MIXED BAG

 By   PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU   In the great Age of Discovery ,explorers, inventors, discoverers,philosopher took a daring scientific view and wanted to understand many unknown and frightening things of nature like travelling to ends of the great seas and oceans. Till then the sailing ships moved from one port to next known port very carefully . They did not venture into the great unknown oceans—probably due to fear that entire oceans will tumble into unknown abyss from the end of flat table earth!  But in Age of Discovery a great truth appeared to have dawned on many senior experienced weather beaten sailors that oceans are not so frightening and that the earth is round and that if one sailed straight in forward direction he  most probably may return to his home port after at least two or three years. They half believed and half doubted the words of  natural philosophers(  scientists and university scholars) that earth may be a huge round s...

 BY PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU India achieved independence  only in 1947 after 300-400 years of foreign domination and exploitation . India is a land of about ten major languages which had developed literatures for 1000 years. Each language is spoken by not less than 30 to 40 million people . India is birth place of great philosophies –the great ancient Aryan Vedic philosophy , the Ramayana-Mahabharatha philosophy,the great Buddhist, Jain and Sikh philosophies etc. In India people of different races existed since  ten thousand years and established their own cultures and customs with great vigor . But many tens of millions of people of weaker sections lived in utter poverty and neglect for untold centuries in spite of great reform movements by great people like Lord Buddha. People of different races and unreachable faraway   geographic regions  formed into different castes and sub castes. The castes were mainly to protect their racial and cultural identity. T...

BY PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU English is modern world language . It is used by not less than a hundred countries for doing government work, commerce,banking, education,scientific and technical research . Let us study contribution of English to the world’s pool of sublime knowledge. English is the mother togue of people of England . It was a Germanic language  and its grammar and sentence structure are somewhat similar to German. Four centuries back  English had old archaic  words and old spelling which cannot be understood now. In those old days all government  and diplomatic work,commercial and banking work were conducted in Latin language . Later many English writers developed English language for literary work. The spellings were archaic. The language can be only half understood now. Example –the works of Chaucer and Spencer. In latter Middle Ages England was developing as a great military and economic power. It controlled the seas. The eco...

BY  PRAGYANSHARMA  POLAVARAPU Old India like old Greece is famed for its philosophy of extreme beauty ,art ,morality  and spirituality. In fact some of our  philosophers claim that entire philosophy ,art and spirituality were invented in India. But we are not narrow- minded. "Let streams of knowledge flow from every area of world. Let winds of knowledge blow from every corner of the world" --our philosophers said. There are great philosophers in world from ancient to modern times .In ancient Greece and Rome there were great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus , Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelias etc. In medieval and modern Europe there were great philosophers –Sir Francis Bacon, René Decarte, Spinoza, George Berkeley, Voltaire, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul  Sartre etc. There are great scintillating and sublime eastern philosophers  ancient to present–Maharshi Vyasa, Lord B...

M17-SRI ANANTHA PADMANABHASWAMY TEMPLE THE CONCLUSION  By PragyanSharma Polavarapu We had lot of shopping at the big bazaars on the  temple streets. We had a lot of work packaging our samans. We came to hotel and took food and rested  and talked a lot on phone to our relatives at Hyderabad. Our plan was now to move to the sea side resort at Varkala to  celebrate  our daughter’s  birth day(in a simple way). I may specially add here  that only  because of initiative of our daughter and son-in-law we planned this hurried very long temple trip a month before and this temple trip proved a most wonderful and most holy trip .  Seeing so many great ancient temples lifted our souls.We fixed the dates of the long trip in such a way that we would visit Lord Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple  before the birth day date. We were very happy and satisfied that we could implement our plan. On the way we  saw many of Kerala’s famed  “backwaters”....

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu  (A)INTRODUCTION (1) The temple’s gopuram(the holy tower) is 100 feet high and has magnificent sulime sculptures of Hindu gods . There is a magnificent sculptured corridor directly leading upto sanctum sanctorum and it has 360  majestic stone pillars of great hight with beautiful sculptures of  gods. In addition there is the famous “Ottakkal Mantapam” a little monolithic entrance mantapam before the sanctum . It has a base stone platform (2mx2mx2.5 feet). Half of this platform extends into the sanctum sanctorum. Thus its surface in the Ottakkal mantapam is as holy as floor of sanctum sanctorum. Only a devotee who sacrifices all his wealth and belongigs to god and surrenders to god can stand on it. The great Travancore king Marthanda varma who renovated and reconstructed the temple donated the entire kingdom to Lord Anantha Padmanabha.  (2)Since 2000 years or more  there was lot of sea trade  (by huge  sail boats) with an...

  BY     PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU   (VRS.SOMANCHI) (1)   We reached Tiruvananthapuram at midnight on 4-8-24 and stayed in the hotel already booked there by us . On  morning of 5-8-24  we got ready at 6am and started for the temple. We were there before the time suggested by the guide( 8am). I could not believe my eyes . We were at that moment in the majestic Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy temple by the sea side and we were  a full 1300 kilometers  away from our home! The gopuram is decorated with most sublime and most artistic sculptures of gods . I wondered how the sculptors could create such sulime art on the temple towers and the many  pillars and in the mantapams we saw in various temples. It appears a great temple art renaissance took place throughout south India.All the temples renovated reconstructed during last 300-400 years in south India (particularly in the far south) possess most sublime temple art. Even ordinary perso...

  BY     PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU   (VRS.SOMANCHI) SRI SUCHINDRAM TEMPLE , SRI VIVEKANANDA ROCK, SRI TIRUVALLUVAR TEMPLE –ALSO MUPPANDAL WIND FARM. I remember we started early  at about 1o’clock  in the afternoon(4-8-24) from Thiruchendur after a little rest after food. We had important  places to visit  on our way to Thiruvananthapuram which is about 200 kilometers away. The direct journey would take  four and half hours but  we would be slowly travelling and the journey may  take two or three hours more. We travelled close by the sea.It was a most pleasant journey for us from distant Deccan Plateu lands i.e.from Hyderaad city. Now of course we actually started from Pune, Maharashtra and would be returning there for a  stay at our daughter’s house. We travelled  among millions of coconut trees and often in close view of the sea.  (1)MUPPANDAL WIND POWER FARM. After journeying for about  70...

  BY     PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU   (VRS.SOMANCHI)   (A) At about 4 pm on 3-8-24  we started from Rameswaram to  Thiruchendur (220 kms, 5 hours journey, Thuthukudi district )  to visit  the famous and most holy and most beautiful  sri  Murugan temple. We  travelled  near to  the southern sea boundary. For us who  live in  land-locked Hyderabad 1100 kilometers  away it was really a thrill to travel very close to sea coast and journey  amidst  millions of coconut trees and endless greenery. The sea  “was here there and every where”. When winds are strong the waves grow to huge size and look like  foaming  angry horses.It was night around 10 pm when we reached  Thiruchendur. We just went to the nice hotel and took rest.  The Tiruchendur temple is  said to be the most popular and most visited temple in Tamilnadu .The temple is of huge proportions just like th...