Pre-Quel to ‘The Day Of Meetings’

There is one discovery i made today.Hello Freinds i am now going to publish the more of the exciting stuff happened in my life. The all "First Timers" of my life.



3rd September: I reach ratlam from bombay. Its a place of our relatives. A small city of good people who just wanna satiate their taste buds with all the yummy dishes both veg and non-veg and both sweet and salty. The city where you will have "Sweet Kanda Pohe", "Sweet Samose" ,"Sweet Kachori", and everything has little sugar added to it. Its a a town situated near to Gujrat border and many people do come in for buisness and the major food stall vendors and Jain's. So they put sugar in everything. And their sweets are extra sweet. Ok , a cultural change.



In ratlam i saw some of the famous temples. The temples were very faaaaaarrr. Aroound 3-4 km from their house. The temples were indeed ald and famous. Only one temple was a relatively newer construction. It was built by a defunct company "Jain Vitamins Limited". The temple was really astonishing. The temple was built around 15 years ago, when the company was on the top and was earning heavy profits. Once the company started building the temple, the worker unions opposing it. They were demanding a less expenditure on the temple and better salary for the workers, even when the workers were earning the best in the market. Now the company has shifted and there is no industrialisation in ratlam. Well keeping the politics aside, the temple was an extraordinary example of craftmanship. It was really wonderful and beautiful. The temple had recently received a terror threat, so nobody could take in their cellphones. So i dont have the pictures of the temple. Its a group of temples. Shiv, Ram, Krishna, Ganpati, Hanuman and Durga temples. The architecture was really wonderful.


During this travel for seeing all the temples, my relative had to receive many calls. These many calls seemed to be a bit distracting and time consuming. But i thought that it was ok to attend the calls. Later in the evening he said to me that all those calls were for me. Those were the calls from parents of girls for me. They wanted my details. This was my first encounter with the interview process.

So my Relative was busy talking to the fathers of the prospective brides, and here I was feeling the heat – both on the outside in the sunny weather and inside as to what I need to do.

The day was filled with lots of festive food (The day being start of Ganesh Utsav - Ganesh Chaturthi), anxiety and ACIDITY. I had a terrible acidity with the food I had to take in. The food had lots of sweetness, lots of oil and lots of ghee. I may be sounding one of those extra calorie conscious psychopaths but I am not. I am one of those who eat a lot of these stuffs, but not to this extent of having acidity. It was really too much. It was the extreme. It all started in morning. In the morning I had to eat 2 plates full of “pohe” – the rice flakes. It’s the staple dish for breakfast in those parts of the country. Along with that I had to have 2 samosa and 2 kachori. Damn god, it was really too much. All this happened at around 11 am. And then when I hadn’t even digested my breakfast it was already time to have the lunch. Lunch had 2 sweets and dal, baati, churma. Lunch was served along with the side dishes too. Ohh god! Why did I make this rule for not leaving any food behind in the dish? It would had been a lot better if not for this rule. But anyways this was the start for the first time for “Days of Acidity”.

At night I slept tight and without any thought of what was coming ahead the next day. It was the silence before a storm.

The silence.

Interesting

Hello All,
I wish to write this blog as a general e-mail letter which i generally used to write. So the following format will be somewhat similar to that.
Actually i haven't written blog from last 2 weeks and was having the feeling of being negligent towards my very own blog. i had the sinking feeling of this odd deed i did.
Well from last week onwards i have been traveling and traveling a lot. i have been in 6 states of India already, had a plan for the seventh but as i was really too much tired my stamina for more traveling gave up. now i shall just return back home.

1St September: I started my travel from bangalore to mumbai. The purpose of the whole trip was to attend the death ceremony of my uncle. So i thought lets have a look at the friends on the way itself. So i started on and went ahead. Traveling to mumbai was starting phase of the very big travel. Bangalore had a wonderful weather to start with. It was raining in bangalore when i started. It was a wonderful weather. Train was at 3.25pm but i started from house at around 12.30 itself, for fears of water clogged roads or the more famous of bangalore traffic jams. (i did not wanted to miss this particular trip, and wanted a very good start for this one.) so i reached railway station well before time and then the railways came to rescue. The announcement was being made "Lokmanya tilak terminus express is running late by around 30 minutes". Gosh now i have to spend 2 hours on platform doing nothing.
But then i had to carry on with the boredom. And finally i heard those beautiful words, the train was approaching the. There was one thing i dread while traveling by train, and that is "Hijada's" (The third type of sex). I dunno why, but i get a weird feeling while they are around, and i always try to neglect them. And as luck shall provide it, these kinds of personalities were available at the station and were ready to board the same train as Me. Well then for the first time i didnt faced any problems from them during the journey so i felt good. Then the journey was good, except for the weather. I was sweating right from the time i left Bangalore boundaries. En-route to Mumbai, i had traveled in Andhra Pradesh also.
I had a wonderful company for my travel. They were so co-operative that they allowed me to finish reading my novel. They didnt even talked between themselves. Hats off to them. A Truly Wonderful Experience.

2nd September: Saving grace was the beautiful morning which was a damn good welcome for me. Took some pics of the beauty. The indian countryside. I had never seen the indian villages on my travel. I had seen them when i was a kid and then i had only seen the high trekking mountains and the beautiful valley. But this was more soothing. It was the place where our food is grown, its the place of life. Looking at the vast expanse of the fields, i felt a pinch of jealousy for not being able to be there. It right now is my dream to own a 50 acre of agriculture land and own a house in it. Give it to farmers for farming. I wanna have this thing.....

By Afternoon i was in the urban areas of Maharashtra. I was seeing all the dirt and the lethargy of the living. This was in stark difference to the nature i had seen in morning. By the time i had reached my final stop i was at the Kalyan station. Kalyan local station was just a passage ahead. I bought the local train ticket. It had a very good facility of a person shelling out the tickets using his smart card. I got down at CST i.e VT. From there my friend had come in to receive me. We then went on to Pizza Hut. I was damn hungry and also was bathing in my own sweat. Finally was able to get into the Air Conditioned room of Pizza Hut. With this experience i started becoming more appreciative of Bangalore Weather, or in short Bangalore. I was of the opinion for not settling down in bangalore due to the difference of languages, and the rising cost of living. But then weather was the breaking point of all the negativities.

My friend had already made the arrangements for my visit. I stayed at her house till evening and then i had to start for the next slab of my travel to the Dhaar. It was nice. She was amongst my "circle of trust". Details later. From there on i took a cab to the station of my boarding, the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus. I boarded the train and after half an hour it started. I had my dinner in the train. For the first time i had a good company to chat to. I had people who were willing to have some discussions and not sit like manequins. And then theres the end of the day.


Rest of the journey details shall be put up in the next blog. Keep reading.

Regards,
Antariksh.

My Trip

Hello Freinds in some days i shall be putting up the detailed report of my trip. I had taken a log break from my office. All the fun and the sorrows shall be listed out here. keep reading and commenting.

Regards,

Antariksh

Priceless Trick

Grandmother was pretending to be lost in prayer, but her prayer-beads were spinning at top speed. That meant she was either excited or upset.Mother put the receiver down. "Some American girl in his office, she's coming to stay with us for a week."She sounded as if she had a deep foreboding.Father had no such doubt. He knew the worst was to come. He had been matching horoscopes for a year, but my brother Vivek had found a million excuses for not being able to visit India, call any of the chosen Iyer girls, or in any other way advance father's cause.Father always wore four parallel lines of sacred ash on his forehead.Now there were eight, so deep were the furrows of worry on his forehead. I sat in a corner, supposedly lost in a book, but furiously text-messaging my brother with a vivid description of the scene before me.

A few days later I stood outside the airport with father. He tried not to look directly at any American woman going past, and held up the card reading "Barbara".Finallya large woman stepped out, waved wildly and shouted "Hiiii! Mr.Aayyyezh,how ARE you?"Everyone turned and looked at us. Father shrank visibly before my eyes.Barbara took three long steps and covered father in a tight embrace.Father's jiggling out of it was too funny to watch. I could hear him whispering "Shiva Shiva!" She shouted "you must be Vijaantee?" "Yes, Vyjayanthi"I said with a smile. I imagined little half-Indian children calling me"Vijaantee aunty!" Suddenly, my colourless existence in Madurai had perked up. For at least the next one week, life promised to be quite exciting.Soon we were eating lunch at home. Barbara had changed into an even shorter skirt. The low neckline of her blouse was just in line with father's eyes.He was glaring at mother as if she had conjured up Barbara just to torture him. Barbara was asking "You only have vegetarian food? Always??" as if the idea was shocking to her. "You know what really goes well with Indian food,especially chicken? Indian beer!" she said with a pleasant smile,seemingly oblivious to the apoplexy of the gentleman in front of her, or the choking sounds coming from mother. I had to quickly duck under the table to hide my giggles.Everyone tried to get the facts without asking the one question on all our minds: What was the exact nature of the relationship between Vivek and Barbara? She brought out a laptop computer. "I have some pictures of Vivek"she said. All of us crowded around her. The first picture was quite innocuous. Vivek was wearing shorts, and standing alone on the beach. Inthe next photo, he had Barbara draped all over him. She was wearing a skimpy bikini and leaning across, with her hand lovingly circling his neck.Father got up, and flicked the towel off his shoulder.It was a gesture we in the family had learned to fear.He literally ran to the door and went out.Barbara said "It must be hard for Mr. Aayyezh. He must be missing his son." We didn't have the heart to tell her that if the son had been within reach, father would have lovingly wrung his neck.

My parents and grandmother apparently had reached an un-spoken agreement. They would deal with Vivek later. Right now Barbara was a foreigner, a lone woman, and needed to be treated as an honored guest.It must be said that Barbara didn't make that one bit easy. Soon mother wore a perpetual frown.Father looked as though he could use some of that famous Indian beer.Vivek had said he would be in a conference in Guatemala all week, and wouldbe off both phone and email. But Barbara had long lovey-dovey conversations with two other men, one man named Steve and another named Keith. The restof us strained to hear every interesting word. "I miss you!" she said to both.She also kept talking with us about Vivek, and about the places they'd visited together. She had pictures to prove it, too. It was all very confusing.This was the best play I'd watched in a long time. It was even better than the day my cousin ran away with a Telugu Christian girl. My aunt had come howling through the door, though I noticed that she made it to the plushest sofa before falling in a faint. Father said that if it had been his child,the door would have been forever shut in his face.Aunt promptly revived and said "You'll know when it is your child!"

How my aunt would rejoice if she knew of Barbara!On day five of her visit, the family awoke to the awful sound of Barbara's retching. The bathroom door was shut, the water was running, but far louder was the sound of Barbara crying and throwing up at the same time. Mother and grandmother exchanged ominous glances. Barbara came out, and her face was red. "I don't know why", she said, "I feel queasy in the mornings now."If she had seen as many Indian movies as I'd seen, she'd know why.Motherwas standing as if turned to tone. Was she supposed to react with the compassion reserved for pregnant women? With the criticism reserved for pregnant unmarried women? With the fear reserved for pregnant unmarried foreign women who could embroil one's son in a paternity suit?Mother, who navigated familiar, flows of married life with the skill of a champion oarsman, now seemed completely taken off her moorings.She seemed to hope that if she didn't react it might all disappear like a bad dream.I made a mental note to not leave home at all for the next week.Whatevermy parents would say to Vivek when they finally got a-hold of him would be too interesting to miss. But they never got a chance.The day Barbara was to leave, we got a terse email from Vivek. "Sorry,still stuck in Guatemala. Just wanted to mention, another friend ofmine,Sameera Sheikh needs a place to stay. She'll fly in from Hyderabad tomorrowat 10am. Sorry for the trouble."

So there we were, father and I, with a board saying "Sameera". At last apretty young woman in salwar-khameez saw the board, gave the smallest ofsmiles, and walked quietly towards us. When she did 'Namaste' to father,Ithought I saw his eyes mist up.She took my hand in the friendliest way and said "Hello, Vyjayanthi,I've heard so much about you." I fell in love with her. In the car father was unusually friendly. She and Vivek had been in the same group of friends in Ohio University. She now worked as a Child Psychologist.She didn't seem to be too bad at family psychology either. She took out a shawl for grandmother, a saree for mother and Hyderabadi bangles for me."Just some small things. I have to meet a professor at Madurai University,and it's so nice of you to let me stay" she said. Everyone cheered up.Even grandmother smiled. At lunch she said "This is so nice. When I make sambar, it comes out like chole, and my chole tastes just like sambar".Mother was smiling. "Oh just watch for 2 days, you'll pick it up."Grandmother had never allowed a muslim to enter the kitchen. But mother seemed to have taken charge, and decided she would bring in who ever she felt was worthy. Sameera circumspectly stayed out of the puja room, but on the third day ,I was stunned to see father inviting her in and telling her which idols had come to him from his father. "God is one" he said.Sameera nodded sagely.By the fifth day, I could see the thought forming in the family's collective brains. If this fellow had to choose his own bride, why couldn't it be someone like Sameera? On the sixth day, when Vivek called from the airport saying he had cut short his Gautemala trip and was on his way home,all had a million things to discuss with him. He arrived by taxi at a time when Sameera had gone to the University."So, how was Barbara's visit?" he asked blithely. "How do you know her?"mother asked sternly. "She's my secretary" he said. "She works very hard,and she'll do anything to help." He turned and winked at me.Oh, I got the plot now! By the time Sameera returned home that evening,itwas almost as if her joining the family was the elders' idea. "Don't worry about anything", they said, "we'll talk with your parents."

On the wedding day a huge bouquet arrived from Barbara.

"Flight to India - $1500.
Indian kurta - $5.
Emetic to throw up - $1.
The look on your parents' faces - priceless" it said.

Tools to Embedded -

Today onwards I am being given another job at my office. I have to look into the embedded code also. This is a total phase shift for my kind of people. I have a background of working and creating applications. I work at the highest level in the machine hierarchy. From today onwards I have to look into the world at the lowest ladder.

This world is the starting step for all the things to work. Here while coding we have to keep into mind even 1 byte of memory, we can’t waste that greatly. It was heaven while coding for the applications. The environment takes care of the memory management. The developer does not think twice about memory wastage, just keep on finishing the job assigned.

I was in a dilemma, as to should I go ahead or blatantly refuse to work on it. I was weighing the pros and cons of the action I take.
Pros:

• An un-chartered territory to be explored (60%)
• A possible chance to get into limelight of peers and superiors
• To prove that “I CAN DO IT”
• Added feature in resume

Cons:

• Performance & work pressure
• Scared of the unknown
• “CAN I DO IT”

The urge to get into something others don’t want to or to prove myself was more and so its the pros who win and I am into it. I am getting into the look and feel of it. Let’s see how the things appear at the bottom.

In the meantime I also resolved an application problem for one of my close friend. He had gone for some volunteering work in some deep village in Orissa. He was acting as a translator basically, but a knowledgeable translator. We are friends from years and these kind of deeds help strengthen the bond. He and his team were gratified for the opportune help I provided. It helps a lot to all. We get a chance to get in touch with different people and get to face more different kinds of problems. It adds to our knowledge and helps to improve your credibility.

I too have the urge to do some volunteer work for the benefit of the country as my friend has done.

Love needs no proof - Sri Sri 14th Jan '94

Sri Sri Ravishankar (Guruji) was discussing the Narad Bhakti Sutra's. Following is just a small preview of the extent of the knowledge present in the Sutra's. You too can get to understand the Sutra's, just get onto the wagon, join Art Of Living for the enlightenment.

Devotion is the simplest and easiest among all practices. The path of devotion. Three types of devotion - Satvic, rajasic and tamasic. Three type of divine love. With or without some desire behind it. Whenever there is love ,then behind that love there could be some desire. And there need not be also. But the love without any desire behind it is much superior, is greater. Tamasic, rajasic and satvic love. Satavic love is greater than the rajasic and tamasic love.
As said before the love of a terrorist is also love. He loves something. That's why he is a terrorist. He is ready to give up his life. Isn't it? He loves something. He has some ideology. He is ready to put his life to it. Without love he cannot do that. Love is the main driving force behind it. But it is Tamasic love, Rajasic love. Satavic love is superior.
Then the next sutra that says "Anya smad soulabhyam bhakta ".It is easier compared to other paths. Love itself being the path for love is easier. Anyway that is fruit of all other actions, all other attainments. Whether you want to go through the path of knowledge or action or yoga or service, the attainment or you aim at divine love only. "Anya smad soulabhyam bhakta". This is simpler and easier. Remember, whatever is very simple and easy, that itself is very difficult and complicated too. The simplest things are the most difficult things to do. But yet here Narada emphasizes, this is simpler. Is why says, this does not need any other proof.
The next sutra goes "Prmanantarasya anapekshitvat, swayam pramanantvat".Because it is a proof by itself. You don't need any other proof for your advancement. If you see, how you have grown in your love, you don't need to go and ask anybody how is my progress? Have I progressed or not? If you are welling up in gratitude, you don't have to go and ask anybody, have I improved in my life? That itself is the proof. If you are dissolving, every cell of your body is vibrant with surrender, with devotion, even if the whole world stays on the other side and says you have not evolved, you will simply smile at them.
That is what has happened with all the prophets, that is what has happened with Jesus. Everyone wanted him to give a proof that he is the son of man .He simply kept silent. He never said a word. Because it's evident. What more? When you know you are the source. You are from that source and you are the source you don't need anyone else to prove or you don't need to prove it to anybody either, "Prmanantarasya anapekshitvat.". No need of any other proof for love. But normally we demand proof. When you love somebody, you ask them "prove me". Indirectly or directly you are demanding for a proof that they really love you. And you just see, all the proofs that you get is really nothing. Do not mean anything. They cannot stand. Is this not the conflict today, in all the relationships, everywhere in love? Because everyone wants the proof that the other person really loves them. And through gestures you cannot have proof. It's not foolproof. all gestures could fool you very easily. So they cannot be a proof for your love. They all can be like airhostess' smile. It's not an authentic- "Goodbye", "Thank You", "Welcome you on the board", "Have a nice day". Have a nice day? Do they really mean it? Have a nice day. Haan, of course though as you all get out they will have a nicer day. Their duty is finished. Job is done.
You are so uncertain about love, because your love has not gone deeper enough in yourself. You have not blossomed in love, in your inner strength. So you demand proof from others too .You demand proof that they love you. This is foolish. Narada says no. Such devotion neither demands proof, nor requires any proof. You need any proof that sun has come out? Is there any other proof needed for sun to be? You need a torch to look at the sun? It's so evident. The love is so evident. Enlightenment is so evident that you do not need any other proof. "Prmanantarasya anapekshitvat, swayam pramanantvat". That itself, love itself is the proof of blossoming. Haan, if you find there is no love, and when one thinks that one is enlightened or one claims to be enlightened then can look sor....(don't know..?) ,you can doubt. Because divine love itself is the proof of blossoming. So that divine love neither demands proof, nor requires proof, because that itself is the proof.