One year ago: Daily Prompt Do-over

Today is May 8, 2014. It will be one year today that this blog was shared on Facebook. On this first anniversary, I share with all my readers the story behind making the logo for my blog.

I love to read the Daily Post from WordPress and took up their blog makeover challenge. I chose to design the logo for my blog. This blog was earlier known as Charu’s Musings.

When I started writing, I struggled with questions such as, “What can I do to make this different?”, “Am I sharing too much?”, “How do I know if I wrote this right?”, “Was my previous post good enough?”  I contemplated to give up on this challenge, but persevered and held on.

During this time, I read a post from another blogger about meditation. The article said that in order to clear her mind, the author does meditation. Someone might think, if I was born and lived in India for twenty-plus years, that I should know how to meditate. I am as ignorant as the cardinal which chirps on my Bradford pear tree when it comes to meditation. I used to think that meditation was all about sitting cross-legged, breathing and focusing on the one spot in between your eyes. I was so wrong. Meditation is complex. It is hard work. You are trying to quiet down the human mind, a computer that generates 70,000 thoughts every day.

I set the timer for five minutes each time and then wrote my experiences.

Day one: I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the spot in between them. For the first few minutes I only thought of other things such as the sound our furnace makes, my stomach gurgling or the twitching in my thigh because I was sitting cross-legged.

Day two: I experienced pretty much the same things and an additional tiny cramp in my right foot. I kept my eyes closed and tried to massage it out and before I knew it five minutes were over.

Day three: I used a pillow to add some comfort to my rear end. It did not say anywhere that I couldn’t be comfortable to meditate. Oh no, the same sensations again, and I was burping from last night’s chickpeas. Slowly, I felt the layers of my belly relax. Yes, their are layers of my belly. My thoughts wandered to the baby I had carried in there thirteen years ago, the numerous medicines this food mill had to process in the past few years and now I had this “MID WAIST” while living in the Midwest. I accepted my ‘mid-waist’, kept my eyes closed and searched for the spot in between my eyes and before I could find it my time was up again.

Day four: I set the timer for seven minutes today.

As I sat down cross-legged a sense of familiarity came to me. It was as if I had traveled on this road before. My stomach relaxed and now I could feel the straightness of my spine and I put an extra effort to hold my neck straight. My focus shifted on my breathing and I was able to focus on my breaths two at a time. Next I remember hearing the garbage truck on the curb and before I could find the spot in between my eyes, the timer went off.

Day Five: I set the timer for seven minutes again.

It had been an unthinkable day for our nation. Last evening we had watched the news of the Boston Marathon tragedy. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the spot in between my eyes. Images of the smoke, the runners, the bystanders, the blood, the chaos, passed in front of my eyes. I tried to hold on to my breath and focused on the breathing in and out. Tears were flowing and my heart was empty. Next I realized my time was over.

Day Six: I looked forward to meditation today.

I still had not thought of anything new for my “About page “but there was “something” inside me that was different after the meditation.  Today my focus had shifted to my heartbeat quite early on in the meditation. I could see some white lines that looked like contrails and it was mostly dark, with some shiny spots. I felt tempted to open my eyes. I held on and at the end of a ten-minute session I could see that spot in between my eyes. I enjoyed watching that spot. For me the spot was whitish, cotton-like in appearance. As I focused on the spot I saw a bee that buzzed rather quickly. At the moment, I did not understand the significance of the bee.

After my meditation, I googled “bee”and realized that one-third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees. Bees focus on one thing, either gathering nectar or gathering pollen depending on the social demand. This led me to think as human being, can we choose to focus on that one thing that matters the most to us and enrich our lives. I wondered, could my blog be a platform to help people make these choices about the one thing that matters the most?

This gave me the idea for the logo of my blog. My husband helped me find a graphic designer, Hann. She patiently heard my vision and my story about the meditation and my blog.

Hann came up with this image of the flower and the bee. I did not like it much because I was not looking for a photo. I was looking for  a logo.

I emailed Hann something along these lines,  “I love daisies and actually this sketch comes to my mind for the logo of my blog. Can you make the shape of the petals curved like in this sketch with the bee in the center?”

My original hand drawn sketch to Hann for making the logo of About One thing

So Hann send me another image.  Here was a new image for Charu’s Musings. Hann had a white daisy which was my favorite.Next, I chose to brainstorm with my niece Priyanka. She suggested that we try making the logo like an illustrative style using minimal color and nuance. It had to be something really simple, yet effective such as the Twitter or Facebook logo. I knew this could be  a challenge, but I needed something that would look good at the small dimensions of 32px x 32px, and conveys the message of the one thing that matters the most. Hann and I worked closely over the next week and we then had some images.

The bee was not very obvious with just two colors. I asked Hann to use different colors.

The white daisy, the blue sky and the yellow bee. Somehow, I did not feel ownership in this image and so I asked Hann to use just two colors along with the white daisy.

Hann changed the colors.  I had a logo now.

32X32

I needed text added to the logo, so we experimented in a few ways.

Text circle

Text below

Text on the side

Everything was falling in place, but I wanted the petals to be rather curvy and asked Hann if she could modify the image.

The white daisy, the yellow bee and the green representing Mother Nature or abundance in this universe.

The colors were bold and represented my idea. Aha! This was the logo, I was looking for.

The next step was to add words to the logo and the job could be done in various ways. We experimented by placing the text in various ways with the logo.

Lower CircleText-1 Our very first idea

Our Second Idea : Lower Circle Text              Image Rotated-1

Our third idea: May be O Bee.      Notice the bee in “ONE”.

I contemplated using actual daisies for our cover photo for Facebook page.

Face book cover with daisies

The current Facebook cover photo minus the daisies. Notice the bee in One.

The final image for my blog.

 

The final logo for about one thing that matters most.

This was not an easy journey (to come up with a logo), but it reflects my struggles as an ordinary person, of putting my ideas on WordPress and finally an accomplishment of sharing them with the world.

Thank you for following About One Thing that Matters Most!

 

 

 

The Masterpiece that represents love like no other

Weekly photo challenge: Masterpiece

You may click on any of the pictures below for a larger view.

Let us travel back in time to seventeenth century India.

The Mughal Emperors ruled India between mid sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century. For understanding the story of this masterpiece, the readers ought to know that the Mughals devoted themselves to Islam which allowed them to have more than one wife. Most of the marriages were for political reasons to allow two kingdoms to merge peacefully.

Shahjahan or Prince Khurram ruled India from 1628 to 1658.

The Royal Meena Bazaar was a private market place attached to the palace harem. During the Mughal era Meena bazaars were exclusively held for the women of the Royal court. On this particular day, regardless of their status everyone was welcome  royalty and common folks. The ordinary wives and concubines became noisy shopkeepers and were found selling trinkets, bargaining and flirting with courtiers. The courtiers freed themselves for one day of the tedious court routine and even used Persian verses to ask the price of a trinket.

Mumtaz-mahal or Arjumand Banu Begum

On this particular afternoon in 1607, Arjumand Banu Begum was hawking and admiring her silk and glass beads. She was fifteen years old and was the daughter of the Prime minister Asaf Khan. Most people were afraid to go to “this hawker” because they feared her father who was a powerful and formidable statesman.

Shahjahan or Prince Khurram was the son of Emperor Jehangir and grandson of Emperor Akbar. He was also visiting the festival at the Royal Meena Bazaar. Prince Khurram asked Arjumand Banu Begum the price of a glass bead in the shape of a diamond and she saucily replied to him, “The price is extremely high, ten thousand rupees and I don’t think even a prince of your reputation can pay the price for this indeed is a diamond.” The prince was speechless. Without any hesitation, he drew ten thousand rupees from his sleeve, took the piece of glass, turned and disappeared into the crowd taking with him the glass bead and Arjumand’s heart.

Thus began the real life fairy tale between the future Emperor and his Queen and the devotion he felt for her which is reflected in the world’s most beautiful building “The TajMahal”. The next day Prince Khurram made a bold request to his father that he would like to marry Arjumand Banu. The King gave his permission. Though betrothed to Shah Jahan in 1607, Arjumand Banu ultimately became his second wife, in 1612, and was his favorite. Mind you in those days members of the royal family were not allowed to pick their wedding day and were indeed fortunate if they picked their wives. After a long engagement of  five years on May 10 1612, Arjumand Banu Begum and Prince Khurram got married. Arjumand Banu Begum was married at the age of 19 and was given the title “Mumtaz Mahal” meaning the chosen one for the palace.

In 1627, Emperor Jehangir passed away. Prince Khurram fought battles with his stepbrothers, cousins and nephews and ascended the Moghul throne on February 4th 1628. Prince Khurram became Shahjahan or “King of the world”.

Mumtaz Mahal was beautiful and demure. The royal poets wrote that her beauty made the moon hide its face in shame. She was very intelligent and soon became a political adviser to her husband. Everyday Shahjahan consulted Mumtaz Mahal on matters of the empire. The Emperor placed so much faith in his wife’s judgment that he gave her the “Muhr-e -Uzak” or the emperor’s seal of authority, a mark that once made on a document even the emperor could not reverse. Shahjahan spoiled her with fragrant roses, diamonds and majestic suites in her palace. She was not an ordinary queen. She traveled to different places when Shahjahan was fighting battles. She lived in tented war camps that were portable yet magnificent models of their permanent court.

The couple was married for nineteen years and together they had fourteen children out of which only seven survived. In 1630, Shahjahan was fighting a battle and Mumtaz Mahal gave birth to their fourteenth child. The Emperor received the news of a healthy baby girl, but nothing about his wife’s condition. After midnight he received a word that she was tired, resting comfortably and wished to be alone. Shahjahan went to sleep but was soon awakened by an attendant with the news that the queen needed him. He quickly joined her at bedside only to realize that the baby’s delivery had been very difficult. By dawn, Mumtaz Mahal was dead.

Consumed with grief, Shahjahan locked himself for eight days. On the ninth day the doors opened. Shahjahan had exchanged his royal cape for white robes. His subjects followed his example and before long the entire country was dressed in white. Shahjahan ordered the entire empire in mourning for 2 years, prohibiting all music, feasting and celebrations.

In 1631, Shahjahan undertook the task of erecting the most beautiful building in the memory of his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. It took 22 years and 22,000 laborers to construct the monument. When Shahjahan died in 1666 his body was placed in a tomb next to his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. This is the story of a monument that has represented love like no other – the incredible Taj Mahal. In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Great gate (Darwaza-i rauza)—gateway to the Taj Mahal

Tajmahal: A tribute to love

Author’s note: I would like to acknowledge and thank Wikipedia TajMahal for supplying valuable information that I have used to research this post.  I am also thankful and would like to acknowledge all the sites that come up when I typed the word Taj Mahal to do a  ‘google’ search. I heard this story for the first time from my tour guide when I visited the Taj Mahal in 2003. These pictures are prints from my trip in 2003 using my non-digital camera. I had to scan and upload them for this post.

Historians disagree with this story claiming that it is a romantic fiction. They claim that the key player in this marriage was Mehrunissa or Noor Jahan, the twentieth wife of Emperor Jahangir. Noor Jahan used her powers and got Emperor Jahangir to cast special favors on her family, including arranging marriage between her niece Arjumand (later known as Mumtaz Mahal) and Jahangir’s oldest son Khurram, (later known as Shah Jahan).

I believe the story my guide told us. Which story would you like to believe?  Boy sees girl and love at first sight or an arranged marriage after which the Emperor falls in love with his second wife? I would like to quote Pi Patel in the Life of Pi by Yann Martel : Well, that’s up to you. The story’s yours now.

Don’t hesitate to write in the comments which story you believe. I would love to hear from you.

Either way there is no dispute that the monument was build in the name of love: A true Masterpiece.

An attempt to get a typical postcard image.

Notice the Intircate ‘Jali’ or latticed screen. Much of the calligraphy is composed of florid thuluth( persian, Arabic) script, made of jasper or black marble inlaid in white marble panels. Floral Inlay technique or ‘Parchin kari’ work in the Taj Mahal, incorporating precious and semi-precious stones.