My Son is here :-)

The biggest event of my life has happened. My lovely wife gave birth to my first child, my son on 16th July.

The feeling currently is a mixture of relief, ecstasy, joy, pride, along with anxiety of the welfare of my wife and my son. Both are doing well, though.

I'll expand on this blog soon, when I get a minute from looking adoringly at my son. And changing nappies ;-). Just wanted to get this in.

Festivals - Spirits or Spiritual?

Have been meaning to post on this topic for quite some time.

Basically, the point I want to examine here is - Are religious festivals about festivities or about the religious activities like praying? In other words, is Christmas about parties and gifts and Christmas trees, or is it about Christ and hence a time to remember the God and pray to him? Is Diwali about bursting crackers and eating sweets or is it about remembering Lord Rama and his triumph over evil and praying to him? Is Id about Seviyan or about Allah? The list goes on...

Most of the holidays, all over the world, are woven around religion. However, in today's world, they have lost their religious significance to most of us. For us, festivals mean time to celebrate and enjoy; or if nothing else, relax as it is a holiday. The religious part is just an excuse to have a break, have fun. Is that right?

Mousetrapped

I am mousetrapped.

Agatha Christie's Mousetrap is the world's longest running play, playing in London West End for last 55 years. Quite strange for a murder mystery, you would have thought that by now, the audience would have cracked the whodunit.

So here I am UK. Being a major Agatha Christie fan and a fan of live theater, I had to see this. So I dragged my lovely wife along to the matinée show as an anniversary treat [yes, that's my idea of romance :-) ]. I was expecting the theater to be empty and the performance to be just satisfactory, obviously expecting that the great actors would have moved on to the latest commercial successes and taken the audience along with them. To our pleasant surprise, here we were, watching the 22659th show of a play (see the photograph) and there still was a large enough audience. A further pleasant surprise was that we had bought the tickets for the upper circle, but the usher was chivalrous to my dear wife and found us a couple of seats in the front stalls. Too good.

But forget all that preamble. To have seen Mousetrap is an experience in itself. This is not a review of the play, for what can I say that has not been written already a thousand times. This is about my experience. First, for all those people who are not into live theater, get into it. The kind of involvement with the performance, the kind of connect of the cast with the audience that is achieved here is unparalleled.

So here we are, making small talk and waiting for the play to begin when suddenly, the whole theater goes dark. A lone voice on radio gives us a news that a murder has happened and the suspect has been seen wearing a gray overcoat, a dark scarf and a felt hat. One by one, the characters of the play keep on appearing, each wearing similar clothing. The plot unfolds gradually, and at every step, your mind is torn between following the clues/ red herrings dropped in the classical Agatha Christie style and observing the wonderful acting and expressions of the actors. Guessing the whodunit should not be too difficult for Christie die-hards, keeping yourself uninvolved and hence not falling for the red herrings will certainly be much more difficult.

I cannot tell you the story or the ending. According to tradition, during the final bows, the cast announces to the audience, "Having watched this, you are our partners in crime. So do not reveal the ending". Those of you lucky enough to be in London or near-abouts, do not miss this. Do not be bothered if you don't like murders or murder mysteries, Agatha Christie's were "crime-less murders", as a friend puts it, meaning that there is no violence or unpleasantness in the story.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying my status as being a "partner in crime".

Lyrics from Bharat Ek Khoj

सृष्टी से पहले सत नहीं था, असत भी नहीं
अंतरिक्ष भी नहीं आकाश भी नहीं था
छिपा था क्या कहाँ किसने ढँका था
उस पल तो अगम अटल जल भी कहाँ था

सृष्टी का कौन है कर्ता
कर्ता है वा अकर्ता
ऊंचे आकाश में रहता
सदा अध्यक्ष बना रहता
वही सचमुच में जानता या नहीं भी जानता
है किसी को नहीं पता, नहीं पता, नहीं है पता........

-----------------------------------------------------

वो था हिरण्यगर्भ सृष्टी से पहले विद्यमान
वो ही तो सारे भूत जात का स्वामी महान
जो है अस्तित्वमान धरती आसमान धारण कर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

जिस के बल पर तेजोमय है अम्बर
पृथ्वी हरी भरी स्थापित स्थिर
स्वर्ग और सूरज भी स्थिर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

गर्भ में अपने अग्नि धारण कर पैदा कर
व्याप था जल इधर उधर नीचे ऊपर
जगा चुके वो का एकमेव प्राण बनकर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

ॐ सृष्टी निर्माता स्वर्ग रचयिता पूर्वज रक्षा कर
सत्य धर्म पालक अतुल जल नियामक रक्षा कर
फैली हैं दिशाएं बाहू जैसी उसकी सब में सब पर
ऐसे ही देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

Easter

Happy Easter to everyone.

I received a church pamphlet a couple of days ago which asked a very good question - what is the significance of easter beyond the easter eggs and a good long weekend?

Of course, the pamphlet was to goad people to attend church on Easter, but that aside, it put me to thinking. Two thoughts. First - Most of our festivals today have lost their religious and spiritual significance and are reduced to being shopping extravaganza breaks from work; and as far as I know, this is common across religions and countries. This post is not about this. I'll do another post in a couple of days on this topic. Thought No. 2 came from a statement made in the church pamphlet - The true message of Easter is that by being reborn, Christ has shown us the way to conquer death.

What a beautiful thought! I won't go into the details of Christ or Christianity here, because I am neither a Christian nor a scholar on Christianity, my whole take on Christ being a tremendous amount of respect for him. But what a beautiful thought! Easter is the celebration of the spiritual life being longer, stronger and everlasting, if you have lived that way. Don't even go on the religious path. By spiritual, I mean, what you stand for; the essence of your life is your spirit.

If the essence of your life is great, the death of the physical body is just another event. If the essence of your life is telling people to love their brothers and asking them to be good to each other, your spirit will continue to live. If the essence of your life is to guide people on a way of peace and salvation, you will live on. Who in the world today is more alive than Christ?

It does not matter which religion you belong to or whether you are an agnostic or an atheist. This is not about traditional religion, this is about how to live. Christ or Buddha or Krishna or Mohammad or Guru Nanak are as alive today as they were when they were physically here; perhaps more so as they now live in billions of people around the world.

So Easter, my friends, is a celebration for everyone as the celebration of the conquest of life over death. So have a nice time, enjoy, and remember that the way to conquer death is not by living forever but by living "good".

Names

In India, every name has a meaning. My name, Himanshu (हिमान्शु) means moon. हिम इव अन्शु यस्य सः (One whose rays are cool like ice) is the origin. This all basically stems from the fact that most of the names have a Sanskrit origin.

Where it becomes interesting is that very often, its not Sanskrit but the adapted version of the original word that gets bestowed on someone as his identity. Don't get me wrong, there is no problem with this. This is the way languages are born and grow, by adapting, borrowing from other languages, twisting pronunciations and so on. I am a great fan of the enrichment of languages in this way and am quite opposed to puritanism in languages. However, it leads to some interesting things, especially in names.

Most often, the name adaptation is influenced by the local languages. A good friend of mine is named Suprio. As he is a Bengali, its pronounced Shuprio, as Bengali's have a way of softening their words pronouncing "S" as "Sh". It took me a long time to remember that Bengalis also have a way of pronouncing "a" as "o" (अ as ओ) and so what was being pronounced as Shuprio originally stemmed from Supriya (सुप्रिय), meaning very loveable. [Note: Don't confuse this with Supriyaa (सुप्रिया), which is often written as Supriya in English, and is the feminine version of the word I am talkin about.]

Then there were these two friends of mine in my high school, names Pramendra (प्रमेन्द्र) and Parminder(परमिन्दर). If I were to tell you that their surnames were Pandey and Singh, and you have some basic understanding of north-Indian surnames, you can surely match the names to surnames. I am not sure whether both of them, in their years of studying Hindi together, realised that their names both stem from the same Paramendra (परमेन्द्र) and that both their names are adaptations or abberations (अपभ्रन्श), one being extra-sanskritised while the other the Punjabi version.

The trends in naming people have changed. My parents generation were all named after gods. Our generation has mostly these sanskritised meaningful names. The trend for the next generation seems to be short and sweet sounding names. All my friends' children have beautiful names like Ansh, Yash, Jiya, Parth, Rahul and so on. Nice sounding, easy to pronounce (both for Indians and Americans) and nice enough meanings. Friends, the names not mentioned here are simply a sign of my age, not of the beauty of those names. I must commend all of you in naming your children so beautifully.

Finally, an interesting coincidence in names. My wife, Madhu's (मधु) name means honey/ sweet. Apart from the fact that I like sweets a lot, note that our names put together - Madhu Himanshu - translate to honeymoon.

P.S. - My wife reminds me that moonhoney doesn't mean anything, and that is an indication she should always be the first.

Happy Holi

होली मुबारक
ये होली आपको जीवन में खुशियों के रंग भर दे
Or to speak in English, wish you all a very happy Holi. May the festival of colours fill your lives with colours of joy and bliss.

Prayer

There is a book called "My conversations with God". Wonderful book. One of the concepts in the book is on the concept of thankfulness being the only correct form of prayer. I don't claim to be quoting the book or being an authority on it, after all, I read it years ago. I am just expressing in my own words a concept which I truly believe in.

God is all about belief. Some people call it realisation, but then all belief is a realisation in the view of the believer, so its just playing with words. God is about realising that there is no separate God, that all that I am is the physical realisation of the abstract form called God. Me, the physical form was created to enable the abstract God to experience one way of existence. Finally, there is no difference.

There can be only two states in belief - you either believe in God or you don't. The don't itself can have may states, but that's irrelevant here. So if you don't believe in God, what's the point in praying? And if you believe in God, then you believe that he is everything himself (excuse use of masculine), then you believe that he is the know-all and the designer and the progressor of all events and actions; and if you do believe this, what's the point in praying and asking for something? He already knows what you are going to ask, its after all he who is experiencing an emotion through you and hence it is he who is feeling the need for what you are about to ask. So why bother asking?

Then people complaint, our prayers go unanswered. That cannot be true. A true prayer cannot go unanswered. A true prayer is like God setting up a task for himself to do. Surely, if God sets up a task for himself to do, it will happen. What does not come true is a prayer without belief. What does not come true is a new-year resolution type prayer. When you make a promise to yourself to do something you are not really committed to, you never end up doing it. Similarly, when you pray without really believing in God, the prayer never takes the form of God setting a task for himself, and hence will never be realised.

A true prayer is a prayer of thanks. A true prayer says, "God, I know that you know what I am feeling and what I need. I also know that what I need will be fulfilled by you. You are the source and the end of all my needs and desires. So thanks for giving me these needs and desires, and thanks for fulfilling them.

And, by the way, thanks for giving me the wisdom to realise all this. Have a nice day, I'm planning to have one too".