Saptapadi Ritual - Seven steps taken together in Marriage

Saptapadi, or the taking of seven steps by the bride and the bridegroom before the sacred fire, is considered to be the rite of prime importance in solemnizing a marriage. Saptapadi is the only ritual in a Hindu that gives the right to a girl to choose her husband in front of the sacred fire (Agni).

A question that often comes to the mind is why seven steps? Seven has a very deep spiritual, philosophical & divine significance in it. There are seven matrikas or seven aspects of mother energy. The sacred fire has seven flames, there are seven porous pious rivers, seven phases in the life of a woman, seven elements of body, seven notes of music, seven rays of the sun and seven main planets. Therefore, seven is always considered to be a mystic number that bestows long life.

First Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om esha ekapadi bhava iti prathaman"
"My beloved, our love becomes firm by your walking one step with me. You will offer my food and be helpful in every way. I will cherish you and provide for your welfare and happiness and that of your children.

Bride Says - "Dhanam dhanyam pade vadet"
"I humbly submit to you, my lord. Kindly give me the responsibility of the home, food and finance. I promise you that I shall fulfil all responsibilities towards the welfare of the family and the children.

Second Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om oorje jara dastayaha"
"My beloved, now you have walked the second step with me. Fill my heart with strength and courage and together we shall protect the household and the children."

Bride Says - "Kutumburn rakshayishyammi sa aravindharam"
"My lord, in your grief, I shall fill your heart with courage and strength. In your happiness, I shall rejoice, I promise you that I will please you always with sweet words and take care of the family and children. And you shall love me and me alone as your wife.

Third Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om rayas Santu joradastayaha"
"My beloved, now you have walked three steps with me. By virtue of this, our wealth and prosperity are going to grow. I shall look upon all other woman as my sisters. Together, we will educate our children and may they live long"

Bride Says - "Tava bhakti as vadedvachacha"
"My love, I will love you with single minded devotion as my husband. I will treat all other men as my brothers. My devotion to you is that of a chaste wife and you are my joy. This is my commitment and my pledge to you."

Fourth Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om mayo bhavyas jaradastaya ha"
"My beloved, it is a great blessing that you have walked four steps with me. You have brought auspiciousness and sacredness into my life. May we be blessed with obedient and noble children. May they live long."

Bride Says - "Lalayami cha pade vadet."
"My lord, I will adorn myself from head to toe with flowers, garlands and ornaments, and anoint myself with sandalwood paste and fragrance for your sake. I will serve you and please you in every way I can."

Fifth Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om prajabhyaha Santu jaradastayaha"
"My beloved, now that you have walked five steps with me, you have enriched my life. May God bless you. May our loved ones live long and share in our prosperity."

Bride Says - "Arte arba sapade vadet"
"My Lord, I will share your joys and sorrows. Your love will make me trust and honour you. I will carry out all your wishes."

Sixth Step

Bridegroom Says - "<< :) missing if I find I'll edit the post>>"
"My beloved, you have filled my heart with happiness walking six steps with me. May you fill my heart with joy and peace at all times and seasons."

Bride Says - "Yajne home shashthe vacho vadet."
"My Lord, in all acts of righteousness, in material prosperity in all enjoyment and divine acts, I promise you I will participate and I shall always be with you."

Seventh Step

Bridegroom Says - "Om sakhi jaradastayahga."
"My beloved, as you walked the seven steps with me, our love and friendship became eternal. We experienced spiritual union in God. Now you have become completely mine and I offer my life to you. Our marriage will be forever.

Bride Says - "Attramshe sakshino vadet pade."
"My Lord, as per the law of God and the holy scriptures, I have become your spouse with the taking of the seventh step. Whatever promises we gave, we did so with a pure mind. We will be truthful to each other in all matters. We will love each other forever."

My Home on Google Earth

Kendriya Vihar, Yelahanka, Bangalore, India - 560064

Changing Colour of Listbox Items in VB.NET (.NET 2.0 Beta)

Its simple but finding the code for it on the Internet, and after getting the piece of code, cooking & making it work is bit difficult. So I thought let's put the steps on my blog to help others. This is windows application creating in Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition Beta. Here in order to change the colour of items in our Listbox depending on our logic, we have to draw each item in the Listbox. That means, while rendering the Listbox items we have to select the brush, font, colors, etc and draw image inside the Listbox. The steps are:

1. For the "Listbox" change "DrwaMode" from 'Normal' to 'OwnerDrawFixed'.


2. Click on "Events" icon on "Properties" window, to create a method for "DrawItem" behaviour. Mine it is 'lstSitename_DrawItem ……… Handles lstSitename.DrawItem'. This method get invoke while rendering each item in the list box.


3. So while rendering each item, we have to check whether the item is selected or not. If selected then we have to highlight the item by changing the background colour. Otherwise we have to draw it in normal colors. Generally white background & black text for normal item and for selected item, light blue (CornflowerBlue) background & white text.


4. Now you want to render some items in the list box as per your logic. Suppose if an item is disabled you want to show that one with text strike off & highlight in brown colour.

You ask, 'I already binded/added the Listbox control somewhere else with DataSet or with some other source. How do I know now whether the item is disabled or not now!'
Yes, you don't have any database connection or DataSet to check the rendering item property in order to set text effect & color. But you have to have it. After binding/adding the list items to Listbox, you have to keep that datasource or DataSet in global variable or in persistent place. So that you can access the same in 'DrawItem' method. In this method while setting brush properties, you cross check current item property in datasource is enabled or disabled. According to that you set the text effects & colours. Please see the code below.

Global Variable

 Private SettingsDataSet As DataSet = Nothing

DrawItem Method

    Private Sub lstSitename_DrawItem
  (ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As 
  System.Windows.Forms.DrawItemEventArgs) 
  Handles lstSitename.DrawItem
        e.DrawBackground()

        Dim myBrush As Brush
        Dim myBackColor As Color = Color.White
        Dim myForeColor As Color = Color.Black
        Dim myFont As Font = Me.Font

        If (e.State And DrawItemState.Selected) 
  = DrawItemState.Selected Then
            myBackColor = Color.CornflowerBlue
            myForeColor = Color.White
        End If

        'Checking the property of item in DataSet
        If isDisabled(lstSitename.Items(e.Index)) Then
            myFont = New Font(Me.Font, FontStyle.Strikeout)
            myForeColor = Color.Maroon
        End If

        myBrush = New SolidBrush(myBackColor)
        e.Graphics.FillRectangle(myBrush, e.Bounds)
        myBrush = New SolidBrush(myForeColor)
        e.Graphics.DrawString(lstSitename.Items(e.Index), 
  myFont, myBrush, New RectangleF(e.Bounds.X, 
  e.Bounds.Y, e.Bounds.Width, e.Bounds.Height))
        e.DrawFocusRectangle()

    End Sub

Property Checking

    Private Function isDisabled(ByVal s As String) 
  As Boolean
        Dim rtn As Boolean = False
        Dim rowData As DataRow
        Dim dvSettings As New DataView(
  SettingsDataSet.Tables("site"))
        Dim indx As Integer
        dvSettings.Sort = "name"
        If lstSitename.SelectedItems.Count > 0 Then
            indx = dvSettings.Find(s)
            rowData = dvSettings(indx).Row
            If rowData("disabled").ToString.Trim = "1" Then
                rtn = True
            End If
        End If
        dvSettings.Dispose()
        dvSettings = Nothing
        rowData = Nothing
        Return rtn
    End Function

If you need any help please post comment or mail me.

Very Good Google Sitemap Creator

Today I found a very nice Google Sitemap Creator. It’s FREE. But no idea for how many days it will be free. But it is very good & simple. I ran it on bangalorebest.com. It took around one & half hour to index 5000+ links. But at the end, accidentally I closed the parent browser, it killed the Applet. Yes it’s a Java Applet, that’s the drawback. If it is a standalone then it would be nice. Then no need to think about how many days it will be free.

I have to checkout how much bandwidth it burnt out. It indexes the .JPG & .GIF files. I don’t think for Google site map it is required. But it creates the list of broken links that is also nice feature.

It worked fine on Windows 2000 Professional with IE 6 but facing problem in WinXP with IE6. I added the http://www.auditmypc.com to my trusted site. Still it is not showing the image. I have seen that in Win2K. The applet ran well there.

Error loading class: sitemap.gui.applet.CrawlerApplet
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: sitemap.gui.applet.CrawlerApplet
     at com/ms/vm/loader/URLClassLoader.loadClass
     at com/ms/vm/loader/URLClassLoader.loadClass
     at com/ms/applet/AppletPanel.securedClassLoad
     at com/ms/applet/AppletPanel.processSentEvent
     at com/ms/applet/AppletPanel.processSentEvent
     at com/ms/applet/AppletPanel.run
     at java/lang/Thread.run

I think I’ve to install Sun JVM. Right now I’ve Microsoft JVM in my browser. Need to download the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Version 5.0 Update 5. It is 20MB+ so I’ve to postpone the idea of downloading now.

To change the rating at a time for all rows, we can select whole column by holding shift key and clicking first & last row of it, and then select the rating for one row. I tried that in Win2K.

Ok this is the direct link to Google Sitemap Generator - Free Site Map Builder, Create EASY made with Java!

Today is my birthday

Today is my birthday. I enjoyed a lot with family and I played a lot with my son.

My self I’m a happy living person with good wife, nice son, caring parents, and all loving people around. I do not have any big problems. Everything is smooth.

Started my own software company more than 2 years back, VertexInfoMedia. Previous to that I employed with Dell, Satyam & Indias-best.com.

I don’t know how this blog goes, but I’ll try to maintain this.