Dicey Dice

How does this look?

ruupak maalaa: 1

|| shrii viShNave namaH ||

|| shrii gaNeshaay namaH ||

A word about the series

The series features a dialogue between two persons -- an instructor and a listener. This series will use ruupak-alankaar or metaphors. The metaphors will contain reference to existing stories within our splendid collection of texts like purana. The series, as intended right now, will contain thirty-two stories. Each story is a pearl and the whole series will thus form a garland -- Metaphor Garland or ruupak maalaa.

Pada 1



Glossary

Madhur - Sweet; Lalit - artistic; buddhi - wisdom; bala - strength; shubha - auspicious; dhana - wealth; rasanaa - tongue; hari - all pervading one; bhava - world; vaaraNa - absolver; vaaraya - request to absolve; moha - passion; kari - elephant.

Listener: I have heard that God is formless, then how can God be sweet or artistic? Why is God beyond strength and wisdom? How does God showers wealth and auspiciousness in our lives? Why is God beyond the scope of tongue or narration? Why should we continuously bow to Hari? Why is He called as absolver of this world? And, most importantly, why is passion being called as elephant?

Instructor: Beautiful! These questions are just beautiful, for persons ask questions related to God only when they become lucky. Let me answer your queries one by one; listen attentively.

God is indeed formless, but since He decided to make this world with qualities, He incarnates to preserve the order in this Universe. During His incarnation, He appears with all these qualities and pleases everyone around Him. That is why He is called as sweet and artistic.

Since God has created this universe and qualities within it, He cannot be subjected to them. For this reason, He is beyond wisdom, strength, or the scope of narration. With words, we can only narrate what lies within our universe. Thus the existence of God is beyond our words.

This universe is reciprocative in nature: whatever goes must come back. We should continuously bow to Hari out of love and devotion for Him. Even though He is beyond this world and the qualities, He respects the reciprocativity of the world and becomes a captive of His devotee.

Hear the concept of moksha. A soul is born again and again till it achieves moksha -- unification with the God. After attaining moksha, the soul is not born again and is saved from the pain of life. Many will argue with you that life is fun; however, don't forget that life in a body is not an eternal state while moksha is. If people find pleasure away from God, they must re-think about their opinion. God bestows moksha to us and hence is called as the Absolver.

Finally, in ancient time an elephant attained moksha by God's mercy. That is why, as a metaphor, passion is referred as an elephant.

Listener: This was simply superb! I am really very happy. Please! Pretty please! Tell me the story of the elephant and how he attained moksha.

(to be continued)

Durga: Garland of Thirty-Two Names

SOURCE

This stotra or prayer appears in Durga Saptashati. This stotra was told by Devi to Brahma and if devotees understand it fully, the devotional, reciprocative, and logical aspects, then they are removed from the clutches of fears.

MEANING

O Durga you: 1) are hard to defeat, 2) destroy bad times in life, 3) remove obstacles, 4) are all pervading, 5) are hard to tame or control, 6) destroyed demon Durg^, 7) lift from shackles of fate, 8) are impossible to be slayed, 9) can destroy anything, 10) bless us with divine knowledge, 11) are like fire for tree like demon-civilizations, 12) are unsurpassable, 13) are abode of light, 14) are residing (within us) as soul, 15) show path during difficult situations, 16) are source of all talents, 17) are support for hapless (me), 18) are abode of knowledge, 19) appear (after being sought) during meditation, 20) are the cause of bondage, 21) are difficult to attain or reach, 22) are the reason behind all the difficult knowledge, 23) are the destroyer of glorious demons, 24) are adorned by glorious weapons, 25) have adorned with induplicable organs, 26) are hard to achieve, 27) are hard to visit, 28) are Goddess of everything difficult, 29) are gallant, 30) are hard to defeat woman, 31) are decorated with impeccable shine, and 32) shower induplicable happiness. O Durga! I am singing a garland of your names; please shower Your bliss on this small creature.

Those who recite these names with devotion are liberated from worldly tensions.


Footnote

^ Durg is different from Durgaa.

The Tailor Shop Girl

John bought a slice of pizza and sat in the new sound-filled milieu. As he looked out of the window, he saw a tailor shop. Behind the windows, he could see a beautiful girl sitting on a sewing machine. She was, perhaps, thinking something on the table instead of sewing. John wondered about her thoughts as his eyes attempted to get a clearer view of her. She looked a little tan, with a beautiful long face. Her eyes, from this far at least, looked big and beautiful. Her hairs were golden and hands looked slender. For once he thought, "What is, if at all, such a beautiful girl doing in a tailor shop. Perhaps time, the all powerful, changed her into a simple maid from a princess.'' Occasionally, John ate the pizza slice and whenever he gazed at her, the bite would stick in his throat; He found the pizza hard to swallow while peeking the serenity. Like water-level during heavy rains, John's decision to get a closer look of the girl increased turbulently. Some out of the world thoughts ran into John's head, "May be I should buy a flower for her before I get there. Oh! But what will she think? I don't even know her.'' Curiosity kept piling up and pizza got finished, as if all the pizza got converted into curiosity. He left his seat, cleaned his hands, and crossed the street. At the window of the tailor shop John stood like a statue. His pretty girl was a mannequin.

Ten Reasons for Using Firefox

1) Almost bug free compared with IE
2) Quicker start and loading compared with IE
3) Much better CSS support
4) Possible to disable images from bad servers
5) Inbuilt google search box and pop-up blocker
6) For those on slow connection, it is relatively smaller download of about 4.7 MB; compare with 10s of MB for IE and 11 MB for Mozilla
7) Much less security problems
8) Better cookie-handling if you explore the settings
9) Does not trusts contents from microsoft.com, the storehouse of microsoft related bugs
10) Runs well on even five year old operating systems!

You can get it for free at Mozilla's home

Miss Spelt Poem

I got this from a newsgroup and liked it a lot. It tries to illustrate that spell-checker and such automated reviewers are meant to assist humans and are not verdict. Enjoy!

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

The News that Made My Day

Car Manufacturers finally getting it back

Dinner

450 gms of pizza for dinner
=
finite but arbitrarily large string of "yum yum"

More Prophecies

Another test between Pakistan and West Indies and another set of wishes; I wished yesterday night that Pakistan will wrap-up their score cheaply from 200 for 4. They lost last five wickets in the space of about 35 runs. A bit Cuter was the dismissal of the last wicket, just after lunch, as soon as I went to see the score.

Going the Wrong Way

I have a skewed clock; I work from 12 noon to 9 in the evening at my office. I went for a weekly meeting at a research center about 1 mile from my office. While returning, to my office, I ran into the office delivery man in the street. I said a hello and he replied with a wide grin, "Wrong way on a friday evening!"

Success with Writing

Finally, for the first time, my boss was happy with a few paragraph summary of my recent work for a government report. When I wrote my first article, about three years ago, it was despicable in terms of style, writing, grammar, and presentation order. However, these three years have been developmental and formative for my writing.

Though I have a long way to go till I reach the proximity of perfection, nevertheless I am happy with the progress of past few years. May the trend continue!