Happy birthday Krishna!

Patram puspam phalam thoyam

yo me bhaktya prayacchati

Tad aham bhakty-upahrtam

asnami prayatatmanah

- Bhagavad Gita 9:26

Meaning - Whosoever offers Me with love a leaf, a flower, a fruit or even water, I appear in person before that selfless devotee of sinless mind, and delightfully partake of that article offered by him with love.

This verse is close to my heart. It teaches us two important qualities - humility and devotion(love). How you offer something is the only thing that matters and not what you offer. You may offer just water, but the pure love with which you offer the same is what counts. You may offer the most expensive thing on the face of the Earth, but if you think its the material value of the offering that counts, thats not true. Irrespective of the material worth of the offering, offer it with all the humility and the love.

Makes total sense. When somebody gives me a gift, I don't really care of how much it costs or what gift it is. The fact that the person was so thoughtful enough, makes me immensely happy. How annoying would it be if someone gives you an exorbitant gift, just for the sake of showing off to his friends what he is capable of?

Anyways, Krishna Jayanthi preparations for me, started keeping this in mind. I made vella seedai and uppu seedai, the 2 important dishes that are usually made a couple of days before and by the look and feel of it, I thought it came out very well. I was even planning to post the recipe, but unfortunately it was not as I had thought it would be. Who cares man? Its the love that matters :)

Last night I took up this task of drawing "ezha kolam", which of-course I am very bad at. But considering that fact that I didn't have a deadline, I searched up on the internet and ended by drawing considerably good kolams. This is the kolam blog that I referred to. I liked it, beacuse it had the method step-by-step. And I would have looked funny to anyone who saw me in action, as I had my laptop in front of me, and was copying from it.

The actual pooja was today and I planned to make "Mysore Pak" this morning and it was the first time I was into making this. And surprisingly it came out very well. It was neither too hard nor too soft. It was in the right consistency and taste.

Recipe in brief:

Ingredients - besan flour - 1 cup, sugar - 2 cups, ghee - 1 cup, Water - 1/2 cup (This was the exact quantities I used, from some website online)

Heated the water in a heavy-bottomed vessel and added all the sugar to it. After the sugar dissolved and reached the string-consistency, added the flour to it little by little, and kept stirring simultaneously, so that there were no lumps were formed. I wasn't able to handle it by myself, so had an assistant, who did the stirring for me. After it was mixed well, added the ghee, mixed it well again, and once it all fully mixed, poured the mixture in a greased plate and sliced it after a couple of minutes.

(Don't have a picture of it after having sliced it, this was taken before. Sorry about that)

In-spite of all these dishes, lots of fruits and a delicious meal, Krishna's all-time-favorite Aval and butter were the most important ones. The pooja went on really well and we offered everything to Him with utmost love and humility.

I take this occasion to thank my wonderful friends who gifted the Krishna idol and the Radhe-Krishna picture for my wedding. This is a treasure for me, guys :)

Let Krishna shower his choicest blessings on us, and let us offer all the love that we have to him :)