Condolence Message

Our heartfelt prayers are with the victims and their families of the Gurudwara shooting episode at Wisconsin. We also salute the heroic Satwant Singh Kaleka the 65 year old temple President and the police officers who risked their lives to protect the community.

Raksha Bandhan

The Raksha Bandhan festival symbolizing the sister's love and prayers for her brother's well-being, and the brother's lifelong vow to protect her is being observed throughout India with the tying of sacred threads known as Rakhi.

In the Vedic period, on a 'Shravan Poornima' day (Full Moon Day of the Hindu month of Shravan), the deities and demons were fighting a battle against each other. Unfortunately the demons were in a stronger position, as compared to the deities. The king of the deities, Lord Indra, was very much worried about the result of the battle. His wife Indrani (also known as Shashikala) could not see him worried and prayed to the almighty to help her husband. Indrani was a religious lady, so she prepared a talisman with her religious power and tied it around Indra's right wrist.

Indrani believed that her talisman will safeguard Indra from the attack of demons. Eventually, she proved right, as that day, the deities won the battle and Lord Indra escaped unhurt. As the talisman had the power of protecting the person who wore it, it came to be known as 'Raksha Sutra' and the ceremony of tying it was called 'Raksha Bandhan'. Since this particular act of tying the talisman took place on 'Shravan Poornima' day, it has become a tradition to celebrate 'Raksha Bandhan' on the 'Shravan Poornima' day every year. With time, the festival came to comprise of brother-sister duo, rather than husband-wife.

In the Western Region, the festival is known as Nariyal Purnima and as a ritual coconuts are thrown into the sea on this day. The festival marks the beginning of the fishing season.

In South India, this festival is called Avani Avittam. It is an important day for the Brahmins where they first take a holy bath and then change their holy thread (Janeyu) chanting the mantras. They take a vow to perform their duties as prescribed in the holy books and adopt a good conduct and dignity.

In North India, Rakhi Purnima is also called Kajri Purnima or Kajri Navami, when wheat or barley is sown. Goddess Bhagwati is worshiped and farmers seek her blessings for a good crop.

The great Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore initiated the 'Rakhi Utsava' (Rakhi tying ceremony) in Shanti Niketan to maintain universal brotherhood long back in 1905 at the time of Bengal Partition. But the custom is continued till date by the students of the Shanti-Niketan.

After the ritual of tying Rakhi is over, the brothers would give their sisters some gift or money and promise them to help them whenever they need and protect them throughout their lifetime. In fact, offering gifts to sisters is a tradition of Raksha Bandhan. Year by year, the enthusiasm amongst the brothers and their sisters, to celebrate the festival, is increasing. It is clearly visible from the wide variety of Rakhi, Raksha Bandhan gifts and sweets flocking the shelves of the stores, during the holiday. The festival bears social significance, because it symbolizes the importance of relationship between siblings.

Welcome back!

Welcome back to the Drishti blog spot!

The new ISA core Team for the year 2012-2013 is now:

President                          -         Kashyap Uppuluri
Treasurer                          -         Raja Chegu
General Secretary             -         Subadhra Janardhan
Web Administrator            -         Shruti Vangari
Event Manager                  -         Aravind Subramanian
Public Relations Officer     -          Prajakta Govande
Sports Secretary               -         Satish Jatain


We salute the work our seniors have done in the past for the ISA! We wish to continue the legacy of their work and wish to bring more innovation. We hope to set an example to the future generations and hope that they would continue building the bonds of culture and team work that we would lay for them. To make all this possible, we need the support and co-operation of every Indian on campus so that we can bring out the best. We hope that every student that is a part of the University would come forward to support us. We would also like to remind our alumni/seniors that they are always a part of the ISA no matter how far they move away from Akron and hope that they would continue to guide us.

The ladder to any success story cannot be laid without teamwork and we hope that every Indian would be instrumental in helping us execute every event. 

Come back here to read more! We now officially announce the re-launch of the Drishti blog site :)

Cheers!
The ISA Team

P.S. Please don't forget to remind all your friends to subscribe to this blog spot.

Intramural Tennis Ball Cricket tournament

Hi all,
For people interested in playing Intramural Tennis Ball Cricket tournament; please email your first name, last name, and phone number (for the captains to contact) to Vijay Chavan- vijay.udct@gmail.com BEFORE SEP 22, WEDNESDAY 10AM.

The game will be played on softball field near Wheeler St , Akron. Entry fee will be 13$ per player and can be paid on the game day.

All the games will be played on 25th Sept Saturday (date can be postponed in case of rain or any other scheduling issue). Matches will be played with heavy tennis ball.

Thanks,

Priya

Thank you ISA members!

Hi all,
I want to thank everyone for making the ISA election 2010 a great success on Sep 18.

I would personally like to thank following ISA members that made it to the elections and showed us support-

Srikanth,Birla, Tejal, Karthik, Aditya, Dipin, Vivek, Tejal, Mansi, Neha, Ashima, Mani, Ashok.

I am sorry if I left anyone out!

The following are the officers for ISA 2010:

1. President-- Priya Srinivasan
2. Vice President-- Anurag Sharma
3. General Secretary-- Prerna Arya
4. Treasurer-- Prabhakar Pai
5. Public Relations Officer-- Priyanka Maganti
6. Sports Secretary-- Rochak Vig
7. Web Admin-- Pradeep Garimella

The above duties can be shared if anyone is willing to contribute to the ISA.

THANKS!!!

Incoming Students, Fall 2010

New incoming Student for pick up and temporary accomodation. Please fill the form located www.tinyurl.com/isapickup

New Officer Elections

Hello everyone,

We hope that everyone had a great summer and as the new fall semester starts we would like to take the opportunity to welcome the incoming students as well as announce the upcoming elections for Drishti, The Indian Students Association @UAkron.The date for the elections for the incoming committee of the Indian Students Association will announce shortly. At this time we would like invite nominations for the following posts:-

1. President
2. Vice President
3. Secretary
4. Treasurer
5. Public Relations Officer
6. Sports Secretary

7. Web Admin

Nominations can be sent in via e-mail to isa.drishti@gmail.com with the following information:-

1. Name
2. Program of Study
3. Number of Academic semesters spent at the University of Akron
4. Number of Academic semesters remaining at the University of Akron(approximate)

5. E-mail(University of Akron only)

6. University ID No.
7. Contact Number.

8. A short description about yourself and how you would contribute to the ISA committee (to be posted on website)

9. Link to gozips website (For post of Web Admin only)

All nominations should be seconded via e-mail. A person can not second his or her own nomination. Seconders can not be members of the present ISA committee. The seconder should send in the following information via e-mail:-

1. Name
2. Program of Study

3. E-mail(University of Akron only)

4. University ID No.
5. Contact Number.

The deadline for receiving nominations and the seconding of nominations, with complete information as stated above, is 5 PM on Thursday the 12th of August. .

The eligibility criteria for the above posts are as follows:-

I. For the post of the President:-

1. The person should have spent at least one complete academic year at the University of Akron prior to Fall 2010 (i.e. enrolled from Fall 2009)
2. The person should be a full time student at the University of Akron for at least one complete academic year beginning Fall 2010

3. The person should be in good academic standing (GPA of 3.0 or more)

II. For the post of Vice president,

1. The person should be a student at the University of Akron for at least one complete semster beginning Fall 2010 (i.e. enrolled from Spring 2010)

2. The person should be in good academic standing (GPA of 3.0 or more)

3. It is recommended but not required that the person should be a student at the University of Akron for at least two complete academic year beginning Fall 2009

III. For the remaining posts :-
1. The person should be a student at the University of Akron for at least one complete semester beginning Fall 2010 (i.e. enrolled from Spring 2010)

2. The person should be in good academic standing (GPA of 3.0 or more)

In addition to the above requirements (see section III ) for the post of Web Admin the minimum requirement is the knowledge of HTML. The candidate is to provide a link to a page designed with his/her information on the page and should be posted on the his/her gozips space

We encourage candidates to send a brief synopsis of what executive/team experience they already have and what plans they have for ISA in the coming year, if elected.These will be put up on the blog (www.isa-drishti.blogspot.com) as soon as we receive nominations that have been seconded and deemed eligible.

Every member of the ISA can send in questions in the form of comments and the candidates can reply via comments. All comments will be moderated for language and form.

Any candidate engaging in spamming, and/or campaigning/canvassing on public forums(e.g. yahoo groups) and/or social networking sites(e.g. orkut,facebook) will have their candidacy disqualified, without exception. All discussion and comments should be civil and directed to the ISA blog via comments which will be moderated, as stated previously.

Since this e-mail list is not comprehensive, we encourage you to inform friends via word of mouth.

Keep checking www.isa-drishti.blogspot.com , which will be dynamically updated, for information on candidates and discussion on the issues.

Warm Regards,
Outgoing ISA committee '09-'10