Chap Book For Little Dude

Little dude has started school. Early morning he wakes up, dresses up, takes his breakfast and water bottle and goes to school.

He learns nursery poems, listens to stories, and gets potty training and learns how to socialize with other kids.

I thought he could be ready for some sight-reading too and decided to make for him a chap-book.

The easy way to get the child interested is to show him something that he is familiar with. Every child is familiar with the people he meets everyday. The family that is close to him. Hence I decided to make a chapbook with the pictures of his family members.

I went through his album and selected the pictures of all his family members. I then worked on Photoshop, writing text, drawing balloons wherein I inserted sounds, splitting the words into syllables.

With all the pages in order, it was ready for printing, cuttings and arranging the pages in order.

Next was stitching the pages to make a book.

The greatest joy was seeing the little dude excited to see his own pictures in a book!!!

Yes, he is learning phonetics now!! I am extremely happy……

Miniature Replica of Balaji Temple at Narayanpur

Everyone who visits India makes at least one visit to the temples or mosque. Spirituality is so strongly observed that even an atheist is confused. It is difficult to explain about the crowd standing in long queue for six hours just to get thirty seconds glimpse of the idol inside the temple, of offering garlands and coconuts which are recycled and resold at stalls outside the temple, of eating oily and sweet Prasad even though the health does not permit. To an atheist, temples are just architectural monuments to be enjoyed for their carvings on pillars and ceiling, but to a devotee, it’s a place where their prayers can be answered, it’s the place where they can find peace and compassion.

Whatever the reason, the temple devoted to Venkateswara at Tirumala is believed to be one of the richest pilgrimage center in India. The temple is visited by about 50,000 to 100,000 pilgrims daily, while on special occasions and festivals like the annual Brahmotsavam, the number of pilgrims shoots up to 500,000, making it the most-visited holy place in the world. The popularity of this temple is so high that they have made replica of this temple in different parts of India.

Image source 

 One such replica is in Narayanpur, near Pune. Not having the opportunity to visit the temple at Tirupati, I was curious to visit this place at Narayanpur.

We started from Pune early morning; it was warm and sunny day. Driving through the crowded traffic took a long time; we finally touch the express highway for a pleasant drive through vast fields spread for miles. The plants and trees on route were yellow and light green, family informed me that in rainy season the fields come alive, with lots of greenery and waterfalls on hills. It makes a pleasant drive.

After a long drive of more than 100 minutes, we finally drove through dirt part to reach the beautiful Balaji temple.

You are suddenly transferred to a different world as soon as you enter the gates. The lawns are manicured, the cleanliness is maintained, against the backdrop of the hills, the temple stand proud and prominent, mimicked in wood and painted in grey oil paint. The sculpted spire over the sanctum sanctorum is painted yellow to pay obeisance to the gold spire of Tirumala-Tirupati temple.

On special request from authorities, we were allowed to bring our car closer to the temple; we left our slippers in the car and walked on the red carpet into the temple. No photography is allowed and we were asked to deposit our gadgets with the security.

Inside the big iron carved gates, was a gold temple. Family informs me that it is exact replica of the original temple. Even the black stone and other building material have been brought from Tamil Nadu, The construction of the temple went on from 1996 to 2003. The prayers and procession also take place on festivals. The priests who perform the puja also hail from same families as those of the original temple. One of the most important offering in this temple, is the ‘Thulabharam’. In Thulabaram ritual, a devotee sits on a pan of a weighing balance and other pan is filled with materials greater than the weight of devotee. Devotees usually offer sugar, jiggery, holy basil leaves, banana, gold coins; this is mostly performed with newborn babies. We took ‘parikarma’ around the temple. There were carvings on the walls and paintings in bright colors on the ceiling. Deities were housed in small cubicles where people offered their prayers. At the end of the round, big size laddoo was distributed to every visitor.

We finished seeing the temple in 15 minutes, family tells me that they spend many hours doing parikarma at Tirupati, and they have to pay extra cash to cut short their queue or enter from the back entrance.

The unique ritual of tonsuring of ones head is also done here at temple premises and I did see many people donate their hair in exchange for the blessings of the Lord. The collected hair is publicly auctioned to international buyers from time to time for cosmetic use and hair extensions.

On our way back, the ride was picnic style, feasting on figs, guava,

mangoes

and of course bhel puri at the dhabbas.

The Oath Of Vayuputra

I could not go for the launch of this book at Peddar road, but had watched it on U-tube and was surprised to see the crowd that waited to enter the store. Never in my life have I seen a book launch of such magnitude. Amish said that during book launch of his first book, there were only his family members and few friends had been forced to attend the event, his wife had distributed the questions to be thrown at author during the book reading, but popularity of those two books had changed his status and now he was known as one of the most sought out writers.

I, like thousands others, was waiting eagerly for the third and final episode of Shiva Trilogy.

I had liked the first two parts too. I had written the review of ‘Immortals of Mehula’ and ‘Secrets of Nagas’ on my blog

At the end of part two of Shiva Trilogy, I was left with questions such as:

What evil is he talking about? How can we destroy evil when it does not exist by itself? Good and evil, two sides of the coin, he must visit Panchavati, the city of Nagas to know the secret.

Shiva did reach Panchavati, I had eagerly waited for evil to emerge, making wild guesses of putting face to the evil, was it really Nagas? If it was not Naga then who was evil?, Then suddenly it is revealed that Somras, the powerful magic potion, which was good at first, had turn to evil and it had to be destroyed. Then the journey to seek the help of Vayuputra began to put an end to evil by destroying people who would not stop using Somras.

The third part, however, did not excite me as much as the other two parts did. Maybe my expectations were too high.

However, I did like the narration of the last fight of Sati. This excerpt made me sit at the edge as I read through the pages of her final fight:

“Swuth didn’t approach Sati with both his curved swords. That would have been unfair according to the rules of Aten, since Sati had one sword hand. He held the sword forward in his hand. As he neared Sati, he started swinging the sword around, building it into a stunning circle of death just ahead of him, moving inexorably towards her. Even as Swuth’s sword whirred closer, Sati began to step back slowly. She suddenly thrust her sword forward quickly, deep into the ring of the circling blade of Swuth, inflicting a serious cut on the Egyptian’s shoulder. She pulled her sword back as rapidly, before Swuth’s circling blade could come back to deflect her sword. He’d never met anyone with the ability to penetrate his sword’s circle of death.”

The book title says ‘Oath of Vayuputra’ but what oath? And Vayuputra (isn’t that supposed to be Lord Hanuman) has less than 100 pages of fame.

The read is easy flow, so even though I had put away after reading 200 pages of more brutal war and long sea travelling, I did return back to finish the book. 

The book did have the elements of surprise, joy and pain.