G10 Memories

Banana, milk and honey

 

The most common line around here is “hey, you want to go to the beach?” and the most common reply is” Yeah, I want to work on my tan!.” So loads of people go to the beach specially to get that sun kissed look, and I was one of them as well. It didn’t seem like something crazy to do, or not to do. And of course it resulted in me getting a tan, which in turn led to this major concern that my family began having. They began commenting that I was becoming very dark. I was getting the “O my god, you have become so dark!” comment one too many times. And so I started using this homemade remedy for bleaching my skin, which is a combination of banana, honey and milk (it works!). And the shock from my fellow G10er’s came in waves. I don’t understand it, if you can become darker, why can’t you go fairer? It’s the same thing. What if the whites were discriminated instead of the blacks, would no body be going to the beach today? Colour is something that I personally think is one type of discrimination that will always be a problem in society. Whether in your own society or someone else’s, you are always being judged based on the colour of your skin. And the truth is one’s personality will be affected by ones colour. However skin colour has nothing to do with beauty (inner or external) it’s like the saying,” beauty is only skin deep”.

I don’t want to be a colour which I wasn’t born with. I was born a particular shade of wheat and I want to retain it, because I feel that’s me. I’m comfortable with that skin type. If you think having a tan makes you look sexy and confident or if you think being fair makes you feel more intelligent, go for it I say. At the end of the day the colour of your emotion is more important rather than the colour of your skin.

Maya

Maya, according to philosophy, religion etc ...she is some one who exists to take you away from your path. the right path, the path which will lead to eternal happiness and service to the lord. and i am some one who undoubtedly believes in it(considering it is the meaning of my name). but as i sit on the computer typing this at some unearthly hour. i know that maya is soo much more than that.

for example: you feel pain, you get a shot of anesthesia. to numb the pain.in life, we, instead of dealing with the pain we just like to keep giving ourselves these anesthesia shot. ultimately , we neither live to understand what true happiness is, neither do we live to understand that its all maya.

I have been always confused as to what to do with my life. because i wanted to pick a field that will give me a sufficiently happy materialistic life, as well as a field that will help me progress in my spiritual path. but it took this stupid fool 23 years to realize that it works the other way around. i need to pick a field which i am happy with and offer whatever that comes out of it to the lord with utmost humility.

All i can do is fall at the lotus feet of lord Krishna, and hope and prey that he will one day.............one day, remove me from this vicious cycle.

O lord Krishna!
Please save me, please give me the courage and the intelligence to reach you.
What ever i do, let it be an offering to you. Please let me progress and understand you, and let me serve you and my guru( Jayapataka swami maharaj) in every way possible. Please remove all this hatred that has crept into my heart.
UNLESS YOU WILL FOR THIS, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

Your aspiring devote,
Shreya

now and forever?

i am going to write this post. and i am going to write this post now!!

life is a bitch!! work is really something, it just makes you want to tear your stomach and ripp your intestines out, wrap it around your monitor and bash the living crap out of it!! so much for i am always calm huh! i am ...i really ****in am...... see it all started with work! i have been really over working myself this week. not me but my employers, whateva, and in the process i saw/bumped into one of my enemies, old old ones, the many many people i have cut off in my life. i can not tell you how many people i have cut off in my life. i do it for a reason, not just cuz im bored or anything. but this is just...anyway i just saw her thats it, and this hatred started building up like the vesuvious inside until i read the ****in womans blog today. and you know what it had?? NOTHING.!! im not being judgmental or anything. it really was crap, o i like this, i love ---- color, bullshit, and i mean the actual bull's shit!! but i still wanted to ...........aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! should i get married!!?? really, i am really thinking about this!! i really need closure i think!... i mean i cut off people so easily, but i don't think i deal with it. which is why this keeps happening actually, not with the others, just this one. but i think, what is it that i find so irritating or even intimidating about this girl????! Nothing, i treat her like crap, she wants to make up but i will of course never ever agree, so... im am the settler, so what the hell??! whats the problem!! what is it!!???????? any psychologists reading this page please leave your suggestions, everyone else: no thank you! i have enough of my own!!... anyway this point i am thinking. i will nevr have kids, i think! its just ...weird u know! and sisters...o god! where do i begin. selfish!! selfish , selfish!!! really i mean it, krishna c'mon some help here.!


you know how it is, between me and that girl.!! its like chandler and janice! every time!! i am like ....................uuuuuuuuufffffffff!!!!!!!! does work do this to you? do kids do this to you? do sisters do this to you? its not that im not strong, its not that i can not hate people, its not that i might need closure, its not you think that i have daddy issues!! its just that .............................. eduvum kadandu pohum......this will also pass............. tomorrow will be another day, another love, another hate! but a day it still is................

gyaan bull shit!!

KRISHNA SAVE ME!

Mooshu

The street which i live in is a relatively busy one. But some how it is the home to many stray cats and dogs. One such stray dog lives in my house, under my car. My cousin calls him, Mooshu. He is a this underfed (of course) furry brown and white dog. Hes got a black nose, sharp ears and eyes that make you want to hug him.

I have seen many a stray dog, but none like Mooshu. Why? because Mooshu is the only stray dog i know that wants the same thing, that rich lonely people also want. any guesses!?!

LOVE.

Every day when i step out to take my dog for a walk Mooshu will come running and jump on me pleading for my attention and a few rubs under his neck. He then will accompany me through the whole walk, walking briskly in fornt of me, as if checking if every thing is ok!

This happened a few times and since he stays in my own house out side, i decided to try and feed him some thing when every i saw him. So i tried giving him chapathi, nope he din eat it. Bread, yes he ate that once, next time onwards he did'nt . Biscuit nope, burger nope, pizza crust, nope. Fine you would think he would at least drink water right!? but nooo...

The dog just did'nt want anything. All he wanted was for me to pet him and give him 5 mins of my day. these days he sits outside my front door all evening (which my mom hates of course) hoping i will come out.

When i do, i just cant go with out petting him. So gentle and so affectionate he is. Even for a few seconds i stop petting him, he'll immediately start nudging my fingers. When i open my car door once i get back home, he almost jumps into my car in full excitement.

Some times all people need is love. Once you give them love then they start expecting it and more, and it goes on and on. It is very difficult to satisfy any human being who craves for anything emotional, because not matter how much you do or what you do, it will never be enough. But with animals, you can do the same thing or give the same thing for 10 years and they'll still be happy and want nothing more. In return they will only give you their life!

Talk about fashion

Talk about fashion
Originally uploaded by shreya zazu

One of my favorite pictures ...this when Lakshmi was posing for me ;-) o and she's wearing beautiful silver golisu's (anklets) ..Lakshmi is the elephant at the Manakula Vinayakar temple at Pondicherry.

UNDERSTANDING DEVI

We see Devi in all kinds of ways today, we see her in a wooden shrine, in a brass image. See her as hilltop in gwahati , see her in Kolkatta’s kalighat in her fierce form, in Tibet as the bizarre figure riding a wild ass, in Nepal as a beautiful living child dressed in red…all of them address Devi as maa…the mother who protects them from everything!

There would be more than a thousand names for Devi because each of her temples go by a different names and many times her name is what that village or that city gets called by like Roma for Rome, Athena for Athens, Mumbai for Mumba Devi, Calcutta for Kali ka katta(seat of kali).
When it comes to worshiping her, it happens from just painting a rock to doing elaborate orthodox rituals. In Nepal they belive that the goddess resides in the kumari’s(virgins), and the royal kumari’s bless the king every year. The very form Devi is given is to receive darshan….as the act of seeing is a transfer of grace. The Vishnu samhita talkes about imagery and how important it is to have an image to help your mind concentrate on it.

Lawrence babb’s study is very interesting as he studies the fact that he says that the Devi is soo beautiful the demons don’t want to fight her but she on the other hand tells them that she will marry only the one that fights her in battle. She is the virgin, destructive and she is always victorious. He says that acts of destructions is ok as long as they bring order afterwards.

One must also understand that mother goddess are there for nurturing their devotes rather than child bearing. Non of the goddess such as Lakshmi or Saraswathy ever bore children. Parvathi had Skanda and Ganesh but never bore them in her womb.

DEVI DOWN THE AGES

A large number or crudely fashioned female clay figures were found from the Indus civilization which was at its peak from 2600-1900 B.C. The dominance of such terra-cotta figures among the material remains from these cultures and the absence of male deities suggests the importance of the feminine goddess during that time. Although when the Aryans dominated north India, they introduced the Vedas which is a very male dominated scripture and that is how society changed to becomes overwhelmingly masculine. Post Veda literature such as the Upanishads still continues to support and propagate the made oriented tradition, although the worship of mother goddess was still present it lay low.
It is only the start of the current era that witnessed the rise of the worship of the mother goddesses. They were seen as dayini (wish granters).terra-cotta plaques of different kinds began to be made. Lakshmi the goddess of wealth was first goddess to be portrayed she is also called as Shri. She is describes as being as radiant as gold and she sits on a lotus adorned with jewellery and flowers.

During the Gupta dynasty, 320 A.D mother goddess were engraved on coins, on one coin Shri Lakshmi sits on a lion holding a cornucopia in one hand. It is during this dynasty that the worship of mother goddess strengthened a lot. In the next few centuries mother goddess began to be carved in stone mostly of the goddess killing Mahisha the bore. Dating to the 5th and 6th century we have well preserved images of the goddess, wither with a toddles or with a new born at hand, but it is the Devi Mahatmiyam that conceptualized the goddess worship. There was no turning back for the mother goddess after this!

In philosophy there are two theories that explain the worship of mother goddess. The first is maya and the second is the Brahman. The whole world is brought about by maya a creative potency with in the Brahman. Shankara used the term shakthi to describe shiva’s consort in the Saundaryalahiri, in which she is superior to Shiva. In the Devi Mahatmiyam Shakthi, Maya and Prakriti all come together, she is seen to pervade and sustain creation.
The 12th century text the Devi- Bhagavata Purana which took the tree famous stories of devi and announced that Devi as Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasarasvathi.

One of the earliest temples surviving Devi temples is the Ambika-Mata temple at Jagat, Rajasthan that dates back to 960 A.D. there are varied images of the goddess with Mahisha in different posed all around the temple, though the main image is missing.
In the south, the Vijayanagara empire worshiped goddess Durga before embarking on the war-related activities, just like it was done in the Mahabharat when Krishna asked Arjuna to pray to goddess Durga before he goes to fight and in the Ramayana when Rama prays for victory to goddess Durga before he goes to battle with Ravana.

Through out history even when the worship of mother goddesses did not gain primacy her many forms as a wish bestower, especially as
Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and Saraswathi the goddess of learning are always worshiped. Also the worship of Draupadi and Radha are worshiped in selected parts of India. Temples for Draupadi are found only in south India where as Radha worship is found only in the north. There are a number of village deities around India, in tribal areas there isn’t always a fixed iconography, like for example Vaseli who is worshiped in the coastal Orissa is simply represented by a rock coated with paint. While other deities like Kamakshi and Meenakshi are worshiped in a more orthodox way.

We also have temples like at Guwahati, where they worship Devi Kamakhya where she is celebrated in a sheet of rock with a cleft filled with water. Here worship is very different, she is offered animal sacrifice like for example anything ranging from a goat to a buffalo. The animal is brought to the temple is beheaded and the head alone is taken to the alter as an offering, the meat is then distributed among the devotees. A few times a year the water turns red indicating that the menstruation of the goddess very similar to the Chengannur Bhagavathi temple in Kerala., here again a few times a year, the goddess’s white petticoat gets stained after which the temple is closed for 3 days. The petticoat on the other hand is bought by the wealthy. Menstruation here is hailed as auspicious and a reiteration of the fertility and sexuality of the goddess.
New forms of Devi keep coming up some generalized like mother India and some localized like Vaishno Devi in the Himalayas or Vindhyavasini from the Vindhyachal.also deities like Santoshi Maa, unknown 25years ago! Santoshi ma became popular due to the popular medium such as cinema.

DEVI AND TODAYS’S WOMAN

Although the great goddess have been studies and worshiped in great depth it some how does not affect the status of women in today’s society. Today’s generation might reinterpret Devi as she is and try to provide them with a degree of freedom and power. It would indeed be gratifying to see women in India draw from the tradition of the mother goddess to redefine their status in today’s world.

References:

At the Feet of the Goddess: The Divine Feminine in Local Hindu Religion, Lynn Foulston.

Encountering Devi, Vidya Dehejia.

Devī: Goddesses of India, John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff.

Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Devī-māhātmya and a Study of Its Interpretation, Thomas B. Coburn.