Trekking Trails - Namada Chilume ( ನಾಮದ ಚಿಲುಮೆ) - The fountain of faith

Trekking to Devarayana Durga was this year's first and the only outing that too in the last week of the year. This was the first trek that we did as a family!

The drive from Bangalore is quite nice and after an hour of drive , we get into country side. But the scenery changes drastically about half an hour before the place when we will be rightin the middle of thick tress.

The trekking trail starts from a place called ನಾಮದ ಚಿಲುಮೆ, Namada Chilume.

This is a place where Rama and Lakshmana had walked down in search of Seeta. 

I wonder how much complex it would have been for them to walk in such dense and steep hills! I am amused by the fact that is there a place that Rama & Lakshmana have touched while searching for Seetha. May be it was a way to map South India!

The story is that Rama with his arrow brought water for applying tilak and this water is flowing here like a fountain ever since. This is the mythological significance of the place . 

Historically, Dr Salim Ali stayed here for many years for his research. The house has been retained as a memorial.

The trekking trail is steep but manageable for normally fit people. trekking time is approximately 3 hours. Trekking gears and forest guard is advised.

This is Namada chilume

Dr.Salim Ali stayed here

Picture at the peak

Reaching a peaceful place after a hard trek is so wonderful. After 2020's hard trek, 2021 will be just that..

Peaceful and Wonderful!

Hole in the wall shop - Shetty Angadi - ಶೆಟ್ಟರ ಅಂಗಡಿ

This year during the lockdown and later also saw a rise general stores or pretty shops. Largely due to the fact that it allowed social distancing naturally. MM calls them as hole in wall shops.

I am very happy about it as one I never liked the impersonal Malls and two I loved the relationships that are built at such shops.

One of such ordinary yet very unique shop was the general stores at Hassan. While growing up in 80's , I visited this shop almost daily for varied reasons. We used to call it as shettara angadi (ಶೆಟ್ಟರ ಅಂಗಡಿ).

It was run by father son duo. May be I never knew the name of the shop or the shop keepers. Though it was a 8×6 ft shop but had commodities more than a BDA complex. This shop was frequented by children and grown ups alike. It was a Miniature Super Store.

1. They sold chocolates of those days - Shama cholcolate, peppermints, neembu chocolates, haalkova(ಹಾಲ್ಕೋವ), kadle mitayi(ಕಡ್ಲೆ ಮಿಠಾಯಿ) etc.

2. Bun gulkan was another best seller.

3. Condiments of all kinds.

4. It was a small library. May be the first library I visited as a child. They had many kannada novels of Anupama Niranjana, Usha Navarathnaram and many others. Magazines like Sudha, Taranga, Prajamata etc. Mostly ladies would rent them. I had rented few Anupama Niranjana novels from here.

5. Then it was a Savings Bank too. They had a card  something like a post card with small circular prints of coin denominations for 10, 25, 50 paise. May be even for 1Rs.

All of our siblings had a card each and wherever we get any coin, we will run and give it to the shop and get it marked on the card. When the card is full which is  probably ₹ 25 or ₹50, we collected the money with a lot of pride and happiness.

Now I realise that it was a smart way of collecting coins needed for the day to day trade at the shop. But as a by product this taught me joy of savings at an early age. 

Life Hack Series - Being Tidy

I read a book couple of years ago which I can say has undoubtedly changed my perspective on many aspects of my life. The book I am taking about is " The Life Changing magic of tidying"  by Marie Kondo.

I have always been an advocate of tidying & organising home and office spaces. In my own way I always tried to improve it.

In this book tidying is not just an activity or an event but a new perspective on the life and the way live and approach it. Marie has studied, developed and executed the art of organizing the home and other living spaces in a simple yet a compelling way.

I almost talk and walk the talk about Kon Marie method to all my near and dear ones. Mostly to my sister who nodded but probably never understood.

Yesterday while binge watching with my sister and niece, I randomly put the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Soon after the air at home became so soothing and as they watched the houses and people in the house getting transformed, I could see the change they were going through. Now I understand why they say that picture is better than thousand words.

Even at 10pm at night this is the way my niece folded her dresses in KonMarie way.

Alexa or Radio

This year we bought Alexa. My husband MM wanted to get it since I enjoy listening to music all the time and so the FM radio is ON all the time at my home.

I was excited about Alexa too. As soon as it was configured I started asking Alexa to play this and play that.I listened to all the Kishore Kumar and other retro songs.

Played all the new albums. Then made the playlists. Asked Alexa to play one by one..

Also asked her to play some songs randomly. Got irritated when she complained she can't find it! Then again added those songs to playlist and so on and on..

Liked Alexa for playing any song which just flashed to me but got tired of if she did not understand.

After couple of months of Alexa's arrival one day again I switched on radio and heard 'Kabira' being played on one of the FM channels. I felt there is a lot of beauty and a pleasant feeling in listening to something you love unexpectedly rather than shouting at Alexa!

Now I am back to FM Radio!

Hanuman Chalisa - The source of energy

Today is Hanuman Jayanthi. Hanuman chalisa is our constant source of energy all through this year. Everyday MM and I have been reciting it in the evenings. This is not just like a ritual but has given a structure to our days.

Reciting Hanuman Chalisa gives a lot of energy and feels as though the breath has balanced.

Couple of years ago when my LittleMM developed aversion for school, with uncontrollable sobs to get into school can and tantrums at school, it looked so difficult to manage the situation. It was the shear power of prayers to Hanuman and Hanuman chalisa that helped us to come out and now LittleMM finds school very dear.

बुद्धिर् बलम् यशो धैर्यम्

निर्भयत्वम् अरोगताम्

अजाड्यम् वाक् पटुत्वम् च

हनुमत् स्मरणात् भवेत् ॥

Buddhir Balam Yasho Dhairyam

Nirbhayatvam Arogataam

Ajaaddyam Vaak Pattutvam Ca

Hanumat Smarannaat Bhavet ||

 

Meaning: 

1: (From the contemplation on the character and activities of Hanuman) Intelligence (Buddhi) (to understand a situation), Strength (Bala) (to execute a work), Graceful Appearance (Yashas) (to please others), Patience (Dhairyam) (to wait for the appropriate moment and work with the appropriate pace), ...
2: ... Fearlessness (Nirbhayatvam) (to tackle a situation), Free from Disease (Arogatam) (to work with good health), ...
3: ... Free from Laziness (Ajadyam) (to be up and doing) and Skillfulness in Speech (Vak Patutvam) (to communicate properly), ...
4: ... (All these) becomes (one's own traits of character) from the contemplation on Hanuman.

May Hanuman bless us and shower strength,success,

fearlessness, courage, wisdom and oratory skills.

Oreo - My first pet

This year there were many firsts for me .. One of them is making a relationship with a cute stray cat which used to linger around our house. My daughter Young MM called it Oreo.

Oreo will come every morning and if she sees me only she will meow otherwise she will sit quietly so that no one notices her.

As soon as I go out she will come running towards the bowl which I have kept to feed her.

But once I take milk cup she will start jumping towards me to snatch from the bowl. Though it's been so many days she still can't understand that I will pour to the bowl. So I will have to pour few drops fast to brush her memory.

She comes daily twice or thrice depending on her hungur. I keep aside some milk for her everyday. It has happened that some days she has not turned up and it has gone wasted.

Interaction with cats is like dealing with small kids. Their tantrums also look very cute. Some days ago Oreo tried to come inside the house which we did not allow.. It created havoc and jumped, cried and screamed. But once she understood that it's not going to happen, it reluctantly accepted the fact and it continues to come to the terrace to have milk.

She modulates her meow for every thing I ask. She always amazes me!

Merry Christmas

Christmas has always been a holiday for listening Christmas choirs and eating some nice cake. I had never deeply thought about teachings of Christ. 

However, many years ago my brother in law during one of our discussions said that he is very much touched by what Christ has said - "Do not judge ".

This has remained with me from then on..I had situations where I had judged people and later realised how wrong I was with my analysis. Those people turned out to be great human beings and my dear friends.

So I beleive quickly judging someone or something is not just waste of time but also waste of opportunity..

Today again I remind myself of not judging others and to embrace everyone as they are.. That's such a free feeling!

Magnificent Mornings

One other firsts for me this year was to inculcate the habit of waking up before Sunrise even when I don't have to catch office cab.

I have always been a late riser. My ideal time to rise has always been 7:30 ish during non working days when I did not have to get ready on the morning for office cab. For work I got up at 5 am mechanically and be ready for the 6:30. Come weekend my natural lazy side will kick in and I will wake up only after 7.

This year since we started working from home, mostly everyday I woke up by 7, then yoga, login, work on address urgent things,  attend morning meetings and so on. Then take a break for bath, pooja and then only have breakfast followed by coffee. Breakfast was at lunch time as it touched 11:30- 12. Lunch at evening tea time that's by 3:30 - 4 pm.  Work will drag till 7:30 - 8.Then again calls which will go till 10pm. With all this hectic and haphazard schedule I could not spend time with Young MM at all. When her school is done by 1after her online classes then only my day would have started! 

Being at home my routine became random and rudderless. 

I needed to calibrate and do it fast. Only way to achieve this was by waking up early.

This was the trigger for my Magnificent Morning routine. I would wake up by 5, then after morning chores, read for sometime and then yoga for an hour - then bath and pooja followed by breakfast and coffee. With all this done - be ready for office work by 9! Hurray!

Waking up before Sunrise has a charm to it.. The quietness , dogs barks which pierces through it, birds chirping, the first call for prayer (azan) from the nearby mosque are really mesmerizing.  My favourite thing is to watch the Sunrise and see the world go from pitch dark to dim to brightness.. 

Indeed, waking up early has shed bright light to my lazier side!

Sitting with Sitcoms

This year also has been the year of Sitcoms for me. After about 15 years of break I have started watching series.. This time not on TV but on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The start was with Young Sheldon in March this year. I realised this was a rather short series only after starting with the other ones.

I was totally impressed with Sheldon, Mary Cooper and Meemaw.. the characters , the dialogues and the story gripped me. Me and my daughter enjoyed watching each and every episode of the first 3 seasons.

After Young Sheldon, we both were caught up with watching The Big Bang theory seasons one by one. It was a long way.. Watching 12 seasons was enjoyable sometimes, adorable many times as well as tiring a few times. I loved Amy and Sheldon all through the series..

Schitt's Creek was the next series which we started.. Six seasons of Schitt's Creek was mind blowing.I got immersed in life of Rose's and indeed learnt a lot from them..

Now it is the season of "The Office" .Last one for this but I guess by far the best.. 

I am looking forward to complete my sitcom obsession this year.  And we have about 30 episodes left.. Trying hard!

My daughter, I and now my little niece have got hooked to this show and watching it day in day out.. Let's see!

A Rare Celestial Event

It was a Jupiter Saturn conjunction on 21 December which apparently was a rare celestial event which happened after 400 years..

It was a big news on the TV and the media both for astrology and astronomy.

This made me think that isn't it that every day, hour, minute and second a rare event in one's life.. So much rare that we can't get that similar / same moment back in our entire life.. then why do we let these moments just pass by. 

Like we celebrate these Celestial rare events.. I realise now that we should celebrate and live in every moment with the consciousness that this is happening only once in my life! 

My mom's Facebook world

During the lockdown and later this year as there was not much happening socially, I decided to introduce my Mom to Facebook.

I thought this could be a good way to be in touch with her many friends and family. My idea was that she would be able to scroll through and see some pictures and that way be in touch with the world.

She had started using smart phone only a couple of months ago. I had shown her how to use whatsapp - type messages, pictures, download the images, videos etc..

Since she is not fluent with English she was not very comfortable. 

Well, I learnt how to use kannada keyboard on mobile and I taught her to use the same..

This opened up her spree in the digital world. My Mom became totally comfortable and at ease with whatsapp. She sent messages, wishes to the family and friends. Clicked photos whenever she went and sent it on whatsapp.. her interest was amazing.. Someone who did not even remember her mobile number.. Now became a Pro!

So after my first visit to my mom's place after the first lockdown ( to many firsts!), I installed Facebook and created a login for her and told her to get started.. showed her just few minimal operations  - to Like the post, accepting friend request, sending friend request.. Just this minimal things..

Surprise, surprise! My super enthusiastic and intelligent Mom took her Facebook time to a total different level.

She started with posting pictures of her garden, flowers and trees etc.. She even liked posts with emojis. She made many Facebook friends.It was fantastic to see her liking some of my friends posts even before I had seen them!

I recorded and posted my Mom's song and posted it and it became a super hit! 

My mom also many of our childhood photos and it was very nice to see the way she explored this..

Now, Facebook in a way is the face of social life for my mom! Isn't it amazing!

Life Hack Series - My experiments with De-addiction from Smart phone

2020 helped me develop many good habits and one real bad habit and that is addiction to my phone..

I got addicted to my smartphone and I had an urge to take my phone now and then look for messages, status updates, likes, comments and what not.. It wasted a lot of my energy and time.

I believe the biggest challenge of our times is to control the use smartphones , limit the time we spend on Facebook, YouTube and other social media apps.

My quest to get rid of this habit made me experiment with myself and challlenge my control over my senses.

I did various experiments and hacked it to some extent and these are the things which help me to do so.

1. Mobile Phone as far away from you as possible - When I do not want to be distracted, I keep the mobile exactly opposite and far from where I sit in the room. It should be as far as possible from your reach. I've also tried placing it in cupboards to avoid excessive use.
2. Disable all the Notifications - The notifications from social media such distracted me a lot and I would reach out for my mobile phone every time there was an 'alert tone'. With no notifications, now this urge is gone.
3. Sign out - After using the social media apps, sign out of them. I had to login again with the password to access them which brought down my usage drastically! Unfortunately WhatsApp does not give this feature.
4. Single Channel (for reaching out to friends & family) - I uninstalled all the redundant apps like FB messenger, Telegram and retain only WhatsApp as a way of communication.
5. Remove all the shortcuts for the social media apps.

Above helped me to limit the smartphone usage to some extent only..it didn't not completely take away my constant urge of taking it in hand and playing with it.. Then I found the this what I call as the ULTIMATE Mantra.

That is 'Monochrome Mode!’This is like the good old Black and White TV.. 

Reasons which are not known to me yet -the repetitive urge to take fiddle with the phone..  droped down to almost zero and  trust me it is Magic!!!

Reimaging the house

The one person whom I thanked whole of the lockdown and later this year was  Gardener Hanumantha. 

From a couple of years I started with reimaging our old house mostly from outside to make it look different from other houses in the neighborhood. 

One time when my niece LittleM was here and she told me that the entrance gate of all the 3-4 houses looked the same.. Same design and same color and it is confusing.. she surprised me with her observation which was actually true.. Which led me to the project of Reimaging.

My idea here was to keep flowering pots at the entrance and outside the house..

I did not know how to start since before that , I had not touched or watered a single plant!

After much search I found a person Hanumantha who was selling plants and other gardening essentials near my house. On one of the days in December about 4 years back, I got more than 30 big and medium sized flower pots and planters. We could only place non flowering plants at the house entrance as there was no much Sun light there. There were 2-3 big old trees on our road which blocked Sun light completely.

Though these were non-flowering these gave immense joy and much needed look to the house.

Just few days before the lockdown I thought of getting some more places mainly flowering ones for the terrace. Here there was ample of space and Sun. On one weekend I furnished the terrace with the samplings.

And then there was this lockdown!

we were confined to the boundaries of the house and with no social contact. Nevertheless we had the company of these lovely, tender and colourful friends..jasmine, hibiscus, kanakambara, variety of roses..etc..

Everyday I would water and see how much the plants have grown.. Is there a bud anywhere.. is the plant growing or not.. It also gave a wonderful view from my window where I had my work table.

These plants constantly reminded me of Hanumantha and his help with my gardening.. Be it soil, manure or medicines Totally, he helped us and my lovely garden be lively!

Rendezvous with Akshar Yoga on Facebook

I am someone who swings between utter laziness to deeper studies of variety of topics. On one such occasion of my laziness I was scrolling throgh the Facebook and got a notification that said    "Akshar yoga is live".  In an impulse I clicked on it and watched the yoga for a while and then "liked" the page. This was just the beginning of my journey on the yoga mat from the  lockdown days..

Lockdown had just set in and things had come to a strange point and whole world was wfh. So suddenly there was no more running around !

I was getting up when my eyes opened by around 7:30 and after morning chores will get to work.

This was before I followed Facebook page of Akshar Yoga. After rendezvous with Akshar Yoga things changed! Well for good..

Grand Master Akshar Guruji started his live facebook classes at 8am. I was supposed to be on the "Yoga Mat " by this time with about 10 minutes of walking around (टहलना) on the terrace.

I started to do yoga everyday with grandmaster Akshara without miss, though I missed several asanaas 😊

"Namo Adish" became new mantra which I leaned during the classes. After classes Q&A , Katha, Kahani by Grandmaster Akshar became integral part of my day.

I signed up for multiple other sessions which was on Zoom. At one point I was talking, walking, breathing, reading about YOGA all the time. I spoke to my family and friends about yoga, goodness of yoga and grandmaster Aksharji's classes..in some sense as Guruji says I became "Yogini".

As Guruji has said, Yoga and yogic way of life is a "Password" to unleash the universe. I feel fortunate to have received this password during this year and I am eternally grateful to Akshar Yoga! 

I seek Guruji's blessings to carry it forward. 

प्रणाम गुरुजी। "नमो आदेश"।

2020 - A year of PAUSE

This year has been rather heavy, yet so very essential.. Everything came to a standstill without any clue.. It's as though world took a "Pause".

When I reflect back, I feel if it was not for this pause, then I would have been deprived myself of so many things..

My routine in the past 20 years was hectic and packed .. get up at 4:45am, get ready, making lunch boxes for work, catching the office cab at 6:30a.m and reaching office by 7:30 am. Then like a clock - work and more work, attend meetings, lunch, tea and sit back in the cab to reach home by 6pm. 

Finish tea, go for a walk, come back by 7 pm and then attend work meetings + dinner. Sleep by 11pm..

In between catch up with young MM with her studies and school stuff. In short it was always Run..Run and Run..

Well! Even writing this is making me breathless… And think of following this routine for about 20 years..

In midst of this with not much pomp comes a change - Work from Home , social distancing because of the pandemic..

I got about 4 hours of extra time which I was spending on commute in the office TT.

This opened a lot of possibilities for work, health and hobbies..

My leap into Yogic life is only because of this pause.. As my Guru Grand Master Aksharji says it's because of the "ठहराव". He says to feel the effect of every Asana give pause..

Pause is powerful!

Come back.... After a D E C A D E

Today all of a sudden a thought came to me that I should have a blog of my own. This is not any new madness. I was smitten with this idea every now and then. So once again I was here with an idea for Blog. I thought through the day, came out with options for the blog title, possible posts etc.. I had a long discussion with my daughter who is a proud blogger from a couple of months. After a lot of discussion we agreed on a name and my daughter promised me to help with creating a blog. We decided that blogger.com is the best platform for hosting a blog. Well! After all this prep...we logged in to the blogger and what do I see? This blog page which I created exactly a decade ago.. that's in 2010. May be it could have been my new year resolution back then.. and like most of the new year resolutions which fizzle out after few days this also had fizzled out just after a day😆 I am amazed by the digital footprint is an understatement.. it’s not just that I found my long last blog but also it took me back the to the days when my daughter was so little and tender.. It's nostalgic. It was time travel for me and my life over the last decade just flashed in front of me.. Reflection in a true sense.. So if this is not a good reason to go back to blog, then what else is?