When Shiva gets Beautiful!

Yes! Shiva is getting beautiful, really beautiful.

Back in 2012, as I used to walk from my home to bus-stop, crossing a temple, I used to get to watch Shiva adorned beautifully with garlands of different colours. The temple's main priest is keen towards such special rituals for Shiva. But as the time passed, all the priests of the temple started losing interest in doing any extra rituals that are not part of their normal duty. It seems they were not being paid enough and they started ranting their plight before any devotees who would potentially offer some money. All this saga follows to this day and the temple doesn't seem to be as happening a place, as it was when it was built in 2011.

But suddenly today evening, as I was walking past the temple, I saw that the Shiva Lingam was adorned well. The first thought that came to me was - "నాన్నా ! ఎంత అందంగా ఉన్నారు!" I don't think there are specific words in Telugu to distinguish between the beauty of a man and that of a woman. That sentence when translated to English reads - "Dad! How beautiful you look!" Now, I don't feel like reading it as - "Dad! How handsome you look!" Infact, that just doesn't read right at all, for it is not at all about looks, though that thought was indeed inspired by some outer adornments. I think the aesthetics in the temple only lead us to the inner radiance of God. So yes, some outer adornments don't really harm!

So as those thoughts lingered in my mind, I was thinking how in fact Lord Narayana is famous for being "Alankaara Priyudu" (The one who loves adornments) and how it is often said Lord Shiva can be pleased with just water and bilva patram (Leaf of a Bel tree). There was definitely some deviance...it seemed...

Now tell me, when does Shiva get beautiful? You know when?...When He becomes The Mother!!! Today morning, I happened to tune into Chaganti Koteswara Rao gari pravachanalu on TV. He was talking about why the idol of Devi Meenakshi is often carved with three hands (and not four!) In that context he refers to an interesting story wherein, in the kingdom of Raja Raja Pandiyan, some 12 princes, all arrogant with pride due to their royal birth/upbringing, interrupt the penance of Sage Brihaspathi (not sure, don't remember, maybe it was Sage Brighu) and get "blessed" with a curse that they would be born as pigs. After they realize their mistake, they plead the sage to somehow remit the curse. Then the sage says that Lord Shiva himself would feed milk to them as their mother. Ok the story is a bit long and I don't intend to cover it here, but the bottom line that Chaganti garu tried to emphasize was that Shiva and Shakthi are inseparable and that He is there in Her and She in Him. And that both of them can don each other's roles. In that story, in a moment of astonishment, Devi Meenakshi with a hand on her chin exclaims - "Shivudu thalli ayinaadu!" (and not "Shivudu thalli ayinadhi!" ;-))

It is not just Truth that gets beautiful when Shiva reveals it, even Shiva Himself gets beautiful... :-)

Sound Exercises

After a brief period of some stability and peace, my headaches recurred in the last few days. It was recurring of a past phase. Of course, it must recur because this journey is a 'continuous' one until it culminates in the destined destination. Yes, there is indeed a destination for this 'continuous' journey. There is no end for this w.r.t the Universe, but w.r.t me or for that matter any person in particular, of course there should be an end.

The headaches were not as severe as they were before. Back in 2012 they were way way severe by multi fold. But since I had experienced them after some hiatus, I started complaining about them. Immediately, my father who learnt some yoga exercises for his headache from Nature Cure Hospital recently, suggested me a sound exercise. Listening to that I was also reminded of one more, I came across in "The Hindu" magazine recently. So after some 3 days of suffering and meditating accordingly, I started doing those two sound exercises yesterday afternoon. It did seem like they eased the pain a bit, temporarily. But a proper cure happened only after I transitioned from the phase of "Correction and Convergence" meditation in a (mentally) reverse posture (which started ever since July 16/17) to a phase of meditating on patterns of Infinity (which I practised between May - Sep, this year). I was looking forward to doing the sound exercises today, but miraculously my headaches receded overnight. Yippee, no more headaches for me here on (at least it seems) !!! :-) :-)

Anyway, now coming to those two exercises.....Close your ears with your thumbs. Close your eyes and with your ring and middle fingers gently press your eyes. Now start humming "Hmmmmmmmm". Another one - you can open your eyes, but with your ears still closed, start saying "Eeeeeeeeeeee"...with your mouth in the "Say Cheese" mode!

Desperate Equality

I'm really bored of this Gender Equality (or Inequality), Gender Discrimination, Sexism, Male Chauvinism and such similar phrases, because all this doesn't really matter to me anymore (honestly, it did matter to me once upon a time  in my life, but perhaps not any more) as I face more serious issues that need my action and attention. But this series really gave me some laughs in the otherwise dull life, so I'm sharing it here..hope it would be as much entertaining to you too!

We need to descend, to more certainly ascend!

Since yesterday, I was seeing some signs which were depicting this force-play: A little dose(s) of force in counter-clockwise direction is needed so as to give a permanent clock-wise direction to the rotation of an object. Basically applying counteractive forces! It goes to say that, more often than not, one needs to descend to reach a more certain ascent. And now I see this article on Goddess Durga and Mother India which sums up so aptly, "The Present Crisis" the world is undergoing. Had I come across the same, some 10 years ago, I would not have read it in the same light, as I did now. But now, it perfectly fits my current state of awareness.

The right to die or rather the allowance to die: The life of Aruna Shanbaug, a case in point.

We all talk about freedoms and rights. And how every government and every individual must try to safeguard them. But it is in the nature of rights that they are not absolute...they are subject to reasonable restrictions in the overall general interests of people. Because sometimes rights of some encroach into rights of others. In fact one right of an individual might encroach into another right of that very individual. One aspect of a right could even contradict other aspects of the same right. There is always a fine print when it comes to interpreting anything that is generic or universal.

One such right is "The right to live". The right to live has been evolving hand in hand with human evolution. To safeguard one's own life is the basic prerogative of every living being. When there was no agriculture, people had to somehow live, so a major part of their life went into searching for and making food. So how to live for a given day formed the major part of their life. And then agriculture came in. But disease still didn't go away. There were no preventive vaccines.  Forget about preventive medicine, the medicine was not even curative. How to safeguard themselves from diseases and how to cure a disease was another important work they had to deal with. With Science, man overcame these and many other problems and he was almost about to lead a happy and a pretty long life and just then he made a U-turn where life-style and a plethora of other factors started reducing the longevity of life. Yeah, the last few generations had the luck of leading pretty long lives, in fact touching that ideal age of 100, but the generation which is currently 50 and above perhaps can't even dream of such an ambition.

But why am I talking about longevity of life now? My intention was actually to talk about the quality, NOT the quantity of life. A complete discussion that touches upon every aspect of this right, in its entire length and breadth, is impossible in the scope of this blog. In fact that is not my interest area anyway. My interest here is to emphasize that "The right to live" inherently means "The right to a decent life" and that such a right sometimes might not be realized without "The right to die". Ofcourse, the debate about Euthanasia and Passive Euthanasia is not new and there is never one right way to deal with it. The solution for such cases has always been subjective, in a sense that law has not arrived at a generic act or standard for it yet and has been taking a subjective stance so far when interpreting such cases.

The case of Aruna Shanbaug is one such case. This case had all the elements that went wrong. It was indeed a ghastly instance of rape (as per me and perhaps as per the current law too), yet it was not rape as per the law then. It was merely a sexual assault. Sodomizing a person by strangling her with a dog chain to the extent that she had to remain in a vegetative state for 42 years of 67 years of her life, IS NOT RAPE? And for God's sake, I wish I never come across generous arguments like these ("The incomplete case of Aruna Shanbaug") who shower so much of mercy on remorseless culprits. What do they expect? That culprits who have no remorse of the crime they committed, be treated with politeness, love and compassion? Bloody! Even if the culprit had remorse, how does it make any difference when he/she had already spoilt a life? Again what do they (Udaaraswabhavulu / people-generosity-personified) expect? Any person who feigns some remorse deserves remission of punishment? Again do they even realize that such a consideration leads to a society where some commit crime without any fear and some who are on the borderline of good and bad are encouraged to shift towards bad? So there is no good and bad, everything IS? It JUST IS, it just happens with or without any reason...?

Law and punishment should take their own course at the end of the day! But what irritates me is this kind of counter-punishment argument (Applying 'Om shanti shanti shanti hi' mantra on demons who would continue to commit crimes if not punished appropriately! Know what? That is uttered after the demons are slain, not before that, to stop them from being slayed!) which pops up every now and then to alter the course of law and what sort of punishment it should grant. (And don't get me started on "No Death Penalty" argument, I should better write a book on that...on why Death Penalty can never ever be erased regardless of what times we are in!)

So that definition of rape was one thing. Another thing is that, this is NOT a case where time can heal it! Aruna has been left in a Permanent Vegetative State (PVS). There is no way of getting better. Her life has gone to a point of no return. So waiting for anything (apart from her death) is pointless!

The third thing is that her family members were not ready to fight for her rights. As per the media reports, her family members were not even available to take care of her. The details on this part are not much discussed in the media, so I don't know. But what is evident is that it is a journalist, Pinky Virani, the biographer of Aruna's story, who fought for Arun's right to die peacefully. Virani's fight is definitely laudable, especially in a society which always equates humanity to taking enough care to ensure that people are alive, (doesn't matter how alive they are!), in a pro-life society where talking about death is taboo and offering a peaceful death amounts to killing and sin! I can, by all means, imagine the opposition Virani faced from all fronts.

I came across this news of Aruna's (natural and physical) death when I was in Mumbai in May, when I myself was leading my life in a vegetative way of its own*. Incidentally, owing to my ignorance, that was also the first time I read about her case. I wanted to blog about it then itself, but something stopped me. As I was browsing about the case, I saw tweets and FB posts which read "This case is a shame on India!" (I'm not on FB or Twitter, but those were the popular comments pulled out from social media into the news). I assumed that the case has seeped into the awareness of most of the people, but recent conversations with friends made me aware that wasn't the case.

I don't know if SC's Judgement was right or wrong in Aruna's case. I doubt if God cared to take any action in her case. 42 years of suffering vouches for it - God did not care enough for her! Not enough, Gods just didn't care for her, at least it seems. (Unless we invoke the theory of Karma which I hate to invoke here! It doesn't make sense! It is during such times that I feel like thrashing this whole theory into dust-bin!) But for the soulless life Aruna led, if her soul was given a voice even for a moment, I'm pretty sure, it would beg - "Kill me please!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*No point discussing more and more about a 'conscious vegetative existence' because nobody would understand it unless one goes through it. No point, all the more, discussing it because it does seem like I'm gradually coming out of that state ever since late August, after I gave up on all sort of materialistic pursuits. If I retreat into the phase of void (which would inevitably happen when there is some sort of "materialistic" pursuit), that is when talking about it or acting upon it, might make more sense. But since I wouldn't retreat into any materialistic pursuit until my world changes or instead I change my world, I hope I wouldn't be put to the ordeal of experiencing void once again!

The divide!

Recently, I came across an image which summarizes hundreds of words I used in one of my old posts. This illustration is from an article published in 'The Hindu' about the notorious Ashley Madison case that made it to the headlines online, last two months. A picture is truly worth a thousand words...Besides the article also crisply presents one of the ideas, which is at the heart of growing gender-divide, that I also used to repeatedly voice out in my blog: "Men don't want to give up privilege; women's roles are changing rapidly." Can a middle way not be there?

               (Illustration by Deepak Harichandan. Taken from 'The Hindu' magazine, Sep 06, 2015.)

In.....To The Journey of Infinity!!!

When I checked this link - "Good Luck Finding The End Of This Model Train Moving In An Infinite Spiral" this is what I instantly thought. "Come on! What is so complex to boast about it? It is there everywhere, it is there all around us. Is it anything more than a circle, a closed loop? In nature, when things don't know how much to grow and how long to grow, this is how they grow. This pattern is all around us! Anybody with their artistic side open, will be able to sense that there is not much of technology in it! For me, this is nothing more than a spinning train."

That is until I checked the meaning of "Ouroborus". So the author (of that one liner!) has only cited it rightly that this is an instance of Science meeting Art. Isn't it really hard to delineate these both? One cannot seperate one half of a whole from its other half. How can we separate right brain hemishphere and left brain hemisphere and function normally? It is just that during a given task, one half is more active, functional and visible than the other. But Scientists now have grown a replica of human brain itseems. If the same momentum continues, I wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years there would be brains available with selective parts and brain replacement surgeries happening as normally as Cosmetic surgeries.

Science and Art are so much interwoven that they can't be seperated how much ever one wants to seperate them. It's just that we don't see through that. My debate is never about the efficacy and ways of Science per se, it's rather about the application of Science - how we apply it. The same experiments of growing replica of human brain can be used to meet good ends, as mentioned here. But the question now is how can one restrict anything at all, that Science be used for only these purposes and not those? That is where human discretion plays a role.

Infact, forget about such a brain-replacement technology, but if we suppress the expression of right brain hemisphere and falsely believe in the superiority of left-brain activity, the humain brain itself shall evolve so in some 1000 years. Disorders like Batten disease might just be very rare occurrence (at the moment), but the suffering of that miniscule part of human population is beyond expression. Isn't this suffering a byproduct of our accelerated evolution/growth? When we look from the lens of such suffering, aren't the rest really lucky to have "very long" lives and have enough freedom to explore life? And from the perspective of a may fly, perhaps a human life is indeed infintely long! But unfortunately for the humans ourselves, life is too short to both dream and live and finally live those dreams.