India as home

I'm at Oakland, California currently.
It was 5 in the evening and I was hungry. I thought I'll catch a bite at the Starbucks.
I went and there was one person in front of the counter ordering for himself.
I stood behind him.
As I was standing in the line, the coffee guy asked me what I wanted to have so that he could ready it up by the time I paid for it.
The guy in front of me turned back as I was telling the coffee guy, 'excuse me, I was standing ahead of you.' ... in a kind of 'what man..! how can you get your order before mine?'.
I explained to him with a shrug that thats how they do. They have 2-3 guys to make coffee but only one to bill. So, when the coffee-guys are free, they ask the people in the queue, what they want, before they place the order.
He felt re-assured. By his looks it seemed that he was African origin.
He collected his coffee and as he passed by, he asked if I was from India. I replied in the affirmative.
Then he said, 'I'm from India too'. I was perplexed. He couldn't be Indian..

I collected my coffee and went over to his place and introduced myself.
He introduced himself and told me that he stayed in Mumbai for 10 years. He studied school and college there. And MBA in Symbiosis, Pune. He was Sudanese by origin.
And he'd been in the US for 7 years.
But.. for him, India is his home, he said.. and he calls himself Indian.

He's not an Indian by birth. He's just stayed in India for sometime. He's stayed in US for long enuf to love it.
But he still identifies himself with India.

More on this blog to follow soon..

One man's food is another man's poison

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2015/12/31

Some 'thnik' oozes out of me. I was thinking... conservative thought always demarcates between two values and makes one good and another bad. Your teacher teaches you something. Once you learn it, you don't want to budge an inch from that school of thought. You feel that following that is good and not following is obviously... not good! The point here is.. in that frame of mind, nothing else is right. Mind shuts down.

It doesn't allow one to think of multiple thoughts as equally good.Going further, I feel, I can't think of multiple 'good's. I always compare each with other, extract out a difference, colour it bad and finally I have a good and a bad.
I happens with everyone in some or the other dimension.

Most religions meet the same fate. Religions give you an idea of what's good. (good way to lead life, good way to be with friends, etc... (often I feel religion teaches you proven shortcuts.. but thats another topic)) But people make those ideas as restricted areas. You deviate from them and then what you're doing is bad. Bending towards east and praying is good for Hindus and same in west is good for Muslims. Do the reverse and you're a heretic! Praying itself takes a back seat.
You follow a rule and you're good. You don't follow a rule and you're bad.. though you're not harming anyone!!
Its just wierd. For such a thinker, the world's a wierd place. The actions of such a guy is wierd for others.

Read the attached Calvin and Hobbes strip. Bill Watterson is a terrific cartoonist. I guess, deep inside, he thinks like Calvin. Then, he puts such complex ideas in simple situations in the comic and ridicules the train of thought itself. :)

2.25 stars make one month - a mail conversation

From: Sundaresh H.K.
Posted At: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 4:04 PM
Posted To: My mails
Conversation: Why does the date of Durga puja vary from year to year
Subject: 2.25 stars make one month.

2.25 stars make one month.
'cos 2.25 * 12 = 27. (reason enuf !! :-))

Jokes apart, let me make an attempt at resolving it.

There are 12 months in a year. There are 12 corresponding zodiac signs in a year too.
What are zodiac signs?
They are the constellations that fall in the zodiac belt. The sun and the moon traverse this belt.

It means that in the month of Jan (Dec 20 - Jan 20 around) if you draw an arrow from the earth connecting the sun and go further ahead, you will touch the Capricorn constellation. Similarly, do the same in Feb and you will get Aquarius and Pisces in March.
If you draw a similar line from earth connecting moon then you would more often than not, find a different constellation than the one obtained in the sun's direction at that time.
This explains the difference in a person's solar and lunar signs. Mine for ex: is Capricorn solar-wise and Taurus lunar-wise. When I was born, Sun was in Capricorn and Moon in Taurus.

Relation between the stars(nakshatras) and the signs.
2-3 prominent stars of each constellation have been named for reference. They total 27.
Further each star is divided into 4 padas.

One zodiac sign is made of 9 padas.
for ex:
Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika are present in the Aries and Taurus constellations astronomically. Each of them have 4 padas.
To form the first zodiac sign Aries astrologically, you need - 4 padas of Ashwini + 4 padas of Bharani + 1 pada of Krittika
Similarly, to form the second sign Taurus, you need - the remaining 3 padas of Krittika + 6 padas of the succeeding two stars.

On a clear night, you can see identify these constellations and stars moving from the east to west direction as the night progresses. Identify a zodiac sign A. Move 30 degrees towards west and you'll find its successive zodiac sign. This way you can make out the zodiac belt. 2-3 stars from each of these constellations are named for reference as I mentioned earlier.

Finding which constellation is behind the Moon is easier than finding the one behind the Sun. I think this is the reason why our ancestors chose following the pattern of the Moon in identifying time.

Back to our older problem:

One lunar revolution is approximately 1 earth day.
Hence, 365 lunar revolutions do not equal 1 solar year exactly. But both the Hindu year and the Solar year are made up of exact 365.* days. In order to rectify the difference, the Hindu calendar adds up the deficit number of days to the lunar year at a certain periodicity. This is the reason why Durga Puja is not on the same date as it was last year.

For the astronomically hungry ;-)

(If you're already confused, don't go further..)

1 star - 4 padas
1 sign - 9 padas
12 signs - 12 * 9 = 108 padas

Zodiac belt is circular and hence 360 degrees.

360/ (12 zodiac signs) = 30 deg / sign
Hence the zodiac signs are 30 degrees apart. Sun and Moon move shift 30 degrees every month!!

360/ (108 padas) = 3.33 deg/pada
3.33 deg/pada * 4 padas = 13.33 deg
Hence the nakshatras are 13.33 degrees apart.

Hope this information helps. Do pitch in, to add on to this.

-Sundaresh.

-----Original Message-----
From: SUBRATOJM
Posted At: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 2:56 PM
Posted To: Konark Genera
Conversation: Why does the date of Durga puja vary from year to year
Subject: Hindu Months and Some Remarkable Resemblance

Well,there is a krittika amongst the Nakshatras in your list - that corresponds to the month of Kartika.

Also Margashirsha is the other name of Agrahayana in some of the Indian languages (e.g., Marathi) - so the entry of Mrigashirsha corrsponds to that.

By the way, what are these Nakshatras - Nakshatra literally means star - could anyone correlate these names with the more common names of the celestial bodies ?

Also what is the correlation between the stars and months - I'm assuming there would some reasoning behind naming the months after 12 of the stars.

Could it be that each of the months starts with the moon "in" that particular nakshatra (after which it is named). This could be true if, for example, baishakh, jaishtha, ashadha has 29 days, Shravana, bhadra has 30 days, and so on - using the sequence of nakshatras in the list. But this adds up to only 351 days per year ! How many days are there in a Shaka year ? (I guess it is pretty close to 365, if not exactly that !)

Does anyone have a more palatable explanation ?

The tsunami that struck...

Hope all our known brethren are fine allover. Many unknown were swept away... poor coastal ppl.. they didn't have any shelter against or any idea about those waves.. They were just 2 gigantic waves that in a flash of a moment swallowed the front row of our population.

Hope their families recuperate soon... hope we all get a second chance..