Bhisma Ekadasi

Bheeshma Pitamaha or Devavrata is famously known for his oath of life long celibacy. He is one of the strongest characters in mahabharata and also a famous warrior, who could keep Arjuna also at bay on his day. But he is also a very renowned devotee of Lord Krishna. He is the one who proposes Krisna's name for top honor during RajaSuya Yaga performed by Dharmaraj. He also directs Kauravas to listen to Lord Krishna's words and stop war as Lord Krishna knows fully what would happen in the war. Bhisma figures in list of great devotees as given below sloka.

PRAHLADA-NARADA-PARASARA-PUNDARIKA-VYASA-AMBARISA-SUKA-SAUNAKA- BHISMA-DALBHYAN RUKMANGADA UDDHAVA-
VIBHISANA-PHALGUNA ADIN PUNYANI IMAN PARAMA BHAGAVATAN MANAMI (SRI PADYAVALI-52, TADBHAKTANAM MAHATMYAM)
"Prahlada, Narada, Parasara, Pundarika, Vyasa, Ambarisha, Sukhadeva Gosvami, Saunaka Rsi, Bismadeva, Balbhya Rsi, Rukmangada, Uddhava, Vibhisana, Arjuna, etc. to all of these great personalities, I pay my humble obeisances. "

Lord Krishna makes a promise not to touch weapon in the kurukshetrsa war and Bhisma challenges Lord himself stating that he would make Lord touch weapon. Kind hearted Almighty Krishna, wanted to give victory in this small challenge to his devotee Bhisma. One day when Bhisma starts killing Pandava army and Arjuna was not in a position to stop Bhisma. For a moment Krishna jumps out of charriot and takes weapon of sudarsana chakra pretending to kill Bhisma. In this way Lord Krishna displayed to world how much he valued Bhisma and his challenge.

When Bhisma is on his death bed(ampasayya) Krishna takes Dharmaraj to him so that Dharmaraj can learn more details of Dharma from the veteran. In the same context Bhisma gives Vishnu Sahasranama Stotra that is praying lord with 1000 names. Today Vishnu Sahasranama has become one acumen of the devotees who are on philosophical path. (Need to mention here that Late MS Subbalakshmi has given more popularity to it with her voice)

Bhisma who has gotten a boon from his father for his strong character, pitru bhakti and vow he has taken for his father. The boon is called svachanda Marana, means ability to time his death at his wish. During war he generously gives Pandavas secret to stop him in war. He waits on deathbed for auspicious Uttarayana Kalam and attains niryana on Astami of auspicious magha masa. The ekadasi that follows is named after him as Bhisma Ekadasi. It is believed that Fasting on this particular day and spending time in Lord Vishnu's names can free people from the sins.

Major Bhanu Chander -- A friend who will be remembered

My first meeting with him was not necessarily cordial. Even though he is my batch mate he joined 6 months late and that makes me senior enough to rag him. I made him arrange things in my otherwise clumsy room and cover all the holes on antique doors of the hostel so that I need not suffer in chilly winter. I am sure he would have cursed me at that point. Bt story does not end there, there is a special bonding began then and there. He became a closest buddy for the next few years. He used to tell me how badly he wanted to be in Indian Air Force as a pilot. I listened to every story which he unfolded about defence. May be I did not take all of them seriously as I had internal feeling that once he lands up with a lucrative high paying job, he would give his passion a break. But I was proved wrong in years to come and he was damn serious in becoming a pilot. Every time I had to walk into to canteen (All night canteen) I used to catch up with him and try to pull his leg over some thing or other. His smile looked so genuine every time he smiled. He used to admit honestly that he is not getting gist some hard core courses and happily mugging up for exam’s sake. He is not the smartest in college but he was pretty close to the smart guys in his Bpharm course that he pursued like a Defense project. Soon after graduation every one went chasing their future. Most of the guys future was lucrative job, higher education often called MS or MBA. He is one of the two guys I know who went on to pursue their unfamiliar passion. (Other being Ashis Panda who dedicated his life to social service) I was on one side happy with the decision he made and on the other side was nervous. Reason is obvious because of the risk he is carrying with so much dignity. We used to catch up at times over telephonic calls and just chanced to meet on Vizag road when he is on way to his hometown. I was happy to discover that his trademark smile still the same despite the matured army captain status he earned at that point. Like every other Aam Admi I did not miss any chance to boast that friend is in army as captain in time killing conversations with other friends. Six months ago he called me to inform that he is getting married. I was happy and sad. Happy for him for the time has come for marriage and sad that I can’t make it as I myself was getting married around same time. That was the last time we talked. We talked at length about many things from how he chanced to meet his sweetheart, how he became pilot in army which is his passion to his Honda car. When a friend of mine revealed the news of his death I was dumbfounded. I can’t help recollecting all the things I recounted above. Tears rolled from my eyes. May be God does not let good and extraordinary guys to stay on earth for so long as they are closer to His heart Swami Vivekananda die not live for long. Srinivasa Ramanujam did not live until his 40s. Major Bhanu leaves world at tender age of 29 leaving many friends like me sad in this world. Written with tearful eyes an feeling of deep condolences.

The Day when Right became wrong

Those were the days when King Parikshit is the ruler of the state. Its nearly 36 years after King Yudhistara left the kingdom to his grandson Parikshit to heavenly abode. Kali Purusha, who is the lead man for Kali Yuga did not dare to start his influences when Yudhistara was the king. Such was the power of the satvik and dharmic king.

A case was brought to King’s court for justice. Ramu and Somu were the parties to the case. Ramu sold his farm land to Somu few days and while ploughing the land Somu found a pot full of gold. Somu felt that the gold is legal propriety of Ramu as he merely paid for the land and not for the wealth underneath. Similarly Ramu felt that as the farm land is no longer his, the legal owner of the gold must be Somu. Both Ramu and Somu refused to lay hands on gold. King was pleasantly surprised at the Dharmic life his people are leading. He, how ever, wanted to give the case profound thought before delivering justice and so asked Ramu and Somu to assemble next morning in the court. Little did he know that the night would bring up new surprise at that point.

Kali purusha who was silent till that point sensed his time to exercise influence influence over people has finally come. He has got into minds of the people and started making them deviate from Dharmic life. Deviation from Dharmic life is first trait of Kali.

Next morning when the King appeared the case was completely different. Now both Ramu and Somu are fighting to become legal owners of the gold. King sensed something wrong as previous day they were relinquishing gold for same of Dharma. Serious contemplation and discussion with pundits gave him hint that Kali Yuga has started. He then ordered the gold to be handed over to king’s treasury, as any disputed property goes as per Dharma. He also put necessary steps in place to keep Kali in check. But all have gone in drain as Kali grew stronger and stronger.

I Hate Luv Stories

Disclaimer:This is not a movie review

There is no denying that I hate the concept of boy-girl love in the first place. Time and again I am reminded of this hatred in my subconscious mind through day to day experiences. This time a latest movie has reminded me of it. I just wanted to inspect why I hate love concept and this is what i came up with.

Platonic Love rarely exist:
Every time I hear love my eyes filter the content and transmit it to my brain as lust. It is not with out reason. Every love story we see begins with a good looking girl. People say love is something connected to heart. Surprisingly, most people fall in love with god looking girls only. So it says something that love is not merely heart oriented, it has substantial weightage to physical appearance.

Cheating of parents:
In the name of love the boy and girl invent multitude of excuses with parents to conceal the affair. They invent stories to be with lover and make poor parents buy those insane excuses. A boy who does not have an ounce of concern for parents declares he has an ocean of love for the girl he loves.

Decline in studies:
Studies usually take a huge hit due to juvenile love affairs. As the period during which love and study coincide, the youth pursue love rigorously than studies.

Nasty deeds: in name of love
Sad but unfortunate truth is that under the cover of love boys and girls are indulging in some nasty deeds that are inappropriate for their age and relation. Its painful to any decent human to elaborate on this and so closing it here.

Inter community:
As lovers pay more attention to physical and behavioral aspects only, most love affairs happen to start between people who belong to different communities. Conservative parents in India find it difficult to approve such love affairs and subsequent step of marriage outside their community.

Deception of Love:
Youth when in love trust the partner wholeheartedly. If one person in the couple has crooked intention then the life of the other would be at jeopardy. Mostly girls are at receiving end of this (through premarriage pregnancy or physical attacks by boys).

Is being good same as never been caught doing wrong?

This is one of the lines of thought I had been thinking for last couple of months. Some of us pamper saying "I am a good person". People agree to what we say if they never found us doing any wrong deed and people disagree if we are caught doing something wrong in the past. Question here is, just because no one caught doing wrong in past, do we become good person. Is the nature of good defined by the society or the people surrounding us? Not very difficult to answer this question. Nevertheless I would like to grab this first chance to drive point home.

Society driven:
Society or other people can declare a person good or bad. I cant agree to the point that society can alone decide what is good and what is not. My gut feeling is with the way things are transitioning now-a-days we are not far away from the day when wrong would be declared by society as good and vice versa. I am reminded of a small story in this context

An old brahmin is taking home a goat as dakhsina for performing puja. Three thieves saw the poor fellow and wanted to have the goat from him for dinner. When the brahmin is on his way back home with goat, first thief stops him and asks why he is carrying a dog home. Brahmin dismissed his claim saying it is a goat. A while later, second thief encounters him and asks why he is taking a donkey home. Brahmin evidently taken aback by such comments, dismissed for second time such remark. Sometime later third thief stops the brahmin and asks what he is going to do with the mule he is carrying home. Brahmin was aghast by such remark and begins thinking that he is taking home a ghost which is appearing like goat, dog, mule and donkey to different people and discards the goat. Thieves make merry with goat meat for dinner.

Individual driven:
If society cant be trusted, can we rely on individual for deciding what is good and what is not? Not completely. A learned man who does not contradict with what is mentioned in dharma shatras can be trusted for deciding what is good and what is not. Even the learned sages like Gautama and Manu who have drafted Dharma shastras, clearly stated in them that if they by mistake contradict anywhere with Veda then the Veda takes overriding precedence. Problem with relying fully on individual's decision on what is good and what is not is, people have innate tendency to justify the wrong deeds with some emotional or logical reasoning to make them look good. Just the way it is shown in movies, hero turns into thief and it would be justified by circumstances or hero marries heroin against will of parents in the name of sacred love. But the justification does not make a wrong deed right.

Then what is good:
Vedas form the basis for the acts individuals have to perform as per the context they are in (varna as well as ashrama) and deeds which are banished. How ever as Vedas are not easily accessible to everyone, great sages who have digested gist of the Vedas came up with Dharma Shashtras. These are easily accessible information for every one to know what is right and what is not. These deeds when followed to the spirit can be termed as good acts.

Final word:
I wud like to conclude this article with a small story, which I probably repeatedly told to some of you folks.

A teacher has imparted all the knowledge required to his pupil and while sending them back home he wanted to understand how many understood the content clearly. He called his students and gave each of them a banana to eat with a precondition that it should be eaten when no one is watching. One student went into a closed room and sat under the bed while eating it. Other student went into a forest and ate it sitting on a branch of tree. Other student went into pond and ate it while swimming. But the best student did not eat the banana and came to the guru. When questioned abt it, he replied that he could not eat it as no matter how far he has gone, there is God Almighty watching what he is doing. Guru felt proud and declared thats the gist of the education he imparted and so he is extremely confident that his student will not perform any wrong deed anytime as he knows clearly that God i watching him all the time.

Vedam – Movie Review

This is not a commercial flick. Its more of an experimental class that are rare in telugu film industry. It does not surprise me that it came from the director of Gamyam, another good movie.

Story:
Do not get me wrong. It is definitely not first of its kind. Five different stories hanging linked to a single climax. Hollywood has them, bollywood has them and I am sure other “Regionalwoods” have them. But it is relatively new to Tollywood. Trust me it is not easy to handle such subjects as audience would be lost in so many different threads. So the ambitious project was not very much perfect but it is decently made script.

Narration:
Krish tired his best and surely bettered himself in the art but not quite perfect. As I mentioned earlier it is not easy. There are some parts in movie where either audience get bored or lost. That’s one of the reasons why it cant become box office record getter movie sorts. Other reason being it does not stick to tired and tested 5 songs, 5 fights and/or 2 heroin and one hero concept. But I am glad that telugu movies are coming up with multistarrer movies with Novel subjects. Krish may be accused of trying to handle too many problems at on go, but to be honest he just tried to portray all the problems and did not ambitiously try to offer solutions. (Like Posani does in his movies by offer bizarre solutions to long impending problems thankfully)

Performances:
Allu Arjun:
He is a smart guy. I started realizing it as I just made a recap of his films. He is doing commercial formula based films, message oriented ones and now some novel multi-starrer. I am guessing over a period of time, he would end up having some nice memoirs than some of his peers. He enacted role of cable raju. He has done decent action clubbed with subtle comedy and carried the film very well. If you have watched climax scenes of movie named Happy then you would instantly recognize that he has improved a lot in enacting emotions. Way to go Arjun!

Anuskha:
She is beautiful and did justice to the role. I wont discuss whole lot about her character but she depicts some problems of sex workers.

Manchu Manoj:
There is no debate about this guy that he is any day better than his brother. But this movie surely brought some of his best action. His portrayal as rock star was near perfect, though at times his emotions betrayed him.

Manoj Bajpai:
We have seen his talent in movie Satya itself and he has enacted role of a muslim who gets bad outing in India and wants to leave country. He did justice to his role and very well supported by the lady who enacted his wife.

Nagayya:
Some true taste what poverty in India is like is depicted in character of Nagayya. I could see some missing lipsync at times but expressions were extraordinary. The scenes where he tries to protect his money from thief and the scene where he celebrates recovered lost cash touch heart of even rocks. He will be my pick for best supporting actor in the movie. His daughterinlaw character also is well enacted of a poor mother who sells kidney for son’s education.

Music:
Music from Keeravani is good. I did not listen to any songs before going for the movie. I fell flat with fist song “Now or Never”. I immediately recognized it is written by Sirivennela SeethaRama Sastry. All songs made sense lyrically.

Overall:
It is a movie that needs to be watched once at least.

Wimbledon Final with out Roger :-(

To say the least, it is painful to a fan to watch a Wimbledon Final with out Roger Federer’s participation. We got so used to it, for past seven years to see him in grandslam finals and more so if the slam in question is wimbledon.

In many ways Wimbledon is one slam which is precious. Tennis as a game reaches pinnacle of beauty at this place. In contrast to hard hitting baseline gamers, beautiful Serve and Volley gamer prevails a lot at Wimbledon. Pete Sampras reigned this place before Roger Federer broke lose to the Tennis scene as dominant force. Roger has shown signs of future in 2001 when he sent Pistol Pete home in 2001 Wimbledon. Not many at that point have done that to Sampras. People would have realized a prospect there but not many would have thought the guy would go on to become greatest Tennis player ever to hold a racket.

It is 2003 where Roger laid hands on his first slam and so fittingly at Wimbledon. Post Sampras era Tennis world has seen some Hewitt’s and Roddick’s but they were either not consistent or not all round in their game or showed signs of champion. I almost stopped watching Tennis after Sampras left scene. I would have committed a biggest blunder if I did so because Tennis world has witnessed a great phenomenon couple of years later an the champion has appeared. Champion in truest sense and more complete than Pete Sampras.

2004 is the year where Roger bagged three of the four slams of the year which Pete Sampras also has not managed. Show did not stop there. In 2005 he bagged two. In 2007 and 2008 he repeated feat he has achieved in 2004 and additionally he reached finals of French open both the years, only two lose both to greatest clay player named Nadal.

Roger is one way responsible for raising expectations on him. 2008 year was considered as low year for him and people said and written that Roger’s time is over. As Andy Murray pointed out end of 2008, Roger has semi final of Australian open, two finals at French and Wimbledon and Won US open, which is a great achievement. But, definitely not by Roger’s standard. Biggest pain that year was losing Wimbledon, which is more Roger’s home since 2003.

When every one is writing off Roger, he has other plans. He came back strongly in 2009 by breaking Pete’s record of maximum slams along with bagging French slam which eluded him for 4 years and also gaining back Wimbledon. Some may argue that he was lucky to be helped by injury of Rafa Nadal in the process. But there is no argument against Roger being second best Clay player and would have bagged 4 more of them if not for Nadal.

2010 is a bit painful for fans because we cannot find him in Wimbledon final. It has become a habit to look at Roger’s matches only after semi final stage because for more than 5 years till semifinal stage games looked more of a formality. This year was completely different and more so in Wimbledon when he struggled in first round. I am not writing an obituary here but after the first round match there was a strange feeling in the stomach that this year he is not going to win it. But like many others I thought, he would lose it to Nadal or Murray in the final but quarterfinal exit to a man whose match I never matched earlier is something that pained me.

Season of slams takes a break now till year end US open. Sincerely hoping Roger to compensate for what has happened at French and Wimbledon at Newyork later this year. It is not too easy though, with old horses like Hewitt and Roddick rediscovering their mojo and “generation next” in form of Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, del Potro trying to deny the throne to the King. Hope the King Returns.