Finding Nemo

"I could have done better in the exams, if the neighbor had kept the music on a lower volume" "These stupid people don't know when to stop partying. Can't they see I'm focusing for my interview?" "I find happiness in other's happiness. I have given away myself for the others." I am sure, we all come across such statements every day. We often know and revere the originators of such statements. May I please have the liberty to hurt your feelings and call these revered people as cowards? Yes these people are cowards who shy away from taking the responsibilities on their head and solving it. It is the easiest path for anyone to walk away from our responsibilities. After all, the world was created by the God for all of us to live happily or live with the consequences of our choices. God made all of us equal – giving the choice and the ability to think through. Then why do we blame someone else for our happiness? It is because we do not want to t

We have all heard innumerable stories about the Devas or Suras and their arch-rivals Asuras . The story of their enmity has often taken heights and has been showcased by multiple high grossing Hollywood as well as Bollywood movies. Do you know that there are positions available amongst the Suras and Asuras equally if you are interested? Many of us might recall the Sura and Asura are both brothers from the same father – Maharishi Kashyap but different mothers – Diti and Aditi . Due to their constant strife for power they are both assigned different homes – the sky (Heaven or Swarga ) and underground ( Patala ), We have always visualized the Suras as the nice looking heroes who are always struggling to keep ugly looking, wrong doing Asuras at bay from capturing their abode. Let's take a slightly distorted view and consider them equal and then understand them both! Both Devatas and Asuras are the offspring of the same maharishi. They are both the creatures of the same God –

A few weeks ago, in my blog on "Did Yudhishthira went to heaven?" I mentioned that he saw Kaurava brothers in the heaven. And he was enraged. But do we know why? Kuru – the great ancestor of the Pandavas and Kauravas once tilled a land close to Hastinapuri – his capital. He tilled the earth with such determination that he used his flesh as the seeds and his blood as the water for the seeds to germinate. Upon seeing this, Indra descended from his throne and asked Kuru for his wish. Kuru requested nothing for himself, but for others. He asked ascension to heaven for anyone who dies on the land he tilled. Though Indra could not refuse Kuru's request, he added a condition that the person must die as a warrior. The land was later known as Kurukshtera and all who died (mainly Kauravas) ascended to heaven for just having died on the land. Sometimes, we may have done our best and have been the most righteous of all, yet we may not be the one to achieve success. Never loose the ho

In my own quest, I missed my daughter's questions – Wh do we celebrate Diwali or Deepawali? What is this festival? And why is there so much hype about it? Let's see! Deepawali or the festival of lights has always been called Diwali in the easy linguistic terms. It is a festival to mark the return of Sri Rama in Ayodhya after completing his 14 years of exile. However, Deepawali in today's terms is a 5 day festival and each day has its own story. I will try my best to explain for each one of these. Day 1 – Dhanteras Dhanteras is the combination of two words – " Dhan " and "Teras". Dhan means money or wealth while Teras means thirteenth. Thus Dhanteras falls on the thirteenths day of the month of Kartik. It happens to be two days prior to Diwali and thus marks the start of the celebration. As evident from its name, the festival of Dhanteras is celebrated in the honor of Kubera – the yaksha and the symbol of wealth accumulation. Per the legends, there are

In continuation of the ideas from my previous post, I take the liberty of writing some more. We worship Lakshmi in many forms and strive to get more of her. In fact our thirst for Lakshmi never ends. The question is how do we get Lakshmi? History tells us that you need to churn the ocean to get Lakshmi. Churn resembles hard work and also collaboration of the driving forces. The collaboration is to be understood from the perspective that there are two different opposing forces which work in tandem to give some and pull some fashion. The competition between the groups, the churn of ideas, and the dilemma in mind is fruitful till the time the forces work in tandem to produce greater goods for the organization and decision making. Consider the benefits for the consumers in the market when two product companies compete to enhance their shares. However, there is one more point to the churn. When Lakshmi came out of the Kshirasagar , she immediately went to Sri Vishnu overlooking the handsome

This weekend all of my family was busy preparing for Diwali – the festival of lights. We started with cleaning up the home, decorating it with lights and other artifacts. At the same time, we took out the Ganesh and Lakshmi idols for cleaning, so that we can perform the Diwali rituals. My daughter asked me the question – why do we worship Ganesh and Lakshmi? They aren't a couple and also didn't we perform Ganesh Chaturthi a few weeks ago? Why do we also have a third goddess – Saraswati in the images related to Diwali? Wonderful questions – I remarked, and got back to study harder. Let's see if I can do justice to her curiosity or arouse more? Ganesh is worshipped by the virtue of the boon he received from Lord Shiva. Lakshmi as we all know is the wife of Vishnu. She is the goddess of wealth and good fortune. We all strive to get her and probably lead our lives in quest for more of her. Remember the post where I talked of how Indra runs after Lakshmi and Lakshmi finds comf

Tune in into any channel or read any newspaper. You will be looking at innumerable news filled with violence in many forms –political, poverty, castes, racism, domestic and even sex. The first thing I would have thought was disgust and anger for the one who inflicted violence. At the same time, the feeling for sympathy comes in for the victim. I have often asked where does the violence starts? Is it only the result of the social or poverty injustice or is it inbuilt part of the human nature? I guess both. While there has been a great deal of discussion on the former reasoning, I shall work on the later part here! Imagine a forest with a tiger and a deer. The deer is running all over chased by the tiger. Finally when the tiger catches the deer, the tiger rips the deer with it claws and tears the flesh of the deer’s skin with its teeth. The tiger savors the deer and then moves on looking for another prey another day. A violent story, ain’t it? I say NO .  This is the story of the surviva