in spite of searching all day.

Hah.

The last one was in the chapter of the (lovely) experiences of Rangan with Bhagavan: (The Power of the Presence, Part One, pp. 22-23)

Crows, dogs, monkeys, squirrels, sheep and many other animals came to see Bhagavan. Many of them instinctively recognized his benevolence and greatness, had his darshan and went away. It is the human being alone who uses his intelligence and thereby fails to recognize Bhagavan's greatness. When we look at Bhagavan through the distorting prism of our minds, we think that Bhagavan is some ordinary, insignificant person.

Monkeys frequently visited Skandashram to play in the trees and to visit Bhagavan. Once, when I had come from Madras for darshan, a whole tribe came to visit. One of the monkeys approached Bhagavan, sat in his lap and embraced him. The monkey looked like he was giggling. He also seemed to be saying something to Bhagavan.

Bhagavan remarked, 'The monkey is telling me that today he has been accepted as the king of the monkeys. Look at the monkeys sitting on the wall. That one is the queen, the first lady of the kingdom. Over there is the second, junior queen.'

Then, pointing out some of the others, he continued, 'The chief of his army is sitting there. All the others are his soldiers.'

There were nearly a hundred monkeys assembled there. In their joy and excitement they climbed the trees, broke many of the branches, jumped around and made a lot of noise.

Bhagavan stroked the monkey king's head and said, 'The lame boy has become a king today. He has come to give me the good news.'

Since some of the devotees did not know the story of Nondi, 'the lame boy', Bhagavan told us again for their benefit.

'This monkey was a boy when I was in Virupaksha Cave. One day the other monkeys bit him, inflicted many wounds on him, and departed, leaving him behind. The poor boy came to me with all his wounds, so I looked after him till he recovered. Even then I knew that one day he would become the king. It has happened today. Usually monkeys do not accept a monkey that has been looked after by a human being, but this one was accepted back into the tribe after it had recovered.'

[39] Suri Nagamma writes in Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi:

A few days later, I wrote four verses under the title 'Prarthana' and placed them before Bhagavan. Seeing them he began to laugh to himself. Noticing this, Bhagavan’s another attendant Rajagopala Iyer asked what had been written. With a smile he said, "These four verses are written as a prayer. The second verse is amusing. It seems, after I left the hill and settled down here, I have no monkeys to serve me. So, 'why not accept my mind which is a monkey for service? This monkey is after material things. Tie it down or chastise it; but see that it does service to you.' Adi Sankara in Sivananda Lahari has written a sloka approximating to the idea, wherein he says: 'O, Lord Sankara! You are a bhikshu. Why not tie down my mind, known as monkey, to your stick and go about begging? You will then get alms in abundance."

Slaking the Thirst of the Chatak Bird

There's a nice allusion in the Gospel:

With Various Devotees
…
'The chatak bird craves only rain-water. Even when it is dying of thirst, it turns its beak upward and wants only water from the sky. The Ganges, the Jamuna, and the seven oceans are filled to the brim, but still it will not touch the water of the earth."

Yogananda SRF Devotees—Message Boards—Poetry—Sing O Bird!

The Shri Sai Satcharita is unlike the Gospel in the sense that there isn't much of what Shridi Sai Baba says in it. So when i come across an entire passage from Him, it's like manna:

Chapter 6
…
"There will never be any dearth or scarcity, regarding food and clothes, in any devotees’ homes. It is my special characteristic, that I always look to, and provide, for the welfare of those devotees, who worship Me whole-heartedly with their minds ever fixed on Me. Lord Krishna has also said the same in the Gita. Therefore, strive not much for food and clothes. If you want anything, beg of the Lord, leave worldly honours, try to get Lord’s grace and blessings, and be honored in His Court. Do not be deluded by worldly honor. The form of the Deity should be firmly fixed in the mind. Let all the senses and mind be ever devoted to the worship of the Lord, let there be no attraction for any other thing; fix the mind in remembering Me always, so that it will not wander elsewhere, towards body, wealth and home. Then it will be calm, peaceful and care-free. This is the sign of the mind, being well engaged in good company. If the mind is vagrant, it cannot be called well-merged."

Note: Shri Sai Satcharita Grid updated.

Reviews: DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxDKIOD

Some afternoons, i pass a lot of pleasant time just flipping over the DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary. A thing of beauty is a joy forever; this is one such book.

DK—Illustrated Oxford Dictionary

The DK guys have given the Oxford Dictionary what Pablo Casals once referred to as:

Give to it the rainbow!

Here's a set of sample pages, with my favorite Lynx:

DK—Illustrated Oxford Dictionary (Sample Pages)

One reviewer of the book on Amazon.com put it best:

It's about as multi-media a book can get without being a computer program.

The only thing that bothered me about the dictionary was the Foreword. While the Publisher, Dorling Kindersley was singing paeans to the Oxford Dictionary in his column, the Publishing Director for Reference, Oxford University Press didn't even make a single reference to DK in his.

It's like having two guys, A & B, with A praising B to the skies, while B does some more beating of his own drum (self-dabba we use to call it in Sea Sands) and A could take a flying fuck at the moon for all B cared. That sort of indifference makes me cry.

Anyway, by a quirk of fate, got this dictionary at no cost (more in Visit to Netkallappa Circle on the last Wednesday of SEP.2009), which makes me wonder whether the best things in life such as:

• Air
• Light
• Love of God

are indeed those that come to you free.

Surely the "wonderful things of God" are all quiet—stealing unnoticed into our lives—the air and the sunlight and the sweetness of gardens and of the Ganges.
—Holy Mother, page 307, bottom

Awake, Be Aware

Read this last afternoon:

Stop sleepwalking through life!

A neat little book, highlighting the importance of Awareness more than any material bauble that one might get in Life.

Ramana Maharshi taught more or less the same thing except that this is from an IIT-Madras prof. (Devdas Menon) and written accordingly.

Had an interesting XP a long time back, in the early 1990s, which i understood only much later; that this Awareness is That between two thoughts. More in:

Listening to the Silence

The more you stretch that (interval) between two thoughts, the longer you're in the field of awareness.

Papaji says of Ramana Maharshi: (from Ramana, Inc.)

When I was at Ramanasramam in the 1940s I used to spend hours looking at the Maharshi's eyes. They would be open and staring, but not focussed on anything. Though his eyes were open, they were not seeing anything. Those eyes were completely free of thoughts and desires. The mind is revealed very clearly in the eyes, but in those eyes there was nothing at all to see. In the hours that I concentrated on his eyes, I didn't once see even a flicker of a thought or a desire. I have not seen such utterly desire-less eyes like his on any other face. I have met many great saints during my life, but no one has impressed me as much as the Maharshi did.

A Life Lived Less

Last Saturday, on Diwali, there was a very nice theme on Spandana, the Telugu channel on WorldSpace.

The program host (i couldn't get his name) had this premise:

ఈ శతాభ్దంలో జీవితం సౌకర్యవంతంగా ఉంటుంది కాని ఆశక్తివంతంగా ఉండదు.
In this (21st) century, life will be comfortable, but not interesting.

He was mentioning that, earlier, folks had to struggle for 4-5 hours before they got around to eating their lunch or dinner. And, in the process, they created masterpieces in areas such as music.

Harry Golden writes much the same thing in According to Me: (Book Section of RD, May, 1959)

According to Me—What Makes Mr. and Mrs. Jones Run?

~@~*-*~@~

This century, we hardly seem to be doing anything apart from just surviving even though we have more comforts than we can ever dream of.

One intriguing reason for this could be time speeding up! From Why is Time Speeding Up?:

Scientists discovered many years ago that the earth gives off a pulse. This pulse or frequency which has been likened to a heartbeat has been stable at approximately 7.8 cycles per second for thousands of years. However, since around the year 1980 the earth’s heartbeat began to speed up. It has currently been measured at 12 cycles per second but the most incredible thing is some scientists believe the earth will actually stop rotating when this pulse reaches 13 cycles per second.…

It is due to this increasing pulse rate that we feel as though time is speeding up. Why do we “feel” as though time is moving faster than it used to be? The reason is what we once perceived to be a period of 24 hours now feels like only 16 hours. Our clocks still move in seconds, minutes and hours and still click over a full day in 24 hours but due to the earths increased heartbeat, we perceive it to be only two thirds as long or a perception period of merely 16 hours.

Recovering Images in a Flash

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxRecDelPhoto

Last Friday, a D7C1, was going like sixty when my daughter came home from Ethnic Day at school with a sob story: she got a couple of great photos on her Canon Ixus 65, but one of her friends had deleted them. Make that a fiend.

My geeky hackles were immediately up on this injustice and i resolved to get them back. My search for:

undelete a photo deleted in Canon Ixus

resulted in: (thanks to the new section highlighter in Google Search)

Canon Photo Recovery Software



So i quickly downloaded and installed the same. But it didn't recognize the Canon Ixus connected to the computer on the USB port. We had to borrow a Card Reader from Ram.

Stellar soon listed the files deleted, along with their sizes. However, there was a basic issue with the interface. There were only two columns (File Name and File Size) in the grid, but it didn't allow me to sort on the File Size. The way i looked at it:

The larger the size of the file, the better the chance of getting it back.

Also, there was no way one could recover the file w/o paying the USD 39.50. I wasn't too averse to doing that, but i was uncomfortable after seeing the screwy interface ("know the dog, know the breed"); one might just end up buying a lemon.

In the meanwhile, i had sent a mail to the PMShutterBugs Google Group as well as VSS, the geek's geek, and he saved the day with:

PC Inspector for flash memory freeware


There was some issue with this software recognizing the files on the Card Reader, but a Windows Restart did the trick ;-) Just select:

1. The Device/drive
2. The file Format Type
3. The Destination (folder and start of the file name),

and click the Start button. The software took some time, but there was no report at the end. I was thinking: what the heck, but when i checked the destination folder, all the recovered files were nicely there. Some of them were just thumbnails, but the files we wanted were in their original size.

I couldn't help laughing: what a contrast between the two software. One makes a lot of hungama, but there's "no cigar" till you pay the damn USD 39.50, while the other quietly goes about its business and it's there even before you can ask for it!

Hail:

PC Inspector for flash memory freeware

A "See" Change

Completed one more reading of the Shri Sai Satcharita a couple of days back and i can't help thinking of the change that it has brought about in me.

Reminds me of that first Morse telegraph ;-)

What hath God wrought.

I think the Nithyananda Newsletter that i received today sums it up beautifully:

See understand: Desire and gratitude can never co-exist. When you feel one desire after another, it means that you are not living with gratitude. When you live with gratitude, you can never have any desires. When you live with gratitude, whatever is given to you will simply fulfill whatever you need at that moment, that’s all. Even before you ask, you will be given, so there will be no question of asking!

Earlier, one had a feeling of "it's my right" when something happened; now that's been transmuted to a feeling of gratitude (more in Pathways to Gratitude).

Fun Sunday

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxFunSun

Had a few give-no-quarter games at the shuttle court this morning. There weren't many but they were solid.

Was feeling a bit fatigued but summoned up enough enthu to walk down half a km, to the Club, where Sri. Chari and Venky organized a wonderful Vintage Car Event—the first of its kind in Palm Meadows and it drew in the folks in droves.

Seeing cars older than oneself in such fine fettle was an inspiration.

The first car (a vintage, not an antique, my Obama bro' clarifies) was a Sunbeam Talbot 1948.

Sunbeam Talbot—1948—Edward Rodricks

Note: Cars are titled as follows: Model—Year—Owner.

Oh, that shiny look was so lovely. Then it was the Mark II Jag:

Mark II Jag—1962—Dr. Ravi Prakash

And it went on, to an Austin, the best (IMHO) Jag on display, and some Mercs:

Austin 14—1939—Sulaiman Jamal

E Type Jag—1961—Dr. Ravi Prakash

Benz—The Old and the New

Mr. Chari did a terrific job, but the effort showed:

Sri. Chari & Suhas with a couple of cars

It was a real privilege to witness this lovely parade of cars in "one's own backyard". Folks had driven like 2 hours from Mysore Road and other places.

Ran into Dr. Ravi Prakash, who owns a farm house, where he stocks his 200 vintage cars. There are stud farms and there are studded farms ;-)

~*~*~

In the evening, had an invite for a get-together at the house of WiFi's colleague, Ritu. Enjoyed it thoroughly as it was a nice cozy group of just five families.

Vinish, the host, had some superb single malt, Glenkinchie, and it oiled the conversations just right! Many thanks to Sammy san, who got me going on this king of drinks. You never end up with a hangover.

Chatted for a while with Vyas and, after that, smoothed by the malt, egged WiFi to sing some songs. On a BBU picnic that we did on 04.JUL.1993, the LA guys, Navneet & Srikanth, dubbed her One-Woman Army! She sang two lovely numbers:

• अजीब दास्तां है यॆ
• यॆ रातॆ यॆ मौसम नदिका किनारा यॆ चन्चल हव
  

Thinking that it ran in the family, Minesh prodded me and i sang a raunchy Telugu number:

మసగ మసగ చీకటిలో మల్లెతోట వెనకాల మాపటేల కలసుకో, నీ మనసైనది దొరుకుతుంది, దొరుకుతుంది, అః

followed by a romantic one:

సిరి మల్లె పువ్వా...సిరి మల్లె పువ్వ...చిన్నారి చిలకమ్మ...నావాడు ఎవడే...నాతోడు ఎవడే

The question is whether it's a single malt or a singing malt? ;-)

If i had more songs in my repertoire, i might become, as they say, like the gharana singers:

Take 100 rupees to start, but a thousand to stop!

Later, Minesh was wondering about the ease with which i started singing, but all thanks to Sri Ramakrishna (whose Gospel had made me lose most forms of shame).

One thing i quite liked was the way Vinish's hands stretched almost all the way to his knees, an AjAnubAhu (more in Some unusual physical traits of Sri Ramakrishna).

As usual, did some quick numerology for folks:

Number 2s are never short of cash.

One unusual thing i noticed was the preponderance of 2s in the group. Out of the seven in that group whose b'days i knew, there were like five 2s! Guess one can only surmise that not only are 2s flush with cash, one can find a lot of 2s in a well-off group.

Arun, Minesh and Vinish were hilarious, esp. towards the end, when they ribbed me. Sadhu Shastri on TV, while they take care of the marketing.

The icing on the cake was that it was our wedding anniversary.

Re-solving a Paradox

A couple of days back, received one of the greatest paradoxes: (converted to an HTML and a screen-shot)

Greatest Paradox
(Readable Version)

It reminded me of a very amusing incident at the Infosys Banking Business Unit (BBU) in the mid-'90s, when we were using cc:Mail, which had a bit of a weird interface on the To: and Cc: fields (they were list boxes!).

One guy had sent this to his friends and, since it's an innocuous one, he had marked all the folks (#BBU or #BTM, i forget whether they were using the physical/logical group address) at BTM Layout.

One of the recipient friends, evidently miffed that he couldn't crack the paradox, responded to all w/o checking the list of recipients:

What the lawyer needs is a good phuck.

What i'd have given to see the look on the face of the BBU head, when he got that mess-age!

Comes with the Territory

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGravity

One of the things that i find intriguing about Nature is that gravity is always there in the background. Can't forget how quickly the World Trade Center buildings crashed as soon as their steel core melted :-(

Learned a weird/unusual thing about gravity in 2002: It acts at/near the speed of light.

It Looks Like Einstein Was Right! Speed of Light and Gravity are Equal!

Scientists had the opportunity to test it when, on September 8, 2002, Jupiter passed in front of a distant quasar. The planet’s gravity made the quasar appear to move in the shape of an ellipse through the sky. The scientists used the shape of the quasar’s motion to calculate that the speed of gravity is nearly the same as the speed of light!

Some more info in BBC: Test for Einstein's gravity speed theory.

After i read this, found it difficult to explain to folks who think that gravity acts at 9.8 m/sec² till i hit upon this:

Consider a guy who thinks at the speed of light, but speaks at the speed of sound and you get the drift ;-)

One of the earliest XPs with gravity was at Sea Sands:

Childhood Memories
…
The funniest memory must be the one concerning the car of Angus, one of the Anglo-Indians. He would visit Rajesh in #21, right across our house, in his Ambassador; having a car those days was a real big deal. On one of his nocturnal visits, he went in and came out after a short while. We heard the shout "My Car!" and went out to investigate.

He had forgotten to engage the hand-brake and gravity, that insidious "bitch" that acts at the speed of light, sent the car rolling down the small gradient towards the Oval. By the time Angus came out, it was well on its way into the gutter in 7#Nani's house. Nothing could be done that night.

That "insidious" reference is from Cliffhanger, after Sly "Gabe" Stallone and one of the killers have a fight to the finish on a Rockies overhang:

Hal Tucker: Gravity's a bitch, ain't it?

Btw, what separates the GUT from the ToE?  Gravity.

The Specialty of the Quack

Had a good laugh over this incident narrated by the Holy Mother in Ramakrishna As We Saw Him: (page 20, middle)

Cooking for the Master

One day the Master and Hriday [Ramakrishna's nephew] were eating together. Lakshmi's mother and I would cook at Kamarpukur. She was an excellent cook. The Master tasted something she had prepared and remarked, "Hridu, the person who cooked this is a specialist." Then he ate something that I had cooked and said, "And this one is a quack." At this Hriday replied, "True, but the quack is at hand and you have only to call her, whereas the specialist is very expensive and not always available. The quack is at your beck and call at all times." The Master said, "Quite right. She is always there."

Visit to Netkallappa Circle

Last Wednesday, decided to go to DVG Road, off Netkallappa Circle, as all my Timex watches were on the blink for some reason or the other.

All My Timex

I called up the Timex Service Center (+91.80.2662.5548) and a chap there (Naveen) said that they were open that day. It's almost like driving to another city, so it's always a good idea to check.

Left around 2:45 PM and made it there around 4:15 PM.

Timex Service Center, DVG Road

The lady at the service counter said that they were closed for the afternoon, taking stock (on 30.SEP). Shoot! I referred to my call earlier in the day and she took Naveen to task. Important thing was i got a foot in the door to get the work done.

However, there wasn't too much of that as two of the watches were, to use the lady's words, "obsoleted"; sounds like a portmanteau of obsolete and deleted!

Wrt the others:

• The Indiglo push-button on the brown Expedition watch was fixed but, as i later discovered, the analog time stopped working.
• The loop on the watch with the orange strap was provided.
  
• The working of the compass on the Timex E-Tide-Temp-Compass was corrected.

The net effect was that the number of watches that were working after this exercise remained at two. As one of the characters says in Akali Rajyam:

Balance nil, నిత్యానందం!

~*~*~*

But there were other nice things.

After the Timex service snafu, i went down DVG Road to Sateesh Stores, to buy some small Ziploc bags.

Ran into Rajanna, who reminded me of quite a bit of Sivaji Ganesan:

Rajanna on DVG Road

I was struck by his humble nature.

~*~*~*

I was wanting to see the Ganesh in the temple at Netkallappa Circle, but wasn't sure whether it would be open. Anyway, i went there. As suspected, it was closed, but there was this lovely Shiva:

Shiva at Netkallappa Circle

The temple wouldn't open till 6 PM, so i looped around the area. Went to a Darsini and had a set dosa.

There i saw a set of DK books lying around, including The Winner's Manual, with no one in sight ;-)

DK—The Winner's Manual

However, they were just waiting to be sold by Manjunath, who was having an ice cream.

As i am a sucker for books from DK, i had more or less made up my mind to buy them. The lot cost me INR 1,900, a 5% discount on INR 1,999. Manjunath said "10% discount", but there was a glitch in my brain; call it the DK (dummkopf!) effect. So i lost about INR 100 there, but got the following books as freebies:

Freebies with The Winner's Manual

Anyway, the chap was sweet and he said that he was from Chittoor. Snapped a pic of him:

Manjunath Reddy who sold me the DK Books

By this time, it was nudging 6 PM and i went back to the temple to find the priest, Nagesh Bhat, opening it. The decoration was very nice, not unlike those on the Varasiddhi Vinayaka temple in 4th Block, Jayanagar.

The idol is sort of looking West, but there doesn't seem to be any diminution in its popularity (see A Tale of Two Ganeshas).

Varasiddhi Vinayaka at Netkallappa Circle-III

I played the Sundara Sundara Vinayaka (on my mobile), which invariably makes me cry.

Topsy-turvy, but Swalpa Swananda

Was wishing Raavel, the man behind SwanandAshrama. He told me a very amusing thing.

Due to some reason, the Swananda folks keep talking of (my) 2012, the end of the world as we know it. The other day, someone in that group ferreted out that the reason for the large-scale devastation: the reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles.

So one Swananda devotee, recently into vaastu, exclaimed:

"Wow, now my house will face North"!

Shirdi Sai Baba says:

Baba's Advice Regarding our Behaviour
…
Let the world go topsy-turvy, you remain where you are. Standing or staying in your own place, look on calmly at the show of all things passing before you.

Guess that comment is the best example i have heard for that a++itude.

2012 The Movie

Releasing on Friday the 13^th ;-)

No nitpicking with Picnik

Last morning, the courier chap dropped off the NatGeoMag for OCT.2009 and the five-page foldout of the redwood took my breath away.

Quickly rolled it out and snapped a photo. However, due to the dimensions (five page widths x one page height), there was an unsightly band on either side. Couldn't remove those with MSPaint, as it doesn't allow you to zoom to less than 100% (and then edit).

So i hunted around for a photo editor and got:

Picnik - Photo editing the easy way, online in your browser - Sep 30
Photo editing made fun. Picnik makes your photos incredible with easy yet powerful editing tools. Tweak a picture, create a slideshow, try it free!
www.picnik.com/ …

as the first choice. Man, it just blew me away.

Authorized Flickr to allow Picnik to access all my photos (love this B2B method instead of the silly B2C one of having to type in my Flickr/Yahoo password!).

It was a cinch to edit the redwood photo, taking less than a minute to crop it.

Check out Picnik; it grows on you ;-)

NatGeoMag—OCT.2009—Redwoods