call to soul

My grandmother expired on 7th november. A lot of rituals took place as per hindu religious tradition.

I was observing those closely and trying to understand and make sense of whatever the prist was doing.

One particular ritual got my attention,
The prist requested the soul of my grandmother to come and rest inside a small knot made of 'darbha'; a special grass used in such rituals (i m yet to find y it is so special) .

He then offered her some darbha to sit upon, then she was given a bath , was offered gifts, was offered sacred meal (i don't know exact english word for 'Naivedyaa' ) and so on. Of course the gifts were later donated to the prist.

when I realised all this sequence, I was little shocked. this whole process had uncanny resemblance with the process of planchet.

In both the processes a soul is requested upon to come.

In planchet we request them to answer few questions whereas here the soul was honoured.
Planchet is considered something dark whereas these were religious rituals.

The core theme I think is same. That is acceptance or belief that there is something called a soul, that continue to exist even after this earthly body is burned to ashes. And that it can still have it's own existence in a form unk own to us. It still has an ability to communicate and hence perhaps it's own personality.

All said and done about the scientific attitude and all, still I don't think those who have experienced the presence of a soul through planchet will ever forget that experience.

Just like me.

My curious angel...

Sometimes I just let my 7 months old daughter freely stroll around the room letting her handle any thing along the way ,the way she want... Hold...climb...push... I just ensure safety and observe whatever she does.
It is always amazing to see the curiosity...excitement...enthusiasm with which children at this age approach absolutely everything... Every activity.
The spark in the eyes and smile on the face. May it be simple rattle or watching the image in mirror.
Any activity we do is observed carefully and of course an attempt is made in that direction. The way we eat in plate... The way the remote or mobile buttons are used... Or the way a laptop is used... Nothing is out of reach. She would see me using laptop and immediately she would want to try banging on keyboard.
I simply open a text pad so that she can see the cause-effect between keyboard and screen.

A lot many such activities. I know the experience is common but it is yet so unique to everyone. as we grow up we loose this excitement to explore,learn .

May be we start thinking we know all. Or just because we no longer have the liberty to explore the things 'the way we want'. There is always some restriction, some rule, some law,some tradition that dictate 'the way' things should be done.

In later life the same ability to explore things without any prejudices become rarity and
I think those manage to retain a little of this ability, manage to have some thing called 'out of the box thinking'.

I wish I could borrow some from my little angel... But for the time being I an trying to learn this fresh approach to life without any prejudice.

Losing the spirit of competition.

Some recent news that made me a little uncomfortable. First one was the latest decision of “best of five” subjects in SSC and second one of the decision about not to fail any student till 8th standard.

Somehow I disagree.
When I think of the educational process that I went through.... and the current one being modified through which may be my daughter will go through, I feel a lot of difference and also feel that the system will remain for the namesake. Onus of developing the competitive spirit will be more of a parental responsibility than a educational process.

Instead of upgrading the system to reduce the gap between toppers and average performers, the system is being degraded to bring everyone to equal in a wrong way.
But again, given the undue importance that was being put on marks and percentages, this was to happen.
Only point is that it should have been a relaxation instead of total elimination of stress. A little stress is always beneficial and required for performance. It could have been introduction of grade system where candidates are classified into broad categories till 8th standard. But total elimination of competition is wrong in my opinion.
Many people say that we never use in future life what we learn in school. But that is only partially true in my opinion. Those things invariably leave an impact on our character, and imbibe a lot of morals and ethics through stories,lessons, history. Add an eye for facts and figures through maths and science.
We may not use those exact texts in future but the values they add to our persona's can not be denied. To some they add 80% to some it may be only 20-30 % depending on individual learnability but this fact can not be denied.
As in my case I fully believe that whatever confidence I have to succeed in any field I choose to enter with proper preparation, is due to the competition I faced in my school and college days. A healthy competition is always welcome. It improves the quality of every party involved.

Now when there is competition, someone is ought to win and someone loose. But that is again a lesson in life. You may not win every time. It is all about trying your best.
In current situation the reason that being put forth about increasing suicide rate among children,
I guess it is more to do about parents attitude towards the whole process. The same process is being followed for so many generations. Only in recent years these suicides have began. I put entire blamer on parents.
All around I see parents, one may not even go gar, just have a look at people around you, everyone want their child to score more and more marks, with total disregard to the ability, likes and dislikes of the child. Parents are under more pressure than the children and the pressure then is transmitted through various ways. The child may not necessarily have the ability. It then become a frustrating experience for the child , the parent and everyone around.
One my relatives had started telling to everyone that their son will surely rank in merit list in 10th exam. Poor child was put under so much of emotional pressure that the boy who had consistently scored 94-95% throughout school life, scored 85% in 10th. His father was so much shocked that, instead of the child, who was in need of support, it was the father who needed more support to recover.

Anyway, the who;e pint is that, it the aim is to relieve the pressure from children, it need to be done in a diffenrne manner.
If there is no pressure to pass in exam, then there is no pressure to study.. there is no knowledge gained and in the end it is the child who is on the loosing side. Schools may welcome this because they need not bother about anything, just collect the fees, let the child sit in the classroom for whole day, no worry about the quality of teachers, no worry of teaching anything, just move the child from one standard to another year after year. It is a really horrible scenario. I can see the quality of education drastically going down, so much that it may even happen that children will reach 8th standard and may not even know how to read and write.
Then they will start failing in the 9th and 10th. May be then govt will do away with those exams also.
But how far one can go on doing this?
This can be done at the most till the child graduates. We may even give degrees to children without any exam and then we may even have graduates who may not be able to read and write. But will anyone will employ a graduate at such a level? May be govt institutions... but what about others?
Will India as a country then will survive in the global competition?

You can not eliminate the competition from life altogether.
At some point of time in their lives these children will have to face the competition. And they will not at all be prepared for it. Failure is the only outcome if you enter a competition without preparation.
So if we can not eliminate the competition altogether than the only way out is to prepare the children to face the competition head on, Struggle and ultimately come out triumphant.

I need to figure out a way to imbibe these qualities into my daughter in case this stupid drama goes on for next 4-5 years. Let's see how I succeed as a parent.

On the verge of parenthood...

It's ninth month now..... it may happen any time.....
a new phase... a new role... a new relation.... a new responsibility...
tension... excitement....happiness... worry.... all at once...
The new face of the family. Someone we had been dreaming about....talking about....
even though just 8 months...it seems like a long wait.... an roller coaster ride though....
but each time there was a down.... it added even more to the excitement....attachment...

We have been doing so many things for the yet to be born so that it would attain a good growth as well as a good personality....
From the Manashakti kendra courses and Cd's to the James Nicholas Cd's to various Garbha Sanskaar Books.... as well as reading biographies of great personalities...
in short, what all we could do for the so called pre-natal education.... we did and of course are still doing.

One more regular lookout for Deepa would be babycenter.in website. She regularly studied all the information there week by week and that definitely helped in understanding the changes that happened.. both physical and emotional.

it may be that everyone goes through same experience.... but again it is unique for everyone...
may be because the personality that that enters the world is always unique....
we talk to the baby.... it may not speak.... but it responds through it's movements. We are already Recognizing it as an individual personality. Even though it is not “officially” born, it has already become part of the family. it even has a name...a gender neutral nick name...

The search has began.... for all the new things … cradle... nappies...all the infant care items....
past one month has been little tough though. Especially for Deepa... but like they say in Hindi, “Sabar Ka Fal Meetha Hota Hain...."

Just waiting for the happy moment to arrive....
eager to welcome a new member in the family...

someone has said, Parenthood, its not a job. It's an adventure!
We are just embarking....

A Mouse in My House

Last weekend.
I was in kitchen. Suddenly I saw a small mouse running around.
I knew that he roamed around freely in our house. But since he was not doing any harm apart from collecting all garbage into spaces behind cupboard, my parents did not have much objection to his stay in our house.

But now that I saw him running into a corner, I thought why not get hold of him at once and throw him out. So I moved towards the corner where I expected him to get cornered with a broom in my hand but now I was not able to find him anywhere. Where did it go? He must be there. He had not run away. There was no way out. But still it vanished somewhere.

I looked around carefully. It has already made an escape route ready. I saw a small hole dub between the door frame of kitchen trolley and the wall. He had carefully removed some white cement put in there to fill up small gap in the corner between the floor, the frame and the wall. Through that he went inside the kitchen trolley where I was very difficult for me to tackle him. When I opened all trolleys, the small pieces of paper collected there indicated that he was staying there since long.

That night, my wife woke me up at around 2 am. There was some noise in the room. I woke up and switched on light and started looking around. To my surprise I saw a mouse. It must be the same mouse because...... he was trying to make small hole for his free movement in and out of our room. I looked carefully to see exactly what he was doing.
He was cleverly trying to make a hole by using the same trick; he was trying to exploit the weak section where door frame touches the wall. He had already removed some small amount of cement.
I was amazed to see his effort.... he ran away behind cupboard. We slept... after some time there was the noise again. This time without switching lights, I got hold of my camera on table and tried to click by aiming it towards the door. I wanted to take a photo. But I missed the aim and he ran away. I opened the door so that he could move freely and I could sleep.

I remembered the definition of the term “Learnability” I learned in Infosys, it was something like “ability to draw generic knowledge from specific experiences and use it in unknown situation.”. Here this animal was doing exactly the same thing. It learned it in kitchen and was applying the knowledge in other rooms.

I have always had a fascination for the mice. This creature is always treated as a clever and intelligent character.
I am an ardent fan for Tom and Jerry and especially Jerry. Also look at Mickey Mouse....
If you are a movie fan and have seen movies like Mouse hunt you will definitely agree in the literature like “Panchatantra” also a mouse is a portrayed as an intelligent character.
The height above all is the “Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”.... there it says that entire earth is system created by mice to solve the problem of origin of the universe and they monitor we humans like guinea pigs in an experiment. It cannot get bigger than this :-)

Everywhere, a mouse is always treated as a clever character. This was the first time I experienced it myself...