Another Dasara festival, that means its been a year nd more

I was clicking pics of the Dasara celebrations in my office, suddenly I realized that I had put up Dasara pics of the 2011 Dasara. that means this blog has been around for more than a year now... I'm thinking to myself, "wow, that's amazing". I dint really think I was going to persevere so long with this blog!

The ladies in the office were generally busy; cooking lunch, tidying up the place, applying vermilion on everything in sight, decorating the goddess' picture. The men were busy getting the 'take home' sweet packets ready and decorating the vehicles.


Here,our office assistant is applying vermillion on the cupboard. When she came in, there was already a vermillion mark on it and she was offended that someone beat her to it. We informed her that it was there from last year's Dasara and she happily rubbed it off before reapplying this year's mark.

This is the one on the door...

Well, nothing much is spared, even the vehicles. This one's got it on the tyres too...

The ladies were busy applying rangoli..

 .... and this is how it finally turned out...

...they had a busy time decorating the place....

The mango tree leaves are strung up for auspicious occasions, this time accompanied by a garland of chrysanthemum flowers

No 'Ayudha puja' is complete without the cucumber. So innocuous looking, this one, but its fate later on is interesting.

As you can see, there is a triangular cut made on one side. A triangular wedge is cut out, the resulting hole is filled with pink 'Kumkum' powder and 1 or 2 rupee coins. a piece of camphor is placed on the top, which is later burnt, as we will see later....


Another important player, the lemon, which is placed under the wheels of all vehicles. After the pooja, the vehicles are made to run over the lemon. The driver in the pic is placing a lemon under the wheels of his vehicle.

The 'David and Goliath situation', going down under.....

The bikes are also given their turn at this face-off.

The pujari takes his time with the puja, first the goddess....

...then her other instruments....

Now comes the times the much anticipated time for the kids who had assembled... He looks to the skies with a small prayer to appease the goddess with the cucumber and the lighted camphor.... (if you look closely in the pic, you can see the flame of the camphor burning on the cucumber)

The kids are getting ready too...for the coins inside the cucumber...

Now's the moment...he raises his hands dramatically and smashes the cucumber on the ground...The kids pounce on each other to collect the coins...

All this was topped with a sumptuous lunch afterwords, prepared by Shobha and co. ... too bad my hands were too engrossed in my plate to hold a camera :).

This pic is the cooking team at work.


Happy Dasara to one and all...

Quote for the day

This is something which had me thinking and laughing at the same time. Told by someone, reported to me by my colleague Dr.Mailarappa:-

"A curative specialist can save one life, where as a public health person can save thousands of lives at a time.
A curative specialist can kill one person while a public health person can kill thousands!! "

Thats the beauty of public health.

From light to darkness, lead me

"Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya"

(Lead me from darkness to light )

This famous part of a sloka I already knew from my childhood. I was surprised to find that this mantra was used in the soundtrack of The Matrix trilogy. This kind of piqued my interest and thanks to wikipedia, I read about the various Vedas and found that this sloka is from Brhadaranya Upanishad. And these were composed in the BC period, before 5th Century BC, tentatively around 1000-600 BC! (source- Wikipedia).
It is thought that even Plato and Kant's have been influenced by them (source- Wikipedia).


Having learnt a little bit of Sanskrit in school, I can pick out the words, thought not really string them together. Tamas - darkness, Maa -I/ Me, Jyothi -light, Gamaya - make go/ lead.

 Coming to think of it, it has a meaning at different levels; physical and philosophical- from known to unknown, from ignorance to knowledge.

On a lighter note.....a 'before'  and 'after' pic led me to this post. We had a power outage. Just as I finished clicking a pic of the candle and make-shift candle stand, the electricity came back on, giving me an 'after' pic.

 

The candle stand is actually an upside-down penstand :)

It was a gift from my BIL, from Singapore.

The design looked kind of garish and pretty and I clicked a few more from up-close. You can actually see the melted candle on top!

A room with a view

Staring intently into cyberspace too long strains my eyes. that's when I decide to relax my pupillary muscles and take a break by sparing into real space instead. Thankfully my office window does not open to the concrete jungle outside. Instead there is a soothing green visible outside. A family of inquisitive monkeys, a couple of scurrying squirrels, the occasional yellow butterflies in the breeze, these are the familiar sites through the window bars. Last day I heard two women hollering and quarrelling outside somewhere. I strained my neck hard to catch a view of them but gave up finally for fear of breaking my neck!

A hole in the tree trunk....

 This hole set me thinking... I imagined the following possibilities:
It could breed Aedes mosquitoes during the rains - (hopeless public health persona)
It could be a squirrel's nest - yes, I have seen them gnawing around the place
There could be a bird's nest inside - totally unfounded due to lack of evidence
For now, I think this space is still up for takers.

A closer view of the canopy ...

On Education

Education has nothing to do with knowledge, learning or wisdom.

A sad fact I learned from my own experiences. People who hold the highest of qualifications turn out to have the scrimpiest of hearts and most narrowest of visions and the biggest of hypocrites. What Mark Twain said rings true,

''I was born intelligent,education ruined me"

A day when we walked into the Airport

Yesterday was a day of phenomenal travel. Around 4000 odd kilometers to Delhi and back in 24 hrs. Finally on the way back home I was reflecting on how all we travelled; in a single day, we managed to travel on:
 Airplane
Metro train
Bus
Auto rickshaw and last but not the least,
By Foot

It was the last part which I found the most interesting. We literally walked into the Palam airport. Ever heard of going to an airport by an Auto?? Curiously enough, an auto dropped us in the front of the airport and we walked in much to the amazement of the taxi drivers parked in the front! You can walk into a bus station or railway station, but an airport? Well, all I can say is;  'been there, done that' :)

The Onam of 2012

So happy was I to be home for Onam this year. People in my office were asking all about it and I told them its a 'harvest festival'. Actually I just think its a harvest festival, not quite sure of it. Anyway, them Kannadigas don't know any better than me , so I managed to get away with it :)

And they are surprised that Onam is a state festival celebrated irrespective of religious affiliations. Again they stumped me by asking which god is worshipped for Onam. I explained the story of King Mahabali and Vamanan, they were familiar with some parts of it. Then they wanted to know what we did on Onam. The answer that came to my mind was that we watch movies on Surya TV, Asianet, Kairali TV etc. I din't tell them that ... Instead I that told we make Pookkalams and we have a grand feast on Thiruvonam day :)

Some images from Onam this year...

The Vazhakkula without which no Onam is complete, proudly photographed from my home garden....

The quintessential Pookkalam, the hallmark of Onam...

A closeup view of the smae,

The Thrikkarappan, made of mud, decorated with flowers

Up close,

Some flowers without which Onam cannot be...

Thumba poo, sadly so out of focus  :(

Mukkootti....the yellow bells,

Kakkappoo, it is actually violet or blue; the colour dint come out in my pic...

A Happy and prosperous Onam to one and all!