What I did on my birthday?

THIS POST IS MY REPLY TO EVERYBODY WANDERING WHAT I DID ON MY BIRTHDAY

As mentioned in my previous blog, yesterday was my birthday & am really more than happy receive lots of wishes from everybody & once again Thanks a lot to all. Today I share my birthday with the whole world. I am Thankful to internet & blogspot to let me do this.

Generally birthdays are party time, but this year for a change I wanted to be a bit religious and wanted to eat home made sweets. So to satisfy both the purposes, I asked my mom to prepare sukhdi. Sukhdi is a sweet made from wheat flour, jaggery & ghee (There is a chance I am missing some ingredients). According to Jainism, sukhdi is offered to Ghantakarna Mahavir (A Jain Deity).

Till my mom completed her kitchen work, I finished my daily routine, & so did bhai & dad. Later, we did Aarti (A method of worshiping God by chanting some prayers & mantras) & ate Sukhdi as much as each one of us could. While eating Sukhdi, we planned to go to some Jain Pilgrimage for Darshan & all. After a lot of debate & suggestions we came to a final conclusion that we are going to Raska, a town 80 kms from Vadodara. The peculiarity of the place is that it is a replica of Samet-Shikhar a very important jain pilgrimage.

So our family was now all geared to head towards this place & after 3.5 hours of drive we finally reached the place. Just to mention that a person with exact route known can reach 30 to 40 mins earlier, but for us it was the first time. But after reaching the place, all of us were really very happy. The atmoshphere & area was such that it made us feel pious. I am not so good at vocabulary that I could describe this place & unfortunately I did not have any camera with me, so readers you have to be content with what I could express. There was really a different type of peace, which let us forget all our problems, tensions, frustrations etc. The place is religious as well as very informative. It imparted a lot of knowledge about all 24 Tirthankars (Jain Gods). I took two rounds of the huge area & tried notice each & every detail & knowledge I got from writings, idols, drawings etc. One of the idols I saw & worshipped was said to be very ancient 2200 years approx by the Derasar Authorities.

The beauty of the place made all 4 of us to agree that we will try to be here on everybody's birthday. Other than being religious it made us acquire all pleasure people have on their birthday. Long drive, out-side food, Sweets & also the trip is quite economy, & best for people like me who have to be conservative too. The next time in near future I will be there is when my Grandparents are here. And, I am sure they are also going to love this place.