Warrier's Collage on Sunday July 9, 2023

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Sunday July 9, 2023 Guru Ashtakam By Shankaracharya https://youtu.be/PUCMVIlTMVY Know More : https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/guru-ashtakam-with-meaning https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/religion/festivals/guru-purnima-2023-date-time-history-rituals-and-significance/articleshow/101432483.cms Gu Ru is Ignorance Removal. Poornima is Full Moon Which makes living pleasant… Realised souls over a period Have set an example how our living Has to be .. Our thoughts are subjected to two things. Good and Bad in action. We fall a prey easily acquiring easily negative Ways of habits. But gradually we have to change just like Moon slowly and steadily Observing the rise of Moon till it becomes Full Moon . Our Gurus not only tell us but also practice By their disciplined..way of living.. Ved Yyasa is a living example without Caste barriers as a human born to be humane In action..🤝🤝🤝 Be Well, V T Panchapagesan A meaningful Malayalam song By Kavalam Srikumar, excellent picturisation അരിക്കൊമ്പൻ : Arikkomban https://youtu.be/k5dn4Xru3Pc Happy Birthday to all readers having Birthday during the week ending Saturday July 15, 2023. Ayurarogyasaukhyam 🙏 and Best Wishes for all. Happy to know that you are enjoying reading Collage. Nice Day M G Warrier A Cover Story Sitendra Kumar shared a love story : Why you buy books? Of books and all kinds of buyers Ranbir Parmar 'YOU cannot buy happiness, but you can buy books. And it is, more or less, the same thing.’ I read this aphorism written on a placard at an exotic bookshop and nodded in agreement. Books enrich our lives. And they do so even if we do not read all that are in our possession. I, too, have a disposition to buy more books than I can ever read in this lifetime. The Japanese word tsundoku describes this phenomenon of acquiring reading material and letting it pile up in one’s home without reading it. The Japanese believe that surrounding oneself with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know. I shall finish at least James Joyce’s Ulysses and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged before I die, I promise myself every third day. Continued at H 1 B Messages/Responses 1 Franklin Misquith Shared a poem I would like to go around our globe, Before taking off I shall hold on tightly to His robe, I shall also fix two speakers to His and my earlobe, Our flight will be smooth without my having to here and there probe. Our landing will be smooth, My fears, if any, the angels with their lovely voices will sooth. Our flight will be very long, All the way I shall sing a song, If, however, anything should go wrong, I shall sound the warning gong. Life in Paradise, Will be full of many a surprise, Therein much joy and happiness lies, Flying all around will be many an elf, goblin, gnome all dressed in disguise. C Current Affairs I Singapore Central Bank loss on the rise Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/singapores-central-bank-posts-record-annual-net-loss-8b16893e Net loss widened to 30.8 billion Singapore dollars (US$22.82 billion) for the year ended March from S$7.4 billion in the previous fiscal year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in its annual report Wednesday. Hindustan Times* https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/singapore-central-bank-loss-of-usd-22-8-billion-in-2022-2023-fy-monetary-policy-101688560720670-amp.html *Link shared by S M Sendil Primary function of a central bank is not 'making profit' : https://www.bis.org/speeches/sp230209.htm II Media Responses 1 Rupee should assert its value This refers to the report "RBI group suggests multi-pronged plan to internationalise the Re" (The Hindu Business Line, July 6). Hesitant approach to stage by stage full convertibility initiated during 1990's halted midway for extraneous reasons. The present initiative to internationalise Rupee, hopefully, will have a smoother journey because, as of now GOI and RBI are on the same page. Let's hope, this time around, the IDG report on making the Rupee find its deserving place becomes the step in the right direction to help rupee ascend to a level where it would be widely used and preferred by other economies as a "vehicle currency" as asserted in the report. M G Warrier Mumbai (Published on July 7, 2023) 2 Rs two thousand notes This refers to S K Gupta's letter captioned "Banks can follow RBI" (The Hindu Business Line, July 5) making a practical suggestion for banks. The revelation that major portion of the 2k notes returned came as deposits in banks is comforting and calls for a detailed case study in the context of media debates that followed demonetisation and the present withdrawal of 2k notes from circulation. A couple of quick inferences are : 1) Only a small percentage of high denomination currency was with common man who exchanged them for lower denomination currency. 2) Rich people were, for whatever reason, using two thousand rupees notes as store of value which need to be discouraged any way for obvious reasons. In retrospect, despite hesitant implementation, one feels, the 2016 demonetisation was not a bad idea per se. M G Warrier Mumbai D Vathsala Jayaraman's Column Pariharams : Vathsala Jayaraman A man errs in life and then looks for ways to cover the guilt associated with the mistakes. What exactly is the purpose of these rituals that you perform at the behest of half-baked astrological advice? Blindly following the astrological rituals may, on the contrary, turn you into a disoriented person, with your dedication to work declining with time. Astrology is a wonderful tool of ‘Karma Correction', which tells an individual which wrongs to shun and what to expect out of doing that. India is known as the cradle of spirituality for the world at large. But you cannot appease God by performing endless rituals or conduct astrological remedies blindly, though people indulge in that, wrongly equating performing rituals with spirituality. The Indian version of spiritualism is an ongoing, cyclical process instead of a one-time tradition. It is this attitude towards spirituality that has helped our society and our religion evolve into its present state through thoughts on spiritualism & philosophy. The land that we call India is filled with the fragrance of Dharma and Karma and the Indian concept of Jyotish is based on Karma and how to manoeuvre it. Unfortunately, today rituals are considered as a stand-in for spirituality/religion. Continued at H 2 E Babusenan's column Katapayaadi 'Amarakosa' is a lexicon-cum-thesaurus in Sanskrit compiled by Amarasimha who shared Vikramadithya's famous 'Navaratna' group with Kalidasa. Every Sanskrit scholar is supposed to carry in his mind this dictionary, which is a special feature of the language. India's predilection towards mathematics produced a large number of distinguished mathematicians including celebrated astronomers. In this context one will recall the joke played on our R K Laxman by Bertrand Russell. During an interview, the latter startled the former by saying"India discovered nothing"(Russell was actually complimenting India for the discovery of zero) Astrology that links human destiny with the movement of heavenly bodies is regarded by many as a non-science( by some even as non-sense) but its mathematical content is amazing. Most of those who handle this interesting topic do it effortlessly because of a very ingenious technique known as 'Katapayaadi'. The technique is based on the common experience that it is far easier to remember meaningful words than numbers. In Katapayaadi, the consonents ka, kha, ga ... are employed to represent numerals 1,2,3 etc. including zero. For instance, each of the consonants ka, ta, pa, and ya represents the number1. That is how it got its name. The daily rotational movement of the moon(painfully calculated by the great astronomer Vararuchi) an astrologer can easily tell you from Vararuchi's 'Chandravaakyas' by converting them to numbers and say with certainty how many seconds, minutes and degrees were the movements. It is Katapayaadi that comes to his help. Suppose you give the astrologer the long sanskrit word'Aayuraarogyasoukhyam' which is the last word of the great 'Naaraayaneeyam' of Melputhur. Employing the reverse process of Katapayaadi, he will quickly convert it to numbers and , after duly consulting an almanac, tell you, with a smile, that Melputhur wrote this word on the 28th vricchikam 762(Malayalam era). The current Malayalam year being1198, it was 436 years ago. Similarly, the last word in the dance-drama 'Krishnanageethi' helped to infer that it was completed in Malayalam era 829, that is 67 years later than Narayaneeyam, in the 17th century CE. Regards Bonus Here is a small poem of the famous Brazilian poet-cum- novelist Paulo Coelho, based on a Turkish proverb : "The forest was shrinking, But the trees kept voting for the axe, For the axe was clever and convinced the trees, That because his handle was made of wood, He was one of them. " The poem is suggestive of an ever-present political truth. When I saw it in a WhatsApp message recently, I was struck by its similarity with a four-liner in Sanskrit that I reproduce below : Kutaara maalinum drishtwaa Tharavo bhayavihvalaayaha Thathra vridhatharu praaha "Madeeyo naasthi kim bhalam!" " (On seeing a man wearing axes as a garland, the trees shook with fear. Then the old tree said : "The one among us is not there; so, nothing will happen.") The latter looks better. F Obituary : Artist Nampoothiri (1925-2023) https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2023/jul/07/artist-namboothiri-iconic-illustrator-from-kerala-passes-away-2592337.html K M Vasudevan Namboothiri, popularly known as Artist Namboothiri, whose iconic illustrations gave life to many mythical characters in Malayalam literature passed away at Kottakkal in Malappuram district in the wee hours of Friday. The 97-year-old artist who inspired a golden era of painting and sculpture in Kerala through his unique three-dimensional sketches was undergoing treatment for age-related ailments at a private hospital in Kottakkal where he breathed his last at 12.21 am on Friday, July 7, 2023. Prayers 🙏 G Blogs & Links 1 Dignity Dialogue Magazine After a gap of few years, I renewed my subscription for Dignity Dialogue Magazine. Till some 10 years ago, I was a regular subscriber and occasional contributor to DD. To know more : https://www.dignityfoundation.com/what-we-do/dignity-dialogue/ 2 Gold : Protect the value Rangarajan shared a link on Hallmarking https://www.news18.com/business/gold-hallmark-news-today-7849705.html 3 Retirement planning https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/warriersviews/retirement-planning-55609/ Excerpts : Your age group will decide the starting point. Say 30-40, 40-50 or Above 50. Age Group 30-40 This is the right time to plan retirement. There are different models you can try. Every financial newspaper/magazine and sometimes lifestyle magazines, off and on discuss retirement planning. Issue/product-specific guidance is also available from Investment Advisers. Factors which should not be lost sight of include : 1 Present Asset-Liability status, taking into account a) Share from ancestral properties that may or may not come to you. b) Present savings c) Loans, outstanding and monthly outgo 2 Monthly income, expenditure and surplus 3 How much to save? Save upto 40 percent of your monthly income depending on the availability of surplus after meeting regular expenses. Except in exceptional circumstances, we should avoid borrowing for saving purposes. 4 Active service Considering the present longevity, depending on the post-retirement activities, 25 to 40 years of active earning life is considered reasonable. 25 years as first innings, of you plan an income-giving second innings (like practicing as a lawyer, establishing a consultancy, remaining self-employed in any other manner) 4 My Blog www.warriersblog.com 5 My books 📚 Chasing Inclusive Growth: Reforms for Financial Inclusion : https://amzn.eu/d/eu6BNjn Some more books published by me are available at Amazon and other online sales outlets M G Warrier H 1 Continued from A During our travels, my wife has lost me many times during city tours, to be retrieved later from some forlorn corner of a bookstore. Being in New Delhi at the time of the World Book Fair a few months ago was an opportune moment for me. I could blissfully browse through books for hours together without fear of a forced retrieval. Strolling leisurely through exquisitely decorated bookstalls, I observed and overheard a stunning variety of book buyers. A woman, clad in an olive-green sari, said to her husband at a stall for Russian books, ‘Just look at those volumes in ashen-grey bindings. They will go perfectly well with the curtains and wallpaper in our drawing room. What do you think?’ At another stall, I overheard a bespectacled, middle-aged woman asking the salesman, ‘You don’t have a single novel (sic) by William Shakespeare. What a pity! He is the only English author I cherish!’ The real bombshell came from my wife’s friend accompanying us. She picked up a paperback and said to me, ‘Oh, it is by Mrs Dalloway. She writes wonderfully lucid prose. Have you read her?’ I stared at her face, then at the title of the book for a moment, and said with a wry smile, ‘Virginia Woolf? It is probably a recent novel by Mrs Dalloway — something about hunting and forests.’ She insisted on buying a book of my choice. Keeping in view her literary tastes, I cheekily suggested Boris Pasternak by Doctor Zhivago (and not the other way round). I remembered an incident from my visit to the World Book Fair back in 1984. When I was leaving the fair premises, I noticed a neighbour of mine, a karyana shop owner, holding a newly bought book. Reading the surprise on my face, he smiled. ‘You are right, sir,’ he said. ‘I have never read anything beyond my ledger and account books. But every year, I do buy a book on the horoscope predictions for the year.’ I cast a sideways glance at the title of the book. It was George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. 2 Continued from D The land that we call India is filled with the fragrance of Dharma and Karma and the Indian concept of Jyotish is based on Karma and how to manoeuvre it. Unfortunately, today rituals are considered as a stand-in for spirituality/religion. Let me tell you of a man whose wife was on the death-bed. He was asked to perform the Mahamrityunjay Yagya with at least 11 Panditjis (priests) at 9.30 in the night. Instead of going for that elaborate ritual,he bought a book of Mahamrityunjay Mantra and recited the same by his wife's bedside, without worrying even if his recitation or pronunciation isn't 100% correct. But his wife got better within two days of that ritual. This is, despite the fact that no priests had performed the Yagya for her. However, today, with evolution in every way of life, being spiritual today is misunderstood as being religious. Spirituality is considered to be synonymous with just elaborate astrological remedies and humongous rituals. Today 1. People feel that God would get angry if they fail to worship. 2. Offerings at temples have assumed the status of bribing the Almighty. 3. Devotees mistakenly think that God needs to be offered gifts. 4. There is serious doubt about who is being pleased with rituals and remedies – God or the devotees themselves. 5. Do people love God, or are they afraid of him? 6. Do people think that performing rituals give them to continue with their flawed Karmas? Undoubtedly, some individuals and astrologers consider rituals to be the over-the-counter pop-up pills to cure bad Karma as if they were curing a severe headache. But they are wrong. If you have seriously goofed up in life so far, it is not possible to undo all this with the help of just rituals. In such cases, rituals rarely work. Life isn’t so easy as to keep doing bad Karma but then run back to performing Astrological rituals. It doesn’t work that way! The intention of pariharams may be just to give solace and strengthen the mind to face the problem in a pragmatic way and never to annihilate the evil totally. Vathsala Jayaraman