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I don't know if you have heard the word: Simhavalokanam.
Apparently a lion (more so a lioness) would get up when hungry and yawn and start looking back this side and that in a recce mode. Apparently lion's head has this stupendous ability to swing almost 180 degrees covering the whole of his backyard in one fell swoop.
That is what an old man does when he is done with his productive life and starts preparing himself for the hereafter.
When I do this Simhavalokanam, I often see a dozen and more angels who peopled my long life and delivered their blessings on me in cash and kind. Here a parent, there an uncle, a wife here, a son there, an in-law and an outlaw, a friend and a foe, a boss and a guide, and an insurance agent...
Even animals.
I recall the incident that I blogged long ago when a dog and a squirrel saved me from an angry cobra (or was it a cobress?) by their alarm calls:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/snakes-iit.html
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I don't know if you have heard the word: Simhavalokanam.
Apparently a lion (more so a lioness) would get up when hungry and yawn and start looking back this side and that in a recce mode. Apparently lion's head has this stupendous ability to swing almost 180 degrees covering the whole of his backyard in one fell swoop.
That is what an old man does when he is done with his productive life and starts preparing himself for the hereafter.
When I do this Simhavalokanam, I often see a dozen and more angels who peopled my long life and delivered their blessings on me in cash and kind. Here a parent, there an uncle, a wife here, a son there, an in-law and an outlaw, a friend and a foe, a boss and a guide, and an insurance agent...
Even animals.
I recall the incident that I blogged long ago when a dog and a squirrel saved me from an angry cobra (or was it a cobress?) by their alarm calls:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/snakes-iit.html
And there was an ever unseen Guardian Angel saving me from myself once in a while. Here is a charming account of his Guardian Angel by Jim Corbett:
...The bridge is an iron one and quite evidently the tiger heard me crossing it, for I was walking fast and making no attempt to go silently. When the tiger found I was not going up the Kota road, but was coming in his direction, he hurried down the footpath and, leaving it at the culvert, lay down on the patch of sand and with his head a yard from the footpath. I followed the tiger down the footpath and when I was within five yards of the culvert I turned to the right, crossed the road through the six-inch-deep dust, skirted along the right edge of the road,and after passing over the culvert re-crossed the road to the footpath. All this I had done unconsciously, to avoid passing within a yard of the tiger.
I believe that if I had continued along the footpath, I could have passed the tiger with perfect safety provided (a) that I had proceeded steadily on my way, (b) that I had made no vocal sound, (c) that I had made no violent movement. The tiger had no intention of killing me, but if at the moment of passing him I had stopped to listen to any jungle sound, or had coughed or sneezed or blown my nose, or had thrown the rifle from one shoulder to the other, there was a chance that the tiger would have got nervous and attacked me. My subconscious being was not prepared to take this risk and jungle sensitiveness came to my assistance and guided me away from the potential danger.
On how many occasions jungle sensitiveness had enabled me to avoid dangers of one kind or the other it is not possible for me to say, but from the fact that in all the years I have lived in the jungles I have only once come in actual contact with a wild animal is proof that some sense, call it jungle sensitiveness or call it my Guardian Angel, has intervened at the critical moment to ensure my safety.
And here is an unbeatable account of his wood-nymph by James Thurber:
...Out of my long and dogged bouts with automobiles of various makes, there comes back to me only one truly pleasurable experience. There may have been others, but I doubt it. I was driving in the British Isles in 1938, and came one day to a sudden, coughing stop in a far and lonely section of Scotland. The car had run out of gas in the wilderness. This car's gasoline gauge had a trick of mounting toward "Full" instead of sinking toward "Empty" when the tank was running low, one of many examples of pure cussedness of which it was capable. There I was, miles from any village, with not even a farmhouse in sight. On my left was a thick woods, out of which the figure of a man suddenly appeared. He asked me what was the matter, and I said I had run out of petrol. "It just happens," he told me, "that I have a can of petrol." With that, he went back into the woods, and came out again with a five-gallon can of gasoline. He put it in the tank for me, I thanked him, paid for it, and drove on.
Once when I was telling this true but admittedly remarkable story, at a party in New York, a bright-eyed young woman exclaimed, "But when the man emerged from the lonely woods, miles away from any village, far from the nearest farmhouse, carrying a five-gallon can of gasoline, why didn't you ask him how he happened to be there with it?" I lighted a cigarette. "Madam," I said, "I was afraid he would vanish."...
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