Interaction : 29072020

Good Morning "Fighting Anxiety and Depression : Four Great Practices | Swami Sarvapriyananda" https://youtu.be/vzFtOOVQPmA This talk was delivered in Manhattan, US, four months ago (In March 2020) Listen to this when free. M G Warrier M 134 Warrier's Collage 290720 : Interaction A Interaction 1) C V Subbaraman A variety of issues are covered in the responses column. Interesting. Some issues relating to Sadyas have provided good reading materials. If we could bring back to our minds some good sadyas we had had the fortune to participate in, it would still bring some water in the mouth! It is true that the success of a marriage lies in the success of the feast, of which the "paayasam" is the crown. Our late beloved C V Nair (who retired as ED) attended the marriages of all my daughters and said to me, "Subbaraman, I have attended all the marriages in your family, I think even some of your close relatives might not have done this!". I agreed with him and thanked him for his blessings to the couples. On the marriage of my youngest daughter, In Thrissur in 2002, he was so pleased with the Ada Paayasam that he called me aside and took a stainless steel container from his car/taxi and said "I need the paayasam in this full". I readily gave it and also a Kasavu dhoti for him. After about five hours I got a call from him when he said, "Subbaraman, I gave the Ada to my nephews and they say that it is UGRAM!" I was gratified and richly complimented the chief cook of the day!. My many Thanks to Shri Shivram Shetty for remembering me after 35 long years. Remembering me is more important than my designation then which was Jt. Controller. (C V Nair is a sweet human being. He had a fairly good sense of humour. After a few days of his taking charge of Administration (DAPM) as ED, he said : So far I was fighting with Admin. Now I am searching where it is! When I visited Mumbai, I had occasion to go to his Chamber during that period with a message from DSR Raju. I think Vembu was his Secretary. Later I had occasion to work in a central office department under him. When he settled down at "Chellam", his house in Thiruvananthapuram, on a few occasions I have accompanied PRR Nayar and enjoyed his hospitality) On prayers: the tune is fine, dulcet. In the last line, however, the word should be Gurave Namaha and not Guruve Namaha. The Chaturthi vibhakti for the term Guru is Gurave. (Those who upload these on YouTube are not well-versed in Sanskrit. We have celebrity singers who didn't find time to understand the lyrics of the lines they gave voice for) Morning hours: I agree that one should rise in "Brahma Muhurat" It is so enchanting, calm, with some birds giving us the alarm to rise. Man is the only creature in the world who consciously tries and does defy the Nature. He not only does this to harm himself and his species but also to Mother Nature herself. Each person should set oneself how many glasses of water should be taken in the early mornings, depending on one's own constitution and physical needs. So too the qauantity and quality of food for BF, lunch and dinner. But each one should necessarily devote sufficient time to yoga and praanaayaamaas, which can be learned under a Guru. Of the three divisions - yoga aasanaas, physical exercises and praanaayaamaas, the last two are more important and should not be missed even for a day. Aasanaas help keeping the limbs nimble and flexible and they have a 3% to 5% contribution to keeping the body and mind healthy. Subbaraman 2) V Babusenan Sri Sankara became famous through his Advaita philosophy. Tangal Kunju Musaliar rose to wealth and fame through his Practical Advaita(the name of the book he wrote) much before the new management techniques were imported from the West. Musaliar made money through cashew exports and it is said that Central Bank of India opened its branch in kollam to serve him. It was this illiterate man, in the conventional sense, that founded the celebrated T.K.M.College of Engineering. Musaliar, whose mansion was in Kilikolloor, a suburb of Kollam, used to visit the town regularly on all Fridays for prayer. From the mosque, with a select cotery of friends, he would go to a building owned by him near the Clock Tower. On its first floor would be waiting for them the best mutton biriyani in Kerala, prepared by experts brought from Hyderabad, the citadel of this delicacy par excellence! Its mouth-watering smell would reach us in S.N.College, about half a mile away! If Droupathy were there, she would certainly have sent Bhima for the biriyani, but it is equally certain that it wouldn't have reached her. But I am going to talk about the biriyani of Murshidabad, as famous as that of the Nizam of Hyderabad. One evening, a businessman from Delhi called on the Nawab of Moorshidabad. They were old schoolmates and the Nawab received him with joy. Both of them went on sharing old memories for a long time and it was time for dinner. Gold and silver plates were spread on the dining table and then came ceremoniously a big embellished gold bowl filled with exquisite biriyani. The visitor took a generous helping while the Nawab took only a few spoonfuls. The visitor thoroughly enjoyed the food- even taking a couple of extra helpings. When the table was cleared, a servant brought and placed on it a small silver box, a gold plate, a silver spoon and a silver knife. The Nawab slowly opened the box, carefully took out with the spoon a white tablet and placed it at the centre of the plate. He then proceeded to cut it into four equal parts of which he put one on his tongue. The visitor, who was watching this procedure with amusement, asked: "What for this tablet?" "In order to digest the biriyani", replied the Nawab. The friend smiled :"Why? You have taken only a few spoonfuls." This biriyani is too rich to digest. Better you too take the tablet. One piece of this will do." said the Nawab. Before he could stop him, the visitor took from the box one full tablet and put it in his mouth. On the next morning, the visitor didn't get up. The tablet was so powerful that his whole body was digested! This story was told to me by S.S.Sanyal, a Bengali Officer who was with us in Thiruvanantapuram office in the 1960's. In all probability, he is not alive now. He was an excellent raconteur. He concluded the story with such gusto that I was tempted to believe for a moment that such an end was possible. Regards." 3) S Nallasivan Hyderabad These days there are event managers of all kind and to have functions to be the talk of the town, in the family be it a marriage, children's lavish birthday functions or for that matter the sixty year's Shastiya poorthy family gathering these Event Managers are a gift served on a platter, of course for the right price. I think they even undertake and guarantee successful last journey rituals in style. Now a days it is not as the joke goes, not the Undertakers who let one down last. But these Even Managers with the MBA tag. Of course one have to pay the price for the TPA aarangement. The bonhomie and personal touch is lost and everything has been reduced to commerce and the size of the Family's Balance Sheet. Here is one such marriage I attended with family almost a decade back. I had traveled from Trivandrum to Chennai with my wife and son to attend the marriage. It was the marriage of the daughter of a Gynecologist with a good practice and a husband who looked after her "business" and doubled as a driver when emergency calls arrived. In keeping with their present status the marriage was arranged in one of the high end expensive Marriage halls, with a Rs.5 lakh tag for 24 hours. To be on the safer side I booked accommodation for a couple of days at VOF, Koyembedu. We were there an hour early from the scheduled reception hoping that we would be received with endearment and affection as guests making it a point to attend the function from a far off place. The bride's grand mother was the only in a mood to receive us and we could have a chat as she was closely and intimately known to my wife since birth. Then the reception was officially called and those who were waiting in the massive auditorium started falling in line in an organised Queue to greet the newly married couple and present colourful and expensive gifts After all, gifts these days, have a certain bearing directly to your status. There were obviously heavy number of doctors, rather a crowd, both men and women, other staff, and the rich clientele of the Gynecologist, mother of the bride. First we thought, instead of joining the Queue as a formal acquaintance to greet and bless the couple, we wanted to make it special one and spend time with the bride who was at one point of time my wife's protege and had informal coaching during her school/college days. The parents of the bride too were not total strangers to us, we had met on many more occasions, visited them whenever we had arrived at Madras and even spent time with the bride's grand father when he was long bed ridden. Our long wait was proving to be in vain; if not for the busy Gynecologist, at least my wife expected the bride's father to call us to bless the couple by the "Green Channel" reserved for VVIP guests. Then my son suggested instead of wasting our precious time, we can walk to the grandmother of the bride and hand over the "Gift", indeed and expensive one, and for a change to get her blessings and join the Queue in the air-conditioned dining hall serving Five Course Dinner. Yes, it was a wonderful and very pragmatic idea and we walked to the old lady, presented the Gift and sought her blessings. As She belonged to the bygone era, some how carried a sense of guilt and made a feeble attempt to invite my wife and son to join her after the reception was over to her home, for old times sake. We thanked her for the kind and magnanimous gesture of the invitation and bade her goodbye. We had really, inhibition free, a sumptuous meal to our heart's content as we had arrived with the idea of staying back and have our meal in the company of the newly married couple and their parents. Now to our great relief, and mind at ease, we walked back to the VOF, Koyembedu though feeling an oppressing sense of being let down by the hosts of the event. So what? we failed to make it in the queue to bless the couple directly and had a Chat with the her parents. After all what mattered in a marriage function is the rich dinner served and of course the pompous and filthy showing off and flaunt their status and of course the size of the Gift . S.Nallasivan" 4) G Mohandas Chennai "Dear Nallasivan, In Rome you have to act like Romans. We have to follow this kind of procedure for marriages in Cahennai. You have to stand in the Queue to give the gift and stand there with couple to take a photo. Then you have to go to the Dining Hall yourself. Nobody will come request you to take lunch or dinner. For the First time in Madras I attended an evening reception held in a School Ground. I knew the groom well . He was at the entrance and requested me to have the tea and showed me the way. I went to the open ground and took a vacant seat and waited for some time. Nobody cared to watch whether the tiffin was being served to all. After some time I left the place without taking tiffin. When I took leave from the groom he just enquired whether I had tea. I told him 'Yes" and left. In big marriages nowadays the Event Manger appoints young ladies in Silk Sarees to receive the Guests at the entrance. Even in the Dining Hall these ladies go round and enquire whether the guests wanted any item being served there or other help (like opening the water bottles etc) Love, G.Mohandas" 5) Dr T V Surendran Mananthavady Sri Babusenan's post on delicacies of our Sadya with protocol for enjoying, reminds me of the illustrious Malayalam writer VKN's characters. Whíle reading, (VKN/ Babusenan's), your saliva secretion increases😋👍 B Blogs 1) AdSense https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/warriersviews/have-we-lost-adsense-23702/ Are we on the right track ? 2) NewGen https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/thatswhatmybrainthought/the-pedestal-23672/ Posted online comments : Dear Reader, Your comment on the article ' The Pedestal' is now live on timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog. ' great article. the piercing language in which it\'s written, impressed me. here the theme is somewhat restricted to \"gender\" issues and family. but the message need to be taken in a wider sense. yes, we need to extend this to leadership in all walks of life. any leader who detatches the team and claims supremacy, in the long run, harms the game.' To reply to this comment , or see the whole conversation, click here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Regards, Team TOI C Nostalgia https://indianexpress.com/photos/trending-gallery/old-advertisement-posters-sharmila-tagore-dilip-kumar-cadbury-fiat-4969435/ Remember?