The Lapwing Incident

I approached after a tiring 10 hours journey, listening to the sound of the newly arrived visitors to our area. This time it was a pair of birds with light brown feathers, with patches of black and white on other parts of the body. Spent some time in google to find that the name of the bird is red-wattled lapwing. Reaching home, took the binoculars and started observing them for a while. Soon forgot them, and returned to the most important work of changing channels in the television from 0 to end.

After few hours, the sound of the lapwings increased. It was more like a sound of distress. Apart from me, looked like it has also attracted the attention of a old shepherd and she was doing something peculiar. She started going near the birds and kept checking the bushes. Pieces began to fall in place, and i realized that the egg or the chick is in danger. Looks like the lapwings lay eggs on the ground or depressions in ground. The eggs have very little chance of survival and the chicks little better.  I kept watching, hoping she does not get what she was searching. The birds continued to fly around making wild noises. Soon it was all over, She found the chick and its desperate attempt to escape was foiled with the long stick she had in hand. I watched!!!

She wrapped the chick carefully and left, the birds left with nothing to guard and i stood there thinking hard. The birds look better adapted than men. For the old lady it is a chance to taste meat which she may not get often. But still could not accept it. it felt cruel. Funny in a way, considering that i have no trouble in eating chicken every week :-) It is just like how vegetarians convince themselves that they are not killing anything. Civilization, most of times makes us forget what we really are. Most of the time the rules are twisted. Anyway, my affection towards my area grows exponentially with every incident like this. Looks like when i feel bored with Nat Geo all i have to do is come out of my house and look around :-)

The Greener Past

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Stood there at the terrace feeling the cool and gentle breeze from the east. It felt like a child's light kiss. Saw a few cranes, and a peacock searching the fields for food.  Delighted, i stood watching the vast expanse of land in front of me. I wished it would remain like that forever. And i knew i would not get a single soul in that area who would similar feelings.

Anyway, quickly traveled back in time and the old memories emerged from the rusted mind. We had shifted to our home from the every crowded, ever friendly colony life. Our home looked remote and desolate, and i quickly decided that the area is lifeless. Soon i was proved wrong.  The first rainy season was special. When it rained, the area was became a scenic spot. To us it was like Venice. When we get out, it is just water everywhere. Usually the canals breach their boundaries, and it becomes difficult to differentiate the lake nearby and the area. As usual man made boundaries, wiped off by nature's fury. To others houses floating in water looked funny, to me it was fun. For i got to watch snakes for the first time & crabs too. Anytime i was able to see around 10 snakes in water. Snakes of different colors, different textures. Remember the time, when i ventured into water and a snake slithered in between my legs.  Lost in childish enthusiasm, killed a lot when they ventured to land. Should be more than 25 i think. The only snake i have hit and left without killing is a Cobra :-) As myths have it, Cobra's dont forget their offenders and take revenged and kill them. Anyway, I am Still waiting!!!! FYI, i stopped killing snakes after that. Once i saw Cobra mating with another snake in real. Early in the morning, when i am starting to school, would see Mongoose leisurely crossing the street. Everytime i wished, i would see it fighting with a Cobra, but it never happened.

As water drained, different varieties of birds & cranes used to visit the place. Few looked like they had migrated from nearby places. When it becomes dry, we get a flock of peacocks as visitors. Around 10 or 11, used to visit the fields nearby. It was here i was first introduced to Quails (Kaadai) and Grey Francolins (Gowthari). Nomads, occupy the area around the lake with their ducks and we used to visit them at times to get Duck's egg, Cucumber, Brinjal which they grow.

Once as usual was aimlessly watching the fields nearby from the terrace, suddenly saw three dogs in a line running hard with their tongues out. Soon found a wild rabbit at the front. It was mesmerizing to see the rabbit's effortless jumps and the agility. Had the effect of watching Nat Geo in real. After a while, they dogs came back disappointed. At times saw rabbits searching for food and hopping away, when i walk aimlessly through the fields. What i missed that time was a digital camera.

I was lost in those thoughts when sound of the bulldozer brought me back to reality. The land was being cleared and will eventually give way to some apartment or bungalow. The rabbits are no more, the peacocks have reduced, so are cranes, Kaadai and Gowtharis, snakes i haven't seen for a long time and crabs are extinct i guess. What was once a home to snakes, crabs, peacocks, country birds & Rabbits is now an opportunity to make Lakhs & Crores.  What if a 4th grade guy shifts to a house in this area now ? What will he do ? Will he lose himself in man made toys and the virtual video games? Will he miss something ? What made man constraint himself to a walled prison and feel proud about it ? With few random crazy thoughts, i watched the bulldozer returning from work. Atlast, the area was slowly turning lifeless!!!!

The Broken Rules

The bus was inching closer towards the destination, taking me away from my Home after a well spent 5 day vacation. I sat there in the last seat, my favorite one, staring blankly at the road, mind clogged with memories. The last seat, the seat where family people and ladies try to avoid, the seat where usually people don't come and ask you to change to another one so that they can sit with their spouse/fiance/lover. The last seat, the seat of the singles. The bus had halted at a stop. An Activa on the other lane caught my attention. The right indicator was blinking and buzzing and he was moving intelligently towards the left for reason known only to him. BAM. The van driver efforts went in vain, and the guys in bike were on the ground in pain. Fortunately, both the vehicles were slow, and could see that there were no serious damage.

Time for drama!!! An onlooker decided to play the role ofjudge and was questioning the van driver and was giving free session on traffic rules. The van guy was furious, he could have landed behind bars for no fault from his side. We have some weird rules, out of syllabus but very much in practice. If a two wheeler decides to commit suicide by jumping from nowhere, the guy in the four wheeler will be held accountable, even though the car is just parked on the left most side of the road possible. Thankfully the Activa guy accepted it was his mistake and apologized.

Anyway watching all these, i felt like a god (you can imagine a yellow animated ring on top of the head). I had saved atleast three people who wanted to commit suicide in front of my car on three different occassions during the five day vacation. Pure luck. Driving in Madurai had become a challenging and stressful task indeed. It is still hard to believe the rate which traffic in Madurai has grown over the past four years. People who were satisfied with just a two wheeler for the family, now have a bike for the son, scooty for the daughter, activa for the parents and a car for the family. Great!!! No issues, but the traffic sense has been the tortoise slowly inching towards the destination.

So now we have two wheelers drawing Rangoli on road, share autos who sincerely maintain just an inch gap between you and your vehicles, driving in car has never been peaceful like the bike. The rule seems to be simple, keep moving forward and if there is an obstruction move to the left or right without watching the rear view mirror.

With luck in favour of me, managing to drive without action and adventures. While i enjoy each and every bike ride even in traffic, with car it has just been the reverse. You also get the additional responsibility of protecting morons on road. Patience has grown a bit, as i continue to imagine the idiot in front as responsible parent or a studious son or a loving husband or a lover boy running to his little girl, and try not to get tensed by the way they drive. And the learning process seem to continue endlessly.

FStival 2010

Note: This post contains reference to names and places, which might make sense only to TCE folks. It will be a bit long too. And at few places managed to mention about FStival, the main reason behind the visit :P

After two years break, i was back at FStival, the software freedom day celebration organised by GLUGOT and GLUG-Madurai. Accompanied by Junior Sai went to the function a little late as usual and stayed away from the chief guest address which seemed to be halfway through in K.S. Auditorium. The chief guest was none other than our senior, Mr. Amalan Joe Steeve. When the chief guest was addressing the crowd, myself and Sai, decided to roam around the college and check out the changes. And our junior Karthikeyan, who is presently doing 3rd year gave a good company for more than an hour. In two years, college has changed a lot, but there are still a lot of landmarks left to make you nostalgic.

The CSE classes are being held in the new building in front of IT department. The open air auditorium is functioning. There is a new building in the pump house. There is some new building coming up in front of the Maths Department. There is one more new building coming up near hostel. Very few monkeys in pump house and CSE Aalamaram. Z0 my final year class room has changed. The tables where 10 of us sit in a row has changed and it is now replaced with single chairs, and the room looks clean. I think the lab which was adjacent to Unix lab, previously called as Client/Server lab is now called as IBM lab !!!! Wondering how it got the name though and whether there is a plan to change the names of other labs to HP, M$, Oracle labs :P N/w lab is now called as Multicore lab or something. No changes to Apple and Web Design labs. The ditch in front of the library remains occupied with boys and as usual guys were having fun.

Met all the staffs in Unix lab except for Shalinie mam, since she had a meeting to attend after FStival and went straight there after the chief guess address. Met a staff who managed to talk as though he remembered me, while i doubt whether he did really. And then a mam who was travelling in auto showed signs of recognition. Whatever it is, it was great to be in College after two years and to get a feeling few staffs still can recognize you. This FStival also gave an opportunity to meet few of my juniors. It was fun as usual talking to them.

Coming to FStival, there were so many stalls this time. Congrats to them. Also there were around 300+ audience for FStival, including people from near by colleges and schools which was good. Roaming around the stalls was fun, we had stood behind and had explained the audience few years back :-) One major change was that students were using personal laptops in stalls. Looked like a corporate presentation with around 10 laptops in lab :P   Finally left the college at around 5.00PM planning to visit later when i get time...

Trip to Varichiyur

To be exact it should be kunnathoor. Could call it as the only good thing that i did during this vacation, which was destroyed by Diablo, lord of destruction. Coming back to the trip, once again should thank Prabhu anna for interacting with history professor Dr.Venkataraman and inviting us for the trip. This time i thought i went prepared with a scribble pad and a pen which doesn not write!!! So it was once again had to rely on my memory, which i know is a bad option. Anyway will try to list whatever i remember.

Varichiyur is small village near Madurai, around 10-15KM from here. There were two rock cut temples built by Pandiyas around 790AD. Here are a few points gathered from Dr.V's talk.

* Udayagiri temple will be built always facing the east, usually built for the new king who comes to power.
* As usual, there is a lingam that is scooped out of a single rock.
* There are two dwarapalakas and they have two hands, which means they are a bit older. Later the dwarapalakas, were sculpted with four hands to show that they are not common men.
* Regarding Nandi, looks like the worship of Nandi or the bull started at around 1500BC.
* There is a statue of standing Vinayagar in the front of the temple. Looks like this is supposed to be rare. It is a customary to sculpt a Murugan statue opposite to it. This is missing here. So historians feel that the temple is incomplete.
* Dr.V also talked about the lingam. The lingam is built as a long shaft. I have no clue on how they arrived at the conclusion, but looks the lingam represented Brahma, lord of creation, Vishnu, who protects and Shiva.
* And regarding the dravidians and Aryans, initially people from Persia, came and settled in India and they are the dravidians. Later, people from Europe, drove the aryans to the south and settled in northern part of India, and they are Aryans.
* Later the different sects were formed, where Brahma was ignored and the feminine nature was given importance, forming the sakthi cult.

There is another temple in the west, called asthagiri. So the sun rises in the east, where we have the udayagiri. The whole hill is also considered as a huge lingam. So the sun moves from east to west, having a view of the lingam, and in the west, we have the asthagiri. Asthagiri is built for the old king and the difference is that, it has a arthamandapaa which is a empty space for the king to sit and pray. So a temple can have a Mahamandapaa where the people gather, arthamandapaa for the old king and the sanctum sanctorum or karbagrihaa where the god resides.

After that we visited another rockcut cave in the same hills. This was supposed to be a place where the buddists or jain monks resided. There is also a long cave inside that. One has to crawl if he wants to continue the journey into the cave. Looks like people ventured into the cave forty fifty years ago and from their words, it is believed that there is larger space inside the cave, where around 20 people can sit. He explained a bit about the inscriptions there, which he had also deciphered.

Everytime i hear his lecture about the idols, my belief that it was nature that was worshipped as god by men doubles and the athiestic feeling increases, and free time is wasted thinking about it.

Would suggest referring to Prabhu anna's blog entry for further details. He was the one who had written some points from what Dr.V said, so might have accurate and missed out details of this post.

Anyway altogether it was a good trip, informative and the only reason i woke up at 5.00 during two weeks of my vacation.

Few Updates from Madurai..

Had never seen so much crowd at a single place in Madurai. It was totally packed. Though there were squads to control the crowd, they were of little help as the crowd wandered as per their wish. A large group of paati's caught a corner and were resting along with their grand daughters, unwilling to enter the crowd. They resembled like a few old protesters gathered to fight for their rights. From their face it was fully evident that they were tired. One could easily lose their kids in the crowd. It had brought together people from all around Madurai. I would not be surprised if it was some festival in temple or something, when you come across such site inside a garment shop, i was a bit surprised. That too in Madurai, where i had shopped peacefully, where shop owners usually invite with a gentle smile. All this happens inside Pothys, which has opened a new outlet in Madurai.

First visit was by mistake and alacrity to see the new shop. Last week, wanted to test it once again, to see whether it can tried. Had spent some time thinking over it and came up with the idea of visiting the shop in the afternoon hoping sun would help us in keeping people at home. But we were wrong. For once again, we were forced to waddle through the crowd. This is the first time i have seen so much crowd concentrated in one shop, not sure whether it is my ignorance or it is actually uncommon. Is it the name or the advertisement or curiostiy or the escalator that has attracted the crowd, i am not sure. But it wont be favourite shopping spot till i hear some positive update. Anyway they seem to be doing a good business there, and is evident from the shop's bags and plastic covers that can be seen with most of the people. So how are other shops doing ? God only knows.

FStival '07

It was the first FStival i attended as an aluminus. It was a great feeling to visit the college again and meet the juniors and staffs out there. I went a little late after going to my home and i missed praveen's speech and the installation session. Heard that praveen gave an inspiring speech and inspite of some problems with the installation, juniors managed to finish the session in a good note. When i entered the KS auditorium, Subramani was explaining some cool compiz features and 3D desktops. After that there was a doubt clarification session during which i got the opportunity to poke my nose and utter few words.

After then it was time for the demo stalls. As usual we had stalls like GCC, GDB, Emacs, Databases, CMD, LAMP, GIMP, Games & Multimedia etc. Vim and "Linux Day to day" stalls were added this time.This time Juniors did a fine job with the demo stalls and were explaining with good examples. For the first time i saw juniors explaining Blender with some real animations. Almost all of them did fine in explaining the functionalities of the softwares. Regarding the audience, this time we had a diverse crowd ranging schools and colleges in and around Madurai and from other departments.

After all this it was time for fill the tummy and we proceeded to hotel Bell for the treat that was pending for a very long time.Praveen, Subramani and myself atlast treated our juniors :) After that headed back home to enjoy the remaining one day at home.

Managed to take only very few snaps. Check them out at http://picasaweb.google.com/sens2003

Bidding adieu to Madurai

Just a day more before i leave madurai to join my company in bangalore. Twenty one years in madurai has created a lot of love for the city. Ten days visit to chennai during the second year of college increased it a bit. Madurai looked like the ideal place to live. Most of them might not agree with this, but Madurai is more beautiful from one perspective. It is the city that never sleeps. Cant say that the climate is perfect here. Cant say there are many places to visit here in madurai. Still Madurai is better and more beautiful than most of the cities here in TamilNadu. Unique feature of Madurai is that there is always a hotel to  fill your tummy and it is possible to reach all places in Madurai through bus even during midnight. And Madurai is one place where you can find people speaking good tamil. May be this a one side view of Madurai, but found most of them sharing the same view. Will be missing Madurai a lot, the place where i spent the most beautiful part of my life :(

Morons with power

"As an individual you can do something to the society, as a politician you can do anything". This was a comment made by one of my juniors in the group discussion session during Placement training. It happens to be 100% true. Past two days in Madurai has been a little tensed due the violence that started because of a stupid poll. The tamil daily dinakaran started a poll to find who will be karunanidhi's political heir. Dinakaran has being doing useless job like this for a long time. 70% voted for stalin it seems and only 2% for CM's elder son Azhagiri. This sparked a lot of violence and funny fact is that it was
headed by mayor of madurai. Finally the violence became uncontrollable, as police did not take any steps to control it and ended with the death of three Dinakaran employees.

What followed this incident is something unacceptable. Police made fake arrests still leaving the one who is reponsible. Cable TV operators were afraid of transmitting, as it would spread news. People never seemed to mind what is happening and were thankful that they were spared. This makes my conclusion valid. My conclusion is that politicians = fools with power, police = mindless morons, TN people = 100% ignorant. Politics will continue to remain as a garbage as long as educated stay away from it.

An early visit to the exhibition

We went to the Madurai exhibtion last week. As hostel friends would be leaving home early we planned an early visit and ended up seeing how the shops are built. The exhibition looked a lot different with very little crowd and very few shops. It was a different experience.  As there were very few shops and entertainment aspects we were walking around the whole ground chatting and at times peeking into the shops. Usually the policemen, with the thought of being more vigilant and people friendly are usually hard on college students moving around as a group. This time it did not happen.  We ended up visiting stalls put up by the police department, wildlife department, fisheries, IT department, Madurai corporation. The stalls were informative and were the only place where one could spend some time. One interesting information is that, the road from thiruparankundram C2 police station (TCE college stop) to Thiruparankundram stands second in the road list where more number of accidents happen. Surely, it was not the right time to visit madurai exhibition but its a different exhibition i have seen. Soon it would reach its peak and would demand one more visit. Think that visit would be a lot different.

Spectacular Show

Twelve suryakirans, the front line aerobatics team of IAF (Indian Air Force) were here in Madurai for the first time and left the people mesmerized with the skills they exhibited here on Wednesday. Suryakiran is one among the three teams in the world who are capable of flying nine flight formation.  The other two being to Royal air force and Canadian air force. They left the Madurai people awestruck with their acumen and precision.

The decision to go to the show was taken in the morning and after going to college found that 90% of the final year students have taken the same decision. Later that evening we realized that reaching the destination is going to be a herculean task as about 75% of the Madurai population were heading for the same location. The fifty buses organized by Madurai corporation were not at all enough. A little away from the location traffic came to a halt. We were left with no option other than relying on our feet to reach the destination.  We were forced to run a half marathon in the road packed with vehicles.

We reached the location just in time to see the Mi-8 helicopter leaving the crowd after showering flowers. Then began the spectacular show. The six suryakirans started exhibiting their skills.  The twenty minutes show started with the phoenix formation and continued with rising sun formation,rays of sun, dives, barrel rolls etc etc. The crowd erupted when two suryakirans created the heart symbol in skies.

The pilots manoeuvred the flight through the open skies with great precision and speed. The return journey was more difficult. There was no space to walk on the road and as usual autos and two wheelers were taking pleasure in blocking the way. At last we reached the bus stop walking through dust and dirt and when we came out, we were stinky with smell of sweat. Later i had to take bath in the middle of night to get back to normal. I should consider myself lucky as there were some who came all the way from the other end of Madurai just to know that the show has ended. Anyway the pain was worth taking, as it was a spectacular show by the fearless falcons of the Indian air force.