Sankranti is celebrated in many states and in different ways.

In the south it is essentially a harvest festival.

In our traditional way cattle have a honoured place. so it is common to see decorated cows and bulls being taken out in processions.

We also have a native version of barbecue when families gather in their fields and have a feast. in some states it is celebrated over three days.

“Bhogi” as it is called, in Andhra Pradesh gives prime importance to fire.

Fire is always a cleansing agent .It is our way of saying that the past be buried and a fresh beginning made !

That beginning again is symbolised by sesame seeds though polished for the occasion. accompanied by jaggery or some sweet figurines they are shared with friends and relatives.

Is it another way of stregthening bonds?

Or our way of thanksgiving to the almighty who is marching forward by changing the course from south to north.

That is also the start of auspicious period, an event looked forward to by Bhisma Pitamaha resting on his bed of thorns.

So it is generally believed that the people who pass away during this period reach higher realms.

This is all about beginnings.

In yet another ritual the sesame seeds play a prominent part.

That is when we bid goodbye to our dear and near ones.

Punarapi Jananam, Punarapi Maranam as the saying goes is the underlying message , or so I understand.

It is not advisable to club the auspicious and the Inauspicious together

But the awareness of the greater truth perhaps will resore us equanimity.

The poise to treat both success and failure in life alike because in  one  sense they are imposters.

It also enables us to live aright.

As a wag once remarked , life is a passing show.

So enjoy what comes to our lot but with the feeling that it may or may not last.

Better still, ponder over the goal of life , Yours as well as others , so that proper relationships are established.

Happy Sankranti and may this season Herald a Happy new year for all of us, that is my prayer.

#bhogi #sankranti #newyear #festive #festivities

 

 

 

The statue of unity

 

Sardar patel & The statue of unity

 

 

 We were privileged to see the tallest statue in the world.

It is impressive, stands on a lofty platform and its vision encompasses the area around for several kilometers.

The holiday crowds and the short time at our disposal made our experience shortlived.

Online bookings deprived us of a chance to see the countryside and the Narmada dam from high on.

Yet it is a moment we cherish.

We found more statues of Sardar Patel than of the Father of the Nation or are we mistaken ?

Junagadh which is famous for its lion sanctuary has had a chequered history.

It was almost on the point of acceding to pakistan.

The Sardar’s contribution in mergence of states was highly commendable.

Contrast this with kashmir which remains a thorn in india’s flesh to this day.

Nehru’s trust in the united nations was misplaced.

The dithering by Hari singh , The kashmir king, cost him and us dear.

We are helpless to undo historical wrongs .

But Nehru’s remark that not a blade of grass grows there, meaning Siachin was born of shallow understanding.

Borders are meant to be safeguarded , in whatever condition and his faith in chinese friendship, counsel of wrong kind and his  fondness for krishna menon deepened the crisis.

India was meant to be a contiguous nation.

By distorting this truth thru partition the rulers then and the ones who succeeded them fared worse in the people’s eyes.

Was partition inevitable?

Yes, because the imperial power desired it so.

Or so I feel.!!

#statueofunity #sardarpatel #gujurat #Nehru

 

 

The Gujurat

 

What is special  about Gujarat?

Not just politics but everything else.

their enterprise is to be seen to be believed.

Their love for language and identity is without any parallel .

Just imagine even restaurant menus are in Guajarati.

Of course the majestic lion is more symbolic .

We did get a glimpse of its majesty and its gaiety.

It chooses its own pace and just does not tolerate any prodding .

Utter self-confidence , if such an expression may be used for the royal animal.

Baroda or vadodara as it is called now reminds one of Mysore and The wadiyars.

Somewhere something went wrong and the period of transition in the case of mysore saw the decline of the ruling family.

Though sri Jayachamaraja wadiyar was extremely friendly with both Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

There is no Ahmedabad without Sabarmati and there is the ashram which was the cradle of the independence movement or almost.

Gandhiji’s wish to return there as free man was perhaps not fulfilled.

But here was his launching pad for the salt Satyagraha.

Still later he spent some years at wardha and experimented with naturopathy and the like.

The work was entrusted to Vinobha Bhave when he moved over to Delhi.

His love for khadi may be traced to the textile centre that was Ahmedabad .

They do talk of Gujarat model of development but I feel they are right if one considers National Expressways and Expressways as the acme of development.

Dwarka retains its ancient character with modern touch.

Somnath , restored, oozes ancient values.

Everywhere we go we see the imprint of Swami Narayan.

The Guajarati’s were entrepreneurs of high order then as now and  the

Remittances have certainly helped the state’s growth.

There was not much evidence of Swatch Bharath in the state though my judgment may be hasty.

The chinese supremo had visited the city when Modiji was Chief Minister.

As destiny would have it, both of them might have been power centres but not the centre.

In recent days when they meet on the sidelines of International conferences or on other occasions they speak for the country.

As for the  border dispute , the question on everyone’s lips is …..

Who blinks first .

#gujurat #modi #swatchbharath #Nationak xpressway #sabhramathiashram #vallabhaipatel

 

 

Happy New Year!!

 New year !!

Life is an opportunity bestowed on us to make good. To make for happiness , of others as well ourselves.

The biggest stakeholders in this business are ourselves, none others.

it follows that a measure of responsibility be displayed by us while living it and while forfeiting the right to it.

i am not intending to be cruel when i say far too people are giving up easily,too easily the sacred gift earned over several centuries of living in various forms.

Saint or sinner it matters not, we are here and we have to make most of it.

As the saying goes , a saint has a past and a sinner has a future.

meaning , at any point of time there may occur a turnaround.

that is why patience is so much commended .

we live in the world of dualities.

health, disease, prosperity, poverty, success, failure, friendship, betrayal, love, neglect , hatred are all facets of this phenomenal world.

it is as real as we think, as unreal as we may make it.

the first line is adopted by people who think this world is everything, the second line by people who think beyond this apparent world.

unfortunately there is  no school which teaches us these basic truths.

comparisons ruin us.

comparisons with others as well as juxtaposing our present with the glorious past we may have gone thru.

or stupidly thinking that the night of despair we are going thru will last and last for ever.

What after death is a question not for theologians alone. It is for all of us.

Our past was the base for our present and our present will shape the future.

Commonsense suggests the action is in the present, the results in the future.

Again, if we were to focus on  results  our work style alters and we put a brake on nature’s flow.

Stripped of rhetoric this is what Nishkamakarma , propounded by lord krishna , means.

Ours to work, HIS to reward.

A simple truth twisted out of shape.

It pains me to see so many lives lost thru suicides, and worse.

Life is a continuum , so is death.

Many mistakenly think that by ending their present lives their suffering would end.

The wise say the effects would be carried forward into whatever future form we may have.

There is evidence to support this. Theists or atheists or agnostics, we have to face this truth, that we are in large part responsible for our present condition.

It follows that we do have the time and the opportunity to reshape it and rebuild it.

This is optimism at its basest. This is positivity in action.

This is the path of happiness, of ourselves as well as others.

What we have not created , in the physical sense, we have no right to terminate.

It pertains to our families  also.

What right have the adults who are parents to destroy the offspring ?

And who gave  them the right .

It is time the civil society wakes up to this threat as a threat to extinction .

#newyear #life #philosophy #responsibility #karma #2023

find few interesting things about  me on :

Ramamurthy

 

 

 

The Miracle Worker

 

This is the case of a Miracle worker. Unlike others he was a Reluctant one.

A government servant in a South American country , He was a faithful follower of Christianity , A householder who upheld higher values, and little known to wider  society.

He suffered from searing headache . No doctor could cure him. He would hear a voice, agree, agree.

He knew  not where it came from .

In a fit of defeatism he heeded the voice.

And the headache troubled him no further.

One of the family friends was suffering from terminal cancer.

He went along with his wife and stayed there for the night.

Earlier he had offered the usual consolation  to  the patient .

In the middle of the night he woke up and entered the kitchen.his wife was a silent observer.

She followed him.

He picked up a knife, went upto the patient’s bed, and plunged the knife in the region where the tumour was.

He lifted it , went back to the kitchen, placed the offending flesh in a glass jar and returned to his bedroom.

His wife , who was the witness , was too stunned for words.

Next morning she checked up, and the tumour was in the container.

The patient was taken to the hospital . surprisingly , the doctors found the tumour missing from her body.

Bar a small cut in the flesh which healed by itself there were no complications.

Thus started a healing mission that startled the medical community, gained him massive publicity and of course such negative attention that he was jailed for quackery.

A sympathetic politician supported him to the hilt and he was freed.

Thus ends the first phase of his mission.

We will take up the second phase later.

#healer #spirituality #philosophy #journomurthy

A bit about me!

 A bit about me!

Here is a classic of the subject becoming the object.

My young associate who is assisting me in this endeavour suggested a piece introducing myself to myself and others.

Expectations.

I hail from a laid back town not far from Bangalore, Hosur.

Laid back is the wrong word in the present context because it has grown and grown beyond anybody’s expectations.

Proximity to the city is one of the reasons. Tamilnadu government was quicker than ours in exploiting this fact.

The corrective measures taken by Ramakrishna Hegde preserved the advantages to some extent.

I studied in board high school , Hosur and one of my classmates was H.Nagarajaiah Setty , since deceased , who became a IAS officer.

Going further back, I may lay claim to another distinction. This was the very school where C.Rajagopalachari, former governor general of India studied.

When I was in eighth standard he walked into our school and our classroom and said the very bench I was sitting on was his too when he was a pupil there.

Proxy glory indeed!

After my sslc I moved on to what was then known as Intermediate college. It is still situate opposite Central college though the name has since been changed.

My Finest move in education was my choice of Maharaja’s college, Mysore for my Bachelor of Arts course.

Incidentally it was also the postgraduate centre at that time .

Manasa Gangothri came up later.

When I visited Maharaja’s recently the old lecture halls remain as they were.

The academic atmosphere is subdued but that cannot be helped when the focus is on Manasa Gangothri.

The university library where I spent several hours poring over books and magazines which I may not access now whetted my appetite for knowledge.

I was an indifferent student , shy too, and failed in the final examination for a reason you may not appreciate---- to taste failure for the first time.

I was just out of teens then.

A friend who had close relatives among journalists would speak highly of Frank Moraes who was helming the Indian Express then.

Thus was sown the seed for a journalist job within me.

No, I did not join the journalism course there .

Mine was the royal combination, history, economics and politics.

How I wish I had opted for Politics, Sociology and Psychology.

Psychology, then as now, has fascinated me.

A senior wellwisher would hand over his copies of Psychology Today and I benefited a lot from that in my underemployment days.

#aboutme #myself #blogging #blogginglife #journalism #journalist #freelance 

Just a thought !-Journomurthy

 Just a thought !

 Life after life I have often wondered what brings us here and into particular environment, The family, the connections, occasionally the occupation we are engaged in etc. One does not claim to have deep insights. Perhaps this is the province for greater minds but they have provided us some insights worth sharing. My intention in sharing them is limited, it may make us more responsible for our actions. All of us are familiar with the law, cause and effect. Devotion is perhaps a way out to alleviate the pain of effects, good or bad it does not matter because both are binding. Some scriptures have suggested a solution to get out of this trap of self Creation . A bigger subject which we may take up later. Enough if we accept this fact that what we are today is the resultant of what we were yesterday . what we will be tomorrow is dependent on our thoughts and actions of today. Here yesterday stands for the past, today stands for the present in the usually understood sense and tomorrow again is the so called future. Most of us think of this in the linear fashion. Life, I submit, has the knack of throwing surprises because it is more non-linear than linear. So to preserve our blessings for what they are, a proper lifestyle and proper thinking are necessary. People who enjoy harmony and peace in life are generally a contented lot. Contentment, I hold, is different from satisfaction. Satisfaction is linked to ego , contentment carries with it a sense of gratitude to the higher forces. Yet this too is not enough for our purpose. And what is the purpose of human life ? A bigger question which may need deeper study. As a Curtainriser to this big mystery please ponder over this. Life here is death elsewhere, and death here is life elsewhere. The link between here and hereafter is invisible but real. Invisible because our vision thru the senses is restricted. If only our inner eye gets opened will we see the Splendour beyond. Till then we have to rely on other people’s experiences. Of them they are plenty.

#life #death #karma #

PS: Have a quick peek into my bio and share your thoughts !

My bio