Deepawali ...

Deepawali is a festival which is designed to celebrate the suppression of the Ego by the Higher Self. Man is plunged in the darkness of ignorance and has lost the power of discrimination between the permanent and the evanescent. When the darkness of ignorance caused by Ahamkara (the ego-feeling) is dispelled by the light of Divine knowledge, the effulgence of the Divine is experienced. 

If the darkness of ignorance is to be dispelled, man needs a container, oil, wick and a matchbox corresponding to what an external lamp needs. For man, the heart is the container. The mind is the wick. Love is the oil and vairagya (sacrifice) is the matchbox. When you have these four, Atma-jyothi (the Divine flame of the Spirit) shines effulgently. When the light of the Spirit is aflame, the Light of Knowledge appears and dispels the darkness of ignorance.

The flame of a lamp has two qualities. One is to banish darkness. The other is a continuous upward movement. Even when a lamp is kept in a pit, the flame moves upwards. The sages have therefore adored the lamp of wisdom as the flame that leads men to higher states. Hence, the effulgence of light should not be treated as a trivial phenomenon. Along with lighting the external lamps, men should strive to light the lamps within them. The human estate should be governed by sacred qualities. This calls for the triple purity of body, mind, and speech--Trikarana Suddhi (purity of the three instruments).

The inner significance of Deepavali is to lead man from darkness to light. Man is perpetually plunged in darkness. Every time he is enveloped in darkness, he should light a lamp that is ever shining within him. Carry that lamp wherever you go. It will light your path wherever you may be.

Courtesy: One of my friend shared this info and I could not stop from posting it here... 

Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

Meaning:

1: Om, Lead us from Unreality (of Transitory Existence) to the Reality (of Self),
2: Lead us from the Darkness (of Ignorance) to theLight (of Spiritual Knowledge),
3: Lead us from the Fear of Death to the Knowledge of Immortality.
4: Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

BitterSweet...

Kicking out the enchanting summer, came in the Colours, for now I was thinking yet another wonderful summer came to an end...
and the depressing winter, more dark and less light days takes in the pride dominating all the sunshine :(

But then the Autumn is a complete mood lifter - which gives me the sense of some happiness to enjoy the fall - the colours, where in all the trees like maples and oaks undergo a seasonal change...they are bright and ripened and before they wither away...!
Yes, indeed, its such a delight to see the golden, pink, orange red... the subtle colours of maples and oaks...blushing and smiling and giving away the last love for the year...

Everyday I walk down the streets from home to office, I admire in awe, the beauty of these trees and their adaptability to save energy during winters when there is less sunlight... for me who loves both science and colours,
this definitely made me happy and smile with glee... And then decided to vist, "Westonbirt Arboretum" before the winds roar high until the leaves fall off and the tree stands bare in the dark...

"Westonbirt Arboretum" - ranks number 1 place in Britain to visit the Autumn colours... This National Arboretum is managed by the Forestry Commission and reading the reviews about this place on net and also seeing the pictures on Facebook, I could not really wait long to go there...
It showed about 2:30 hrs of journey from where we live, its situated in Gloucester near Bath Road... but no matter the distance, I wanted to witness the heap of colours...and the very thought of it made my heart to rejoice!

So we started on a weekend morning by 10ish, reached there by 2 in the afternoon... within sometime managed to get into the arboretum , following the map we could see hoards of colourful tree... Started gazing deeply, could see the divinity in the trees...I was seizing every moment to capture the colours, really could not stop myself from engrossing in this fantastic beauty..! Words never make justice... I say, one has to really feel it by seeing it!

One particular path called, "Circular Colours" or something was spectacular...There were so many trees all of them unique and beautiful - Acer Glade, Japanese Maples, Birches, Oaks etc...
It was just colours and colours everywhere... As if God painted them Gold, Red, Pink, Gold... :)

If colours were one side, the other side was boulevard of tall huge trees... a really mind-blowing view... all I did was to stand there and let my eyes n heart have the fun!
There were loads of fallen leaves, loved (as always) the soft walk on these fallen Autumn leaves making rustling and crunching noise and loved the way it felt like -  a bit of cushion :)

In the midway we stopped, rested on a bench-chair had our home made wraps and the amazing home made Indian chai!!! definitely added and elated our trip of Colours, a complete treat to eyes!
Managed to cover about 60% of the reserve by the end of the day, as its very huge could not really capture it completely, but this is one of the best places I have visited so far, If you like colours, the smell of woods, the sound of crunching leaves - then this is the place!

Autumn is BitterSweet indeed! :)

Hearing Sita’s Silence

A very interesting article on Yahoo News - could not stop myself from posting that here...

Draupadi screams for bloody vengeance and we valorise her. Sita bears the brunt of Ram’s rule-following and she makes no sense to us. But Sita is not a victim, she is a sage. Take her away and there is no Ramayana. 

- Devdutt Pattanaik

I once asked my sister if, given a choice, she would marry Ram or Krishna. Her reply was predictable: “Krishna, of course!”

But he would not be faithful to you, I warned her, reminding her about Radha and Satyabhama and Rukmini. 

“But I don’t want to marry a man who throws his wife out of the house because people gossip about her faithfulness,” she snapped. 

But what if he never married again, remaining resolutely faithful to her despite family pressure, I asked. Is he not the only heroic god to be given the title of ekam-patni-vrata, ‘faithful to a single wife’? This made my sister pause and think. Finally, irritated by my championing of Ram, she said, “I don’t think he is the ideal man at all.” 

Who said he is ideal, I asked. “Well, everyone,” she replied.

That got me thinking. Ram is called maryada purushottam, which means ‘he who follows the rules perfectly’. He is not merely purushottam, or ideal man. That qualification of maryada is important to distinguish him from another purushottam, leela purushottam – Krishna, he who ideally plays games, referring to Krishna’s ability to bend and even break rules with a smile.

To try and understand Ram without Krishna is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without all the critical pieces. In fact, to understand any god or goddess in Hinduism, we need the rest of the pantheon. The idea of God, for example, cannot be explained without the Goddess. They embody not masculinity and femininity as is popularly imagined, but rather the mind and the world outside the mind – in other words, humanity and nature. Each complements the other. Every character and plot is a metaphor, and this web of metaphors creates a narrative fabric that reveals what we call today Vedic or Hindu or Indic thought.

 Most people, like my sister, prefer the rakish and charming Krishna to the stoic and distant Ram. But to me, as a mythologist, this seems odd because they are not two different people. They are both avatars of Vishnu, two forms in two different contexts behaving differently in response to two different situations. 

Ram belongs to the Treta Yuga and is the eldest son of a royal clan, obliged to uphold the rules of the kingdom. Krishna, however, belongs to Dvapara Yuga, a later, more corrupt era, and is a younger son of a clan that is cursed never to wear the crown. So we find Krishna defending kingdoms and serving as kingmaker, but in temples we rarely see him as a warrior: he is worshipped as cowherd and charioteer, lowly servant roles that, considering the caste hierarchy in India, are neither accidental nor insignificant.

If Ram stands as champion of the varna-ashrama-dharma (code of civilized conduct determined by social station and stage of life) that defines Vedic social engineering, Krishna challenges it from within, subversively, without openly confronting it (open confrontation is left to another avatar). Thus Vishnu is prescribing a system and at the same time warning one against it. This escapes the eye of those who are too busy worshipping Ram and Krishna, but it does not escape the eye of those who seek patterns in the many plots of the epics and the chronicles.

Vishnu is described as preserver of social order – the order that Brahma creates and Shiva destroys. All orders are based on human rules and values, and Shiva as hermit mocks human rules as unnatural, since he prefers nature’s way. But in nature’s way, only the fit survive, and the unfit have no hope. Social order is about the human attempt to create resources, to help the helpless and to create a world that does not favour only the strong. Hence, rules.

But rules have a dark side. And the Ramayana reveals it. Rules force Ram to go into exile so that his father, the king, can keep his word to his junior queen. This is best brought out in the line from Tulsidas’ Ram-charitra-manas where the father says, “Do not forget the great tradition of the Raghu clan, son: better to lose your life than go back on your word.” 

This tradition weighs heavily throughout the epic. Later in the forest, Lakshman draws a line around the hut where Sita resides. This line, which is mentioned in later regional retellings of the Ramayanaand not in Valmiki’s Ramayana, is a powerful metaphor for rules. Within the Lakshman-rekha, social rules apply, and Sita is the wife of Ram. Outside it, she is just a woman for the taking. Within, Sita is safe. But then comes a hermit asking for food, and the rules of hospitality demand that the guest’s wishes be fully satisfied. So should Sita worry about her own security and stay within the line, or should she do what is expected of a royal princess and feed the guest? Sita chooses the latter and pays the price for it. She is abducted. 

Later, the rules come to haunt Sita again. She may be pure of mind and body, but her reputation has been tarnished. Can she still be queen of Ayodhya? No, say the people. And so Ram abandons her. Rules that made Ram the ideal prince, the ideal king and even the ideal son, fail to make him the ideal husband. Or so we think.

The plot is even more complex. The rules demand that a king must have a wife next to him during the ritual of yagna. The people ask Ram to remarry; he refuses. He abandoned the queen, not the wife. He would rather have a golden effigy of Sita beside him than marry another woman. So he demonstrates his love for his wife, in a way, and becomes the ideal husband too, one who never looks at another woman except his wife while being true to his position as the rule-upholding king. Such fidelity for a wife is unseen in mythology.

Krishna breaks the rules. When he plays the flute, wives of other men flock to dance with him at night outside the village. And yet, this is pure. Why? Because it is all about others, and not the self. He does not seek them for his personal pleasure; he seeks to make others aware of their ability, and freedom, to have pleasure, despite the burden of rules. His focus is not tangible action that can be misunderstood, as in case of Ram, but of intangible intention.

In the Mahabharata, the kings of the land abuse the rules by upholding them more in letter than in spirit, and so not a single nobleman raises a voice in protest when a woman is being publicly disrobed – not Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, Drona, Karna, or the Pandavas. Everybody hides behind rules. This is what makes Krishna break the rules, for they fail in the primary objective of society – to help the helpless. A society that favours the mighty is no society at all. It is worse than the jungle – a warning given by Shiva in the earliest stories of the Puranas, when he attacks and opposes Brahma.

Hindu philosophy is all about outgrowing the animal within us. We can civilize the world around, but dharma is about civilizing the beast within, that predatory instinct that makes humans territorial and dominating.  Ravana displays this animal nature when he breaks rules and claims rights over another man’s wife, despite her protests. Duryodhana displays it when he upholds rules to gain access to the body of Draupadi. Ravana is a rule-breaker like Krishna, yet he is not worshipped as God, for he submits to the animal within him and is unable to show compassion for the weak and helpless Sita. Duryodhana is no Ram even though he upholds rules, because he is a pretender who upholds the law that benefits him and enables him to exploit and abuse Draupadi. These complex narrative structures
tend to be ignored, or even denied, in the pursuit of simplistic explanations about God and religion that were popular in the 19th and 20th centuries.

We valorise Draupadi as she screams for blood and demands vengeance, and not the quiet Sita who bears the brunt of Ram’s rule-following and decision-making. Draupadi makes sense to us, not Sita, for we live in a society where we want to be heard but forget that we also have to hear. So we scream our point of view and refuse to listen to anyone else, like the wounded Draupadi. (In the end she gets her justice but loses all her children.) 

Sita does not do that. We forget that she is the daughter of the sage-king Janaka, patron of the Upanishads. This relationship is not accidental: Valmiki is telling us something important. Sita is no ordinary woman. She is not just daughter, wife and mother. She is also a sage. She quietly watches the toll that cultural rules and values take on her husband. She watches how Lakshman expects his elder brother to follow what he considers to be ideal conduct. She watches how Surpanakha cannot handle rejection and crosses the line of propriety, and ends up playing the ultimate victim. She watches how Ravana turns his sister’s humiliation into an excuse to satisfy his own lust. She observes how people judge her silence as weakness, not the patient and affectionate acceptance of people’s shortcomings that stems from her confidence that they need her, while she does not really need them.

Sita hears her husband and herself and realizes Ram is Vishnu, the dependable God, while she is Lakshmi, the independent Goddess. She dutifully follows Ram when he goes to the forest, patiently waits for him in Lanka, and finally, quietly accepts her fate when he kicks her out of the palace. She has the capacity to bear the burden of all consequences. She is like the earth from which Janaka ploughed her out.

Culture, by default, is not fair. It feeds on nature, destroying ecosystems to nourish itself. Cultural delusion prevents us from recognizing this truth. No matter how hard we try, every society will have rules, and rules will create a hierarchy, and hierarchy will have its oppressor and its oppressed. To imagine a society without this hierarchy is like imagining a forest without a pecking order or a food chain.

Brahma struggles to create a perfect society but eventually succumbs to his animal side, provoking Shiva, who destroys his creation. Between the creator and destroyer stands the preserver, Vishnu, as Ram and Krishna – upholding and breaking rules, fighting wars with Ravana and Duryodhana, hoping that people realize that if they act too smart, disrespect Sita and Draupadi, fail to recognize the power of nature represented by the female characters of Hindu mythology, the demure Goddess will turn into Kali, spread out her tongue and consume the world whole.

What I liked the most were these two paragraphs below:

Ramayana is not the story of Ram. It is the story of Ram’s relationship with Sita and, through her, his relationship with the humans of Ayodhya, the monkeys of Kishkinda and the demons of Lanka. Take away Sita and there is no Ramayana. 

It is when she follows Ram into the forest that the gravity of the situation emerges. Sita reveals that actions can be provoked not just by desires or rules, but also by affection. She wants to be with Ram so that Ram is never alone. She reminds him that he is part of an ecosystem. His actions impact this ecosystem and all the events in this ecosystem impact him. Without her, he cannot demonstrate his dependability. Without her, he cannot demonstrate his sacrifice. Without her, he cannot demonstrate his love. It is she who completes him, makes him God. That is why she is the Goddess.

 

Source: Yahoo News

Image Courtesy : GRIST Media

Author: Devdutt Pattanaik 

This is a gist of his new book, 'Sita'

 

 

Perk, Kit Kat, Dairy Milk and Munch... yes! Gobble them up!

Just two lanes away from where we lived, was a a super store called "Anu Departmental Stores"...
I grew up in that area buying something or the other from that shop... the moment I made an entry, I was lost and was always fascinated to see all the items neatly and nicely arranged...

If somebody needed something from that shop, I'd always volunteer to go, just to seize the opportunity to gaze at the stores and especially the chocolates... they had a separate chocolates section...but of all what I loved the most was a medium sized glass box which had chocolates in them, where the opening was towards the shop keeper.. :(  I know! LOL
whenever somebody wanted to buy a chocolate, the shop keeper would open it so gracefully and slide the bars to the customers... I wish I could buy as many chocolates I wanted,... it was my obsession then, loved all of them and especially, "Perk", "Kit Kat", "Dairy Milk"and "Munch"!

Ha Ha ... I know, love for chocolate as a kid! can't be explained :)

This being the case, it was not just me, all my cousins were equally so addicted and loved chocolates...
There were times where we all cousins had tuff time to deal with moms when they forcefully shoveled their not so tasty foods into our mouths...
Horrendous used to be the scene, with great difficulty after completion...we all used to discuss, why can't people give us a plate full of Perk or KitKat you know as breakfast, Lunch and dinner
and we would happily eat with literally zero fuss!

No worry about the diet, no worry about the fat, nor the sugars! It was just the innocent love for chocolates!

One day afternoon after lunch it so happened that, as most of the weekends would, we all had gather around grandpa and were pestering him to narrate stories, (he was an amazing story teller...
everything from his mouth were like Golden lines for us! we all loved him!)... he then asked all of us, okie what would you like to do, if I made all of you kids invisible!?'

We were amazed by the idea!, (we were all within the age band of 10-11 years old)... there were zillion thoughts across all our brains... we were busy thinking, suddenly something sprang up to me!
I was so excited and thrilled to tell to grandpa what I would do... and I started saying,

Me : "Thata ( Grandpa in kannada), I will say first, what I would do...

Grandpa: Okie, will you tell us first my dear, okie go on...

Me: I'l become invisible, hmmm...I want to become invisible only at nights when parents are fast asleep...
And then, I would wanna go to "Anu Departmental Stores" through the closed doors...

Grandpa: with a confused look, (as why I wanted to go there) and then...

Me: Eat all the chocolates in the store until I get tired and also put the remaining in all the pockets and also in a bag and silently come home and sleep... and distribute the chocolates to everybody
and we will not have to have aunty's bad dosa... 

Grandpa had already started laughing at my idea.. without any more further discussions, he went to his room, fetched a 100 Rs note from his shirt pocket and asked us to go and get as many chocolates as we wanted :)!
We all were so over joyed, and super excited...
all of us wanted to go to the store... all 8 of us hurriedly went on to the store and really bought whatever we wanted...

Our joy had no bounds! we were truly a bunch of happy kids for the rest of the week!

Once when we were done with the quota of chocolates for the day, Grandpa called us all for a story telling after the dinner and said,

"So you did have what you wanted, now the lesson... remember, don't ever dare to commit a mistake knowingly, thinking that nobody sees or notices you, there is always a person who sees what you do and thats none other than you,
Don't cheat your inner, when you know something is wrong you should never do it!, however small or grave the mistake is.. mistake is a mistake once committed and could cost entire life...." 

and something more on that lines, which I don't remember very well...

Now when I recollect this, its so true what my Grandpa said...
I see the innocence in me(in my cousins or another kid in general) - as a kid...

But how adulthood with maturity and modesty teaches or imbibes so many other side effects,
probably if such a question was posed to an adult...I don't know how bad/selfish/greedy the answers would be! really...

Painfully Beautiful Indeed!

Ha ha ! Yes indeed this was painfully beautiful... 

I was there standing still, freezing cold wind breezing over me... I was standing silent and still... with no words to speak... only my heart and eyes could feel it...
It was heavens, almost a tear rolled outta my eyes! watta sight! A very very massive prodigious fierce river flowing in front of me... plus the huge locks of mountains behind the scenes of the river, kissing the clouds and melting them down... 
it looked like a layer of cotton spread over the mountain caps... it was transcendently fantastic! 
I was still and silent, my joy had no bounds.. I could feel the adrenaline gush coz I was so super excited too see this supernatural beauty... I had almost forget how biting cold it was ... No more than 6 deg Celsius... Now you can imagine how painfully beautiful it was... :)

This is when I realised few things or may be nature reminded me of certain things, the whole scene seemed to convey something to me...

I had heard from people on spirituality about controlling sense organs, you should not let them over rule you... 
and me always placing contradictory arguments for most of such conventional concepts... 
Its half true what they say, the complete truth is that nature has created us with all these sense organs to see, understand, feel things what nature has created for us...
without these organs we would have never ever realize the value of such an eternal creation... so is with life, we'l never know the value/worth of it until we do it... 

No matter what Advice and suggestions are, they are not the ultimatum, if one wants to do something the fire which is triggering the desire to try to do it should never be extinguished... 
go for it, do it if you fail don't let yourself down or unbalanced, stand up strong and come back as these mighty mountains... let the fire be still burning like this roaring and thundering River Ness!!!

It was on of the richest experience, may be a learning for the lifetime for me...
I have been travelling so much these days and its to nature where I get attracted and attached to ... and of course Nature is the most beautiful of all, so versatile and colourful...
where ever I go... though its the same greens yet so different, pleasant and so very beautiful... This was in one such trip to Scotland and where we halted for about an hour to get dissolved in the beauty of LochNess!

Purely and utterly divine!

All I need is some spice

Well, when something is leftover and when I don't wanna waste any food and I am bored to have it again, first thing occurs to me is to get creative and at the same time create something which is eye appealing and good enough to taste...

So all this happened yesterday, when there were about 7 left over Idlis... I was in no mood to eat them as is...and definitely not for Idly upma which most of them do - with Idli leftovers.. and no Fried Idly - as this is too oily, din't wanna go on the other side of healthy scale.... i wanted something spicy! :)

With all these thoughts revolving around my head while I was on the train back from office... Bang On - My brain struck - "What about Idli chat", okie now I started thing about the things needed and the execution,
cross checked if I had all there at home to make this one and it was a big Yes! I could not wait longer to get home asap and get cracking with it...

so here is how it could be made, of course you could customise as you need... :)

Ingredients/stuff needed:
-------------------------------------

2-3 spoons of Pudina + Chilli paste ( this can be made by grinding a bunch of pudina + 4-5 green chillies + half spoon of salt )
1 spoon of Lemon juice
Salt to tast
Finely chopped onions - 1/2 cup
Finely chopped Tomatoes - 1/2 cup
Finely chopped coriander - 2 spoons
Tamrind Chutney - 2 spoons (I used readymade chutney - you can use tomato ketch up instead)
Roasted peanuts - 2 spoons
Spicy sev/ deep fried gram flour noodles - 2-3 spoons
3 spoons of sunflower/vegetable oil


Method:
-----------

* Cut the Idlis into small cubes
* Mix the Pudina chilli paste and 1/2- 1 spoon of lime juice + 2 pinches of salt with the chopped idli pieces and allow it to marinate for about 10-15 min
* Heat a pan with 2-3 spoons of oil 
* add the marinated idli pieces - keep tossing them - make sure it gets roasted on the edges and on surface.
* After about 5 min, spread them on plate - as a layer of idli cubes
* Now sprinkle it with chooped tomatoes, onions and coriander
* Dazzle the tamrind chutney on the top 
* Sprinkle the spicy sev with the roasted peanuts on top

And there it goes ready to be munched! :) 
It was a good chat indeed!

Give it a go! and you might like it too :)
  

Big BANG!!!

It was a bright sunny afternoon, after giving my 4th standard final examination paper for Math...
I came home hurriedly, so that I can get some quick nap and start preparing for the next exam which was for Science - my fav subjects... as soon as I came home, removing my shoes, asked amma to make some curd rice n feed me as I change...
as usual got a bit of gyan for washing my hands and legs before I eat and a little bit of conversation went on as how I did the Math paper... I had done it pretty well ;), finally mom fed me the curd rice, the way I wanted.. :) and eventually took a nap...

All that was in my mind was to give the best in the next exam and get above 95 on 100... hot sunny afternoon, after having curd rice, anybody can guess how a 4th standard kid would feel when taking a nap under the fan on a bare floor with a pillow...
I felt something churning in my stomach.. as if something was forcing itself... it did hurt a bit here and there, I started screaming running to my mom saying that my stomach was hurting badly... in no time I was having a puking sensation.. wanted to throw up,
but what I found was a tree coming out of my throat I don't know from where the hell.. but yes it did have some leaves, branches... I could not close my mouth, all I had to do and I did was to look up and the tree never stopped, it grew and grew until the ceiling, the pain in my stomach increased and increased...I was sweating... I could not scream nor talk nor cry,
I was about to faint... the worst of all was, my mom being so calm, merrily in her kitchen doing some stuff...
- least bothered about the tree which is growing from her daughter's stomach, which is gonna kill her in few mins?!! :(

I realised that there was nobody at home, I was feeling very hot, almost that God has given me 2-3 mins to spare before I finally bid a big goodbye without giving my 4th Standard exams...I was feeling so bad for me - almost in tears, that I would never be able to become a big girl, do wonders - drive my dad's TVS 50, use an ink pen... wear high healed shoes ... they were all my tiny dreams
how could he do that to me - why cant he cut the tree and save me...
I could not scream, to bring mom's attention, nor I could walk... I donno if I was doing a balancing act .. to balance that bloody big tree... All I could see was this tree had reached the ceiling, no I did not see any birds on it chirping ... I could see some fruits... FRUITS!! Yeah.. fruits.. Now I remember, what a grave mistake I had done to myself.. indeed a grave one!
Oh no, the worst thing ever, I had swallowed an Orange seed the previous day...and I remember mom and dad and granny saying that there would be an Orange tree growing in my stomach!!! :(

Alas, I know nobody can save me now...the tree is so huge, oh wait... an orange falling from the tree right on my face...!!!
"Ouch!"...
I eventually collapsed and felt a big bang on face... I donno what had happened...Almost got up all at once sweating, and in tears, I was in a utter state of shock... to see a plastic ball which had hit my face, by my neighbour aunt's 5 year old son who had come to my home to play with me :P

Thank God there was no tree from my mouth...It was just a DREAM!!! I could now scream, I could walk, I can give my exams .. I could do everything!!! :) :) LOL... I got back my life - to do what I wanted to, what I had dreamt of... :)
Started jumping and dancing and went to mom and hugged and kissed her tightly... she was so much confused as what happend to me and why I was so funny... well I know what really happened ;)


Ha ha what wonderful days those were, full of innocence ... I still remember, from that very day, I was so careful while having fruits, made sure I had removed all the seeds before eating them and I never used to eat grapes which had seeds...
My sub-conscious is so strong, even now when I eat any fruit, there is an alert from my brain :P :P, 
I happened to remember this while having some punnet cherries yesterday night...!

Did it actually find me?? :( am running away!

Well you are all gonna have hell of a laugh at me, after reading this... its the nastiest thing which ever happened to me...

before I say what really happened, lemme ask you how it feels when there is a small bug or an insect next to you... how scared are you? or how cautious do you become?

Ok, what if it looks litte scary, something like a black spider or a thorny little worm, spiky cockroaches... I just feel sick!!!

I know all are creatures like us, but just cant stand them when I sense them approaching me, I always feel that I have an inbuilt antenna and whenever something like tat comes my way I go bloody crazy and always wanna get rid of it, either I make sure to grab it and throw out of the window or smack it down...

I have also thought about the sins I would be committing murdering all those spooky lil ones..! gosh! what to do It bloody freaks me out!!!

So it was a summer evening, for about a week was so keen to do some yoga and eventually managed to book a class that day.. I was doing all the asanas well, trying to be perfect... 

I wasn't perfect,but managed to be nearly there.. it was a session for about 2 hours.. time just rolled by, it was the end of the session, the instructor asked to go to shavasana - where you would lay down like a dead body without any motions, but just concentrating on the inhaling and exhaling of the breath... 

I was there in that position for about 2 - 3mins... was feeling really good about the whole session, by the time I was thinking ah! watta session...have attained the inner peace, 

no less than a min, I could sense something whacky in my ear... I thought it was my looped earring managed to get it out...but I could still sense something buzzing..

and there I was wild making all sorts of actions digging into my ear hole trying get that thing out of my ear... and it never came out.. I ran around the yoga hall.. 

everybody started staring if I had gone mad! Yes I was mad with my ear.. by then I had realised it was something crawling... sneaking down...disgusting feeling ever...

I knew its not gonna be easy to get it out, I almost ruptured my eardrums by digging n shovelling with my lil finger... nothing worked out, packed my bags and left the class... 

It was almost 9 at night, no GP clinics are open until then, all kinds of thoughts spun around my head while on the way home... what if the insect enters my brain n start nibbling it away...

Ghosh, I even thought of calling 999 - emergency service... but then managed to call a GP who was available - and she insisted to pour some oil and allow the insect to float.. and beyond that she could not help me...

All I had to do was to wait until the next morning to get the lil imp out of my ear... I wanted to get rid of it very very badly!

There was no end to tantrums - I cried and sobbed and my husband was helpless - he did all what he could do.. I finally managed to  get some sleep... 

the first thing in the morning I did was rushed to the local GP... and finally got the nasty rouge out of my ear... haa.. watta relief! 

Truly the utmost inner peace... no yoga gave me this!! Phew

The aftermath is so much that, I walk around very cautiously and am super responsive of any flying objects/insects and ants... this morning had the living room's window open and bumble bee buzzed in - seeming to chase me, and thats it,

I closed both my ears and started running all around and swearing at it... my husband warned if you keep swearing it might get into your mouth.. - 

I was zip locked and covered the blanket around me and sat quietly... 

Even when I sleep I have my ears closed one goes with the pillow and on the other my palm rests assuring me not to worry! bloody hell I'd rather ask my husband to gift me a pair of ear plugs... I still go mad, when I here a buzz around my ear!

The bug has finally and actually found me... I hate it!!!