Return(ed) Gift..

I went to this family function sometime back and I came back with a stainless steel plate that had a label that said that it cost Rs. 8.. Like this there are numerous plastic and brass figurines of Gods, candle stand, cups or a blouse bit.

Now I dont believe in giving gifts unless it is to a loved one .. but a return gift just does not make sense to me at all.. Okay I can understand if u gift something to a person who has invited you to an ocassion thinking that the gift would be useful to them. But what is the reason behind a Return gift.

Okay lets keep aside the reason for returning gifts. Lets focus on the gifts first.

1. A Stainless Steel plate - Useful in the kitchen.V's opinion - I like things as sets and this one off thing is reallly odd...
2. Brass and Plastic Figurines of God - Show pieces in our showcase or can be placed in the Pooja room.. V's opinion - one is good.. but over a period of time they accumulate
3.Blouse Bits - Can be stitched as a blouse for a sari/ used as cloth for other such clothingV's Opinion - I hardly find people using these in a fashion conscious matching blouse society.. It is almost always recycled.....

Next question .. what do you do with these gifts..

1. Use them - well that was the purpose of the gift but this hardly happens

2. Return them - this is hardly done.. often considered rude.. keep it in the house whether u like it or not..

3. Recycle them - this is the most common method used .. People wait for occasions to recycle gifts.. But then u must be very careful to remember who gave u what and when coz sometimes in a conversation they might probe on the whereabouts of their gift and also be careful not to unknowingly return the gift back to the gifter..

4. Throw them - this cannot be done.. what ever it is they have also spent money buying these gifts....

I dont know why we must give a return gift and why people expect it.. not only expect it but compare their gifts..but then how else do u display your wealth and buying power and ur generosity...

Scratching my head!!!

Sometimes you feel the whole world is against you, that nothing seems to go the way you want it to go. that the sun rises only in te east and sets only in the west and not the other way around..

Hmm I was just thinking.. is it us who made the wrong choice and decision or is it that we are looking in the wrong direction and complaing that things are not going the way they must go?

It can be either or both the above... Sometimes we make the wrong choices and sometimes we are just off the target and wonder why things are not happening.. But how do we find out if what we are doing is right?

My Response

Can we recreate Tirupathi?

There can be no two exactly alike things on earth. So a replica will be a replica and I think you would agree with me. But the question is "Will there be the same positive energy seen at the replicas???"

I believe that the energy that we feel is prevalent all around us. It is just that we want to associate it to one place and one idol. If u look at it - a Dharshan at Tirupathi and Dharshan at T.Nagar( the Venkatachalapathi temple here) is the same.. (albiet more peaceful here as there is lesser crowd)

If you ask me, to recreate something like the Tirupathi experience is impossible for the experience is not just about the deity like Gils pointed out but the entire trip across seven hills, the Ram Bhagicha, the never ending queue, the sea of tonsured humanity, the telugu characters( as Vivek says "jelebi ya pitchu pota maadiri)and the jaragandis.

But to associate the energy that u feel at tirupathi is possible coz that is the energy thatyou feel when you are around the idol. To me I can feel the same energy when I visit the local Goddess' temple here.. So, does that mean that it is the deity that exudes the energy? No, it is my mind that associated such energy..

So now it is upto you to think and decide if there will be that "positive energy" at replicas.

Replica of Tirupathi

Read this article....

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/mmpaper.asp?sectid=4&articleid=85200622124046885200622122315

It is about building replicas of Tirupathi in various cities..
My Question : "Will there be the same positive energy seen at the replicas???"

PS: I will write about what I think after I hear what u have to say to this.

Food for Thought

Life is about choices where somebody else chooses for u and u just accept it. The best part is that u r fooled into believing that you made the choices....
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Happiness is not something u get when u have achieved one level but what u get when u learn to accept what life has to offer to u...
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I know really morbid thoughts .. I am back.. Will get back with a nice and lively post... Until then...

Attachment...

Since I have joined work, I have changed about 8 workstations/locations. But, it was only the last two shifts that I was a little sad about. Why is it that u get attached to a machine. Isnt a machine , well, just a machine? Everyone of them is identical , at least in office.. It has a dabba monitor, a CPU tower and a Internet Keyboard(Only in name .. there isnt any special button on it tho) and the configuration is the same...I dont know if it is the machine or the place and the people around u that makes the shift painful? . Even if the same people move with u to a different location, u still complain that ur old machine was better.

Machines, although a big bundle of wires, plastic and metal, are different . Some are slow, some are fast, some are dark(Black) while some others are fair(White). U r used to them, their little idiosyncracies. Like my keyboard had a problem with the control key.. and u know how it is if the control key does not work and that too for a s/w engineer..:D

I have often heard friends say, " hey my old machine was not like this. It was so sweet." Why a friend, my own old machine was damn slow. when I say damn slow I really mean slow. To open a word document it would take 2 minutes.. ( Well I got bored one day and timed it) But I still like that machine... why because it was slow.. I would just start an application and go for tea or go to my neighbour's desk for a chat and come back :)... But the new one was faster so that luxury is no longer there.. But yes this has its own advantages.. Its atleast faster...

Okay, I Know, You are wondering what I am trying to get at. Well, what I am trying to say is that we get attached to even inaminate things .. which seems very natural. This attachment to material things happens almost automatically. It isnt good but thats how the mind is .. it loves to get attached to "material things".

The Gita will tell u "Do not get attached to material things.. they will give u momentary happiness but u will never be able to get the complete eternal bliss that every person is looking for". But do u think that is possible?

Who/What is God?

Giving brings Happiness

Until now, I have never felt happy about giving anything coz when I give, it will ususally be something I cherish and I part with it... My dad always says, "Giving brings more happiness" but I always refuse to even give it a thought. Does it even make sense.. giving.. and bring happiness? definitely not. How can you be happy if u part with something that u cherish or buy something that u think.. I repeat think will make another person happy.Even if it is not something that is mine, nothing really gave me pleasure coz when I bought a gift, I'd buy something that none of us had and that would make me more unhappy..

But, recently, I gave a gift to a very close friend of mine. The happiness on his face when he got it, well .. I have no words to explain that. I felt happy too.. I felt like I had touched somebody's heart for the first time. Then i understood what Appa meant by, "Giving brings more happiness"

But there is just one thing I noted. It is not what you give that matters, it is the feeling with which you give it that matters. This time I wanted to give this present to him and boy, I have never been happier in my life about giving gifts to people. I guess I have grown up..... ;)

Impoverished Thinking

On an average day, the average person runs about sixty thousand thoughts through his mind. What really amazes me is that ninety five percent of those thoughts were the same as the ones you thought the day before.This is the tyranny of impoverished thinking.

hmm.. got me thinking....

(An excerpt from 'The Monk who Sold his Ferrari' by Robin S Sharma)

God's Debris

This is a book by Scott Adams. It is a very different book. The central theme of the book being a novel theory about God and other material and non-material things that exist or dont exist(which ever that is that you believe). The theme was very compelling to read so I picked it up. It is really really good. It has the easy flow of conversation, easy language yet manages to confuse you and then enlightens you. If you are open to interpretations then this is a must read.

U can get the e-book at this link God's Debris

Fuzzy Logic..

What is good? What is bad? What is right and what is wrong? What I think is good, may be bad to someone else and what I think is bad, maybe good for somebody else. There is almost never a clear demarcation of the right and the wrong or the good and the bad. This grey area is, I think, what most people exploit. But then again why am I calling it exploition. I dont know if I have to think about anything as good or bad but I think, end of the day, it should be what I like. I think it must just be the feel good factor for each individual that finally gives us a clear picture of right, wrong, good and bad..

Modernity - A new definition

What is modernity? Is it the way we dress? or is it in the way we socialize.. like mingling with the opposite sex? Breaking away from tradition is considered modern by some. But is this really modernity?

Well, I was talking to a friend of mine and discussing about modernity... and this is what his views were......

Modernity, in my opinion, is heralded by the coming of a new way of seeing the world. The world view in which we see clear demarcations between different kinds of identities.

Consider the following two examples:

I belong to a traditional family in a remote village of Tamil nadu. My family migrates to some place in Maharashtra. In my new neighbourhood, there is a temple of a goddess. This goddess is considered very powerful by the local people of that region. What would my “religious” mother do? She would visit the temple and pray there as it is considered powerful. Will she think that the goddess does not belong to her “religion”, because she has never worshipped her before? No. She wont. I would cite an example here. We here a lot nowadays about santhoshimata. This god I don’t think existed in tamil nadu till sometime back. It should have been some village goddess somewhere in north India. But what has happened now? There are so many people worshipping her in tamil nadu? Reason, we feel we are one people and don’t have any qualms in worshipped the “Gods and Goddesses” of “another” group of people here.

Now another situation: My family migrates to Mecca instead of Maharashtra. The locals there consider a stone in the heart of the grand mosque as sacred and powerful. Will my mother go there to worship it? Will she give offerings? No. Why, because it is a “muslim place of worship”.

Consider the second scenario with a difference. About two thousand years back. My family migrates to Mecca. The grand mosque still stands there (It is a pre-islamic structure). The stone is still there. It is sacred. Will my mother go there? In all probability she would, because it is something similar to the first situation. Why? The concept of the “other” did not exist then. An average human being from India did not see it as “alien”. Yes, people would still be others. But we would see them as people belonging to another village with another village God. Not as people of a different religion.

This is the change that modernity is all about. Differences always exist and will exist for ever. But the way we see differences is what matters. The borders have gotten more rigid now. They seem impossible to change. This is modernity. When one person thinks the other is incorrigible. When one thinks the other is wrong. The inability to think wide. This is modernity. The same disease is there in the “most modern” nation USA. The same disease plagues the most modern religion too. A basic intolerance towards what is defined as the “other”.

So far I was under the impression that modernity means breaking barriers. But this explanation that he gave got me thinking on what modernity really meant......

PS: These views expressed are just one angle of looking at the term "modernity".. each one has his definition and I guess I could write a book and still not come to conclusion on what it really is

Random Thoughts

Its been a long time since i wrote a blog. Since the time i have started working i havent realised how much i miss until saturday last ....After 2 months of hectic schedule and working for three weeks straight with no holidays in between, I finally got this weekend off. It was a day of rest and rest i did.. But while i was sitting in the balcony i saw pink flowers bloomed on the tree rite outside my flat. I wondered how i missed it this year. This was the tree we planted 4 of years back and it did not flower for the first 3 year. But bloomed last year . I was so thrilled to see the flowers then. And now one year later .. hear i am standing in front of the tree and not noticing that it is in full lossom. It is a pretty sight now. It has so many flowers that the leaves are almost invisible....That is when i realised that this working culture tha we have makes us mere Robots .. sitting in front of computers and typinginane stuff incessently .. What a life.. you only get to enjoy the small pleasure of life on pictures forwarded to u by some good soul...

But really we must all stop to think .. Is hat we r doing worth misssing so muuch?? After all we only have one life to live!!!

A quote

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."-- Erica Jong