Lights and Cheers!

Come December - the merry-making season starts. It is a wonderful season of lights and cheers. 

We ushered in the season with the Karthigai Deepam - the most significant festival of lights celebrated in our home with delicious eats like Appam and Pori Urundai (a sweet ball made with puffed rice and jaggery). Traditionally, we have always used oil lamps for Karthigai Deepam - not electric lights. The functioning of oil lamp has a spiritual significance. The wick in the lamp symbolizes our ego and the oil denotes what is responsible for the ego to thrive. The flame resembling the spiritual knowledge has the capacity to diminish our ego.

Travelling through the streets of Columbus, Ohio, I caught this colorful picture from my car.

My five-year old grandson assembled the Christmas tree and clapped when the lights were switched on.

I love the holiday season - especially the colorful decorations of lights spreading cheers all around! As I drive on the Lake Cook road, I am delighted to see beautifully decorated trees with strings of lights wrapped around them. There are homes decorated with colored lights that blink on and off. Some are strobing lights that move gracefully across the home.  

One of Chicago's biggest and brightest holiday traditions is the Lights Festival parade. This year, it was the 25th Anniversary of this wonderful festival. The Lights Festival officially kick off the celebrations of the winter holidays and usher in the shopping season. Snow or no snow, people brave the cold to venture out and enjoy the lights.

Life shines where there is light. Let us usher in the New Year with bright lights spreading cheers all around us.

Happy New Year to all!

On Growing Old

Last week, my entire family got together in Chicago to celebrate two birthdays. One was my birthday and the other was that of my grandson Vivek who merrily turned five. 

As usual, the birthday celebrations included a "Burra Khana" (derived from बड़ा खाना in Hindi meaning a fabulous feast!). It was followed by a visit to the Balaji Temple in Aurora. At the temple, someone admired me and paid compliments - surprisingly for my grey hair and old age! I wish I were really worthy of that compliment. 

A few days later, after a Harikatha program at the Lemont temple, a couple whom I knew well came up to me and said I served as a source of inspiration for them. What did I do to deserve it except losing more hair on my head and growing some wrinkles over my body? I pondered.

To some, growing old is a real burden. But then, growing old is mandatory for everyone. The option is how you deal with it. Everyone, at every age, have their own share of problems in living. Those lacking the means for happy living within themselves will find any age to be hard. And, what are those means? To me, they seem pretty simple - like being true to your self, pursuing goals in tune with your inherent strengths, respecting nature, leading a simple life, being cheerful and contented. 

Once I asked my octogenarian father how he would like to live if he were given a new lease of life. Without batting an eyelid, he replied, "Exactly the same way as I have lived." His response reflected the high degree of contentment he had in life, despite all the hardships he faced all through his life. In his career span of over thirty years, he was never late at work even once! He ate simple vegetarian food at regular times, always active but never went to a gym or popped pills. 

An example in contrast- One of my friends wanted his teenage son to pursue a rewarding career. So, he took his son for an aptitude test. The test revealed that his son had no ambition whatsoever and was ideally suited for retirement! 

These days, many people seem to be obsessed with exercising, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, following strict diets, doing yoga, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to lead a happy and prolonged life. I am not sure how much of these really help in overcoming old age. Old age is unavoidable. 

As a proverb goes, everyone is the age of their heart. Age is a simple question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.

Let me quote a nice poem by H.W. Longfellow:

Age is opportunity no less,

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Enjoy life, even if you are old!

Maharajapuram Mitra Mandal (3M)

There are different factors that inspire people to do something for their "Maatru Bhoomi." For me, it was a deep burning desire to trace some people of my ancestral village and unite them to perform activities that benefit the local rural communities. Neither me nor my father have ever lived in our ancestral village of Maharajapuram - a tiny hamlet near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu. So, finding people who hail from this village was like finding a needle in a hay stack! I tried googling Maharajapuram. It produced about 2,57,000 results in 0.61 seconds with prominence to the great singer Maharajapuram Santhanam who prefixed the village name to his own but apparently contributed very little to the village. I could not find any useful people contacts through google. So, what should I do further in pursuit of my desire? 

I thought hard. In the first place, what attracted me to my ancestral village? It was the small, beautiful ancient village temple of Vishnu Durga that I happened to visit for the first time some 30 years ago - thanks to the trustee of the temple Sri Ramachandra Iyer who kindly hosted me at his home in the adjacent village of Baskararajapuram. 

During my extensive travels, I discovered that people in India's villages are often united by the village temples. Temple festivals pull thousands, sometimes millions of people together. I witnessed it in the most recent Kumbabhishekam of a temple in Baskararajapuram. Besides being most colorful, such festivals provide livelihood to hundreds of local people who are skilled in various services. One way of helping the local communities is to perform some actvities connected with the temple. I felt there could be some people of Maharajapuram lineage who might still be interested in the village temple, if not in the village itself. 

My hunch proved right!  Through my network of contacts including the family members of Ramachandra Iyer, I found at least four people with Maharajapuram lineage seriously interested in renovating and maintaining the Vishnu Durga temple. In fact, one of them whom I had not met before was so good that he invited me to visit Mumbai and stay at his home. Another was my long-time friend and colleague from Greaves Cotton in Mumbai whom I met by chance after 40 years at the temple! Last week, we all met together in Mumbai and formed the "Maharajapuram Mitra Mandal"- an association of Maharajapuram friends - to work on our objectives. We decided to undertake the renovation of the temple and also planned to conduct a 'Laksharchanai,' a major temple event, in July 2016. Such activities are sure to provide jobs for local workers and further their livelihood. My fond hope is that we will discover more people of this village and the 3M group will grow to help a tiny part of rural India economically and spiritually too! Stay tuned to the group activities on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/509065412615138/?ref=bookmarks

There is a popular saying "Service To Humanity Is Service To God." To me, it appears that Service to God translates itself as Service to Humanity! Jai Durga Maatha Di!