CBC Tablog 3: Chennai - A blend of the Traditional and Modern

This post has been published as a part of 'The Chennai Bloggers Club Tablog - 3.' Read previous post by Salesh Dipak Fernando here…

Arriving temporarily from Delhi, in the year 1994, in a sleepy town and then having stayed back to create a life around work and business, I have seen the city grow. But when I sit down to write about “CHENNAI - A BLEND OF THE TRADITIONAL AND MODERN” I find that it is still, in it’s soul, a traditional city. Modernity per se has only seeped into its being as general growth due to flow of time, unlike Bangalore, where it was forced down the city of gardens’s throat due to the tsunami of IT Sectorial advancement.

When I say it’s traditional, it is because of…

A) People: - You still find the people dressing up traditionally across the city. Thronging to the various temples as ritual and frequenting the traditional eating places in ritualistic way. If you drive across the city, you will find that 90% of the people are dressed conservatively as well as traditionally, until and unless you are only cruising around the upmarket malls and hotels.

B) Places: The T-Nagar’s, The religious places and the markets are almost the same apart from the cosmetic design and architectural changes. The gold jeweellery, silk sarees and the road side eateries along with the customers remains the same to a large extent. Most of the parks remains the same too, where the elderly retired gentlemen from the govt services vie for the same space with fertive love birds and noisy children.

C) Entertainment: It is still the movies, margazhi and Temple festivals. The same enthusiasm and craze around the ‘larger than life’ icons; Same revernces towards deities, devotees and  Political leaders.

D) Culture: Well that’s one thing that has not at all changed, however old the city has become. In fact I am very happy to note that it has grown to be a bigger draw than other forms of entertainment across generations.

Over the years, the city has retained it’s traditional values, ethics and culture. That’s the reason a north Indian like me came over to stay for few months, still lives here after two decades.

Looking forward to Sahithya Sridhar's thoughts about the same at her blog Rhythmica and passing on the baton of CBC Tablog 3 to her... 

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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3 Weeks of Transformation

TTW: 3 Weeks of Transformation

A New Year Resolution – 3 weeks of transformation

A week contains full 168 hours of action, divide that into predefined activities according to your nature as well as your need and then, if you can act accordingly, you can transform yourself into achieving any thing and any kind of success.  

But the difficult part is…

a)     To find the right division of actions - a way in accordance with the natural process of growth

b)    To continue on this path for at least 3 weeks. 

Most of us draw up New Year resolutions, schedules and then give up within few days of following it. The reason for giving up on them is not that they were hard to follow but on the fact that the schedules and resolutions were not based on the natural growth process. Over the year, I have seen many schedules that are based on ‘over the top’ goal setting and superhuman demands from oneself.  Sometimes the activities that we end up putting into our daily schedule are even difficult to fit in within 24 hours of day that we have got.

Secondly, we don’t give any schedule enough time to seep into us as a habit. If we can stick to any proper schedule or activity for 21 continuous days, our mind accepts it as routine and it becomes easier to continue further.

To really transform ourselves, we must divide our days and weeks into hours of activities according to the natural growth process and should be aligned with our own comfort level of striving, in tune with our biological clock - specially the sleep pattern, Physical and Mental activities.

Here is one such schedule of ‘weekly’ activities that I have drawn up for the year 2015. I am sharing it with a hope that it might help you too, to find your own way towards transforming yourself…

NOTE:
1) you will have to tweak it a little bit to fit your own comfort levels and needs.

2) I have further assigned certain number of hours to each activities and if you would like to have a go at it, please leave me a message at (Click on) FB, Twitter or Google plus.

SPIRITUAL – 7 hours

A continuous way of living

1)     Spiritual: Time to think, reflect and meditate. Wake up early in the morning, as it’s the perfect time for reaching out into deeper consciousness. Start with 6 am, strive for 4 am.

2)     Tenderness: Live every moment with tenderness. It’s the process of living in ‘now’ with the things and people around; knowing, experiencing and interacting in caring way, with all the faults and goodness of it’s being. It’s love at its best.

PHYSICAL – 14 hours

1)     Exercise: Yoga, Walk, Sports or Gym. Do two things at least.

2)     Control: The Habit of any excessive bodily intake

3)     Relax: Take a periodic vacation from work, passion, internet, mobile phones or with a need to be connected (unless it’s an emergency)

MENTAL – 28 hours

1)     Stillness: Stop listening to the chaos of mind, control the thoughts i.e. bring the mind to dwell on one thought for some continuous moment. Be still, be silent

2)     Reading: Read one good book every month

3)     Creativity: A blog post or on social media or write the damn book

4)     Memory: To learn by heart - A saying, a poem or a thought every day. Learn a new language

PRACTICAL – 56 hours

WORK…

1)    With Passion: Doing things that one is passionate about; dropping those that one has lost interest in; find the next passion to work on. Sooner, the better.

2)    With Clarity: In saying ‘yes’ to the things that comes on the way and also know when to say ‘no’ too.

3)    With Skill: Learn new things, new skill sets in day to day work

4)    With new things: Start something new - a new initiative; a new Corporate social responsibility; a new branch;

5)    Break: Don’t work on one day in a week

BIOLOGICAL – 63 hours

1)    Sleep

2)    Freshen up

3)    Eat

4)    Daily routine works

TOTAL: 24 HOURS X 7 DAYS =168 HOURS PER WEEK

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Satan's Letter from Earth

33rd Edition - Celebrating 400K Hits and New Year 2015 with spiritual quest

This is my 33^rd Edition over a period of four years and 400K hits with multitudes of friends, followers and peers, on FB, Google+ and Twitter, ( @VerseEveryDay ); the last year has been great, though I could post only 23 articles on the blog. This I intend to correct in the year 2015 and hope to achieve one post every week at least. This is the first edition of the year with an interaction with a great and firebrand author Meena Kandasamy as well as my thoughts on Existentialism and spirituality. You will also visit some of the spiritual journey that I have had undertaken last year… Hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

 

TALKING POINT:Satan's 'Letters from Earth' and spirituality

What Spirituality means?

Let me begin by sharing some lines from “Letters from Earth” - a book written by Mark Twain in 1909 about the Creator, who created the universe and then the earth and put the man along with all the animals on it.

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The Gypsy Goddess - Meena Kandasamy

A THUNDERCLAP OF A NOVEL

From Hindu lit festivals, to constant ongoing word wars on social media, I have been watching Author Meena Kandasamy's journey to becoming a fiction writer of repute, for some time now. Her book ‘The Gypsy Goddess’, seemed to me, giving voice to her restrained rage against passivity of society at large. In this powerfully crafted novel, she gave vent to her angst in most interesting and witty way, taking us on a journey, exploring one of the most heinous massacres in Nagapattinam at Kilvenmani, where in 1968, 44 dalits were burnt alive by the landlords.

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IN SEARCH OF SPIRITUALITY

A SpiritualQuest in Jageshwar and Kasar Devi

This is my third visit to Jageshwar Dham, along with my Amitabh and Shweta to celebrate their anniversary, had a special purpose i.e. in search of the answers to some questions that I have had developed in recent times as well as thanks giving for the many blessings Lord Jageshwar has given me over the years. Jageshwar is believed to be the site of first of the twelve Jyotirlingas, Nageshvara Jyotirlinga.The temple city comprises a cluster of 124 large and small stone temples, dating 9th to 13th century AD. And I firmly believe that the spiritual energy of the place can affect one's inner consciousness deeply to unlock energy centres 'Kundalini' to give you a different perspective on life and living...

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Purpose Of Life- Existentialism

What's the purpose of life and why do we live in an Universe devoid of meaning...

At some point of life, most of us, face the inevitable question ‘What’s The purpose of life?’ and then we try to answer either with our own day to day efforts of living or just leave it to be answered by the society / culture / religion to which we belong. Yes, I have faced this question too and slowly I have come to realize that it’s really not a question about Living but about Dying. It’s really hard for consciousness to hold on to the idea that each one of the steps that we take in living is one more step closer to our dying. But then I think, it’s one thing that we rarely forget…

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SelectedThoughts on Love, Life and Divinity... by V.E.D

Over the year I have shared some Thought This Week (TTW) and here are some of the best one from this year....

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Hope you have liked this edition of my blog. Let me know your views and I will be grateful if you can leave your comments …

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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32 Edition                                                                       34th Edition