After retirement hobbies -6

After  retirement hobbies -6

    I always  had a great regard   to our religion .Due to my interactions    with younger generation  , I found that  our greatest export commodity is them. Most of them  have great regard for our rituals but are not able to do    simple things like Sandhya Vandanam    ,THarpanam and Avani Avittam due   to the non availability on manthras    to them   in the language most of them know , that is English . They were  not aware  of  the rules of life governing a life of a Brahmin. I did attempt to get Vaidhyanatha Deekshitheeyam    the authoritative book in Sanskrit  , I located  it   on line but it was very difficult to read it as it was a Xerox copy of a  very old manuscript.  It was  at this time that  I came to know that Mahaperiyavaa  , in his great   wisdom   had entrusted   the job of  properly   summarizing of this great book   to a great Scholar called Manjakudi Venkatrama Satrigal  and this was published  in Tamil  by Heritage Educational Trust  in Mylapore and according to the wishes of Mahaperiyavaa  it was   being sold at  a subsidized price  . Maha Periyavaa  in his gret wisdom  also had ordered   the publishers that   there should not be any copy right to     this great  book. I bought the book and translated   it word by word and put it  in   my blog. I also added Manthras  for Trivedi Sandhyavandhanam  with necessary modifications    for Vadakalai   and Then Kalai Iyengars  , Amavasai Tharpanam for Yajur Vedam (Iyers as well as Iyengars)  , Bodhayana THarpana Manthras  , Avani avittam manthras separately    for   all the three Vedas , Several books on rules of Behaviour  for Sadacharam,  etc. Every year for the past fifteen years  I have been putting  The sankalpa manthras   for Amavasya THarpanam   for every year with modifications for different countries, Avani avitta Manthras    for   three  Vedas every year and so on.  These Manthras are accessed  by several thousands of people   every year,. My heart  fills up   with joy of helping people after    every Avani Avittam when thousands of people thank me  . I am getting old but I am determined   to keep this service as long God  keeps me healthy  with the blessings of Mahaperiyava . The blog where you can find all this information is

http://brahminrituals.blogspot.in/

After Retirement Hobbies 5

After   retirement  hobbies-5

   I have always been fascinated by    the small but clean and devotion drenched temples  of Kerala, to which state  I belong . So after   collecting information by reading   and personal enquiry   wrote  in great detail about 100   temples of Kerala.  I came across temples which I had   not known earlier. There was a  temple for the Divine Brahmam,  temples for  all the four sons of  Dasaratha, a temple to Duryodhana   etc. This kept on engaging me as  collection of information    sitting in Bangalore   was very difficult .Please read   about them in

http://rajathathaskeralatemples.blogspot.in/

  Another group of temples that fascinated me were    the temples of Village Gods of Tamil Nadu  .Fortunately by reading many magazine articles as well as   few  well written books  I could get detailed information of 102   such temples. Collection  of information was indeed difficult  and occupied   lot of my time. Those   interested  may read about them in

 http://villagegods.blogspot.in/

After Retirement hobbies-4

After  Retirement hobbies-4

    All my life  I habe been voracious and compulsive reader. I started reading books when I was  ten years of age . This made me a story teller of great repute to children. Atl east 6 of those children who were  pestering  me for stories    are members  of face book. During one of  my trips   to USA  ,when I was reading fairy tales  of Grimm, suddenly I recollected   several stories  that I knew, which reflected the Indian culture.  I started typing them all. Then I recollected that  I was   greatly dissatisfied  by the western rhymes   that  were being taught to our children. I started    writing  rhymes similar to them  from the Indian   angle  and also started collecting   rhymes from Indian languages that I knew.When I came back  , my  daughter  designed  a web site to put all my work .She wanted me to write small stotras addressed to different God’s   with their meaning   syuitable for Hindu children. I got a brain wave to add stories from Upanishads   and stories illustrating principles of Gita. This material    was put in a web site and  it was called  Raja Thatha’s corner because  the name I was well known in my family circles was Raja and I had become a Thatha. This great web site brought a huge fan following to me of  children and parents  of children. Among all the works that I have done  this is  became very dear to my heart. I know  none of you are children but I am sure   you would enjoy reading them in

http://raja-thatha-corner.bizhat.com/Stories.html

After retirement hobbies-3

After    retirement Hobbies-3

    Though not a musician or a musicologist  I was always fascinated  by  Carnatic musc  But  though  it is  great to hear   , I found it difficult to understand   the Sahithyam (lyrics)  of  most   of the songs sung during a music programme. One reason  was   due to language and another   was due to the technique involved in singing. For example  I could easily understand the songs sung in Tamil at the end of the Cutcheries , About  6 years  back I got a book by Brahmasri Balakrishna Sastrigal giving meanings of selected   songs of Thygaraja . I was enchanted   amd when I heard     those songs next time  I  could   understand them. I used the book initially   to translate  those Keerthanas in to English and put them in my blog  .  The response was great   and so I took the hobby of translating Carnatic Music Krithis    written  in Telugu, Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam  , Kannada   and Hindi in to English  Whenever    I was not able to understand some   of my on line  friends  helped me . So far I have translated 1000 krithis written in these 6 languages. Recently I got a friend   to translate ten Abhangs   of  Saint THukaram  written in Marathi  .My translation also includes   translation of Musical  Dramas-Nandanar Charithram     and Gayathri Puranam. I propse   to continue   this hobby of mine.  Any one who can translate  , please do so and send it to me   so that I can put it in my blog

http://translationsofsomesongsofcarnticmusic.blogspot.in/

May God bless all of you.

After retirement hobbies-2

After  Retirement hobbies-2

     I retired  on 30^th January  2000. I was a well  known statistician  who has made   very significant contributions  to Statistics.  This was  possible  due to my innate  curiosity  and  capacity    to hard work,Whenever  I use to recite   any Stotra   , I used to wonder  what it means. After retirement   the few books that I purchased   by Anna  , the legend in translation of   Stotras in to Tamil  , So after   translating in to English a  few simple stotras   which were   easy to understand  , I started   translating Vishnu Sahasranama ofcourse    with the constatnt reference to Anna’s great book.I did a not bad translation  clearly aiming   at the future generation  of Hindus who may not know  their mother toungue   or  Sanskrit.  I also decided that   I would   give the simple meaning and not   the Goodartha.  By 2002, I had    translated  about 20 Stotras ,  which included Vishnu Sahasranam, Nama Ramayanam , Annapurnashtakam  and during my visit to USA  in 2002  , My daughter in law Sangeetha created   a web site for me to put them (  http://members.tripod.com/english_stotras/eng_stotra.htm). The   response was great  . One of those  readers from Mumbai  adviced me to    create   a web site using Geocities. I did  and a new web site   called  was created and maintained by me.( http://www.geocities.com/ramya475)  After returning to India,  I started work at a  furious pace  , By another   4 years I had translated about 400 stotras   written in   Tamil, Malayalam,  Sanskrit   and Hindi.   I   bought many Malayalam  and Tamil books   and also downloaded   several     stotras.  IN 2009    all geocities web sites   were closed  .In the mean while  I  contacted sri Lakshmanan www.celextel.org/  , who gladly agreed  

To put my translations in his web site  HE also requested me to translate some  21 upanishads. The SAthya SAibaba brotherhood of Jolland and  Hindupedia     agreed   to put my translations in their web sites. I also  started using the Google blog under name  of   http://stotrarathna.blogspot.in/

 and started  posting my translations there  . As  of now  I have translated  around 1000 stotra  rathnas which include   several great books   and  this is visited by around 1000  people a day . I spend about   4-5  hours  daily on my translation job.  I am doing it all alone   with no one    to even read the proofs . I have several fans  my translations   ofcourse   there are critics also.  Hope this  hobby  would   keep me  busy   for some more time to come.  two of my translations have been published   by Giri traders, Madras Ofcourse  I also have more hobbies.

After retirement hobbies-1

After retirement  hobbies -1

       Al my official life was spent    as a  scientist  in  Indian Council of Agricultural Research. I retired in  2000 January. Then I had gone to USA to be with my daughter.It was at this  I came to know Sri Murugavel, , the founder  of Bharath Matrimony  , who was at that   running a web site called www,sysindia.com.  Since he knew  that I was doing   matching of horoscopes for matrimony  , he suggested to me to  help   people using my knowledge. He thought that people in USA  were finding it difficult to get match horoscopes and  were  forced to wait  more than a month   for getting that done. Since I had  a lot of time in my hand I agreed    to do that   and the first announcement   regarding  my availability   to match horoscopes came in tamilmatrimony.com.  Soon another web site   called cyberkerala also agreed to put my  availability. With   free software   available   for horoscope matching , later tamilmatrimony removed    the announcement but it is still there   in

http://www.cyberkerala.com/matrimonial/horoscope.html

     I  am still doing it in a small scale   due  to my   preoccupation with other hobbies as well rising  old age. Several people who have benefitted by my services    are  my face book friends. 

Completed Kamba Ramayana Translation in to English

It was   in the month of April 2012 , I started     translating Adhyathma Ramayana   from Malayalam   which has about 4000    verses and I completed it in  4 months,A very interesting  incident   happened then. Please read about it in

http://rajathathas.blogspot.in/2012/07/note-from-translator.html

 Later at the suggestion of Sri Lakshmanan of Celextel , I did the translation  of Vamiki Ramayanam  from Sanskrit which consists of 24000 verses and I completed this job    in about 8 months  . I was relaxing after this   and then I thought I also should do the translation of Kamba Ramayanam from Tamil  and I started this job in March 2014 .In July when had completed    the five Kandas which occupied the   about 2000   verses and started   the translation of   the Yidha Kanda     which consists of 6000  verses,  due to my age  and  the difficult   poetical text , I felt very nervous and requested    all my on line  friends for  praying  for me. They all did and today  I have    completed  the first draft   of my translation of  this great book. I would be correcting it and uploading   it in another few days.

    I earnestly believe that   this work is not done by me   but God    did it through me.