Nine gems

"pancha ratnas, he wants from me, " I smiled as I finished reading. "saadhinchenE O manasaa," I sang too. I admit I giggled and sniggered also. Five gems, he wanted.

"What is this about," he inquired. I explained that a famous blogger tagged me. "He wants you to write about the pancha ratnas?" he asked incredulously. "Is he a classical music buff? You only play one in its entirety, the rest you can only play snatches."

There are several versions of the five gems. The absolute five gems in Indian folk wisdom are diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies and emeralds (which tells you that you should take ancient wisdom with a pinch of salt, as pearls are organic after all, oh but they are precious, ah well).

There are other major things that come in fives, too. The five elements, the five colours, the five virgins (I refuse to talk further about them), the five senses of body and mind, the five lives, the five divisions of almanacs, the five metals… you get the drift.

I agreed with my husband, though. But when tagged to do anything that added up to five, I can count that high, thank you very much, my first thought is always Tyagaraja. The five brilliant encyclopaedic kritis in the five ghana ragas, the very definitions of how to render and develop them. True, I only learnt one of the five formally from a teacher. The Sri, endarO mahaanubhaavulu, but I picked up the others. There are notations in various books, there are renditions by artists, and there are recordings of the Aradhana Festival group singing to follow. You can learn them easy. I used Balamurali as my guide, but I never got around to learning VaraaLi. It always seemed beyond me.

But this is different. The big shot blogger tagged me to a five-fold post.

The rules of the tag are as follows. Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Now this is an invitation to go through my archives, wallow in my blog and inflict my favourites on poor unsuspecting readers all over again. Who am I to refuse?

Family: in my career of two years of blogging, I must have mentioned my family once or twice. I don’t make a big deal about them like mommy bloggers or other personal bloggers, but I do talk about my family, because that defines me too. This post of mine gives an insight into that.

Friends: I did talk about the art of making friends, the effort of keeping them, and the heartache of losing them too. I was a victim of parental disapproval when it came to making friends in school or college, and it tainted me. But I did make friends, and odd sort of friends, too.

Yourself: this was a toughie. The one time I presented myself naked and defenseless was when I wrote this post. It is the most honest thing I wrote.

Your love: ah, here I get an embarrassment of riches in choice, but I confine myself to just two posts. I once bragged that Araucaria loved me. He read the post and wrote and told me he did, so there. Though I did not have many readers then, or any feedback, I rather like this post I did about my career of reading.

Anything you like: see, asking for it, he was. But since I am a nice and harmless middle-aged person, I am confining myself to giving you links to some posts that I really enjoyed writing. I hated it when broadband died and so I moaned about it. I used to froth at the mouth about trees and environment too. My first ever rant on the blog was a major moment, too; people gaped in astonishment that nice Missus Em can be nasty, but there were times when I surpassed myself.

You say that is ten? I said I could count up to five reliably. After that, it gets murky. So sue me.

Cheers!