A unique day

 Ram Navami! The day was super special this year. The unique moments such as the "Surya Tilak" of the newly venerated Ram Lalla idol in the beautiful Ayodhya Mandir made it an emotionally moving day for the devotees. The evening skies in Ayodhya, what with the superb drone show, were literally lit with the Ram Katha.

The Ram Katha is indeed as unique as the special Ram Navami celebrations this year. Lord Ram is idealism incarnate. In each and every one of his roles in his life, be it the son, the brother, the disciple, the friend, the king, he is pure perfection incarnate. Why, even relationships such as the stepson or the stepbrother turn touchingly truthful and tremendous in his case. 

Aai-Papa adored Shri Ram. Not a single day of theirs went without a whole-hearted recital of "Ramraksha". As long as she could, Aai never missed her daily visit to the Lord Rama temple in the vicinity. Her singing group performed the "Geet Ramayana" there. She used to be both a singer and a "sutradhar" for such performances. Indeed it would have been a really special day for both of them if they were to be with us today.

As for me, I find the Ramkatha interesting precisely because it can be so beautifully explored in multiple ways. In my opinion, Lord Ram is like the sky or the sea, infinite. Define it in any which way, it would contain, and yet transcend that particular interpretation. 

Hence great Sanskrit dramatists such as Bhasa and Bhavbhuti have written great plays based on the Ramayana which itself is a great epic, great poetry illuminating an ideal. The Ramayana is so prolific that it offers a new vision on life when explored from the point of view of a secondary character such as Urmila, for instance. 

Personally I feel that the Ram Katha is great because it invites you to lead a seamlessly integrated, perfect life. You cannot build a temple to Rama, for instance (hopefully not with ill-gotten money), and simultaneously constantly ill-treat an innocent woman who has never harmed anyone. The Ram Katha does not allow you such convenient lee ways. Tough indeed to be a committed devotee of such a god! 

The shimmering ideal/i-deal kind of unity of being and becoming that Lord Ram posits before mere mortals makes every Ram Navami truly celebratory, absolutely unique!

Pratima@ The day was special for me for yet another reason. There was an ETS/TOEFL-IBT workshop today. It was at Kalyani Nagar, a part of Pune I visited for the first time. A long bus journey it was early in the morning, Swargate to the Railway station, from there to Ramwadi Jakat Naka, from there in a shared auto to the venue in Kalyani Nagar. It took me exactly one and half hour.

While returning though, a wonderfully pleasant surprise awaited me. I boarded the Pune Metro from Ramwadi to Wanaz. It hardly took me thirty minutes from Kalyani Nagar to get off at Deccan.

 Was my first ever journey in the beautiful metro wonderful?!? You bet! The metro, full yet specious, clean and modern, like the platforms and stations, is indeed the precious pride of Pune. 

Surely, I did not see the two petal faces at a metro station that Ezra Pound immortalised. The sunset was never this lovely though! Honestly, on this unique day, yet again I was as highly excited as I was when I first boarded the "Fulrani" mini-train! 

Like my nephews who used to find the whole Peshwe Park a lovely and enchanting discovery when we would together  board the "Fulrani", I found the Pune scenery, including that canal cum gutter called Mula-Mutha, absolutely fab!

 A terrible ride in a jam packed, burning hot PMT bus, lurching, hurtling every moment, what with that horror known as the Pune traffic, instead transformed into an absolute joy ride. Why, like the kids on the metro train, i, too, felt very happy to see the plane and the cranes flying parallel to us. 

In brief, on the Ram Navami day, i, too, was re-born  as a child yet again! A unique day indeed!