Wedding Bells

Congratulations!

My best friend is getting married!!! Wow! I feel so pleased, happy and excited. I am jumping with joy... And this news is doubly-delightful because I hear it on the 4-month anniversary of my wedding...

I am so damn happy for you dear. Falling in love and marrying your love... This is the best thing that can happen to anyone...

This is the occasion to disclose the dream that I got about him long long time back. Okay Mandu, don't get angry! I really have to reveal it! ;-)

I dreamt that all of our friends had decided to play a game. Each person has to do something to shock the rest of the persons. The person who does the best is the winner. And I vividly remember what our Mandu did to shock us. Well, some part of it is censored. So, I won't write about it. To summarize the whole thing, what our Mandu did, was to arrange the stage ready for a wedding ritual and he actually got married and that was his act to shock us. I felt bad (in my dream) that he did not even bother to inform the wedding date earlier. It was indeed a weird way to shock us!!! Now in a way my dream has come true! Mandu, you shocked me with this pleasant surprise ;-)

I wish you, couple, a life full of everything. Let the magic of love bind you together till eternity!

Bhaja Govindam

While I was browing to get the complete Bhaja Govindam slokam from the internet, I chanced upon a site that told me the reason why this slokam was composed.

When Sri Adi Shankaracharya was in kashi, he saw an old man learning the rules of grammar. This slokam is an advice to the old man to spend in time in gaining spiritual knowledge rather than intellectual knowledge. He advises the old man to seek God and salvation, instead of concentrating on worldly things.

The slokam begins with:

bhajagovindaM bhajagovindaM govindaM bhajamuuDhamate . saMpraapte sannihite kaale nahi nahi rakshati DukR^iJNkaraNe ..

The above verse means:

Worship Govinda, Worship Govinda, Worship Govinda. Oh fool ! Rules of Grammar will not save you at the time of your death.

Each verse in the slokam is full of wisdom. It is very soothing to recite them.

Paati's Thaalaatu

When we were children (I wish I were remained a child! :D), we would fall asleep listening to the melodious voice of our Paati (grandma) and sometimes Amma. The song that is sure to make us drop into deep slumber was 'Mannu Puhazh Kausalai Than..' I miss those carefree days.

It was a lullaby(thaalatu) sung (in his PerumaaL thirumozhi) for Lord Sri Rama by Sri Kulasekara Alwar (more details here).

mannupukazh kowsalaithan maNivayiRu vaaytthavanE

thennilangai kOnmudikaL sinthuviththaai semponsEr

kanni nan maamadhiL pudaisoozh kaNapuraththen karumaNiyE

yennudaiya innamudhE iraaghavanE thaalElO

Oh Rama! The One who took birth as the darling son of eternally fortunate and famous Kowsalya! The one who shattered the heads of the strong king of lanka,

in the south! The One who shows Himself so gracefully in the divya desam of

ThirukkaNNapuram divya desam surrounded by tall, beautiful and strong

ramparts studded with gold! The apple of my eye! My sweetest nectar like

Lord! Sri Raamaa! Lullaby to You.

My Paati would often replace the word Raaghavane (in the last line of the verse above) with my name and sing it. It would feel so personal as though she is singing just for me. And she would be singing just for me! :D

I wish to record this song in her voice... I do not know when I will get to meet her. Sometimes life changes so much that you can't help being lonely and longing for our closed ones. Even a far-off friend can make us feel so warm and yet a person right next to us may make us feel very distant.

I would not want to continue in these lines else this post would lose its meaning.


Courtesy: http://ahobilavalli.org/perumal_thirumozhi.pdf

Upanayanam

Last week we attended the upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony) of my cousin. The purohit who did the ceremony helped us understand the nuances of each mantram and we even got to know the historical(mythological) background behind a famous mantram. I do not want to spoil the show by revealing the name of the mantram right here. Read on and enjoy! :)

As the legend goes...

Thousands of rishis(sages) came together and found out the perfect ultimate mantram... and later all of them dispersed to go and do tapas.. after hundreds of years when they broke their tapas, the only thing that came to their mind was the fact that they had all composed a mantram.. but noone remembered what is was. they met each of the other rishis who participated in the making of the mantram. yet noone could recall it...

Finally they decided to go to the place where the mantram was discovered to find out if anyone had overheard their discussions. Their meeting had happened under a porasu maram(Chloroxylon swietenia tree). It said that it knows the mantram and recited it.. This is the gayatri mantram...

Hence when a person takes up brahmacharyam, he is given a dhandi(stick) of porasu maram.

A person who has taken up brahmacharyam needs to recite this gayatri mantram. This mantram is one of the most respected mantrams in Hindu culture. More on this mantram at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri and http://www.gayatrimantra.co.in/

Living Happily Ever After?

"I wanted a perfect ending.
Now I've
learned,
the hard way,
that some poems don't rhyme,
and some stories
don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is about not knowing,
having to change,
taking the moment
and
making the best of it,
without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious ambiguity."

- Gilda Radner, 1946-1989

Anguish!

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. - Hector Berlioz

Relationships....

Relationships are so hard to understand... Sometimes a very simple straightforward relationship may seem much more complex to others... Sometimes we get torn between two people, not knowing whom to be spend more time with... We miss both of them equally... And hate to call quits to anyone of them... It could be a husband sandwiched between his mother and wife... It could be a friend whose two of his best friends are staunch enemies to each other...

Friendship is a relationship that includes a wide and varied range of feelings. We do not know the invisible line that divides friendship from love... Many of us may keep jumping across the line and not feel the pain it leaves once they cross the border to the otherside of the line... 'Don't give any name to our relationship,' they say... But are they atleast clear on what kind of feelings the two feel for each other? Alas! Our closest friend may be the most unfit one to fall in love with and at the same time a lover can never be a close friend! Lucky is the person whose love and friend are one and the same and luckier are those who get undivided attention from their spouse...!

What happens when we are at the receiving end of a relationship? We are left with no choice but to show a blind eye or a deaf ear and pretend as though everything is fine... What else can be done? We would not want to lose the relationship, do we?

All the love in the world does not seem enough when we do not get enough attention from the person who means the world to us... Our whole life seems to revolve around this single person... Whatever we do is directly or indirectly for this person... We are even ready to do things that may hurt us the most, to see that happiness and glow on the special one's face...

Is this pain, love? Or may be it's a combination of madness and obsession...

Love, the timeless music!

"You know
when you listen to music
playing from another room?
And you're singing along
because it's a tune that you really love?
When a door closes
or a train passes by
so you can't hear the music anymore,
but you sing along anyway...
then,
no matter how much time passes,
when you hear the music again,
you're still in the exact same time with it.
That's what love is like."
-Anonymous