Sri Raghavendra Swamy Darshan

Ok, so this happened many many years ago but the event remained etched in my mind and I had always wanted to blog about it but kept putting it off. Each day I saw Sri Raghavendra Swamy's photo in the morning, I vowed myself to write about it as soon as possible but I never did. So here goes...

I had visited Mantralayam with my parents and my brother's in-laws. The morning darshan went as planned and so did the lunch at noon. While my parents and I had booked for the return journey the next day, the in-laws had planned for a night bus departing on the same day at about 8 pm. Them being aged, we thought it was courteous on our part to bid them farewell by going to the Bus stand instead of just from the hotel room. The only glitch was that at about the same time, there would be Rathotsava (chariot ceremony) in the temple premises which we had to miss. Nevertheless, we thought perhaps we can bid them adieu at about 7:45 pm at the bus stand and return to the temple to have a glimpse of the Rathotsava too.

Unfortunately, the bus was late. While the in-laws asked us to "Go, its ok, we will take care", we continued to stay on knowing fully well that we would indeed miss the Rathotsava in its entirety. Finally the bus came and it left at 8:30 pm - and with anxiety, we returned hastily to the temple, hoping the chariot ceremony would still be underway. Alas, it was over. In fact, the temple itself was being closed for the night and many pilgrims were asked to leave the premises. With a lump in our throat, we realized that the opportunity was lost, and we felt an inexplicable grief.

At that time, my mother's relative (Sri Parimalacharya) was amongst the few priests who were give the responsibility of doing the daily rituals (such as floral decoration, abhishka, etc.) to the Brindavana. He happened to see us just while we were getting ready to depart and he asked us if we watched the Rathotsava to which we told him how unfortunate we were to have just missed it. He then asked us to accompany him to the sanctum sanctorum where the final rituals of the day were being conducted to the Brindavana such as removing all the flowers, other clean-up, etc. This was happening when hardly any other pilgrims were present & the temple premises was almost empty save for a few priests and other temple attendants. So it was both an honour and a privilege to be present to witness the final rituals of the day - and this offset our grief greatly.

Sri Parimalacharya took off all the remaining flowers from the Brindavana and did the final Aarathi of the day. He offered this Aarathi to all those present including us. And then he did something I hadn't seen anyone do. He stood directly in front of (and facing) the Brindavana and with the help of both of his palms he leaned on it and touched his forehead to it. He stood like that devotedly, resting his palms & forehead on the Brindavana for a few seconds as if to intimately bid goodnight to Rayaru, and then he walked back towards us with a smile. 

We then offered our namaskaara to him and thanked him for letting us inside the sanctum sanctorum despite it not being the time for devotees to be within the temple premises. He waved it away as if it was nothing. We then offered our final namaskaara to Rayaru and walked out of the sanctum sanctorum and then out of the temple towards our hotel room.

Thats all that happened.

But this incident remained in my mind all through these years. And recently, there is this one special quality about it that suddenly dawned upon me whenever I think about what happened that day. After we offered our namaskaara to Sri Parimalacharya & looked at him, his face had this strange brightness, this unique inexplicable glow that I now think that the great Sri Raghavendra Swamy Himself had entered the mortal body of Sri Parimalacharya and was offering grace to us. It was as if everything was pre-planned: the in-laws bus being at 8 pm which deliberately got delayed, the Rathotsava that we had to miss - and all this was just so that we could get Darshan of Sri Raghavendra Swamy Himself "in-person" & get His blessings directly from Him!

It was a mind-boggling event, and I still cannot forget the way Sri Parimalacharya leaned on the Brindavana with great devotion, & that glow he had while he blessed us. This constant belief that I have that it was Sri Raghavendra Swamy Himself who blessed us that night "directly" is suffice to make me think that my this life has become sacred. 

Amen.

The JiraLe Scare!

I was in Central Mall yesterday, sitting with my daughter in one of the rare couches that was empty, while my wife was shopping. 

Just then I noticed a small cute little girl, maybe about 3-4 years old walking amidst the multitude of dresses that were folded & placed neatly on shelves. She was holding the hand of an elderly gentleman, who probably was her grandfather. Her other hand was idly touching all the dresses that she was passing by to which the elderly gentleman remarked in Kannada, "Adhella mutbeda, alli JiraLe iraththe" which translates to "Don't touch, there will be cockroaches." 

Obviously he was kidding and just trying to scare her just so that she will stop touching the dresses. And she did stop touching the dresses with a mild fear in her eyes as if those roaches will come flying out of the folds. Just to confirm she got the message - like how we all do with such tiny tots - he asked her a question: "En iraththe?" (what will be there?) She dutifully & fearfully replied "JiraLe".

All this was happening as they were walking right in front of me and hence I could hear every bit of it. I even smiled at the gentleman knowing fully well what he was doing and he acknowledged the smile back. And then she came to the section where there was Jeans pants folded neatly. She pointed her finger to the "fashionably" torn section of the Jeans pant and told the man innocently with a slight scare in her voice, "JiraLe Kachbittidhe!" (The cockroach has chewed!")

😊

"The Best Friend"

One of the most awaited times during a "school working day" for me is the time to pick up Paavani from the school bus after her school gets over. As soon as she jumps off from the bus door, she is all bubbly to offload the latest information about her "best friend". 

Below is an excerpt of a "real conversation" on any typical week (days specified are fictional):

Monday:
She: "Pappa, Roshni is my best friend. I have so much fun with her in the bus!" 

Tuesday:
She: "Pappa, Madanika and I were playing bunnies today, and we were laughing so much!"
Me: "Who is Madanika? You have been going to school for almost 9 months and I haven't heard her name till today..."
She: "Oh she is my best friend!"

Wednesday:
She: "Pappa, I have decided I will take Charanashree with me on my birthday to distribute chocolates to all the teachers."
Me: "Why not Madanika?"
She: "Oh Charanashree is my best friend!"

Thursday:
She: "Pappa, today is Karnitha's birthday and she gave me chocolate even though we are now no longer classmates."
Me: "Oh that is so nice of her. She was your first friend in this school."
She: "Yes, she is my best friend."

Friday:
She: "Pappa, I miss Pragathi."
Me: "Last time you met her was about 4 years ago in your pre-school."
She: "Yes, she is my best friend."

And so it goes: Paavani & her long list of Best Friends...!

:-)

Rebirth as a House Fly?!

At times, there are a few house flies (commonly called in Kannada as NoNa) flying around in our house. These creatures don't really cause any nuisance like mosquitoes which bite and go ummmmm near our ears while we are sleeping - but they are annoying in their own way. It tends to make us shoo them away by waving our hands and legs and what-not whenever we see them.

My daughter has suddenly shown interest in these flies. This happened once when a fly sat on her finger for a long time. When a fly sits on your finger or toes, you wont even feel it - it is so light. So, she didn't really feel it but she saw this fly sitting on her finger. At that instant, she declared the fly to be her pet and she will play with it. [This could also be because she kept asking me for a pet (like a dog or a cat) and I kept refusing!] So she asked me not to shoo away any of the house flies from the house because they were her pets now! Boink!

Be that as it may. That alone is not the reason for me to blog this post. 

She had nicknamed the fly as NoNi and used to call them so until one day she changed it suddenly to 'Mahatma'! I asked her why she was calling the flies as 'Mahatma' and she replied that anyone who had achieved great success in life is called 'Mahatma', and who knows these flies might have achieved great success in their past life! A big BOINK!!

Now, this was good enough reason to blog!!

I had never thought about what she had said! What if our very own Mahatma Gandhi himself had turned into a fly in his next life?! I mean, can that even happen? You achieve great many successes in life only to turn into a fly the next life! Oh Jeez - that is so despairing to think about! After all those struggles, the sacrifices, the Satyagraha, the fasting and then sweet success of a Nation's Independence - only to be turned into a house fly in the subsequent life! Surely that cannot happen?! 

But then he should have been born again by now really. I have read great many philosophical theories now to firmly believe that there is definitely rebirth but no one has told me yet that the rebirth will be as humans only. What I have understood is that the rebirth is from animals to human beings but, to be honest, I have never thought that we might be reborn as animals in future. That is like going back in the Process & Fulfillment of Life as we know it, like getting demoted instead of promoted. What if it might just be true - that we might not be reborn as human beings?! Now thats a scary thought!! My mother always used to tell me when I was a boy that we will be born as lizards if we refuse water to folks who ask for it and I always used to think that it cannot be true - but what if it indeed is?!

But what if we are indeed reborn as human beings? Our generation has depleted this Mother Earth so much that when we are born again, there would be hardly anything for us to live upon. Men are cutting down generation-old trees in this life to make furniture and doors and houses and when these same men are reborn a century later, the Earth would be so much hard to live with soaring temperatures and depleted water due to all those fallen trees cut by the very same men! Men are throwing garbage and trash into oceans & rivers, illegally mining the sand off the river banks, and not worrying about now but when born again, they will see the impact it will have on the ecology which in turn comes back and affects the same men. But they would then just blame their fathers and forefathers for not taking care of Earth but in reality, due to rebirth, they are actually experiencing the results of their own actions in their own past life! Like right now - what if I am experiencing this era of 'no-water', 'rising-temperatures', 'polluted-air' because I used to cut down trees, burn up the fossil fuels, waste electricity, waste water, etc. in my own previous life?! What if people in Africa are suffering massive famine because they used to waste food in their own previous lives? This is what Karma is all about, right?

Even on the positive note - again, what if we are indeed reborn as human beings? All the achievements and successes achieved are forgotten by us when we are reborn. They would only be associated to that name and person of the yesteryears. So, amongst us, there could be Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, Ramanujan, Newton, Mother Teresa and all those great folks but just that they wouldn't even know that they were those folks in their own previous life! Unless, of course, they had reached that state of Enlightenment which apparently takes them out of the lifecycle of Birth & Death but then again, who really knows?!

What if I myself was - in my previous life - a famous personality that I studied so much about in my History books in this life?! 

What if that fly indeed was Mahatma Gandhi?!

So many thoughts and questions just by a simple conversation with a seven-year-old on a house fly!!

Phew.

English & Me

As a child, English was a foreign language to me. I was never comfortable with it. I couldn't speak as well as I would have liked to nor could I get my hands around it. Not that I do now (!), but I am way better compared to, say, when I was in my 3rd standard! Any given day, I would resort to my mother tongue - Kannada.

But that didn't mean I was averse to it. In fact, I used to do crosswords and puzzles from a very early age and was quite adept at it. I remember my 2nd grade teacher asking me what 'Satan' meant and I was the only guy in a class of over 60 people to know it. But I was too shy to raise my hand and say the answer. My relationship with the language was more with the hands than with the mouth!

In fact, I remember when I was probably 8-9 years ago (around late 1980s) arguing with my mom - who was coercing me to speak in English so as to become comfortable & fluent with it - that one shouldn't speak in the language which belonged to our invaders. My point was - why should we speak the language of our erstwhile rulers after we got independence from them!

Gradually, I started getting the feel of it though. But it wasn't easy. One day, a cousin (elder brother) of mine had come to our house. This cousin was studying in a real English medium school - by that I mean not the one where people just study in English but also talk only in English with an accent that is hard to understand AND in the 1990s. I asked him about the visit and what prompted him to come, for it was not everyday that we get to see him. To this day, I remember his reply - "I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I will just drop by". I remember gaping at him, with my jaws dropped. I mean, I knew there was a word called neighbourhood and it meant something but I never knew till that very moment that it can be used in a sentence!

And on one another instance, me and my neighbour (another Bishop Cottonian or Baldwinian school) were talking about something, and he remarked - "It costed me forty bucks". I remember distinctly asking what bucks meant. He gave me that kindly paternal look which contained shock as well as amusement that I didn't know "the most commonly used" word.

And then there were some really embarrassing moments. During a visit to my cousin's (elder sister) house, I looked at the wordings she had scribbled on her room door and asked her with all innocence, a complete blank and neutral face, the face of the illiterate - "What does this thing that you have written mean? No Farting." I will leave it to you to imagine the look on my sister's face, the pregnant pause before she replied to me back with the same innocence in the language that I could understand. I will spare some adjectives and leave it to you to imagine the look on my face when I realized what I had asked and what I had made her answer.

Another one of those embarrassing moments was when my father's colleagues had come to our home. Most of them were known to me and we exchanged pleasantries after which one of them remarked "Sunday is longer than Monday." Now, how can a guy like me understand such a cryptic statement if I am not taught?! I tried to understand the statement literally and wondered why this person was telling me that Sunday was longer than Monday. With nothing else to reply, I said "Oh ok" and smiled back. Only then my father told me what it meant and I hurriedly corrected my attire. In fact the subsequent questioning by the same colleague also left me stupefied: "Are you studying for the exams hardly or very hard?" And thats when & how I learned the difference!

Added to this was this really great uncle of mine - the same one whom I mentioned in the driving post - who always asked me the English words for things I never thought had English words! Like the mirror-like reflection on the road when we are driving on a highway (mirage), the thing that joins the two coaches of trains (vestibule), the rectangular lace-like same-shaped same-sized horizontal pillars that form the bed for the parallel rails of the railway track (sleepers) and many more. 

Although my grasp of the language increased and improved when I started reading novels (which kind of happened suddenly in my high school) - not because my mom was forcing me to, but because I was enjoying it - I still wasn't in anyways great in talking. I could never get on the stage and talk in English. My English teacher forced me to do that for a debate (Pros and Cons of Television) and I was having all these butterflies in the stomach while I read out loud what I had written on the piece of paper. 

Me and my friends used to call all those who were talking only in English as Thames - that iconic river in England - metaphorically. It used to amuse me a lot - and sometimes even irk me - when I was seeing parents talking to children in English. By doing so, they were killing their own mother tongue and its associated heritage, culture, literature, poetry, etc. It was like the baton not being passed from parents to offsprings and thus triggering the possible extinction of a language!

At the same time, my English writing and speaking skills improved automatically, thanks to the novels and Star Plus & HBO channels that suddenly invaded the Indian Television during mid-to-late 1990s. I became a great fan of Pierce Brosnan, and his Remington Steele became my favorite. I got acquainted with the American accent. 

Slowly but gradually, even without my knowing, the English language was enveloping me and I never realized it. I was talking more and more in English than in Kannada now! I suddenly was more comfortable in English than in Kannada. All those events 2-3 decades ago - me fighting against my mom about not wanting to learn English - suddenly seemed so superfluous! 

Despite the knowledge and confidence of being English-friendly, there were some mild shocks during my initial days in the US (mid 2000). My first 'For Here to go' was an absolute blinder! And there is no such thing as 'Plastic Covers', we had to just ask for 'Bags' at the retail stores! And 'Overtake' meant nothing to the traffic cop, it was 'Pass'; and 'Indicator' didn't mean anything to the car repair guy, it was 'Directional', and the list goes on!

And then a decade later (late 2010), here I am with a 7-year-old daughter who is most comfortable talking English, thanks to the first 2.5 years of her schooling in US. I feel funny now - me and my wife talking in Kannada and our daughter talking & replying to us in English. This is just the kind of family-language-thingy I didn't like and didn't want about 2 decades ago looking at other such families, and here I am in the exact same situation! But, thanks to my wife and my daughter's new friends & new classmates, Tontu now talks in Kannada more than she used to talk when we left US for good - which is nice. It is amusing to hear her talk in Kannada just like how we all used to talk in our childhood. In fact, I am to be blamed more now since I resort to English words very often for the sake of convenience.

Suffice it to say that although I am trying to get back to "Kannada Days", the English language has become very much a part of my life. So much so that - 

This is my 600th blog-post in Kaleidoscope!!

:-)