Tirupur Kumaran

Marking our Nation's Independence day today, I wanted to share the story of Tirupur Kumaran who hails from Tamil Nadu.

Kumaran (1904 – 1932) was an Indian revolutionary and a staunch freedom fighter. . Kumaran was born in Chennimalai on 04-10-1904, a small town in the Erode District in Tamil Nadu. He was deeply involved in desabandu youth movement and participated in the Indian independence movement. During one of his march against British colonial rule, he held the flag of Indian Nationalists. The flag was banned by British rule. Therefore, police started assaulting everyone who had the flag and asked to put it down. But Kumaran did not bend to their order and held the flag upright. Policemen started assaulting him heavily, but despite their efforts Kumaran did not put the flag down. Finally, he died from injuries sustained from the police assault.

Even when he died, he held the flag up and did not put it down. Kumaran is revered as a martyr in Tamil Nadu and is known by the epithet Kodi Kaththa Kumaran – Kumaran who saved the Flag since he gave his life defending the flag. He attained martyrdom on 07-04-1932. His memorial is situated on Kumaran salai, near Tiruppur railway station. His life history and photographs are displayed here for the public The Government has erected his statue in a park by the railway station in Tirupur.

A stamp is also released in commemoration to his sacrifice.

Let us take this day to remember the heroes and of course heroines of our Indian Independence movement.

It is also important to pass this knowledge and spirit to younger generation to instill Nation spirit in them

Picture credits: http://dawnpages.wordpress.com

Story on Krishna's pranks

Shravana month Ashtami thithi (Thursday, August 9th, 2012) marks the auspicious day of Krishna Janmashtami, the birth day of Lord Krishna. Krishna's life is a store house of stories. While some of them sends a message directly, some has many hidden messages. This short story about Krishna's prank is fun to hear and at the same time, has a beautiful message in it.

Krishna was playing with his friend Gopabalakaas. He went silently to one Gopika's cow yard and released the rope tied to a calf and took it near the cow and helped it to drank milk. Seeing this, the Gopika went to Yashoda (Krishna's mother) and complained, "Hey Yashoda, your son Krishna's pranks are growing more these days. He released the rope tied to calf and let it drink all milk from the cow. There is no milk for the babies at home now." Thus the affected mother gave a pity cry. When Yashoda enquired Krishna about it, he told a simple statement with profound meaning. "Like this mother who worries for her child being hungry without milk, will not the cow worry that it could not feed its own calf? That's why I released the calf."
Emotions are same for human beings and other living beings. Through this prank, Krishna laid the importance of taking care of animals in the same status as human beings.

Lets share these fun stories with kids and more importantly try to behold these values in our daily lives.

Story courtesy: www.moralstories.wordpress.com
 

Guru Poornima - Story and thoughts

The Full moon day on Aashada month which falls on 3rd July, 2012 is the Janma dina (birth day) of Veda Guru "Veda Vyasar" and is celebrated as Guru Poornima. The Hindu culture strongly emphasize the importance of learning knowledge from a Guru and more importantly doing Seva (self-less work) for Guru as the foremost thing. The reasoning behind Guru Seva is to inculcate humility in the hearts of the Shishya (disciple), which is a requirement that enables the learning aspect from Sishya.

On this auspicious Guru Poornima day, I would like to share an incident from Life of Sri Krishna, which shows how Guru takes care of a Shishya both in terms of being strict and showing love towards his Shishya.

When Krishna was ruling Dwaraka, His childhood friend Sudhama visited him. They both were having friendly chat and was recollecting incidents from their childhood days at Guru Sandeepani's ashramam.
One day Krishna and Sudhama went to forest to collect dry wood as per the orders of their Guru Sandeepani. After few hours, the clouds turned black and there was a heavy downpour of rain in that region. The heavy rain had blocked the way back home and both the children (Krishna and Sudhama) find it struggling to find their way, as the roads were filled with rain water. Being afraid, both of them got hold of their hands and wandered the forest all night without food.
Guru Sandeepani not finding his Shishya's return from forest, got worried and went in search of them. After he saw both the Shishya's next morning, he felt bad on how much trouble they have gone through because of his orders. However, Krishna and Sudhama were happy to see their Guru and told that they were saved from wild animals and heavy rain because of their Guru Seva. Guru Sandeepani was pleased with their response and blessed them that the Vedic knowledge they possess would protect them forever.

This incident recollected and shared by Krishna to Sudhama conveys that while Guru is strict to his Shishyas, he is bountiful of love towards his Shishya at the same time. So as a Shishya, it is important to oblige Guru's orders, though we might not get the implied meaning behind their strict teachings.

Story taken from: "Deivathin Kural part 4" by Sri Ra. Ganapathi

Sensors in Nature

I am always interested in gardening and it is one of my favorite hobby to grow plants and flowers. I still remember the days when I grew "sanghu pushpam (in Tamil)"  (English name: Butterfly pea, Biological name: Clitoria ternatea) flowering plant. It was like my pet plant and I used to talk with it everyday.
While adoring the plants I also developed a skill to observe it closely and recognize the way they grow.

Now I have some plants in our yard and on close observation I found something interesting which I would like to record and share. It is about the plant "sweet peas" which is a climber plant. It took some days for me to arrange some stick lines for it to climb. But by that time, it had grown well and it seems was already in search of something to climb.. It can be seen from this picture how the tendrils reach out to see if it finds something to climb on.

So in fact, the tendrils act like proximity sensors and react based on some physical object nearby. Once these tendrils finds some physical objects like stick, grass, stones or other plants nearby, they curl themselves with the object and starts growing over them. Like this sweet peas plant whose tendrils have identified the nearby grass and got a hold of it.

That was indeed wonderful isn't it.. I am sure that I am not the first person to recognize this "search and hold" activity of these climber plants. But for me personally, it is interesting to observe them growing.

As a person who has learned some Electronics, I can say that the proximity sensors work based on the amount of light that fall on the sensor and react to the intensity of light. They have some transistors and diodes which does these kinda work. The climbers as proximity sensors made me think how they do this search and more importantly what ingredient in it is doing that logic?! (as equivalent to transistors or diodes)
Perhaps some one well versed in botany studies and has expertise might know the answer.
If you, readers have some ideas or thoughts about this, please do share them with me here.

Nature is full of wonders and I wish I do not stop just wondering, but go ahead to find the truth behind it.
And, that can happen only with God's grace - Nature's creator.

An oxymoron example?

Perhaps this post could be an example of oxymoron, but isn't the world full of oxymoron?
 
Time and again, events happen proving money or lack of funds per se is the most important entity for the survival of a company or an individual.. and so I felt worth posting this video again.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7rvupKipmY&feature=related.

 But hold on, that is not the only case happening in this amazing world. Look at this,  and those who deliberately pursue their interests shunning away the need of money.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzitB1xyoc

As the old lady reflects, "It is hard to convey the difficulty in living that way" and I could add that "It is also hard to experience the joy she enjoyed unless one experience it oneself".

Putting into practice - the toughest

I am always inclined towards ideals mentioned in Bhagavat Geeta, and "wanted" to practice it in my life. Especially the main essence "To work for the cause and do not work expecting the results". Though it is in my thought all the time, it seems the recent events proved that it is actually NOT. So what is that?

There was a idea submitting competition called IIDA in Tampere, Finland which invites ideas from students and researchers about product or service innovations.
The first time I had participated in it was on March 2009, when I just joined the college. Unfortunately I could not submit my idea & business plan within the contest deadline (as I started working on it only a week back). But gave it a try still by sending my idea a day after the deadline. The organizers told that it is not possible to accept it and promised to send feedback though. I also got the feedback as promised.

Again, I came up with a good idea  (in my opinion though ;-) to submit for this year (2012) contest and worked on it well ahead.. But this time I had noted the deadline date as April 14th while it was April 12th. When I tried to submit my idea, the form threw error.. Deadline over!Ah, same story again this time!
Still I sent my idea through email on April 13th and got the reply that mine will be considered. From then, I used to check often news and updates about that contest and look forward to results. I did this so often, that I got really obsessed about it.
I have neither worked on improving my idea nor implementing some prototype of it, in the coming weeks.

On the day of result, I found that I am not one among winners/runners. I did not feel bad, for I was not looking for winner/runner prize, but a platform or support from them to build up my idea and help me in implementing it.

My introspection later, made me understood that the obsession I had over this contest, had prevented me from working on my concept and try implementing by my own. Though I believe, in working for the cause and not results, I had not put that into practice. That was the reason, I wasted my energy in knowing about the contest news and results and did not channel it properly to the actual cause of my work.

I pray God to bestow me His grace and make me put the ideals into practice. In Sanskrit there is a word called "Anushtanam" which means, incorporate it one's lives. I am keep reminding myself with this word, which would hopefully get me to the right track.

MahaPeriyava Jeyanthi 2012

Today June 4th, 2012 marks Tamil month Vaikasi and Nakshatra (Star) Anusha is auspicious as it marks the Jayanthi (birthday) of HH Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi Swamigal also widely known as "MahaPeriyava".

He is one of the Matt Guru of Kanchi Sankara Matt. Though I could not meet him even once, I am drawn towards His teachings through various books and articles.
From my limited knowledge, I have to say that His teachings are far more simple, that He gives common man examples to explain many spiritual questions.

On this auspicious day, I would like to share with you two of such examples, whose mere simplicity will let us believe in the concepts He relate them to.

Once a group of His devotees came to see him and request him to send some well versed pundit to perform poojas, and other rituals in their city. They complained that the only one pundit in their location though he performs pooja well, does not know the meaning for the mantras and poojas he is doing. So the younger generation are not interested in taking part in those."
On hearing it, Periyava told, "Yes what they say is  true and and has to be acknowledged. At that time, a postman brought some posts to the mutt and delivered it to Periyava and waited for his darshan.
Periyava read some posts and asked the officials and the post man standing there, "All these letters have the word PIN. Do you know what is PIN?". They thought for sometime and later told that they do not know". He replied that PIN means Postal Index Number.
He continued saying, "Even those people who wrote PIN and the number might not know what does PIN correspond to. Postman though he delivers letters based on the PIN does not know what it corresponds to. However, if the sender writes the number correctly, it will reach the correct destination, though the sender and the postman do not know what PIN corresponds to.
Similarly, you might not know the meaning or reason behind these mantras and practices. But if you pronounce it correctly and perform it with Shraddha (determination) it will yield the result it is destined for."

This explanation clears the misconception, that it is better to abstain from telling these mantras without knowing meaning. This example clearly sends a message to follow the rituals laid out by our ancestors which provides nothing but good for us.
It is equally important here to quote that Hindu Dharma also encourages people to strive towards knowing the meaning behind these rituals as discussed in this post (http://meinall.blogspot.fi/2011/06/guiding-verse-of-my-life.html)

So while the first thing is to tell Shlokas with belief, further goals should be to find the reasoning by ourselves.

The second example is about preserving our Vedic knowledge and resources. MahaPeriyava elucidates that our ancient Vedic knowledge is rich in analysis of various subjects like Vimana Shastra (Aeronautical), Pakshi Shastra (Birds science), Astronomy etc. Varahamihra has compiled all of them and gave a book named "Bruhat Samhita". Though we personally could not gain understanding of these knowledge, texts and literature, our future generations could be interested in knowing them.
He explains the importance of it with a simple example. Once, a blind man was walking on the road holding a lantern during night. Another man came on  his way and seeing the blind man carrying a lantern (which is of no use to him) asked him, "Why are you carrying the lantern, when you cannot even see things around?". The blind man replied, "Though I am not having vision, I am carrying it because you have vision. If I am not carrying the lantern, then you would have stumbled upon me during this night time." Thus He explains the importance of preserving our ancient knowledge and pass it on to the future generations, though we are not interested in them.

This raises me the question, "In what ways we can preserve and pass our ancient knowledge?" If you have any thoughts please share them here.