Gokulashtami 2020

This year we are celebrating Gokulashtami in a much simpler way. 

Made some seedai in the morning with some help from San who also made some maladdoos and looked lovely today..

We did a small pooja and did neivedhiyam and deeparadhanai. 

did I mention she looked absolutely lovely today?

This year, one more person dear to us has reached Krishna.. San's grandpa is one with Krishna now! Was thinking of him, even if it was for a brief moment while doing the deepa aaradhanai. 

The kids have stopped dressing up for functions, but their motivation for dressing up is when someone is going to see them dressed up. Parents don't count on that list. Given COVID times, I understood and gave them a pass. There are a few functions they look forward to.. especially when the star of the show is a cute crawling baby, a cute looking elephant, lighting lamps and bursting fire crackers or simply the excuse of "I cant study today because all my books are with Saraswati ummachi". 

We have passed on what we could to the next generation. Feel happy that my kids are aware of traditions. Right now there are kids growing up in Tamil Nadu as well as a lot of young adults who have managed to develop so much self loathing for their own culture and tradition in the name of secularism that is being pushed in their face. The marketing machinery that has gone into over drive in recent times to do this to so many kids at this scale is mind boggling. 

You can accept another's faith without having to show you gave up on your own! This is so much easier to do and understand, especially when you have a concept of god being in every form, shape, size, color, nature and being open to acceptance. I can understand it being a lot harder for religions where the concept is "my way is the only way". 

"Sarva deva namaskaraha Keshavam prathigachathi" is something we say as part of doing Sandhyavandhanam every day.  When you prostrate yourself in front of any god, it all eventually goes to the same god. It is a beautiful message. 

On a totally tangential note, I have been wearing the same 5 "pocket vechcha T-shirts"  in rotation since the lockdown when going out. Inside the house it has been the 60-day challenge shirts in rotation.  Using Krishna's birthday as an excuse, finally put on a new T-shirt from the collection of unopened gifts. 

This one was courtesy of my FIL/MIL or one of San's uncles. Feels good to wear new clothes every now and then! Apparenlty after eating everything I do look like a blue whale. 

A very happy Gokulashtami to everyone. I know that given the technicality of the calendar a lot of folks celebrate Krishnas birthday in early September this year. An advance Gokulashtami wish to them!  

What a week!

After visiting doctors, labs and pharmacies for the front end of the week, the later part of the weekdays were just spent surviving the days. 

The routine was wheeze from 11PM to 5AM, go to bed at 5AM and be woken up by a work phone call or the kids, get some idea of time and space and go to work by 9, struggle through the day and come home. 

Survived till 2PM, 3PM and managed to work till 4:30 today. So that is improvment on the stamina side of things.

The breathing is still iffy at best and have found that sleeping in the sitting position till exhaustion takes over is the best strategy. 

Krishna Ummachi's birthday came and went without me doing anything of significance. Being able to partake a few of the dishes in sample quantities was my contribution to the function. As a rule of thumb it is very difficult to even be sick in this house with the parents and MIL present and having the kids in the house with no school.

You come home at 2:30 and want to go sleep and 

a. Parents come out all concerned and give you two suggestions every 5 minutes (usually the same suggestion with a time lag) on how to improve your situation. Most of these are not going to help in anyway as they will be things I have already tried or know won't make a difference.

b. MIL will either join with parents with the concern or try to push me the other way with some enthusiasm. "Let's go back to the hot room and you will be fine!" she will say and off I will go and barely survive the session. That is better than the first option to some extent. 

c. The kids who are not used to seeing daddy gasp for air will try to wake me up every 15 minutes in an attempt to cheer me up. Let's go biking daddy! Let's go to the park daddy! etc. etc. Their idea is that if I do physical activity the lungs will forget the problem. Little do they know that going outside itself is an ordeal now..

and of course how can we forget d.. or di or my own little Kolaveri di.. 

d. San will come home from work to check on me and declare "if you can pick up the phone and answer a work call or participate in a meeting even on mute, you can help the kids with the Kumon or go back to work. today is the last day I am losing sleep because you won't rest during the day and wheeze all night!" Well, she has her point and so does everyone else in the house.

The best thing I actually did was realize that there was no place where rest was possible.. not at work, not at home. So parked the van under a tree near the house and slept there one afternoon for a couple of hours. That was a great move! 

The weekend is here and for starters got my mind off of things and started browsing old pictures from the Canon Powershot S30 days with the kids. Found a few JPG's that were interesting and processed them on Photoshop and uploaded them to the Galleries. 

In case you only read the blog on reader... do checkout the Galleries tab at www.sundar72.com

Here are some samples...

Hanuma bay in Hawaii when we visited for two days en route to Australia in 2004!

Bryce canyon in Utah.. We were there the day the Tsunami hit and did not know as we were cut off from civilization!

Took this one with one hand while parasailing in Seattle right around Sunset!

There are more pictures. Going to start a new tab in the website called "The story behind the pictures" and explain the photograph in more detail. Maybe it will be of some use to other Photographers in training...

More tomrorow..

Until then, I will pray for better breathing, something we all take for granted all the time!

Krishna's Birthday

Lord Krishna is probably happy what with the kids inviting him to our house to taste some real yummy goodies (all courtesy of the MIL)!

We kept it simple.

MIL cooked.

We thanked the god for being who he is.

We ate!

And we are still eating...

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