Flawless

The name says it all. Watch it here.

Darshan do...

Here's a beautiful video with melodious music. just listen to the lyrics...

Dwar daya ka jab tu khole, pancham sur mein goonga bole.

Andha dekhe, Langda chalkar, pahunche kashi re.

Just Ah! Listen here. 

Darshan Do Ghanshyam Nath - Hemant Kumar - For more of the funniest videos, click here

Can you guess?

Cook

Its been about 2 months since I returned from Germany and time has just flown away. I was travelling to a foreign country for the first time and had my share of jitters. Being a vegetarian, I had to take care of what food I eat over there. 'Experienced' people had advised me to be careful because the Germans consider egg and fish to be vegetarian!! So by chance I could end up tasting them. Yuck!! Read up here on the benefits of vegetarianism. But I was also given a lifeline - "If you can cook on your own then you can manage." Cook?! Now that's the word I used to utter when I would pester my mom to prepare something yummy to eat. 

There were still some days before I left. I decided to learn it all. But as the saying goes - 'Procastrination is the thief of time' and it came true again this time :-)).  My mom kept telling me how to prepare some simple, easy to prepare items to eat but i did not lend a patient hearing to her caring words. I also carried some of the 'MTR Ready to eat' stuff, Maggi etc which I could use over there.

After landing there, realized that I was going to be all alone, doing all the chores myself say cooking, washing clothes, washing utensils etc to be precise. Managing office and all these chores back in the hotel was just a skill which I learnt after going there. Among these cooking was something which i had never done before although i had visited the kitchen in my house; just to gobble up whatever my mom had prepared. :-)

The Maggi and the Ready to eat stuff disappeared into my stomach within a few days. And here came the crucial phase where I had to cook.  I avoided cooking by having food either in the office canteen or outside on some days. Got bored of it since most of it would not satisfy my taste buds and they were also very unsattvic.

Finally I took the tough decision of cooking on my own on a Saturday afternoon. On a low confidence note but with full josh and enthusiasm started cooking.  That's the kitchen below in the hotel - 

Prepared some rice, dal and bhindi fry. Very hesitatingly I tasted them and to my surprise it came out very well.  :-) and they tasted just perfect. Some kinda magic?! Ha Ha Ha. Suddenly my confidence levels rose sky high. Here I had prepared something for the first time and it was amazing. The items look tasty below. :-)

 After some days one of my friends also joined me. Together we prepared a keralite special item called the Avial. It came out really superb. You can see the colourful item below.

 Since he had a big hand in preparing that, I don't remember the recipe. :-( You can read it up here. The experience of cooking together was great. Now I feel like I can manage wherever I go. But its very important for each and everyone of us to know cooking whether be a bachelor or a married person.

Now looking to forward to cook up something for my mom sometime. :-)

The silver lining

Last week when things were not going very well at one end, I started to learn the Veena. Yes, the divine instrument played by Godess Saraswati. 

I was contemplating on learning it from a very long time due to following reasons - 

1. I had read somewhere that a person even belonging to the lowest of castes; if he has a veena in his hand, he will reach heaven.

2. My friend Akhilesh plays the veena. I heard him play it one day and I was so awed by it that i wanted to learn it right away. You can listen to him playing Narayana Hari Om here.

3. The music of the vibrating strings does some magic which I am not able to explain.

But even now I am not sure why I wanted to learn. Just wanted to learn, thats it!! Playing it gives me a feeling that I have known the instrument for a very long time. I am not sure whether I had learnt it in my previous birth :-) . 

Maybe last week was the right time when things came together. So off to the shop which sells Veena. Akhilesh had a big hand in choosing the right one for me. It was also reviewed by four more people including my guru. Finally it was decided and I bought it. A pretty old one maybe about 25-30 years old or maybe more. Thats what the experts say. In the case of Veena, the saying - "Old is Gold" fits perfectly since the instrument would have good or better Nada after being played for decades together. Lucky enough to get one so quickly.

Now looking forward to learn it and play well.

Well, wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2009!

Returning to normalcy.

The whole of last two weeks have been very boring. Reasons follow... very irregular with my Sadhana, no seva altogether and the wrong kind of food. All put together i was becoming dull, boring and lazy. I guess everybody goes through this phase in their lives. But as Guruji says - We need to commit and recommit ourselves again and again. And thats what i have decided to do from now on!

But there was a silver lining to these dense black clouds...will write about it in the coming week.

 

Today being Christmas eve, ended well with seva in the AOL School(The project which my colleagues at BOSCH and I are doing. Will write a separate post on that), delicious ashram food and satsang in the VM.

Looking forward to a great week ahead. :-)

Back Home :-)

Have come back home after 3 months in Germany...Got a lot to write...will keep posting here :-)