Reclining Buddha

Reclining Buddha--View from behind the feet.

A different view showing head and the base of the feet. The fingerprints are clearly delineated by mother of pearl in lay work!!!

Picture Post Card View of Emerald Buddha Temple from Outside

The Grand Palace _ Bangkok

Grand Palace Outer View

I could take some beautiful shots of the Palace and Emerald Buddha Temple.

This complex consistes of three parts:
The Emerald Buddha Temple
The Middle Palace and
The Inner Palace.

No one is allowed inside the inner palace.

The Thais are highly ettiquette-driven. It is  not correct to enter a temple scantilly dressed. Our guide a stout tThai woman kept poking chinese girls who were in mini skirts or shorts and forcing them to wrap their sarongs. It is not seemly in Thailand to expose the upper ans lower torso. 

On the Banks of the Chao Phraya

Here I am...once more gazing out of my hotel window at the wide expanse of the Chao Phraya river flowing throgh the middle of Bangkok. I am here this time for a meeting with a client. The hotel is the Anantara Riverside Resort and Spa, a wonderful and huge property right on the banks of the river.

The entire place is alike a museum with carvings, sculptures and bas relief adorning the walls and corners. The elephant motif is pronounced.

Bangkok is the same old traffic loaded, ancient yet modern city. Every time I drive through Bangkok, I feel India could have achieved this long long ago. Till 1995 we were looking with awe towards Singapore, Kualalampur,and Bangkok as developed ultra modern cities. They were foren. We were Indian. Today any metrocity in India looks as modern as or better than cities like, for example, Bangkok. A drive through Bangkok today is no different fromn a drive through an urban sprawl like Gurgaon or OMR in Chennai. Bur in Indiua this modernization is still in pockets while here it is evenly spread. This is not to say that there are no poor underprivileged people. But here they seem to be contented with their lot and sincerely attempting  to do something.

We had dinner at a nice Indian restaurent called the Indian Cor
ner opposite to Maa Hotel. There are lot of north Indians here who are traders and businessmen. But there is no service oriented community as in Dubhai or Muscat.

Ooty Flowers

Managed a two-day break at Oootacamund en famille. These snaps were taken during a leisurely stroll through the Botanical Gardens. 

I liked this quotation engraved on a slab in the Rose Garden:

Roses for the Garden

Roses are a gift of price 
Sent to us from Paradise
More Divine our Nature grows
In the Eden of the Rose.

Roses, why for silver sell?
O, Rose merchant fairly tell
What you buy instead of those
That is costlier than the Rose

Kis I of Mreve

Unusual Vs. Not Usual

Another casual shot. As I came out of my house, I saw these EB workers using this contraption to fix a bulb on a street light. Thought it's not an usual sight though it may not be an unusual sight!

Dolie-Walas Relaxing

sabhari Malai Dolie Walas Relaxing

I  took this snap from my Nokia Lumia 920 mobile camera during my recent visit to Sabharimalai. After an exhausting descent from Neeli Malai, my son and I had almost reached the comforting shelter of Pamba Ganapathy Sheds. On the left sitting in the shade I saw these Dolie Walas with their dolies neatly stacked in a  row! Liked the frame-snapped it!

Nicholas Nickleby and Mahabharath

This is a 2002  movie adaptation of Charles Dicken’s third novel. Dickens is able to bring out the stark black and white images of ‘good” and “bad” in his novels. The Victorian idiom enables these “passion play” imagery.

Ralph Nickleby is the personification of evil or to use its Indian equivalent “adharma”. Nicholas Nickleby the honorable nephew is “good” or “dharma”. The story is essentially a tale of the triumph of good over evil.

As I was watching the movie, I could not help but speculate on the parallels between Nicholas Nickleby and the Mahabharath! Both are tales that describe the travils of dharma as it is put down continuously by evil. The pandavas are personified in Nicholas and Kate. The insults thsat Kate undergoes in Ralph’s house from his evil friends are similar to the famous scene where Draupadhi is dishonored in public in Duryodhana’;s court. Just as we have Vikarna and Vidhur who try to counsel evil, we have a friend of Ralph’s who not only advises Ralph and hios cronies to desist but also feels guilty for not having spoken up! We even have a “pair of Krishna equivalents” in the Cheerybyl brothers.

The comparison rose up naturally in my mind and there is no contrivance here. I think this only proves the essential fact that the fight between good and evil, the initial victory of the latter and the eventual triumph of the former are essential themes deeply embedded in the human consciousness so as to transcend cultures and continents. Of course, in the complicated world we have cocreated, there are no convenient pegs for hanging good and evil. Our times are more Elizabethean than Victorian! There is a lot of grey!

But, the real battle between the forces of dharma and adharma is happening outside but inside each one of us! Each one of us has a little bit of both Ralph and Nicholas in us. The battle within is the Kurukshetra. It is both a Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra. It is Kurukshetra because we can’t transcend our own inner evil by inaction. It is only by action that we help dharma to emerge victorious.

Action is neither good nor bad. It is the coin of life. We exchange time for action. We accumulate karma with action! To stop acting is itself an action! “So, Act!” says Krishna. But, act within the framework of love and good. Any action that is prompted by a general desire for doing well by everyone including oneself and that is rooted in love and a sincere commitment not to harm others by thought, words or action is preferable over inaction.

We wonder why evilis victorious. We wonder whether good will triumph at all! Yet, the Lord has promised to return whenever there is a threat that good will be totally destroyed. How much more should evil win before the balance is irretrievably tilted and the cosmic force in irreversibly released in the final battle against evil?

But this is the revelation; the second coming and the Hope! Amen

Unconditional Love

My wife does not love me unconditionally. She loves me within certain value parameters. But, it doesn’t matter. Because, the parameters she has set are actually good for my long term growth as a human being.

Therein lies the nub. Most women/Men love or think that they love or that they ought to love their partner unconditionally. This means, they deem it their duty to ignore the other’s faults or shortcomings. They have a humongous blind spot. This creates superb victims or martyrs depending on the other paty’s response to this ‘unconditional’ love. This is a Lose/Win contract that’s destructive for the victim/martyr.(Try trelling this to them!)

Most unconditional love has subtle value parameters. pretty girl marries a rich man and loves him unconditionally as long as he provides her with the material wealth she seeks. The conditions she places are not for the benefit of the other person but for her own personal benefit. As long as love is filtered through ego, it is not unconditional. But where conditions are not filtered through ego but a genuine wish to improve the other person, such conditional love is better than the unconditiona love that destroys and deludes either or both the partners.

Another combination is a situation where one party is too critical or abusive. (In fact, this is ususlly the other party in the ‘unconditional’ love example we saw above. This is not conditional love. This is simply no love at all.It’s a Win/Lose relationship that’s going nowhere.

Imagine a marriage where both parties love each other unconditionally. That is to say both are willing to ignore their faults and shortcomings. While they will be extremely happy in the short run, in the long run they would have made so many mistakes in life that the whole point of a healthy marriage would be lost. This is a lose/lose marriage. They laugh but do not smile. They are living a lie and delude themselves. These people are usually the educated middle class who need to put on a show of happiness. This breaks down once the children settle down and the social need to live together is gone.

It is better to be honest to your spouse. Shortcomings and faults should be discussed and addressed as both the parties actualize their fullest potential on the parallel and adjacent paths they have chosen to take voluntarily and out of a deep (but not unconditional) affection and admiration for the other.