The last two weeks have been interesting. The smoke which kept us from walking for a few days that finally cleared. The blue skies were back as were the birds and little critters..
Then there was some walks in the evening with some amazing skies..
an attempt to make mysore pak during lunch..
the end result was okay.. put a little too much ghee and kept it on the stove a minute longer.. so while the taste was good, it was a little hard.. it has been at least 4 years since I tried making mysore pak and the next attempt will be better..
practice makes perfect.. and the one thing I finished in the last two weeks is learning the entire Shiva Thandava Stotram..
Made this color coded chart based on the template for understanding the meaning of every verse using a primary theme with sub concepts (green is primary message, blue second, red third, orange and gray fourth and fifth level).. helps understand the meaning and remember (uploading this one as a large jpg that prints as a single page in hopes others can use this to learn).
and here is my attempt to recite this earlier today..having a camera in front of you makes you conscious.. can say it without any glitches off camera..
The days are going by fast. The usual work, yoga routine all from a mat in the same place is still ongoing.
There is the occasional parking lot yoga practice which makes my day!
It is just that I have been meaning to blog for a long time and never got to it. Skipping watching a debate and writing this seemed to be a better idea!
Learning something new, practicing things and creating some things that actually put a smile on your face are much better options for spending time!
After being in stay at home mode for six months, we (read San) really wanted to go somewhere for a drive. So two weekends ago we decided to drive towards Santa Cruz on Labor day Sunday to at least wet our feet in the beach. What we didn't know was that the beaches were open only on Saturday and they closed it for Sunday and Monday. So after a 45 minute drive towards Santa Cruz, we drove back without ever getting out of the car.
There were fires burning then but it was clear that morning. Still no chance to realize the get out of the car and walk around goal.
This weekend we decided to go visit Stow lake in Golden Gate Park as one of our friends posted some amazing pictures. We have visited this park many times in the past, mostly to go to California Academy of sciences. The first time was in 2002 when San was pregnant with Jr. It was the first place we took my MIL to visit. At that time we walked near this place and went to a Japanese tea garden.. but missed the lake and boating area!
By the time we went there the boat rental was closed, but we did go for a nice walk around the lake and enjoyed some fresh air. The lawns were extremely crowded with families sitting on blankets and kids walking the dogs, but the walking paths were relatively people free. 90% of the folks wore masks with the exception being a few runners. We stayed clear of them. We removed our masks only to take a few selfies when no one was around.
The selfie camera in iPHone is not as capable as the actual camera as you can tell from the rest of the photos..
The colors in this place are so vibrant the photos came out great..on the iPhone. Was editing the photos on snapseed and fell in love with this frame that seems to work for nature photos..
Loved this frame..and the bridge that was erected in 1893!
then the birds in the lake gave us a few more chances to take a break and take pictures..
an evening well spent.. now that we have had one visit, we plan to start going to other places on short drives where we don't have to step out anywhere, use public restrooms or come in contact with strangers..
The daily walks around the neighborhood and stay at home / Parking lot yoga is still on.. The air has also cleared up nicely so far. It almost feels like life came back closer to normal.
Two weeks ago, given the negativity in media, way too many lies to handle on a daily basis, friends who show their true colors when it comes to divisive topics.. lets just say that it was just plain depressing.
As chance would have it, a friend shared a person reciting the Shiva Thandava stotram with a damroo(it is an instrument... a hand held drum of sorts) in some temple in the himalayas. It was mesmerizing..
Decided to try and learn this stotram instead. My original thought was that given the complexity and intricacy of the lyrics and the convoluted word structure, any attempt to understand the pieces to memorize it would be too difficult for a person like me who is not that fluent in Sanskrit.
First two days was spent in doing some research, getting printouts of different versions of pdf files from sites with different fonts (Sanskrit letters which are run on have different ways of writing combined letters and that alone can be a big deal for learning something this complex), trying to check out more youtube videos etc.
There was a great story explanation of how this stotram came to be, thanks to Aarsha vidhya varshini, and the most amazing breakdown of this by the Sanskrit channel.
Took the breakdown from that channel, color coded the entire stotram by main idea, sub ideas and sub sub ideas etc.. Ravana should be considered the orignator of nested loop programing! The whole thing reads like a bracketed C program!
In 12 days have managed to memorize the first 10 stanzas. Most sites show 14 total. Some have added 4 more which are explanations or appendix of sorts on the benefits of reciting this.. My goal is the first 14 for now!
As a student in Varanasi, I am pretty sure this could have been memorized by just taking the printout and sitting outside the tree in Birla Mandir on two or three evenings and the whole thing would have been entered into my hard disk drive with backups. Right now, it looks like there is a I/O issue.. there is hard disk space because I am able to memorize it.. but the quality of the memory is not good. Have to constantly keep refreshing it to push it into permanent memory and the memory bus seems to be damaged. What used to be a 64 bit I/O seems to be acting like a 16 or 8 bit I/O in just 30 years!
At this rate of memory degradation, in another ten years, my ability to memorize anything will be severely impacted. This stotram is not easy to memorize based on what even the teachers are saying and it is a decent challenge to recite.
My friends conferred the title of "star maggu" on me during my BHU days when memorization came in very handy for studying metallurgy. The star maggu is now struggling to keep the title. I am sure my classmates will be amused to see this post.
The lesson in this for everyone is this... keep testing and pushing your memory periodically with something, anything. That will give you some indication of how much additional work is required to bring things back to some reasonable performance. Once you remember it, keep going back to reciting it and it will help keep your brain sharp.
My grandpa used to tell me "keep reciting the slokas from memory. it will help you keep your brain active when you are older". Somewhere I stopped exercising the brain as much as I used to in the last few months, thanks to the new COVID lifestyle.
This was a good exercise. It also helped me be happier over the last two weeks by skipping social media. Other than wish friends and relatives for their birthdays, I have been news free. There is always the news about work or work related things that one gets in emails, which also happens to be only negative.
If I can recite this, anyone can. So if anyone out there is thinking or on the fence and has starting trouble with reciting the Shiva Thandava stotram, take heart.. you can do it!
Ganesha, vinayaka, the remover of obstacles has the big celebration today. Ganesha's blessings are needed more than ever this year. There are fires all around us.. (I am not philosophical.. literally fires all around us) and the air quality is see-sawing on an hourly basis.
Mostly we make all of the favorite foods for this pooja (which obviously are also our favorites) but this year we kept things simple.
Missing someone, no marks for guessing..
Ganesha will keep her safe wherever she is, or that is the hope and prayer!
You will find plenty of old posts on this blog for this event!
It is the same day sheet calendar Pillayar that is still the mainstay for our prayers on this day.. but with the iPhone in portrait mode, he really shines.
San is getting good at taking pictures with the iPhone.
and the little one did a good job taking this photo for us.. this year given we are stuck at home all the time, have decided to wear a new T-shirt for every festival. Why not?!
2020 has been and continues to be surreal. There are always some positives from everything. I have not boarded a plane this year and that is a good thing. Have been reasonably healthy this year with the body. There is a nagging gum infection and I was told earlier this week that unless there is a gum surgery in two or three weeks, will lose two more tooth much sooner. Apparently they are gone in a few years anyways. This is the second time in 8 years this is happening.
Not sure if there is any yoga for tooth. They seem to be the motorcyles of the body, when it comes to risk and insurance. Have been told that my dental insurance covers practically nothing and the bill for this will be in the many 1000's. Trying to figure out a way right now. If the virus wasn't doing its thing, would have gone to India to our family dentist and got the surgery done, but that is not an option now. Even with a flight ticket included it would have cost less than half of what it costs here.
Praying to the "remover of obstacles" to make sure this will be the last time I go through this.
To everyone who is celebrating Ganesh Chathurthi, may Ganesha give you everything you ask for!
Want some kozhukattai(dumplings) now and will go help myself to some..
31 years ago, I went to college. Being the first grandson on my mothers side and given most of my social interactions were with my maternal grandparents and uncles and aunts who raised me, the entire family was participating in a social experiment.
"Sundaram has never been outside this small area all his life. Sure he can read write and speak Hindi enough to be the official translator for 20+ people crowded in front of the TV every Sunday before Mahabharat starts, but that doesn't necessarily mean he will survive up north by himself in college!"
Yours truly was the real life version of Jim Carrey in the Truman show... and I went to Benares to study.. The Hindi didn't help and first year was not what I expected. There were a lot of mistakes mostly on my part which made my first three weeks a crash course on life. It took a phenomenal effort from my parents and classmates to help me through that year. Something for which I am forever grateful. Being intelligent and being smart are two different things. If anyone needs to understand that in your house, send them to me. Will gladly explain.
The more time I spent in Benares the more I loved it. Was actually sad to say bye after 4 years. That experience at 16 did help me later in life multiple times as I moved to US for grad school and went from place to place, apartment to apartment and moved to the west coast. My worldview is all the more supportive when it comes to dealing with people and events thanks to some rude awakenings in my freshman year.
This weekend, Jr. goes to college. She is the first grandkid on both her mother and fathers side of the family but she has seen more of this world before college compared to me. Hoping she is smart and not called intelligent. This blog has seen her grow up right in front of all our eyes. Time flies because they are mostly good times. She is a good kid. She is the type of person who will go run towards a problem to help someone when everyone else runs away. I hope she stays that way.
It was decided by the family on a 3:1 vote that daddy will not be the one to drop her off in college. The logic was that I will cry in front of Jr. or make her feel sentimental and it won't help while saying bye. The little one's words I believe were "Appa is a drama queen! Don't send him. Let him stay here with me and I will manage him". So San did the college visit.
The best part of this was that my classmate and chai partner drove 4 hours to help. That is the real blessing.
She now knows a lot more about our college going days than I would have wanted her to know.. but that comes with the territory when uncles share stories.
My sincere hope is that she makes friends in college who will be her lifelong friends.. friends who will help her kids move to college when the time comes!
After leaving for college I never got to spend more than 2-3 weeks with my parents at any time till to date. If history is any indicator, it will be something similar with this girl unless she comes back to the bay area to find work.
As a parent, one can always hope.
Have started a countdown to when she will be home at the end of the semester...
as long as daddy is working on counting something, tracking things in spreadsheets, etc. things will be fine.. cleaned up her room and sorted things out. It will take me a few days to get used to the fact that she is in college, but I am confident of getting through it. All I need to do is go every morning and change that number to a smaller number and take it one day at a time.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020 at 9:35PM ;)
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