The wells of Rameshwaram temple

My parents had visited Rameshwaram and I was not a part of that trip. There was this constant reminder for me to go visit with my wife, especially given we had both visited Kashi before.

So a big part of this India trip (previous post here..) was to go to Rameshwaram temple and get.a bath from waters of the 21 wells in the temple. The history and reasoning behind these wells is well documented and will not explain it here. 

The logistics of accomplishing this on the other hand, will get a mention. Currently the train that goes from Chennai does not go into the island. It stops at Mandapam station. Supposed to reach at 4:30 AM but is usually late by 30 mins to 45 minutes. That should factor into calculations for a one day trip!

We had a car pick us up and take us straight to the temple gate. Thanks to my chitti's friend, we were connected to one of the. priests at the temple who gave us a contact for a person named Lokesh.

His official title should be Technical Program Manager, Well bathing, Rameshwaram. He asked San, myself and my FIL to walk, after realizing my MIL couldn't walk that far. He took her on his bike to the side gate. Once there, he gave us precise instructions, took us to each well and got us drenched with water from every well within a span of 35 minutes with extreme planning and precision. After that we got to go change at the entrance and visit the main shrines. Within a 2 1/2 hour period we had done what we came to do and one of the main temple visits was checked off. (the other was Gunaseelam... not sure how many days it will take me to get to that post!)

This temple is a marvel !! just look at the pillars as far as the eye can see on every main corridor.

Saw the Sankara mutt on the way out and was reminded of the mutt in Varanasi in Hanuman Ghat! lots of memories..

We said bye to Lokesh and thanked him for pictures from his phone (we were not allowed a phone) and went to get something to eat.

After a quick brunch at a local vegetarian place (Hotel New Saravana Bhavan.. not in anyways related to Hotel Saravana Bhavan!!! but actually better..) we decided to cover the rest of the sights there in this sequence, thanks to our driver (who was from Madurai) who had done this tour many a time. However he said in his experience he had not seen anyone cram this much into a day!

First stop was Ramar paadhukai..(three of us climbed the hill and saw the sights while MIL stayed in the car.. it was a wise move. She was clearly told by our driver where there was flat nice terrain and where things would be difficult)

Then the Panchamukha Hanumaan temple with a demonstration of the floating rocks that were used by the monkeys to build the bridge to Lanka..(sadly my phone died and have no pictures or videos of that) followed by a visit to Lakshmana's temple and pond (there is a story or segment from the Ramayana that is there for each of these locations and you can read up on it if interested)

My FIL had his SLR for pics. I had to stay content with the iPhone.

Then we had finished with this area and were off to see Prof. Kalam's house. It was inspiring in its own way!

After visiting his house, we left for Dhanushkodi area. On the way we got to see the Kodhandaramar temple. Thanks to Modiji, the roads were nice and we also had access to go all the way to the end of the road to see the ocean. We had some ice cream and coconut water at the temple, then stopped by the light house. 

The lighthouse has a small elevator that simply cannot handle the tourist volume. So it was difficult to wait there, but after 30 minutes we did make it to the top for some spectacular views. (The restrooms behind the lighthouse are extremely well maintained !! )

After this we got to put our feet in the ocean water where two oceans meet.

There was crazy traffic at the end of the road to make U turns and get back. Our driver had told us to keep walking to find him. The three of us walked close to a mile to catch up with the van and were out of the area.. but we did stop for chai at a roadside stall.. it was pretty good!

A short video compilation of the few clips I took..

There were two more stops to go before we were to reach our hotel in Madurai that night.. 

will share that in the next post!

A decade of practicing anything..

Exactly 10 years ago, my MIL and me walked into the old studio of BYSJ to do our very first hot yoga class.. it was not "bright and early".. more like "dark and cold".. but early it was at 5:30AM.

Over the years it has been a journey filled with little joys, frustrations (mostly in the early days of practice) but mostly realization of what this body and eventually mind can do and how things are connected.

Practicing yoga is the one thing I could always count on to bring me a level set every day, no matter the other circumstances that weigh in.

My MIL does yoga at home (whatever yoga works for her) and I have stuck to Bikram Yoga for 10 years now. Have tracked the classes, my weight after coming home (or walking to the bathroom now that coming home after yoga has been reduced to a 30 second thing!) and have been doing yoga very regularly. It has been 2259 classes as of yesterday and hopefully tonight we get to round it to 226 classes a year. 

The teachers tell you to practice at least 4-5 times a week and that is about there. 4-5 times a week. 

I cannot tell you enough how good this practice has been for me. It is my sincere wish that more people pracice yoga and practice regularly.

My MIL has not been fortunate enough to practice in the latest BYSJ studio. She showed up here on March 13th last year and the studio closed on 16th. We did get a chance to go see the studio, thanks to BYSJ!

 

Cannot wait for the doors to open again and soak in the heat and humidity! 

Today also happens to be Maha Shivarathri, a day for spirituality and a special day that brings back so many memories for me personally. The fact that the 10 year yoga anniversary fell on Maha Shivarathri made my day! 

This photo was taken last night by San of me doing yoga..

Incidentally, my first yoga blog post 10 years ago was about being able to do this pose with some semblance to what it was supposed to be. I could not grab my feet for the first 9 days. Finally managed it on the 10th day! 

It is a lifelong practice.. just getting started.

Wishing myself and the MIL a very happy Yoga anniversary and a happy Shivarathri to all of you!

A heartfelt thanks to BYSJ and all the teachers for the yoga and everything the yoga has given us!

An alternative to depressing actions

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! 

Rudra blues

My taste in music was and is heavily influenced by Bob Dylan. One of my motivations for coming to the US of A more than 20 years ago was to see Dylan. That was checked off within a year after showing up here. Okay, that was not the primary reason!

Most of you also know my penchant for runon sentences and my liking for using not so easily pronounceable words in conversation.

It is very much possible that my memory, vocabulary, run on sentences etc. all have roots in my childhood. As a toddler I used to sit patiently on my grandfathers lap for hours and listen to him recite scriptures. To this day that is my most favorite memory of him. 

Jr. and the little one are always amazed by my memory and I keep telling them that if they just listen to certain sounds, there is a benefit to their brain and the way they can register things. It is true that I don't have any personal experimental proof of this with the western scientific method, but this is based on what the smart elders in my family concur with and it is possibly working in my favor. Nevertheless, not everything needs a proof this way as some experiements go on for generations over thousands of years! Maybe this is one such experiement in progress where these chants are taught?!

Jr. now knows almost 80% of the Chamakam and recites it with the correct pronunciation.  I am not asking her to recite it, but just sit next to me when I recite. So far, so good..

We (Jr. and me) had an idea to do a video of the last stanza with some inspiration from Dylan's Subterranean Homesick blues. 

It is funny that she was introduced to Dylan before she was introduced to Chamakam.. 

Here is the result..

You will see a video here somday where Jr. recites the entire thing. On a side note, we had a funny incident at home a few months ago when she was conscious of her accent when it came time to pronounce some words. Given that she knows neither Hindi or Sanskrit and only Tamil, she was not comfortable reading it in English. 

My initial reaction was to enroll her in Sanskrit class in hopes that she will pick up the Devanagari script and that did not work out. Did find something else to motivate her.. A video where a bunch of Caucasian folks recite Rudram with perfect intonation (catch it from the 55second mark) that taught Jr. that it has nothing to do with where you are born and what your native tongue is and it is just a question of practice and finding a good teacher!

I called it the Rudra blues because sometimes listening to this or chanting this makes me miss my grandfather and the Kapaleeshwarar temple and also sends me back to simple and innocent days from my past. Then again, watching the kids pick it up makes me feel that some goodness is being transferred to the next generation!