Was browsing through my feed on Facebook today, and this happened!
I don’t personally believe in coincidences but this is interesting 🙂
One illustration is with Ram, and the other one a devotee in front of Shiv!
Category: Religious
-
Chai ki Dukaan (चाय की दुकान )
The above are from a tea-shop in Badrinath, Uttarakhand
This one is from Dhara Devi.. a temple in the middle of the river somewhere near Rishikesh
And this is from the plains… a place called Fatehpur Sikir -
Tajul Masajid, Bhopal
On my unplanned trip to Madhya Pradesh a few years ago, I managed to visit the Tajul Masajid in Bhopal. Said to be the third largest Mosque in the world, it was an experience which was both peaceful and spiritual for me… there is a certain calm if you visit a religious place early morning before people start pouring in… The kids studying in the Madarsa, and chanting words from Holy Quran was such a detoxifying feeling… here are some photographs from the morning….
A little bit of information about the Mosque…
Imam Sahab of the Mosque
Sun rises behind the main entry gate of Tajul Masajid…
Religion is more about reflection of our faith and beliefs more than anything else…
Its always a lovely experience to take pictures of kids… These are some of them from the Madarsa…
-
Sharma Bandhu!
Was talking to Ma in the morning and was reminded of this… One of the very few Bhajans that I am totally in love with…
Enjoy!
I feel at Peace!!!
-
शांति पाठ – Praying for Peace!
ॐ द्यौ शान्तिरन्तरिक्ष: शांति: पृथ्वी शान्तिराप: रोशाधय: शांति: |
वनस्पतय: शंतिविश्वे देव: शांतिब्रह्म शांति: सर्व शांति: शान्तिरेव शांति: सा माँ शांतिरेधि ||ॐ शांति: शांति: शांति: ॐCould not think of anything better than this to start the new year!!! Wishing 2010 brings peace to everyone! -
Sapt- Sholki- Gita (Gita in seven verses)
These seven sholkas sum up the teachings of “Bhagawad Gita’.1. कृष्ण उवाच:
* ओमित्येकाक्षरं ब्रह्म व्याहरन्मामनु स्मरणम्या: प्रयाति tjyandeham स याति परमां गतिम् (8-13)* इस ॐ swaroop को ही braham या akshar कहेंहै यही मेरा रूप जिसको पा कर नर मुक्ति लें* Krishna Uvacha:
Om ithyaksharam Brahma,
Vyaharan maam anusmaran,
Ya prayathi thyajan deham,Yaati parma gatim.
* Krishna said:
He, who meditates on me,
Chants the single syllable- Om- which in Brahman,
While leaving this ephemeral body,
Will surely attain the most supreme state – moksha.=======2. अर्जुन उवाच :* स्थाने हृषिकेश तव प्र की तर्याजगत्प्र हृस्य त्यानुराजय्ते चरक्षाम्सी भीतानि दिशो द्रवन्तिसर्वे नमस्यन्ति च सिद्धि संघा (11-36)* हृषिकेश तुम्हारी कीर्ति सेसब लोक आनंद लेते हैंभय कर रा क्ष स भागते चंहु दिशासिद्धि मुनि जन तुमको नमते हैं* Arjuna Uvacha:
Sthane Hrisikesa, Thava prakeerthya,
Jagath prahrushthya anurajyathe cha,
Rakshamsi bheethani diso dravanthi,
Sarve namasyanthi cha sidha sangha.*Arjuna said:
The world is delighted by your praise, O Hrisikesha
All are happy and rejoicing
The evil raksha are flying away with fear,
And all devotees bow before you.========3. कृष्ण उवाच :* सब orr baahu चरण sirr मुख नयन agadit हैं जिसेसब लोक mei vyyapat rahein वह prabhu कहते हैं जिसे (13-14)* Krishna Uvacha:
Sarvatha pani padam thath,
Sarvatho akshi siro mukham,
Sarvatha sruthimalloke,
Sarvamavithya thishtahi.*Krishna said:
It [the knowledgable] has hands and legs everywhere,
It has eyes head and mouth everywhere,
It has ears everywhere in the world
And it exists in all the creatures of this world.=======4. कृष्ण उवाच :sarvagya है pracheen है अति sukshma है sikshak हैआदित्य रूप achintya है sansaar का रक्षक है* Krishna UvachKavim purana anusasithara-
Manoramaneeyaam samanusmaredhya,
Sarvasya dhataram machinthya roopa-
Madithya varnam thamasa parasthath. (8-9)* Think of Him, as ancient, omniscient spread everywhere,
Ruler of all, much subtler than tha subtle,
Protector of all with his inconceivable form which is beyond thought,
With the colour of Sun and transcendental beyond dark thoughts.=======5. कृष्ण उवाच
drishant दे के vraksh का सब भेद इस sansaar काहे मित्र samjhayu tujhe यह जाल prakati prasaar काहे sakhe jag ashvathav है जिस की ऊपर मूल हैनीचे है शाखा बढ़ रही ऐसा uga prti kool है* Krishna UvachOordhwamoolamadha sakham,
Aswatham prahooravyayam,
Chandamsi yasya parnani,
Yastham Veda sa Vedavith. (15-1)* With roots upwards and branches growing down,
Like a Banyan tree with Vedas as its leaves,
The tree of knowledge is everlasting and immortal,
And whosoever knows it, knows the Vedas.=======
6. कृष्ण उवाचvedo से ही mei जाना jayu mei vedo का ही रूप hunvedo का करता जान ने wala mei विश्व swaroop hun* Krishna UvachSarvasya chaham, hrudhi sannivishto,
Matha smrithir jnana mapohanam cha,
Vedaischa sarvaii, rahameva Vedhyo,
Vedanthakruth veda vidheva chaham. (15-15)* I am seated in everybody’s heart,
And from me are Memory, wisdom and their loss,
And form all the Vedas, I alone am the subject to be known,
For I created them and I am the one knower of the Vedas.=======7. कृष्ण उवाच
मुझको yajo मुझको bajho मुझको namo mam भक्त होmei satya kahta hun sakhe तुम mujh me ही aasakt होतुम param priye mam मित्र हो इसलिए kahta hun meipaayoge mujh को ही, हे sakhe यह अटल prn करता hu mei* Krishna UvachaManmana bhava Mad bhaktho,
Madhyajee maam Namakuru,
Mamevaishyasi sathyam they,
Prathijane priyo asi may. (18-65)* Focus your mind on me,
Be my devotee, Sacrifice for me, Bow down to me,
And I promise to you because you are dear to me,
That definitely you will come to me.======= -
Some call it religion some call it music
I call it PEACE !!!Since childhood, I remember mom chanting Sanskrit shloks in the morning, and Pa chanting them during his meditation in the morning and evening..
I think the love for the word (ॐ) OM comes from Papa’s chanting of it, and the environment it creates at home every time I hear it from him, in addition to one out of body experience I cannot forget EVER.
Also since a very very long time, I have found peace in listening to Sanskrit in the form of chants, and one of my favorite happens to be the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra…
ॐ त्रयम्बकं यजामहे सुगंधिम पुष्टिवर्धनम
उर्वारुकमिव बंधनान मृत्योर मुक्षीय माम्रतात- tryambakaṃ yajāmahe sugandhiṃ puṣṭi-vardhanam
- urvārukam iva bandhanān mṛtyor mukṣīya māmṛtāt
I am not a very religious person, but I have a very very strong faith in something which is beyond me or anyone I know… I can call him Uncle God for the lack of a better word at this point of time, though Mom Dad, are also very apt words in case you are not too keen on using the God word 🙂Coming back to this Shlok, I feel at a lot of peace when I hear it, and a few more which I might talk about in some of the later posts ! It is apparently one of the most powerful as well as per the learned. And then when I chant with it, I speak Sanskrit, which happens to be my most favorite language !
Some information about it below from Wiki . In case you are interested in buying the CD with it, please do not buy anything other than TIMES music. It has been rendered beautifully in that album. or ask me for the mp3, I can send it to you.
-
DeLHi-LaNsDoWnE-HaRiDwAr-DeLhi…
Time for a few statistics first…
~ Total distance: 720 kms
~ Total Petrol Burnt: ~55 lts
~ Approximate Mileage: 13 kmpl
~ Total hours of sleep between Friday morning and Sunday afternoon = 8 hours
~ Total expenditure per head in the trip (total divided between 3 people) < fun =”UNLIMITED” style=”font-weight: bold;”>Time for some highlights…
~ Buying a Palio was one of the best decisions ever… forget about how much I love the car… the only hatchback which can better the Palio 1.2 is the 1.6 Sports… nothing else !!!
~ The handling of the car on the hills is nothing less then FANTASTIC…
~ A lot of conversations added to the fun in the trip…
~ We did the first 254 kms in a li’il less then 4 hours, which included about 45 kms of hills… which means that the over 210 kms were done in less then 3 hours… an average speed of 70kmph and that too on the roads of UP…
~ I have not driven on a better road in UP then the Meerut-Bijnor-Najibabad-Kotdwar Highway…
~ We witnessed Clouds, Bright Sun, Heavy Downpours, Slight Drizzles, Flooded Highways, Slow Moving Carts, Bribe Taking Policemen, Erratic Drivers, Scenes which ask you scream WOW, and more that words cannot describe…Some important observations now…
~ Lansdowne is the closest hill station to Delhi at 254 kms… and the great road makes it really really accessible… The route that you have to take to reach Lansdowne is the Delhi- Meerut-Bijnor-Najibabad-Kotdwar-Pauri Route… a right turn after about 20 kms from Kotdwar on the Pauri route takes you to Lansdowne.
~ There is nothing that you can do there (even if you wanted). It’s just a small town on the top of a hill, inside a cantonment area. Your options are take long walks, talk to the people you are with, or just talk to anyone. If you are loner kinds… Its just the place to get away from everyone…
~ Only BSNL GSM works there… yippieeeeeeeeee…
~ There are only 4 hotels/resorts in Lansdowne… two of them are really not worth trying… One of the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam’s guest house and the other one is the Fairy Dale Resort both at walking distance from the Main Market… The fifth option that takes you further away from anything related to humans is the Anand Retreat… About 3 kms away from the Main Market and driving on a 6 ft wide kuchcha road for 2.6 kms you will reach this resort in the middle of nowhere…
~ The best time to leave Delhi for Lansdowne is very very early morning around 0400 hours, this way you will be able to avoid most of the traffic and manage a speed of about 90-100 kmph most of the time with a few exceptions…
~ I would recommend going to Haridwar via Najibabad to anyone who asks me this question… better road, less traffic, better scenes… It would be about 50 kms more then usual, but is worth it…
~ There is an old Shiv Mandir about 45 kms away from Lansdowne called the Tarkeshwar Mahadev. Do not go into that direction in case you are not prepared to drive your vehicle on about 5.6 kms of something that is remotely away from being called a road… the other alternative is to walk those kilometres…And now let me talk about my experience…
I was kinda scared that I would not be able to make the June Trip… and I was not sure where I wanted to go… I was discussing getting out of Delhi on the ODM day too… and looked like it would be just fine… we decided on the 25th wala weekend and it looked doable… Asked a couple of people… Aseem was ready… Deepak was game… Akash also was keen, though he dropped out at the last minute…
We tried hard to take Rohit along… but there were things that he could not run away from and go with us… so he stay put at his place over the weekend… too bad he missed it…
Aseem and Deepak were at my place by 2100 hours on Friday night, we had thought of sleeping for a few hours before we start an early morning drive… had a nice dinner at the Vishal’s kitchen and managed to sleep only by 0000 hours… rather go to bed around that time… kept talking and managed a sleep of only about a couple of hours… I was the last to sleep and the first to get up… which meant that I was awake at 0230 hours… got ready and woke the rest of the gang up @ 0300 hours… we managed to leave at 0325 hrs from my place and then went to the ATM… and managed to officially start our journey at 0341 hours…
Zoomed past the lesser mortals, took the right turns after asking the policemen about the route on BegumPul in Meerut… I could not believe the kind of road I was driving on the entire way… I was hoping for a much worse experience… actually was prepared for it… but could not really get out of the surprise till we reached Kotdwar… I was comfortably driving at 90-100 km/hr most of the time… oh… we almost hit a lot of stupid crows… who were not ready to fly off the middle of the road till the car was about 50 metres away from them… and we almost hit a few donkeys because they strayed on the wrong side of the road…phew.. that was a close shave… I do not care if the donkey had died on the spot… but a scratch on the car would have been a good enough reason for me to kill the rest of the donkeys and bury the owner alive with all of them!!!
Anyway… I was not really surprised after completing the first 210 kms in about 3 hours… we reached Lansdowne around 0730 hours… and then spent time looking for a place for ourselves… GMVN was booked… Fairydale was booked… we had breakfast there… had read about the kinda paranthas that place makes… but it was just average… I have had better stuff and more then once… so once our stomachs were full, we decided to find another place to stay… tried two very shady hotels in the main market but both of them were full too… so we were not stuck with just one option, the Anand Retreat !!! we talked to the guy there and got a room, a semi deluxe room, in 750 bucks… while driving to the place, it started raining pretty heavily and we reached there in about 30 odd minutes in the middle of a heavy downpour… driving on a mud-stone track in the kind of rain is definitely not one of the best things I have done to Radha… but she was there with me right through and we were safe… checked into the room… and were kinda stunned to see the number of bugs in the toilet… this is not what we had planned ? but there was li’il we could do now… it was raining cats and dogs outside… and we three were stuck in a room in the middle of nowhere… anyway…I decided to take a nap… and quickly fell asleep while watching the TV… got up fresh in two hours… It had stopped raining and Deepak had checked out most of the surroundings… Aseem gave us the idea of getting out of there for good.. and staying somewhere else… we bought it right away and decided to first drive around the place and see whatever we could and then decide what we really wanted to do and where we could stay in the night… went back to the Town, drove to a so called Lake, did not bother to get out of the car, took a u-turn and went to see the St. John’s church, The St. Mary’s Church ( I think I am messing up the name here) and the Tip-n-Top Point… went to snow-view point… and then rushed straight outside Lansdowne to Tarkeshwar Mahadev temple a good 45 kms away… reached there in good time but realised that the last 5.6 kms were mud-stone road… and I was not keen on taking the car there… Deepak and Aseem were not too sure either… so we took a u-turn… parked the car there for a while, had tea from a local shop and started back to Kotdwar… the plan was to reach Haridwar ASAP !!! I was expecting to reach there by 2100 hours… but we made it in good time this time too… Deepak slept on the back seat while me and Aseem talked our way throughout the drive back and managed to reach Haridwar around 2000 hours… nice roads again… beautiful sunset… and also a good 2 hours of conversation… I missed out on atleast a thousand shots because I was driving… I wish to capture them sometime when someone else is driving…
Haridwar was full of people… most of them from Delhi… ?… and that ensured that we did not get a room in Haridwar as well… so a quick decision to go to Rishikesh was taken… and we reached Rishikesh in about an hours time… got a room in the Maduban… this is where we eat most of the time… and this time managed to get a room there for 350 bucks… extra bed for 150 bucks… in all 500 bucks for the night…
Went to Chotiwala for Dinner but it had already closed, checked out a few more places to eat but no luck… and at the end we ate at a small road-side restaurant near the parking for Ram Jhula… not bad eh !!!
Walked back to Maduban, and crashed on the beds… I had opted for the floor… so I managed to enjoy the sleep on the floor… got up at 0400 hours on Sunday… and rushed to Haridwar to catch the Morning Atari… it seemed we were late and we decided to have a bath before going to the Har Ki Pauri… I had the holy bath after a long time… and I loved it… it happened to be some auspicious occasion too which I came to know after I reached home… so I am sure it helped me wash away some of the deadly sins committed by me in the last few months… we went to the famous Mohan Ji Poori Wale, to have the poories, but they had not started serving… so we had to be content with some Khasta Kachauri and some Halwa and some Gulab Jamuns… moved out of Haridwar and reached Roorkee to have the Lassi there, but the shop again was closed.. and this time to keep us company, Aseem bought some Mazaa, some chips, Appy Fizz, and Little Hearts… nice… thereon the struggle to overtake started… there was a bumper to bumper traffic on the opposite side… to over a vehicle I was like waiting for atleast 5 minutes on an average… things became better once we reached the Meerut Bypass… it had started raining too…
We stopped at Kadrabad to have the famous Jain Shikanji… this time it was better then the last 4-5 times I had it… because of less crowd I guess…
By the time we reached Modinagar it had started raining very heavily… and I drove with the left tyres in water throughout the town… the other side of the road was flooded as well with water… rain stopped after Muradnagar… and it was nice drive back home from there… dropped Deepak at the NOIDA Mode… and Aseem drove back to his place in his car which was parked at my place…
So this was the trip!!! I enjoyed writing as much about it as the drive itself… it was nice to know Deepak a li’il more… Aseem was nothing unusual, he has been with me for a number of years now and I more or less know him!!!
And for people who missed out this trip!!! Well I cannot say much but tell them that they missed out on one of the best drives I have ever been to!!!
Oh!!! And Next month, I want to go to Bhakra Nangal… anyone Game?
