Interactive Fun Session for Seniors

Interactive Fun Session for Seniors 

Yesterday, I participated in an online interactive Fun session targeting seniors. The website https://seenage.life hosts every Saturday at 10:30 am IST this inspiring event. The event host, you won't believe, is a 13 year old school kid from California, who happens to be the grandson of Smt Kamakshi Hatti.  Today's program details are given in the attached invite. You may look up for details of future fun sessions at the website. 

Under the section Gardening at home  we were taught how to plant Almond. Every step was explained, described and demonstrated in great detail. The process is pretty simple. Wrap an almond in a piece of kitchen towel, fold it, wet it, keep aside for a couple days until a small spout appears. Then place the seed horizontally in garden dirt (mud) about an inch below the surface, water it and wait.  You can watch them grow with wonderment within a few days. As the plant grows you may have to move it to bigger containers. He also showed avocado  plants grown by him.

There was a singing session. Upon a suggestion of a word, any participant may sing a song where the word comes in the lyrics. Many sang cheerfully including some kids! Talinn also demonstrated how to paint rocks (small stones or big pebbles) with pastel colors and write some inspiring positive words / phrases on the painted surface. He took a reasonable hand sized black stone, painted it with yellow and wrote Smile in black ink. The result was imply marvelous and pleasing. 

I found Talinn Hatti fascinating as a talented host. Whether it is fluency in his speech beating any seasoned magician, ability to imagine the requirements of the audience and focus rightly on objects under discussion, lighting them properly or making himself audible without interruption while moving, or mastering demo techniques (for instance, the stone has to be painted many times after each time after drying and this would take a long time, he took an already fully painted and dried stone for continuation!) etc -- what really floored me, I can not say. Due to paucity of time I had to withdraw without spending entire hour, I am sure those other 21 participants are luckier!

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How to handle death news?

How to handle death news? 

This post has been prompted after hearing the news about the demise of my dear friend Sri IVLN Chary yesterday. He died on 12th April 2021and I learnt about it on 24th through Sro NV Murthy

One of the most striking issues in old age is getting the news of a dear friend or the other passing away. Death, as birth, is happening all the time, as a matter of routine as ever. During the pre-retirement days, death news is accepted as a matter of routine: someone gets married, elected, elevated, defeated etc, or some known person dies. The impact is minimal and short. But in old age, we tend to add another dimension: When is our time to depart this earth?

Though death is a constant unexpressed fear in all human beings, it is highly pronounced as we near it. The judgement is given but not the date / time and we are constantly reminded of it with each obituary news. That's awful and nagging.

When you get the news of the demise of a dear colleague what do you do? Offer condolences to family members; discuss about it with close friends; lament about it in fora and meetings; recollect good things that pop up and share them with common friends.

What else can you do? You may write a journal entry in your diary. You may write an obit note to some newsletter of the association of some group. You may note the date of death just like the date of birth in your online calendar. Bring out his greatness in appropriate forums by pertinent observations, anecdotes etc

In short we need to learn to celebrate death in positive ways. Collect funds and institute an award, prize, scholarship etc for a cause that was dear to the dead person. Motivate the family and beneficiaries to  perpetuate the dead person's memory via memorials or long lasting activities. Let not death deter us but move us to positive celebrative action.

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Tapovani - A podcast for Senior Citizens, largely in Tamil

 Tapovani - A podcast for Senior Citizens, largely in Tamil

(https://i-radiolive.com/podcast/channel/tapovani/)

Tapovani is a podcast hosted on I-Radio platform recently in March 2021. This has been started by one Sreedhar, 74, a resident of Tapovan Senior Citizens Foundation in Madhampatty near Coimbatore with some fifteen volunteers, all seniors!. Within five weeks of launch, it has 47 podcasts, mostly in Tamil. The content ranges from speeches, interviews, group interactions, musical events etc. Statistics for the site is impressive: 600 visitors - 95% from India - mostly from Chennai, Coimbatore, Bengaluru. It has the distinction of being the first podcast in the country exclusively devoted to the elderly. 

Of late interest in podcasts has increased a lot in India. There are more than 25 podcasts catering to various tastes. Platforms like Spotify, Castbox,  Google Podcasts and Anchor.fm etc have amazing content with podcasts in a wide ranging topics like food, travel, Bollywood, TV, health, news etc.  Tapovani may be added to all such aggregators sites also.

Some suggestions to Tapovani: There is no provision for comments by visitors or feedback. I listened to the talk on Karadaiyan Nonbu - interesting facts. The delivery was very clear and impactful. In other podcast aggregation sites, we find extra facilities like Time stamps, notes, transcript, references, Infographs etc. For instance visit: coreimpodcast.com

Seniors Citizens may well listen to such podcasts and develop different  ways of spending time to ward off loneliness. I congratulate Sreedhar and his team for their contribution to Seniors' Community.

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Collective Wisdom on the use of oil lamp in the Puja Room

Collective Wisdom on the use of oil lamp in the Puja Room

 

I asked my friends in a discussion group to help me solve certain problems in using the oil lamps in Puja room. Questions like: Which type of wick is good? What type of oils give best results? How to avoid incomplete flame cessation? How to avoid black or green deposits in the lamp surface? What is the best way of keeping the lamp clean? How to prevent wick slipping down the stem? What are the factors improving the duration of burning? Where to buy good supplies?  The cumulative experience and wisdom shared by my friends is summarised here. I thank Sri Khanapur Krishna Rao, Sri SV Ramana, Smt Indu Priyadarsini, Sri Seshadri and Sri KS Srinivasan for their contributions.

 

Wick:

·       Threaded wicks will slip. Avoid them. Use cotton wicks

·       Use them thick enough by combining many strands to fit well into the stem

·       Wick must be thin and long. Flame end must be sharp. Fitted just enough part is exposed to yield a pearl like flame.

·       Free end of the wick must be in oil almost at the bottom of the stem to give maximum duration of burning – to ensure no oil is left after flame cessation

·       Change wicks once in three days

 

Oil:

·       Pure Gingeli oil or Cow Ghee is the best. Oil from traditional cold press is preferable.

·       They leave no deposits green or black

·       Oil must be enough to soak entire wick; Smaller stem saves oil

·       Refined Dhara Groundnut oil is the choice of one for decades!

 

Lamp:

·       Clean the lamp with Pitambari powder or soap and water; use a brush to remove black soot stains etc. Tamarind will remove green deposits

·       Use old cloth to wipe it dry

·       4 inch dia, half inch deep AshtaLakshmi brass Lamp – filled with 75% lasts for 20 hours

·       Using a small silver disk / washer near the bottom of the lamp will prevent green deposits

·       Lamp flame may be protected against wind by covering it with a glass cover used in Kerosene hurricane lamps

·       Use terracotta (burnt mud) lamps to avoid green deposits

 Shops & supplies:

·       Amazon sells cotton wicks soaked in ghee at Rs 300 for a pack of 100 wicks

·       Puja shops in Bengaluru have variety of lams to choose from

·       So called Puja Oil sold in ordinary shops & super bazars are adulterated mixed oils,  that includs Soya, sunflower, rice bran, groundnut etc Not preferable at all.

·       A shop outside Parthasarathy temple in Chennai is acclaimed to be the best stocked shop for all Puja items

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AOSC-H conducts online drawing Classes for Senior Citizens

 

AOSC-H conducts online drawing Classes for Senior Citizens*

A few months back we started free online drawing classes for the elderly and for differently-abled. Learning new things will activate the brain and it will give exercise to the eyes, hands, vertebral column, etc. Dementia the deadly disease can be prevented or delayed with learning to draw. Old age homes elders too will join us soon. Our teacher is an internationally recognised Mouth Artist – Smt Sri Lekha.

 

AOSC members Dr Vithal Rao, Smt Vaijayanti, Sri Shankar Rao, Sri A C Gupta, Smt Sandhya, Sri Mani Nath (new member) are drawing very well. Sobha’s mother, 80+, is also a student. Watch this short video on the program. Narration in the video is in Telugu by Sobha. You can see learners active!

 

https://youtu.be/T5RIZgOLUp4

Details of the learning sessions are given below

Topic: Drawing class  Date: 18/04/2021 Time: 4:00 pm

Repeats every SUNDAY at the same time     https://zoom.us/j/8588617411

Meeting ID: 858 861 7411  password---123456

 

 

*Info furnished by Dr Sobha Perindevi, President, Association of Senior Citizens Hyderabad

Book Reading Session by Smt Indira Narayan

                            Book Reading Session by Smt Indira Narayan

Smt Indira Narayan, President of Senior Citizens Forum, Secunderabad conducted a book reading session online on Google Meet Platform on 17^th April 2021. She is a retired school teacher, social activist, blogger and editor. She hosted the meet online all by herself. Some 13 persons participated. Normally some three or four persons read a book then talk about portions of it which they liked, quoting(=reading) extensively supporting their points of view. This session was different in that we were treated to a single short story authored by RK Narayan titled: Engine Trouble.

Mrs Narayan gave memorable account of the author – his childhood, academics, unsuccessful attempts in convincing the publishers, famous titles written by him etc. RKN lived in a house in the close vicinity of Indira Narayan’s residence in Mysore and she explained how and why she is specially attracted to the author.

Starting off with a question: What could the title of the story mean? She read out the story, helping us follow the text visually on the screen also. The intonation, the clarity in pronunciation, pausing at appropriate places and her diction were all superb. We listened with rapt attention like that of a school child. The story per se talked about a series of problems faced by the author (first person account) after his winning a Road Engine as a prize in a village show and how they were all finally solved. The speaker paused towards the end asking us to guess how the problem could have ended. It was Indira Narayan on RK Narayan. The event turned out to be truly interactive, thanks to the able and efficient handling by the speaker.

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