The spray of Ganga
From Siva’s matted locks;
Cloud crown
Of Arunachala!

****

On seeing the above picture and the four-line intro, my good friend Srini has given the following Tevara Padikam of Tirunavukkarasar from the fourth Thirumurai, as a comment to this post… I am cut-pasting the verse from the ‘comment’ part, and giving it here…  With Srini’s help. I have tried to understand the meaning, and have attempted a rough translation below…

பார்த்தனுக் கன்று நல்கிப்
பாசுப தத்தை ஈந்தாய்
நீர்த்ததும் புலாவு கங்கை
நெடுமுடி நிலாவ வைத்தாய்
ஆர்த்துவந் தீண்டு கொண்டல்
அணியணா மலையு ளானே
தீர்த்தனே நின்றன் பாதத்
திறமலாற் றிறமி லேனே.

WIth great love for Arjuna
That day
You gave him (the great weapon)
Paasupata!

Ganga, of surging waters,
You placed
On your long (matted) locks!

O the One at Arunachala
Adorned
with thundering-clouds
As crest-jewel,
O, Holy-One (of Holy-waters)
Other than your feet
I know not any other way!

Some weeks ago…. Chanced to be in a stadium one evening… Saw a practice session….magic of cricket under lights… Royal challengers… Champions league…

A glimpse….

So there we were, climbing up the hill… Destination : The temple of Cow-protector Krishna playing the flute, Venugopala Swami temple…

Nice view…

**

“S” was carrying the flower basket on his head. Every once in a while, he would put the load down… And monkeys would come, as if drawn by a magnet. “S” was more than equal to them. He simply out-stared them… We had safe passage…

Soon, we reached the top and entered the temple compound. A stone Dhwaja-sthamba (flag-staff) stood tall near the entrance…

**

We came to know later that this flag-staff too was recovered from the ruins. The story goes that when the temple Kumbabishekam was done in early 90s, this sthambha was to be lifted and mounted erect… They had brought special engines and pulleys to do that, but all of that was failing… After a supreme effort, they somehow managed to raise it just in time for the kumbabishekam. The Prashna-oracle had apparently mandated this as a pre-requisite; that the flag-staff should be erect, for the kumbabishekam to be successful…

There are many incredible stories about Padavedu temples…

But, lets first have a glimpse of the outer part of this temple – the Venugopala Swami temple.

**

The idol was maybe 8 feet or so tall. Bewitching Krishna! The worship was slow and elaborate. Abhishekam of different kinds… We, the pilgrims, felt great joy, singing, chanting suktams and shlokams, and seeing the worship… One of the temple dharmakartas told us that Purattaashi month (around October) is special here. The first rays of the Sun fall directly on the feet of the east-facing Venugopala Swami…

Lets sample some of the stories about this temple.

This temple is said to be very ancient, predates 12th century AD (who knows by how many centuries more). This hill itself is directly north of the mystic peak of Arunachala. And their heights at peak are near-about the same. Pilgrims of Arunachala will know that there is a connection between Arunachaleshwara and Venugopalaswami, right there in the main temple at Tiruvannamalai.

This Venugopala Swami in Padavedu was quite in ruins till the 1980s.  The Lord’s idol and some of the temple structures remained, as did some small parts of the ancient fort.

Sometime around the 1980s, a man attempted suicide here, and some kids came and stopped him, saying that this is a holy place, and he should desist from doing such an act here. He, is then supposed to have decided to stay here, and do what service he could. At that time, a Mouni (silent) Sadhu is said to have come and stayed here. Mostly lost in deep meditation, he was fed once a day with rice-gruel by this other man. The Sadhu stayed here for 18 days, and then at end, he wrote a message on a sheet of paper. The message was that, if the people of this place would offer worship at this temple here, every Saturday, for 48 weeks, then before the end of the 48th week, someone would come here, and take the responsibility of renovating and consecrating this temple. Having given this message, the Sadhu went away. No one knows who he was, where he came from, and where he went…

So the Saturday worship was commenced by some of the pious local people.  Sometime around that time, Sri Venu Srinivasan, the leading Industrialist is said to have got some divine direction to renovate this temple, by a Prashnam method. As it happened, he is said to have come here by the time the 48th week ended, and announced his decision to renovate the temple…

He also was directed to renovate the Rama temple not far from the base of the hill. That is another beautiful temple, where Rama is seen sitting in Samadhi, and Hanuman is next to him, with a treatise-scroll in his hand. The temple story depicts the Muktikopanishad, where Lord Rama clears all doubts of Hanuman about Atma-Vidya (Self-Knowledge),  even as He abides in Supreme Samadhi…

Prashnam had indicated that the Rama temple had to be cleansed, for a lot of human bone remains were buried in one part… It is said these were indeed found, and removed…

These and such stories are quite common, indeed quite the rule, here at Padavedu. Gods and temples have literally been announcing themselves, and directing the rejuvenation of the place. There is a Siva temple, which had been dismantled and sold off many years ago… That Siva too, through Prashnam, gave directions, even to the extent of pointing out a place where they would find the utsava-idols buried, and indeed it was just so. We had the privilege of seeing these idols.. Golden Soma-skanda, what beauty… Absolutely priceless…

So it is that Sri Venu Srinivasan, and the TVS industry temple trusts, have really played a major role in the renovation of Padavedu…

Coming back to the Fort hill… We were at the Venugopala Swami temple… And then we saw a helicopter approaching…

*

It was Sri Venu Srinivasan himself. He was coming to offer worship to the Lord whose name he bears, Venugopala Swami…

We had an opportunity to have a brief interaction with him, and I must say that he came across as such a simple and noble man.  And to think that he is the head of Confederation of Indian Industries this year! He himself came over and spoke to us, enquired about us, and it was he who told us the Muktikopanishad connection to the Rama temple, and asked us to be sure to visit it. More power to him, and may his family continue the noble tasks of temple renovation and upkeep…

Signing off this post, with a picture where you can see a little portion of the old fort wall, right at the edge… My camera, seemed tired, and its eyelids remained half closed, and so that’s how the picture has dark patches on the top and bottom…

**

So that was a brief journey into Padaiveedu…. All Glory to the land of Goddess Renukamba!

… The tractor was not to be…

And so, we had tried our car… The car did go up some, but after that it was a losing proposition… The contours of the path, the loose soil and stones, the sudden twists – these and such rendered progress questionable…

At some point we got off end legged it…

Welcome, in this post, to a picture trail, of the hike up the hill…

**

At the hill top is the temple of the flute playing Krishna… Its a hardy hike… Green hills… The view is nice…

*

At some point, we get onto steps… These steps have been made recently… We were told that the first time when Sri Venu Srinivasan came looking for the temple, there were no steps… He and his team had to somehow make their way up treacherous slopes…

*

As we negotiate the steps, we pause and enjoy the beautiful landscape…

*

My co-pilgrim and host, “S”, is bringing a huge basket of flowers, to be offered for the worship of Krishna… He is a true devotee all right…

*

We stop often, to catch our breath, and take in the scene…

**

**** To be continued

“A poem is a little machine for remembering itself” – Don Paterson.

“Perhaps no person can be a poet or can even enjoy poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind” — Thomas Babington Macaulay.

**

Come, lets log in to this ‘unsoundness of mind’…

There was a time when I used to walk around everywhere with a certain book of poems in my hand.

Titled “I’m a stranger here myself”, it was a collection of poems written by Alden Nowlan, a Canadian poet. I liked his poems so much that I issued an ‘all-points bulletin’ to look out for any or all of his books. And some of my friends from his part of the world, empathized with this unsoundness of mine, managed to hunt high and low, and got me many of his books. All this was a journey of over two decades! How does that sound?

There are many other poets that I like too, but Nowlan was the one who struck a match in my wayward mind, illumining it’s penchant for unsoundness!

And I think the genie escaped the bottle when the new millennium popped up.

And since then, I have tried to make many “a small machine attempting to remember itself”, and the unsoundness made me call these machines as “pomes”…

And now,  a collection of these machines, “me first book of pomes”, has been published.

The book is titled “Seahorse in the sky”.

If you like the unsound of it, and are cranky enough to wonder about (and think of laying your hands on) “me first book”, then click here to take you to the book’s page in the publisher’s website…

And just in case you are wondering what a software engineer has to do with poetry, remember the WordPress motto – “Code is Poetry”!

Giddyap now!

Happy Deepavali to all!

And now, lets travel back a bit in time, and forward in space…

Padavedu (the current name-form of the town Padaiveedu), is a place lying between Tiruvannamalai  and Vellore. Its a short distance past Polur, if you are coming from Tiruvannamalai…. As we were…

We had driven to Tiruvannamalai… Had holy Prasadam at Sri Ramanashramamam… Stayed the night there… And left at 5 am for Padavedu… An hour or so later, we turned off from the main road into a lane that takes us to the little town nestled between so many hills…

The day was Saturday… The first of Avani month… The previous day was the last friday of Adi, a time of terrific festivity in Padavedu, being as it is, the abode of Goddess Renuka….

When we reached the edge of the town, we found the road blocked by a VIP caravan, that of Lord Rama. The temple procession of the utsava idol of Lord Rama on Garuda Vahana was ruling the road…. We got down from the car and joined the walkers…

Here’s the Lord on the eagle…

**

Renuka Devi is the presiding deity of Padaiveedu. She is the mother of Parasurama, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu.  In one of his letters to Ramana Maharshi, Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni wrote “The deity I have awakened by composing Umasahasram is none other than Mother Renuka. She is activating the entire creation of the universe remaining as the essence of life force i.e, Kundalini power” Padaiveedu is known in Sanskrit as Kundalipura or Kundalinagara.

Below is a picture of the outer wall of the temple of Renuka… The month of Adi would have seen fabulous festivities here… Now, early morning, all is quiet… Except for bird songs…

**

The makeshift market by the side of the temple has just woken up, like a lotus in a village pond…

**

A temple elephant (of perhaps the Rama temple) walks about majestically.

**

Padaiveedu is a land of temples. At one time it is supposed to have had hundreds of temples… Ravaged by invaders, looters and time…

Yet, like all ancient Hindu holy towns, the ambiance of the sacred could not be rooted out. All it takes is a large lotus-pond with a small shrine by its side to radiate the sacrosanct. Or an ancient tree with a little shrine below… Like this one here…

**

We have come here, primarily to visit the temple of Venugopala. This is an ancient temple on top of a hill known to the local people as the Fort Hill. At one  time, the rulers here had built a fort on this hill, one can spot some ruins here and there now…

The Venugopala Krishna temple too was in ruins. But then, a good hearted industrialist, Sri Venu Srinivasan, took it upon himself to rebuild the temple and arrange for worship. Local lore has it that he was directed to this holy task by some divine oracle.

The temple is on top of a hill that lies directly in N-S line of Tiruvannamalai. The temple is open for worship only once a week, on Saturday. Also, the temple-site is such that it is quite difficult to reach.  The way up is a broken hill-path… Pilgrims have to take the local tractor-taxi to go up…

Picture this…

**

Not much place for us!

We decide to risk it and drive up in our cab.  Our cab driver, however, is quite petrified, and is very circumspect as he cajoles the car up… After a lot of fits and starts, he finally can go up no more…

We have to foot it from here…

Happy hiking!

*** To be continued ***

]]> http://gkamesh.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/padavedu/feed/ 1 gjk pada-1 pada-renuka-temple pada-2 pada-3 pada-4 pada-5 pada-6 http://gkamesh.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/my-morning-mentor/ http://gkamesh.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/my-morning-mentor/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:01:42 +0000 gkamesh http://gkamesh.wordpress.com/?p=1042 ]]>

Some pictures from some time ago… Maybe an year ago…

Early morning, sometime around 6 am, I go up to the terrace of my house… My house faces east, and the Sun is peeping out, some degrees to the right, and is going a bit more right every morning… The season of Dakshinayana… Feels good knowing the course of the Sun by keeping in touch with the morning sky, rather than a pancangam… My good friend “S” says that I am enjoying the perks that was reserved for Rshis! Well… The morning sky charges no money… One and all can enjoy it for free…

Here’s a pic of how it was that morning.

**

Some surya namaskar, some other exercises, some pranayama… Life is good… And then, I turn around to my morning mentor, the Tulasi plant… Early morning is when she is at her prettiest… Twinkling with dew… This lady here is on a flower pot whose mud includes the sacred sands of Brindavana, and the Gita Upadesha Sthala of Kurukshetra…

I notice that she has a visitor. A dry twig like insect is hanging on to one of the little branches (marked by a red arrow on the pic below)…

**

Here’s another pic of the insect… Closer up… How well camouflaged is its form… Just blends with the foliage… A messenger from Krishna to Tulasi… Enjoying a dimension not accessible to the human senses…

***

This is one special Tulasi plant.

We planted it some seven years ago… God google opines that a typical tulasi plant lifespan is a few months… Maybe this plant is a special species… She is a real senior person … I do know that some rodents wanted to chew her to the bone when she was a baby… She survived all that… And is now a graceful, ageing, green, little Goddess in my terrace.

Here she is…

***

A week or so back, she left this world.

One morning, she just stood there – all bone. She has done this once before, and I had prayed fervently and poured holy water (the waters that have bathed the Shalagrama icons), and much to my joy, she had revived the next day, sprouting little leaves of green…

I tried that again. But no. Not this time. The next morning, the message was clear. That Tulasi was no more in this world.

Few months ago, on Varalakshmi  Vratam Nombu day, she too had been tied with a yellow thread that was first kept on a Krishna icon…  Now, that thread remained on the dry plant… Its yellow gone…. Krishna had taken Tulasi away, to Goloka…

This sankata caturti day, my gardener Karna came and planted a new Tulasi… And this youngster was straightaway attacked by rodents at night… I take it as a good omen… Ganesha has visited…

Thank you Tulasi! Saashtaanga namaskara to you, my morning mentor!

Shashi Tharoor is just the kind of man one wanted to see in politics. Educated, eloquent, experienced… A person whose integrity you can take for granted…

And then came his tweets… Lets jump past the cattle-class tweet and come to his Gandhi (the Mahatma) Jayanti tweet. Which started this debate on why we should observe a holiday on that day… Among other tweets, Shashi Tharoor has the following:

- “Vietnamese VP said ydy: in V’nam, HoChiMinh’s birthday is a working day & citizens are expected to put in extra effort at work to honour him.”

- “I want us to start the day w solemn commemoration of Gandhiji & then work, bearing his ideals & principles in mind”…

Nice tweets.

Tharoor is one among the many great Indians who have found inspiration from the Mahatma.

There is this other eloquent and educated person, who is considered the Guru of communications, and is a revered icon of the Advertisement field… He was on TV in a panel discussion about  Mahatma Gandhi (Note: the Mahatma prefix is just to clarify which Gandhi we are speaking of).

And the Ad-man, with folded hands, said that he considered Gandhi as his guru, and that Gandhi had an intuitive understanding of communication… And then he went on to say that even though Gandhi was a South African, he took to wearing Indian dresses at the behest of Gokhale, and that was quite amazing considering that Gandhi was at heart a liberal westerner (or words to that effect)…

Was the loin cloth of the Mahatma merely a “communications device”?

Not sure how many “liberal” westerners go around doing constant japa of the name of Rama.

Coming back to Tharoor and the tweet :

“I want us to start the day w solemn commemoration of Gandhiji & then work, bearing his ideals & principles in mind”…

Here goes…

For one, the Mahatma would not have stayed in a five-star hotel. He would not have done that, for he was frugal with his spending. He would take the least expensive option,  a post card rather than an inland letter, a third-class train ticket rather then an upper class one, a hut rather than a room (what to speak of a suite in a five-star hotel)… He would certainly not justify any excessive spend saying “it was my money that i spent”, and he would not insist on “gym and privacy”.

So…

So, among thousands of folks following Shashi Tharoor, I too sent a reply-tweet:

“On Oct 2, politicians following the Mahatma’s ideals may fast, spin charkha, introspect and pray [if that is not a No-No ]“

But then they do very little of these things in Vietnam!

***

Ok… To end this post,  let me RT (retweet) (requote) words of the great Mahatma, whose last will and testament, written on the eve of his assassination, commenced with the following lines:

“Though split into two, India having attained political independence through means devised by the Indian National Congress, the Congress in its present shape and form, i.e., as a propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine, has outlived its use. India has still to’ attain social, moral and economic independence in terms of its seven hundred thousand villages as distinguished from its cities and towns. The struggle for the ascendency of ‘civil over military power is bound to take place in India’s progress towards its democratic goal. It must be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties and communal bodies. For these and other similar reasons, the A. I. C. C. resolves to disband the existing Congress organization and flower into a Lok Sevak …”

**

Now what was that again?

Couple of weeks ago, I had visited Kanchipuram.

In the evening, as I was walking in the Kamakshi Amman temple praakaaram, looking across from the other side of the temple tank, I was lucky to see the Sun reflecting golden, on the temple walls…. More golden than the two real gold gopurams (temple towers) behind… It was quite breathtaking.

Here’s a pic that I took of that, in my little cell phone camera… Click on the picture to see it better…  I think it would make a nice wallpaper for the computer…

***

Move aside MBO (Management by objectives), and ABM (Activity Based Management)… Move aside Drucker, Kaplan… The old order giveth way to the new…  No more do we need fancy Harvard gurus… Corporate leadership has found a new tool to whack the world with… Enter BBM…

The background is this. The Information revolution that swept across the world suddenly put the spokes in the wheels of the rising leadership… New technologies to learn, new systems to ride … No more shouting at the bourse… Computer algorithms, sophisticated quantitative models, new management jargon… Life was complicated for the rising leaders… At heart they knew, all this is bunkum… If you can manage to shout, you can manage to lead… But then, the knowledge workers were challenging the shouters… The shouters were computer challenged… The world was running on computers and bypassing them… What do they do, except set up a PMO (a couple of MBAs in a group called the project management office) and beat them to prepare the presentations… Even draft their emails… Good written communication, which was never a strength of the shouters, became a real spoke in the wheel…

Not any more.

BBM has changed all that.

What is BBM, you ask?

BBM stands for Blackberry based management. No more problems. The world is a blackberry. Management made simple. Instant and terse. Let the clerks clash over attachments (PPTs, excels, and stuff). The leaders will send simple oks, no oks, ‘we need this deal’, ‘Good, congrats’ kind of messages. Brevity be excused, as message is being sent from Blackberry. Anything that cannot be done with brevity, use the phone. Shout.

So suddenly, old style leadership has found the right tool for operational excellence. Have an eye on the whole world, scan the sky, and issue your lightning bolts! Follow that up by a long phone thunder, if needed!

Take a simple scenario… A new prospect in an emerging market wants you to sign an NDA if you want to bid for their business.. Legal department finds eight serious objections to signing such an NDA. The sales fellow in the field is jumping up and down. The Sales head at HQ moves into the act… Has a discreet word with legal, and clears the NDA. The Geo-head declines to sign as CFO has not personally cleared. The sales fellow in field screams “Will someone please clear this NDA? If we dont sign this, we are out of the deal”. The Sales head, who is out fishing,  loops with CFO, says “I understand… I ought to have cleared it with you… Yeah, I’ll send you a mail that I have spoken with Legal… Hey thanks!”. CFO says “Sure. With you I have no issue. But these sales fellows in the field, they will sell the company down the chute, if we let them…” CFO then sends an ok.  All this transcontinental drama, finished within the hour. Oh, the power!

Hail BBM! Throw away the computer. No more the need to keep up with Windows and office updates and stuff… All that is for the nerds!

Use someone else’s laptop, only when needed. To read an important attachment, like your personal credit card bill.

For all else, its BBM. Rrrrrrrrrring…