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Showing posts with the label Religion

When Destiny Sends Its Helpers

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Keep running. The right people find you on the way. At different stages of life, you’re confronted with different challenges. And each time you cross a hurdle, you feel that familiar sense of accomplishment. It’s tempting to attribute that success to your own skill, tenacity, and willpower — to pat yourself on the back and feel proud of how you handled it. But when you zoom out and look at the moments where you somehow managed to trump the odds, a quieter realization sets in: It’s never just you. There is always an unseen army that shows up at the right time. It was 2005. I had decided to pursue my Master’s in the US. I picked a few schools in the Midwest where the expenses were manageable, and that’s how the University of Missouri–Rolla entered the picture. But funding was still a massive question mark. I hadn’t secured any assistantship, and we didn’t have the means to pay out of pocket. We went from bank to bank, hoping for an education loan. Each manager aske...
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Turning up(on!) with a bindi

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I had to check the title twice so that I did not end up adding an 'h' somewhere that could result in a vegetable. The whole meaning of the post would have been lost. But, Google has always helped my cause to verify things instantaneously, and here goes the post to convey the right meaning. Bindi is a symbol anyone from India would be familiar with. In South India, it is referred to as Pottu or Bottu , and since I am from the South, my first reaction would be to associate that tiny dot on a woman's forehead as Pottu . I do not want to write about the religious significance of a bindi since a significant lot has been written about that. I have always wondered how that tiny addition to the forehead of women serves as a nice decorative item. A bindi comes in different sizes and shapes associated with a myriad of decorative features thus answering a big question Why do girls spend hours and hours of their time selecting a bindi? But today it is different. It is no m...
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Religious Conversion

Innumerable controversies seem to hound the topic when it comes to conversion. Is it a state of mind or is it something more complex? I have often wondered and reflected upon the merits and de-merits of religious conversion. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and other religions are beset with issues of conversion. It also creates a topic for further conversation with fellow friends and beings, when someone takes the step of conversion. The gossip mills work overtime to find the exact cause and reason for this step. I have often wondered how knowledgible are we to judge a religion. Take the instance of a person who converts from Hinduism to Christianity. On what basis does this transformation take place? Has he gone through all the vedic scriptures? Has he mastered the Bhagavad Gita? Has he studied the Upanishads and the other sacred verses? On the other hand, how much of the Bible is he comfortable with? The obvious answer to all these questions would be a...
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Premarital sex and Hinduism

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It is not everyday that a talk on pre-marital sex can lead to Hinduism and religion. It was just one of those days, where everyone spoke and about a lot of things! How (im)moral is it to have pre-marital sex! It is always good to elicit different views on this rather subdued subject. Obviously, in India it is still a taboo to talk about sex and related issues. No wonder, we get to study the related topics only in the tenth grade and that too not in all the mediums. Imagine a student taking up electronics or computer science in his eleventh and twelfth grade. He would have no formal way to learn about sex. And this is what the majority of the country is into at this time - no person has no definite say in this subject! So how right is it to have pre-marital sex? Or rather should we be saying Can we talk about pre-marital sex? But being mature enough individuals, it is always good to vent your opinion for/against this topic. What has been subdued for so long should atleast have a common...
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Avani Avattam

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Hey! Wondering what this mysterious word is? It is nothing but one of the most sacred and religious ceremony of the Brahmins. It is the Upakarma. Belonging to the Yajur veda , the thread changing ceremony ( to be simple) fell today and the three of us in our room were ready with our waishtee ( dhoti ), vivudhi ( sacred ash) on our forehead, dharbe, new poonal ( thread ), pancha pathra ugruni , arisi ( rice) or to be appropriate akshadhai and of course water. A scanned copy of the Kanchi madam upakarma copy was there on my lap and with great vigor and challenge, I was reciting the Sanskrit words written in Tamil. Never easy to get a good foothold in the subject if you've never read it before. All the time we are involved in science and technology that you realise what you've been missing in the long run. Vedic knowledge has always been a boon not for a particular community but for the whole wordly sphere. It encompasses all that we can think of and a lot more. Life gets too...
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