Circle of life!

One of my close pals since last 8 years, who had also rejoined my old company is leaving this place for better career prospects. I feel happy for her transition. In as much I know, she is just a call away and going to be in the same city as me, I will definitely miss her for the instant communicator, tea & lunch table chats we used to have! :(

"To meet to part is the way of life and to part to meet is the hope of life."

Wishing her all the very best in every walk of her life

Kitty parties..

This post is based on Usha Suryamani’s post on similar lines and a recent office get together we had.
Offices or rather IT & ITES offices(I know of) have the funda of celebrating the birthday’s of their team members. It’s considered to be a MNC culture to celebrate the employees birthdays!! I think this attitude is fastly getting down these days even to our Indian public sector banks, government offices…

A typical IT office team get-together.

Entire team would assemble in a training rooms(ironical -for birthday celebrations!) and one of the birthday bakkaras of the month would cut the cake on everyone’s behalf! Followed by, a cake & snack distribution ceremony by few ladies (or rather responsible aunties) of the team.

It’s followed by a gift voucher distribution from the manager to the birthday babies(that’s how they are called!) of the month. The gift vouchers would be from leading shopping or chain stores in the city! The birthday babies will collect the vouchers as a present! (The voucher has come from their pockets?!)

They will need to allocate time to go and redeem the voucher in the stipulated stores irrespective of whether they want to buy something or not! Otherwise the voucher will expire!! They would eventually end up spending more than the voucher amount!

It’s considered fun to have high calorie food at office get-togethers as its celebration of your department member’s birthday party!!

If we consider the average money collected per person per month is around 100Rs. So, for a team of around 30 members, the money would come to app around 40K per year!

If we extrapolate the same to the entire organization – Would it not be sufficient to educate few kids or provide for feeding for an orphanage for a few days?

During the initial few years in office, we did have a similar type arrangement within few of our closed friends! As it’s considered a collective gift, we would all meet up on a weekend. We would go to most expensive designer wear saree shops in Chennai and buy clothes for our respective birthdays! Down the line, one of our friends enlightened us that this practice is a sheer waste of money and we stopped this practise for the good!

Kumbakonam weekend trip.

Last weekend was hectic but good - as we had covered 21 temples in a span of 2.5days!! We had amazing energy levels during this trip. Currently, I am back from the trip and my stomach is not OK. This is because of some over-eating I did during this trip. I sometimes try to be on par with S and eat more than what I am capable of and end up with such issues!!

We had a good peaceful Dharshan in all temples. We were able to do archana and special pooja’s as told for us by our family astrologer.

The list of temples visited in the order with the day and timings. This might help for anyone who is intending to visit these temples.

Friday(morning 10am to 1pm)

1) Thirukarukavur (Garbaga rakshambigai temple).
Visit the temple link to get to know more details on the significance of this place.

2) Thingalur (Navagraha temple - Moon-Chandran)

3) Swami malai(Murugan – one of the arupadai veedu). We got to see a beautiful abishegam(milk/sandhana) of lord Muruga.

Friday (evening 4pm to 8pm)

4) ThirumangalaKudi (Prananadeswarar/Mangalambikai temple.) To know more about the sthala puranam of this place, visit the link here.
5) Suriyanar koil(Navagraha temple-Sun-Suriyan)
6) Kanjanur (Navagraha temple- Venus- Sukiran)
7) Kozhikuthi(Vanmutti perumal)
This temple was suggested by our cab driver only. He was very patient with us. We took lot of time in all the temples. I will first try to read the sthala puranam and will translate the same to S as well. We would do a slow darshan.

8) Vaitheeswaran koil (Our family deity , Navagraha temple-Mars-Chevvai-Angarahan)
We did archanai for Vaitheeswaran , Thaiyalnayaki, SelvaMuthukumaraswamy & Angarahan)

Saturday (morning 7am to 8pm)
9) Thirunageswaram (Navagraha temple- Raaghu)
10) Thirumeeyachur (Lalithambigai)

I have been thinking for a long time to learn to recite Lalitha sahasranam. I hope the visit to this place, helps me to make an attempt to start the same!
11) Poonthootam (Koothanur –Saraswathi).

I got a tamil alphabets book for S here! I did start teaching him with the 12 uyir ezhuthu. I hope “Sarawathi” blesses him to read and write Tamizh soon! :)

He is able to identify the alphabets which I have taught him so far! He is doing better. ;). Long way to go though. Lord give me the patience to teach him .

It’s believed that kids who write their names and pray to goddess are blessed with good education. I could see lots of kids having written their exam numbers and names in the temple boards . :) I have prayed for a good education for some of the small kids I know of.

12) Thirunallaru (Navagraha temple- Saturn-Saneeswaran)

We got a beautiful darshan of Lord Saturn and able to see “Thailabhisegam”(sesame oil bath), on an auspicious day(Saturday) for Saneeswara Bahgawan.

13) Keezhaperumpallam (Navagraha temple- Kedhu)

14) Thiruvengadu(Navagraha temple-Mercury-Buddhan)

15) ThiruBhuvanam (Sarabeswarar temple)
16) Alangudi (Navagraha temple-Jupiter-Guru)

Sunday(10am to 12pm)

As we stayed in temple city, kumbakonam, we visited the famous temples of Adi Kumbeswerar, Chakrapani temple, Ramaswami Temple, Nageswarar temple.

We got a good auto driver in the temple city to do our local temple visits. One of the temple suggested by him was Karuvalarcheri. This temple is meant to help couples to be blessed with a child. The goddess Akilandeswari is believed to protect the foetus and help for a safer pregnancy.

We sincerely prayed in these temples for a “Santhana Bhagyam” for myself and S. I still need to improve my confidence level in believing that I will be able to have a healthy pregnancy!

There are some temples which are being maintained with lot of difficulties(less patronage). I find that some temples have got very much commercialized!

I feel its better we do a little bit of planning like getting our own OIL and lamps (deepam) to light in the temples. Also, we can buy blouse bits(different colors) for different navagraha swamy earlier itself and take it to the temples. We can buy deepam oil packets for the temple we visit. We did do that for most of the temples we visited this time.

Some places which I would suggest for good coffee/snack is “Seetharama Vilas”, Aduthurai. This place is a very very small place with serves good filter coffee! I had a good lunch in “Ambal mess” in a small village on the way from Thirunallaru to Mayiladuthurai”. I literally hogged their meals as I had not had proper food since Saturday morning. I forgot the name of the village now! I find that in most of the hotels in and around kumbakonam , everyone is supposed to dispose their own Banana leaf plate!(dignity of labour).

Coool-oru.doc

I am little late to write about the recent weekend Bengalooru trip . I am visiting that city after 3+ years.

I felt like I am in a hill station after experiencing hot summers in Chennai!

I had nostalgic memories about that city. That’s the place where I started my married life! I felt nice to see the areas I am familiar, when my husband’s friend drove us around on his SX4 on a peak weekend traffic! I had hated the city those days for the traffic! I still find that the traffic situations have not improved much.

We visited lot of friends and relatives during our short 2 day trip! It was fun. We were also able to spend good time in the marriage of our close Kannadiga friend. I liked the attention we got being bridegroom’s close friends. :)

We always have a feeling that Bangalore cost of living is more than Chennai. But, to the contrary I felt out that some things are really cheap there. Food and juices are very cheap in Bangalore compared to Chennai. Also, people there don’t spend on “mineral water cans” or Tanker for daily water usage! There is no need for an Aircon in Cool-ooru. The autowalas there are much much better and by and large charge as per meter! (Are Chennai politicians Listening!??!!)

One part of our mind feels like we should move back to Bengalooru , considering it’s a little more cool(in all sense) and lot of work options than Chennai!