waving light in sari

this is not exactly the picture showing me waving light. but with me elbowing hwubby waving light it's close enough.

how did the sari situation go? marvelous. what happens was kate generously came in and watched me. the day before during practice on my own i could see there were two points where i was not clear which way to turn the fabric and to place the pleats. turns out, with kate's two decades of pujari experience, i should pin the pleats over the left shoulder on the upper back of the blouse. also i had to turn the fabric to the right, not to the left in order for the pleats to land properly over the chest.

even then i could see i wouldn't be able to do it beautifully on my own. not yet. because i couldn't execute that pinning on the upper left back of the blouse. i would have to be able to bend my limbs like a pretzel. :)

the most thrilling part is hwubby came to see me wave the light. i heard his voice rising above the rest as i happily swayed the light. and then i got to give out chocolates to hwubby and everybody there. i am serious when i say i truly feel the inner devi is released.

puja in satara

besides doing 46 days of panchakarma in india what else were we up to? how about this. a six hour puja. performed by a very esteemed and beloved brahmin priest. we have the joy and privilege to call him vivek bhau. the indian lady who chaperoned us was stunned in awe when she first found out this was the brahmin priest we were going to. she calls vivek bhau guruji. anyway my point is it is our great good fortune that he would do the puja for hwubby's book. later when hwubby was talking to the dean of a college in pune about marketing, he mentioned he did a puja. the lady immediately says, you did puja, that's big marketing.

where am i? vivekbhau. his chanting of vedic mantras  is, literally, awesome. his sound fills up the atmosphere, reaches out to all ten thousand corners, touches the far edges of the universe, draws in nectar and lifts my heart to the seventh heavens. i can feel the presence of the deities coming upon us. they are very pleased.

sari sadhana

after a week of hours and hours of wrapping, googling, now i am ironing. this sari thing is truly meditation in action. whether i am focusing on making a pile of pleats, pinning - lots of safety pins in order to have some sense of security, at least at this beginning stage -, tucking - a big part is tucking while not looking bulky and just so that i won't trip on myself -, and now, final pre-prep, ironing. as i pull in another stretch of fabric and gently smooth it out over the ironing board i notice that i am taking long, deep breaths. out of the corner of eyes i catch the huge, golden daisies that are to go onto the tray tomorrow morning. i feel this sense of beauty, shining splendor that is so very mine. it feels so natural to pull out jewelry, make up. i am not just doing it to make myself look nicer. it is what the god within is like. beautiful. shining. gorgeous. this opportunity to wave the flame to the lord is a powerful reminder of who i am waving the light to. my very own innermost, highest self within. the same self that is in all.

btw i am not saying i can wrap as good as i look in this pic. but, believe me, i am getting there. practice. practice. practice.

me in a sari

this is a cheat pic. how so? i didn't put it on by myself. i just stood there and an indian lady wrapped it for me. i've been a yogini for twenty-one years. i can count the times i was in a sari with one hand and still have fingers leftover.

a couple of weeks ago i was invited to go through a training to wave light in the temple. a generous offer. i don't have to sari. i can be in a punjabi.  my mind was all set on punjabi when i received an email from my trainer. she says, suk wah, i could bring a couple of saris for you to choose if you like. somehow something moved deep within in a subtle, quiet but major way. by the next morning i felt this upswell of resolve to learn how to wrap a sari. so last sunday sylvia spent one and a half hour to show me. i thought i had it down. but, oy, how wrong and arrogant i am. yesterday i tried for an hour. i got as far as tucking the end into the slip but i just couldn't wrap my brain around how to pleat and wrap this thing around me. then this morning, in meditation this came to me. google. i did so. boom. in a fraction of a moment a bunch of videos surfaced. i went through the first one. still couldn't get it. i went down the list. by the third one i got it. i have to say i have a lot to work on the pleating but i am proud to announce that i have got the sequence of steps in order.

twenty one years. well, better late than never. besides, a thousand years is just a blink in god's eye anyway.

my mother and her 'son'

meet my mother's 'son.' seriously. somehow i've noticed that there's some sort of a thing in the likeness of  my mother playing favorites. for instance. she cooks a meal. i show up in her place. i look at the food and i am drooling. all my faves. smoky and juicy pork chop with caramelized onion. ginger and spring onion chicken. minced beef cake with water chestnut. shittake  and chinese  broc. milky white fish soup slightly tinted with the tangy taste and color of tomato. by the way you cannot make such a soup with those big and expensive soup. it has to be a lot of small, bony fish that are cheesecloth wrapped and cooked briskly so that literally all the tender flesh seamlessly blend into the soup. anyway, where am i? yes, sibling rivalry. i can't wait to start eating. she says, where's son-in-law? i say, he has other plans. i'm not kidding. i immediately see her face clouded over with disappointment. as if that's not enough to show her love for her new 'son' she takes the pork chop away. i say, what is this, am i chopped liver? she says, you can't eat all this. i say, why not.

all kidding aside i realize i do have this attention deficit disorder since i was born. since i was the first child and first grandchild. so by the time my sis came along and then other cousins, i just didn't know how to handle the situation where i was no longer the only adorable baby in the universe. suddenly it appeared to me that all the aunties and uncles had other bundles to hover around and i was supposed to act like a mature, responsible grown up.

now even that, i realize it's a perception that came out of my sense of separateness from my highest and innermost self. really. other babies came along but nobody ever took away their love from me. nobody can ever take away the love that ever dwells in my own heart. nobody and nothing can diminish who i am. well, if it were not for my meditation practice i don't think i would ever have come to this understanding.

so i am truly happy to see the aging parents revel in their big 'son.' after all when they are happy it makes my life a whole lot easier. :)