4.21.2006

An Ode to Mangalam Pati

Srirangam Tamil Nadu, time unknown:

Mangalam Pati is an orthodox lady I heard, oval faced, lean, always in a 9 yards saree and wearing gold frame spectacles. She has sharp eyes, is disciplined and is everything an orthodox tyranical pati should be. She wears a small gold chain around herself and a larger beaded gold rudraksha around her neck. She rules the family, her laws are orthodox but not to everyone, its only to the deserving. For mangalam pati teaches only the deserving, the essential meaning of life. Learning is a tough game, with a million "thopakarnams" thrown in along with innumerable "kuttus" should you make a mistake, but its only now when we are old that we realize how much that training helped.

An old pati in an age old agraharam. Mangalam pati does not come downstairs at all. She doesnt talk to all, well not to anyone at the first meet. When one goes to meet her, they wash their hands and feet and preferable have a shining jadagam against their name. Mangalam pati loves jadagams.

She has a soft corner for one of her grandsons, and what a soft corner it was. He was made to learn the laws of orthodoxy, the laws of karma, the laws in the dharma shastra, the laws of the agamas...lets say the laws of good living in short, of course with his fair share of "thopakarnams" and "kuttus". Mangalam pati taught him to face the world, the world of karma, giving lessons on defence strategies of parigarams. Mangalam pati taught all she knew to the grandson she loved the most.

It was another silent evening, the sun had just set. Mangalam pati lit the oil lamp and sat silently in her room. A sacred room I would say. The children ran around the house proclaiming to all not to go upstairs for Mangalam pati was talking to Lord Ganesha! No one dared to disturb her, except her most favourite grandson. He took the guts to walk up to her room.

In the silent room sat Mangalam pati, the oil lamp light glittering in her gold spectacle frame. Not a sound, not a movement in the air. Her rudraksha gently formed a stream of gold to the floor.

And on the floor lay a yellow line ever growing.

A simple sight, a profound moment. Witnessed by her only favourite grandchild. Never again questioned and hushed away, the yellow line had more than a line to say.


Grantham, the ancient language of the Gods has strange ways of sending the message across. In a matter of hours the day was gone, the world moved on and Mangalam pati sat silent, enlightened. What a life! Mangalam pati was indeed a very dynamic woman.

One fine day, her grandson went for his dance performance. He insisted she come to see it and in a gentle voice she said "You go ahead, I will come". That was the last he saw of her. Mangalam pati died that night, but she had done well for herself. The Lord took her with Him, to his Abode, Kailasa.

I sat listening to this story on Mangalam Pati, I believed I had never met Mangalam pati and yet I knew her so well. Mangalam pati was my only connect, to the strange new world I live in now. Strange it is, blessed I am, to have once been her grandchild.

Mangalam pati, mangalam mangalam.

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

Terms: (Gio, this is for you!)

Pati - grandmother,
Kuttu - a knock on the head when you dont do something right. Hurts most often.
Thopakarnam - to hold ones ears and descend to the floor, squat and rise all the way up. Typically based on a count, which gets tougher as the count increases. It is a punishment to children when they do not listen, still practised in old indian households.

23 comments:

Aswin Kini said...

Hi Kavitha, a good narration of a truly pious person. It is true indeed that our ancestors had set forth some very virtuous values on how to live our lives and then atain god. IT is very fortunate that i have met several persons who are indeed pious and they have set a good example for their grandsons and granddaughters to come. I have to confess something , my late grandma was very similar to mangalam patti, unfortunately she died way back before i was born. Nice one

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha, Felix, Aswin and others… I will try to be brief, attempting to hold the sea within a pot, like any human head holds innumerable thoughts :-)

Krishna says that a tree has its roots in the earth, whereas man has his roots in the sky!

When one observes carefully, like a Yogi', one can see that just a single seed (as ‘Mooladhar’, an apparently dot-like storehouse of unrealized Supreme knowledge at the ‘basement’, as the essence of planet Mangal or Mars or Ganesha or orange colour, a mixture of red and yellow), with his siblings residing at higher floors, is needed inserted inside the available top soil of mother earth (the unending physical form of Naadbindu, the unborn seed having ‘Big Bang’ OM as its ‘beej mantra’), to start an unending cycle or ‘chain reaction’ with the help of ‘panchabhoota’ - of fruits at the top of the tree, each fruit having numerous seeds inside (Sahasrara, the essence of Moon or Parvati on the ‘top floor’, having gold-like yellow colour and the temporary store house of Supreme Knowledge), i.e., one multiplying into ‘infinity’ over long durations, Kaliyuga to Satyuga the age of perfection!

Human being is believed to be the most evolved life. Therefore, it reflects the downward journey or time moving from Satyuga to Kaliyuga that it experiences, as indicated by the mythological stories, i.e., home-coming of victorious Rama-like character, his having started from zero to reach ‘Supreme knowledge’, i.e., bringing back Sita the model of Moon with assistance from Hanuman, a model of planet Mars, after gaining knowledge based on practical experience, back to zero again. But with ‘supreme knowledge’ retained in His brother Lakshamana's, model of Earth's,‘third eye’ who, with Sita, also went with Rama (the model of Sun when only he was exiled :-)

The Shabar tribe of Orissa, who traditionally take care of the idols in Shiva temples, viz., Lingaraj temple in Orissa, are believed to be doing so since 'Satyuga'...in 'Treta' they believably were in Sugriva's army of 'vanar' or 'monkeys'. Their local deity is ' Ma Mangala', whose idol they dress up in red cloth! (I saw it on TV in a Doordarshan's documentary)

Anonymous said...

Hi all...

Coming back to the illusion part, let us consider the apparent shortcoming in human eyes again…

When a person is within the four walls of a building, her vision gets restricted. She provides windows that allow her only partial view of the exterior and that too over a short range only, because of other material hinderances. Provision of glass like transparent material could enable her to see relatively more of the exterior, which would however not allow her privacy from outer world and also not save her from heat/ cold, and so on…

Thus, she takes recourse to locks on doors, guards at entry points, closed circuit TV etc. only from security reason in the ‘present’…

The ancient Yogis however appear to have realized the ‘real’ doer, or part of the Supreme Soul, Supreme Knowledge, Omnipotent and Omnipresent and so on, within the physical body…

They found the process of tapping that high potential energy similar to drawing water from a naturally available underground pure water source by placing a pump at the ground level and connected through an intake pipe placed well within the surface of water :-)

It is easier said than done though… They seemed to have found the ‘pump’ naturally placed at the meeting point of nose with the forehead, called “Ajna Chakra’ or the 'commander', that has gone out of use over the passage of time and thus needing rejuvenation, besides straightening and strengthening of the electrical wiring-like nervous systems, water/ oil pipeline like blood supply vessels, and so on…

They advised integrated Yogic exercises to take care of the three axes around which the human body apparently develops, i.e., physical, mental, and spiritual, that could give one the sharp vision of ‘Garud’, the believable vehicle of Vishnu, a bird (that can be visualized with the help of the earlier discussed upper half of the figure 3, turned anti-clockwise through 90 degrees to result in letter’ M’ (for Man :-) with wings spread out wide like those of the Condor, and placed in the sky high above the letter ‘W’ (for Woman :-), the lower part at the base… All this if the person wants to do it herself :-)

But, how about allowing Him to do it for you, like an ‘item contract’ - free?! The ancients however suggested ‘surrender in Him’ first :-) A hard proposition to accept today because of the natural ‘time related barriers’, viz. ego, ‘superiority complex’, and so on, because of 'barriers placed by Him', through 'Maya' or illusion :-)

Anonymous said...

P.S.~ By the way, letter 'M' in the 'sky' level also stands for 'Moon', the satellite that regulates the rotation of Earth, or 'Garud' of the mythology keeping an eye on the earth... And the letter 'W' at the base, if moved clockwise by 90 degrees again reads as letter 'E', for 'Earth' :-)

'Hindus' called Lord Rama's wife, Sita, as 'vaidehi', i.e., one who didn't have physical form, or 'Maya'...

Anonymous said...

P.P.S.~ Saint Tulsidas - who made Ramayana popular in the relatively recent times – wasn’t a student of ‘Science’ and still he appears to have described the presence of ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere (say, to cite just one example out of many) although in a poetic way,(maybe copied from some scientific literature that was written in code words by some other writer before him)…

When Lord Rama & Lakshamana, with the army of 'monkey king', Sugriva, reached the sea beach, Rama prayed to the concerned, 'Varun devta', to allow them passage to the golden Lanka, where ‘demon king’, Ravana, was holding (golden Yellow coloured) Sita. However, the sea didn’t allow them the passage for some days…

This angered Rama, and although he was an 'expert archer', he asked Lakshamana to hand him the arrow that would dry up the sea…

Now, perhaps only a ‘seeker’ would pause and wonder why he asked Lakshamana to hand him over the arrow (like a golfer asks his caddie to hand him over a particular club today :-)

With the background belief that man is only a model of the universe, one could thus realize that the particular reference is pointing towards Rama to be the model of our Sun, and Lakshamana of our Earth in Trtayuga that holds the ozone layer, Shiva's third eye-like', around its atmosphere, which, if opened, could not only dry up the ocean, but destroy entire life forms on earth too - including them, i.e., 'Kamdeva' :-)

[Of course, every literate today
perhaps knows that it is on account of the restricted amount of heat received from the sun that water in small quantities gets evaporated from the seas, which has set up the unending water cycle ...]

Anonymous said...

P.P.P.S. ~ I have attempted to show earlier how the ‘Hindu’ mythological stories indicate the crust of earth associated with the neutral colour, Green, a mixture of Blue (believably associated with Venus) and Yellow (associated with Moon). And, that it is the earth’s crust that apparently has moon over it in the sky. Thus the crust was apparently visualized as a neutral link between the top layer of earth’s core (related with Venus) and the ‘sky’ (related with Moon)…

Whereas the essence of planet Mars, believably nearest to the core, i.e., zero, is represented by ancients through colour Orange, a mixture of Red the number one in the visible spectrum, and Yellow, the colour associated with moon in the sky, as referred above…

We have, today also, come to know that within the physical body of sun Hydrogen gas lies confined in the core and the outer neutral covering is provided by an ‘inert’ or ‘Noble’ gas, Helium, which is colourless and its outer shell is full with just two electrons, compared to 8 (the mysterious numeral associated with 'Nirguna', i.e., inert or detached, and 'Nirakar' or formless Creator referred in 'Hindu' mythology) in all other inert gases (used in ‘Neon signs’ today in tubes painted or baked with some fluorescent material to get different colour signs - starting with Georges Claude's ‘Claude Neon’ getting US patent in the year 1915), viz., Neon (red), Argon (mixed with minute particles of mercury to give subdued blue colour) , Krypton, Xenon, & Radon…that led to the colour TV in the fifties…

[Also flame tests are used to determine composition of substances. Generally, an unknown substance, to be tested, is either sprayed into a flame or placed on a thin wire that is then put into a flame. The colours produced by the flame test are then compared to known standards to confirm the presence of individual elements in the sample (for example, Sodium, which is abundantly found in nature in sea water and in human body in tears in eyes and urine in the bladder, and Potassium - the elements that are responsible for current to flow in human nerves - have wave lengths corresponding to Yellow and Red, respectively)].

Third Eye Closed said...

Hi K,
Very lovely post. A beautiful look into Mangalam Paati... a pious, orderly and an archaic induvidual who truely connects to the Greater. Inspiring person. It truely must be great to have a connect or relation with her.

Hi Uncle,
Once again, you have flowed through your mind in words. I am slowly reading them. So, it'll probably take a while before I can exactly comment on it :)
I think we all have a "Mangalam Paati" somewhere connected to us, in one form or the other. Someone who has seen a larger part and whispers it into our ears by thier actions.

~fEelix

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha, Felix, Aswin and others… It appears like 'my discourse', with the public remaining silent :-)

Let us look up the Map of India in an Atlas, to see the route related to Hindu’ mythological story concerning ‘exile of Lord Rama’, from Ayodhya near Kashi the present day Varanasi near Allahabad the location of confluence of Ganga and Yamuna), his believable birth place, down south to ‘Dandakaranya’, the forest…

The Tropic of Cancer, the southern most limit of North-South movement of Sun in India, in the east passes through Durgapur town in West Bengal, where a ('gold' generating) Steel Plant (iron being associated with Venus & ‘Demons’) exists from the British period... Further southwards one would find located Jamshedpur town (TISCO or Tata steel plant), Rourkela (SAIL), Vishakhapatnam (Vaizag Steel Plant), the port from where highly rich iron ore is shipped to Japan from Bailadila Project, in the Chhattisgarh state…

I read down south, between the ‘holy region’ range of Kashi-Prayag, the name of Raipur city (a rail junction) in Madhya Pradesh (now Capital city of Chhatisgarh state) that is connected with the Bastar's tribal region with its district head-quarter at Jagdalpur on River Indravati, that has ‘Chitrakoot falls’, a name associated with Lord Rama. Jagdalpur, a plateau, acted as the head-quarter of ‘Dandakaranya Project’ and is close to Kirandul where the head office of Bailadila Project is located… [As per information available on the Internet, Dandakaranya Project (DNK) was set up in September 1958 for the settlement of displaced persons from former East Pakistan and for integrated development of the area with particular regard to the promotion of the interests of the local tribal population. It is an agriculture-oriented project…]

It might not be a coincidence that Kalinga war was also fought in this region during Emperor Ashoka's period... We have also seen how Orissa in the past saw occult practices in Yogni temples, also presented by Kavitha earlier...however,knowledge always gets disseminated in all directions, because of 'Brahna having four mouths', particularly involuntarily when He feels sleepy - towards the end of a Yuga :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Felix...~ Your comment appeared this morning after I had already posted my comment - a game played with her grandsons by Mangalam Pati perhaps :-)

On review I found factual erors, which I would like to correct, hoping that no more factual errors still remain/ get added:

Sorry! Please read ‘northern most’ in place of ‘southern most’ in, “The Tropic of Cancer, the southern most limit of North-South movement of Sun in India…” The southern most, the Tropic of Capricorn passes through Australia, ‘down under.’

[Another correction: M/s Burn & Co formed the Indian Iron & Steel Co (IISCO) at Hirapur, West Bengal in 1918. In 1924, the company was taken over by M/s Martin & Co. In 1946, the two companies were amalgamated to form M/s Martin Burn Ltd. The IISCO plant was established in 1952…]

Also, near Raipur, at Durg, is located the Bhilai Steel Plant of SAIL (Steel Authority of India, in collaboration with the erstwhile USSR) , besides the ones in Rourkela and Durgapur (in collaboration with Germany and UK respectively)...

Nevertheless, the basic idea is to indicate the significance of the ancient belief about blue colour and steel, or iron, with Venus (Ravana) under the top soil (Shiva), and Lord Rama's 'exile' for 14 years to overcome the temptation created by 'glitter of gold' or illusion created my 'material'.

Anonymous said...

Hi all...

It is perhaps well known that some 'Brahmins' in North India traditionally wear 'sacred thread' coloured yellow, believably also worn by Hanuman (model of planet Mars or 'Mangal', an ardent devotee of Lord Rama in Tretayuga...

A certain numbers of rounds of threads, coloured red and yellow in alternate bands, are traditionally worn on the wrist, right hand side for all male and unmaried females and left hand side for married women (who also sport a red 'bindi' or a dot every day on the forehead) on auspicious occasions - for 'raksha' or 'defence' or protection from 'evil eyes' and for all round material progress and happiness...

Anonymous said...

southern brahmins wear the sacred thread arount their upper body, the history behind this is that brahmins earlier were recognized by their upper body garments, which they alone wore, this upper body garment started coming in the way of most of their daily rituals, i guess this was the time rituals started gaining significance, and to combat this, a smaller more compact version was used in the form of a thread, 3 for bachelors and 6 for married men.

i learnt this from my brief meeting with the shankaracharya of the sringeri mutt a couple of years ago, when i asked him about the significance of the sacred thread, i repected the man taking time off to meet, despite me being an aetheist.most of family has disowned me as they are extremely pious and orthodox, what saddens me most is that its religion that binds these people and not the fact that they are all human beings, sad but true.

i am not in any position to validate this, i thought i should share this information, a practical and logistic view at religion, seldom do we look at religion like this now.

@kavitha, its nice the way every post of yours seamlessly integrates in to a long thread of conversations.

@jc joshi, r.e.s.p.e.c.t, your knowledge is your gift to all around you

@felix, your curiosity and modesty will take you far.

Anonymous said...

Hi Sheshadri…

Maybe my birth in a ‘Brahmin’ family, in the Himalayas in present day Himachal Pradesh - parents belonging to Uttaranchal - and believable ‘samadhi’ of Adi Shankara at Kedarnath in that state and his belief in one God has something to do with my apparent ‘research’ :-)

From the very beginning, I found that I wasn’t much inclined to accepting rituals. I believed in someone omnipotent and omnipresent who was taking care of the entire universe, and not humans alone…

With this inclination, I believe now that He has made me churn accumulated thoughts within my head, showing me some aspects of creation through believably different eyes. I therefore call my head as ‘God’s garbage dump’ and myself a ‘rag picker’ who is presenting some of His thoughts as his :-)

In a way, Kavitha has kindly provided me space in her blog to sell some of His ideas to apparent others :-)

I admit that despite hardship in 'material life', I have received 'spiritual happiness' - like a poet describes the phenomenon as ‘getting intoxicated with the spirit which brews in one’s heart’ - which I wish to share with others also…

If all believably different 'images' or 'models of the (one and only) universe' of the one and only Creator fall into one line as equals, or mentally coincide, the apparent barrier in human minds would disappear :-) Only 'time' can do it though...

Anonymous said...

Hi kavitha, and all…
I would like to get back to the graphic representation developed earlier regarding location of essences of selected planets, showing the numerical order from 1 to 8 as given below.
8. MOON [Yellow at Sahas(t)ra(dha)ra]
7. Earth (Green at Ajna - Shiva's eye)
6. Venus (Blue at Vishuddhi - throat)
5. Mercury (Ultra violet - chest)
4. SUN (White - solar plexus -
separating Rahu and Ketu)
3. Jupiter (Infra red - navel)
2. Asteroids (Red - below navel – rejuvenation point in Acupuncture)
1. Mars (Orange - Mooladhar)
The formless is believed represented through 0 and 9, i.e., planet Saturn, the physical model of the formless Vishnu, known for His ‘Sudershan Chakra’ or the ‘beautiful rings’ (also exhibited by planet Jupiter)…visualized by me as numeral ‘0’ cut at the bottom and the ‘arm’ folded up, to form a smaller 0 having a tail (9)… The communication of separation of heads of Ganesha and Rahu in the stories indicates four combinations of body and respective head, I imagine four combinations as 1 (body)-8 (head), 2 (h)-7 (b), 3 (b)-6(h), 4 (h)-5 (b) to conform to four Yugas indicated in the mythological stories, which result in Moon as head in Satyuga, Venus as head in Tretayuga, Sun as the head in Dwaperyuga, and Asteroids as head (or group of heads) in Kaliyuga… These, I believe represented through Index finger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger, respectively, in human hands…

Third Eye Closed said...

Hi Uncle J,
Finally I sat through all your comments, uncle. That was quite a flow! Interesting way to relate the natural resources & the physique of the land to history & a divine legacy.

I relished every single of your comment. Deep and Thought Provoking, I must say.

K's blog has become a Tome that hives your Words of Understanding and Knowledge :)

Also, din't you once start a thread about Australia being a place where a major part of Ramayana took place... or did I hear it somewhere-else (which too is quite a good possibility)

Hi Mr. Sheshadri,
Thank you very much :)
Somehow the more we hear, the more we want to hear. The more you sing, the more you want to sing. I see my curiosity is a perch of the current state of yearning to be more and more complete... pretty much like "half the glass full" :)

It must be quite an experience to hear a wise voice.

Btw... about your mentioning of "atheism"
I strongly believe in a truth; There is no classification.
No classification of creed, caste, thoughts, believes, virtues or anything that can demark. Infact, I don't even see a classification between the good and bad. There heeds no classification that would deprive us the presence of the other.
Everything is one or another, not the same and being the different faces and or the different phases of a single...
(I have no word in my knowledge to complete that line, but somewhere in my instinct I see a faint vision of what it would be.)

~fEelix
PS: Sorry for my long-time-to-respond. There's a little piece of reality that sits next to my seat or on my computer screen that keeps me busy and away from what I otherwise would love doing; Office work :D

Anonymous said...

Hi Felix, Sheshadri,…

I am glad to know, Felix, that you didn’t find it too difficult this time :-)

In the present, ‘atheist’ and ‘secular’ are two words that are on the lips of the majority – and yet none seem to know what these two intend to communicate
:-)

‘Secular’ reminds me of the story of six blind men (‘religions’) each of whom touched a different part of the one and only animal and believed the elephant to be that part only as visualized by each – wall, pillar, rope, branch of a tree, fan, and scabbard - and not the whole elephant as one single entity (like a ‘siddha’ is supposed to reach at an integrated version of apparent ‘Truths’)...

Similarly, I had earlier narrated a story of a person who was apparently very pious, for he performed rituals associated with the worship of a Shivlinga, situated on an island, after swimming over to the place daily while an ‘atheist’ also did so after him, but only to strike the lingam with his footwear! And, eventually he alone was blessed by the Lord as he swam across the river when it was in spate whereas the ritualistic believer, being scared, decided not to risk his life that particular day :-)

Anonymous said...

Continued…
I would like to return to the numerals 0 to 9, and look again at ‘9’ …
As it stands, it appears to me like a hand-fan (Perhaps because of frequent power cuts and peak summer heat in the Capital city). I also imagine it as 0 cut at the bottom and the left side end moved up to result in a smaller zero, but with a cutting edge like tail, which when rotated around the centre of the zero would appear like a wheel or an instrument for cutting things (Say, a ‘sudershan chakra’ with a finger of formless Vishnu at the centre of the small zero - seen with a child’s eye as a Diwali cracker that revolves on a point on the surface of earth when its tail or fuse is ignited
:-)…

Now, if I imagine placing a plain mirror vertically, touching at the middle point of the ‘real number’, along with its image it would form a pair of scissors (for cutting and pasting, i.e., copying and claiming as original work :-) or a nut cracker (needed more in the month of April for ‘nuts’ like me, for ‘kuttu’ on the head by Mangalam Pati :-)

Now let us review the order of eight planets I had indicated earlier and insert these two, 0 and 9 also that represent the formless and the planet Saturn respectively, as below.
9. Saturn
8. MOON [Yellow at Sahas(t)ra(dha)ra]
7. Earth (Green at Ajna - Shiva's eye)
6. Venus (Blue at Vishuddhi - throat)
5. Mercury (Ultra violet - chest)
4. SUN (White - solar plexus -
separating Rahu and Ketu)
3.Jupiter (Infra red - navel)
2. Asteroids (Red - below navel)
1. Mars/ Mangal (Orange – Mool(a)dhara)
0. FORMLESS CREATOR

The mythological stories indicate ‘Saturn’ cutting off heads of Ganesha, (Shiva transplanting in its place the head of an elephant), and also the head of ‘Demon’ Rahu to separate the body (Ketu) from his head. These perhaps indicate five sets of bodies and heads exchanged with one another from the above to form the ‘panchatatva’ or ‘panchbhoota’, or the ‘five elements or illusoary ghosts’, i.e., 0 (Head, h) & 9 (Body, b), or formless Vishnu on Ananta or Sheshnaga; 1 (b) – 8 (h) or the fractional part of the formless lying in a super conscious state within earth/ human body at Mooladhar; 2 (h) – 7 (b) or Kali/ Sati the consort of Shiva or core of earth as ‘His heart’ that on overflowing from a volcano’s crater, turns black when the lava cools on earth’s surface; 3 (b) – 6 (h); 4 (h) – 5 (b)…
For ease, I visualize the various heads, starting from top of the ‘sky’, Moon, Venus, Sun and Asteroids (i.e., all group heads integrated into one head – referred in the mythology as ‘serpent Kaliuya’ in River Yamuna, on whose ‘thousand heads’ Krishna danced to conquer it), transferred on to my four fingers from the index to the little one respectively… Thumb representing the ‘body’ of Mars and the rest bodies, each in the gap between the bases of the three fingers – representing Earth, Mercury and Jupiter, from top to bottom… Thus I get the same order as above from number one to number 8, on my right palm, starting clockwise from Mars at the thumb, Asteroids at the little finger Jupiter in the space between the bases of little and ring finger, and so on…till I reach Moon at the index finger, the finger that is used to show direction, i.e., the Guru :-)
I use the index finger joined with the thumb to read the formless or 0 - and if I bring the thumb down to reduce the size of ‘0’, I read ‘6’ (on left hand and its image on the right) the inverted image of ‘9’ and not ‘9’ while my fingers point skywards :-) For reading ‘9’ I have to use my left hand with fingers pointing earthwards, i.e., towards Shiva of the”Satyam Shivam Sunderam” or “Anbe Sivam” fame :-)

However, if I close my fist, extending only the index finger, and rest the thumb against its middle line and view sideways, I see Ganesha’s elephant head, complete - with its tusk represented by my nail, wrinkles near its small eye, and trunk, movable up/ down :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Felix, coming to your comment, “…din't you once start a thread about Australia being a place where a major part of Ramayana took place... or did I hear it somewhere-else (which too is quite a good possibility)”, I would say that the land masses have been drifting from time immemorial. At a certain stage India was an island, Jambudweep… Australia too had believably been close to ‘India’, and so on, which indicate changes in the topography with time over long duration...

Thus there could be many possibilities… However, as the mythological story - related to Lord Rama, one of the ‘Suryavanshi’ kings or related with our Sun - refers to River Ganga, as well as worship of Shivlinga (a model of Mount Kailasa) and presence of “Dandakaranya’ down south of Kashi, the story apparently pertains at least to a period after appearance of Himalayas…

However, one funny feeling, which I sometimes had during my stay while journeying through highways and passing through jungles at places - maybe because of ‘Maya’ or image thereof or illusion - was that it could have happened in the Northeast India even :-)

Till date there are places, viz., Mayang in Nowgong, where some locals practice the ‘black art’, they reportedly can turn you into any animal form (and Marich apparently drew Rama away from Sita, as a golden deer, and even Lakshamana, later, by duplicating Rama’s voice, so that Ravana could kidnap her :-)

And, River Brahmaputra, which alone is named after a male in India whereas all other rivers have names of females, is wide enough at places to appear like a sea. In the story, Hanuman reportedly reached ‘Lanka’ (even today there is a city in Assam that is called Lanka)… There are places having ancient names, viz., ‘Vashista Ashram’, ‘Sita Jakhla or Sita’s ladder’, and so on. There even is a pond within Gauhati, named, “Nak Kata Pookhri’, i.e., it sounds like referring to Lakshamana cutting Ravana’s sister’s nose, the incident that led to Ravana kidnapping Sita :-)

Some people, in Manipur, claimed that Hanuman took the hill - that had 'Sanjeevani booti' or the herb to save Lakshamana after he had been struck with a poisoned arow by Ravana's son, Meghnada - from one of the hills there...

Kavitha Kalyan said...

Hi Joshi Uncle

There is another belief that the Ramayana could have taken place on Egyptian soil, given we get to see an egyptian king by the name of Ramases there...
Incidentally, when i dug further into it, i came to know that the previous ruler, Akhenaten alias Ankhesenamun was a very famous ruler, and somewhere down this lineage there was our very famous Tutankhamun and some vague half sister in the family by the name of Sitamun. Interestingly the name "Amun" at the end of their names is attributed to the ruling deity of the time.

Hence i would love to assume her name was Sita... with the amun attached...interesting eh?

when they spoke of a monkey army, it need not literally mean monkeys but Numibians who were slaves to egyptians.. but well all this is speculation...

the only damage this causes, is that Mr.Most famous Moses decided on the exodus at the same time making ramases look more like a villain than a hero!

regds
Kavitha

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha...

In the confusion I posted my reply to your comment above on the latest blog :-) Sorry!

I would like to also show how the order of members of solar system that I have arrived at, and given above, could perhaps be confirmed...

One would notice that Sun is at number 4, which when read with its image on a mirror placed along the vertical plane results in an arrow, which could represent both, the sunrays and arrows from the bows of expert archers, viz. Rama, Arjuna, and many others even in the present, perhaps indicating them as models of our sun...

And, Earth is at number 7. Now, if you visualize reading the overall figure generated by placing this all rounder on a vertical as well as a horizontal mirror, it would appear like a 'Dumru' or a percussion instrument narrow at the middle and broader at both the outer ends that is associated with Shiva :-)

Of course, Jupiter in position 3 could help visualizing it as the original three-in-one Creator... And Venus in number 6 perhaps could help imgine why it was called 'Rakshasha' or the one who defends his father and mother at number 7 & 8 as their personal bodyguard :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha…

Sorry! For the sake of convenience and continuity, I post the comment here too again, as below...

Yes they too worshipped Sun God, Ra (?)… Like Hindu mythological stories indicate head of animal attached to a different human body for Ganesha, the Sphinx in Egypt indicate the reverse, i.e., human head transplanted over animal body, and so on…

As I have understood from ‘Hindu’ mythological stories’, the statement, ‘Brahma has four faces’, read together with the present day knowledge that our sun (Brahma/ Rama/ Arjuna in human form), combined with moon (Saraswati/ Sita/ Draupadi) - as like a mirror it reflects all the sunlight from its surface - cover the entire globe, i.e., all four cardinal directions… Tides created by moon, in comparison with that produced by sun alone, is found to be twice in height, thus indicating greater power vested upon the Guru or Moon…

The stories also indicate Adi Shiva’s birthplace at Kashi. This perhaps indicates the realization that ‘India’ is the ‘original’ and stories in other regions are ‘copy and paste’ but with a difference, i.e., unlike in the present, all look original, the regional effects having been taken into proper account:-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha…

I had said above, “…if I close my fist, extending only the index finger, and rest the thumb against its middle line and view sideways, I see Ganesha’s elephant head…”

Now, try placing the index finger of your right hand palm on the first half of the thumb while keeping the three fingers skyward and look at it sideways… Maybe, like me, you would also notice Shiva-Parvati's son, Kartikeya’s, peacock :-)

Read with the background of 'Palmistry', essence of the Hindu Philosophy can be read on one's hand, wherever one might be located, without recourse to any external aid :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Kavitha,
Like a mischievous child it indicates, to the ‘seeker’, two directions – earthwards (inwards) or skywards (outwards) for the three fingers, as is evident in the two examples cited above.

In case of Mars or Mother Parvati’s son Ganesha’s ‘elephant head’, the fingers point towards the surface or, rather, the core or earth, whereas in case of her other son ‘Kartikeya’s (Venus’) vehicle’, peacock, these point skywards – thus the advice of ancients to look for ‘Truth’ ‘inwards’ (spiritual) and not ‘outwards’ (material that is deceptive or illusory) as the generality of men are made to do - ‘naturally’ because of helplessness against the forces created by ‘time’…

I would now show its mischievous childlike nature also through the numeral 5, the ‘anahat’ or the ‘immortal’ located at the heart representing planet Mercury or its essence ‘ultraviolet light’...

The number 5, read along with its image on a mirror placed vertically, could also be visualized to result in the figure of a pot, (besides the inverted tree we saw earlier, or an apple if written in smaller size, and so on), ‘Amrit Kalasha’, containing the ‘panacea of life’ (life giving sunrays/ water/ ‘spirit that brews in the heart’) distributed by Mohini (Ma Gauri or Sun, and Moon as its mirror) to devtas or the ‘selfless’ at the ‘final stage of churning of the milky ocean’. However, to keep one lost for ages, it (ultra violet or ‘Neelamber’ Krishna in blue, in the ‘middle path’), has been made to understand associated with the demon Rahu, (‘Rakshasha’, and not literally as the ‘defender’, goalkeeper/ wicket keeper as in ball games, viz., football, hockey, cricket etc.), that acts as hindrance in the path of ‘Ma Kali', the Black or 'Krishna’ or the red hot core of earth that is separated from Shiva (exterior of Earth), which sometimes meet through eruption of volcanoes, like water at high pressure (in ‘natural’ geysers, like the ‘Old Faithful’) issuing from a fountainhead to reach great heights as a model thereof, or Mount Kailasha reaching the ‘sky’ from under the ocean bed, and many such other examples in ‘Nature’ urging man to similarly activate one’s ‘kundalini’ and raise energy in all locks to ‘Ajna chakra’ or Shiva’s third eye - or just surrender in Krishna to reach the Formless :-)

Aditya said...

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