The Road to Sainthood : Monsignor Lawrence Puliyanath.

I consider this brief article as a thanksgiving for all the favors received and as a prayer for the canonization of Monsignor Lawrence Puliyanath, who lived his saintly life in my hometown. A monsignor who illuminated thousands of lives with the message of love, a genuine Christian hero, a man of action who obeyed god, by having a mental state of being incredibly optimistic against overwhelming odds. Monsignor Lawrence Puliyanath was declared as the ‘‘Servant of God’’ on February 4^th, 2011 completing the first step in the process of canonization.

His mortal remains are venerated in the St. Lawrence Church at Edakochi, where faithful from places throughout the state visit, in order to give thanks, for the favors received through his intercession. I consider myself blessed for being in the church locality, where a priest, who lived as one among the ordinary people, glorified the name of god. His life was dedicated to fill this world with love and to make people love one another. His life is a message for each of us to understand each other and to be generous in our lives irrespective of religion, cast and creed.

The over flowing devotees to the pilgrim centre at Kochi is a reflection of his exceptional holiness. Thousands of devotees consider him as a father figure who guides and helps them throughout the hard journey called life. Most of the familiar faces in my hometown are living testimonials who still remember how; he personally touched the lives of people through selfless service and love for the community.

Monsignor Lawrence was born on 8^th August 1898 in Kochi, to the blessed couple Maria and Peter, of the Puliyanath family. He was fortunate enough to have a good school education and eventually attained a doctorate degree in both Theology and Philosophy from a Seminary in SriLanka. He was ordained priest on 1926 and started off his apostolic mission for the poor, serving the society at large. During his 33 years of church service, he served as a professor of Philosophy in Alappuzha Seminary and later as a Forane Vicar in the parish of St. Lawrence Church, Edakochi. He was conferred the title ‘‘Domestic Prelete’’ by His Holiness Pious the XII-th in 1951. His simple life with no special attachments to material comforts in the midst of glory makes him an ideal religious teacher. His humbleness was revealed when he declined the promotional title offered from Rome, to be the first local bishop in the Diocese of Kochi. He was sick during his late days, yet was always concerned about the needs and lives of the people. The divine soul of Monsignor Lawrence left to heaven on 20^th February, 1961.

Like the two sides of a coin, with the touch of god, come miracles and blessings as well as sufferings and the cross. Dear lord, as Christian followers, we know that our lives would be subjected to testing and temptations throughout our life, to strengthen our faith. Monsignor Lawrence Puliyanath is our local guardian, who guides us through this worldly life, to follow your way of light. We consider this stage of canonization as the phase of our struggling and we hope our prayers, along with the ever glowing candle lights, in front his sacred tomb, would one day open the gates of heaven and bring out the shower of miracles and blessings by declaring his sainthood.

To Visit the Official Site of Monsignor Lawrence Puliyanath. Click here.

A R Rahman & The Jurassic Park.

The year was 1997, I was having the life of a seventh grader by then. Patriotism in those days for me was pretty much confined within the daily chore of reciting national anthem at school. Other than that, well may be the movie ‘‘Roja’’, telecasted on every Independence Day on DD National refreshed the sense of being an Indian.  It was like a fresh installation of national pride when Bharat Bala productions came out with the album ''vande mataram'' featuring my all time favorite music director A R Rahman. For me it was much more than that.

The sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park was released days before the August of 1997 in my favorite screen at Kochi, Sridhar. Since it was one of the most awaited movies of the year, everyone in my family have been making plans to go to the movies to have the Jurassic experience yet again. I guess, it was during the Onam holidays, as most of our family was present in our Tharavadu at Vaduthala as part of the usual holiday reunion. Surprisingly, a sudden decision was made during one of those afternoons to set off to Sridhar at the city of Kochi, for a 6:30pm show of The Lost World. Movies in theaters were something I have always been crazy for since my childhood and it still gives me goose bumps when the Universal Pictures or 20^th Century Fox is screened with Digital sounds in the big screen. Almost everyone in our family, mostly the guy gang including uncles and cousins set off to Sridhar, needless to say me & my cousins were overly excited. I still remember listening to the big sounds of dinosaur walks while we were waiting in the queue to grab tickets for the show outside the theatre. I always loved seeing the writing ‘‘DTS & Dolby Surround system’’ on top of the doors to the theatre hall. It was possibly a family first for us with such a big group fully occupying almost a complete row of the First class seats. As soon as grabbing our seats, two of us from the group set outside the theatre to buy some 2 Kg’s of apple as nothing was bought as snacks. We hurried back to the hall amidst the crowds still packing the queues, to witness something surprisingly extraordinary on the screen.

The man in blue jeans with a glowing heavenly white shirt was singing the most powerful national outcry ‘vande mataram’. Yes, the man was A R Rahman and he was crying his heart out with such powerful melodious and catchy tune that the whole of us were having a fresh feeling for our country like never before. That was one of the best theatre experiences I have ever had till today. If it wasn’t for A R Rahman, I would not have felt any different for the 50^th year of Indian Independence.  Though I was a diehard fan of A R Rahman ever since ''Roja'', it took me a few years to possess the audio cassette of ''vande mataram''. Just reading the words of A R Rahman written over its cassette cover is enough to ignite a new sense of being an inspired human being with strong feelings for my country. The album is indeed a timeless collection of musical magic covering the energetic ‘‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’’, the natural & peaceful Revival (vande mataram), the fresh & innocent ‘‘Gurus of Peace’’, ‘‘Tauba Tauba’’, ‘‘Missing’’ (vande mataram), ‘‘Only You’’ & the Tamil version ‘‘Thai Mannai Vanakkam’’.

‘‘All perfect praises belong to the Almighty alone. I dedicate this album to the future generations of India. I wish that this album inspires them to grow up with the wealth of Human values and ethics that this country is made of.’’ – A R Rahman.

The Man behind Google+

Google has boldly revealed its new face on 28^th of June, 2011 by challenging the biggest social networking sites of our times, Facebook and Twitter. Google Plus has been in a process of development ever since the failure of Google’s first social networking site, Orkut. Several alternative ideas have been tested such as Google Buzz, Google Wave etc. but were not big enough to compete with its rivals. Never mind the struggles, the tough gets awesome by repeated attempts, and hence Google is back with a bang. We are yet to see whether it’s worth the present hype. However, Google+ is obviously a strong rival for Facebook, which has got over 750 million active users.  Google+ is fresh and fun. With the initial survey reports, there are 280% active registrations going on worldwide for Google+. The interesting fact is, large communities of Facebook users are still unaware of the new Google magic.

Now to break the silence, the master brain behind Google+ is that of an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) graduate from India. It’s none other than Vic Gundotra, the Senior Vice President of Social for Google. Born in 1968, he fell in love with the power of software in his childhood days. He joined Microsoft in 1991, and later became the General Manger of Platform Evangelism, a part of Microsoft. He specialized mainly on Windows Live services and MSN to compete with the Web based software applications of Google. In 2006, he signed an agreement with Google and resigned from Microsoft. After spending 1 year in charitable endeavors due to a Microsoft employee non-compete agreement, he joined Google in 2007.

At Google, he has played a major role in the realization of Google Real-time Search, Google Buzz, Development of Android applications, Google Gadgets, Google Gears etc. The biggest contribution being the inception of Google+.

Google+ is an integration of Google profiles and Google Buzz along with new additional features such as +1, Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. Google+ is way much advanced in comparison with Facebook in areas such as E-mail, Voice & Video chats, News features etc. Though Facebook has recently integrated Skype, its way much behind the Video call experience offered by Google+.

+1 is a feature much similar to the ‘’Like’’ of Facebook.

Circles, is the revolutionizing feature of Google+ offering a new social networking experience enabling users to group people without any social obligations. This is much different from the traditional friends list used in Facebook. It helps users to categorize the people into separate circles without letting the people know where exactly they have been placed. The user’s advantage here is in having the privacy of not revealing how many and what all circles he/she has. Hence other users could see the list of friends in ones profile as in Facebook, but they will be completely unaware of the circles. This eases and adds more fun to the networking experience.

Hangouts, is actually an enhanced version of the conference video calling in Skype.  It comes with more user friendly features like having around 10 people in a group video chat at any given time.

Huddle, is a messaging or chat like feature within any given circle, available in Android and i0S mobile devices.

         Instant upload is a feature for mobile devices enabling users to store pictures and upload when they wish to.

            Sparks, is an enhanced Google search feature which works in a customized fashion.

Personally I find Google+ more advanced in every possible way. Am loving its fresh and simple interface. It was Orkut which took me into the world of social networking and was an active user for almost 3 years. Then, to keep up with the race, I finally configured a space in Facebook. In between I got into Twitter and LinkedIn. Social networking sites have always been an integral part of our lives with lots of personal attachments mainly owing to the people involved. One thing which we should keep in mind, no matter what social network we are into, is nurturing and prospering with our real life relationships.