Navarathri Golu 2016

This year we had Navarathri over two weekends, which is always a plus compared to it being spread only over one weekend!

Was way busy with work and had just come back from another overseas trip at the beginning of the festival. Wife, MIL and kids made it to all the Golu's while I chauffered them to select places over the weekends only. They took pictures of Golu's I missed so we can add it to the blog.

The highlight of this years festival was these two photos which we will cherish for a long time. Many thanks to our friends for the clicks and cracking the right jokes at the right time!

 

You need two things for good family pictures. Good lighting and good jokes that the entire family can get!

Then there were the golus. Neat and clean and simple, to complex to creative! Best part was to see the little displays the kids create on window sills and on the floor next to the Golus.. National parks, Hamma bead towns, cricket sets.. you can see they all are still setting classic three slips and a gully while the New Zealand team is now going to a field set up that has only third slip and gully!.. okay, where was I? yes, Golus!

We also had kids sing and dance and Jr. played the saxophone in two of the Golus. She is getting better. I get berated by my friends for giving her "feedback" after her performance, which is interesting in its own way. 

Here is a video of her doing the Thillana this year.

Hope next year she will do the entire piece without any mistakes. I am very proud of her, but given her ability, if she just practiced a little more instead of two days before the festival starts, she could have aced the whole thing! 

Finally the Golus.. enjoy the slideshow!  

Thanks to all our friends who invited us this year. It was fun. Next year, will try to visit everyone!

A visit to Ballarat

The first time I knew that a place called Ballarat existed was in 10th grade. It was mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story. All I knew in those pre Wikipedia days was that Ballarat was a place where lot of gold was found and many folks got rich in the "gold rush" in Australia. 

We did visit the place once in 2004 on our first ever Australia trip. Jr. was too small to remember anything and the little one wasn't born yet. So on this trip, we did an all day trip to Ballarat. They had also added a light and sound effects show in the night in the recent years and we stayed for that. We left Melbourne after breakfast and returned at midnight on what was definitely a day well spent.

Ballarat has a few streets preserved in the Victorian era. We have visited a similar gold rush town in California a few years ago called Columbia. Ballarat is a large scale version of this. There are folks walking down the streets (all actors) in ancient clothes, stores that sell ice creams of a distant era, buildings and facades that look like sets but are for real, candle makers, horse buggies, bowling alleys that take you back in time.. 

It is a wonderful experience trying to connect to a past and this place does give you that experience in a very nice way. The guy who did the musket firing is apparently a Ballroom dancer who does this as a part time job or so he told me.  All the actors and store folks who do demonstrations are nice and polite which makes you wonder where our level of politeness has gone with time! 

The sound and light show was interesting. The  quality of it was not bad, but it needs to be edited a little better to avoid long pauses between acts. It was not as good as a Hollywood production but a great attempt at getting close to one. It was interesting for one reason. I never knew that the Australian independence movement of sorts was started in Ballarat by the miners trying to get rights from the British authority. Never knew anything about the "Blood on the southern cross"! It was a really great history lesson!

The kids did enjoy the light and sound show. But what fascinated them the most was panning for gold. They got really furstrated after 20 minutes of hard work trying to find a spec of gold. They threw their instruments down and walked back disappointed. 

They were treated instead to a museum on Soverign hill where large gold nuggets were on display. Seeing all that gold made the girls happy. It is only a question of time before they grow up and seeing is not going to be enough. If my father in law is any guide, I should start robbing banks soon so in a few years the girls can have all the jewelry they want.

On an entirely side note, we had to wait for 4 hours between the morning tours and the light show at night. So we decided to go around "Downtown Ballarat" which boasted some really old buildings, a great town center space, 4 Thai restaurants, Thai kickboxing exercise places, Thai travel places etc.. within 2 blocks (let's just say the Thai's have taken over Ballarat or so it appears) and a Pizza Hut right next to Soverign hill with large pizza's for 5 Aussie dollars including breadsticks and soda!  Still cannot believe how good that pizza was and how cheap it was!

Here is Ballarat in pictures.. 

 

Mud roads with only horse carriages going through... a Bowling lane with wood balls that for some strange reason reminds me of Angelina Jolie (hey.. different things bring different memories to the foreground!)

Plates and other metal ware made in front of your eyes using methods from the late 1800's! 

The nice lady who poses for us (guessing she is also a ballroom dancer? like the guy with the musket)

Ladies in costume.. everywhere..

Candles, soaps, candies.. all made old school way, in front of your eyes. It was interesting for everyone.

Horse buggies ! They also had a studio where the entire family could pick costumes from that era and take a group portrait.. but it was booked for the day and we missed an opportunity. 

Clouds that made the place even more interesting..

Buildings that were surreal

and did we mention Gold! Gold! Gold! Had to get that photo as a mild sepia tone..

The kids were so sincere in their search for gold.. all of 20 minutes till they figured out that the miners were all idiots for wasting their time searching!

They had a show where a single bar of gold worth 160k $ was melted and poured into a mold. It was a nice demonstration of gold metallurgy. Brought back memories of sitting on the gallery seats writing notes in Prof. PM Prasad's class! 

For some strange reason, they had a bunch of domestic birds and animals on one side to try and show how things were hundred years ago.. The alpha turkey went and did a display for us..

but what caught my attention was the sparrows. There were thousands of them everywhere. In the vents, inside the little buildings. Looked like a sparrow invasion of sorts in the place. They were fearless too. One of them ate ribbon pakoda and thenkuzhal right from my hands!

Then we went across the street to Soverign Hill and the gold museum. It was a place with a view!

both outside and inside

Some lucky bloke kicks the ground in frustration and finds this! Must have been something in those days with gold found a few inches below the surface!

These things are the size of my head or slightly larger.. so you can imagine the girls getting all wide eyed!

An old hotel in downtown Ballarat.. 

and a more recent statue in the city center area.

The place seems to be getting a big time makeover. My BIL was giving me a lesson on how Australia is trying to bring up little cities as development hubs. IBM is going to be there big time in Ballarat apparently. Guessing that their cafeteria will have at least one Thai restaurant.

The place was beautiful. The stones were screaming for a HDR picture..

There were no pictures allowed in the sound and light show and that was a surprise given we are allowed to take all the photos we want in Universal studios. You will have to go experience that one for yourself.

If you visit Melbourne area, definitely worth a visit. Budget a day for Ballarat and the entire family will come home happy after experiencing something unique.

Thanga Bhaspam, Velli Bhaspam, Legiyams - The irony

Recently, some of my friends were discussing the role of Gold/Silver and their impact on the environment and what was considered safe levels in our systems.

When I mentioned that as a little kid have taken a few grams of gold and silver powder as part of medicines over a period of years to cure a weird infection, no one in the audience believed me and they actually thought my "credibility" was taking a hit with a statement like that.

That is really sad because I am reasonably sure (and my parents have confirmed) that it was Gold containing powder (Thanga Bhaspam) which was always mixed with Honey and given to me and Silver containing powder (VeLLi Bhaspam) which was given always by mixing in Ghee (clarified butter). Why different media were used to dissolve the powders, we do not know. In addition to that was given a Legiyam (or viscous solution) that would clean out my bowels in record time and literally purged me.

Distinctly remember the old Siddhar( telling me that my blood was impure and he was purifying my blood (Raththa Suddhi was the word he used.. ie. blood purification) using the combination.

When mentioning this to Allopathic doctors (at least the western medicine doctors were referred to in our family as Allopathic doctors), they would comment on how these treatments were known in the western world but were avoided because of the "poisonous" nature of the cures and they used heavy metals like Arsenic, Bismuth, etc. to get to the digestive tract and attack the system using a "mild poisoning" method.

The way the body tries to fight mild poisoning, it kills the real poison also and that helps recover the system. It is not totally true that western medicine ignores these elements now.

You can see Bismuth in pepto bismol like stomach restoring systems. Chemotherapy uses heavy elements, kind of like the "raththa suddhi" used by Sidhhars.

The thing that would always beat me was the labels on these medicines from the sidhdha vaidhya saalai which would say "Used in curing the following with other medicine combinations... and Putru Noi or Cancer would be in the list"

Being in 7th grade and having limited exposure to Cancer as a "cureless disease" in those days, would ask my parents if this whole thing was bogus and can be believed. They recommended that since there were not many other alternatives, might as well go with the flow and believe! Their point was "Siddha medicine has been around for centuries. People won't go back to a doctor if they don't cure a high percentage of patients".

Now some dude in China actually goes and proves using western science that old eastern medicines have a reasoning behind them.

My personal take on how this type of thing evolves over time (again, note my very over simplified explanation) is..

In the good old days(thousand or two thousand years ago) there was a huge gap in the knowledge base of the people. There were many smart people who probably weren't famous or well documented but left their mark by passing on their knowledge in spite of not having media. Today we have a population of 6.9B instead of an estimated 170M in 0BC (a forty fold increase) and Information technology has come a long way from stone tablets to bluetooth. We only question the information from the past and want validation with current methods of understanding.. But as a % of people with higher knowledge levels have we come far?

Is information really leading to improved knowledge? What use is all the information if you do not act on it? Can knowledge be useful if it did not have a Ph.D behind it?

Does everything from the olden days have to be proved and understood in a doctoral thesis to be accepted? By who? why?

Should we confer Ph.D's to all our grandma's who tell you that using turmeric powder when boiling vegetables or adding turmeric to food that comes from the ground is safer or applying turmeric on baby girls is good for their hormone cycles? Or should we have research papers like:

Choi, Hyunsung; et al. (July 2006). "Curcumin Inhibits Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 by Degrading Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Nuclear Translocator: A Mechanism of Tumor Growth Inhibition". Molecular Pharmacology (American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics) 70: 1664–71.

Aggarwal, BB.; Shishodia S. (May 2006). "Molecular targets of dietary agents for prevention and therapy of cancer". Biochemical Pharmacology (Elsevier) 71 (10): 1397–421.

Hatcher H, Planalp R, Cho J, Torti FM, Torti SV (June 2008). "Curcumin: from ancient medicine to current clinical trials". Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 65 (11): 1631–52

etc. etc.

Maybe if there was a Journal of Grandma Society and it had papers published every month and we could have references like

"Effect of kasthuri manjal podi on long term hair growth" , R. Saraswathi, K. Vijaythaammal, et. al. J. Gram. Soc., Vol 23, 2010, pp1023-1025

would more people be inclined to take it seriously?

Will the use of heavy metals to target poisons be taken more seriously now that we have this news?

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Girls will be ..

Girls, Silly!!

Grandma decided to dress up in a silk saree to go for a Varalakshmi pooja at a friends place. There was no plan to take the kids.

The minute Jr. saw grandma in a saree, the promptly pulled out a dozen clothes from her wardrobe, found her pattu paavadai (silk frock) and wore it. Then went on to wear her bangles, decorate herself to the point where Grandma couldnt continue her dressing up.

As soon as they came out, the little one had an expression that could only be described as :

50% shock that this dress up session had happened and she didn't have a clue

30% anger that she was still not dressed yet

10% pain

10% jealousy

I could be off a little bit on the breakup on the pie chart, but rest assured that all those things were evident in her rapid change in facial expression! She let out a yelp and went running to the dresser and jumped up and down till her most elaborate Paavadai was found!

After 10 minutes she came out with her sister to show me that she was also all decked up and the first thing she tells me?

"deda, nanna nanna (pointing to herself and saying I look good, I look good)...foto.. foto.." and pointed to the backyard to our portrait location!!! Apparently, it has now become a tradition to take a picture when they declare themseleves to be pretty. Well, I am not complaining. Hey, what are dad's for?

It is amazing to see a 20 month old, have that kind of attachment to silk and gold! I can see myself 15 years from now trying to buy two of everything, sorry, three of everything.. (forgot to count the big girl) and taking lots of portraits and enjoying every minute of it.

I am glad that Girls will be girls!

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Coins, Fishes and gold powders...

After reading Deepak's post on the coins people throw into water fountains and fish ponds, I had a theory!!

I do see the occasional quarter or nickel, other than the usual plethora of pennies. Incidentally I have a theory on why people throw pennies in the shopping mall fish ponds!

When we were in Waikiki a few years ago saw a mall with a fountain and lots of Coi fish. The bottom of the water was filled with pennies, international coins, but mostly coins which were a golden bronze color. The fish looked large and healthy.

Came home after that trip and got a fishtank! When the fish were sick, the PETCO dude gave me fish medicine. Guess what element the medicine contains ? Lots of COPPER!! So maybe the copper in the coins helps the fishes survive ??

This theory immediately made another connection in my head. My dad told me during my wedding that there is a reason why we wear a gold ring in our right had and eat on a silver plate. Apparently the gold rubs against the silver and we ingest trace amounts of gold and silver every day and these elements are good for us in trace amounts.

I knew that the film legend MGR was known to attribute his strength and complexion to "Thanga Baspam" and "Velli Baspam" (literally gold and silver powder) which he used to take as part of his diet. As a kid, I have taken these powders when I was really sick and the western doctors gave up on me. The local Siddha healers gave me these powders and a whole bunch of other concoctions which probably saved my life! But my dad's statement did raise some questions like :

1. If this is good, how come women dont wear the same ring and eat in the same plate ?
2. If this is good, then why wait till the wedding to give that gold ring and the silver plate ?
3. What about copper ? Is that why we drink water from copper vessels ?
4. What about lead ? Didn't we all drink rasam from our great grandma's "Eeya Chombu" which probably would have retarded us all with lead poisoning!? or maybe we need lead in small amounts too ?

Hopefully there are people out there who have answers to these questions, and who knows my theory for the pennies in the fish ponds may not be way off the mark!!

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