When things had to go wrong, they go wrong in all possible ways. It was a about a week back, when i was preparing as usual for the weekend trip home. Had tickets booked in Tatkal, and it was in WL 17. Packed everything and went to office as usual. The plan was if the ticket doesn't move, cancel the plan and get back home for a peaceful and lazy weekend.
When i reached office, got a call from a friend, checking whether i could get his return journey ticket booked by an agent and get that to native. Hoping that the tickets would move, i accepted. So that meant, whatever it is i will have to go home.
Was waiting for the tickets to move, checking the PNR status in web every now and then. Train was at 9.00PM, so expected the chart to be prepared by 5.00PM. Time tickled, 5.00, 5.30, 6.30, 7.00PM. Chart was not prepared. That was unusual, but it happened. Finally at 7.15PM, the chart was prepared, but my ticket status was at WL 12. Once again unusual, for a tatkal ticket to move just 5 seats :( So had to choose the last option, travel by BUS, go to hosur, salem and then to Madurai.
With that in mind, myself, Nirmal and his Brother started at around 7.45PM. It was fine when we started, but once we reached the bus stop to board the bus to bus stand, heavens opened up and to make matters worse we just had one umbrella. Before we got a bus, we were drenched. Finally we reached the bus stop to board bus to Hosur or Salem. And we met a huge crowd, who were waiting just like us. Rain had not stopped. There was enough crowd to fill three or four buses. We got one Hosur bus, and soon it became packed with space just to breath. The rain had reduced, and during the journey to Hosur, it had stopped. So felt relieved.
Reached Hosur around 10.30 i guess, and once again Rain was there to give us company and also the huge crowd, just like us waiting for Salem bus. The cool breeze made us shiver. No Salem bus was in sight and if there were it was fully crowded. When we were contemplating whether to return back to bangalore, we sighted a KSRTC bus to Kodaikanal. There were three sites available fortunately, but those were the seats behind the driver seat unfortunately. Still we boarded, and the ticket cost was 600, a bit more than 3 Tier AC ticket in train. And it goes only till Dindigul. Thanks to the superb road between Bangalore and Madurai, the journey was a little dreadful. Anyway all plans and positions to sleep ended in failure. At the end, reached Dindigul and boarded i reached home by morning 8.00 after 13 hours of arduous journey.
Though the journey was tiring and irritating, it felt fine to be at home. Wont be trying something like this again in the near future atleast i guess.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
IPL III - CSK vs RCB
IPL III is beautifully poised, with five teams at 12 points after 12 matches. Lalit Modi should be a happy man, since his plan has worked out well. So it is going to be a tough fight from here. Leaving all those stuffs behind, IPL does provide some enjoyment. We had gone for the match here in Bangalore. As usual it was the CSK vs RCB match on March 23, and as usual, we were there as CSK supporters.
After a bit of delay, we got settled there. This time it was a lot different from IPL I. RCB was doing good and there were so many supporters for RCB. We were like an island surrounded by RCB supporters, tough task for us actually. And unfortunately, Dhoni was also missing in the match due to injury. Raina won the toss and called Bangalore to bat, the decision we were not happy with. We still follow the street cricket rules, the team winning the toss should bat first.
Anyway the match started with some CSK domination. CSK bowled well picked up quick wickets and match was in control til the 17th over. So till the 17th over, we got opportunity to shout and keep ourselves happy. After 17th over we were at the receiving end. RCB fans in the row behind us were shouting in our ears when Uthappa's shot cleared boundary line. But it was still interesting than sitting in home and watching the match alone.
We expected some fun in Chennai batting. Expectation that Hayden would fire, backfired as Hayden just kept switching between normal bat and mongoose bat. And Man of the match Bailey, showed his skill as very good test batsman. Thanks to Shyam, who came up with the idea of calling everything as "Idea batting", "Idea bowling", "Idea fielding" for all of CSK's mistakes. Back row, RCB fans, should have wondered what we are upto. We just wanted some entertainment :) Anyway after some time RRR was too high and wickets were falling. We knew, its time to leave and we left in the 15th over. Soon the celebration of the RCB fan, announced us the results. Thanks to whoever responsible for arranging all the BMTC buses, soon we caught a bus and went home, discussing whether IPL is fixed or not. And most important thing, White mischief, the cheer leaders of RCB were dancing a little away from us and it was good :P
This time the crowd included DP, Eric, Shyam, Musi and Myself. In IPL, we cant blame a team, because it is not in their hands. It doesn't matter how a team plays, when it is money that is actually playing. Lets see what Modi has in mind for CSK. My teammate's prediction was that CSK will reach semis, since both the semis are in Bangalore and CSK has some support here in Bangalore. Lets see how it gos.
After a bit of delay, we got settled there. This time it was a lot different from IPL I. RCB was doing good and there were so many supporters for RCB. We were like an island surrounded by RCB supporters, tough task for us actually. And unfortunately, Dhoni was also missing in the match due to injury. Raina won the toss and called Bangalore to bat, the decision we were not happy with. We still follow the street cricket rules, the team winning the toss should bat first.
Anyway the match started with some CSK domination. CSK bowled well picked up quick wickets and match was in control til the 17th over. So till the 17th over, we got opportunity to shout and keep ourselves happy. After 17th over we were at the receiving end. RCB fans in the row behind us were shouting in our ears when Uthappa's shot cleared boundary line. But it was still interesting than sitting in home and watching the match alone.
We expected some fun in Chennai batting. Expectation that Hayden would fire, backfired as Hayden just kept switching between normal bat and mongoose bat. And Man of the match Bailey, showed his skill as very good test batsman. Thanks to Shyam, who came up with the idea of calling everything as "Idea batting", "Idea bowling", "Idea fielding" for all of CSK's mistakes. Back row, RCB fans, should have wondered what we are upto. We just wanted some entertainment :) Anyway after some time RRR was too high and wickets were falling. We knew, its time to leave and we left in the 15th over. Soon the celebration of the RCB fan, announced us the results. Thanks to whoever responsible for arranging all the BMTC buses, soon we caught a bus and went home, discussing whether IPL is fixed or not. And most important thing, White mischief, the cheer leaders of RCB were dancing a little away from us and it was good :P
This time the crowd included DP, Eric, Shyam, Musi and Myself. In IPL, we cant blame a team, because it is not in their hands. It doesn't matter how a team plays, when it is money that is actually playing. Lets see what Modi has in mind for CSK. My teammate's prediction was that CSK will reach semis, since both the semis are in Bangalore and CSK has some support here in Bangalore. Lets see how it gos.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Yercaud Trek
Anyway we reached Salem at around 4.45 AM. Rengasamy, who travels to Salem every weekend. He quickly took us to a coffee shop where we had a good Tea. And then the otherAfter a long long time, once again we went on a trekking trip. The trip was to Yercaud near Salem in Tamilnadu. We started at around 00.00AM from Bangalore and the crowd from Bangalore included, Musi, Pramod, DP, Eric, Rengasamy and myself. What could have been a peaceful journey was disturbed by Illaiya thalapathi's movie, Sivakasi, where there were only punch dialogues and sentimental mokkais. Whenever i travel in TNSTC buses, i get to see only Sivakasi, Thirupaachi or Thamiraparani or some Ajith movie and not even one good movie. Probably a trick used by state govt to keep the drivers awake.
Whatever it is we reached Salem at around 4.45 AM. Rengasamy, who travels to Salem every weekend. He quickly took us to a coffee shop where we had a good Tea. And then the other people, Yousuf and Dhilip joined us in Salem. Boarded the bus that would take us to the "Adivaram" where the trekking is supposed to start. After 15 minutes of journey we started the trek.
The trek started exactly at 7.00AM. The weather was ok at that time, and think we had a lot of energy. So we climbed at a faster pace. First wicket to go down was Musi, who had lost all the energy after 30 minutes of walk. After some rest, the trek continued. Summer had just started and we could already feel the heat. With occassional rests the trip continued. We entered the estates around 9.30AM. The silver oak trees, and the coffee plants looked a little pleasant. We continued our trek through the estates and at around 10.00 AM the heat became unbearable. Musi developed a sprain in his legs, thankfully we had the pain killer. At around 12.00 we completed the trek at Ladies point, where we gulped some watermelon and pineapples. Funny part is we had eaten watermelon and pineapple for around 200 Rs.
Yousuf, had arranged for a car to travel to the resort, "Enchanting woods or E woods" where we stayed. He is actually the owner of the resort. The resort has the caption, "Just do Nothing". It was true, after reaching the resort, we did nothing :) The resort was wondeful, in particular the food was awesome. Yousuf who had designed the rooms has done it a lot carefully. When we reached the resort lunch was ready, with rice, sambhar, rasam, fish fry, omlette and papad. After a fantastic meal, all the tired souls rested in peace, with only Deivapalan's dinosaurus snores disturbing the silent atmosphere. By evening the sleep had given us a lot of energy and we decided to burn some calories playing cricket.
After cricket it was time for some barbeque. Yousuf had arranged for a barbecues and we feasted on Chicken barbecue and Musi the only veg guy munched on the veg barbecue made of cauliflower, potato and onion. After that we had dinner too !!! Parotta and Chappathi, with fish gravy was awesome. Yercaud which was annoyingly hot in the morning was pleasingly cool in the evening. Few brave guys like Pramod, Eric and Yousuf decided to sleep outside, willing to bare the cold. I stayed there for a while watching the stars and talking about some stuffs which i am not able to recollect now.
Next day once again we started with Cricket. Street cricket has weird rules, Pramod made it a lot weirder by introducing -ve runs whenever we lose our wicket. In between had breakfast of bread, panniyaram, omlette, mango jam. Yousuf also demonstrated how to prepare coffee from the coffee seeds. After that continued with game of cricket, took bath, had good lunch of chicken, jeera rice, egg etc. Wanted to catch the SETC UD bus from salem to Bangalore. Could catch that without issues. In Salem, got parotta parcelled for dinner from the infamous Selvi Mess and it proved to be a little too spicy requiring around 2 litres of water for 2 parottas.
Forgetting the hot weather at Yercaud, it is a memorable trip once again.
P.S. - Had presses Ctrl+x Ctrl + s few times in Emacs, which actually posted it in the blog. Sorry if your feed nad got messed up..
Whatever it is we reached Salem at around 4.45 AM. Rengasamy, who travels to Salem every weekend. He quickly took us to a coffee shop where we had a good Tea. And then the other people, Yousuf and Dhilip joined us in Salem. Boarded the bus that would take us to the "Adivaram" where the trekking is supposed to start. After 15 minutes of journey we started the trek.
The trek started exactly at 7.00AM. The weather was ok at that time, and think we had a lot of energy. So we climbed at a faster pace. First wicket to go down was Musi, who had lost all the energy after 30 minutes of walk. After some rest, the trek continued. Summer had just started and we could already feel the heat. With occassional rests the trip continued. We entered the estates around 9.30AM. The silver oak trees, and the coffee plants looked a little pleasant. We continued our trek through the estates and at around 10.00 AM the heat became unbearable. Musi developed a sprain in his legs, thankfully we had the pain killer. At around 12.00 we completed the trek at Ladies point, where we gulped some watermelon and pineapples. Funny part is we had eaten watermelon and pineapple for around 200 Rs.
Yousuf, had arranged for a car to travel to the resort, "Enchanting woods or E woods" where we stayed. He is actually the owner of the resort. The resort has the caption, "Just do Nothing". It was true, after reaching the resort, we did nothing :) The resort was wondeful, in particular the food was awesome. Yousuf who had designed the rooms has done it a lot carefully. When we reached the resort lunch was ready, with rice, sambhar, rasam, fish fry, omlette and papad. After a fantastic meal, all the tired souls rested in peace, with only Deivapalan's dinosaurus snores disturbing the silent atmosphere. By evening the sleep had given us a lot of energy and we decided to burn some calories playing cricket.
After cricket it was time for some barbeque. Yousuf had arranged for a barbecues and we feasted on Chicken barbecue and Musi the only veg guy munched on the veg barbecue made of cauliflower, potato and onion. After that we had dinner too !!! Parotta and Chappathi, with fish gravy was awesome. Yercaud which was annoyingly hot in the morning was pleasingly cool in the evening. Few brave guys like Pramod, Eric and Yousuf decided to sleep outside, willing to bare the cold. I stayed there for a while watching the stars and talking about some stuffs which i am not able to recollect now.
Next day once again we started with Cricket. Street cricket has weird rules, Pramod made it a lot weirder by introducing -ve runs whenever we lose our wicket. In between had breakfast of bread, panniyaram, omlette, mango jam. Yousuf also demonstrated how to prepare coffee from the coffee seeds. After that continued with game of cricket, took bath, had good lunch of chicken, jeera rice, egg etc. Wanted to catch the SETC UD bus from salem to Bangalore. Could catch that without issues. In Salem, got parotta parcelled for dinner from the infamous Selvi Mess and it proved to be a little too spicy requiring around 2 litres of water for 2 parottas.
Forgetting the hot weather at Yercaud, it is a memorable trip once again.
P.S. - Had presses Ctrl+x Ctrl + s few times in Emacs, which actually posted it in the blog. Sorry if your feed nad got messed up..
Friday, March 12, 2010
Miserable Plans
“He who fails to plan, plans to fail"
Believe me, i take those words pretty seriously at a situation like this. Atleast a plan has to be in place to save me. So what is that, which needs so much of planning. Its the usual stuff, exams are approaching fast. The problem with exams is that, you never realize that you have very little time till it is already very late to save yourself. Unfortunately, i have pushed myself into a situation like that now. Thanks to the optimistic decisions i made an year back :(
Anyway exams are approaching, and i had to atleast plan something, execution of which can be planned later. But it was important to have a plan. So i dusted off the brain which nowadays prefers to sleep, whenever i try to think, and started thinking at last. And soon a plan was in place.
The idea is to burn some midnight oil and study. But that would be difficult, since books are the best sleeping pills i have ever seen. So the idea was to do something interesting whenever i feel sleepy for a while and try to study once sleep goes away. Yep it worked, the first part worked, i could stay awake late in the night as long as i did something interesting. But thats the only part that worked. Looks like the second part needs to be replanned. The moment book is opened, eyes close automatically and slowly book falls from the hands and i fall into a peacefull sleep :(
Today's plans was to blog to keep me awake and then to study later but remote sight of the OS book is already putting me into sleep..
Yaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnn....
Believe me, i take those words pretty seriously at a situation like this. Atleast a plan has to be in place to save me. So what is that, which needs so much of planning. Its the usual stuff, exams are approaching fast. The problem with exams is that, you never realize that you have very little time till it is already very late to save yourself. Unfortunately, i have pushed myself into a situation like that now. Thanks to the optimistic decisions i made an year back :(
Anyway exams are approaching, and i had to atleast plan something, execution of which can be planned later. But it was important to have a plan. So i dusted off the brain which nowadays prefers to sleep, whenever i try to think, and started thinking at last. And soon a plan was in place.
The idea is to burn some midnight oil and study. But that would be difficult, since books are the best sleeping pills i have ever seen. So the idea was to do something interesting whenever i feel sleepy for a while and try to study once sleep goes away. Yep it worked, the first part worked, i could stay awake late in the night as long as i did something interesting. But thats the only part that worked. Looks like the second part needs to be replanned. The moment book is opened, eyes close automatically and slowly book falls from the hands and i fall into a peacefull sleep :(
Today's plans was to blog to keep me awake and then to study later but remote sight of the OS book is already putting me into sleep..
Yaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnn....
Sunday, February 28, 2010
VTV - Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa
VTV is the third Gautam movie which i had seen in the first week. This time i saw the movie in Madurai, the renovated Jazz. To be true the theater was pretty decent and they had really turned on the air conditioner unlike few theaters where it is just printed on the ticket.
Coming to the movie, it is pretty decent effort from Gautam's side and exactly has his touch of handling romantic scenes. As Gautam mentioned in his talks, it is the same old love story, told differently. It was a bit fresh and practical when compared to other love stories. The romantic dialogues were pretty impressive and as usual, it was more in English and Malayalam than in Tamil. Funny part, he does mention about it in the movie. So seems to be stricly for A centers. The location, the screenplay and the picturisation were great.
Simbhu should have struggled to act without punch dialogues, unnecessary fights and finger circus. So naturally it was a better performance and the role suited him too. Trisha as malayali girl was too beautiful and cute. Background voice of chinmayi too suited her nature as a calm and confused girl. Thanks to all those who had helped Trisha in looking beautiful :) Costume selection was also good. Also, for a change Trisha's face showed a lot of reactions, which was amazing. Rarely does the audience get to see Trisha acting and she has done a marvellous job in the movie.
Songs were already a hit, and i need not mention about ARR's BGM. It did rock. Songs were great to watch. Though it is the same old love story, which Tamil cinema had repeatedly tred along few decades, the way in which it is told makes it interesting.
So what is the story ? I am not telling you anything, better know it when you see in theater. Thats the best way to enjoy the movie. Only thing, watch out for some twist at the end.
Commendable work from Gautam, would recommend seeing it once.
Coming to the movie, it is pretty decent effort from Gautam's side and exactly has his touch of handling romantic scenes. As Gautam mentioned in his talks, it is the same old love story, told differently. It was a bit fresh and practical when compared to other love stories. The romantic dialogues were pretty impressive and as usual, it was more in English and Malayalam than in Tamil. Funny part, he does mention about it in the movie. So seems to be stricly for A centers. The location, the screenplay and the picturisation were great.
Simbhu should have struggled to act without punch dialogues, unnecessary fights and finger circus. So naturally it was a better performance and the role suited him too. Trisha as malayali girl was too beautiful and cute. Background voice of chinmayi too suited her nature as a calm and confused girl. Thanks to all those who had helped Trisha in looking beautiful :) Costume selection was also good. Also, for a change Trisha's face showed a lot of reactions, which was amazing. Rarely does the audience get to see Trisha acting and she has done a marvellous job in the movie.
Songs were already a hit, and i need not mention about ARR's BGM. It did rock. Songs were great to watch. Though it is the same old love story, which Tamil cinema had repeatedly tred along few decades, the way in which it is told makes it interesting.
So what is the story ? I am not telling you anything, better know it when you see in theater. Thats the best way to enjoy the movie. Only thing, watch out for some twist at the end.
Commendable work from Gautam, would recommend seeing it once.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Loquacious Companion
I am awake at 2.00AM in the morning, observing the peacefull city with very little clue about what to do and why i woke up. The city looks peaceful and with summer starting, nights are unusually hot.
Anyway thought of sharing few things that happened during a train journey that managed to catch my attention. Dont expect something spicy, in the train i travel things like that rarely happen.
Anyway that day i had to travel in a three tier AC coach. As per my experience my thought is that the chance for people to interact with people in AC coach is pretty less when compared to the sleeper coaches, since most of them have something to keep themselves occupied. I had my own plans of completing a novel, which i am trying to do for a long long time. But few things happened that managed to grab my attention.
As usual, the coupe i was in was testosterone rich and didn't have any trace of any girl. The same state prevailed in the near by coupes too. Is that my luck or is that the state of the train, i have no clue. In my coupe, there was a old gy, some one from northern part of india for sure, a middle aged man who never bothred us, another guy who seemed more like a fresher, and the character in focus, whom i will call American return, as i am not aware of his name.
It all started when, TTE started checking the tickets. Our guy had the ticket in iPhone, and zoomed the document and kept it ready, which the TTE as expected refused to see and he had to pay Rs. 50 as fine. Our guy tried arguing with the TTE who remained silent and continued to fill the receipt. The reason he quoted was he is trying to save paper by not printing the ticket. Though most of the other people didn't try listening to his grievences, except for the old guy.
So our american return started in full swing, he blamed the Indian government for not making it easy to use their services. His lavish comments had a strong american accent and looked more like it was intentional. He could speak normally too, which became evident, when he started talking later. Looks like he was not happy with how railways was functioning. Though it had made so much of profit, still there was no escalators in railway station as a result of which most of the old people struggle a lot. The old guy turned out to be a railway judge and he was able to give him some explanation. Few points he made,
* Though Indian railways makes a lot of profit, there are a lot of other basic amenities to be fulfilled other than escalator.
* Looks like the newly installed escalator in Chennai Egmore seems to be creating more problems, than helping people.
* Along with the escalator, a person was employed to maintain it and help people. Also, the guys employed to take care of it lack knowledge about it, and they do struggle.
* Though at times, if some accidents are caused because of the pure negligence of the people, Railways does pay them money just for the reason that they are illiterate.
The talk continued and American return, stuck to his point. Though it was just two people who talked for a long time, there were a lot of silent observers including me. One point that i will accept with that American return guy is that, we Indians lack don't push ourselves to perfection. This is very much true, we rarely take steps to make things perfect and this get reflected in all levels.
One quality that i did note in that american return guy is that, he started the conversation with an argument and finally ended it in a good note and went upto the level of exchanging contact details with the old guy. Also should thank him for making the train journey a bit interesting. This is just a gist of what happened, as usual described in a bit of crude way.
As for the novel, i still at the same page i started with during the start of my journey.
Anyway thought of sharing few things that happened during a train journey that managed to catch my attention. Dont expect something spicy, in the train i travel things like that rarely happen.
Anyway that day i had to travel in a three tier AC coach. As per my experience my thought is that the chance for people to interact with people in AC coach is pretty less when compared to the sleeper coaches, since most of them have something to keep themselves occupied. I had my own plans of completing a novel, which i am trying to do for a long long time. But few things happened that managed to grab my attention.
As usual, the coupe i was in was testosterone rich and didn't have any trace of any girl. The same state prevailed in the near by coupes too. Is that my luck or is that the state of the train, i have no clue. In my coupe, there was a old gy, some one from northern part of india for sure, a middle aged man who never bothred us, another guy who seemed more like a fresher, and the character in focus, whom i will call American return, as i am not aware of his name.
It all started when, TTE started checking the tickets. Our guy had the ticket in iPhone, and zoomed the document and kept it ready, which the TTE as expected refused to see and he had to pay Rs. 50 as fine. Our guy tried arguing with the TTE who remained silent and continued to fill the receipt. The reason he quoted was he is trying to save paper by not printing the ticket. Though most of the other people didn't try listening to his grievences, except for the old guy.
So our american return started in full swing, he blamed the Indian government for not making it easy to use their services. His lavish comments had a strong american accent and looked more like it was intentional. He could speak normally too, which became evident, when he started talking later. Looks like he was not happy with how railways was functioning. Though it had made so much of profit, still there was no escalators in railway station as a result of which most of the old people struggle a lot. The old guy turned out to be a railway judge and he was able to give him some explanation. Few points he made,
* Though Indian railways makes a lot of profit, there are a lot of other basic amenities to be fulfilled other than escalator.
* Looks like the newly installed escalator in Chennai Egmore seems to be creating more problems, than helping people.
* Along with the escalator, a person was employed to maintain it and help people. Also, the guys employed to take care of it lack knowledge about it, and they do struggle.
* Though at times, if some accidents are caused because of the pure negligence of the people, Railways does pay them money just for the reason that they are illiterate.
The talk continued and American return, stuck to his point. Though it was just two people who talked for a long time, there were a lot of silent observers including me. One point that i will accept with that American return guy is that, we Indians lack don't push ourselves to perfection. This is very much true, we rarely take steps to make things perfect and this get reflected in all levels.
One quality that i did note in that american return guy is that, he started the conversation with an argument and finally ended it in a good note and went upto the level of exchanging contact details with the old guy. Also should thank him for making the train journey a bit interesting. This is just a gist of what happened, as usual described in a bit of crude way.
As for the novel, i still at the same page i started with during the start of my journey.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
2009
Had been thinking for a while, should i do this ? I mean once again troubling you with this post of mine, stating what i did, what i didn't do blah blah blah.. It is this thought that has prevented me a lot many times from posting something, anyway here we go.
As the title suggests, it is about great things i did last year 2009. I had a good amount of time to waste, and the dance and song shows in TV was not impressive. So i tried hard, really hard to recollect what i did throught out the year. For a moment i blamed my memory power, as i could not recollect anything. Later i realized, how long i spend thinking about 2009, i wont get anything. Ha ha that was my 2009, in the sense quite ordinary without any trouble or surprises. Work was fine and other than work it was movies, trips and journey back home. 2009 will be remembered for a lot of significant events in the world but to me it was yet another normal year which went away happily.
Anyway, Happy new year to all.
Wait, hold your patience for some more time while i talk about new year resolution. I managed to think of a resolution for this new year and it is not to take further resolutions.
As the title suggests, it is about great things i did last year 2009. I had a good amount of time to waste, and the dance and song shows in TV was not impressive. So i tried hard, really hard to recollect what i did throught out the year. For a moment i blamed my memory power, as i could not recollect anything. Later i realized, how long i spend thinking about 2009, i wont get anything. Ha ha that was my 2009, in the sense quite ordinary without any trouble or surprises. Work was fine and other than work it was movies, trips and journey back home. 2009 will be remembered for a lot of significant events in the world but to me it was yet another normal year which went away happily.
Anyway, Happy new year to all.
Wait, hold your patience for some more time while i talk about new year resolution. I managed to think of a resolution for this new year and it is not to take further resolutions.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
2 States
I presume that everyone is aware that 2 states is the name of Chetan Bhagat's latest book. I got an opportunity to read this book last week. I had read, Five point someone, and felt that the book was a little ok. But when i started reading his other books, i felt irritated. Somehow i felt them to be a repetition. 3 guys, a hero among them, a gal, screwed up family, they get into trouble and finally escape blah blah blah. I felt i had nothing to take from his books. So i had stopped in the middle of his other books.
But there was lot of hype about 2 states and moreover it involved TamilNadu. It kindled a little of my curiosity to know what Chetan had to say about TN and Tamil people. But the story was impressive. The book was a bit fast paced and had something not to let my interest die. Both Punjab and Tamilnadu had suffered some serious humiliation at his hands. But it was enjoyable, has humourously brought out the defects or funny sides of both the cultures, starting from the dressing sense, education, food, society etc etc. Also at few places, some philosophies here and there.
Though on the whole, it was a mass masala like a hind film with just songs missing, i liked it. Worth reading once....
But there was lot of hype about 2 states and moreover it involved TamilNadu. It kindled a little of my curiosity to know what Chetan had to say about TN and Tamil people. But the story was impressive. The book was a bit fast paced and had something not to let my interest die. Both Punjab and Tamilnadu had suffered some serious humiliation at his hands. But it was enjoyable, has humourously brought out the defects or funny sides of both the cultures, starting from the dressing sense, education, food, society etc etc. Also at few places, some philosophies here and there.
Though on the whole, it was a mass masala like a hind film with just songs missing, i liked it. Worth reading once....
Friday, December 04, 2009
A short Break
An unintended short break from Blogging. Not that i am totally occupied with work. At the same time, i am not totally free too to think about something and blog about it. Is twitter a reason. Yes think so. If not for twitter, i might have tried posting about few social or personal happenings.
Anyway, the habit of blogging helped me a little last weekend. I was fighting with a bank, regarding Credit card fee blah blah blah. Had been sending them a series of mails and i was getting a number of junk replies. Was really pissed off with them. So wanted to send out a mail, containing all the information, the dates when i had called, when they had called me etc etc. If it was an actress birthday or movie release date, i might have remembered something. But dates of call, was something that i never paid attention to. Fortunately when i had received the call, i was in theater, about to watch "Unnai Pol Oruvan" and i had blogged about it. So visited my blog, got the info, mailed them with the exact date. I did see some positive response and action after that mail. Blog is in a way acting as a tool to immortalize the feelings and happenings. So I am determined to blog about significant, unsignificant, rubbish, repeated stuffs. My determintations and resolutions are volatile, lets see how this goes.
Anyway, the habit of blogging helped me a little last weekend. I was fighting with a bank, regarding Credit card fee blah blah blah. Had been sending them a series of mails and i was getting a number of junk replies. Was really pissed off with them. So wanted to send out a mail, containing all the information, the dates when i had called, when they had called me etc etc. If it was an actress birthday or movie release date, i might have remembered something. But dates of call, was something that i never paid attention to. Fortunately when i had received the call, i was in theater, about to watch "Unnai Pol Oruvan" and i had blogged about it. So visited my blog, got the info, mailed them with the exact date. I did see some positive response and action after that mail. Blog is in a way acting as a tool to immortalize the feelings and happenings. So I am determined to blog about significant, unsignificant, rubbish, repeated stuffs. My determintations and resolutions are volatile, lets see how this goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)