5 Quotes on Inspiration

1. "We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluable problems."
- John Gardner

2. "Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action."
- Benjamin Disraeli

3. "We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough."
- Helen Keller

4. "We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. "Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do."
- Orison Swett Marden

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Quote on Writing

Ten interesting quotes about Happiness.

1. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. ~Mother Teresa

2. A happy thought is like a seed that sows positivity for all to reap. ~Miriam Muhammad

3. Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. ~Maxim Gorky

4. Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens. ~Douglas Jerrold

5. A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. ~Bernard de Fontenelle

6. My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. ~William Shakespeare

7. We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. ~Mignon McLaughlin

8. When you’re really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights — and flowers will bloom on a barren land. ~Terri Guillemets

9.Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust

10. You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus

Quote on Writing style

Revisiting Shoranur in Palakkad, Kerala

Recently, I had attended our annual "Kudumba Sangamam" (family reunion) in my native place in Kerala. The place was Mundakkottukurissi at Shoranur. The function was attended by more than 100 family members, who had come from different parts. This time I had spent a little more time in this village and I was able to attend some important functions and visit many relatives and places. Visiting some of the temples was a great experience which brought me some nostalgic memories of my childhood and adolescent days.

Kunnathu kavu, Mundakkottukurissi

We used to visit this temple regularly as a part of our family rituals and light deepas for chuttuvilakku (lighting deepams around the temple). As kids, we used to wait eagerly for Uchar Vela, the pooram festival of the temple, to see the colorful chariots of our own village and the chariots coming from other nearby villages, for this event. We used to dress in our best attires, to compete to take the thalapoli, (arathi) to welcome them. This festival is celebrated on a particular day of the year, which usually falls between 15th January-15th February, as per the star.

Paddy field

In the earlier days, harvesting of the field, was performed by the womenfolk of the village, cutting the paddy yield and bringing them on their heads, which used to last for a week or more. Now this job is taken over by the machines and would be finished within an hour or so. The paths for walking through the fields were very narrow, not more than two feet in width. As kids, it was fun for us chatting while walking on the narrow paths without dancing and falling down to the fields, holding the school bag and an umbrella. Without expertise, one wouldn't have been able to walk on these paths, especially during rainy season.

Kayiliad Kavu, Kayiliyad

This was another temple where we used to visit only once or twice a year. The womenfolk in groups, used to go there with the required ingredients and vessel and cook payasam there, using firewood. I used to accompany my mother. The Payasam, (a rice pudding cooked with jaggery and added coconuts scrappings) was the nivedhyam to offer the deity, following a pooja there. After the pooja, the devotees can take the payasam home. This was usually performed once a year, during the month of the main festival of the temple.

The main festival was called Pooram. Then on the main Pooram festival day people from the same village and the nearby villages, come to see and enjoy it. During that festival night, Pava Koothu (Puppet show), a traditional art form of Kerala, was also played in the Koothu Madam in front of the deity, Bhagavathy. The performance starts at about 10 p.m. and goes on till day-break. Those days it used to be a popular entertainment for the public.

Other attractions include the colorful chariots and well decorated kalas (oxen) made out of hay and clothes, called kalavela (( check a sample here ) -

Also watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwO-tPK_0M

Why writing - 10 interesting quotes from famous writers

1. “Writing is my way of expressing – and thereby eliminating – all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.” – Zadie Smith

2. “That is why I write – to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.” – Paulo Coelho

3. “I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway, and I would disapprove of it.” – Colm Tóibín

4. “I write because I love writing. I think I became a writer in order to explore my ideas and responses to the world around me, which I often found it difficult to share with others. Also I liked my autonomy, and a writer can choose his or her own working hours – midnight to dawn or whenever. The difficulty of becoming a writer never bothered me. I knew it was going to work for me sooner or later. And if you’re a writer you don’t have to retire but can keep on doing the thing you love till you drop off the chair.” – Alex Miller

5. I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. - James Michener

6.“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.” – Octavia E. Butler

7. “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” – George Orwell

8. “I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.” – Sylvia Plath

9. “I believe there is hope for us all, even amid the suffering – and maybe even inside the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probably. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to build a fire in the darkness.” – John Green

10. “Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.” – Anaïs Nin

Happy New Year 2015

A visit to Pondicherry

Pondicherry is a Union Territory in India, formed out of four enclaves of former French India. It is located in the southern part of India, on the banks of Bay of Bengal. Since 2006, Pondicherry is known as Puducherry in Tamil (meaning New town) and also known as The French Riviera of the East" (La Côte d'Azur de l'Est). Pondicherry was earlier under the French influences (from 1673 until 1954), and when they left the place a great legacy was also left behind.

This tiny land of Pondicherry (Puducherry) has some great attractions such as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the international city of Auroville, the French boulevard town, world class beaches, beach resorts, backwaters, fishing villages, and more. Recently, we had a weekend trip to Pondicherry. These are some of the best places we visited.

1. Auroville

2. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

3. Museum -

4. Botanical garden

5. Chunnambar Lake-

6. Paradise Beach

7. Auroville Beach

8. Promenade Beach

9. Immaculate Conception Cathedral

10. Manakula Vinayagar Temple

(Vendors selling lotus flowers near the temple)

Happy Deepavali 2014

Wish you all a very happy Deepavali, 2014.

Read this link to know more about Deepavali- the Indian festival