Blogwarming, Moving Houses, Astrology & Superstition…
Published by Vijay May 24th, 2006 in Blogging, Life in India, News
The picture on the right shows a traditional South Indian earthenware lamp (அகல்் விளக்கு ‘akal villakku’ in Tamil). More about that later…
This is my first proper post in my new blog…
Moving is always a little sad. This move is especially so for me as I have been unable to find a way to transfer the contents of my previous blog here.
All my older posts and the interesting comments by readers will, sadly, stay behind in their old home.
In one of those remarkable coincidences that are so common in real life, I am also in the process of moving houses. Truly hectic times at home which have been complicated by the necessity to find an auspicious day on which to make the move.
We will be moving into our new home next Thursday (June 1), just a day ahead of my daughter’s first day in her new school. I really wonder which genius thought of reopening the school on a Saturday after a two month summer vacation. I am fairly certain that astrology and auspicious days are behind this..
The more obvious question that is begging to be asked is why we did not shift houses during the vacation. For that, I blame the stars. We had initially planned to move in the second or third week of May. That was till my parents and in-laws came to know of our plan.
We were told that it is extremely inauspicious to shift houses during Agni Natchathiram (அக்கினி நட்சத்திரம் - in Tamil, which literally means Period of the Fire Star). It is an astrological period ruled by Agni, the god of fire. It traditionally marks the hottest period of the year in Tamil Nadu (mid to late May). [Unfortunately there is no Wikipedia entry (yet) on Agni Natchathiram! Google brings up lots of sites which are related to the 1988 Tamil movie of the same name directed by Mani Ratnam.]
The bad period ends on Wednesday, May 31. Thursday is an auspicious and good day for moving into a new house. Wikipedia’s page on Jyotisha (Sanskrit for Astrology; ஜோதிடம் - Jothidam in Tamil) has these Vedic / Hindu astrological guidelines on what to do on specific weekdays…
I used to believe that I was a rational person. Astrology and auspicious days and times were hocus-pocus to me.
Diligent readers would have noted the past tense..
I’m afraid that is no longer the case. Years of having experienced situations which unexpectedly take a turn for the worse have made me a firm believer of Murphy’s law.
It is but a short step from blaming a Major in the US Air Force to believing in astrology.
Now, the lamp…. A lit lamp is extremely auspicious. Most functions in India, including medical conferences, are traditionally inaugurated by the chief guest(s) by lighting a ceremonial oil lamp.
The lamp is thus my way of ensuring that this blogwarming is propitious.
And I have now made it doubly sure by posting this very early on Wednesday (12:30 AM) rather than on Tuesday.
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10 Responses to “Blogwarming, Moving Houses, Astrology & Superstition…”
- 1 Pingback on Jun 17th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Congratulations!
The blog looks really nice. You have really done a great job.
Congratulations on your new house too.
It looks like you have been very busy.
Have a great week!
later…
Great new site!! Looks fantastic!!
Scan Man! Wow!
I’m so impressed! What a great looking site! You did a fantastic job!
I’ve announced your move on my blog … hopefully people will come and take a look at your new home!
Your post had me chuckling … I can’t picture you as being superstitious! I’ve got a half dozen tabs open in my Firefox from the links in your post, and I’m going to go read them now.
Welcome to your new home - both in the blog world, and in your day by day life. And may your stars shine down on you and give you a world of good luck.
I can’t carry boxes for you into your new home, but I can help you with this new home, if you want. So - just holler!
I will fix the link tomorrow! In the meantime … the new digs look great!
Thanks all.
Moof, Sorry about the delay in posting your comment. Akismet decided that it was spam!! I rescued it in time
Thanks for the offer to help. I’ll take it up right now…
Where do I insert the code for the click counter - MyBlogLog. The Help page says I’ve got to insert it after the open
tags in the index.php file…Hmm… I just found out that there are two index.php files in WP, one in the main folder and the other inside wp-contents, I pasted the code into both & uploaded - didn’t work. I also tried pasting the code into the index.php theme folder (fGreen) - doesn’t work. Any help will be appreciated.Hello scan man! I am a new visitor to your blog on reference from Moof and Dr. Hebert. And I agree with the above comments, this is a lovely creation. I am very impressed. As a new blogger myself, I am barely managing to figure out Blogger; going independent is wildly bold. Good for you! I will check out your old site to get a larger sense of you. Moving your house and your blog at the same time is huge; good luck with both (and the burning lamp is beautiful). In your spare time (ha!) you’re welcome to stop by my place for a visit.
So there you are back again!
Wonderful to know that you have wordpress running in full steam. But do tell me more about your hosts.
Wishing you a happy blogwarming!
Moof, Thanks for the mailed hints. I figured out the way to get the click tagging to work.
Tundra PA, I found you thru Moof’s post on Grand Rounds. Was your site down yesterday? I ended up in the Apache page which tells you that the domain you are looking for isn’t registered! I just peeked in today. Wow! You’re from Alaska. That’s about as exotic and far out a place as I can imagine. Great pics. I’ll definitely spend some of my ’spare time’ visiting. The few things that I know about Alaska are that its only about 50 miles from Russia which foolishly sold the land to the US, the cartographers error which resulted in Nome, the Iditarod (thanks to Reader’s Digest) and the 1925 serum run. Looking forward to learning a lot more
I’ll blogroll you today.
OrthoDoc, Thanks. I rented my domain thru Myhosting.com, they are the same guys who run mail2web, the free email checking site. Their rates are good. Check them out.
I did check out MyHosting.com. The rates loog good to me. but for the present I think I will stick to edublogs.org. Don’t have to much time in hand to shift.
Thanks for the info, anyway.