What's in a name?

It’s been a long time, I have been hearing about a lot of Gods Men and their help to the distressed ‘Men Folk’ of the world. Raising them to the upper strata of life, enjoying and at the same time being happy within them.

It all translates into absolute bliss and there is so much of talk about relieving, stress therapies, and various centers of concentrated camps (Yeah, kind of!!!) where you can relax and learn to enjoy life in spite of your traumas.

There are various yoga centers and meditation centers mushrooming in the large cities and especially where there is wealth and prosperity for they are the easy targets for all these stints and they get hooked.

Now, being to a genre of the IT, can I be far away? Whenever I claim, I am stressed and over worked there are a number of mouths telling or advising me to various therapies from Ayurveda to Modern Sciences.

This is me, here but my husband is very much inclined to these things, not that I am not inclined. I feel it requires another form of living and two things cannot be mixed up.

He is influenced by the ISHA Yoga Centre, which is based in about 40 kilometers from Coimbatore, the cotton city of South India. He is so up to the mark that he did his research on the net about the place and the offerings and the preaching and something made him feel comfortable with the teachings of this person, who is known as, Jaggi Vasudev.

Hmm….anything under the sun is at the click of the mouse, irony here!!! Something live is driven out of the house. But still finds a place at your study table in an electronic form.

Ok, where was…I wasn’t mourning for the mouse. Yeah, so he had made up his mind to visit this place in Coimbatore, which is at about 4 hours journey from my hometown. We were waiting for an opportunity and there came a fabulous opportunity and we made our plans.

I have been to this place even before this trip together. This place is a very nice, quiet and calm and when I had been there it was just making a mark of its own. It had been just started and there were a lot of construction going on.

So, I was actually eager to see this place for a second time. Now, what is there in this place?

There it is at the foothills of the Velliangiri Mountains, is the Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple or the Meditation Centre in which is in the form of a dome and it holds a Shivalingam that is very huge in size.

It has a Theerthakund, a rectangular space filled in with water and it too has a Lingam in the centre immersed in water. The specialty of this Lingam is that it is made up of ‘MERCURY’.

Yep, mercury solidified and immersed in water. Man, this pool or kund, whatever you want to call has the purest form of water and though it is put to use by several disciplines and visitors. It is believed that this water will enhance spiritual receptivity in a person and if you immerse yourself in the water, hold the lingam with your hands or clutch it for a few minutes and return to the sanctum to meditate, you gain positive vibrations.

It is believed and being practiced. Whatever be the quality of the water not sure but the water has immense buoyant and density. It is clear and it is being replenished by a spring from the above that is on one side of the wall.

So this was something new to me…I was waiting to experience this. I haven’t been immersed in water and never been to a swimming pool. I did not know how to feel inside water or how it feels??!!

I had made up my mind; I will take a dip and following all the procedures that were read out to the group that goes in to the Theerthakund. It had about some several big steps that lead to the water.

I started descending the steps with an air and as I neared the water, I got literally scared. I know it was a water enclosure and there is no happening of an undue current even then I got scared and I stood on the last stair and was just helplessly seeing people in it.

There were a lot of ladies around the Lingam and they were all lost in meditation. I was just looking around for a savior. We were not supposed to talk in there, so I could not talk to anyone.

So all my efforts went in vain and finally I was standing on the steps looking at the place, the water, the people, and the stairs and thinking and making my mind towards taking a dip. My conscious was trying to tell me, “Kavitha, it is only an enclosure of water nothing will harm you, just try, and get in”

But my fear did not find it a good reason enough and was standing. There are people who help you around, so one such lady came down and was looking. She asked me to sit down on the step letting my legs drop in the water below. I sat down obediently and have just rested on the step, when a pair of hands just pushed me into the water.

That’s it, I wondered I am lost, I am drowned and I almost lost myself. I grabbed someone’s hand and held on to it like it was my last life line. But the effect was fabulous but my fear did not allow me to enjoy.

The first turned out to be a different one and still remember the lady who pushed me into the water and wondered what would have happened to me.

All physics had gone out of my mind and all my learning and survival techniques. I stood out of the water as if I had lost all and had nothing with me. It was an incomplete feeling, not describable. Then we had a deep meditation inside the meditation centre and went home talking about the dip in the water.

The next time I went after two months, I did the same and I enjoyed it. This time it was a different experience and it elated the inner soul and I promised to return to this place one more time.

Each day has a different meaning attached to here and they meditate in the sanctum with different experiences to it.

I did not get really moved and got into the ‘thing’ but certainly I feel a difference and this difference I am not able to explain.

Oh!! Oh!! Did I start the same thing again in a different form? Shucks!! No, yaar, enjoy life as long as you want.

December 23, 2008

My Rendezvous with Shajahan’s Taj Mahal – Symbol of Love

What do you feel looking at it for the first time?

I remember I was in 6th standard when I saw the Taj Mahal for the first time, I accept it was a long years back in my life, but the memories of seeing such a beautiful architecture was fascinating and still vivid in my memory.

Before, I personally visiting this place the first memory of this place was seeing it in a beautiful crafted movie by the one of the finest directors of Tamil cinema, Mani Ratnam’s movie, ‘Mouna Ragam’.

The story of a girl who comes to New Delhi, married to a guy whom she did not want to share his life, but visits the Taj Mahal along with him and her interests in life starts changing...such is the Power Of Love.

Now on my real journey to this place was unexpected. My parents, my sister and a close friend of ours went on a tour to Delhi and Agra in the summer holidays. We were excited about the days of journey and those long stays and the different places and the culture along with them. It was an exciting trip, never to be forgotten.

We were in New Delhi viewing all the historical places and when we discussed about the Taj Mahal, it was decided that we had to miss the place due to the distance and lack of time. We had made up our mind and decided sometime later in life will certainly come to visit the Taj.

Maybe, when I get married with my husband on a full moon night, is when the Taj is exquisetively beautiful, reflecting the moon light….[This piece of information I got after I came of age and people talked about love and marriage synonymously and after I had also explained about what I did in my holidays in our School Composition.]

I am fascinated by the historical places and the hidden treasures of the kingly states and the wonderful life, those human beings had. I used to sometimes wonder myself as a Sultan’s daughter and dream myself in the lap of luxury and the exotic buildings and gardens.

Wow! What a life they had…Especially seeing the forts of Delhi, Agra, and the house of the kingdom of Akbar, the Fatehpur Shikari… I had really fallen in love with this countrymen and their life.

We started to our journey to Fathefur Shikari and finished watching the Buland Darwaza - the Watch Tower of Akbar and his kings’ men. What a fabulous palace…that is why it was his Winter Palace.

But, we had sometime left and the taxi driver said you have come so far, so not to miss the Taj Mahal and see it. You might not get another chance and he promised us to take us very quickly to that place and giving us ample time to look around.

That’s it, we said, “Shenshah, hum aa rahe hain, tumhare Taj ko dekhne [Shahjahan, we are coming to see your Taj]!” in a classic historical way, like a king would have declared his statement to his folk.

Then, we set on the journey to the Taj Mahal; I was not feeling well on that day some disturbance in the health happens when you travel, so it was the usual. We hired a taxi to go to Agra from there and during the journey, I wanted to get back to the hotel and take some infinite rest, but keeping company with the people on travel, I spelt most of the journey in the car to Agra sleeping and when I finally woke up I was just in front of the beautiful white building…The Taj.

I just got out of the car and was looking at the Taj with my mouth wide open and a whistle out of my breathlessness. What a huge structured building, what craftsmen…??!!!

We hired a guide to tell us or explain us the magnificent building, a little bit of history, a little bit of journey into that world that was gone-by, that exotic was it all.

We listened to him so excited and nodding at his explanations and acknowledging the guys description with the passing outside structure of the building. It was a great architectural feat from outside.

When we moved in, he said, we are going to see the tombs of Shajahan and Mumtaz Mahal, as it is still believed today that they were laid here after they passed away from this material world.

For a moment I stood froze, Can it be real? If it is, then he must be awake in night to talk to his wife and they might take a tour in the night and spend sometime together.

I could visualize them, walking hand-in-hand and he explaining the beauty of this place and how it matches with her beauty [Mumtaz Mahal is said to be the most beautiful one and Shajahan being head-over-heels in love, that made his long and build this place for her, before she took leave of him from this world and promised to stay with him in the memory of the building.]

It was a promise of a Man to his Lady Love, who was ailing and did whatever that, could please her into a peaceful death, at the least, when he could not strive to save her. It is a great feeling of being loved beyond your existence!!!

The tomb inside another masterpiece in itself…It was wonderfully done. It had a structure crisscrossed walls with holes in-between and it looked like a pattern to let light, and wind pass through and not let the beauty suffer from suffocation.

The passage of light through the small gaps in-between made wonderful patterns on the tomb and the floor and it looked like any moment, Mumtaz might get up and dance heartily in the light and express her love for her husband beside her.

The whole place wasn’t like two dead tombs, it was so much with live and that place looked like a peak into the private bedroom of the King and the Rani. The place was so lively and with so much of air, chillness, light and the warmth.

I looked around I saw people praying to them to give them the strength to carry on their love, some bowed heads, some discussing the building, some silently walking around the tomb, some just not understanding what it is, some just passing by, some busy in their love interests, some kids running around, who did not understand LOVE.

It was a mixed feeling for me…not sure if I will feel the same. But the memory of that place is too much in my mind that I can’t give up this place for many centuries to come, as well.

For some it is a representation of Love and for some it is a Monument, for some it is an Architectural Building for some it is History, today people have gone to describe this place as a Graveyard of the two most important people of History and the Dynasty that ruled India several years back.

Whatever it is, for me it stands as a memory of the King who built an Architectural feat for his loveable wife, as a token and then, he let her sleep there. Even if he could not make her live in it.

He lies beside her in a tomb and I sure he would have lived those days thinking about her and talking to her about the beauty of the architecture and the its structure that he did built to stand across time and tide and people visiting them from all over the world just to feel the power of love.

Shajahan, built it for whatever reason, better know to him, but history tells us something from the building. It was the love for architecture, fine buildings, finest craftsman, finest workmanship, and fine gentlemen lived in centuries ago, leaving us to wonder what we can achieve.

We feel so small in front of it in size and nature…I could not stop wondering the dedication and pain of the people who did see the building being erected and standing for centuries. We are trying to save it from hazards, coz we can’t build one such…

What more small can we feel…Let us not fall in love, let us rise and be with pride that Indian Heritage is not a matter of disintegration, but to live it across time and tide.

December 22, 2008

Have you noticed a pattern in life??!!

In my times of confusion and helplessness, I always wondered there must be something more to do. I always wondered am I missing an important sign that my mind along with my logical brain tries to comprehend the situations. This kind of situation puts me into a lot of introspection as to what, why and how?

I have lived in various places right from childhood and every time I settle at a place I will be or am asked to leave and start again. I used to always think, why me? This also reasons to make my quest to the answers, I sought in my interrogations.

On one such interrogations, I started noticing a pattern in the way people gets displaced from one place to another and the earth retains its balance of holding the right amount of weight at a certain place at a given point of time on its surface, maybe who knows???!!!

I sound idiotic, right!? Yes exactly, what I thought at the first instance it struck me. Let me unfold my theories or substances to the aspect in discussion.

Have you ever wondered, when you are quietly seated in the comforts of your room, office, house, lobby, coffee shop in any part of the city, be it in your homeland or be in your foreign location, there is activity in that city’s railways, airways, seaways, and roadways.

Yes, the transportation of the life is very much active. Be it every single day or 365 day, round the season, round the year and in fact year after year. People transport from one place to another and there is a constant rotation of people on earth. Why does this happen? Why should people travel? Why people move from one place to another? Why don’t they all sit at peace, like I am sitting? I say this because I don’t want to travel now; I have no inclination and neither the necessity.

Another interesting piece of news or weird information is flights or aircrafts are not supposed to dock in an airport for more than an hour or otherwise the airlines have to pay heavy fee for docking the aircraft in that particular airport. So, the planes keep flying between destinations hour after hour….non-stop. [Have you heard of a port for the civilian aircrafts?!]

But across the globe and across your own country there is some people who have the necessity and the reason to travel, just like you did on your holiday, your vacation, your meeting, your sorrowful journey or happy journey, anything. If there is a necessity it comes unannounced to you and you have to travel.

Have you ever noticed this? Whenever you want to book a ticket for your unplanned and immediate travel, you don’t get tickets? You get a waiting list ticket, you crib that why do people always travel at the same instant you want to travel….but the real truth is, an unplanned travel equates with a planned travel a vacation or a yatra or another unplanned travel, it can be anything. You are never sure…..

So, now I got your attention, let me tell you further…there is a constant journey of some soul in some part of the village, city, or country. Now, to find an answer to the most important question? Why does travel happen? Not sure right, but it does happen and it brings a cause with itself to substantiate the visit.

These questions in my mind set my thinking and I started watching closely this pattern of travel. I have been moving from cities as I have already confessed, I always found someone replacing me in the vacant place, I leave.

That is confusing, isn’t it? The explanation will be. Suppose a person from a city named A, leaves with his belongings to a city named B, there is somebody displaced from the city B either on the day you arrive there or there is vacant place you fill in. This vacant place sometimes is a vacuum that you fill in… (Hope, you understand!!!???)

The pattern of filling a vacuum is even stranger. Where should I start? OK. I will start with the pattern of death and birth. I noticed it in my family. There is an equal and opposite reaction to this pattern. Whenever there is a demise that happens, it is quickly filled in with a birth somewhere in the city. I have noticed this in families. Sometimes, it happens in the closer circle of relations.

This pattern is also evident in a city, street, locality and in the community we live. A village is a small representation of a big city, let me start there. A village has lanes and streets that follow certain address, similar to the office locations in a city. Being smaller in number, the people live there in communities and they are evident to every other person and their respective family members. They know, when a death happens, when a birth happens, the pattern goes on….Street 1, there was a death, and Street 2 there is a birth and vice versa…

The other kind of pattern happens whenever you leave a place and start living in a different city. I started closely watching this kind of pattern and I could always correlate some kind of shifting either in my family circle or in my friends circle.

Another, example that confirmed the pattern was when I closely saw this relativity happen. I am at present working in Hyderabad and did not intend to come to Hyderabad on all accounts and never had the slightest inclination to leave Madras (Chennai) ever.

I came here to work in an office on deputation and just came there to finish off the work and leave the city as soon as possible but as days rolled into weeks and weeks into months…I found it difficult to leave this place due to work and eventually after a few months, I decide to make it my city.

There were a few people who were transferred here to a certain project where I was working, with all their belonging they had moved in and I saw them returning and I who not intentions of being here, had to stay back with my belongings. [Was that a sign of pattern??!!]

Then, when I found out one of my friend moving in here to Hyderabad along with his belongings and his family, I wondered who is going to be displaced from Hyderabad. I heard a couple of my friends, like this are shifting out of Madras, this month-end and I again see the pattern unfolding. It is time for me to displace myself from here… [Looks like the pattern works!!!!]
Did I make sense? Do I look insane? No, I just wanted to say there is certainly a pattern and it is very alive, like you and me.

Till then with sanity, asking you to look out for such patterns in life.

Men folk Read and Women folk Think!!!!

I was in the auto waiting for the signal to change so that this huge bus behind the auto moves forward and I reach the destination in the appointed time.

The wait was killing me and I was feeling annoyed that I had to fruitlessly wait on this auto on this junction of road wondering and calculating every second of the time amongst the blaring horns and smokes from the carburetor depositing on my skin, face. The exhaust fumes irritating me and literally choking me out of breath.

I just started wandering around and started looking at the array of vehicles around my auto, the pilled cars, public buses; the motorcycles. Wow! I got lost in the crowd of colors and engines, what machines and what range of brands.

Leave alone the four wheelers, the motorcycles weren’t behind, just a glimpse will tell you that they were themselves in various shapes, sizes and colors. The motorcycles had the most wonderful and intricate companions on it. They motorcycles were colorful to compliment the colorful couples as well.

When you are awed by one aspect or by another aspect where do you concentrate, Yaar! Tooo… Hard I tried not to gape at them, and turned my head but my eyes did not seem to listen to me, every time I turned to look at them I was acting weird, either I was trying to hold my dupatta which did not fly in the wind or outside the auto, but being conscious as I am, turned towards the side to look whether it flew in the wind.

I was trying clutching my hair that wasn’t waving in the air or I was trying to get some air, waving my fingers against my face to flush in some air…. What not?! Every time I did this small gesture of mine, I got an array of events registered in my mind, such as a perfect picture in a camera.

I watched closely sitting dames, clutching the mid-rib of the guy who is driving, I saw a dame saying some sweet nothings into the ears of the guy, I saw some dame and guy playing with the dames fingers that held his thigh, I saw a dame almost over him, she was flat on his back as if from a distance it looked the two persons were merged into ‘One Soul and One Body’…How divine!!!

Hmm….What a romantic day and perfect location, I thought looking at these guys and girls. Hot sun, sticky weather, the dusty sand winds, the exhaust of the vehicles, the blaring sound of the horns, the spitting auto drivers, the loud talking motorcyclists, the loud stereos system of the auto’s…Oh! What else you require, perfect picturesque!!!

Suddenly in my mind a thought struck, I wondered whether these guys felt the discomfort of their girls sitting so close and in that sticky weather and the tension of the driving, the stupid horns blaring …did they feel the discomfort of all these?

Agreed, the pleasure of being in love is all divine and so heavenly that every moment of it is cherished. But, the constant nag of these things in life did it bother them too….??!!

Do they feel like saying, “Arey, hat na yaar, thoda hawa anethey” or do they think “Oh! God let the traffic clear; I will drop her off and then take a breath of aram.” Or “My back, is hurting, does she understand that? Why, doesn’t she understand things, I put my hands on her she says after sometime, It is heavy, please. But she is almost lying on my back for about thirty minutes and what am I, Huh!?”

Not sure what these guys think and I feel these girls should also not hinder them like this. Anyways, being loved and being in love is an elate feeling and it is certainly not for exhibition at the least and not for look at my love types…

It is great felling that runs deep into your nerves and keeps you excited always but it is certainly not at the cost of the loved ones.

All these actions are good in cinema, because the road is cleared for shooting and most of the times in cinema the bike just stands in one location and it looks as if the guy is riding the bike and the romantic scene goes on…..but in real life the traffic is so much and thanks to all the senseless driving that happens it is really a tough time for even an aced driver or motorcyclist to drive home safe, almost like an absolute art of navigation.

When conditions are thus I guess, having a girl behind - be it a girlfriend, hanging out partner, wife or whatever the relation is …the guy is more responsible at that time to take not only her safe home but also him, so that he continues the chauffer ride.

I pity these guys, they do so much for these girls and still the women folk consider the men, irresponsible, not sensitive, not romantic, not up to expectations, and what not.
Do the men folk enjoy all these or they just bear it or like some say it is a nice feeling to have a female close to you??

Somebody get into the other side of men and tell me what do they think??!!!

PS: This post is just an extension of my thinking mind.