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!
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!
This year we are celebrating Gokulashtami in a much simpler way.
Made some seedai in the morning with some help from San who also made some maladdoos and looked lovely today..
We did a small pooja and did neivedhiyam and deeparadhanai.
did I mention she looked absolutely lovely today?
This year, one more person dear to us has reached Krishna.. San's grandpa is one with Krishna now! Was thinking of him, even if it was for a brief moment while doing the deepa aaradhanai.
The kids have stopped dressing up for functions, but their motivation for dressing up is when someone is going to see them dressed up. Parents don't count on that list. Given COVID times, I understood and gave them a pass. There are a few functions they look forward to.. especially when the star of the show is a cute crawling baby, a cute looking elephant, lighting lamps and bursting fire crackers or simply the excuse of "I cant study today because all my books are with Saraswati ummachi".
We have passed on what we could to the next generation. Feel happy that my kids are aware of traditions. Right now there are kids growing up in Tamil Nadu as well as a lot of young adults who have managed to develop so much self loathing for their own culture and tradition in the name of secularism that is being pushed in their face. The marketing machinery that has gone into over drive in recent times to do this to so many kids at this scale is mind boggling.
You can accept another's faith without having to show you gave up on your own! This is so much easier to do and understand, especially when you have a concept of god being in every form, shape, size, color, nature and being open to acceptance. I can understand it being a lot harder for religions where the concept is "my way is the only way".
"Sarva deva namaskaraha Keshavam prathigachathi" is something we say as part of doing Sandhyavandhanam every day. When you prostrate yourself in front of any god, it all eventually goes to the same god. It is a beautiful message.
On a totally tangential note, I have been wearing the same 5 "pocket vechcha T-shirts" in rotation since the lockdown when going out. Inside the house it has been the 60-day challenge shirts in rotation. Using Krishna's birthday as an excuse, finally put on a new T-shirt from the collection of unopened gifts.
This one was courtesy of my FIL/MIL or one of San's uncles. Feels good to wear new clothes every now and then! Apparenlty after eating everything I do look like a blue whale.
A very happy Gokulashtami to everyone. I know that given the technicality of the calendar a lot of folks celebrate Krishnas birthday in early September this year. An advance Gokulashtami wish to them!
Most of the families we know went out to some beach, local park etc. We did not go out today. Went for walks around the block, did yoga, took pictures and that was it. Really did not know how crowded it would be in those places and wanted to go next week when it would be less crowded.
I love my family for their support when it comes to yoga. They might not all be doing yoga with me, but they do support me immensely.
They watch me with amusement as I keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.
Usually there would be a yoga class on Sunday morning at BYSJ and they would give our a rose to take back for all dads and we would take a picture. The missing years are ones where I had to catch a 1PM United Flight to China on Fathers day..
Today we had to make do with a small rose from our own backyard but the kids obliged with a picture and even gave me permission to post it ! That is two old photos to recreate in one day!
Then after I finished the 90 minute class, they helped me with a little demo where I wanted to see how close to "sitting in the chair, not below the chair" the awkward pose was.. and if I did indeed straighten my back. It was weird to do this.. but if you have family volunteers this is worth trying to get a feel for what this pose should be like..
The end result was okay.. Need to do a lot more exercise to get rid of some belly fat. Sitting all day in the same place in meetings does not help that much. There was one yoga teacher who would stand only on his big toes and go ballerina style on this.. in another 5 years will try it.
This has been a good day! Wishing all of the dads out there a happy Fathers day. I am not too thrilled that my dad is in Chennai and I cannot even go see him right now if I want to. Hopefully that changes soon.
My teachers say some things very casually as corrections and move on during Yoga class.. usually at the studio, we have the opportunity to discuss these lightbulb moments right after class.
I have had so many such moments where a certain word is used by a teacher for the first time by way of a second level explanation to what they are asking us to do and that one word switch clicks in the head.
Now that yoga classes have become isolated affairs, it is not easy to have such live discussions. However, there is a forum where we are still fortunate enough to post comments and photos videos to get clarifications.
Today we had yet another zoom yoga class at BYSJ. While in class, our teacher Michelle casually mentions "Sundar, press your knees closer to each other" and she went on to correct someone else.. she is seeing me as a small thumbnail and gives me a correction that was very profound for me..
it makes it so much easier to lift up in toe stand when you compact the base. it was like my floor was solid and in one piece and I had no worries of my leg unraveling during a perpendicular movement..
If I lost you in the previous sentence... especially if you dont do toe stands, dont worry, you are not alone. That is every yoga class for me! I get lost easily..
Before class we got to chat with teachers and one of the great tips from the forum was for a stretching pose "pachimottanasana".
my ankle is off the ground.. it is not visible in the photograph.... and my knee is locked.. I am just bow legged so you see that gap in the floor above the knee.
Jr. helped shoot these videos of me explaining my lightbulb moments from todays yoga class.. she has inherited the sarasm gene from me, as you can clearly tell from the video.
She will be missed when she goes to college. No one else in this house is willing to do yoga videos for me.
I have been a mess mentally thanks to all the recent news and I became the "red chitti" version of myself on social media trying to mock the world for what it is. In the process I trolled myself pretty badly and this class has brought me back to sanity!
It has been a very busy work week and I could not even go out for walks or do yoga many times this week, thanks to the recovering ankle and meetings that have pretty much been round the clock. That did not help my mental state either.
Tomorrow I plan to do a lot more yoga and walk and even bike a little to make up for last weeks inactivity.
The world definitely becomes a better and bearable place with yoga! Seriously think Yoga should be available as a course for people in law enforcement.. It will also help people who are trying to rehabilitate if made available.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020 at 9:35PM ;)
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