Rangoli

A sneak peek at things that I made for diwali. I got the rangoli design from Diwali Festival. They've a nice collection of designs. The dot-grid wasn't clearly visible on the online designs so I generated a graph paper, drew the design on it and then made the rangoli (with Crayola color chalks!).

Another item that I made for diwali was kandils/kandeels. Like Rangoli, they're also my favorites for diwali. I like small colorful ones as they make your home look really beautiful.

Happy Diwali!

Wish you a very happy diwali!

P.S.: What better day than the most auspicious day of Diwali for my 100th post :).

Happy Choti Diwali

"Choti diwali" falls on the day before Diwali. There are two legends behind this festival.

One famous story behind the celebrations of Chhoti Diwali or Narak Chaturdashi is about the demon king Narakasur who was ruler of Pragjyotishpur, a province to the South of Nepal. During a war he defeated Lord Indra and snatched away the magnificent earrings of Mother Goddess Aditi who was not only the ruler of Suraloka but also a relative of Lord Krishna's wife, Satyabhama. Narakasur also imprisoned sixteen thousand daughters of Gods and saints in his harem. When Satyabhama came to know about this malevolent act of Narakasur she got furious and she prayed to Lord Krishna to empower her so that she could destroy Narakasur. The legend also tells that Narakasur was under a curse that a woman would kill him. So Lord Krishna empowered Satyabhama to fight with Narakasur and himself became the charioteer of her 'Ratha' in the battlefield. Thus by the grace of Lord Krishna Satyabhama beheaded Narakasur on the day previous to Narak Chaturdashi and released the imprisoned ladies from Narakasur's harem and also recovered the precious earrings of Mother Goddess Aditi. In order to save all those imprisoned ladies from embarrassment Lord Krishna accepted them all as His wives. As a symbol of the victory over Narakasur Lord Krishna smeared His forehead with the demon king's blood. Then Lord Krishna returned home with His new wives early morning of the Narak Chaturdashi day. The womenfolk massaged scented oil to His body and gave him a good bath to wash away the filth from his body.

Another legend is about King Bali, who was king of the nether world. His power and increasing influence posed a threat to the security of all 'Devatas' so they prayed Lord Vishnu to help them out. To help Devatas and to curb King Bali's powers Lord Vishnu went to King Bali in the guise of a short-height 'Brahmin', who is known as incarnation of 'Batu Waman', and begged to give him only that much area of land that he could cover with in three steps because King Bali was well known for his philanthropy. King Bali saw just a short-height 'Brahmin' asking for a little piece of land so he proudly granted him his wish. That very moment that short-height 'Brahmin' disappeared and there was almighty Lord Vishnu in place of him. In his first step Lord Vishnu covered the heaven and in the second step the earth and asked King Bali where to put his third step. Then King Bali offered his head to Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu put his third step on his head and pushed him deep into the underground. But at the same time being impressed by his generosity Lord Vishnu gave King Bali the lamp of knowledge and allowed him to return to earth once a year to light millions of lamps.

The mother of Narakasura, Bhoodevi, declared that the death of her son should not be a day of mourning but an occasion for celebrations. Since then people celebrate diwali with joy and fun every year.[Source: I love India]

The pleasantries of the incredible Mullah Nasrudin and The subtelties of the inimitable Mullah Nasrudin

Author: Idries Shah

These are two different books and, as the name suggests, on the same theme. Mulla Nasrudin is a a folk character of middle-east. He is sometimes silly, sometimes funny and sometimes beyond my understanding! His constant companion is his donkey. Many countries claim to be the progenitor of this character and hence it's hard to pinpoint which country he belongs to.

I was first introduced to this character through a serial aired by Doordarshan by the same name. This was long back when cable television hardly had any roots in India. Recently, one fine day I remembered how funny his tales used to be and so I searched and found that there are a couple of books on him. Lo and behold! I issued almost all these books from the library.

Coming back to the books, they contain Mulla's anecdotes some of which are not even half a page in length. You can't help but smile at the end of each tale. This is not to say that all the tales will keep you glued. The first book has a better set of anecdotes than the second one.

Bottomline: A must read.

Aarkt

This story illustrates the devotion of an aarkt devotee.

Draupadi was the daughter of king Drupad and was born as a result of a yagna. She was very beautiful, talented, devoted to her husband, ideal housewife and a true devotee of God. She considered Krishna as the supreme God and Krishna too didn't hide his supreme powers from her. On the orders of Duryodhan, Dushasan tried to insult her by dragging her in front of everybody in the court and unwrapping her saree. Seeing that no one was coming to her rescue, Draupadi found herself totally helpless and prayed to Krishna. She believed that on hearing her faithful plea, Krishna would definitely come to save her. When Krishna heard her prayers he took the form of her cloth. So that her saree became a never ending piece of cloth. Hence, by being there at the right time Krishna saved Draupadi from the humiliation and Dushasan finally got tired and gave up.

San Diego wildfire

The north eastern part of San Diego county is engulfed in flames due to a wildfire that started in Ramona. Most of the schools, universities and offices are either closed or have advised their employees to work from home. Thousands have been evacuated and heaven only knows how much damage has been done. The air quality is very poor and we know that not because we read it in the news but by personal experience: there were ashes falling on us yesterday when we were outside. One always feels sad to read about people affected by natural calamities but for the first time I can really understand what such people face because this time it's people whom I talk with everyday that have been evacuated from their homes. Some of them had houses 2 blocks away burning down to ashes. Just imagining how would one feel leaving their homes and knowing that potentially their home might be burned down, sent shivers down my spine. I always talk about that one should learn to be thankful to God for what one has and I always do; now I do even more.

My sincere prayers are with these people and all those who're suffering in this catastrophe. May God give everybody the strength to endure this. I request everybody who reads this to also pray for these people and the firefighters.

Read more about this fire here.

Green Olympics

In order to clean the air for the Olympics and reduce the traffic on the road China is taking the following measures:

"...In one move, the municipal government has called on local residents to take public transport more instead of driving private cars through axing bus and subway fares, hoping to reduce the pollution from automobile exhaust.

Citizens who possess vehicles such as motorcycles, passenger cars, sedans and trucks have been taxed more as of Oct. 1, with the rates ranging from 200 yuan (26.7 U.S. dollars) to 600 yuan ( 80 U.S. dollars) a year, almost doubling the sums before the change."

I agree that it's a very drastic change but I think if it benefits the environment then we should go for it. It might cause inconvenience in the short term but in the long term people adapt to such policies and would realize how much good they've done to the environment. I think such measures should be adopted in the US too. Unless it hurts the pocket, majority will not resort to means of transportation that are eco-friendly.