Due to some very reasonable reasons I am all alone on this festive day
The man at work , the children spending holidays with granny chote papa and Choti Maa .
I am in Hyderabad for my exams.
All the homes in my neighbourhood are well lit including mine .Boys and girls busting crackers , Women cooking elaborate meals, lighting Diya's , refilling the oil , Men entertaining guests and keeping an eye on the children . My house keepers family requested me to share the Diwali meal with them instead I requested her to cook a meal for all of us in my kitchen .
I am lighting Diya's playing ram Raksha sthotram in the background (SPB version) and continuously thinking of Sita as Diwali is also a symbolic celebration of ram ,Sita n laxmans return to Ayodhya after killing Ravana .
Sita was jubilant on being reunited with family unaware of the turbulent times ahead. The time in Sri Lanka was less humiliating , as it was just a small kidnap and her husband fought and killed the evil Ravana to secure her release , in the end it brought much glory name fame to lord rama , but in Ayodhya she will have to face humiliation at the behest of her own family , first by undergoing a test to prove her chastity and later being sent off to the forests ,for someone in the kingdom of rama was not sure if the test results were genuine or manipulated by rama himself .
When she was weak and humiliated no one stood by her , everyone sacrificed her like an untouchable in the guise of dharma . If Laxmana did raj droha and stayed with her in the forests instead of running away from her , Or if rama himself left Ayodhya with Sita by giving up the Thorne as he did the same once for his fathers word , because he knew and believed that Sita was chaste ... why dint he go with her , she never succumbed to Ravana's offer of being his queen , even if she can foresee rama dumping her she wouldn't have surrendered to Ravana , such is the greatness of mother Sita so intense was her love for rama .
She suffered all her life and then decided to put an end to her suffering and humiliation by ending her life.
I wish she lived long to see better times , her children getting married , grand children , spend some happy times with her husband and large family. I wish she breathed her last tucked in a cosy bed in the palace as an old woman as a raj maata.
Rama on his road to greatness asked for sacrifices of Sita Urmila shrutakirti Kausalya Sumitra and many more ...
On this diwali day my heart goes out to you dear Sita maata , for all the sacrifices you made to reinstate the glory and greatness of your husband the great king rama ..... You are the real hero of Ramayana . राम , श्री राम न बनते अगर माता सीता न होती
I prefer a progressive (stood by Draupadi in her worst times ) flirtatious Krishna to maryada Purushottam shri ram ...
And my heart goes out to all the parents more so for mothers who are celebrating Diwali alone , away from their children and by children I mean both Son and daughter.
I shudder at the thought of seeing such days , just cooking for self away from children in the future. May be this is the fate of all the parents in this progressive world .
An introspective eye opener Diwali for me .
Happy Deepawali dear family and friends .

I open my wardrobe, and it’s time for my daily dilemma of what to wear. The girl notices it and offers help…mom as today is Sunday and you follow the weekly astro color code strictly , so wear this red kurta and pair it with white Patiala, as sun(Sunday and red) and moon(white , Monday ) are friends , this combination shouldn’t upset them, and you may in fact get the benevolence of 2 planets on one day. I don’t laugh at her snide remark on my strict adherence to color code but follow her choice of dress for the day.
She interrupts my thought process by saying mom what if modi ji brings in a new rule tomorrow about limiting the size of wardrobe, what will you do with all these sarees??? I hoarsely chirp at her “preesha shub shub bolo “… mom: - you are upset just at the thought of cutting down the wardrobe, I can guess the impact of it on you, if such a rule is made.
The man calls the girl, and they discuss in meek tenor about my mental status ….I over hear words like aging, frustration …. I yell at them from bedroom, humare shauk hai hi ithne se “few good clothes, little jewelry, and few pairs of sandals” isme bi pabandi hogi tho gussa nahi aayega kya? … She answers back gently , mom what about the perfumes and all the lotions stacked up on the dressing table. i shout back , Please don’t scare me by making me imagine glimpses of govt officers coming and clearing my dressing shelf too.
While driving to work, I realize that I am really getting paranoid reading all the forwards on whatsapp, debates on fb and watching news on the TV, (thankfully off late I have become less of a newspaper person) about people dying in the ques, army taking over a state, rs 5 crore plus of fresh currency seized in bangaluru, a govt officer caught with crores of old currency, bank employees doing money laundering for commission. News reporting is not limited to journalists any more, and journalists are not neutral any more. We are fed by Biased, corrupt, and sold out media 24 hours a day .
Added to this is another nuisance of every party’s back office staff , releasing pro party messages, images, articles ,data into the grapevine … and sadly also the morphed, distorted deprecating and denigrating images of their rivals , and we aam insaan share them frivolously. I don’t know what has taken over us that we don’t think twice before using the forward button.
To be honest I as aam insaan don’t know the real effect of demonetization or good/bad effect of the imposed gold limit or of the pending announcements. I get swayed by the strong make believe current, by the general sentiment created by media. It should be the job of JOURNALISTS to help the truth to percolate to the bottom most layer of the pyramid.
AND IT IS THE JOURNALISTS WHO ARE FAILING TODAYS INDIA.
I finally decide to stop bothering myself about all the good and bad news being spread around and tune into FM, luckily I get arijit for company
“Acha chalta hoon Duaaon mein yaad rakhna
reporter dost mere , kaam tum log sachha karna
i hum along.........................

Damn the nightmares... my brain is yet to make adjustments to the new emerging rules post demonitisation.
As an inheritance from mother, I developed the habit of hiding the currency in between the sarees , under the PAPERS in the wardrobe. I was so distrustful of myself that I never hid them at the most obvious places.
On November 8th night, after our mitr ended bashan on TV, I came home and opened the Godrej almirah and searched the most obvious places but did not find more than a note or two. I was relaxed but then I thought, is this all I saved? No there should be more to it, but from where do I start to ensure that the black snakes are not sitting somewhere silently to settle the scores with me later for forcefully hiding them away from the world.
Next day after the man left I closed the bedroom door opened the wardrobe believing that I am going to unearth a lot of hidden wealth. To my utter dismay I couldn't find more than a couple of old rs500 notes. I wasn't satisfied with my efforts in searching because I had confidence in the bharatiya nari in me.
When we stuff a note here and then in the wardrobe it is always with a noble intention of helping the families sail through the tough times. Actually it helped me big time once, when I lost everything to the tumbled nifty, the hidden wealth saw me though the tough times for a month.
I called my dear saroj to dust every saree. She while doing the same shared that her mother too had the habit of saving money the same way. And mother always had enough to meet the unexpected, unforeseen emergencies in the house. Unplanned needs too were fulfilled by her unanticipated savings. She would give money to brother to fix the cycle puncture, give her a rupee or two to buy bangles in the mela, her sisters tuition fees too was met with these savings. Father was never aware of the backdoor transactions. Rich or poor once we are wives and more important mothers, we think alike save alike and spend alike.
Saroj and I finished the dusting activity by midday, we were successful in finding a couple of the much disliked despised notes, but not to the extent I expected. I was happy and unhappy both at the same time. I left for work and since then till date every discussion in virtual world or real world is all about money...
When I came back from office, while having coffee I asked saroj ...kuch rreh gaya hoga re. she : aap ka vaham hai babhi, Maine har ek sadi ko jhatak ke deka, jo mila uthna hi tha
I made peace as I had 50 more days in hand to dispose, if i accidentally discover any more of them. But everyday there is a new law regarding the abandoned notes.
With 30th Dec around the corner, I am getting jittery about finding the demonetized notes later and then being jailed for the same. Bringing in a lot of disgrace, to the family for stocking the abandoned currency. All this punishment just for the innocent ways we inherited in the name of small domestic savings.
Every Indian housewife should become brave bold suave and demand her share of white money from husbands in their bank accounts, and be provided with a debit card and if possible a credit card too from here on...
Our handsome 56" inch broad chest bachelor mitr should get this idea in his Mann and declare his Mann ki baat as a diktat on one chosen Sunday, Men should be penalised for not declaring their wealth to their women all these years, because of this women developed a habit of saving the savings in the most ancient methods, which caused a havoc in their financial planning recently.
Before the hell breaks loose let me go and dust my wardrobe one final time to save the family dishonor of being branded as black money hoarders, if I discover anything more than a meager rs10, 000 I will be penalized humiliated isolated branded and maybe when I go in search of suitors for my children, they will call us, hey this is the family which once upon a time hoarded rs100000000000000000 (from mouth to mouth a zero gets appended at the end very naturally), hey ram shub shub socho
Rs 50,000 penalty for holding old notes after December 30?
http://toi.in/WpJtbZ/a19ai

After I downloaded Devdutt Pattanaiks my Gita in kindle , inspired by pandit Madhava Turumellas fb live video , the daughter wanted me to tell her a story form what ever I was reading
I handed her the kindle and made her read the following story
The complexity of karma is demonstrated in the following Telugu folk tale based on the Mahabharata: a little girl was drinking milk from a pot when Karna’s chariot rolled past. Startled, she dropped the pot. The pot broke and the earth soaked up the milk. The girl began to cry. Karna saw this, stopped the chariot and decided to get the milk back for the little girl. He took the moist earth in his hand and squeezed out the milk in the pot, much to the girl’s astonishment and delight. Everyone praised the great warrior.
Thus, Karna’s action yielded an expected output. But the outcome was unpredictable. The earth was furious that Karna had squeezed milk out of her. She swore that one day she would take her revenge. So on the battlefield of Kuru-kshetra, she grabbed hold of Karna’s chariot wheel, squeezing it as hard as he had squeezed her , forcing him to alight and pull the wheel free. And while he was thus distracted, with his back to the enemy, he was shot dead. His blood fell on the ground and the earth soaked it all up. Karna’s action thus had two reactions, an immediate one and a subsequent one. The immediate one was perceivable. The subsequent one was not. The latter reaction created the circumstances of Karna’s death.
Arjuna, you have control over your action alone, not the fruits of your action. So do not be drawn to expectation, or inaction.—Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 47..
She read it twice , the complexity of karma theory cannot be solved in a go .
We read some more stories and discussed krishna as the book is all about krishna's teachings
She shared An interesting observation
Maa krishna and jesus had long hair were born at midnight in mysteriously similar circumstances , both were shepherds both of them died in similar circumstances . We tried to connect the dots by exploring some relevant stories online and unlock the theory of their birth and death by doing some research
The story about death of krishna beautifully brings out the very important fact that, even for the Ruler of the Universe, the laws of Karma remain the same.
https://kshetrapuranas.wordpress.com/…/the-death-of-krishn…/
And in the case of jesus Christ
The violence may not always be seen in the body, but it decimates the heart, spirit, mind, character and emotions of people just the same. The beating and scourging of Jesus Christ before crucifixion describes the violent nature of the death he met to redeem our sins
http://www.vatican.va/…/ccc_…/archive/catechism/p122a4p2.htm
they lived , died like ordinary men... I could see some sense in her inference
She . Amma May be they are brothers or father and son?
I : but they were born at different times
She : may be it is a double role like in movies or a reincarnation or spirit brothers
I :what is this new spirit brothers
She : extra ordinary men with same mission descended on to the earth for the same purpose at different times in similar circumstances (bad weather) and died violent deaths as ordinary men...can be called spirit brothers.
I : hmm intresting, we can write a nice comparative fiction based on facts ..like our indigenous amish tripati, Ashwin sanghi does , or share the idea with Dan Brown and later on it be made into a high decibe action packed Hollywood movie
I wish some intellectual takes up these topics on linking gods and their missions , and depict them as 1 United force without any bias towards any one group irrespective of whom they follow or believe in....
All the world needs now in the name of fiction is to show the unity amongst the heavenly powers, to restore harmony on the earth. Instead of using ones creative cells to demean others religion it will be a big service to the mankind if one can deploy their creative thoughts and skills to show the gods as brothers in arms .