Zero Calories Intake..

Ever heard of the World Solar Challenge? Cars souped with latest and hybrid technology to maximize the run on least amount of fuel? This is similar - One full day without fuel.. morning till night.. in a quest to get the maximum life.. sounds familiar?

Well.. this is a recent one.. 17th October, to be exact, was the marathon day. Lot of preparations go in before the onset of the occasion.. up-n-down the town, shopping malls, 5 varieties of fruits, some usual stuff, yes of course, gifts!

Last evening were able to gather most of the stuff; but no hopes of henna.. last minute dive for some dinner viola! A henna parlor!! do we have another choice? :)

Morning baths.. never on my favorite list; but still on.. whole day without fuel.. no solid.. no liquid.. no propulsion! first time in life relied completely on solar energy; perhaps a bit of wind too! The best part, we were together in this race for life..

Heard about SkyGlobe? Yes.. lets track the lunar motion.. last year was not the lucky day.. clouds cover hid all the glitter.. had to settle down with the TV transmission.. this time with technology at disposal, tracking helped in pin pointing the path.. got lucky just for 5 minutes to have a clear peep through clouds.. and yes.. we made it! :)

Keeping fingers crossed for a long healthy life together.. Zero Calories Intake.. :)

Its quite a fun...

May be I donno till now what the various little things symbolize, but we did go out for shopping everything needed.. Incense sticks, flowers, mango leaves, some kindda grass (no, no, not the smoking one!), the Ganesha idol, and yes of course, the fruits - five kinds, and the sweets.. a bit of running around to locate all these.. and home in 2 hours!

The rest of the stuff had already been arranged by the better half.. cotton garland, camphor, kumkum, gulal, turmeric, rice, incense stick stands, electric lamps, and what not.. How can I forget the script printouts of the main chants.. it was the first time, right? (Well, Google is great!)

Finally, we were home.. with the idol.. initial time flew past in preparing the area for placing the idol.. decoration with electric lamps.. setting all up with textbook precision.. all geared up for the launch!

Though I tried my level best to understand the 128 bit encrypted chants which were in a language i was not very comfortable with.. The pooja went well.. ending with the great moment of tasting (gobbling up would be a better word) the sweets.. Something was missing.. about which I was soon enlightened.. the tradition to have hand made sweets for offering to the almighty besides the ready made ones.. I guess no pains, no gains, was applicable here too.. in any case this was a good news.. a wonderful opportunity to give him some competition on the belly size.. before I could realize, we were churning out some coconut and jaggery based mini-fat-bombs, I mean the modaks! (I always wonder why all sweets taste so good!)

Time to pump in some calories.. mind it.. this is different from the fat-intake ritually followed on the festivals.. A sumptuous lunch was the one to push us to low-power standby mode..

Another round of pooja in the evening.. waking up to another one the next day morning.. this time with realtime streaming from the internet hooked on to the home theater system.. (waking up the lousy lazy neighbours actually).. and a final replay in the evening before it was time to conclude.. God Ganesha finally took to the water (in a bucket) with a bit of fan-fare.. a goodbye and invitation to early home coming next year as the physical form gave off and blended with water.. Its quite a fun.. do try this at home! :)

Welcome God Ganesha...

I am married.. and with marriage comes lot of decisions.. decisions which are mutual.. or at least they seem so! ;)

Anyways.. with the fast changing world.. changing society.. moving paces.. just like the 'IBM on demand business!'.. no one knows if we would ever remember who we are.. where we are from.. may be these things wont matter.. may be they will.. may be the world undergoes a complete evolution to be something else.. and someone from future digs past to find us and exclaim - 'Eureka! here is the superstitious lot from the pot!'.. without any clue except the branding 'superstitious' or 'blinded' or may be something better!
So why not keep things alive? Why not take things that we have got from our past into the present.. and build a future? Explaining the rational behind our 'superstitions'.. and asserting that they mean much more.. things that have been set by the wisdom of our past.. for the betterment of mankind.. which the later used to its ulterior motives to divide and rule and for many other reasons to clash, fight and vanish over time.. Lets take forward our tradition and culture to tell the future that we existed.. and existed with a cause.. with values on strong foundations.. to show them the right way and learn from the ancient wisdom.. and leave onto them to decide..
Today's is Ganesh Chaturthi.. and we decided to participate and celebrate to the best we can given our limitations of the rat race and time.. and be unaware of the divides of mankind.. and open to all the wisdom.. :) Sounds to hi-fi? :D
The Lord Ganesha comes our home.. Welcome. Welcome one and welcome all...