Dalton Chiscolm, an average American citizen (formerly), decided that it was time that he earned a little bit of fame somehow. He must have thought about the things he could do to like…get drunk and make scene on a saturday night, running naked through a football game but those probably seemed too ridiculous and immature. So he decided…are you ready….to sue the bank of America for 1,784 billion trillion dollars because he was not satisfied with their service! That is 1 followed by 21 zeros!!! Unfortunately, the gross domestic product of the entire world in 2008 was $60 trillion so even if he won, he couldn’t collect his money..

Anyway…there is a common saying that goes “Reach for the stars”… I think Mr.Dalton Chiscolm might be closer to success if he did literally try and reach for the stars than try to pull off this ridiculous act.

Signing off.

The break of dawn on September 19th, marked the arrival of the festival of lights called navrathri. Navrathri is a festival celebrated by hindus, approximately during the beginning of every autumn season. Its another lunar calender derivation that I don’t completely understand yet. Anyway… in tamil, “Nav” means 9 and “rathri” means nights…and hence its the 9 nights festival.

I’m sitting here in Canada relatively void to many of the festivities. Don’t get me wrong, my family does celebrate it to the best of their abilities, but it is obviously very different from being in India with other family and friends. So…I do try to live vicariously through stories from my family back in India… and I’ll tell you, jealousy doesn’t take very long to settle in…

In India, as soon as dusk hits, the streets light up brighter than they were lit during the day. There is a vibrancy about the place that can only possibly be paralleled by a summer night in Vegas. It is a pretty spectacular feeling just imagining and putting yourself amongst that vigor and excitement.

The best part of these festivities is setting up ‘gollu’. Gollu is the arrangement of toys, dolls, idols and all small decors on a stepped show stand. To grasp the excitement that succumbs this tradition…think of how you may feel when you decorate your x-mas tree every winter. Its kinda the same, just without the tree…okay may be its not all that similar but you get the idea.

Well there you have it..a little taste of what navrathri is all about…the rest, I will have to leave to your imagination or hopefully your experiences in the future..

Cheers

“This was how I saw it: As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow it to remain there, it will always be there. However, if you attempt to close your fingers round it and try to posses it, it will spill through the first cracks it finds.This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love…they try to posses it, they demand, they expect… and just like the water spilling out of your hand, love will retrieve from you.

For love is meant to be free, you cannot change its nature.
If there are people you love, allow them to be free beings.
Give and don’t expect.
Advise, but don’t order.
Ask, but never demand.

It might sound simple, but it is a lesson that may take a lifetime to truly practice. It is the secret to true love. To truly practice it, you must sincerely feel no expectations from those who you love, and yet an unconditional caring.”

-Swami Vivekananda

Here’s the link to the talk:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

Enjoy!

Bimbala claims to have fallen in love with, get this, a snake, a cobra to be precise. The snake lives in an ant hill. When Bimbala was sick she fed the snake and her sickness got cured; coincidence? religious innuendo? or the magic of love??

The wedding was performed by some priests in close proximity to the ant hill. The villagers and the parents of the Orissan girl are throwing her a big celebration and feast to celebrate their daughters marriage. Unfortunately, the snake could not make it out for his big day so they instead married her to a brass replica of the snake. Her parents are building her a hut so she can live right by the cobra’s hill.

I wish them both a long,happy,prosperous and healthy life together…

On the other hand, we have a typical warm summer (25 degree) day that everyone atleast in North American and Europe are absolutely crazy about. If you look at a majority of the people during a sunny day they are wearing sunglasses that come in the wackyest tint these days, thereby completely destroying the true colour of everything around us. If people are not wearing sunglasses then they are having to squint till their eyes are pretty much closed. All this squinting and staying in the heat is a leading cause for some very unplesant headaches. Suddenly, a “nice” warm sunny day is no longer as attractive is it?

Well, I hope this is an eye-opener to all of you warm-and-sunny day fans…now get out there and enjoy the pleasures of rain.

The story goes like this…Amir Khusro was presented to the mughal emperors to sing them a poem. He was accompanied by a pakawaj player. The pakawaj is a drum that has a treble side and a base side on opposite sides to each other. In the middle of the performance, the pakawaj fell and broke into two pieces, but the concert had to go on. So Khusro suggested that the pakawaj player put the two broken pieces up right and play on them.This marked the origination of the tabla.

The treble drum is called the dayan and the bass drum is called a bayan. The dayan is set to immitate a woman’s voice due to its relatively high pitched sound while the bass drum is supposed to immitate a man’s voice. The beauty and life of the instrument comes out when a master can replicate the human character and voice through their musical creation.