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Ballad of a Soldier (பாலட் ஒப் எ சோல்ஜர்) - 1959

Ballad of a Soldier (பாலட் ஒப் எ சோல்ஜர்) - 1959 ஆம் ஆண்டு வெளிவந்த ரஷ்ய மொழி திரைப்படம். யுத்தத்தினால் ஏற்படும் குடும்ப உறவுகளின் பிரிவை இந்த திரைப்படம் ஒரு காவியத்துவமாக படம் பிடித்து காட்டுகிறது. இதன் இயக்குனர் கிரிகோரி சுக்ராய் (Girigory Chukrai). இவர் இரண்டாம் உலகப்போரில் படை வீரராக பணியாற்றியவர். ரஷ்யாவின் மிக முக்கிய இயக்குனர்களில் ஒருவர். இந்த திரைப்படத்தில் காதல், தாய்ப்பாசம் போன்ற உறவுகளை மிக அருமையாக காட்சியாக வடித்துள்ளார் இயக்குனர். போருக்கு சென்ற தனது மகன் இறந்தது கூட தெரியாமல் அவன் வரவுக்காக காத்திருக்கும் ஒரு அன்னையிடம் இருந்து இந்த படம் துவங்குகிறது. பின்னர் ஒரு குரல் அந்த போர் வீரனின் கதையை நமக்கு சொல்வது போல திரைப்படம் அமைந்துள்ளது. அந்த போர் வீரனின் பெயர் அல்யோஷா. அவன் தனக்கு கிடைத்த 4 நாட்கள் விடுமுறையில் தனது தாயை பார்த்து வர செல்கிறான் அவனது பயணமே நமக்கு திரைப்பட காட்சியாக அமைகிறது. தாயை பார்த்து விட்டு செல்லும் மகன் போர்க்களத்தில் இறந்து போனது தெரியாமல் தான் அந்த தாய் தன் மகனுக்காக காத்திருக்கிறாள். இந்த திரைப்படம் கேன்ஸ் மற்றும் BAFTA திரைப்பட விழாக்களில் சிறந்த திரைப்படத்துக்கான விருதை வென்றது. சிறந்த திரைக்கதைக்கான விருதுக்காக ஆஸ்கார் விருதில் பரிந்துரைக்கப்பட்டது. யுத்தத்தினால் பாதிக்கப்படும் பொதுமக்கள் மற்றும் ராணுவ வீரர்களின் குடும்பங்கள் எவ்வளவோ இருக்கின்றனர். இருந்தும் தன் நாட்டுக்காக போர் செய்யும் ராணுவ வீரனின் பணி மிகவும் மகத்தானது என்பதை விளக்கும் திரைக்காவியம் இது.

இயக்குனர் ஸ்ரீதர் - ஒரு சகாப்தம் ...

இயக்குனர் ஸ்ரீதர் - ஒரு சகாப்தம் ...

"சாதனையாளர்கள்"

நெஞ்சிருக்கும் வரை ஸ்ரீதர்

இயக்குனர் ஸ்ரீதர் அவர்களின் நினைவு நாளையொட்டி (அக்.20) அவர் குறித்த சில நினைவலைகள்:

* ஒரு படம் நெஞ்சை அடைக்கும் அளவு ட்ராஜடி, அடுத்த படம் நெஞ்சில் மணமணக்கும் காதல், அதற்கடுத்த படம் முழு நீள காமெடி என ரோலர்கோஸ்டர் அனுபவத்தை தமிழ் ரசிகர்களுக்கு அளித்தவர் ஸ்ரீதர். கல்யாண(ப்) பரிசு, நெஞ்சில் ஓர் ஆலயம் போன்ற சோகப் படங்களை இயக்கிய ஸ்ரீதர்தான்,காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை, ஊட்டி வரை உறவு போன்ற ஹிலேரியஸ் படங்களையும் இயக்கினார் என்பது ஆச்சரியமான விஷயம்.

* புதுமை இயக்குனர் என்ற அடைமொழியைப் பெற்றவர் ஸ்ரீதர். படத்தின் ஒவ்வொரு ஃப்ரேமிலும் ஒரு புதுமை இருக்க வேண்டும் என்பது அவரது எதிர்பார்ப்பாக இருக்கும். அவர் இயக்கிய முதல் படமான ’கல்யாண பரிசு’ படத்தின் டைட்டிலில் வேண்டுமென்றே ‘ப்’ என்ற எழுத்தை தவிர்த்தார் ஸ்ரீதர். கதாநாயகனும், கதாநாயகியும் சேரப் போவதில்லை என்பதை சிம்பாலிக்காக உணர்த்தவே இந்த உத்தியை பயன்படுத்தினார் ஸ்ரீதர். (ஏழெழுத்து செண்டிமெண்ட் மற்றொரு காரணம்!)

* இன்று ரீமேக் செய்தாலும் கியாரண்டியாக ஓடக் கூடிய படம் அவரது ‘காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை’. தமிழில் வெளிவந்த முதல் ஈஸ்ட்மேன் கலர் படம் இது என்பது குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது. இரண்டாவது படம் சிவாஜிகணேசன் நடித்து, தாதா மிராசி இயக்கிய ‘புதிய பறவை’. ‘கதையை எதிர்பார்க்காதீர்கள்’ என்று ‘காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை’ படத்திற்கு விளம்பரம் செய்திருந்தார் ஸ்ரீதர். அதே பாணியில், அண்மையில் விளம்பரப்படுத்தப் பட்ட படம் ‘மதுபானக்கடை’.

* ஸ்ரீதர் இயக்கத்தில் 1962ம் ஆண்டு வெளிவந்து சூப்பர் ஹிட் ஆன படம் ‘நெஞ்சில் ஓர் ஆலயம்’. இந்தப் படத்தை 21 நாட்களில், ஒரே செட்டில் படமாக்கி சாதனை படைத்தார் ஸ்ரீதர். இந்தப் படம் வெளியானவுடன், ‘இந்தப் படம் ஓடாது’ என்று பலராலும் பேசப்பட்டது. ஆனால், ஸ்ரீதர் இயக்கிய படங்களிலேயே அதிக வசூலை வாரிக் குவித்தப் படம் ‘நெஞ்சில் ஓர் ஆலயம்’தான்.

* ‘நெஞ்சிருக்கும் வரை’ படத்தில் சிவாஜிகணேசன்,கே.ஆர்.விஜயா,முத்துராமன் உள்ளிட்டோரை ஒப்பனை இல்லாமல் நடிக்க வைத்து புதுமை செய்திருந்தார் ஸ்ரீதர். வண்ணப்படங்கள் வந்துக் கொண்டிருந்த காலத்தில் வறுமையை அழுத்தமாக பதிவு செய்ய வேண்டும் என்பதால் ‘நெஞ்சிருக்கும் வரை’ படத்தை கறுப்பு வெள்ளையில் படமாக்கினார் ஸ்ரீதர்.

* ஸ்ரீதர் மிகவும் கைராசியானவர். அவர் அறிமுகப் படுத்திய யாரும் சோடை போகவில்லை. செல்வி.ஜெயலலிதா,வெண்ணிறாடை மூர்த்தி,ஸ்ரீகாந்த் (பழைய நடிகர்),ரவிசந்திரன் முதல் விக்ரம் (தந்துவிட்டேன் என்னை) வரை ஸ்ரீதர் அறிமுகப் படுத்தியவர்களின் பட்டியல் நீளம். கதாநாயகியாக நடித்து வந்த சச்சு, வில்லன் கதாபாத்திரங்களில் நடித்து வந்த டி.எஸ்.பாலையா ஆகியோரை காமெடி படமான காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை படத்தில் நடிக்க வைத்து சோபிக்க வைத்தவர் ஸ்ரீதர்.

* புரட்சித்தலைவர் எம்ஜிஆர் அவர்களை வைத்து ‘அன்று சிந்திய ரத்தம்’ என்ற படத்தை ஆரம்பித்து சில காட்சிகளை பிரம்மாண்டமாக படமாக்கினார் ஸ்ரீதர். எம்ஜிஆர் அவர்களின் கால்ஷீட் தொடர்ந்து கிடைக்காததால் அந்தப் படம் நின்று போனது. பிறகு அதே படத்தை ‘சிவந்த மண்’ என்ற பெயரில் சிவாஜிகணேசனை வைத்து எடுத்தார் ஸ்ரீதர். இதனால் எம்ஜிஆர் அவர்கள் அதிருப்தி அடைந்ததாக கூறப்படுகிறது.பின்னர், ஸ்ரீதர் அவர்கள் ஓரிரு தோல்வி படங்களால் நலிந்து போயிருந்த போது, ‘உரிமை குரல்’ படத்தை ஸ்ரீதருக்காக செய்து கொடுத்தார் புரட்சித்தலைவர்.

* ‘சிவந்த மண்’ படத்திற்கு முதலில் வசனம் எழுதவிருந்தது கலைஞர் கருணாநிதிதான். அந்த நேரத்தில் அவர் அமைச்சராக ஆகியிருந்ததால் அந்தப் படத்திற்கு வசனம் எழுத ஏதாவது சட்ட சிக்கல் ஏற்படுமோ என தயங்கினாராம் கலைஞர். அதனால், அந்தப் படத்திற்கு கலைஞர் வசனம் எழுதும் நல்வாய்ப்பு நழுவிப் போனது. ஆனால், ’சிவந்த மண் படத்திற்கு நான் வசனம் எழுதுவதாக இருந்தேன்.ஸ்ரீதர்தான் என்னை தொடர்புக்கொள்ளவில்லை’ என ‘சிவந்த மண்’ படத்தின் நூறாவது நாள் விழாவில் ஜாலியாக சுட்டிக் காட்டினார் கலைஞர். ’மோதிரக் கையால் என் தலையில் வைக்கப்பட்ட இந்த குட்டை, என்னால் மறக்கவே முடியாது’ என்று இந்த நிகழ்வு பற்றி அடிக்கடி நினைவுகூர்வார் ஸ்ரீதர். வெளிநாடுகளில் படமாக்கப் பட்ட முதல் வண்ணப் படமும் ’சிவந்த மண்’தான்.

* 2008ம் ஆண்டு ஸ்ரீதர் அவர்கள் காலமாவதற்கு சில மாதங்களுக்கு முன், சன் டிவியில் நான் தயாரித்துக் கொண்டிருந்த ’நினைவுகள்’ என்ற நிகழ்ச்சியில் பங்கேற்க அவரை தொடர்புக் கொண்டேன். தன்னிடம் ஒரு அருமையான காதல் கதை இருப்பதாகவும், மீண்டும் ஒரு ரவுண்ட் வரப்போவதாகவும் உற்சாகமாக கூறினார். அந்தப் படைப்பை ரசிக்கும் வாய்ப்பு நமக்கு கிடைக்காமலே போய் விட்டது.


via Guru Prasath.

ஆதாமிண்டே மகன் அபு - 2011

ஆதாமிண்டே மகன் அபு - 2011 ஆம் ஆண்டு வெளிவந்த மலையாள மொழி திரைப்படம். இதன் இயக்குனர் சலீம் அஹ்மத். பத்தாண்டுகளுக்கும் மேல் இந்த கதையை மனதிலே யோசித்து வைத்து பின்னர் அதை படமாக எடுத்து உலக சினிமாவின் வரிசையில் சேர்த்தவர். இது இவரது முதல் படம் என்பது குறிப்பிடதக்கது. 58வது தேசியத் திரைப்படவிழாவில் சிறந்த திரைப்படம், சிறந்த நடிகர், சிறந்த ஒளிப்பதிவு, மற்றும் சிறந்த பின்னணி இசை ஆகிய துறைகளில் நான்கு தேசிய விருதுகளை பெற்றது . இதேபோன்று கேரள மாநில திரைப்பட விருதுகளிலும் சிறந்த படம், சிறந்த நடிகர், சிறந்த திரைக்கதை மற்றும் சிறந்த பின்னணி இசை ஆகிய விருதுகளைப் பெற்றது. இந்தியாவின் சார்பில் 2011ஆம் ஆண்டுக்கான சிறந்த வெளிநாட்டுப் படத்திற்கான ஆஸ்கார் விருதுக்கான போட்டியிலும் கலந்துகொள்ள தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்பட்டது. எனினும் ஆஸ்கார் விருதுக்கு பரிந்துரைக்கப்பட்ட சிறந்த படங்களின் கடைசி பட்டியலில் இடம்பெறவில்லை. இந்த திரைப்படத்தில் சலீம் குமார் மற்றும் ஜரீனா வஹாப் முக்கிய கதாபாத்திரங்களை ஏற்று நடித்தனர். சலீம் குமார் அவர்கள் சிறந்த நடிகருக்கான தேசிய விருதையும் பெற்றார். சலீம் குமார் மலையாளத்தில் ஒரு சிறந்த நகைச்சுவை நடிகர் என்பது குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது. அமெரிக்காவின் கலிபோர்னியாவில் இருந்து வெளிவரும் டேசெர்ட் சன் (Desert Sun) என்ற பத்திரிக்கை இந்த படத்தையும் சலீம் குமாரின் நடிப்பையும் பாராட்டி எழுதியிருந்தது. இதன் ஓளிப்பதிவாளர் மது அம்பாட். இந்த திரைப்படத்தில் தனிமையின் உணர்வை பிரதிபலிக்க நிறைய லாங்-ஷாட் தேவைப்பட்டது என்று கூறியுள்ளார். வெளிநாடுகளில் நடைப்பெற்ற சர்வதேச திரைப்பட விழாக்களில் கலந்துகொண்டு பல விருதுகளையும் பெற்று வந்துள்ளது இந்த திரைப்படம் என்பது மிகவும் குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது.

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இணையப்பாவனையினூடாக பரவும் வைரஸ்கள், மல்வேர்கள் போன்றவற்றினை கட்டுப்படுத்துவதற்கு பல்வேறு அன்டி வரைஸ் மென்பொருட்கள் காணப்படுகின்றன.இவ்வாறான மென்பொருட்களில் Bitdefender Internet Security மென்பொருளும் சிறந்த செயற்பாடுடையதாகக் கருதப்படுகின்றது. இவ்வாறிருக்கையில் இம்மென்பொருளிற்கான புதிய பதிப்பான Bitdefender Internet Security 2013 தற்போது வெளியிடப்பட்டுள்ளது. அத்துடன் ஒருவருடத்திற்கான சீரியல் இலக்கமும் இலவசமாக தரப்பட்டுள்ளமை விசேட அம்சமாகும். இம்மென்பொருளை நிறுவுவதற்கு கணனி கொண்டிருக்கவேண்டிய தகைமைகள். 1. Microsoft Windows XP,Vista, 7 அல்லது Windows 8 இயங்குதளம் 2. CPU: 800MHz processor 3. RAM: 1 GB 4. வன்றட்டில் 1.8 GB இடவசதி தரவிறக்கச் சுட்டி சீரியல் இலக்கம் - Q5YW7GP அல்லது 3NVQXKI

Immovable

“Some were excited, but the bow was immovable, like the word of a saint. Looking at the bow, their strength and intelligence were forcefully stolen, like with King Nahusha.” (Janaki Mangala, Chand 11.2)

eka karahiṃ dāpa na cāpa sajjana bacana jimi ṭāreṃ ṭarai |
nṛpa nahuṣa jyoṃ saba keṃ bilokata buddhi bala barabasa harai ||

Goswami Tulsidas here makes a few references to Vedic history to describe what happened to the rival princes as they tried to lift the famous bow of Lord Shiva. The setting was a kingdom hosting an event with thousands in attendance. The main attraction, the final act on the bill if you will, was the lifting of the bow. Whoever could do it first would win. The fight would be declared over as soon as that bow went in a prince’s hand and was raised to the sky. As destiny’s will is impossible to subvert, on this day only one person was set to win, someone who has never lost anything in His life.

Do we know of anyone who has never lost? Famous political figures may have won the big election when they were on the ballot, but they definitely lost something prior to that. No one goes completely undefeated. Death is the greatest champion in this regard, as it defeats every single person, regardless of the effort they make to send it back from where it came.

To say that God is undefeated seems a bit obvious. “Oh sure, go the God route. You can just say that about anything. ‘I will never win this. Only God could do this. It is hopeless for me. No one but God could succeed in these trying circumstances.’” The Vedas give more than just an abstract or utopian idea of God. There are concrete details provided which are easy to remember, provided that one wants to remember them.

And why wouldn’t we want to remember someone who is undefeated? To aid in the remembrance we get God’s name of Achyuta. Just saying the name “Achyuta” over and over again brings God to the mind, allowing us to remember that He is undefeated. If that remembrance isn’t giving enough pleasure, go back to an incident that proved that He is the strongest person in the world. For such an incident to take place, the undefeated figure known as God must have a form that is visible to the eyes.

There are debates among transcendentalists as to whether God is with form or without, whether He is a personality or just an energy. On a higher level, the arguments are a waste of time because we only think in terms of form and formlessness because of our limited abilities. On a cloudy day we say that the sun is not out, but the sun hasn’t gone anywhere. We say that a person is gone after they die, but their soul still exists. They are still alive, though we can’t see them.

To make an entity distinct, we refer to them as a person. A person possesses features but a person is also flawed. Therefore we think God can’t be a person because that would mean He’s flawed. He must also be without form because we can’t see Him. Both of these are indeed not the case; His personality and form are different than how we know personalities and forms. He is the Supreme Person, and His attributes are divine. He can lift an extremely heavy bow while in the visible manifestation of a young prince.

Before that victory took place, other princes tried their hand. King Janaka hosted this contest to find a groom for the bride, his daughter Sita Devi. What better way to find a good protector than to hold a contest relating to strength? But this bow was originally Shiva’s, and Sita is eternally Rama’s. Rama is the Supreme Lord in His incarnation as a warrior prince. Rama appears before the eyes, but He is not an ordinary person. He possesses the attributes of beauty, wealth, strength, fame, wisdom and renunciation to the fullest degree and at the same time.

Shiva is a great devotee of Rama, and Sita, as Rama’s wife for life, can only be with Rama and no one else. Janaka is also a famous devotee today, so we see that based on the players alone, the result of the contest was set. Of course no one knew this outwardly, as this is the fun the Supreme Lord likes to have. If all knew what was going to happen, why show up? And if everyone knew beforehand, why would we want to hear details of the event today? Why celebrate Achyuta’s marvelous feat of lifting the bow if everyone there already understood what was going to happen?
In the above referenced verse from the Janaki Mangala, Goswami Tulsidas continues his description of the kings who tried to win the contest. Prior to this, some just stared at the bow and walked away, making an excuse. They were like monkeys looking at a coconut, not trying to open it because they were too afraid of the shame of losing. The kings mentioned above were so excited that they actually tried to lift the bow. But it is said that the bow was immovable, like the word of a saint.
A saint in the Vedic tradition is known as a brahmana, which can be likened to a priest. A brahmana lives by austerity and penance, and through their good deeds they acquire tremendous spiritual merits. As a result, when they say something, it must come to be. For instance, if they curse someone, the results of the curse must manifest. If they are supplicated after the fact, they can proclaim something else which will also come to be, but they will never take back their word of the original curse. This is a power granted to brahmanas by the Supreme Lord, who holds His devotees in very high esteem.
It is also said that by looking at the bow, the strength and intelligence of the kings were forcefully stolen, like with what happened to King Nahusha. Nahusha was a famous king during ancient times, and through his pious deeds he ascended to the heavenly realm. The three worlds are the earth, the heavenly planets, and the hellish planets. As they are all part of the material world, residence is not permanent for the wandering soul. You go to heaven if you are good in this life, but you don’t stay there forever. Similarly, being condemned to hell doesn’t mean that you are stuck there without any hope.

King Nahusha was in heaven, but while there he had lusty desires towards the wife of King Indra. Indra is the king of heaven and he cursed Nahusha to fall from heaven and be born as a snake for his impious thoughts. Material life is thus very tenuous; there is no certainty for anyone. These kings were previously considered to be very powerful and intelligent, but since this bow was destined to be lifted by Rama, they seemingly lost all their strength just by looking at it.

Fortunately, there is one discipline that is above the material nature, that brings permanent results in a permanent realm. Devotional service, also known as bhakti-yoga, is the soul’s eternal occupation, and one of its primary methods of implementation is hearing. Just hearing about Rama’s eventual victory in the contest, and how all the other kings were bested by the bow He was to lift, brings the consciousness closer to the transcendental realm. While the curse of a saint cannot be reversed and accumulated merits can vanish with a single transgression, know that through loving God spiritual strength increases in a manner that is irreversible. The undefeated Shri Rama makes sure of it.

In Closing:

Through piety Nahusha to heaven went,

With lusty desires back to earth sent.

Once a curse upon you a saint does make,

Can’t go back, their word never to break.

Comparisons the bow contest help to describe,

Excited kings failed though with effort they tried.

Strength with one look stolen, move the bow would not,

Rama destined to win, beautiful Sita as wife He got.

Sai Amritwani full

பராசக்தி (1952)

பராசக்தி (1952) - தமிழகத்தின் தலை விதியை மாற்றியமைத்த கருவிகளின் பட்டியலில் இந்த திரைப்படத்துக்கு முக்கிய இடம் உண்டு. திராவிட உணர்வு , சுயசிந்தனை, மூட பழக்கவழக்கங்கள் ஒழிப்பு போன்ற சமுதாய அக்கறைகளை பரப்ப திரைப்படத் தோட்டத்தில் விதைக்கப்பட்ட விதை இந்த திரைப்படம். இதனை தொடர்ந்து தான் சமுதாய சிந்தனையுடன் பல திரைப்படங்கள் எடுக்கப்பட்டன என்று சொன்னால் அது மிகையாகது. பராசக்தி திரைப்படம் 1000 அடிகளுக்கு மேல் தயாரித்த பின் அதை போட்டு பார்த்த அதன் தயாரிப்பாளர் ஏவிஎம் செட்டியார் அவர்களுக்கு புதுமுக நடிகர் கணேசனின் மீது அவ்வளவு திருப்தி இல்லை ஆகவே K.R.ராமசாமி அவர்களை வைத்து மீண்டும் இதை படமாக்கலாம் என்றார். ஆனால் படத்தின் இன்னொரு தயாரிப்பாளரான P.A.பெருமாள் அவர்கள் "என் தங்கை" நாடகத்தில் நடித்த இந்த கணேசன் தான் நடிக்க வேண்டும் படத்தை முழுசாக எடுத்து முடித்து பார்ப்போம் என்று கணேசனின் மீது நம்பிக்கை வைத்தார். அவரது நம்பிக்கை வீண் போகவில்லை. நமக்கு ஒரு நடிகர் திலகம் கிடைத்தார். இந்த படத்தில் நடிப்பதுக்காக இளைஞர் கணேசன் வாங்கிய மாத சம்பளம் Rs.250. இந்த பராசக்தி திரைப்படம் ஆன்மீகவாதிகளையும் அக்ரஹாரங்ளையும் எந்த அளவுக்கு தாக்கியது என்பது படம் பார்த்தவர்கள் அறிவார்கள். அப்போது தமிழகத்தில் காங்கிரஸ் ஆட்சி. முதல்வர் ராஜாஜி அவர்கள். அவருக்கு இந்த திரைப்படத்தின் மீது முழு திருப்தி இல்லை இருந்தும் திரைப்படம் மக்களுக்காக எடுக்கபடுவது அவர்களே அதை பார்த்து நல்லது கெட்டது தெரிந்து கொள்ளட்டும் என்று திரைப்படத்தை வெளியிட அனுமதித்தார். ஆகவே திரைப்படம் 17 அக்டோபர் 1952 ஆம் ஆண்டுதீபாவளி நாளன்று வெளியீடு கண்டு மாபெரும் வெற்றி பெற்றது. இளைஞர் கணேசன் முதன் முதலில் கேமரா முன் நின்று நடித்த திரைப்படம் "பூங்கோதை" என்ற திரைப்படமே. ஆனால் பராசக்தி முதலில் வெளியீடு கண்டதால் அது அவரது முதல் படம் ஆனது. பூங்கோதை அவரது ஆறாவது படமாக வெளியீடு கண்டது.

SRI PANCHAMI(Vasantha Panchami)

Sri Panchami is a Hindu festival dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi. It is celebrated on the fifth day (Panchami) of Sukla Paksha in the Lunar Month of Magha Masam that generally occurs during the months of January-February. In our Hindu religion and culture, child going to a school generally begins with a ritual called Aksharabhyasa (learning of alphabets), the foundation for education. Akshara means the one that will not perish. Abhyasa means practice. Anything that we acquire in this life may perish but, the knowledge acquired through Akshara Gnana will never perish and will be an eternal asset. Goddess Saraswathi, the presiding deity of such Akshara Gyana, the female Divine energy of Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom is said to have born on this auspicious day known as Sri Panchami. Inducting a child into Aksharabhyasa on this day is said to be highly auspicious for good progression in education.

Reference to Goddess Saraswathi, the divine consort of Lord Brahma one of the Trinity Lords we find in many Pouranic scripts like Padma Purana, Brahma Vaivartha Purana etc... It is said that many pouranic great Sages like Sri Veda Vyasa, Brihaspathi, Yajnavalkya, Vasista, Parasara, and Bharadwaja had worshipped Goddess Saraswathi in their spiritual pursuits. Saraswathi worship is essential for spiritual enlightenment. In the life history of Mantralaya Seer Sri Raghavendra Swamy, we find Goddess Saraswathi referred to as the Goddess responsible for giving direction for his Sanyasa Sweekara.

She is referred to as Vaakk Devi, the Goddess of Speech. For any student, poet, writer, analyst, journalist, astrologer, musician, singer, preacher, philosopher, etc… to become proficient and to excel in their field, Divine blessings and Grace of Vaakk Devi is very much essential. She is also known by other names like Vaani, Sarada, Bharathi, and Braahmi to name a few. A river by her name is also very famous, holy and spiritual in Hindu religion and philosophy that forms a part of the famous river trio Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswathi popularly known as Triveni.

Seated on a fully blossomed white Lotus, Goddess Saraswathi is generally depicted as Chaturbhuja (four hands) with Veena as her instrument which she will be holding in her two hands while in other two hands holding Vedas (Sacred scriptures) and a mala of Divine Rosary beads. White coloured Hamsa (Swan) is depicted as her vehicle (chariot) that symbolizes sattvik nature, purity, high intellectual capability and discrimination.

This day is also known as Vasantha Panchami that marks the beginning of a new season called Vasantha Ruthu the onset of Spring Season. Lord Sri Krishna mentioned in his Bhagavat Geeta that He is the Vasantha Ruthu among the seasons. Though this festival Sri Panchami is not very popular in South India, it is a very important festival that is widely celebrated with great fervor in the North, West Bengal and Maharastra. In North Eastern States of our country it is celebrated as the beginning of a New Year.

While Goddess Saraswathi worship is done round the year, certain special occasions are prescribed for an exclusive worship. One such occasion is on this auspicious day of Vasantha Panchami (Sri Panchami) and the other is during the Navarathri (Dussera) festival in the Lunar month of Aaswayuja on the 7th day (Sapthami) coinciding with Moola constellation. It is highly meritorious to worship Goddess Saraswathi on these days and to seek Her Grace to become learned, knowledgeable and wise.

In our country we find very few temples of Goddess Saraswathi. Out of two such famous temples dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi we find, one is in Kashmir. Ashtaadasa Shakthi Peeta Sthothram refers to this temple as Kaashmirethu Saraswathi, one of the 18 most revered places for worship of Goddess Shakthi. The other famous temple of Goddess Saraswathi is in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh in a place called Basar where, special celebrations and prayers are held on this day. We also find on this day of Sri Panchami many people inducting their children into Aksharabhyasa at this famous temple known as Gnana Saraswathi temple. We also find a temple of Goddess Saraswathi known as Sharada Devi at Sringeri in Karnataka state where the idol is said to have been consecrated by Adi Sankaracharya.

Let us pray and worship on this auspicious day Goddess Saraswathi who is respected and adored even by Devathas, to get rid of our sluggishness, lethargy and ignorance.

 

MARRIED OR NOT, YOU SHOULD READ THIS

“When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her! With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now. The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again. In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage. This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that every day for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request. I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully. My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office. On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her. On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office…. jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore. She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart. Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us apart. That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed -dead. My wife had been fighting CANCER for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we push through with the divorce.— At least, in the eyes of our son—- I’m a loving husband…. The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage! If you don’t share this, nothing will happen to you. If you do, you just might save a marriage. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ♥ Remember love is the richest of all treasures. Without it there is nothing; and with it there is everything. Love never perishes , even if the bones of a lover are ground fine like powder. Just as the perfume of sandalwood does not leave it, even if it is completely ground up, similarly the basis of love is the soul, and it is indestructible and therefore eternal. Beauty can be destroyed , but not love. ♥

Bringing up daughters: The new battlefield for parents

Boys were the problem children a decade ago, and dozens of books sought to help. Now, girls are at risk, with drinking and self-harming on the rise, and a new industry is just beginning

Joanna Moorhead

It's a freezing night in Bristol, and snow is forecast – but every seat at Colston Hall in the city centre was sold out weeks ago, and not only for Ronan Keating who's playing in the main auditorium. Also packing them in is a 59-year-old, softly spoken Australian psychotherapist, who will take to the stage for 90 minutes with just a whiteboard and some ideas that will keep his audience on the edge of their seats.

The psychotherapist is Steve Biddulph, and most of the people queuing up to hear him are the mothers of teenage girls. A few years ago Biddulph toured Britain warning of a crisis facing boyhood: now he is back with a similar message about girlhood. And if the audience here is anything to go by, he's definitely touched a nerve. "Parents of girls are seriously worried about their daughters," says Saffia Farr, editor of Juno magazine and the organiser of the Bristol part of Biddulph's country-wide tour. "They feel there's this overwhelming tide of advertising that's targeting their daughters, of inappropriate clothing being sold in the shops, of media messages that encourage their girls to grow up way, way before their time. And they want to know what they can do about it."

Telling them what they can do about it is Biddulph's mission. "A few years ago, boys were a disaster area – there was an epidemic of ADHD, they were underperforming in exams, they were drinking too much and getting involved in wild behaviour," he says. "Back then, girls seemed to be doing just fine. But, about five years ago, that all changed – suddenly, girls' mental health started to plummet. Everyone knew a girl, or had a girl themselves, who had an eating disorder or who was depressed or was self-harming. It was a huge change in a very short period; I started to investigate why this was happening."

Biddulph lives and works in Australia, but the crisis he sees brewing for young girls seems to be echoed across the Western world – and, in Britain, the figures suggest it's worse than in other countries. A few weeks ago, the charity Childline announced a 68 per cent increase in youngsters contacting them about self-harming, and said most of the increase was among girls. The problem also seemed to be affecting teenagers at a younger age, with 14-year-olds now likely to be among callers.

Anxiety and depression in teenage girls is also on the rise: research from the Nuffield Foundation last year found that the proportion of 15- and 16-year-olds reporting feeling frequently anxious or depressed has doubled in the last 30 years, and is more common in girls: it has jumped from one in 30 to two in 30 for boys, and from one in 10 to two in 10 for girls. Meanwhile, a report from the Department of Health found teenage girls in Britain are more likely to binge drink than teenage girls anywhere else in Europe; more than half of 15- and 16-year-olds admit they drink to excess at least once a month. A separate report in 2011 found that one in five girls in this age bracket who drink at least once a week have drunken sex and later regret it.

Anorexia and bulimia are also dramatically on the increase: official figures for hospital admissions released last October pinpointed a 16 per cent rise in hospital admissions for eating disorders, and showed that one in every 10 of these admissions was a 15-year-old girl.

"There's plenty to be concerned about," Biddulph says. "Everyone who has a teenage daughter right now sees this, in their child and among their child's friends." The people they blame, he says, are the advertising industry and the media. "They are driving girls' sensibilities and making them miserable. The corporate world has identified them as a new market for products, and is preying on them." During his talk, Biddulph describes teenage girls as being out in the wilderness, surrounded by hyenas: it's starting to get dark, he tells his audience, but they are all alone out there.

His message, though, is one of empowerment: he encourages parents to get together, to challenge the advertising industry and to lobby the Government to impose more restrictions on advertisers.

"Take the drinks industry – about 30 per cent of the market is sales to underage drinkers," he says. "Alcohol companies are extremely powerful – but parents are powerful, too, and they have to stand against this and stop the marketing of alcopops and push for a higher drinking age."

But the battle needs to be fought on a domestic as well as a policy front. "What we need to do is re-evaluate how we think of teenage girls: the current philosophy is that they're growing older, so they need us less. But I believe that teenage girls go through a kind of second babyhood, and they in fact need their parents more than ever. We have to spend time with our daughters at this age: talk to them, listen to them, keep in touch with them. Staying connected to their parents makes all the difference to how they cope with the pressures they're up against."

Case study

Lindsay Julian, 51, lives in Salisbury. She has three daughters: Emily is 24, Olivia is 14, and Amelia is 11. She also has a son, Alexander, 28

"Emily got into drinking when she was about 15, and she started taking drugs fairly soon after that. It was a real roller-coaster time for all of us: sometimes she'd drink a lot and run off, and we'd have no idea where she was. One time, she didn't come back all night, and we ended up calling the police. They were difficult times.

"There are so many pressures on young girls today – you're very aware of that as a mother of daughters. So when my younger girls got close to the age where things got difficult with Emily, I thought: we're going to do things differently this time round. I sent them to a Steiner school, where I think the pressures are lessened: the philosophy is holistic, it's not all about exam results, which I think can be very stressful for young girls.

"Some of my daughters' friends spend a lot of time on social media, texting and on Facebook – but I'm careful to limit those things for my girls, and it does make a difference. They watch TV but I monitor it – in some homes, TV seems like a third parent, and I don't want it to be like that in our house. A lot of teenage girls never switch off, they're constantly connected, and that puts them under pressure from one another as well as from advertisers.

"We've got friends where you can see that their 14-year-olds are more like adults; the wanting to drink, to go to parties all the time.

"Emily is fine now: things turned around for her eventually, and she now works as a researcher and has written a book. She's a rock for her younger sisters and I'm very proud of her. I know you could say that she was OK in the end, but I don't think it's an experience I'd want to go through with my younger daughters. I think their adolescence could be happier, and less fraught, than Emily's was."

Source: The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/bringing-up-daughters-the-new-battlefield-for-parents-8458767.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Retinal Metric: A Stimulus Distance Measure Derived from Population Neural Responses

Gašper Tkačik, Einat Granot-Atedgi, Ronen Segev, and Elad Schneidman

 Two different stimuli, labeled and , were presented to a salamander retina. This is schematically shown here as grey patches on light and dark backgrounds, but Tkačik et al. used sequences of flickering light. They triggered two different sets of neural responses σ to repeats of the same stimuli. Out of these repeats, a distance between and was computed as the difference between and . The bottom right panel shows the matrix of distance for different pairs of stimuli indexed by. The upper diagonal shows the Euclidian distance between the stimuli, the lower diagonal the Dret distance estimated from the retinal acitivity.

Anyone who has experienced change blindness (in which a large difference between two images goes unnoticed [1]) knows that while our brain is supposed to efficiently process the sensory inputs from our natural environment, it can be tricked by well-designed stimuli. In the visual system, this is best reflected by optical illusions in which two physically different stimuli appear identical. For example, the perceived brightness of an area can be greatly influenced by the luminance of the surrounding areas: a gray patch on a dark background can appear as bright as a darker patch on a bright background [2]. These illusions suggest that physically different stimuli will trigger identical responses in a part of the visual system. Searching for the neural basis of such illusions is a major challenge in sensory neuroscience. Some researchers have found that perceived illusions can be reflected in the firing rate of single neurons [3] or populations of neurons [4].

However, a conceptual barrier remains. How do we know if the responses of a population of neurons to two different stimuli are the same? For instance, by comparing the firing rates of the recorded neurons, we assume they contain all the information about the stimulus, an assumption that might be wrong—or insufficient. If we were able to define an objective measure of difference between neuronal patterns, we could determine which stimuli evoke similar responses. A physical stimulus and its illusory percept should be very close in this neural metric. In a paper in Physical Review Letters, Gašper Tkačik at the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria, and colleagues report their theoretical development and experimental study of a new kind of neural metric for characterizing how different two stimuli are in terms of the response of a population of neurons in the retina [5].

To achieve this, they used data simultaneously recorded from neurons in the retina of a salamander (a classical model to study neural coding in the retina), while presenting different sequences of flickering light (Fig. 1). Since the relation between a stimulus and the neural response is stochastic, their first step was to obtain an estimate of the conditional probability distribution , which quantifies the probability that the neural pattern σ is emitted if stimulus s is presented. σ is represented by a binary word with a 1 for each neuron that emitted a spike, and 0 for the ones staying silent. This distribution cannot be sampled empirically, so they used a maximum-entropy procedure (stimulus-dependent maximun entropy, or SDME model), developed in detail previously [6], which constructs ) distributions based on the experimental data. This model predicts the probability of a spike pattern from a weighted sum of the stimulus, the activity of each cell, and the joint activity of pairs of neurons. Using the probability distributions obtained from the model, they defined the retinal distance between the stimuli as the distance between the distributions of responses elicited. This latter is quantified using a symmetrized version of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, a classical measure to compare two distributions: measures how much information is lost when approximatingwith .

The advantage of using is that this measure is relatively agnostic about the exact nature of the neural code: it does not assume that all the information about the stimulus is contained in the average firing rate, or in the timing of the spikes, but takes into account the full distribution of the neural response.

This definition allows the authors to calculate a distance between each pair of stimuli. In a second step, they computed the “distance matrix” between all stimuli, . Such a distance is hard to visualize, so they used a method called multidimensional scaling (MDS) that makes each stimulus correspond to a point in a low-dimensional space, such that the Euclidian distance between the points approximates .

This procedure tells them whether this complex neural metric can be projected in a low-dimensional space, where it is more easily interpretable. In the retina dataset, they found that the two first modes (where the first mode is essentially the firing rate of the neurons) already capture most of the metric in stimulus space. They even build a model that predicts the distance between stimuli from their projections onto two vectors.

These findings show that this large population of neurons, although initially high dimensional, extracts only a few components from the stimulus. This dimensionality reduction was found before for single neurons, using techniques such as spike-triggered covariance analysis, for example [7], showing that each neuron can divide the space of possible stimuli into the ones that evoke the spike and the ones that don’t. The novelty of the approach of Tkačik et al.is to take into account the whole interacting population, rather than single neurons. One might have thought that the different neurons would each separate the stimulus space into distinct subspaces, so that reading the different neurons would increase the information about the stimulus exponentially. However, here it is shown that this population of neurons is very redundant, since its sensitivity can be reduced to two components.

These two components provide an important insight into the changes in the stimulus that the neural population can detect, as well as the ones it cannot. Over the time course of the stimulus, the method of Tkačik et al. predicts that some fluctuations added to the stimulus should not change the retinal response, while others, sometimes smaller, would.

The implications of this work are potentially important. First, it provides methods to investigate how populations code for neural stimuli by taking into account the whole population, not just single neurons. Second, it allows quantifying what aspects of stimulus space are encoded and gives a metric for such quantification. Of course, there are some limitations in this approach. The entire definition of the metric relies on a model connecting the stimulus to the response, and it gives relevant results only as long as this model is a good one. In the present case, the model has been tested and gives a faithful prediction of the retinal response [6]. But for more complex stimuli, or other structures, it is not yet clear how well the same model would perform, and significant extensions might be needed. Nevertheless, this approach is an important step in defining a metric on stimulus space based on a neural network response. It becomes possible to look for the most singular points of this metric, where small deviations will trigger large changes in the neural response. Designing stimuli to probe these singular points would, in fact, be a good way to test the validity of the model.

This neural metric will also have interesting applications in other modalities, especially when there is no natural distance between stimuli, like in olfaction. Finally, it can also have applications to the motor system, and in particular, to neuroprotheses (artificial legs or arms controlled by neural activity), where the key is precisely to define a neural-based distance between motor actions.

References

1. D. J. Simons and C. F. Chabris, “Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events,” Perception 28, 1059 (1999).
2. D. Purves, S. M. Williams, S. Nundy, and R. B. Lotto, “Perceiving the Intensity of Light,” Psychol. Rev. 111, 142 (2004).
3. A. F. Rossi, C. D. Rittenhouse, and M. A. Paradiso, “The Representation of Brightness in Primary Visual Cortex,” Science 273, 1104 (1996).
4. D. Jancke, F. Chavane, S. Naaman, and A. Grinvald, “Imaging Cortical Correlates of Illusion in Early Visual Cortex,” Nature 428, 423 (2004).
5. G. Tkačik, E. Granot-Atedgi, R. Segev, and E. Schneidman, “Retinal Metric: A Stimulus Distance Measure Derived from Population Neural Responses,”Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 058104 (2013).
6. E. Granot-Atedgi, G. Tkačik, R. Segev, and E. Schneidman, “Stimulus-Dependent Maximum Entropy Models of Neural Population Codes,”arXiv:1205.6438 (2012).
7. A. L. Fairhall, C. A. Burlingame, R. Narasimhan, R. A. Harris, J. L. Puchalla, and M. J. Berry 2nd, “Selectivity for Multiple Stimulus Features in Retinal Ganglion Cells,” J. Neurophysiol. 96, 2724 (2006).

Source:  American Physical Society
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/11

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek