Gita, Gita, Gita, …, Tagi, Tagi, Tagi

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Auda abu Tayi: [to Lawrence] I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because I am a river to my people!
—Lawrence of Arabia

There was a nice inspirational one from Vidya Vahini, Chapter 14 this morning:

As trees do not eat their fruits but offer them to be eaten by others in an attitude of detachment; as rivers, without drinking the waters they carry, quench the thirst and cool the heat from which others suffer; as cows offer their milk, produced primarily for their calves, in a spirit of generosity born of Tyaga (renunciation), to be shared by others; so too you should offer yourself to others prompted by the motive of service and without consideration of selfish interests.

It reminded me of that ultimate condensation by the Master:

Visit to Vidyasagar
…
"What is the significance of the Gita? It is what you find by repeating the word ten times.  It is then reversed into 'tagi', which means a person who has renounced everything for God.  And the lesson of the Gita is: 'O man, renounce everything and seek God alone.' Whether a man is a monk or a householder, he has to shake off all attachment from his mind."

When i had just got the Gospel in 1992, i recall GL Pramod flipping it open at random, reading this quote, and being totally zapped by it!

The Holy Mother used to feel that, more than the Master preaching the harmony of religions, the crown jewel of His Being was His renunciation.  In Holy Mother, we read: (page 232, bottom)

Holy Mother emphasized renunciation as the unique feature of Sri Ramakrishna's life.  One day a disciple asked her about the special message of Sri Ramakrishna.  Was it not the harmony of religions that he experienced and taught?  The Mother replied: 'My child, what you say about the harmony of religions is true.  But it never occurred to me that he had practiced the disciplines of different faiths with the definite idea of preaching this harmony.  Day and night the Master remained overwhelmed with divine rapture.  He enjoyed God's sport by following the paths of the Vaishnavas, Christians, Mussalmans, and the rest.  But it seems to me, my child, that the chief characteristic of the Master's sadhana was his renunciation.  Has anyone ever seen such natural renunciation?  Renunciation is his great ornament.'

Got Problems Regarding Samsung?

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGPRS

The Airtel folks have been spraying this ad all over the place:

With a trip planned to HYD last week, i thought of enabling the GPRS on Wednesday, August 18.  When i called the Airtel help desk (on 12118) late on 17.AUG, they said that it would take 48 hours to enable the GPRS.  So w/o any further ado, i sent the keyword SAMSUNG to 543210, as indicated in the ad.  An interesting thing that the CSR told me was that the GPRS cost just INR 300 for six months.  The ad said:

Unlimited Mobile Internet for 6 months @ just Rs.300  from Airtel.

The @ threw me, making me think that it was INR 300 per month.  Anyway, that was a pleasant surprise though i sure hope that i don't get any billing shocks in the future.

Btw, a bit weirdly, AirTel charges 50 pips per 3 minutes for talking to a CSR.

Anyway, there was a prompt ack. as well as another SMS the next morning (18.AUG) that the service requested for would be enabled in 48 hours.  Since i was traveling Friday evening, i thought i was cutting it fine, but still cool.

Come Friday morning, there was no hint of the GPRS.  So i called them that morning itself on 12118 after some great baddy games.  The CSR said that i should call 12149.  When i did, the CSR (Rajesh) was polite, but said that a complaint would now have to be registered and did so.

When i called up 121-198 on the way to the BLR airport, the CSR said that the complaint would be resolved in a further 48 hours, by Monday (23.AUG) afternoon.

Man, that really got my goat.  I spoke to his supervisor, a lady, for about 10 min, but the lady held her ground saying that the complaint would be resolved only by Monday afternoon, meaning that the GPRS would be of no use to me on the HYD trip over the weekend.  When she thanked me at the end of the call, i was wondering for what.

Anyway, after checking in at the airport and settling down for Gate 5 to open, i suddenly noticed that the GPRS was up and Gmail was sync'ing.  That was nice!

The Samsung Galaxy S guys have done a mighty fabulous job on keeping all the plumbing hidden from users.  Nothing had to be done from my end, no downloading of any instructions, no nothing.  It just kick-started on its own and went like sixty.

At HYD, i noticed that the GPRS was off and i was wondering WTH to do.  Only in the night, i figured out that the GPRS is switched off in Roaming mode and one must trigger it on through Settings | Wireless and network | Mobile networks | Data roaming (check the option).

There were a couple of pain points, but a great XP all in all.

Hallelujah

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxHallelujah

Though i hardly ever listen to Western music, once in a while, i find a real gem, due to that Roald Dahl quote above.

I first heard it in, of all movies, Shrek, and was profoundly touched.

Much later, Niki, a big fan and singer of soft rock, told me that it was Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright.  Don't know why, but the way it starts:

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord

makes me cry.

Last weekend, i finally got it on to my SGS.  Niki had it on her iTouch, but it was a hell of a job to get the two to talk to each other on Bluetooth.  Finally, we routed it through her mobile. As we say:

శతకోటి దరిద్రాలకు అనంతకోటి ఉపాయాలు
A billion issues, a gazillion ideas

~~~*-*~@~

This morning, i was playing it before the puja.  Our cook, who's a converted Christian (she loved Jesus ever since she was a kid), perked up and said that she keeps hearing stuff like that in her church, but since it was in English, she doesn't understand it.  I said:

అర్ధం కాకపోయిన దేవుని దగ్గరకు తీసుకొనివెళ్తే చాలు
Even if we don't understand, it's enough if it takes us close to God,

which later reminded me of one of the great moments in The Shawshank Redemption, that numero uno of the IMDb Top 250:

Red: [narrating] I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

VaraLakshmi Vrata Puja Process

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxVLVPP

వరలక్ష్మి వ్రత పూజావిధానం

With the VaraLakshmi Vratam coming up on August 20 (Friday before the full moon day in the month of Sravan), thought i should document the same.

We start the season of puja with this one for the Old Mother.

Converted the puja on the cassette (in Telugu) to a set of MP3 files: (using the Philips Rip-All AZ1856)

• Getting Ready (the list of items required for the puja is below)
• Puja—Part 1
• Puja—Part 2
• Katha.

You can download by right-clicking on the above links, as usual.

Needless to say, the puja is parametrized :-) and here are the following (few) items that you should be ready with:

• Your gotra
• The year (for 2012, it's nandana nAma; for 2011, Srikhara nAma; for 2010, vikRuti nAma)
• Tithi (for 27^th July, it's navami).
• Your location with respect to Srisailam. Here are the Telugu equivalents: (source)
  East (Thoorpu)
  West (Padamara)
  North (Uttharamu)
  South (Dakshinamu)
  South-East (Aagnaeyamu—for folks in Chennai)
  South-West (Nairuthi—for folks in Bangalore)
  North-West (Vaayuvyamu)
  North-East (Eesanyamu—'Sa' as in Sat).

The list of items required for the puja (from the cassette) are as follows:

• Turmeric
• Kumkum
• Fruits
• Flowers
• Betel Leaves
• Betel Nuts
• Agarbathi
• Camphor
• Gandham
• Akshatalu
• Coconuts
• Kalasam
• Kalasam Vastram
• Mother's Pratima or Vigraham
• PanchAmrutam (Cow Milk, Cow Ghee, Curd, Honey, Sugar)
• Lamps: (Oil and Ghee)
• Yagnopavetam (Cotton)
• Ornaments
• MahaNaivedyam
• Thoramu (Nine Knots)
• Pasupu (Turmeric) Ganesha
• Peetam (with standard decoration)
• Water in Glass, with uddarina.

VaraLakshmi Vratam and the Virat

Dead Man Talking

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxDMT

The TanSeer got an IM request from one of his pals: (for those who came in late, the TanSeer was one who looked at problems tangentially; a tangential seer—TanSeer for short—with all his solutions here)

"A weird one.  Sometime back, got a ZIP file from one of my middle-aged friends, to be opened in case of his death.  It was password-protected, with the password, according to him, being his date of expiry in the YTD format.

Thought he was kidding.  His death wasn't certainly a suicide nor premeditated.

None of the combos i tried have worked.

The TanSeer wasn't one to go rushing into a problem of that sort.  He stared into his own private space and then:

Something had occurred to him; something so fantastic and absurd that for a moment he felt like telling (his friend) about it and having a good laugh.

But he checked himself and asked his pal to try out a word.  No luck, but within two variations of that (same word), the ZIP file was cracked.

The TanSeer was amused; it was all so…yesterday, but all that mattered was that it worked.

My little homage to the master of the macabre.

Commonwealth Grime

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxCwGrime

Play sports, not games.

Man, it's too sad to read about the sordid stories of the Commonwealth Games and that too on the front page.

Less than two months to go for October 3 and folks are still playing catch-up / patch-up.

Guess the synchronous way of doing things in India should stop somewhere along the line.  The shame resulting from a sorry start will take a long time to undo.  Or probably that's a good thing.

Was reminded of Nandan's comment on the (Old) Airport Road flyover that took forever to complete: [incidentally, the project was kick-started on amAvAsya (New Moon day), Saturday, February 1, 2003, the very same day that the Columbia space shuttle blew up on re-entry]

"JunkShuns" in Bangalore

Q: Things are happening much faster in China, where they build infrastructure so rapidly.
A: It's going to happen, but not the way it happens in China. In China, a bunch of guys get in a room and decide to build a 16-lane highway from Shanghai to Beijing, and it's going to happen.

There's no way that will happen in India. It's too chaotic and argumentative. But what's going to happen is these 200 planes will be ordered, they won't land. They'll be circling. Everybody will get [very angry]. Finally, there will be such public outcry that the airports will get built. It's a different model. But it's a model.

Spammer's Delight

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSpaDe

Brother, as long as I live, I learn.
—Sri Ramakrishna

One of the best things about changing my name from a name number of 28 to 41 is the tendency to follow the above advice of the Master more.

Learning can happen from just about anywhere.

Some time back, there was a Google alert that took me to a spam blog with an NYT article on the holographic nature of the Universe!  Used in The M*cro Universe.

Of late, i have noticed a tendency of some Far East blokes to post comments on my posts with links to some lurid sites.  I delete them w/o much hesitation.

But the other day, there was this show-stopper, at least for me:

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Wow!  I let the comment be for a couple of days and, after it has sunk in, deleted it.

Guess this is what Roald Dahl means when he observed: (thanks to Michelle)

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

Inception Deception

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxIncDec

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
—Winston Churchill

If old WC had seen Inception, he would have replaced that first word.

One of my baddy pals seriously felt like walking out during the interval/intermission: he couldn't make head or tail out of it.  To me it was so much gobbledygook, packaged in a fun manner.

One of the main reasons for adopting a witness attitude to life is the finding that:

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

The "murky, seductive subconscious" is way beyond our ken.  And our man Leo and his acolytes not only enter the subconscious of another, but go three levels down.  It's like hitting a home run when, in everyday life, we are struggling to get to first base!

Right now, it's No. 3 on the IMDb Top 250.  I am treading on thin ice here but, once in a while, i wonder whether movies like The Matrix and Inception reaching cult status is due to lack of clarity about the model of the system that we inhabit.

That said, things i liked about the movie:

• Leo, always a p"leo"sure to watch
• Dileep Rao, who stays back on Level 1 as the driver and his "Did you see that?" after he rights the van after that cartwheel, while all the other folks are in dreamland.  He reminded me strongly of that other Dilip (Panicker…!)
• At the very end, it's not clear what happens to the spinning totem as Leo comes back home and meets his kids. Very nice touch, that was. Ramana Maharshi would have loved it.

Related:

• Is the World Real?
• Reality and Consciousness: Turning the Superparadigm Inside Out
• Is the Universe a Dream of God?

The River Mother Beckons

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxRiverMaBeckons

The River Mother

Ran into two references to the River Mother earlier this week.

The first one was regarding Totapuri, the advaitic guru of Sri Ramakrishna, whom the Master used to refer to as Nangta, the Naked One.  From the Gospel:

For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute.

The second one was the Fellow Traveller interview with Medha Patkar in the July, 2010 issue of Outlook Traveller:

What do you find most beautiful about the Narmada valley?

Everything actually. The Narmada is a 1,300km-long perennial river. The Narmada valley is an ecosystem by itself, and home to one of the oldest civilisations in the world. Also, as Paul Atkins says in his book, The Seven Rivers, this is the most beautiful of them all, even more so than the Ganga and Yamuna river valleys. This is because the Narmada flows through silvery marble in the first stretch around Bedaghat and onwards through thick forests. It flows not just through marble but also black rock, which is so lovely, too.

At what time of the day do you love the Narmada most?

In the evening, when the sun sets and hopes rise across the valley. This is when children swim in the river and play by its banks, the cattle return home and the canoes are out. Yesterday, I was in a village till midnight and crossed the river in the vast moonlight in a small boat. But this picture is changing very fast because of wrong human interventions, which care for nothing, not beauty nor prosperity. Meanwhile, the bountiful valley only gives, gives, gives.

Call that Narmada in the Gloaming.

Just to think of Her is to get all those పులకరింతలు (frissons of joy chasing one another).  The mind stills.  No wonder Her name means "giver of joy".

I asked our resourceful maid to fetch me a nice stout stick for me to make that Narmada Parikrama.

This morning, cajoled my kid to take this: