A good side and a bad side.....

I have had some bad experiences before in temples particularly in US as Indian priests there are more of temple managers than being vedic scholar or devoted priests. They do manage to learn few verses of puranas or gita and utter the same over and over again. What irks me so much is their greed for small donations of funds by devotees called as Dakshina. Though dakshina is supposed to be voluntary contribution... bogus priests literally ask devotees to contribute funds and treat devotees differently depending upon their value of contributions. So I seldom visit temples in Austin.
Quite recently a friend of mine wanted to visit an ashram in outskirts of Austin called Barshana Dham and i had to accompany him. I decided to not take part in prayers or rituals and instead sit back and relax. I sat in the last row and started observing the people around.
A Caucasian (white American) lady who looked to be in her late 30's was playing an instrument (Veena), she was attired like a priest, a white sari...long hair and bindi on her forehead, chanting hymns from the bhagwad gita texts like a devout Hindu. A little later I realized that, I'm seeing not just any devotee but a supreme artist in action. She was reciting songs one after the other with her eyes closed and playing veena parallel. Her pronunciation of the Sanskrit words, control over language and ease with which she sang was quite palpable. It was like she was in a flow. I was caught by surprise as I saw for the first time an American women leading the prayers in a temple which is largely visited by Indians.
Everyone else in the hall were found sitting on the floor with their eyes closed....clapping their hands...in to sort of deep listening mode..and forgetting their very existence in the hall. I observed her carefully and was stunned by her bhakti/devotion towards the god. Her body movements, her voice, sound of her Veena elevated the realm of a prayer to a sublime form. Every wave of her sound was suffused with the unique aesthetics, gentlest touch of the strings of veena which reverberated in the hall giving an experience of floating on the water or flying in the air. what is the verb that comes closest to describing such moments? Self-engrossed? Self-immersed? I think the two Sanskrit words, tanmay and talleen, best captures the experience. I felt, that lady was in a secret conversation with her god, and when she sang, she makes me feel that she has become dissolved in the sound of her own creation, as if the sound itself is coming from a distant, mysterious, non-material source. I was very elated to see that lady on that day, For the first time in my life, I came across a true devotee who was confident, completely at ease, who sang with conviction and character. I think all Indian priests should learn a lesson from that American lady's devotion who serves as best example of how to practice bhakti and what it means to be a real devotee of god.

Bhakti is the faith, love, trust, loyalty, devotion, attachment towards god or teacher, parent or some loved one or it could also be our daily work. Hindu scriptures bhakti or path of devotion as one of surest and easiest ways to god. Bhakti is like highest love, that is like Amrit or Holy grail, finding which a person becomes perfect, becomes immortal, becomes satisfied, finding which he desires nothing more, neither grieves, nor hates, neither engages nor gets enthusiastic about anything else. Yes it can be attained through our daily work or relationships also. It is one of my own principles of attaining bhakti through karma yoga.

Austin Rocks during Fall

Every year just after summer, the trees start to shed leaves during fall and this preceded by a beautiful display of color changes in Austin. It is now November and the nights are beginning to get cooler...even the days have changed to a much more brisk wind. I love this time of year..its neither very hot nor too cold...sky is still blue, but the temperature gets crisp..it brings out the hot coffee, soups and other tummy warming recipes and it welcomes the return of big, comfy sleepwear. I like to hangout on a pair of dorky shorts or pyjamas. Snuggling up with a good book or a light music...loved one is also a good choice.

When the leaves begin to change colors, drive towards lake and mountains...the view is just breathtaking. Let's go for a ride! pockets of trees around my neighborhood produce scenic drive to my office everyday. The spectacular display of fall colors on deciduous trees..the green colors will transform in to red, orange, gold and browns before leaf fall off the trees. This phenomenon is not very common in my home town probably because the winter is not very cold, and trees do not run out of water and sunlight due to shorter days. I think i'm lucky to be in this part of the world where nature has one last fling before settling down into winter's sleep.

Austin has an amazing weather, summers are very hot which posts temperature between 40 degrees and winters get very cold sometimes below 0 degrees Celsius.
But one thing which always catches me by surprise is the sudden change in the weather in Austin. There's a saying in Texas that "if you don't like the weather, just wait a minute, because it's likely to change". Sudden changes in the weather, especially in the summer when late afternoon heat can spark brief thunderstorms, aren't uncommon. So people keep an eye on local weather forecast almost every hour.

How fun would it be to enjoy a Beer at 6th street on a mild winter evening listening to Cool blues and rockabilly ? I'm off for it now.....

Trick or Treat ?

I had a rather interesting Halloween experience this time in Austin.... we had been to downtown looking at people in many different costumes, watched horror movies etc.
However, I also had a humourous incident which still makes me laugh.

On halloweeen night, we went out for dinner to a Indian restaurant, it was a buffet with unlimited food for $10...holla holla !!! bang on target !...we eat n eat..gulping n hogging like pigs. needless to mention, our every visit to that restaurant leaves the restaurant owner's face grinding and miffed.
we went home and layed flat.. my friend went to wash room and started his usual late night throat gargling and toungue cleaning.

Knock...Knock !
Who’s there?
Franc
Franc who?
trick or treat ???

ah ...argh !!.. alas... I recalled its a halloween night, Children go in ghost costumes from house to house, asking for treats. I knew if there is no treat, trick means i will be stoned with eggs n rotten food, so...I ran off to refrigerator to see if i have something for the kids. While i was walking towards the door...my friend is making gargling sound inside...garrrrrrrrrrhhh....garrrrrhhhhh (sounding like a devil's cry). I slowly opened the door hiding myself...just extending the chocolate cake in my hand...Just then.... a loud sound of ghost crying out... aaaahhhhaaa, blechhh.... blarghhh....

All the kids screamed and ran away throwing their candies at the door. geez, it was actually my friends tongue cleaning noise...scrubbing his toungue forwards and backward against the very end of the reed. man o man !! that puking noise is so horrible...I had never before imagined it to be so frightening. Since that night, every day before i come out or get in to my house, i peek out to make sure there are no kids around and then slip away silently :-)

Museum of Weird

"We've seen it!

What?

Mermaid!

Geez… Where? What is it?


I remember seeing many comics and stories surrounding Mermaids during my childhood days. I had never seen a real mermaid and always believed that it must be a fictious creature. But when we went to see “Museum of Weird” at downtown Austin, we were in for a surprise. The Fiji mermaid kept there looks like the torso and head of a baby monkey with the body of a fish. It is claimed to be real catch at a Fiji Islands by American Navy. There are many theories floating around mermaids, some say mermaids must be real since all things on land have their counterpart in the ocean — sea-horses, sea-lions, sea-dogs, etc. So therefore, we should assume there are also sea-humans. There is also a theory that, Fiji Mermaid was an example of a traditional art form perfected by fishermen in Japan and the East Indies who constructed mermaids by stitching the upper bodies of apes onto the bodies of fish. They often created these mermaids for use in religious ceremonies. Nevertheless, ths museum piece is worth a shot !!


There is another artifact in the museum which took us by surprise. It is a seed from a tree which is shaped like a women body. It was called Nareepol or something like that. It seems, there exists a tree bearing fruits that look like a woman and this amazing tree named Nareepol existed in Thai and eastern India. Naree means "girl/woman" in sanskrit and pol means plant/tree in Malay...meaning..women tree. There are also claims that, some species of this tree can still be found at Petchaboon province about almost 500 kms away from Bangkok. I read the entire story described below the artifact and it said once their lived a saint who was performing a tapsya beneath a tree. His tapsya (form of meditation) was disturbed by a women… enraged by this… saint cursed the women to become fruits of the tree and be eaten by all animals.

There is also a 3000 year old mummy which was claimed to have recovered from Mexican pyramids. The mummy is well preserved and it still has corpse retaining its shape intact.

Rituals and Rites : China

Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven

Beijing is enmeshed in ritualistic and religious artifacts and beliefs of Chinese. Forbidden City is a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which graphically illustrates a evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations. Temple of Heaven in Forbidden City is one of the most dazzling architectural masterpieces in the world.

The Forbidden City takes its name from the fact that entry to the city was forbidden for any common man in this world. It was only used by kings and his servants. Ever since it was opened to public viewing few years back, it has become one of the most visited places in china. Much of the building design and meaning of carvings is still shrouded in mystery. The emperor’s lifestyle can be guessed by looking at the buildings.In the temple complex the Emperor would personally pray to Heaven for good harvests. Earth was represented by a square and Heaven by a circle; several features of the temple complex symbolize the connection of Heaven and Earth, of circle and square. Dragon is considered as a daemon sending drought, diseases and floods to people. So inscriptions of dragon in all the Chinese buildings are a common sight.

The Forbidden City, displays an extraordinarily harmonious balance between buildings and open space within a more or less symmetrical layout. The Purple Forbidden City, the emperor established himself as the Son of Heaven, with the mandate to maintain harmony between the human and world. He and his city became linked to the divine forces of the universe. The fearsome Mongolian/Chinese warriors of the 13th century have ruled the largest empire in the world. Their empire extended across Asia, from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
The chilling north was regarded as a harmful direction. Because all invasions of China had originated from the north, it came to represent evil spirits, cold winds. Hence, nearly all the buildings in the Forbidden City face south, the direction of holiness, giving protection from icy winds and also permitting subtle decoration by catching infinite variations of sunlight. Many treasures (about 1 million) are now housed within the Forbidden City - and many of these are on display to visitors, including gifts of state, military campaign treasures, and the furnishings and possessions of the imperial rulers.

Texan Adventures !!!

My friend Ismail is irked over me for writing just abt cemeteries part of our tour. So I decided to write something more about tourist attractions we visited in our last weekend.

After the scary ride of previous night, next day morning, we caught a glimpse of beautiful sunrise from our seashore condo. It was a multi-storied condo and we were in top most floor room with a verandah facing the beach. I thank both Ismail for booking such wonderful spot and Taskeen for making us see that beautiful sight in morning. The sight was amazing..we were directly looking in to sea.... straight in to line of sun rise...we could see the colour of sky changing from yellow to pink to rose and then bright red as sun was rising swiftly. Small boats and Ships sailing just in front of sea was as if like they are on its way to Sun's mouth.

Our first stop of morning was USS Lexington - Aircraft Carrier of US navy in World war -2. I never knew aircraft carrier was an war factory cum battle field cum navy soldiers home. It had everything right from manufacturing small weapons to producing food,water for soldiers till fighting the war with enemies in sea. This naval treasure had destroyed hundreds of Japaneese aircrafts and ships in world war 2.
We got to go inside the ships deck and see the world within...
Steam Turbines engines, huge Propellers, Boilers, were of sizes we had never seen before....
Though the ship stays in water 24*7 but still crew has no water to drink, as its all saline water..soln ?? Fresh Water Production unit..using process of electrolysis they break salt water molecules an produce 180,000 Gallons of fresh water per day.
In house medical facilities has surgical rooms, Dental Facilities etc.
We also saw Library, Church, Canteen, US mail room, etc underneath the deck. Weopons storage unit had huge torpedoes, landmines which looked like a big iron ball with small cap at the top (just like how we see bombs in cartoons), its just layed on top of sea bed to destroy submarines.
Jet aircrafts need high speed taxiway before taking off but ship deck is just few metres long, solution lies in Jungle book of Mowgli ? yes its Catapult.
Huge catapult will be pulled to one end using heavy machinery under the deck and then pull the trigger....bang !! there is goes....it recoils itself with high speed pushing the aircraft on its way and hence giving it the required take off speed.
Same concept is reversed to stop the high speed landing aircrafts on the deck !!!
I salute the Naval engineer who came up with this ingineous concept.
Hangar Bays was just like manufacturing line of any big industry with cranes, trolleys, heavy equipments to to repair aircrafts.
The ship Anchors was so huge that all six of us couldn't dare to move it an inch...
The Landing Deck has many fighter aircrafts parked with control room, radio station, captains cabin etc.

We then visited Texas State Aquarium seeing Dolphins, Sharks, Aligators, different kinds of Fish and sea animals etc.
Finally, we went to a beach at 'Port Aransas', a small town outside of Corpus. The drive to the beach was wonderful...as soon as we crossed Corpus...we noticed unusal traffic jam...we stranded on road for about 15 mins and we were wondering if it could be passport check.....as we slowly moved ahead we noticed that road we were driving will come to halt as 'Gulf of Mexico' waters making it way between corpus and port aransas. As we got close to water, we were asked to drive our car in to big steamer boat and boat took us to Port Aransas. We stayed inside the car and enjoyed a boat ride inside a car. Gulf of Mexico waters are the warmest...we played a small gamed of football on beach and then dived in to waters till the sunset in evening.
Next morning, we set out to San-Antonio on our way back home. Our first stop was at Almao. Alamo is a fortress built by Spanish empire for native american Red Indians. Later there were series of battles between Mexican army and Texas army to hold that fortress famously known as 'Battle of Alamo'. Itseems, when the Mexican army retreated from Texas at the end of the Texas Revolution, they tore down many of the Alamo walls and burned some of the buildings. The Alamo was then used to garrison soldiers, both Texian and Mexican, but was ultimately abandoned. Several years after Texas was annexed to the United States. Alamo is still one of the top most visited tourist attractions in Texas. Though most of the buildings and structures are destroyed, people throng to pay a site at that location. Similar to our Hampi temple in Karnataka.

We did visit River walk before Alamo but I didn't enjoy much as its mostly for romantic couples ...probably Ismail can write about it.

A Scary Drive !

We started from our home Austin at 6pm on friday and were kinda thrilled by some of the sunset scenes we had met while crossing through old Texas towns with people wearing cowboy hats, jeans and long boots...people riding old vintage cars....ferrying horses and buffaloes...old cotton mills , huge agricultural tractors on farms....old wooden stores....small farming aircraft taking off the fields...big texan buffaloes seen grazing on vast green farms etc.

traffic was little..not a typical US state highway ..our new dodge SUV was cruising at 65 miles per hour on Texas 183 along Guadalupe river....It was fast getting cold and dark, .just then we noticed a small town called Luling, texas with very few houses and restaurants around....we decided to stop and pick up some dinner as we weren't sure if we will get any restaurants later in the drive. After dinner, we started our journey back to our destination i.e Corpus Christi. I was seated at the front right next to my friend Ismail who was driving the car.
It was roughly about 8 pm when we started our drive and as soon as we were out of Luling, some wierd scenes started treating my eyes....the view outside was pitch dark on either side of the road, all i could see was the road right in front of our car illuminated by headlights. After every few miles, I was seeing a sign boards with names of a cemetry pointing towards the field on both sides of the road.......that sight started making me think and heart beat faster.....as we drove along, i continued to see many more cemetries on the road..we were driving through one of the largest graveyard of texas...one cemetry for every 2 mins of drive...and i dared to turn my eyes through the side window... that drive made me revisit memories of my childhood the day when my grandma passed away, when I had been through very frightening events which makes me still think if there was some external force which was controlling it all...i still find it hard to to rubbish it away as mere coincidence. As we were 6 of us in the car, we tried to cheer up the moment by talking some jokes, playing some games....but i found it hard to take it off my mind...then suddenly one sign board comes in front of us which read 'cliff-ton church'... Ismail was quick enough to show that to us...most of us tried to overcome that fear...but i continued to see many more cemeteries along the highway...we roughly crossed about 12 cemeteries along our drive from 8pm to 11pm and finally when we arrived at sea shore, illuminated flyovers, windmills, skyscrapers of downtown started appearing and I was through that fear.
Nevertheless, that drive we had between Luling and Corpus along Tx 183 was one of the scariest drives i have been through and i will continue to remember that forever...