दीपावली

The word Diwali is derived from the Sanskrit word Deepavali and literally translated means a row of lights. For this reason, the Diwali festival is sometimes referred to as the Festival of Lights.

I haven’t been studying Sanskrit lately but have been finding instances where I could find the influence of sanskrit for instance the word Orange through Old French orenge, Middle Latin orenge  from Arabic نارنج naranj, via Persian نارنگ narang and Sanskrit नारङ्ग naranga-s meaning “an orange tree”.

Currently I’m preparing for the JLPT N2 (Japanese intermediate level) in December so other languages have taken a back seat, which are Chinese and Urdu. Why Chinese?  because its the next big thing without doubt, and after studying Japanese its quite easy as the characters aren’t intimidating any more an the grammar is a piece of cake. I know some basic Chinese now but pronunciation is not up to the mark yet but getting there. Next Urdu, which is so similar to Hindi it would be a crime if I missed out on it, I have always loved shayari (SMS) and sufi music so I thought it would be great if I could learn the language. At the moment I haven’t yet finished with the script, reading from right to left is a completely new experience, enjoying every bit of it. While studying Urdu I truly understood the importance of vowels अ आ …. Urdu script lacks such distinct vowels which is a challenge.

My target languages for next year are Russian and  Spanish; I also would continue improving my Japanese, Chinese, Urdu and Sanskrit.

By the end of next year I want to be fluent in all of the above, I know its a challenge but that is what life is about keep pushing your self forward. Set clear goals and make a dedicated effort towards achieving  them.

शुभ दीपावली

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गं गणपतये नम:

Ganpati bappa is in town and there are celebrations everywhere in Mumbai.

Few gods have managed to create a place in everyone’s mind, He’s one that goes beyond religion, caste or status. He’s the one love by one and all. I’m not too religious but when I think of gods he is the one that comes to my mind always.

गणपती बाप्पा मोरया

Change in outlook

The decision to learn Sanskrit has truly changed my outlook towards Marathi as a language. I hadn’t touched a Marathi paper in ages apart from the fact of checking up with the latest sport scores, but reading an article never. May be I had begun treating the language inferior to English which has become my default reading language and with the variety material available in English its just hard to ignore.

Gradually I have begun appreciating Marathi written work as well as music and poems as well. The sweetness in Marathi language cannot be rivaled by any other language to my knowledge, words are like honey drop and the fact is I always knew that but just some how I never appreciated it.

I hope to keep on reading more in Marathi, but the fact is in today’s life many English words have displaced Marathi words making them the outsider simple everyday words like foothpath vs पायवाट / पाउलवाट etc. Here if the Marathi words are used you might find people with a question mark on their faces.

Mobile phone

Mobile Phone, Cell Phone, 携帯電話 !!!

Some thing that was not existent two decades ago has gone on to become the most visible thing in todays’ world, such has been its impact that to survive today you need ‘Food, Shelter, Clothing and a MOBILE PHONE’. Unbelievable.After the television and the phone before (how can we forget our landlines), personal computer, the mobile phone has been an awesome discovery.

In Sanskrit the mobile phone would be called as भ्रमणध्वनि ( bhramaNadhvani ) or चरदूरध्वनि ( charaduuradhvani ) here

भ्रमण ( bhramaNa ) means roaming, roam about,

चर (chara ) has many meanings but here it means moving,

दूर (duura ) means far,

ध्वनि (dhvani ) means sound.

Wow, while breaking up the above words I realized the method is similar to Japanese where 携帯 (keitai ) means handheld and 電話 ( denwa ) means telephone and English as well mobile + phone.

These things are really getting me thinking and making it exciting.

Mahabharat

“यदा यदा ही धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत, अभ्युथानम् अधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् |
परित्राणाय साधुनाम विनाशाय च: दुष्कृताम, धर्मं संस्थापनार्थाय सम्भावामी युगे युगे ||”

This verse from the Bhagavad Gita is ironed into my mind and most of the people who have watched Mahabharat TV serial. I never understood what it meant never even tried, I still don’t know the meaning but I would learn about it gradually as I study Sanskrit.

Coming to TV serials the kind of following they had in the 90’s that is really impressive and hard to find today, but back then it was just Doordarshan that we watched there was no distraction of so many channels bombarded on you that you are lost of choice. Ramayan, Mahabharat, Chandrakanta, Malgudi Days, Chitrahaar, Jai Hanuman, Bomkesh Bakshi, The Great Maratha ….. the list just goes on, feeling nostalgic a ride through memory lane.

Friday the 13th

I create my new blog on Friday the 13th can’t believe it, its not that bad a day just one bad memory of losing an inter school football final and we managed to get our selves in the local news papers with the heading ‘Friday the 13th’ and since then it some how has managed  to stick in my head. For the record we beat the same team the following year and went on to win the district title. But still that defeat did hurt, wow school years full of innocence some how we find a way to lose it as we grow.

Give me some sunshine,

Give me some rain,

Give me another chance,

I want to grow up once again.

Studying Sanskrit

Wow I always dreamed of this but some how I took a very long route to come this conclusion that I should be studying Sanskrit. I began my language study journey with Japanese which I am perusing for professional reason and would be giving the JLPT N3 in July and then N2 later in December by that time I will be fluent in Japanese. I wanted to learn another language along with Japanese, so the next obvious choice was Chinese which seems to have similar characters but it had various tones to memorize and it would create confusion with my Japanese study as the same characters have different meanings and sounds, so I abandoned it.

My next stop was in Europe trying to learn German as English and German are part of the same family but I did not find it interesting so soon I took off  from Europe back to East Asia. Now after googling for some time I found that Korean and Japanese have similar sentence structure and I even studied the Korean alphabet the ‘Hangul’ which is pretty easy learning the basic characters but again it was kind off getting in the way of Japanese study which is my primary goal so I abandoned that as well.

The I was back to the sub continent trying to learn Urdu which is like the twin of Hindi just written in a modified Arabic script, the script is wonderful but the left to right writing is quite a challenge and I had not much time for that but it one of the language I would love to study in the future. Next to the east of India flirting with Bangla the characters are different from the Devanagari script though not that tough, but I decided t keep it for my later study list.

Then came the big decision I said to my self rather than beating around the bush why don’t I learn Sanskrit the mother of all Indian languages and the one which had as special place in my heart. So here I am finally in Sanskrit land the place where I can be at peace with my self and I hope it  helps me get the best out of me. I know studying Sanskrit would be a big ask as it has tons of grammar rules to be learned and understood but hey nothing is easy in life, so here I go …..

नमोनमः

Here I start a new journey in the study of Sanskrit, I’m proficient in Hindi and English and Marathi is my mother tongue. I have an advantage of knowing the Devanagari script and sounds which is used for writing Hindi and Marathi, so I have an head start in Sanskrit compared to learning Japanese which I had to learn from scratch.

Sanskrit has always fascinated me with kind of history and aura it has, it will be my goal to become proficient in it. I would also like to include some Japanese, Hindi and Marathi as well in this blog. By the way I’m not that good at blogging, hats off to those people who can express themselves in writing. Lets see how good I can get.

I have been studying Japanese for some time now and the more I study about the language the more I respect our languages for the knowledge, structure and everything. Simple things like put a line above each letter that groups a word together now seems fascinating to me. Just hope to keep this desire burning and learn as much as I can.