Writing moments

There are days like today, when I just want to self-indulge in the lonely space of my white Ikea desk where writing is my only goal and pleasure.

There are days like today when I contemplate on the words in my life and the life I put into words. 

There are days like today, when Gabrielle Bouliane's poem is just the kind of jolt I need.

Share with me. Is there some place in your house, where you can just be ?

Take care.
Suma.

Weekend Dog-Yoga

      (Picture Source: facebook.com/pages/when-your-dog-make-you-smile-/325314921081>)

    Three things I learnt from my dogs Duke, Buddy and Leila –

     1.       Walking is not a chore. It is therapy.

(Left to Right - Duke, Leila and Buddy) 

  2.       Silence is the one of the best means of communication

      (Picture Source: dogtrainingtipsguide.com)

3.       Love in any form, in any language, only cares for joyful giving.

(Picture Source: dogguide.net)

      Here’s a video you’ll love –

    Share with me. What inspired you this weekend?

My Best,

Suma.

Author Spotlight Series - Rosanne Parry

Can you imagine a girl who wanted to be a circus flyer in her childhood, developed interest in writing and she is now a published author of two best-selling novels ?

Meet Rosanne Parry, author of Heart of a Shepherd and Second Fiddle. She is very friendly and has a lot to share about her writing life.

( http://ia600701.us.archive.org/32/items/AuthorInterview-RosanneParry-BySumaSubramaniam_123/Rosanne_parry-Workspace1.wav )

Rosanne also shares her recently read booklist -http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1472137.Rosanne_Parry

Happy listening! I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Suma.

This year, October begins with Navarathri

(Source: sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com)

- a festival that is celebrated by a large number of Indian communities, both in India and outside. 

 Navarathri means nine nights in Sanskrit.  It represents the celebration of the Hindu goddess, Shakthi, also called Durga. 

Shakthi fought with Mahishasura, a demon for nine nights. Demons possessed extraordinary strength during the night. 

Shakthi killed the demon on the evening of the tenth day, which is celebrated as

Vijaya Dashami, also called Dusshera.

(Golu at home)

 In South India, we have special offerings and prayer to the goddess on all the nine days of the festival.

We have a display of “Golu”.

A golu, as seen above is a step-by-step arrangement and exhibition of dolls – predominantly of Hindu gods and goddesses. There are also figurines depicting marriages, Indian independence, music sets, dance sets , different communities and so on.

The most important of all are a wooden figurine pair called “Marapacchi Bommaigal” .

 

(Source: hindu-blog.com)

We also need to make a “Kalasam”. The Kalasam is symbolic of a human who has the faculty to realize the pure consciousness.

(Source: learn-malayalam.com)

I love Navarathri. In my growing up years, my sister and I would wear long skirts and blouses made of silk and invite our neighbours to see the Golu in our house.

Here is a recent Tamil TV commercial that will give you a sense of what happens during this festival.

                           

We would draw a colorful Rangoli / Kolam with rice flour outside our house and in front of the

golu.  In the evenings, we would light oil lamps and place them on the Rangoli / Kolam.

(Source: wikipedia.com)

The women and children visiting our house would sing songs in Indian classical, Carnatic music.

Everyday, my mother would make different types of sundal, a dry curry made of beans, lentils or chickpeas. The sundal would be served as an offering to the goddess and then, to all the guests who would visit to see the golu.

(Source: chennai.in)

That's not all. All the female folks would receive a bag of goodies, called “Tamboolam” containing betel leaves, bangles, a blouse piece, a coconut, fruit, sindhoor (red powder) and turmeric.

(Source: indusladies.com)

At the end of the 10-day festival, we would carefully pack the figurines with lots of cloth. We would put them in a box and keep them in an airtight, safe place until the next year.

       

  

I hope you liked reading about Navarathri. Do you celebrate festivals? Tell me about your favorite festival of the year.

Best,

Suma.

One of the most refreshing end of summer sounds

is the notes of squeals and laughter from the elementary school opposite my house.  My dogs and I walk on the road around the school everyday. We watch children on swings, some playing soccer and others tennis on the playground during their most desired session of school  – recess.

Growing up today is harder than ever for children. Most of them live in nuclear families and are isolated from their grandparents and extended family. They wake up and sleep to news of violence, war, natural disasters and horrific traffic accidents. Children face tougher challenges with the increasing rates of divorce, addiction, poverty, population, abandonment and trafficking. 

Despite all of this, we have so much to learn from these little beings. Between adults and kids, the latter are clearly more joyful than us. It doesn’t matter how gloomy we are, the inner child within us bounces out in their presence.  Imagine a child who wraps her arms around you. The warm nuzzle of her chin on your shoulder is just priceless. 

Children respond to animals, pets, toys and animated characters by instinct. They approach life with indiscriminate love rather than logic and fear. 

They explore the world of imagination. It helps influence their thoughts, their actions, it helps them heal. They use it all the time, when alone, at home, with friends, when they’re at school, at sports practices, art, music and dance classes.  

Today, I want to share with you a  TED Video by Adora Svitak, a young Seattle girl who talks about what adults can learn from children.

Share with me, I would love to know. What is your biggest learning from today's children? What do you like the most about them?

Best,

Suma.

Adopting Buddy - our second dog

When we adopted Buddy, a black lab-shepherd-chow mix from the rescue shelter, we did it out of emotional impulse. Not just that, we did it with a quiet sense of dread, wondering how Buddy could possibly love us at eleven and a half years, which is over eighty human years. He was shy and feared every possible thing in the world including us. It was obvious that he didn’t have a good growing up life.

The night we adopted Buddy, the woman at the rescue gave us a yellow, dirty fleece toy. “Buddy came to us with this toy and he loves it,” she said. When I tried walking him on the road outside my house, on the 1-mile pavement leading to a stop sign, he couldn’t even move. How could he start walking when he was visibly bony and weak?

We weren’t even sure if he’d get along with Duke, our 10 year old yellow lab retriever mix.

We had a thorough physical examination done for Buddy the next day. At our regular private veterinary hospital, the doctor informed us about his partial blindness and a mass in his liver, the size of a half-watermelon. 

We’ve had Buddy for almost a month now.  August flew by quickly and we’re nearing the end of summer. After numerous food trials, we are now learning that his favorite food is chicken and rice. He could get his mouth around a whole packet of chicken strips and can persistently knock on the door of our backyard until we open it. He is now eating marginally well and feels a lot more secure and happy.

Buddy is doing road trips with his nose occasionally squeezing between the space of the front windows and our seats. He has brought us into the schedule of everyday dog-walks. Trips to off leash dog parks have increased to multiple times every week. He loves people and he loves dogs.  He waits alongwith Duke at the door every single time we come in to the house and welcomes us like he hasn’t seen us in a million years.

He rests his face on our laps, pants on our faces as we ride in the car, loves jamming his head on the couch and is glued to our heels  even on our way to the restroom.  He has helped shape our physical and mental health – as a couple, as dog lovers, as family, as friends, as adults.  All this in just over two weeks.

This evening, after we returned from a long road trip with the dogs, Buddy ate a medium fat burger, chicken strips, cheese sticks and biscuits. Duke had all these and pleased his palette with glazed doughnuts. Then, both of them claimed their favorite spots in the living room.

Raj (my husband) and I sat on the floor a few feet away from both of them. We were talking about Buddy’s major liver surgery tomorrow and the things we needed to prepare. Buddy and Duke didn’t want to leave their spots, but they couldn’t resist themselves. They came over and rested their heads on our laps, Duke on Raj’s and Buddy on mine. Their tails pounded the floor and they showed us their bellies with their legs stretched out. 

Yes, without Duke and Buddy, we’ll have a fur –less clean house, not smelling of dog perfume, no drools on the floor, a clean garden, more friends visiting us, more money , frequent fantastic travel getaways without having to worry about a reliable dog sitter and boarding facility, no dog wash and no veterinary visits.  We could do without dogs and have all these. Trust me, our lives would never be complete.

It’s strange how two wonderful animals, despite being the center of all our amused and annoyed conversations, all disappointments and unmet expectations, persistently teach us with all their hearts how to give and accept unqualified, unconditional love.    Of course, we have poor learning skills.

There are times, when we ask ourselves, “Why these two remarkable beings would let us into their lives and how would we let them steal our hearts like this?” There is no answer.


Best,
Suma.

Reading THE POWER OF NOW - By Eckhart Tolle

The book was recommended by a good friend and I’m listening to the audio version from my local library.

The POWER OF NOW is compelling and a powerful teaching. Eckhart starts the book by talking about how he took to spirituality. At the age of 29, he felt a deep longing for isolation and the feeling of not being able to live with himself any longer. He says that the most loathing thing was his very own existence. After years of learning from spiritual saints, he realized that something profoundly significant had happened to him but he didn’t understand it when he was 29. Then, a time came when he had no relationships, no dog and no home. He spent most of his time on park benches. People would come up to him and say they wanted what he had. That answer later grew into the book that we are talking about…THE POWER OF NOW.

The book originated by people’s questions often asked in classes, sessions and conferences. Sometimes in the process of writing, an entirely new thing came up that he had never thought of or uttered.

Eckhart uses terminology that is as neutral as possible to reach a wide range of people. The book draws insight into finding peace within our own deepest self and how we can feel it when our mind is still.

Eckhart elaborates the identification we have of ourselves with our mind. He talks about how we’re not being able to stop thinking and the way our mind-made self causes fear and suffering. He describes the mind as a superb instrument when used rightly. It is not so much that we use our mind wrongly, it is that we don’t use it at all. It uses us. Just because we solve a crossword puzzle or build atom bombs, we cannot be free of our mind when we want; then the mind is using us, we don’t even know that we are its slave.

Eckhart reflects on how people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, use the words “being” and “god” with great conviction as if they know what they are talking about; he further goes out to say that the word God has become a closed concept and it has become the mental representation of someone or something outside us. Neither God nor being can define god.

Eckhart’s answers are accompanied by visual images and mental movies. He reveals that we can free ourselves from our mind. We’ve got to start listening to the voice in our head and be there as the witnessing presence. The I AM realization, rather than I am THIS or I am THAT, arises from beyond the mind.

Here is the real deal. The book is about is about living in the NOW. I highly recommend it to those who are interested in the psychology of spirituality.

Write to me. I would love to hear. Are you spiritual? What moves you about spirituality?