Category Archives: Religion

Diwali Recipes: Coconut Barfi

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Another typical recipe, this one also needs a good bit of stirring so a good arms workout with this one!

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Ingredients:

  • 2 cups grated coconut
  • 1.5 cups Sugar
  • ½ tsp Cardamom Powder
  • 1 cup Water

Method:

  • Take a big plate or cake tin and grease it slightly. Or, you could lightly spray it with oil and then put baking paper over to completely cover it, this reduces the amount of ghee used in the recipe slightly.
  • For this recipe, you need only the white part of the grated coconut. If you plan to grate your own, stop at the point when the brown part starts getting grated. Or you could do what I did, which was to buy freshly grated coconut from your local Indian store.
  • In a pan, saute the grated coconut till you get a nice aroma from it. Do not let it brown. Remove it from the pan and add the sugar and water and let it come to a rolling boil. You can also add a couple of teaspoons of milk to the mixture so that any dirt in the sugar comes up and you can remove it. This trick also makes the barfi more white which is aesthetically more pleasing. At this point, reduce the flame and let it boil till it thickens to a single string consistency.
  • This means that when you take a drop of the mixture from the flame and touch it with your thumb and index finger, it will stick to both fingers and form a kind of string.
  • When the sugar mixture reaches this point, add the grated coconut and stir for a couple of minutes. Add the cardamom powder and continue to stir at a low to medium flame. When the coconut completely absorbs the sugar water mixture and starts to leave the sides, it’s time to take it off the flame. You can also test it by putting a couple of drops in the greased tray. If it stays in shape, it’s time to remove it from the flame, otherwise continue stirring and repeating this step till you get to this point.
  • Switch off the gas and pour it into your prepared greased plate. Using a clean spatula, level the mixture and make it smooth. Let it cool for a while and when still slightly warm, lightly score lines in the mixture with a knife or pizza cutter. You could cut squares or diamonds in any size. Let it cool completely before transferring to an airtight container. This should be good for a week or so outside and slightly more inside the fridge.

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The Power of Prayers

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I usually start the morning with prayers to the Lord and am trying to inculcate the same with BB & GG too!

As you probably know from my posts, I am a Hindu and am also bringing up BB & GG in the same way. I am weird in the sense, though I have rock solid belief in God, I am not a very big beliver in going to temples. I firmly believe that if you believe in God and don’t go out of your way to harm someone, then even a heartfelt two minute prayer in your heart to God will give you the same results as going to the temple. You do not need the outward manifestation of your belief to God. I posted about religion some time back, but this post is more about the power of prayers.

GaneshaLike I’ve said before, I have a very personal relationship with God and my personal God is the Lord Ganesh.

My daily routine is do a string of prayers in front of my altar at home. Hindus usually light the lamp in front of God twice a day and I do this in the morning after bath and in the evening after I am home. Once I light the lamp, I say my prayers. After this, I try to meditate for a couple of minutes and then have my conversation with him. The evening prayer is a much shorter one with a quick prayer after lighting the lamp. But I do have my conversation in the evening too, especially if the day has gone well for me, or I see his hand in something that happened during the say!

So does praying to God worth your while? My answer is an equivocal YES! Prayer is the vehicle with which you reach out to God or the higher divinity. It allows you to focus on the divine and helps a human being to become one with that one Universal Divine Being who can be called by various religions as their Gods!

Prayers also allow you to push your stress and desires on to your preferred God. This releases a lot of tensions in your lives when you move your stress to God! I remember there are days when my mind is full of things and I can’t sleep. Those days when I say a short prayer to Ganpati Bappa (Lord Ganesh) and tell him now it’s his responsibility to ensure that my problems are solved; I am able to sleep quite fast!

Do you believe in the divine and pray?

Stories from Ancient India: How Lord Ganesh got an Elephant’s Head

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One day Goddess Parvati wanted to be alone and have a bath, so she instructed the bull Nandi who was Lord Shiva’s personal guard to ensure that no one could enter the house while she was bathing. Just then Lord Shiva wanted to meet Parvati. Seeing him, the Lord of Mount Kailash, Nandi immediately allowed him into the area where Parvati was bathing. When Parvati came to know about this, she was furious about the fact that the guard she had ordered to do her work was more faithful to her husband than to her.

In retaliation, she took the turmeric paste from her body and with her powers, created a child whom she wanted to be faithful only to herself and no one else. She named the child Ganesha. At this point in time, no one knew about the creation of this child as Shiva was away from Mount Kailash then.

Soon, the child was guarding the Parvati’s room and did not allow anyone to enter the room as ordered by Parvati. Meanwhile, Lord Shiva entered their home and made his way to Parvati’s private chambers. Following orders, Ganesha stopped the great lord with a loud “Stop! You cannot enter my mother’s private chambers”

Shiva was amazed both at the audacity of this child who was stopping him from entering his own home and with the fact that this child, whom he had never seen before was calling his wife Parvati his mother.

“Who are you to stop me from entering my own home? Do you even know who I am?” Shiva roared in anger.

“I don’t know who you are, but I can’t allow you inside since my mother has forbidden me from doing so” replied Ganesha.

Furious, Lord Shiva sent his army or Gana Sena to attack the child. But Ganesha who was no ordinary child was born with immense strength and he soon defeated the army easily. Shiva then looked at other avenues to reason with the child. He used the services of Lord Brahma who came in the form of a peaceful Brahmin and tried reasoning with Ganesha using the religious texts, but Ganesha did not budge. Then Shiva mobilized the army of the gods or Devas, but the child routed them too easily. Enraged beyond reason, Shiva then goes behind Ganesha when he is battling others and cuts off his head.

“Motherrrrr” Ganesha screams and dies on the spot. Hearing the noise, Pravati rushes from her private apartment and sees the carnage before her. Seeing her child, her creation dead in front of her puts her in a great rage and she moves into her destruction mode threatening to destroy the entire universe. Seeing this makes all the Gods assembled there very nervous and scared and Brahma decided to intervene and asked her to reconsider her decision

“I will not destroy this universe only on two conditions – one my child be brought back to life and two Ganesha will be worshipped and propitiated before any other Gods” Parvati put down her conditions.

In order to console his wife and stop the world from being destroyed, Shiva agreed to the conditions and sent for his servants and soldiers.

“Go forth and bring to us the first head of any creature you come across which is sleeping with it’s head pointed in the northern direction” Shiva ordered his soldiers and they soon set out to do their Lord’s bidding. The Ganas spread out to search for a creature with its head to the north and soon find an elephant sleeping with its head to the north.

They then bring the elephant’s head back to Lord Shiva who attaches it to Ganesha’s body and with his divine powers, soon brings him back to life. Ganesha soon gets revived and Lord Shiva proclaims him his own son and also the leader of his army, hence his name as Ganapati (Lord of the Ganas). He further proclaims that Ganesha will be foremost of all Gods and will be the first God to be worshipped as well as before anyone undertakes any new undertaking.

This is how Lord Ganesha came into existence, why we worship him first and why he is also called Ganapati

Who am I? A question of Identity

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I am all of the following – a daughter, grand-daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, mother and the myriad other relationships that we acquire as we move along in life. But at the core of all this is one identity that is uniquely me, which is ME! The ME who is a person in her own right, with an identity of her own.

This is so not Me

There are women who have no issues with going through their entire life as someone’s wife, daughter or mother. I know some women who have known each other for the last 30 plus years and still call each other as the other woman’s daughter’s mother. For me, this is something I can’t imagine. Imagine knowing someone and then not knowing or worse not acknowledging their own names – is that what life is all about? I for one refuse to call any of BB or GG’s friends moms by the names of their children. If I don’t know their names, I’ll make it a point to know it and then use that. Yes, we’re all happy and proud mom’s, but that’s not the end of our identity.

In India, most of the laws of Hindusim is governed by what is called Manusmirti or The Laws of Manu.  According to this, before marriage a woman is a subject of her father, at marriage her father passes her responsibility to her husband and if her husband dies before her, her responsibility then passes on to her son. Yet, the same Hindusim gives a woman equal rights as a man where a married man cannot undertake any religious ceremony without his wife sitting next to him and taking part in the ceremony.

Coming back to the topic, at marriage, a woman is supposed to be reborn and to ‘celebrate’ this, a new name is given to her. Some families force the new bride to taken on, formally a new name. So the name she was born with and grew up with is gone forever, and is will now be known as this new person. Her old name, harking back to carefree days is only a memory, which is taken out when she visits her maternal home. I have many friends on Facebook with multiple identities (that is have two first and two last names – pre and post marriage) who are living examples to this custom even today. This irritates me no end. Thank God I didn’t have to go through this – although knowing me, I wonder if I would have done it and whether I would have made a big fuss there and then?

This is one of the reasons I didn’t change my name when I got married (the other, more convenient reason being that I had to leave Mumbai immediately and so flew here on my maiden name and since then all official documentation has been in that name. This is the story I’m going to stick to!)

Saraswati Puja

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Today is the last day of the Navaratri festival with the Saraswati Puja and Dusshera tomorrow. Then it’s the anticipation of Diwali!


Saraswati Puja is celebrated all over India and across the world today with the day being dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi. In Hinduism, Saraswathi is the goddess of knowledge, wisdom, studies, science and technology, music, arts etc. She is also said to be the consort of Lord Brahma, who is said to be the creator of the world in Hindy mythology. Goddess Saraswati is depicted as a beautiful woman wearing a spotless white saree symbolising the purity of knowledge with four hands embodying mind, intellect, ego and alertness. She is usually seated on a white lotus or a white swan which is also her vehicle of transport, with a peacock close to her. She also holds the following in her four hands – a book, which is usually the vedas representing universal, eternal and true knowledge as well as her power over knowledge and the sciences; a rudrashka or rosary representing the power of spirituality, a veena, which is a musical intrument representingin her perfection in all arts and sciences and a pot of gangajal or sacred water which represent creative adn purification powers. Unlike most Goddesses in Hindu mythology, she is usually dressed very simply and not adorned with loads of jewellery showing that she prefers the intellectual and the artistic over the material.

Saraswati is also the main goodess of the Sringeri Sarada Peetham, which is what my family has been following for generations and the Jagadguru Shankaracharya at the Sarada Peetham is whom we consider our guru. I’ll post more about this later, just is just a teaser.

In South India and our brahmin community, we worship the Goddess on the ninth day of Navaratri. On that day, after bath, we keep books and some new clothes at her feet and worship her. I made a payasam today as the prasad. On this day, children also do not look at their books since she is supposed to be sitting on them and to use them is to disrespect her. The next day, we have to read a couple of pages from each book that was kept at the pooja so that she blesses us with good intellect and the most important thing for children – marks!

I’ve kept BB & GG’s books at the altar and asked them to pray to Saraswati Ummachi (God) so that she can bless them. They both prayed “Ummachi, please bless us so that that we can study well and get good marks in our exams“.

One of the first shlokas that I learnt from my ammama and have taught GG & BB is the one about Goddess Saraswati. It goes like this:

Saraswati namasthubiyam, varade kamarupini
Vidyarambham karishyaami, siddhir bhavatume sadaa

O Goddess Saraswati, salutations to you, the giver of boons, the one who fulfills all desires. I begin my studies. May there always be accomplishments for me.

The picture in this post is the picture of Goddess Saraswati in my pooja.