Vishwas Shenoy

India Vacation experience - June 11th to Aug 8th 2021

2021-08-13T10:19:00.007-07:00

It all started with my H1B Petition getting approved within 1.5 weeks after it was filed with USCIS on Dec 2020. Ironically, it took more than 3 months for my employer to file it with USCIS. And in that time period, lot of things happened – Trump lost the elections, a US court reversed the DOL’s rule to hike the salary of H1B applicants (by close to 100%) – I wouldn’t have been impacted by this anyway as my LCA was drawn much before the rule came into force (abruptly), etc.

If I cover every single aspect of what happened between Jan 21 to Aug 21, it will be too big of an article to write or read. I will try keep this short and crisp, but at the same time trying to convey the essence of everything.

Onward Tickets:

1. Decided to go on leave and applied for it. After that, never bothered to check the nitty gritties of visa stamping process. All I bothered was to get tickets for cheapest price! From Jan to Mar this is what I did.

2. Booked the tickets in Lufthansa for cheapest price. Was ecstatic. But realized the mistake later – travelling to India via Germany is fine even with expired US visa. But travel back is problematic even for the exempted category travelers, due to confusion prevailing at that time.

3. Spent several days calling them and pleading to cancel and issue full refund. Frustration reached peak levels. After a point, I just let it go. Anyways I can travel to India… challenges of travelling back can be dealt later.

4. But thankfully, Lufthansa themselves cancelled the flight from Bangalore due to pandemic. But neither they sent email nor there was any call. Thanks to travel group in Telegram, I came to know about it and immediately called up the airline and got the refund issued! Problem #1 solved by itself.

5. I didn’t book tickets again till first week of June – due to so much uncertainty prevailing after April 30^th travel ban proclamation. Finally, after carefully analyzing the inputs from Telegram groups, decided to go for the overly pricey AI. Problem#2.

6. AI too cancelled the flight exactly a week before! Worst part – even today I’ve not got the refund they promised.

Finally---------

7. After what seemed an eternity lost in finding other cheaper flight option, I managed to book on Etihad on June 6^th, for travel on June 11^th! A record of sort I thought – for having managed to get cheap tickets for international flight on the week of travel!

Visa stamping appointment:

1. From Jan till march, except ticket booking and other work, I never bothered to check about visa stamping appointment. I assumed that we would have to go to Chennai anyways and I can do that later. Every now and then I just checked the portal and saw that “first available appointment” was in next week or so. Another mistake? Let’s see.

2. A call with Mohit one day helped me to know that due to pandemic, USCIS has extended the visa interview waiver option from 3 years to 4 years now.

3. In order to take advantage of it, I need to book appointment by end of June last week itself.

4. Immediately I logged in and started looking for appointments – I came to know that “first available appointment” info in the home page was misleading info. No one knew what that was as one can never find appointment around that date!!

5. To my disappointment, there was no slot available in Chennai within June end. None in Mumbai or Hyd too –locations closer to me. Only 2 locations had it – Delhi and Kolkata! Went with Kolkata. Thought I did another mistake booking the appointment so late, by believing the “first available appointment” trap.

Finally----------

6. There were no mistakes anywhere. Booking the appointment late helped me to get benefit of extended interview waiver policy. And booking in Kolkata was huge, huge benefit. Biggest of anything else. How? The third wave of pandemic forced all 3 consulates to shut the operations till June end. The only 2 that operated were – Kolkata and Delhi!! In that too, Delhi started earlier to Kolkata by a week or so.

7. The time period from April 30^th till Last week of May was very depressing. At one side the news of Pandemic wreaking havoc and on another side the news of consulates shutting down, issuing 221 g, cancelling scheduled appointments. Several times I decided to cancel the travel plan and each time I ended up cancelling not the travel plan, but the plan to cancel the plan😊

8. How can i forget this. On the day of my appointment at Kolkata, I left my Hotel room at 9.30AM itself for my 12.30 PM appointment, thinking that they will let me in early. But I was denied early entry and was told to come back 30Mins before my appointment time. For next 2 hrs, I roamed around the central Kolkata by walk, getting drenched completely in my own sweat due to the humidity! Thanks to Covid, no temple was allowing devotees. So my plan of visiting famous temples of Kolkata didn't happen.

9. 18th June was my apointment. While handing over the documents, the person told me that the photo was not meeting the requirements. It should have been in white or off-white background, whereas ours was in Gray background. Plus there was a smile on my wife's face in the photo. Person was kind enough to offer me 2-3 hrs to get new photos if I wish. It was not so hard for me to make decision - there was covid lockdown at both Kolkata and Mysore. So neither can my wife take her photo and send me the softcopy nor I can take photo of myself in this unknown city during lockdown. So I said i'm ready to take risk.

10. Next week Thursday I recieved call from Kolkata. I was surprised. I picked the call and the person told me that he is from Kolkata VFS and he called to inform me that my DS 160 was not loading due to some technical issue. My wife's loaded fine. He was too kind. He requested me to fill a new DS 160 and share it next day. He apologised for it!!

11. Now comes the interesting part. While filling up the new DS 160 I was referring to my old DS 160 and noticed that in the old form I had mentioned my highest qualification as "High School"!! Had the form loaded fine, I would have been rejected the visa easily!! I got shiver down spine.

India

1. Well, what to say. Everything that we planned, we accomplished. But just that the order in which it was accomplished was laid down by God. We just went in the direction he took us. What is there to fear when he himself is holding our hands all the time.

2. Initial 2 weeks – Lockdown ensured that we couldn’t go anywhere out of city. So, all the local work was done – Bank, post office, Locker work (which saw my mom falling down and getting her pelvic fractured), Rekha’s Aadhar updates, House cleaning and setup, Satyanarayana puja etc.

3. Travel started from 3^rd week onwards. Took blessings of ever smiling and divine – Sri Raghavendra swami at Mantralaya. So, it was God’s intent to start our pilgrimage with blessings of Guru.

4. Then the God gave us his Darshan at the abode of Venkatachala hills. Walk-in Darshan was stopped at Tirupati due to covid. So, God himself made me to call the Kashi mutt Guest house who himself guided me how to get the special darshan tickets by booking the Kalyana seva tickets, without I asking for it. (300 Rs ticket used to get sold out like hot cake within mins. Kalyana Seva will get two 300 Rs tickets).

5. After that – next week was full-fledged travel – refer the photo in Google album for full details. I can never forget the driving experience at Sigandhoor.

a. Most of the places we covered, had opened up just Sunday of that week

b. In Udupi, we enjoyed having darshan of the Lord multiple times. Even met my fav pravachana acharya – Vidwan Krishnaraja Kuthpadi.

c. At Anegudde and Hattiangady temple, the Maha puja was done right when we arrived. Anegudde Ganapati even blessed us with Flower prasada during puja.

d. DOUBLE LUNCH – yes, my first ever double lunch experience. At Kundapura, we had nice North Indian lunch at NR Nandini restaurant. After that we reached Hattiangady, where after the puja, we had Lunch prasada of the Lord!

6. Met Varadh Maam, Vignesh Nayak Maam, got so many pujas done.

7. June 13^th till Aug 8^th – passed like a movie trailer. What was happening, who was controlling…

Return Tickets

1. The sad part of any vacation – returning.

2. Etihad had cancelled all its flight operation -Thankfully. I got free cancellation and full refund for my July 27^th flight. I called up my office and requested to extend my leave by one more week – till 8^th Aug.

3. Returning to US in August is costly affair – as the schools reopen in the month of Aug. Tickets were selling at an avg price of 1.2 Lacs per head!! Even that was difficult to book.

4. Sat down to book the tickets on 5^th Aug. Nothing was available for less than 1.5 lacs. And I couldn’t book that also as I didn’t have such balance limit on India credit card, and on US cards I was not able to get the OTPs sent to US number.

5. Got fully tensed. What next? I had promised to return on 8^th Aug to my company. Called up one manager and described the situation. He said he will try to get approval for me to work from India for a month, within which I will have to book my tickets and travel back. And I’ve to work in night shits (US shifts) during that one month.

6. Though it looked like a solution, I was worried with the side-effects of working night shifts. Entire Day was spent contemplating various scenarios.

Finally

7. Friday morning – God made me to give it a shot early morning itself. Thankfully it worked – was able to book tickets for 50k per head on British Airways!!

8. So, here I’m. Breaking my own record set just 2 months back (onward journey tickets were booked a week before). International flight tickets were booked 2 days before the travel date, at economical price!

9. Thankfully, UK had just announced on 6^th Aug that they will allow fully vaccinated transit passengers from 4a.m on 8^th Aug. My BA flight reaches London at 1.30 pm on 8^th Aug – this fits the definition of hair gap?

Covid lockdowns & hardships:

1. First 2 weeks, there was partial lockdown in place – during which we got most of the Govt/other official works done – Bank, Lockers, Visa stamping.

2. From 3^rd week onwards, Lockdown was relaxed up to 90% - during which we completed all the pilgrimages, Homa (can never forget the divine experience of sitting at late night Homa at Ravindra Acharya’s home at Udupi), shopping, doctor visits etc.

3. Last week – Lockdown/curfew was reimposed on weekends – impacted us only for one day i.e. 7^th of Aug. 8^th of Aug anyways we traveled back to US.

4. So all in all, Lockdown was not a major issue for us during the trip, except that we had to get the torturous RT-PCR test done before any flight journeys, Jingu included.

5. During the month of May, when strict lockdown was being imposed Pan India, I had told myself that I’m ready to sit idly at home. For the entire vac. No matter what, I will travel. Only point of anxiety though was visa stamping. For that too I was trying prepare my mind – I had taken all imp stuff like files, documents etc. with me.

The entire trip was nothing less than a divine experience. What seemed like problems at several steps, were getting solved by itself. And each time it got solved, I was reminded of Gita lessons – we have to just keep going through it all, wherever the Lord takes us, completely detached from fears, illusions, anxiety, worry etc.

GURU BRAHMA

2021-01-02T10:37:00.003-08:00

I was probably a 9th grader, when I bought a book on Lord Krishna during the visit/book exhibition by ISKCON at our “Sri Cauvery School”, Mysore. The book had a dark pink cover with a cute photo of Lord Krishna on it. I fell in instant love with that book from the day I got it. When I started reading it, I didn’t rush to read the book like a novel. Rather, I was reading one chapter at a time slowly, like how we eat our favorite dish or sweet - one small bite at a time. The only worry I had while reading the book was - I will be done reading the book sooner or later… what to do after that?

This book was actually my second unforgettable Krishna Experience. The first one happened way back when I was still in middle school (somewhere between 6th to 7th grade). Shri Ramananda Sagar’s “SRI KRISHNA '' serial was being telecast on National Channel every Sunday 9am. I still remember the first scene(photo) in that title song - Lord Krishna in His Shesha Shayana position (Sleeping on Serpent bed with Hand supporting the head). Such was my enthusiasm to watch that Serial that I sat in front of TV at the right time, making sure not to miss even the Title song (which was my favorite).

I have created another blog post before this, in which I narrated my Krishna experience that happened in recent times during Janmashtami of 2020 (Sharvari Samvatsara). In that post I tried to put down the logic behind deciding the Krishna Janmashtami date every year. I gained that knowledge from a very popular, humble and very renowned scholar who had mastered vedanta and had excellent knowledge of Sanskrit, Kannada & Tulu. A Guru who everyone lovingly referred to by his birthplace name. Yes, I’m talking about Vidya Vachaspati Shri. Bannanje Govindacharya. This Post is dedicated to him. Lord Krishna gave me my recent Krishna experiences through this Guru.

Lord Krishna says in Geeta that he ensures the survival and propagation of Spiritual knowledge by sending the Gyaanis & Gurus at the right interval. Several such esteemed devotees of the Lord have taken birth in the past and it will continue in future too. Shri Bannanje definitely belongs to that class of the Lord’s devotees. When the divine Swamiji of Udupi, Sri Vidyamanya Tirtharu himself bestowed the title of Vidya Vachaspati on his favorite disciple, one can imagine the depth of Knowledge that Sri Bannaje had gained from his devotion to Lord. He was certainly a walking encyclopedia. Though very late, I certainly don’t want to miss dedicating a post for this Guru of mine, who gave me Krishna experience in recent times, who illuminated the lamp of Krishna inside me, who made me a dasa of Sri Madhwacharya. I can go on…

Lord Krishna helps the lesser mortals like us to come in contact with these Gurus & get enlightened spiritually. Purandara Dasaru has rightly said - “Gurugala Gulama aguva tanaka Doreyadanna Mukuti” - One cannot attain Moksha without becoming a slave of a spritual Guru. The very fact that Lord helped me to know about this Guru and listen to some of his discourses makes me so happy and sends a divine shiver down the spine. Thus I categorize this divine experience as Krishna experience (Just like the book, the TV serial and the Krishna Janmashtami experience of 2020).

I must say that i was his digital Shishya. I got to know about him from youtube and listened to his discourses via Youtube channel only. Over the past couple of years that I listened to his discourses over youtube, I would list down a few unique qualities that I observed in him:

He never refers to any book during discourse. Whether it is Bhagavad Geeta or any Puranas, he has the relevant slokas on his tongue tip. Very rare to see any vidwans who come with no book in hand for giving discourse.
Straight-on-the face talk. Doesn’t sugar coat anything to please anyone. Never mind calling a spade a spade, no matter who the person is.
Blends science with Vedanta and explains the concepts of vedanta logically. Thus he was popular among all age groups. He never used to follow something just because “it is followed like this from the past”. Some interesting examples to quote:

“Can Females chant Vishnu Sahasranama?”
Why? Females don’t have mouths? Please do not follow advice of someone who cannot give you a valid scientific reason.
“Can we chant Gayatri Mantra 12 thousand times daily?”
Better to limit it to 2k-3k per day. Your body cannot withstand chanting it beyond that.
(I recommend the readers to watch his discourse for more details on this)

Though he belongs to the Madhwa Brahmin community and has mastered the works of Sri Madhwacharya, he had profound knowledge on the works of other 2 great acharyas of south india - Sri Sankaracharya & Sri Ramanujacharya.
He used to always come to discourses wearing Kurta and white Dhoti. He used to say that Vedanta is about removing the clothes that cover our Gnana. Why should one worry about the attire of the pancha bhautika body.

Due to all these unique qualities in him, he attracted many youngsters to his discourses which helped them to get right knowledge about our ancient scriptures. He always used to say in discourses that Knowledge is important. Lack of knowledge is the root cause of misery and confusion among people. That is the reason why Lord Krishna gave the Geeta to this world and later incarnated as Veda vyasa to further simplify the knowledge contained in the sacred texts. One of the favorite quotes of Acharya was ‘Iruva Sampattalla; Iruvina Arivu Sampattu”. Loosely translated, it means “Existence is not wealth; Awareness of existence is real wealth”. And the real awareness of existence comes from the knowledge.

For a person who has contributed so much to the spiritual world, this blog hardly tries to scratch the surface. What justice can a 2 page blog post give to such a towering personality who has delivered more 30,000 hrs of discourses (and many other un official discourses), has written several books, written screenplays and dialogues for movies on acharyas and made many other contributions to the spiritual world.

I feel very fortunate and happy to tell anyone that I was also one of the several youngsters that got influenced through his discourses. After starting my spiritual journey by listening to acharya’s pravachanas, for more than a year or so, I listened to only his pravachana. It was only after a year that I slowly started listening to other Pravachana Vidwans. But Bannanje acharya holds a special place in my heart.

Such a great personality passed away on 13th of December 2020 creating a void in the world of Sanskrit and Vedanta Vidwans. When Rekha broke the news early in the morning on 14th of Dec, I felt a pain pass through the core of my soul. For 2 days, all I spoke about was only about him. The sense of loss gripped me for a few days. But then I had one thing to console me - the treasure of his discourses available on youtube. Listening to his voice makes me feel that he has not left us. He is still around us imparting the knowledge of Vedanta. I read in the news that he was working on a book that reconciles the teaching of all the 3 great Acharyas on Bhagavad Geeta. He had completed working till 8 chapters. His death leaves that book incomplete. I felt really bad about this. This work would have bridged the gap in knowledge among the following of the 3 acharyas and would have helped bring all of them closer and work as one community.

I end this post with one small special note - just 2-3 weeks before the passing away of the Great Acharya, I had told Rekha that whenever we visit Udupi in future, it would be great if we come across Acharya there. I will definitely take blessings and photos with him! Never imagined that this wish will remain unfulfilled.

Update: 13th Aug 2021: Though the wish of meeting Shri Bannanje Acharya was not filled, God didn't disappoint me. He gave me the opportunity to meet another favorite Guru of mine - Vidwan Shri Krishnaraja Kuthpudi at Udupi itself! How divine. I took his blessings and got a couple of photos with him.

SRI KRISHNASHTAMI

2020-10-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

सर्वकर्माणि मनसा संन्यस्यास्ते सुखं वशी |

नवद्वारे पुरे देही नैव कुर्वन्न कारयन् || 5.13||

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is living within the body of a living entity, is the controller of all living entities all over the universe. The body consists of nine gates: two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, one mouth, the anus and the genital. The living entity in his conditioned stage identifies himself with the body, but when he identifies himself with the Lord within himself, he becomes just as free as the Lord, even while in the body. Gita - chapter 5, Verse 13.

The beginning of new tradition:

This year (2020) - Sharvari nama samvatsara, Lord Krishna started a new tradition at our home- Celebration of Krishna Janmashtami at our home!! Yes, Lord himself made that sankalpa through us and helped us celebrate by doing his puja.

Aug 11th, 2020 - Krishna Ashtami:

I cannot forget going from one store to another here gathering the required items for puja. All things were gathered, except the Idol of Sri Krishna. Though it was available in the store, I have vowed that I will buy it only from Udupi, when Lord gets me a chance to come there.

At the end, all went fine. Rekha sang bhajan, Jingu stayed put in her stroller throughout that 2 hrs of puja duration. It was my long time dream that we should do Puja at some festivals every year. Especially Krishna Janmashtami. We were so happy that the puja was finally done at our home.

Breaking the monotony of life and doing something new gives a fresh breath of air to life. Lord Krishna did just that to us by making us go through all of this.

Click to watch the bhajan video.

Miracle:

A week or so after Krishnashtami, I casually happened to tell Rekha- “Now that I was able to do puja by reading the mantra and following the rituals mentioned, I feel like I want to do it again soon. Next year seems so long away, I wish we got a chance to celebrate Janmashtami again very soon”

Now, comes the miracle part - Maybe a week later that I expressed my wish, the Lord made it come true! Yes, Janmashtami again in the same year!!

Keep reading to learn how this miracle happened.

The Basics:

Before we go to the Miracle part, we need to have understanding of how the date is decided for Krishnashtami by different set of Krishna followers:

Krishnashtami (Lunar calendar):

Generally, Krishnashtami is celebrated on the 8th day (ashtami) of the 2nd Fortnight (Krishna Paksha/ Dark phase of moon) of Shravana Masa. Let's call this as General Krishnashtami for our convenience sake.

So we too celebrated the Lord’s Janmadin according to this tradition, which was on 11th of Aug, 2020.

Krishna Jayanthi(Luni-Solar Calendar):

Krishna Jayanthi is different from Krishnashtami. There is a reason why we call it Krishna Jayanthi. Let’s see how they are determined.

Udupi Mutt and Guruvayoor temple follow the Luni-Solar calendar in determining Lord Krishna’s Janmadin.
So they don’t fix the Birthday on the Lunar month of Shravana. Instead they consider the Solar Month(Rashi) - Simha Rashi.
So Simha Rashi’s , 2nd fortnight’s (Krishna Paksha), Ashtami tithi (8th day) when there is Rohini Nakshatra during Moonrise time(midnight)- that day is Lord’s Janmadin. If the Rohini Nakshatra coincides with Moonrise time then it is very auspicious and thus called Krishna Jayanthi.
In point#3 above, if Rohini Nakshatra is not there at Moon rise time (Mid Night) then it is not called Krisna Jayanthi. Instead it will be just called Krishnashtami. Let’s call this Udupi Krishnashtami to differentiate it from General Krishnashtami.

So now we learnt 3 terms:

General Krishashtami
Krishna Jayanthi - Most Auspicious. Observe fasting on such years.
Udupi Krishnashtami - popularly called Rohini Ashtami

I will now explain the relationship between the General and Udupi Krishnashtami

Most of the years, Simha Rashi will coincide with Shravana Masa. So the General Krishnashtami date will be the same as the Udupi Krishnashtami date.
Very rarely though, the Simha Rashi will coincide with Bhadrapada Masa, which comes after Shravana Masa. On those years, the Udupi Krishnashtami date will be almost a month after General Krishnashtimi
The year 2020 was one such rare year and Udupi Krishnashtami date was on Sept 20th!!

So What is the miracle here?

We were not at all aware of this tradition at Udupi mutt!! So a week later, after i expressed my desire to celebrate the next Krishnashtami soon,while watching some YouTube videos, I got to know that udupi mutt is celebrating Krishnashtami on Sept 20th! I was so confused. Naturally I turned towards Google to know the reason. And that is when I learnt about all of that I explained above.

My Joy knew no bounds. Lord Krishna got Krishnashtami Puja done from us for the first time ever. And that too twice. I can’t express it here - To wish for something divine like doing Puja of Lord and Lord granting that wish immediately...

Sep 20th, 2020 - Krishna Jayanthi:

So on the day of Krishna Jayanthi, We decided to follow some of the rituals that we had skipped last time.

Fasted till the Puja is over at night
Did the Arghya Pradana (the main part of the Puja) right at the moonrise time at night. For us in Lombard, USA, that was 11pm at night and there was Rohini Nakshatra. So it was Krishna Jayanthi.
Each adult at home did Arghya Pradana and not just me. Mom did it as well, at Mysore.
We watched the Live telecast of the main puja at Udupi Mutt.

At the end, the sense of accomplishment was higher compared to the last month. There were lots of reason - the awareness that Lord fulfilled the wish immediately, Lord Narasimha had come in my dream the early morning, the first ever experience of fasting, Arghya pradana right at moonrise time, Jingi staying awake all the way till we completed the Puja… so many.

At times, while writing this blog, thoughts used to cross my mind as whether it is required to write this beautiful experience in a blog when it is already etched deeply in my memory. But then I realised that though I may not forget this miracle, chances are that I may forget the other associated events. So to not take any chances, I finally decided to roll out my memory in digital format. And while writing this, I had the same kind of Joy and happiness that I had experienced while going through the actual event.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article as well as the knowledge of determining Krishnashtami/Krishna Jayanthi date. I sincerely thank Vidwan Sri Bannanje Govindacharya, who explained that so beautifully in a discourse. Our rituals are so rich and based on so much science and logic. Let’s do our bit to learn, understand and follow our ancient culture.

I bow down with heartful respects to the only supreme Lord - Sriman Narayana - For making me put down this blog to remember this beautiful miracle forever.

Happy New Year - Lets be part of the change

2015-01-04T18:29:00.006-08:00

Oh, look at that guy, no manners. Jumped the queue. Indians are like this. Can’t help....

We come across this ranting at least once in a day. Don’t we? We take rules for granted, law for granted. We misuse the freedom and impose a new rule on ourselves. We like to litter around. We like to do whatever it takes to make our lives easy, notwithstanding if it means breaking the rule or causing nuisance to others.

I agree with everything. If we closely look at it, we can bifurcate this social problem into two parts. Part 1 involves us, the aam admi who can do his bit to help keep up the cleanliness, law and order in the system. This I can say constitutes 60% of the pie. The rest of the responsibility falls on the head of govt machinery – the babus and politicians.

Complying with law is something the basics what an aam admi can do to do his bit. When PM asks to maintain cleanliness, let’s participate in that. When there is sign to follow the lane rules, let’s do that honestly. If we see no smoking board, let’s not smoke. Is that so difficult?

Yes, some things are difficult. Ex. The traffic. We do all sorts of jugaad to reach to destination. The infrastructure is really pathetic to cater to the demand. Our city planning was not future oriented. I don’t know the solution, neither I wanted to dedicate this post for that. But just wanted to quote an example.

But things which are possible, let’s do it. “Swach Bharath”mission is simplest one to start with I believe. If we take one after the other, I think we can address the issues systematically. If we are responsive, show responsibility, take part in democracy machinery, things may start working. That is what Our PM believes too. That is why we have so many options to knock on the govt’s door created these days.

And let me tell here that western countries are no exception to breaking rules. I have seen some insane guy inserting himself into long q in London Airport. People do throw cigar stubs anywhere they wish in US. You don’t have restriction on smoking in public area in US (in India it has to yet see a strict implementation. But thankfully people are aware of their rights and I’ve seen instances where folks have chided law breakers), a potential health hazard that has not yet alerted the administration here.

The point is very simple. Abiding by rules is really not so difficult. We do it inside our homes. It’s time we follow the same outside too. Any change is difficult at beginning and becomes part of life in no time when we start following. The same has happened in US. They have been doing it from many generations there. Once we start the habit in India then, it becomes practice here too. Ranting at rule breakers and degrading ourselves by comparing with "Rule-abiding"
firangis is not a solution. Let’s be part of Modi’s dream. Let’s begin the change.

Travelogue 2

2014-10-23T09:24:00.001-07:00

In the order of Latest-first (going back in order, w.r.t the latest trip), this is the 2nd tour that I went before my Kerala Trip(for which I've written a separate post ,the first part of the Travelogue series). Lord of Guruvayoor gave us chance to have his darshan in this tour. This tour has a nice prologue to be talked about.

I had been to a marriage of my engineering classmate where I met my Mechanical Branch classmates after a gap of 7 years! Ride down the memory lane kick-started and continued during dinner too where I was sitting beside this Adarsh (if I get a chance, I shall blog about this wonderful guy sometime) who was one among top 10 scorers of our batch. I got to know that he along with a bunch of machas (guys) do climb up the stairs of the Chamundi hills every Saturday early morning! Though I excitedly committed to join the group for this weekly-trek without fail, so far I’ve been able to make it only once. During the climb they were refining a tour plan which they had started to conceive some couples of weeks back. Ok, there is another coincidence as well. I had applied for leave on 25^th and 28^th of July 2014 to make it a long weekend as 29^th was marked as public holiday in our company. I sometimes do that – applying leave in advance, so that I can plan something suitably later. This time though, I didn’t have to plan as well. All I did was packing the luggage a day before the trip.

Trip route summary: Kanyakumari – Suchindram (aka suseendram) – Trivandrum – Guruvayoor

No. Of Days: 3 Days 2 Nights

Mode of Travel: Train and Bus.

This was a unique trip in many ways. The machas had planned this trip with one main aim – to take the parents along. There were 7 machas in the group. Some had got both parents, some only one and some came sans parents. Some even got their cousins, siblings and friends (I got my friend Manoj pothkar apart from my mom). The team size kept on adding up on daily basis. This prompted the core committee to say “Done. No more seats” when finally the numbers touched the 20-mark.

Since the planning was done perfectly well before, there were not any hiccups in the trip. Rooms for stay were booked at Kanyakumari for night#1 and at Guruvayoor for night#2. Train tickets too were booked well in advance.

Trip was fairly simple. Day 1 Saturday we reached Nagercoil (train will not go to Kanyakumari as marketed by Railways. Nagercoil is the last stop) early morning by train from Bangalore. We then reached Kanyakumari by hiring 2 taxis. The day was spent at Kanyakumari. Since it was Amavaysa that day, we took bath in the ocean as it is considered very auspicious. We then took Darshan of Kanyakumari Devi at the temple near the beach and then came back to hotel. After having bath and lunch we left for Rock Memorial-Thiruvallavur statue islands. After coming back in evening, we went to Suchindram by hiring a mini bus. Spent good amount of time there. The temple is famous for the tall status of Lord Hanuman. This temple is very huge and has temples dedicated to many Gods and goddess. Out of them, the Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwar god is very beautiful. We had the Dinner at a hotel beside the temple and came back to Kanyakumari.

Day2 Sunday: Reached Trivandrum, capital city of Kerala by train from Nagercoil. Visited the Huge AnantaPadmanabhaSwamy Temple. As it was Sunday, there was a bit of crowd. Otherwise, we were told that there won’t be any rush or queues. Security is too tight. Male devotees should compulsorily wear Dhotis. No shirt/banians. Not even a towel should be there on top! Needless to say that mobiles and other electronic gadgets too will not be let to accompany with you inside. Female devotees should be in sarees. If wearing any other dress, they should wrap a dhoti kind of material just like how males wear the dhotis. No purse or baggage allowed. There will be lunch available for good amount of time. But you should wash the plates yourself afterwards. Don’t think you can just hold it under the tap water and put it back. There will be a quality supervisor sitting who collects the plate and checks it for cleanliness. If he finds it not clean, you need to go back and wash it again!

3 of my friends left for Bangalore from here by 4pm train. The rest of us travelled towards the abode of Supreme head of God – Lord Krishna. The Guruvayoor. The Jan Shatabdi express goes up to Thrissur. From here, we travelled by a local private bus to Guruvayoor which is 25KM from Thrissur. It was late night by the time we reached. We hardly slept for 2-3 hours. The next day being public holiday, we were warned by the Temple Guest house staff to expect serpentine queue. In worst case, we will have to spend the whole day in queue they said.

Day3 Monday: Not to take any chances, we resolved to make it to the queue by 4 am. Though we indeed reached there by that time, the queue had already grown by significant length but thankfully not as big as to consume the whole day. When we had almost come near the gate, doors were closed for an hour for the puja purpose (around 6-7am). Once it opened the queue movement pace picked up and we had the darshan of lord by almost one hour.

The team split into 2 halves. One half travelled towards Bangalore by 10.30AM train (which they were able to catch by god’s grace, given the delay in Darshan). The other half, which included me, travelled towards Mysore by bus. We first travelled till Calicut from Guruvayoor. It was around 2pm when we reached Calicut, where we had the lunch at Saravan Bhavan near Bus stand(suspect it to be original saravana bhavan hotel. But nevertheless the food was good). Post lunch, we got direct bus (Kerala RTC) to Mysore from here.

Reached Mysore @9PM. I guess the blore group also reached their destination around same time. Everyone was happy with the planning and success of the trip. And as I say always, lord himself called all of us to his abode to give us blessings. Hari OM Tatsat.

Khushboo Gujarat Ki - Mother of all Tours

2014-10-12T06:37:00.002-07:00

You may think that you have come here for a trip, but let me tell you that it is because god gave you the permission to visit his home. That’s the reason why you are all here today, taking the blessings from lord himself. – as said by a pandit at Bhet Dwaraka.

Every strand of hair on my two hands was standing straight as I heard those words. The fact that the tour was successful stands testimonial to what the pandit said above and I strongly believe that anyone who reads this post will also agree to that.

It all started when the news about upcoming long weekend – the first weekend of month of October 2014, was floating around in office. The part of my brain that takes care of weekend/holiday planning got into action and started gathering the data –

No. Of holidays

Places being covered so far.

what place comes next in priority

who all may join

Let me discuss only point#3, rest being personal stuff which no reader of my blog will be interested in. In my Kanyakumari tour (I will shortly put a post on that), Manoj had made one point that he wants to explore more of North India from now since it is easy to do so when we are still young and can afford some extended leaves in office. This statement had settled down in some corner of my brain. When my brain kick-started planning, this remark came up for processing and I thought I should give it a try. But where north? Mumbai is the max point in north I’ve been to, on my own planning (have been to Delhi with parents when I was kid). Amitabh bachan surely is most charismatic person. His “Khushboo Gujarat ki”ad immediately flashed on my mind. Can I make it to Gujarat?? Seemed a bit difficult. But as pandit said, what happened in the last 2 weeks of August (I had smelled the October long weekend only in mid aug) still seems to be miracle for me. Lot of sleepless nights went into the planning. Let me present a short and crisp version of it –

No. Of days of General holiday = 2 + 2(weekend) = 4 days – 2^nd to 5^th of October 2014

No. Of days of leaves applied = 4 days – 30^th of sept and 6^th to 8^th of October 2014

Total holidays at disposal = 8 days.

Onward journey –

30^th of sept night – Mysore to Mangalore

1^st of Oct 1pm – Mangalore to Mumbai.

2^nd Oct 2pm – Mumbai to Ahmedabad (reached @ 9 PM)

Return Journey –

7^th Oct mrng 1a.m – Ahmedabad to Mumbai

7^th Oct 5 PM – Mumbai to Mangalore

8^th Oct – Mangalore to Mysore

I had to split the journey in the above fashion just because there were no tickets available for direct trains. I stayed at my relative’s place in Mumbai and at Guest house of LIC in Mangalore during transit. The above travel iternary itself is the first proof of how God made it possible for us to visit him. A few months before, I had fractured my Left toe finger due to some injury (yet to recover from it). There was a terrible pain when I had reached Mumbai on 1^st Oct. But thanks to my family doc, I remembered one of the drug he had prescribed in case of severe pain. It worked for me. Point #5b above – a reason for even an atheist to believe in god. I've underlined it since I've lot of memories with this journey. A goods train which had left before ours in the same route (not sure how long before) had got derailed! Thus our train was diverted to some other route and thus we passed thru Dudhsagar falls in Goa and all that before we reached Mangalore with full 7 hours delay!! Not just this. Another incidence happened related to this journey itself which I don’t want to write here as I want to forget it.

Coming back to the tour, I had booked the package tour – Saurashtra Darshan, of Gujarat tourism (govt). Details –

4 days 3 nights – 3^rd Oct 2014 to 6^th October

7500 INR per head

Package includes Guide, AC bus and AC Accommodation.

Imp places covered – Rajkot, Jamnagar,Porbandar,Dwarka,Nageswar,Somnath,Virpur.

I was writing down all the information about each day in my phone so that I don’t forget anything when I reach home. I will paste them as it is here (without editing the grammar also). The package was decent enough. The accommodation was pretty good as well as the bus. Guide was very helpful and gave good info about many things. Since it was a long weekend, the bus was fully booked. The trip started from Ahmedabad (in front of Sabarmati ashram, 6 am) and also ended at same place @ 8pm.

Before I paste the daily details let me thank the Almighty for making this tour possible without any hardships – Hari OM Tatsat.

Day1
Bf at Limdi,surendranagar dist. 8.30am. Start of saurashtra.
About guj:
Ahmedabad aka amdavad aka karnavati nagari was part of Mumbai till 1960.

Saurashtra also known as kathiawad. Ruled by krishna and ashoka. Holy part of guj.

Porbandar is famous for sudama and gandhi.

Kutch is divided into two. Greater rann of Kutch-white desert which looks like moon at night. Post monsoon when water dries sand looks like salt.
Little rann of Kutch-where wild ass is found.
Over1600 km of coastal line with 42 ports.kandla is major.
Ajanta clocks,reliance petrochemical ind,nano suzuki honda and several major industry. Cotton and peanut major crops.
Total 13airports highest in India.
2 jyotirling and one dham out of 4.
Only one hill station. Associated with lord ram vanvas.
Biggest network of roads. Even on borders.
Statue of unity is getting constructed near sardar vp dam which generates elec and provide water for agri.

When ahmed shah went in search of place to build new capital,he saw a rabbit threatening dog near sabarmati river. Decided to build city there after admiring power of sabarmati.
Gnagar is a newly formed capital of guj. Well planned and lots of greenery.

11.30 am Rajkot- alfred high school bldg. Rajkumar college. Rk ashram.

1 pm lunch.

3.30 pm jamnagar. Darshan of lord hanuman at bal hanuman mandir where ram dhun (bhajan) is played by ppl non stop since 1964 thus entering Guinness book.
Raja jam ranjit singh famous for introducing cricket to india ruled

4.30 pm passed by reliance petrochemical refineries and then essar oil refinery

7pm halt at Porbandar. Had darshan at sudama temple and dinner at nilesh parota house. Couldn't make it to chowpatty and khadi bandar.

End of day 1.

Day 2:

Started from hotel at 7.30am. Scores of ppl soaked in pale red color were going towards Porbandar in all sorts of vehicles.

8.30 am- had darshan at harshad matha temple. Huge rush. Had bf and left at 9am.

1.30 pm finished darshan at bhet dwaraka. Place where sudama met lord krishna with a handful of beaten rice. Considered as home of lord. The other dwaraka which we say main one is actually office of lord known as gomati dwaraka. Lord's idol is 5000 years old and has golden pillars around. Temple outer structure is made of pale pink granite with beautiful carving which depicts life of lord Krishna. Bhet dwaraka is located on an island and one needs to take boat to reach there. Inaccessible during monsoon due to heavy waves. Place will be taken out of list by tourism dept from 15th July to 15th October. Luckily by Lord's grace we were able to get the darshan on this day of 4th October. Okha port- where we catch boat to go to bhet dwaraka is last stop of western railway.

Left for nageshwar jyotirling from here.

3pm - left nageshwar after having darshan. Lots of ppl due to holiday.

Didn't had lunch yet.

3pm - finally lunched at dwaraka.

4.30 pm- Rukmini temple.

5.30 pm - checked into hotel and left for night arati darshan at temple.

10.30 pm- back to hotel. A sense of fulfillment flowing inside having seen the lord during aarati. Guide explained everything beautiful. Had dinner too. A local lassi shop was serving tasty lassi at 15rs. I had 2.

End of day 2

Day 3 :

Checked out of hotel @ 6am.

8.30am reached Porbandar. Visited kirti mandir-Gandhi's birth place. His home is maintained as is without any alteration. 3floor bldg with 19 rooms. Another bldg has been constructed newly, connected with home, for museum. Together the place is called as kirti mandir. Ironically,surrounding place is very dirty as cattle & dogs have made roads as their loo and paan spitting bins by humans.

10.30 am - crossed madhavpur town. This s the place where lord Krishna had married Rukmini. Goddess Rukmini is from a village near Amaravati in maharashtra(called as Vidharbha back then).when her parents decided to marry her off to Shishupal,she writes a letter to lord to rescue her. Lord kidnaps her and brings her to dwaraka where he marries her at madhavpur.

Lord then vists his guru Durvasa rishi for blessing and asks him to come to dwaraka for function (I guess).sage asks lord to take him in a cart pulled by the couple as he is a sage with no carts or horses to travel. Lord agrees. On the way Rukmini mata feels thirsty and requests lord to provide water. Lord just knocks the ground with toe and water springs out. Both of them quench their thirst but forget to offer water to sage. Out of anger the sage cursed them that they will live separate for 12yrs,dwaraka will not have sweet water for drinking and their temple shall get constructed at far from each other. That's why goddess Rukmini temple is located at outskirts while Lord's temple is inside.(We visited Rukmini temple on day 2)

12.10 pm- crossed chorwad - birth place of Dhirubhai Ambani.
Moving towards Bhalka Teerth. Bhalka is arrow. This is the place where lord was shot by an arrow fired by hunter.
As per research,lord was born on midnight od 21st June 3228 B.C and lived till 2pm of 18th feb 3102 B.C. 125 years. At the time of mahabharath he was 89 years old.
Lord was cursed by kunti that like the way he destroyed kuru clan,yadavs clan will also meet its end 36 years after the war.
Yadavs were super knowledge ppl.once while playing,a group of children tried to test the power of a sage who was passing by. They made a boy look like a girl by magical power and asked the sage whether she gives birth to a boy or girl. The sage cursed them that he'll not give birth to anybody but will be responsible for extinction of yadavs by one iron piece. So in order to ensure safety of the clan yadavs throw all iron things into sea except for one small piece which was similar to arrow head. This gets into a fish which finally falls into the lap of the hunter who uses it to shoot lord.
When the hunter cries in grief realising his mistake,lord consoles hin by telling him about their previous births. Hunter-Vali and Lord Krishna-as lord Rama. When Vali asked Rama why he killed from hiding when the fight was going on between him and his brother sugreeva, lord Rama is believed to have consoled him by saying that. He (Rama)will be killed in his next avatar by vali.

1.30 pm bhalka Teerth.

2 pm -Geetha mandir- This is the place where lord balaram got back into his real form of Sesh Nag and went back to patal (under the ground).

Triveni - Sangam (confluence) of harini (or hiranya not sure) Saswati as gupta gamini (flowing under the ground) and one more river.

Many ppl believe that sarswati river has dried up. But a lot of research has now supported what majority of hindus believe-flowing under the ground. There is a interesting story behind thus belief. When Lord Ganapathi was writing Mahabharath as per the oral recital by Lord Vedavyas beside the River Sarswati, lord Ganapathi was loosing concentration due to the flowing sound of river. Thus upon request by lord Ganapathi,lord Vedavyas asked river for help and she immediately agreed and started to flow under the ground. This is the river beside which Goud Saraswat Brahmins used to live long time ago. I will cover this story in another post.

Somnath - The another major attention of tour. There are 2 temples here now. New one built by Sardar Vallabhai Patel which is just marvellous and the old one built by Rani ahalya devi some 800years ago.

There was this great King called Daksha who had 27 daughters had married them all to Lord Moon. Moon aka Chandra Devata used ti love Rohini out of his 27 wives. Daksha cursed him to become ugly when Chandra Devata didn't mend his way even after request by Daksha. Thus having realised his folly Of Being pride about his beauty,Chandra Devata decided to do penance to invoke blessings of lord Shiva. When Lord shiva appears,he says that he can't nullify the curse but can relax it to a extent. Thus Chandra Devata will become bright for 15 days and get dull for 15 days in a month. Som =Moon and Nath = Shiva. This place is also known as Prabhas Pathan and is the most holiest and first Jyotirling.

The original temple which was looted more than 17times was believed to have the Jyotirling floating in air a little above the ground which was destroyed and plundered by Muslim invader ghazni. So much so that nothing remained in its place.

One night, Rani Ahalya Devi got a dream that she should get a spot near the plundered site excavated and build a temple with the Ling idol that she will find during excavations. This temple which is more than 800 years old is now known as old temple after the Iron Man of India,the first home minister of independent India,built the new temple in the original spot.

Security is very stringent and one cannot even wear a belt while entering. Free cloakroom facilities are provided to deposit our stuffs. The chowpatty behind the temple is excellent and provides a magnificent view of sea. Shri Patel's statue is placed right in front of the temple maha dwar.

5pm- pit stop at roadside tea stop. Proceeding towards Junagad now.

7.30 pm checked into Toran hotel at Junagad. Toran is chain of hotels maintained by Gujarat tourism dept. Avg cost is 2000. Hotel is pretty old but decent and well maintained. Only problem I found is lack of lift facility. The other 2 nights we were made to stay in pvt hotels. They were also good. Avg cost in those hotels were 1500 to 2000.

Food is not included in the package. Hence we had to go out on our for dinner. But rhe Toran hotel at Junagad is located at sone corner with no street lights on rhe roads outside. So here they arranged for food in hotel itself.

End of day 3.

Day 4 - Final day

8am -checked out of hotel.
Junagad celebrates independence day on 9th of November. It was on this day of year 1947 that the last nawab of Junagad escaped to Pakistan after a stern warning by Sardar Vallabhai Patel to stop his tricks to add Junagad to pak. Thus this place got it's independence 85 days after india got.

The state of Junagad was supposed to be 2nd prosperous after state of Baroda. This place is famous for Kesar mango. Also the most hily hill - Ginar parvat is located here. There are 4 Tirthadham of jains located atop this hill and also it's believed that lot of holy Sadhu do their penance here. 10k steps-one needs to take to reach top. State's effort to get a ropeway built is met with stern protest by Jain folks.

There is a fort here inside which Junagad was located earlier before the nawabs developed outer city. This fort is built in 11th century and still very strong. There was a queen named Ranak devi whi used to live here once and was famous for her beauty. A raja of gujarat wanted to take her away with him but failed to enter the fort and waited outside for 12yrs.

9.30am - reached Radha Damodar temple. There is a cave here where lord Krishna got Rakshas Kalyavan killed. When Lord was coming from Mathura,Kalyavan followed hum thinking that the Lord is running being afraid of him. Lord cannot kill him directly due to some reason which I'm not clear. Thus he gets him to this cave by trick. A king who had renounced the world was sleeping Here and gets woken up by this demon. The demon gets burnt up when the King's sight falls on him. The king had a boon rhat whoever disturbs him from sleep would die by getting burnt up.

10am - reached Mrigi kund(pond). A temple similar to one atop Girinar hills is constructed here for benefit of those who can't climb the hills. During Mahashivrathri highly supernatural sadhus who do penance in hills come here to take bath in pond and it is believed that on an avg 1 sadhu out of 100 will not come out. He will disappear or attain moksh. More than 12 lakh ppl gather here on that day.

11am- reached Virpur. This small town 1km off highway is famous for Jalaram Bapu temple.

Jalaram Bapu was born on 9th of November 1799 and was famous for generosity. Once a sadhu came to his house and told him that he has heard a lot about him and wants to know whether he will fulfill his wish too? Bapu agreed and the sadhu asked give him his wife. Bapu was a little sad and discussed the matter with his wife. His wife thinks for a while and tells him that she doesn't want to tarnish his name and thus will go with the sadhu.

The sadhu rhen leaves the place along with Bapu's wife and upon reaching outskirts of the place hands over a danda and jholi (bag) to her and asks her to go back to home by saying that they don't have to beg and eat anymore.

When she comes back and narrates the story to her husband, Bapu immediately understands that the sadhu is no ordinary person but lord Rama himself In disguise. Bapu being a big follower if lord Rama immediately runs to the spot where his wife had left him but doesn't find anyone there. Upon reaching home he gets a pleasant surprise. A swayambhu (self evolved) idol of Lord Hanuman would be there at the spot where they had left the bag and Danda.

In the temple you can see the danda and Jholi as well as real photo of Bapu taken by some londoner.

Food is available 24hrs all day and not a single rupee is accepted as donation here now since already so many people have done so much of donation.

We did sime saree shopping here and then left for lunch.

1.30 pm - had lunch at Toran hotel on highway and started to ahmedabad where the tour will end officially.

7pm - back to Toran hitek opposite Sabarmati Ashram Ahmedabad. Tour ends here officially. Everyone was overcome with emotions. Thanks to gujarat tourism.

The Travelogue - part 1

2014-08-22T09:55:00.002-07:00

Any trip should not be marked as complete, until one documents the trip details. Yesterday, I came back from Kerala trip and I’ve 4 trips (including the Kerala) pending to be documented!

Let me start with Latest one first, since it is very fresh in my memory.

2 days Kerala –GSB- temples trip.

Day1: Reached Ernakulam early morning by bus from Mysore. Made a quick change in my plan and decided to catch the train to Alleppey where we have our Kashi Mutt branch with accommodation facility.

Reached Alleppey or Alappuzha at 11. In Kerala, all temples open early in morning say 3a.m or so and closes at 12PM. In some temples (including Guruvayoor I guess), there is a short break of say 1 hour or so in between this 3 am to 12pm. The temple will then open at 5 PM and closes by 8-9PM. So we decided to start our temple visit in the evening. Had a quick bath and went to our GSB temple nearby which is couple of centuries old! Had lunch (Prasad) at this temple. In Kerala, all GSB temples are called Tirumala Devaswom or TD in short. Oh yeah, b.t.w GSB stands for Goud Sarswat Brahmins, a sect of Sarswat Brahmins with affiliation to both Vaishavism and Shivaism.

1.30PM – Left Alleppey and reached Vaikom at 3PM. Since there was 2 hrs to go for the temple to open, we slept there inside the temple complex. This is a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva and supposed to be one of the oldest. Temple is as huge as one cricket stadium.

5.30P.M – Left Vaikom and reached Alleppey back at 6.45 PM. We quickly hired a taxi and started off to the next place – Ambalapuzha Sree Krishna Temple – the Dwaraka of South. This is another famous temple of Krishna in Kerala. When Tippu attacked Guruvayoor, Lord Krishna’s idol was kept safely here in this temple. We were lucky to see the Lord decorated in the form of Narasimha.

8.15P.M – Reached TD temple at Parkad. This is supposed to be the oldest GSB temple dating back to 400 years! Had Prasad here and left for Alleppey where we had the dinner at Mutt’s Manager Home. The Manager’s mother, who is very aged, is a huge cricket fan. Though deaf due to age, she has not lost the love for cricket and Mallu serials. And not just that, she speaks so nicely to anybody as such that I was just listening to her with full smile and was totally carried away by her warmth and affection. Got her blessings before we left after the dinner.

Day 2:

Left Alleppey early morning by bus and reached Thoppupady (Ernakulam) at 8 am, on the way to Cochin. The plan to visit Cochin got inserted while having lunch at Alleppey. People over there were praising the Cochin TD temple very much and wanted us to visit it at any cost. So thus we decided that we will pit stop at Cochin TD temple enroute to Ambalamedu.

There was little bit of confusion at this junction, which turned out to be good at the end. Though we had planned to arrive at Cochin by train, we changed the plan and took a bus as per the suggestion of the Alleppey Kashi mutt manager and his friends. We were asked to get down at Thoppupadi (Ernakulam) and then catch a bus to Fort Kochi. We were then supposed to get down at a stop called Pandikudy from where the Cochin TD temple is at a walkable distance.

But the almighty had planned the scheme of things differently J In the bus that we were travelling from Alleppey to Cochin, a elderly man who was standing, fell flat on his face on the floor of the bus when the driver applied the brakes very hardly(which is very common in Kerala. Driving is real harsh over there and all vehicles generally will be over speeding). The sound of his falling was so loud that for a split second I thought that he might have got seriously injured. But the very next minute the man was given water and was helped to get down. There was hardly any commotion and neither the man nor other passengers had any altercation with the bus crew!!!! The bus moved from the spot as if nothing had happened. Had if the same thing happened here in Mysore-Bangalore, there would have been a flash strike and the road would have been blocked for at least an hour.

This incident shocked me like anything as the sound of the man hitting the floor while falling resonated continuously in my mind for next 1 hour. I was still feeling bad for him even after getting down at the Thoppupady stop. This made me to forget about the next bus to be boarded, the stop name etc!! I decided that I won’t travel again in bus in Kerala (an emotional decision which fizzed out later)! So instead, I stopped an auto and asked him to take us to TD temple. He spoke something in Malayalam which I couldn’t understand. I asked him the fare and he said 130/- I agreed and got into the auto with my mom. It didn’t register in my mind then that this Thoppupady place where we are currently, is in Ernakulam and not Cochin! There is TD temple each at both the cities (twin city). The driver might have tried to explain the same to me which I hardly bothered to care. So he took us to the Ernakulam TD temple (logical) which we had not planned to visit. This clearly proves that everything is decided by the Lord above. If he wants us to get a chance to visit him, he will provide us that even without our asking! I feel divine as I write this. We had breakfast at nearby Bharat Hotel – a decent, well maintained veg restaur with excellent ambience. For the first time ever I used rest room in a hotel to unload myself. And full credits to the hotel with regards to the maintenance of the rest room. After the breakfast, we visited the Ernakulam TD temple. We had real quick darshan of the Lakshmi venkateshwara and left.

10.30 AM: Reached the Cochin TD. A Konkani speaking elderly man (whom the lord sent to help us reach the Cochin TD temple) helped us a lot at the bus stop behind Ernakulam TD temple. Luckily, even he had to go to Cochin TD temple and helped us board the right bus. We boarded the bus going to Fort Kochi and got down at the Matanjali stop (or may be Pandikudy stop, don’t remember properly as the two names were used interchangeably) from where the temple is at walkable distance. The temple is very huge with gates at all 4 directions. The architecture is very similar to any other old Kerala temple that I saw.

In the temple we enquired about the means to reach the most important place – Ambalamedu Kuladevata complex, which was the only place that I had planned to visit originally as part of the trip, but which later got this much bigger by God’s grace. After discussing with couple of people there, we decided to hire a Auto, even though the cost was on higher side, since we had to reach there before the temple complex closes by 12P.M. If we were to take bus, we had to change minimum 2 buses to get there. Language problem coupled with time made us to think logically and opt for the auto.

12P.M: Reached Ambalamedu. Our Kashi Mutt Swamiji has got this complex constructed where there are more than 6-7 temples dedicated to all the different kuladevathas of GSB community. We had 5-6 mins to cover all of them before the temple shuts for the noon! Thankfully we did get the darshan of all the deities. Had lunch (prasadam) at the temple and left for the next stop – Chottinakkara, at 2PM.

3P.M: Reached Chottinakkara. We took a bus to Hill Palace stop from Ambalamedu. All through the entire route, I saw the refineries, LPG bottling plants of Bharat Petroleum and Indian Oil. From Hill palace stop we took another bus to reach Chottinakkara. There is a Bhagavati temple over here which is as huge as any old temples of Kerala. The goddess is worshipped in 3 different avatars here every day! The temple opened at 4.30 PM. We had a quick darshan and left for Ernakulam at 5.30PM by bus.

6.30PM: Reached Ernakulam. We roamed around nearby the bus stand and M.G road, in search of a place to buy the famous Kerala banana chips. Luckily we managed to locate one store where we purchased huge quantity of chips (which I’m munching on while writing this post), had dinner and waited for our 9.15 Bus. If you happen to book tickets in Kerala RTC bus, here is a tip for you (if you are not Mallu). If the time in the ticket is mentioned as 9.15 P.M, don’t think it is the departure time of the bus. It is the time at which the bus will arrive at the stand, the first boarding point! I had tough time dealing with people at the stand to know why the bus hasn’t come even if it’s almost time. Language problem just intensified the tension rapidly.

Bottom Note: On the face of it, the trip looks like a well planned and executed by us. But while I was writing, I realized how wrong it is to assume it that way. Several points crossed my mind which registered this fact in my mind –

1. Apart from Kannada, the only south language I can understand is Telugu. Malayalam ranks last in the hierarchy of the languages I can grasp. Still, I dared to visit the state.

2. We had planned to stay put at Ambalamedu thinking that we will be close to Ernakulam which may help us in moving around easily to cover all the places that we planned to visit. But as we got down from the bus and enquired with few people as well as the Mutt manager, the reality was known – nobody (excluding the mutt manager) really knew where the place is located. By God’s grace, I had made risk mitigation plan (almost without my conscious effort, as if driven by external powers) just the previous day as per which I had decided that we can stay in Alleppey if situation demands. But never had I had a smallest hint in my mind at that time that this could really happen. Looking at the reaction on the face of the people in the bus station, we quickly decided to execute the Plan B – catch immediate next train to Alleppey. Luckily the railway station is located very close to the Ernakulam bus stand. In fact, just behind the stand the railway tracks pass. Time was 7.30 when we reached the station. There was a passenger train going to Alleppey still in station. But again by lord’s wish, the lady at the counter didn’t give us the ticket for that train and instead handed over the ticket for the next train which was at 9am. We had good 1 and half hour to spend now. On a quick glance at the station, I was assured about its cleanliness (no, I’m not sarcastic). We brushed the teeth and then had a breakfast at the food plaza in the station. The food was really decent as well as the hygiene at the place. Once we completed the 80% of the morning chores, we were bit relaxed and waited for the train for next 30 mins. Later on day 2, when we went on hunt for banana chips at evening in Ernakulam, we were looking out for a good Kerala cuisine restaur too for dinner, but couldn’t locate one anywhere nearby. So the same food plaza at the station came to our rescue finally.

A few tips for Kerala travellers –

Buses – govt or pvt, are very rash in driving. Do take care when you are standing inside the bus. It’s very difficult to manage if the driver applies brakes hardly and suddenly.
In general, driving is very rash. So be cautious in crossing the roads.
Train connectivity is excellent. Especially the Jan-Shatabdi express. Have a train route reckoner on your smart gadget and make good use of the train network for your travel.
People do respond in Hindi/English. So no need to worry about language prob much. Also all important boards will be in English too.
Auto drivers don’t fleece much (unlike in Bangalore or Chennai). So hop on the auto if needed without much worries. But do make it a point to enquire the price before you board the auto.
Don’t shout around or make noises if you are in big groups. They don’t take it positively.
Food.
1. Keralites like the red-rice (aka boiled rice) and prefer it over the normal white rice. So do make it a point to ask for white rice when you order your meal.
2. Water served in any hotel will be pale pink in colour. No it is not dirty water. They soak the kokum (Garcinia indica) in the water before serving. This is excellent anti-oxidant with great medicinal values. So don’t worry about the colour when you sip the water in hotels. But yeah if you are the SRK type-guy (of swades movie), you can go for mineral water bottles.
3. Coconut and coconut oil/by-product will be extensively used in food preparation.
4. Food will be ultra-non-spicy (almost bland I can say). I recommend the Andhra guys to carry a pack of chilli powder or fried chillies when they travel to Kerala.
5. For strict-vegans. Don’t ever pass by any non-veg hotel there. If you are starving, better to survive on grass rather than giving the non-veg hotels a try. Reason – most non-veg hotels will serve Beef!!!

All In All a nice trip.

Hari OM Tatsat.

Beware ! You are being watched

2014-07-16T09:24:00.001-07:00

“You are under the watch of our CCTV cameras” read the boards hanging on the ceiling of the shopping malls.

There was a huge uproar in Bangalore recently, when the worshipful Mayor of the BBMP went ahead with his ambitious plan of CCTVing the lush green parks of the hi-tech city.

I was getting a bit uncomfortable these days when this realization hit me. And so I’m back here, to let my floating thoughts spill over on my blog.

The trigger for this thought process was none of the above two events. The ones listed above are physical security apparatus being used to keep an eye on the crowd in a defined boundary. The capacities of such devices are limited to its area of focus. If you stay away from that area, you are nobody.

What concerned me was the news item that flashed the newspapers a couple of weeks back which said that Facebook has decided to follow the footsteps of its rival/competitor Google, to infringe on the privacy of the netizens!

For the uninitiated, tracking the netizens means accessing the web cache in your “Smart devices”- such as Lappy, Tabs etc to get to know the seemingly-unharmful data about you such as, the sites that you visited, the ads that you clicked etc. The monstrous algorithms of the tracking company will then analyze you (I hate to admit this). It creates a “virtual you” in its database using which it can uniquely identify you, your tastes, your interests etc. (I’m no computer whiz kid, so cannot put in more details here. Nor I claim that this is exactly how they track). This data will then be used by the tracking sites to “deliver the relevant Ads for you”.

Google was the first one to declare it publicly that they will start tracking the people. This is precisely the reason why they implemented single sign on for all of their products – Gmail, G+, YouTube, BlogSpot etc. (you thought it was to increase your comfortability?) Thus, based on the type of videos you see, you will get similar ads when you next open the Gmail inbox or Googling for something. The news created huge noise in the social media and other forums. People cried about losing their privacy. But the all-powerful corporate lobby prevailed in the US. Silicon Valley maintained its silence on the breach of ethics by software.

I was using technology for bare minimum during then. I wouldn’t have recounted this incident at all if not for the recent incident of similar kind. This time the company to do so was the most popular social media networking platform– Facebook. What surprised me this time was not the news but the silence of the same set of people who had raised their voice during Google’s case. One thing was clear now. Breach of online privacy has now got no immunity. People are so hooked to the smart gadgets that virtually we have become slaves in its hand and may find it next to impossible to think anything about breaking free from them!

I am not the kind of person who blames the technological advancements by referring only to their flip side. But what I’m concerned is about the fading of the line that demarcates the good and bad uses of it. The above incidence proves that with time, the bad uses gets legitimized and the state of mind of people thus gets changed – people who protested at first instance of breach of ethics get now silenced out of confusion. We lose the wisdom to think between the good and bad.

When I take a look at the various apps out there in Android OS, I see that most of them try to help us get the work done online. Bank transactions, e-commerce etc are hot cake apps. My concern is, down the line when I ask my son/daughter to get my work done in the bank, I don’t want them to fiddle with their smart gadget and tell me with an expression less face that it is done. Not that it is wrong to do it thru smart device. The fact that they become more and more confined to the home, with no interaction with people from various walks to life, is what my concern is. That definitely brings up an obvious question - what if the kid is extra-ordinarily talented and walking out to places like banks/offices and talking to people is like walking on a cake for him? This is definitely a possibility. That is the reason why I feel that one should stop debating on what is wrong and what is not. Instead let’s look at what is the best way to do the things. If I’ve the luxury of a chauffeur driven car and, if I have nothing productive work to be done, why not go out myself and do my shopping? Or contrastingly, if I’m hard pressed for time (which is with most of the people) and has lots of other work that requires my attention, why not use the smart technology and get the work done in easier way? One laments at the fact that due to mobile phones, one doesn’t remember at least a couple of phone numbers also these days. But the other side of the fact is that due to mobile phones, you are able to carry around so many phone numbers that you don’t cry at the time of emergency that you remember only 2 numbers.

Going out to places, meeting various people, talking to them, learning one new thing a year like new form of art or if you are tech savvy then learning new platform or programming language, getting along with relatives etc. keeps the mind active and open for fresh ideas. If you know how to do the things without the help of your smart devices then, you don’t panic when your device fails at the time of emergency. Otherwise a disaster will happen due to your own folly. As the device gets more and more smarter, human’s IQ gets lower and lower. So be smart. Decide for yourself how much you want to depend on the technology. Think what is good for you – using the IQ of your phone’s smartness or develop the IQ of God given grey cells in your brain? Stay out of snooping from the digital terrorists. Give power to your own physical form and become strong instead of creating a weaker virtual “you” in the digital world who surrenders himself dumbly to the D-Terrorists.

Gowda Sarswath Brahmins, We the People of India

2014-05-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

When the routine life was getting totally stereotypic and mundane, life called me to be part of a brahmopadesham of my distaaaaaant cousin. I literally meant what I wrote. By “To be part of…” means, to be one important person for the event and not just a mere spectator sitting in the chairs meant for audience and stare at the people(mostly women) wearing what-not-types of jewellery and top-of-the-brand-list clothes.

My uncle wanted us(our family of me, my bro and parents) to be part of the function, especially with me, as I was required to get the Guy – who was getting the sacred thread put across his left shoulders thus marking his initiation into Vedic studies – to the mantap (the stage) by holding him up in my arms (like how one holds a child). This ritual has to be done by a person who is related to the guy in a certain way (brother I guess). I loved the lime light, the red carpet welcome, the sense of being given so much of importance – all of which fizzed out once the ritual was over :D

But nevertheless, it was a welcome change to my life which was otherwise not even least exciting on any count. On positive side, this function helped me to get closer to that fraction of my relatives which I knew existed, but never got chance to interact with – thanks to some age-old issue between the various families. It even gave me access to several facts and data, which my mind started processing and became busy with(a change for it too, it must have felt). The one which it constantly shooted to my conscious part of brain was this – I could be the only few fortunate guys in my community of GSB, where I have cousins from the own siblings of my dad as well as his half-siblings. Too much of a puzzle for your grey cells to decode? Well to put it plainly, my grandfather had married twice in his life time. Don’t be shocked, he didn’t break the Hindu marriage law. When his first better-half said bye to this material world after giving birth to their fifth progeny, My grandfather, not happy with his contribution to the Human resource asset of our nation, decided to go ahead and tie the knot once again and keep his good work going. Thanks to his good work, otherwise you wouldn’t have been reading this blog. You are right, I’m younger son of the eldest son of my grandfather’s second wife!!! Too much to decipher? Well that was precisely how I was feeling when my mind was cooking up all these stats for me in that function.

It was all a mixed bag of learning experience for me. I was interacting with my relative back here in Mysore after we returned. He was particularly disappointed about how this tradition of Upanayana (aka Brahmopadesham) has got transformed into a mere customary function. I got to know from him that actually one is supposed to visit the priest’s home (who performed the ritual for the guy) or any such elderly scholar (could be grandfather or priest of any community temple of ours) for at least couple of days and get to learn all the things from him – basics of our vedas, how to do sandhyavandhana etc properly. This is because there is so much to learn and it is impossible to do that in that short time available during the official function. More than anything, this step denotes that one has attained adulthood (not from biological sense) and is now responsible enough in life to stand up on his own and view all the things religiously – which includes the transformation of baby love to your mom into ardent respect to her as god.

Alas, the changing time changes everything and makes only the change as constant in this changing universe!! Modi recently informed the people of this country that to rule a State, the ruler has to be optimistic always and also wished that everyone in this country to be optimistic as well. I think I was a little pessimistic of sort in the previous paragraph talking about thinning up of the traditions and customs in people with time. So Let me see if I, in my capacity as author of this blog, can be optimistic here and see the other side of the things. In the town of puttur, where this function happened, I visited our GSB community-maintained Lord Lakshmi venkateswara temple which is located in the heart of the town in main road. The Temple was closed when I went there. But that didn’t stop me from glancing at the notice board put up at the entrance. It was put up to announce the scholarship schemes to the needy students who are doing professional courses. I was overwhelmed with pride at once. I can list down numerous such charity events that our community trusts, organizations, temple boards, Mutts etc does in benefit of the people of community. This will have dual benefit of keeping up the pride of the people to stay loyal to our community values and traditions as well as community services.

Like anywhere, within our community also there are people who just love to sit behind and complain about anything under sun. But what makes me happy and proud is that there are equal number of people who don’t care for such things and come forward to serve the community. Either it is matrimonial services or educational support, you name them and we have it in our community. That drives home a very important point. To keep up with time, one has to ensure that they cater to the changing needs of the time. You cannot expect one to give his everything just in the name of religion. Sustainability comes with give and take policy and that is what our community has learnt so early in the time-curve graph.

Today, the IT city has not just bangalored the jobs of US to India. It has had one more effect within the country– migration of people to IT city on account of getting jobs. I call this bangalored too, in context of within our country. But in spite of this, come car festival of lord venkatramana temple of Mangalore, you can see the entire Gen-X standing in the front volunteering for the 5-day festival. Its sheer visual delight to watch them taking part in this with so much of enthu and dedication. We may have either cut short on few traditions or may be given a miss for few of them, but the mere fact that the crowd size keeps swelling year on year is a proof for the pride of our people about our community, our god and our religious heads.

So, to close this thread on an optimistic note, it makes me feel happy that we still do follow the rituals such a Brahmopadesham tradition, even in its compact form. It is nothing but these get-togethers which brings all the people of the families settled at different hooks and corners of the country, to meet each other and re-bond, either full siblings or half! And I am happy that I wrote this piece of blog precisely when the historic swearing-in ceremony of the 15^th PM of 16^th Lok Sabha is going on!!

Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa - A memorable trip to Sabarimala

2014-03-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

There cannot be a better example than this to show how God gives us an opportunity for his devotees to have his darshan. Never in my dreams had I thought that I would get to see the Lord Ayyappa at his sannidhanam in Sabarimala. I'm writing this blog cum travelogue out of a sub-conscious promise that I made when I was overwhelmed to see the Lord.

After the success of our Trek to the abode of Lord of Spathagiri Hills - Tirumala, My friends planned another similar but more challenging trek to seek the darshan of Lord of Pattanamthitta Hills - Swami Ayyappa in Sabarimalai, Kerala. Since the temple is opened only for a couple of days every month, after the pilgrimage season of Nov to Jan end every year, we made the plan in a hurry. One of the friend got info from his parents that the temple will be opened in the month of Feb. 2014 from 15 to 17th (approx). And thus we chalked out our plan to visit the temple on 15th of Feb 2014. Tickets were booked to travel from Mysore to Kottayam on 14th.

14th Feb:

Bus left Mysore at designated time of 6pm. Thankfully, the highway was smooth throughout the journey due to which I was able to catch up with sleep for at least a couple of hours in that 14hours long journey. Dinner stop was @ Sulthan Battery at 9.30PM, after which there were only a few quick stops for nature calls.

15th Feb:

7.45 AM. Welcome to the "God's Own Country" - Kerala. We reached Kottayam with full 1.5 hrs delay. Kerala's humid climate made us oily and sticky all over the face. I felt the immediate need to find a decent accommodation to freshen up. At the exit of the Bus station, we took left turn heeding to the group's majority vote and by god's grace got accommodation at a decent tourist home for 675/- for a double bed room. As we were 4 people, he insisted that we should take 2 rooms and we reluctantly agreed after a failed argument to negotiate for one room.

9.00 AM. We got ready and left the room. Reached the Kottayam Bus stand and had a quick breakfast. The Language difficulty starts now. We were under impression that Sabarimalai is close by with good connectivity from here. But with the expression and explanation of the people at bus stand, we understood that we were wrong. Apparently the only direct bus is only at around 1pm or so. The other alternative was of course cut journey. We had a great difficulty to understand the name of place where the people were asking us to go by catching one bus. All I could hear was "Patham..." One good fellow pointed out the bus and without thinking further we got into it. Now the next challenge, how to pronounce the place name so as to buy the ticket? I quickly googled for the info and got to know the name - Pattanamthitta. After 2 hours of journey we reached the place.

12PM. It didn't take us long to find out which bus we need to take from here. We were well informed beforehand that the last stop where we need to get down en route to Sabarimalai is - Pampa (aka Pamba) river. There is no road further from here and one need to go by walk to reach the holy Sannidhanam.

The bus stopped in between for lunch. It was not a restaur or hotel but just a hut kind of place which you can call as mini dhaba. They served only two items - Ganji or the Gruel and Meals. It didn't take us long to decide. One guy among us sat down and ordered for Ganji. Another one ordered for Meals. The remaining two of us (Including me) opted for wait and watch technique. Once they were served, we sat down as well, after being assured of the quality. The fun started here.

2P.M. Destination reached. Holy Pampa River was flowing in a canal kind of structure. Like in any holy place, the river was polluted over and above one's imagination level. Democracy offers freedom in most of the things. But we chose to lose it by abusing it. Today, there are boards all over the place, requesting us not to pollute the river. Tomorrow, there won't be any boards, but the security folks, stopping us from taking bath.

After spending an hour to complete the chores like attending to nature call, stepping into the holy river to spray water over head, safe keeping the foot wears in cloak room etc etc, we finally started to ascend.

3.15 PM. Amid the loud cheers of "Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa", we started to ascend the hill. Let me make one point clear here. Unlike the Holy Tirumala where we have both Road as well as foot steps to reach the top, here there is only one option here - foot steps. The path is also not smooth like in Tirumala. At same stretches, it is neither cemented path nor the mud path, instead it's just smooth stones (huge ones) path. But thanks to the recent development works undertaken here, the path is much better than how it used to be half a decade back (as told to me by my friends).

There are Dholis available for those who cannot climb the steep hill. Dholi is nothing but a bamboo chair or light wooden chair to which long wooden logs are tied to both sides and 4 men will carry a person who is seated on the chair. Price may range between 3k to 4k depending upon how you negotiate.

I saw lot of people carrying Glucose powder with them. At regular intervals they mix water and consume it. There are water points along the path. Bio toilets are also available. Since women pilgrims are less compared to men, Gents toilets are more in number.

Also, lot of cardio hospitals are also present at regular intervals. But when we went, not many of them were open. I guess it functions only during the regular pilgrimage season of Nov-Jan.

5.30 PM (approx). We were at the top. The words "Sarnam Ayyappa" Written boldly on the wall of the temple complex made me overwhelmed with emotions. Though we were not allowed to climb the holy 18 steps, as we were not carrying the traditional Irumudi, we felt blessed just by looking at it. Huge serpentine queue of devotees waiting to climb the 18 holy steps had formed at my left side. We turned Right and asked for the direction for darshan of the lord.

There was no queue for darshan for normal visitors like us. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the sanctum sanctorum was just a small room sans the huge temple enclosure. We just had to pass along a line taking the darshan of the lord from outside. Felt really blessed after taking the darshan. The Lord's idol is very unique in so many ways. Unlike the idol of gods in other Hindu temples, here the Lord is sitting on a platform with right hand held in blessing position and left hand rested on the left knee. The Gold plated Idol of Lord was sight to behold. Since there was no queue as such, we decided to come back for another round of darshan.

6.00 PM. After spending some time around the temple premises, we started our journey back to the shore of Holy Pampa. It was getting dark already and we had to ensure that we reached the base quickly.

7.30 PM. We were at the base. Walking downhill is as difficult as climbing up. Legs need to keep the pace under control as the path is full of tiny stones. Once at the base, we got back our foot wears and after roaming a bit(the sheer joy of wearing the chappal made us so happy that we were wandering a bit in spite of being tired!!), we reached the Bus station at 8PM. There was no bus in sight. A taxi walla (who we later discovered that he is actually an auto walla), was pestering us with the offer to drop us to Kottayam for 1500/-. But we unanimously decided that we will not opt for his service owing to security concerns. After a bit of enquiry, we found out that a bus will go to Chenganoor city around 8.30 PM.

8.15 PM. The bus indeed came to the stand and we all got inside. One of us enquired with the driver/conductor about the timings. Not sure what the crew told, but we took it this way - that the bus will not leave until it's full. So we sat down hoping that it will get filled up soon and we will reach the town quickly. But not a single soul came in for another 10mins. A dhaba was there right in front of the bus stand. Hunger, coupled with the gut feeling that the bus may take another 15mins to move; we decided to have quick-dinner and got down without informing the crew(who were standing at a distance from the bus). We were sure that we will have real quick dinner and be back in 10mins. But the moment we took our seats in the dhaba and the rice was served, the bus just zoomed off and we kept staring at it with mouth wide open and hands paused on its way to our mouth carrying food. I was quick to recover from the shocker and assure my friends that we may get another bus and there is no need to worry as such. We finished our dinner peacefully after my assurance.

9.00 PM. True to the words of one shopkeeper, another bus - supposed to be the last one that night - which goes to Chenganoor, came to the stand. This time, we didn't showcase our daredevil trait. In spite of feeling thirsty, not one of us dared to get down to buy a water bottle also! The bus left Pamba at close to 9.45PM.

16th Feb - Sunday

12.30 AM. The bus reached Chenganoor Bus Station. A couple of roadside shops were open and a few autos were there. After a bit of struggle, we understood that there is no bus starting from here but buses which pass via this town to Kottayam may give a stop at this place and we need to catch that to reach Kottayam. Though it was not an assurance as such, but we were too sleepy and tired to worry also. But by God's grace, soon a bus came and we all got into it. We reached Kottayam by travelling in that bus standing for 1 hour!

1.30 AM. Reached Kottayam. Everyone of us, half-minded, agreed to check out if there is any bus bound to Calicut in short while(as we had to gather our luggage from the lodge, buses leaving immediately at that moment were of no help to us). But to everyone's relief, we found that there are buses to only Trivandrum and some closer towns and the bus to Calicut will start only after 5am or so.

So we decided to head to the lodge and rest for a while and then come back after getting ready by taking bath and completing other work (read nature calls). All 4 of us promised each other that we will be up and ready by 6am. I went to bed only after answering all calls from nature and taking a refreshing cold water shower. Rest of the people were in deep trance (even if someone stole their kidneys also, they wouldn't have woken up I guess).

7.30 AM. Yes. Full 1.5 hrs delay from our promised time of getting ready. We were in Kottayam Bus Station. There was no direct bus either to Calicut or to Mysore. So we decided to take a bus to Thrissur (which is on the way to Calicut). At around 10 AM, we reached Thrissur where we had a quick breakfast and boarded a bus going to Calicut at 10.30 AM. We had the lunch in Calicut where we reached around 1.30PM. On my suggestion, the gang decided to venture out and try out the food in a decent restaur instead of having in the hotel in Bus Station. But the non-spicy veg biryani didn't meet the expectation of any of the 4 guys. Came back to bus station and boarded a bus to Mysore at 3PM.

9PM. Back to Mysore. We made it. A sense of achievement was overflowing inside me. Out of 60 hrs, we were travelling for 50(plus) hours - which includes the trek to the temple by foot also. When I had called up my mom after having Darshan, she sounded "Good Lord, you did it. I'm Happy". She is not the one who displays such emotions easily, at least to me. That made me to wonder why she sounded like that. Only after arrival, when I spoke to her about hardships we faced during the trek, she confided in me that she was worried all along those 2 days about my safety. Her prayers alone helped me and my friends to accomplish this without any major hardships. Swamiye Sarnam Ayyappa.

Learn to Earn

2014-01-01T08:53:00.004-08:00

"Sir, I actually wanted to tell you one thing.....". On the way to our building inside the office campus, I came across this Fresher girl who had just joined our project. A few days back I had delivered a formal session related to project and software testing concepts to her and 2 more people. "Your session was really very good..". No need to mention that I was happy to hear that but I went ahead and asked her some more question as I wanted to know my plus points and minus points. "Why because...... Actually after we left university, we didn't listen such kind of session.... the Company training also was also not so good... they just focussed on completing the syllabus stuff..... so after a long gap we got to hear a session in which the concepts were explained so clearly... ".

I am not trying to boast about myself here(well not intentionally :P). All i wanted to point out was about the education system in place in our society today. Lack of good teachers is cause of worry for a long time now. Parents in Cities trying their best to get their children admitted to premier schools is common sight. In the name of providing good education, the way these so called premier schools charge the fees is also well known. What is the impact of all these? Quality education becomes a luxury that can be afforded only by Uber Rich class. Providing education to children becomes as expensive and as stressful as getting a house constructed on loan. Professional courses have already become super expensive. No doubt about that. What I'm talking about is the elementary school education.

The other day i was reading a article in a newspaper (or Mag i dont remember clearly). The author had presented a really nice solution for this potential-bomb. There is no other service or job in our country which is respected the way Civil services is respected. So why not have something called ITS - Indian Teaching service? Such that bright people don't loose the opportunity to achieve their dream career of getting into Civil services and also can contribute to the teaching fraternity. It may be difficult to do it at UPSC level taking into consideration the sheer number involved. But definitely it can be achieved by the state level public services (with a little bit of effort).

The Govt hardly cares about the root cause of any problem. It is only interested about the symptoms. There is this Food Security Bill in pipeline, waiting for parliament approval , which assures food grains for all BPL families at magical rates. There is a symptom prevailing in the society - malnutrition. Any 7th grade student will tell you that this symptom's root cause is illiteracy. But the govt and the people are interested only in quick-fix for the symptom. Nobody gives a damn to the root cause. What this Food Bill will do? Create some more burden on already strained coffers of the state. This inturn will be passed on to the tax-paying middle class people whose disposable income gets further shrinked, making it further difficult to afford the basic things. Finally it boils down to this - drag on GDP. The financial matter of this ill-concieved bill can be discussed with finer details. But that is not the point i want to talk about here. I just wanted to present the picture of what is happening at macro level .

During the recently concluded 93rd convocation ceremony of Mysore University, the Union Education minister gave a statement that it is impossible to make education available to everyone! It took considerable amount of effort on my part to fight back the anger that raged inside me when i read it in the newspaper. People with responsibility are giving as absurd statement as this instead of concentrating on putting some effort in the positive direction. There was this one more stupid Bill that was cleared a couple of years back by our parliament - RTE Bill. The Right to Education. The supreme court had to poke the govt to get it implemented after it was passed (somebody had filed a PIL showing the lack of interest on the part of govt to oversee the implementation of the bill). But alas, this was again a quick-fix for the symptom that was growing. Lack of enough schools is glaringly visible for everyone out there. But the Govt forced the(existing) schools (itself) to induct min % of students from BPL families. This in turn pushed the fee for the available seats (to others) further skywards. What did the schools do? They sold these reserved seats to rich-class people for exorbiant rates by fudging the records. A part of this money also went into the pockets of the BPL family which had applied for that seat!

The only Asset that our country has in abundant is Human Resource. The onus is on us to elect a responsible govt, or to do something effective such that the country's economy improves in a way that this HR asset's Capability can be tapped positively. Stagnant Economy has little to offer for the Educated youth. If Providing good Education is one half of the job then ensuring the growth of Economy is another half. Hope we see a sea of change in coming years which can make these two things happen.

The Q mentality

2013-03-03T00:24:00.001-08:00

Wow, the first post of this year. Had completely forgotten that i had not posted even one blog this year. And what made me to post this? The same old too cliché topic, problems that our country face.

I was waiting in the gas station to get the tyre pressure checked. It is quite common to see that two-wheelers want to get their bike's tyre pressure checked first whenever there are 4 wheelers waiting in the queue. "Our's just two tyres ree.... your's 4 tyres... what??? "people would grumble when the car owner insists on following FCFS (first come first serve) rule. A typical indian would get "adjusted" to these sort of things after experiencing it for one or two times. So is the case with me. I didnt protest when a couple of 2-wheelers jumped the queue, overtook my car and insisted on getting their vehicles attended before the cars -including mine - standing in the queue.

So after attending to 2 - 3 such q-jumpers, the guy was about to attend to my car when out of blue a biker came from nowhere. It was quite natural for any normal-sane guy to tell point blank that the car deserved the turn since it was waiting for quite long time and the same the station guy also did. He then requested the biker to move ahead a bit so that the car can come in front and stand within the length of the air-pressure pipe. This infuriated the biker like anything who took it as an insult. He sped off from the place after shouting at the guy his heart content. I was amused.

I was reading a book called "Jack patel's Dubai dreams". The book started with the writer, a NRI, saying that if there is one thing he hates most about india, it is the lack of ethics in following queue rules which is contrasting to how it is in UK. I first attributed it to the population explosion. But slowly i learnt it is not the only reason. Recently there was a record breaking longest traffic jam in China outsied Beijing. The traffic had piled upto 300Km in length. But surprisingly, not a single soul tried to jump the lane or resorted to any dirty-shortcuts to come out of the jam. The traffic was held up in that situation for quite a few days!!

Compare this with our fellow drivers on Indian roads. Recently I was driving in Indiranagar 100 Ft road and had stopped in one traffic signal at a junction where 4 road meet. When the signal turned green, i tried to go straight. Suddenly a Car which was on Left lane, suddenly took a steep right turn with great speed. I applied the brakes hardly and was too taken aback to even react at that stupid car driver.

It is not limited to roads alone. People resort to dirty-tricks in any q that you see in any corner of the country. If someone asks me what is the one thing that you think is common among the people of entire India, i will say the mentality that we all have w.r.t q-jumping-tricks. Be it temples, ticket counters in cinema halls etc. People want to break the rules with unique dirty tricks. I think they derive the joy out of it. When a person gets the task done before those who were standing in the line for more length of time than him, he feels great about himself. He is now owner of a great success story involving himself which he treasures and shares with his friends, family and even with unknown people if required. "Dukh bantne se kam hoti hai aur khushiyan bantne se badthi hai... " Paresh Rawal says in the epic movie "hera pheri". So this chap who defeated others in the line, has to share his story of "Success" so that he can derive more joy. Whatever time he saved in his life by jumping the q line, he will invest that in going around the town talking about his success.

Off late, i feel that the educated people are resorting to this more than the so called illiterate/less-educated ones. Just a few days before I was standing in q to get the tickets for the movie "Kai Po Che" which was being screened in our office Multiplex. In that one hour i was standing in the q, I was witness to so many dirty-tricks being played by so many "Educated fellas" that it left me ashamed that such people are all the part of same company that I am also in. You should see the smile on their face when they succeed in their attempt to squeeze into the line. This in spite of the fact that there were nearly 10 security people deployed to manage the rush. Having the security people to manage us itself has to be a shame on our part. Do we really need them to help us remember the mannerisms and to remain honest in the q line??

Compare this with the q lines in front of Govt fair-price shops (which normally we call as society or ration shop) in smaller towns and villages. People follow such good mannerisms while in the q. When we were in Chickballapur, there was one such shop in front of our house. Once in a month, the kerosone oil would be distributed to the people. One should see the discipline that they follow in maintaining the Q. No security, no police to help them maintain the integrity of the line. The long serpentine q used to reach till the end of the long road. Still nobody dared to play any tricks. And like the cinema tickets, even the supply of oil used to be limited. Hardly half of the people in line would get their quota of the oil. Those who didnt get today, have to come tomorrow and stand in the q once again. And they used to come if required.

Tailpiece : I didnt start writing this post as the last and final part of my "Time, Technology and generation" series. But when i was done and was reviewing it once before posting, i felt it has got relation with the topic coincidently. With all the advancement in technology, we tend to get everything as fast as we could and end up trading the good manners and honesty in bargain i think. Recently while i was waiting for my turn in Aadhar enrollment q, i was witness to one more such incident where a mother of 2 children used child-sentiment to get turn ahead of others with emotional melodrama. This is where it starts i felt. Parents and teachers, who are supposed to teach good principles in children, end up doing entirely opposite.

Time, Technology and... generation. Part 2

2012-11-13T07:00:00.003-08:00

(continued from previous post.. )

"ye naye zamane ke ladke... " every generation bollywood movie has got this dialog. I used to think that 70's and older movies would not have this line. But a little bit of research helped me to derive the correct fact - the dialog has been the asset of the bolloywood for many a generation now. Like the ancestral property, the line has been inherited by all generations. So the theorem thus proves that every new generation gets deviated from the rules-of-good-book by certain degree. And every deviation of every new generation is aided by a new change that is remarkable in that generation - Movie, computer, internet, fashion, and the latest spoiler of current generation - the mobile phone and tablet pc. Every new generation deviating got drifted away from the complex business of understanding the religion and its underlying fundamentals.

Lord Krishna says in Geeta “I provide the intelligence to human beings, how they use it is left to them”. Why go till Geeta, in the hit Hollywood movie “Bruce Almighty” Morgan Freeman says the same line. Technology has been developed by the humans with the intelligence they r gifted with. How do we use it is again dependent on us. Mobiles are used by teens for what not these days. But the same can be used to access social networking sites and share useful information. Recently I happened to watch the movie Oh My God and I instantly shared the good dialogs and scene pics of the movie. Many a people liked it.

The movie tried to expose the dirty affairs regarding the self-appointed religious heads (swamijis, christian fathers and maulvis) and showed how foolishly people are getting duped by them. Huge sum of money flows into their fold due to innocence (if it can be termed like that) of people.. There are a lot of rituals which many people follow in various religions. With the change in time, people started to ask questions behind these. Unavailability of people who could provide proper answers has made the younger gen loose faith in their respective religion. The movie OMG had an excellent message. If you don’t understand the rituals, fine. Instead of going behind the magic-making-self-appointed-swamijis and wasting crores of money, donate it to the people in need. Help the human kind (or at least that is what my conclusion was after watching it). Both the movie and the book have helped me a lot for answering so many questions that I myself had.

Thanks to the authors like Amish and Ashwin Sanghi who have made good attempts to decode the mythology and making it an interesting topic currently in the market. Amish's books gave out a message that "Gods are human beings, who became god due to their good virtue". Lord Krishna in udupi turned around in diametrically opposite direction, to give darshan to his famous devotee kanakadasa, thus creating the famous kanakana kindi (the window of kanaka) in the holy temple in udupi. Recently, i happened to listen to the pravachana that is read by purohit during satyanarayana vrata. In that, purohit explains as to why the vrata is so sacred. It seems Lord Narada asked some question to the Lord Vishnu(forgot the correct question) for which the lord replied that "for the sake of simplicity of the people of kaliyug, who are under delusion and always pressed for time and dedication for god, it is enough if they worship me by doing this higly simple vrata. No need for them to do any difficult yaga and homa as this vrata will be equivalent of all of them". There is plenty of opportunities around us to feel the god and get answers for anything related to mythology. Only dedication is required i feel.

While Movies such as OMG might have helped us build the faith, there are some movies which might have acted in negative way although unintentionally. The way the divine weapons (or rather magical weapons as one gets tempted to say) are shown in the war scenes of certain mythological movies have been matter of fun for many people. I too had this question as to how come there could be weapon of this kind in that era. But I was proved wrong. With every new Yuga, the knowledge of people goes down, opposite of what we thought. So these technology products such as Mobiles, computers and weapons of modern times are not greatest as we have believed. Just consider this – the fact that sushruta - the father of surgery, existed such long ago itself is the proof of great knowledge that the ancients had. There could have been so much of science knowledge present in those times that all the things which we read in mythology such as a person coming out alive from near-death situation, passing thru fires, building highly sophisticated palaces are not because they are connected to gods in some or other way. But due to the help of science! The fact that science was present during that time has been ignored and thus when we read such miracles without keeping the fact (of existence of science) at the back of our mind, either of two things happen i.e. we may either get forced to believe them without any logic since we believe in god or one may loose faith completely since we don’t find any logical base for that.

(To be continued... )

Time, technology and ...... generation - Part 1

2012-11-13T06:59:00.002-08:00

And one more bday came and went. Lots of wishes, lots of calls. Good to talk to so many friends on the same day. I feel good that at least on this day, my mobile battery gets spent on the actual functionality for which the mobile was designed - call and text, rather than on listening to FM and music.

Looking back, i feel quite amused as to how we manage to survive without this electronic gadget. These days, it doesnt matter where a person is located? just dial his mobile number and talk to him. If there s not much to talk, just text him to convey the short message. Cities has grown, it is practically not possible to go and meet friends and relatives easily. Not that it was easy before, but the lifestyle too has changed now. I still remember my first year of engg. Mobile was just making its entry into indian market then and it was a expensive device. Even the incoming call was as expensive as 16/- per min. Only Airtel was offering the service then. I was staying in a room in mysore. Owner was in ground floor and our room was in 1st floor. My mother used to call to the land line number in owner's house and the maid used to shout from the window. I had to rush down, wait beside the phone sitting on a sofa till my mom called again.

Monsoon season is very tricky in mysore. One can hardly predict whether it will rain on that day looking at the sky. It would start raining all of a sudden and sometimes wont stop for hours together. One fine day, when me and my roomate went out for first time after joining the college in 1st sem, it started raining cats n dogs. We had to wade thru knee deep water thru the center of city to reach the city bus stand (majestic of mysore), catch the bus and reach our room. It was not too late and so i wasnt worried much after reaching our destination. Vignesh, my roomie, quickly rushed upstairs and i was following him when i heard the maid shout out my name from the window. I was dripping all over and certainly didnt quite feel like taking a call from home at this situation. I stood in front of door. As soon as she opened it, she started questionaire. Apparantely, my mom had called some 3-4 times in eve and was eager to know where i had been. Being still new guys, and that too jst out of teenage, there was certain amount of apprehension in owner's mind. So there was a huge burden on us to convince them that we are not smokers/drinkers or making-merry-on-dad's-money kind of guys. I told her that i will change and come back. After 20mins, when my mom called, i spoke to her and there wasnt even a small degree of worry in her voice since she knows me very well. Since it was the first time i went out, she wasnt quite used to know that "I can/need to go out". If only i had the mobile then there was no need for the maid to show off her attitude, nor i had to listen to her and answer her questionaire.

It was only in 3rd sem that i got my first mobile. It was a great relief for me as well as my roomie since we could talk to our family sitting in room itself. All we need to do was give a missed call to dad's mobile and within a couple of mins, the mobile would ring. It was definitely a great relief. As time progressed, more and more functionalites got added to the small hand held gadget. Now it is hard to see people sans their earphones plugged to their ears. Whether they listen to FM/Music all day long? I wonder. And for girls, there are only 3 things. Either they will be talking to companion (girl/boy) who are with them, talking on mobile or listen to FM if they r alone.

(To be continued.... )

Along the way

2012-10-14T08:24:00.003-07:00

Recently, I completed reading the 3rd book of Ashwin sanghi - Krishna Key. The book was brilliant. Lot of research was being done by the author around the Krishna-Dwaraka-Shiva. But at some corner of my mind, I felt that it didn't match the brilliance of his earlier book - Chanakya's Chant. The way he had structured that story, creating the fictional version of Chanakya's story which ran parallel with a contemporary story set against the current affairs in politics, the charm was missing in his latest offering. I thought I might have not concentrated properly while reading it (there were just too many proofs for various beliefs related to mythology) and hence I felt so. But when I browsed the net, I got to know that many shared the same opinion as mine.

That made me to think about myself. I was introduced to the Writing-hobby when the Newsletter team in the project in which I was working in my 1st company invited articles or other contributions from the project people. I just wanted to give it a try and submitted a imaginary story which if you ask me even now, I feel there was nothing special in it. Well the rest was history and I think I have discussed already about this in another post. I was a hero overnight and this overwhelming reaction made me to take up blogging where I made a promise of writing regularly, just to break that promise later.

None of my contributions to the newsletter received any special reaction after the stupendous debut I had. People started stacking it up in their To-do list of the day, since they knew that there would be something in the article but definitely not "That something" so as to give it first priority in the day. No, I'm not saying that I felt let down or that I stopped blogging. None of them happened (well, blogging went on to become more and more less frequent). But I wanted to pour it out from my heart here and tell to myself that it is really so hard to be a writer, to win people's satisfaction, to churn out that-really-interesting-story regularly, to deliver something fresh and new each time. And when I see this feat being achieved by so many authors out there, I feel so great about them. I just sit and admire about their creative abilities after finishing the last page of that book written by them.

For a writer to get new ideas, he has to be in touch with people. People from different walks of life. The more we converse with people, the more broader our ideas get. The more fodder for our brain. Recently, I felt that I wanted to be in a profession where I could meet lot of people on daily basis - a doctor, a Public servant etc. MY friend who was working with Marketing division of a very famous MNC used to share stories about the people who he used to meet from Govt dept. owing to his sales responsibility. There are other friends who being doctors, have to meet so many people, whether they like it or not. "The toughest assignment while doing M.S is when you are posted to govt hospitals. So many people die daily just because they cannot afford the treatment cost in pvt hospitals, where we ask them to move the patients due to non availability of facilities in the govt hosp". I asked him how it felt. "Initially there was lot of agitation inside... the urge to hit someone, shout at someone..... do something... something to save them...... but gradually we started to admit that we are helpless..... " A pause and then we force the smiles on our face and switch the topic.

My mom is an ardent fan of Sudha Murthy (not sure if I have made a mention of this in my earlier blogs). She just loves them for one reason - practicality. No other novels are so close to reality - she tells me. There is a reason for that. Being part of the Infosys Foundation (charity trust), she has met Millions of people, both good and other side of good. And her books are nothing but the reflections of her experience with them. My personal favourites are - Mahashwetha (I just love it. Had tears in my eyes at several junctions while reading it), Gently falls Bakula.

To put it more broadly, meeting people will give inputs - inputs turn to idea. IF you are not a writer, the idea can be learning lesson. There you are. This is nothing but the basic theorem of life. Meet people, watch good movies & TV programs, read books - everything that gives input for us to handle the different challenges that the life throws at us. "If you don't do now itself what you want to do , you will repent after 20 years about it..." My friend told one day while having lunch in my favourite Fish restaurant one day. I was discussing with her my desire to learn how to ride a geared bike and to own one. But my parents were totally against it. Apart from the desire to learn it, I wanted to switch over to a geared bike from activa to save on my monthly fuel bill. "I think you have to go for it... millions of people ride bike.... if you think you can ride it safely and have self control, what is stopping you? " My friend concluded. There I was, being firm on my decision to buy a good economical and "Safe" bike, I conveyed it to my parents. Though there was a slight reluctance, my mom agreed looking at my confidence and not without giving a disk full of safety instructions.

There is definitely lot to discuss... But I don't want to bottle up whatever I've written so far and work on it later and make it a lengthy and boring to read. Instead I will divide it and would make it interesting to read. If my decision doesn't change, I will come back with part2 of this.....

"Buy this, or else.....

2012-06-10T00:29:00.002-07:00

Every year the period from March to july (sometimes till august) is the best revenue period for Newspapers. This is the period when most of the competitive exams results will be out and the colleges will start giving ads in various newpapers to show "their" achievements.

Recently, i was attending a training. The trainer there made one excellent comment on the business tactics that the various industries survive upon. Not tactics, its just one single "Tactic" that they make use of. And what is that?"To sell something to a customer, prove to the customer that he is going to be a loser without that".

Take one simple example - fair and lovely ad. Always the company makes one (several aspiring models) to believe that they cant survive in fashion and related industries (media, news, entertainment channels, sport etc) if they are dark complexioned. If we go by their view, Kajol should not have entered bollywood. People who dont trust their own natural abilities and talents, fall prey to such misleading ad campaigns and start loosing their self confidence. The ad, if not anything else, makes one to think about a newly created problem (not being fair skinned) and the talented person drains his/her energy completely on that useless, stupid problem, instead of planning to move ahead towards the goal.

That was an example of how unfairly this fair n lovely co has been promoting their products (beware - recent studies has shown that these fairness products contain harmful chemicals like Mercury!! Please be very careful with such kind of shady cosmetics which claims to improve the shade of your skin). I fail to understand why people are so obsessed with changing somethings as skin color, nose shape, etc, which are god given and our personal identification characteristics. ultimately, one fine day we all have to leave this body here and go back to pavillion from where we came. We will not carry this body nor whatever we have earned here. Why this obsession? Why cant we live in peace with what we have got naturally by the grace of god? Are we afraid of being a subject of gossip - "look at that curly haired guy..... see see, that girl thinks she is kajol or something......... look at that bulgy nosed girl..."? It is this fear that the cosmetic companies, the beauty parlours etc are using as their "tactics" to survive upon.

Lets get back to the point which i mentioned in first paragraph. Recently, while in mysore, i was reading a local newspaper. There was hardly any news in that except pages n pages of ads of various high school toppers in SSLC and PU toppers, put up by their respective schools and colleges. I failed to notice any difference between these institutions and the insurance companies ads that are coming these days. Both try to drive home the one single point - "Plan for future". While the insurance co shows how badly the situation gets at the time of any accidents or other health problems, if we dont have the insurance (a genuine way actually, but show some sensitiveness also), the educational institutions try to fool the parents and students that if they are not studying in their institutions, they dont stand to get a chance to win the rat race - potential cause of worry in future. The child - even though talented and having god gifted iq, gets carried away by the ad and starts losing his/her confidence. Same goes with parents too.

Two movies made me to realise how vulnerable we are in the hands of this news channels - Rann (hindi), Aarakshan. Both Amitabh bachan movies. The former movie shows how the news channels, in their bid to be the top channel, twists and tweaks the truths and present it to viewers. its this mad race for gaining the TRP's that the news channels are fogetting the ethics of the journalism profession and doing whatever it takes to be at the top.

Aarakshan shows how the coaching classes are thriving these days, due to the highly competitive entrance tests existing in our educational system today. As the ads show the photos of succesfull candidates in IIT, IAS exams etc. Parents start to panic - what if my child fails to make a place for itself in this space? Or to put it other way, and the most probable reason that haunts the most of the parents is - what if our neighbor's/relative's/colleague's child makes it to the top institute and my child fails to do the same? Fear drives out the confidence from the minds of both the parents and the students. Unless a student gets enrolled himself in Bansal coaching classes in Kota, he will not have a remote chances of making it into any of the 7 IITs. This self created fear consumes the most of the energy in the victims mind, making it to loose confidence in themselves ( A human mind has a something called as energy which drives one to achieve what it wants - to reach to a goal, to complete a work, to do something in general. It heavily depends on how a individual directs this energy to achieve the goal. This was explained in our traditional books as well as scientifically proved recently. if required, we can google and check more info on this).

Lets take a look at 80's and 90's - a period when the fourth estate - the news industry was not muddied by too many players. There was one DD1 on which we were dependent for the news and a Indian express newspaper (or a regional language newspaper) - which though expensive to afford, was the commonly used news paper. With the cost of ads at peak (due to non-availability of too many choices like today), these shady educational instis and coaching classes were not having a option to create a fear in the minds of students and parents. The result was that more number of self-confident, naturally talented, self-coached students were making it to the top institutes in their respective fields. So what has happened today? Ofcourse i'm not telling that the students those days used to think that it is dead easy to crack IIT-JEE or UPSC or AIIMS medical test. But atleast, they(the naturally talented folks) were not wrongly lead to believe these are the only career options to survive and so you have to join coaching, read our materials, and what not, to be able to crack it.

I strongly wish that we - the society stops getting fooled by the ads. Be the owner of our choices. Dont give away that freedom to some companies. Lets be genuine in our choices. Lets not loose our self confidence. Lets start doing what we love, what we have envisaged as our goals, what we know as our natural talents, what we think will help us to live in peace with ourselves and with the society.

Let me end this blog with two interesting facts - in US, in last 1 decade alone, more than 50% of news papers have closed down as the citizens there have realised how foolish they are to read those stupid news. In Kerala - a lady who was a nurse by profession, cracked the UPSC exam twice. Once she scored 560th rank which she felt was not good enough and hence took it for 2nd time and got 50th rank!

Shirdi Nashik Tour

2012-03-26T11:01:00.003-07:00

5 days & 4 Nights, 3000+ Kms, 2 days and 2 Nights spent
in train journey - the stats sounds very impossible to imagine. But not when
you want to have darshan of the Lord of Shirdi - Shri Shirdi Sai Baba and one
of the 12 Jyotirlings of Lord Shiva at Tryambakeshwar in Nashik.

Yes, with the gods blessings, Me and my mom were able to
accomplish this. Like how it was mentioned in one of Sai devotee's blogs - its
not possible to have darshan of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba without his divine
blessings - all i want to say here is that, though it may look like the tour
was planned by me, it was just because of Lords blessings that we were able to
have his darshan and I was merely acting as his instrument.

On one fine day in end of jan - begining of Feb month, I
just casually proposed this idea to my mom about a trip to Shirdi. Mom agreed
instantly. All i had to do was book a train to shirdi, since my mom cannot
travel in bus for long distance journey. I thought that if i manage to get a
LIC guest house booked near shirdi by dad, we will stay there overnight and
return to bangalore the next day. Once the proposal was accepted by mom, i got
down to train ticket booking business since i had heard that its very difficult
to get ticket to shirdi by train since many people visit the holy place and
hence tickets are booked very well in advance.

As expected, the tickets to Kopergaon - the nearest station
to Shirdi - were booked till the 90th day (the max limit which the railways
website allows you to book your ticket in advance). So this option was ruled
out. My idea was to plan the trip during the Ugadi festival day since it is off
for me on that day & with one day of paid leave, i get full 4 days for my
trip. But with the disappointment of not getting the tickets, the planning took
backseat for a couple of days. I really dont know what happened after that.
gradually one fine day, from the sources i dont remember now, i came to know
that Shirdi is 4 hours journey from Mumbai. The plan was restructured now.
Instead of going to kopergaon by train, we will go to Mumbai and stay there in
my aunt's (Mom's dearest elder sister) house and from there we can go to Shirdi
by either bus or taxi. Bingo, the idea got its approval stamp by mom. A formal
announcement was made on this regard to others in my family as well as to my
aunt, uncle and their son - my cousin, in Mumbai. My aunt was happy hearing
this. But they didnt pay much attention to other details like - whether they
should join me n mom, how to go etc. But neverthless, the idea got its stamp of
approval from both the stakeholders. Thus, i booked tickets for me n mom
(Asking dad to accompany us on our tours during the month of march - financial
year end month - is like asking my dearest sis Nikitha not to read Novel during
her semester vacations!!) for to and fro journey.

The catch - while restructuring the plan, the fact that we will be going to mumbai failed
to get registered in my mind properly. It never striked to me that I will
hardly get one night of stay in my aunt's house. Neither did my mom realise
this.

March 21st 2012 - 8.10 P.M Sharp. Location : Majestic Railway
Station, Bangalore. The Udyan Express left bangalore at 8.10PM sharp. The train
chugged its way through Kar, AP and Maharashtra, reaching mumbai at 7.30 PM
sharp next day. My Aunt and uncle were at Dadar railway station an hour before
the train's arrival - despite knowing that the train is on schedule !! It took
another 1.5 hours to reach home at Borivili east.

March 23rd - 6.15 AM. Left the home at early morning to beat
the weekend crowd and traffic in Mumbai and get out of the city at the
earliest. My cousin, with the help of his friend's network, had booked a Innova
taxi well in advance. we Had the breakfast at a restaur in the outskirts of the
city. when we were out of the city, in Mumbai Nashik Highway, we noticed large
number of small groups of people walking along the side of the road. SOme were
even walking bare foot. Later my cousin told that they are all going to Shirdi
by walk!!! They start on the day of Gudi Padwa (ugadi) and reach Shirdi after 7
days!!! I was speechless. How much effort may go into planning for such holy
tasks.

We reached Shirdi around 11.15 am. By the time we were
standing in the q it was around 12 and the aarti for the lord started. So we
had to wait till it got over and then the q started moving. It took nearly 3
hours altogether when we finally came out after having Lord's Darshan. In this
blog, all that i want to write is how the lord led me to his place and gave his
darshan to me. Because this is the only way I can repay him - by helping his other
devotees to know my experience. The one
that i find it difficult to explain in this blog is the beauty of the moment
when I had his darshan. I jut dont know how i can explain that. For all those
who are having that desire in their mind from long time - to get the blessings
of lord - this is my suggestion : Please do plan it today. Lord will take care
of rest of the things.

we had lunch in a hotel in the shopping mall just behind the
temple campus and started to Shani Shingapur. I dont remember the time exactly,
but we reached there well before the sunset and had good darshan of Lord Shani
there. The place is around 80 km from Shirdi and lots of shared taxis go there
from Shirdi. Like it was mentioned in one of the blogs, you need not search for
a taxi to go to shani shingapur, the taxi wallahs will search for you:)

9.30 PM. We reached Nashik. It took 15mins of roaming inside
the city before we located the LIC guest house (make good use of the company
resources). The building might have been built by british, said my cousin, looking
at the room situated one floor above the terrace !! But for 300 rs, it was the
most cheapest & best room that one could get. We stayed overnight here.

24th of March 2012: 6 am. Thanks to my over cautious uncle -
we all got ready withing the self imposed deadline of 6 am, even if it meant
that the common bathroom and toilet had to be seized and banned for use of the
guest of another room till then!! We first went to Panchavati - a place where
the river godavari meets with another river. This place has some significance
with the Holy Ramayan. (forgive me for ignorance of complete knowledge of this
place. I had not imagined that we could go to Nashik within 2 days and one
night!! So i didnt make it a point to google, before starting on the tour).
Then we went to sita ki gumpha - a underground temple dedicated to Godess sita.
As per my uncle, Sita did her penance here. Note : if you are a obese, stay
away from attempting to reach this temple thru the narrow steps leading to it
under the ground.

After having the breakfast, we started towards
Trayambakeshwar. My first visit to a Jyotirling temple situated in North of
india ( The only other jyotirling temple i visited was Rameswaram, way back
during my 7th std). What to explain about the natural beauty of this place. The
whole place is covered by mountains of different kind, which you hardly get to
see down the south India side. It seems the temple is located at the origin of
River godavari (i assume so, not sure though). Its a beautiful place. It took 2
hours for Darshan of the lord. The temple is built by one of the prominent
Marathi King. The temple has beautiful carvings on its walls.

5.45 PM: Reached home in Mumbai. I wanted to do so many
things within the 2 hours time we had, before we left to railway station. But
all that i managed to do was, answer nature call, take bath and go out with my
cousin and buy a few of my fav mumbai-special food - Dahi Kachori (please for
god's sake dont imagine the dahi kachori that we get here in Bangalore),
Dabheli, small kachoris, Pav bhaji etc. Dont ask me how much of it i ate (or rather stuffed) there itself and how
much of it we packed and took along with us to bangalore.

7:15 PM - Cousin got a taxi to go to Dadar railway station.
Mom, Aunt and me felt really bad for having not stayed in home properly for a
day, even after coming so far. I had tuff time explaining my mistake ( please
refer to "Catch" paragraph above and do understand me). It was time
to say bye and leave. Aunt and cousin accompanied us to the station. (Due to
the concern and love of my aunt's family, hardly have i ever ventured out on
mumbai streets all alone. They dont want us to go out alone and get into any
trouble in the megacity of our country. Due to this, I always feel like a illiterate
village guy whenever i step into mumbai city.)

8.30 PM: Reached the crowded Dadar station. Spent 1 hour
inside the train talking to aunt and cousin. Ofcourse the often discussed topic
was the mistake I did by not spending a day more in mumbai and one more
important personal family topic. But at the end of it, the happiness was
visible on everyone's face - my mom, aunt, cousin and well..... me (yeah, i
experienced it). Train left at sharp 9.30 P.M.

25th March 2012: 10.45 PM. Reached yeshwantpur station,
Bangalore.

Sachinnnnn sachin

2012-03-17T00:30:00.001-07:00

And it was finally done. Aishwarya couple named their baby
after 4 months (wonder what they were waiting for ), and immediately sachin
scored his 100th 100 thus getting renamed as TONdulkar by media.
It was all a confusing types on a single day. I was not able
to understand why the media seemed to be so relieved knowing that the AB's
named their baby. I understand that they are celebrity couple, but it went too
much this time. More than the AB family, i felt the media was worried with the
unnamed baby(they even went to the extent of naming it Beti B for temporary
sake. Like the Temp registration for cars). Today morning when i read in the
paper about this, I was made to think as if even I was waiting for this to
happen. The news was really forcing us to believe whatever silly news they had
to sell. Foolish me. [putting this within brackets to avoid self-embarrassment.
In spite of such silly news being stuffed into that movie supplement of the
paper, i still continue to read it. So to summarize it, the above view point
may not indicate that i'm super fed up with this supplement paper. Rather it
may be indicate how i waste time in reading such useless stuff and later make
fun of myself. Confusing isn't it? That's what i said at the beginning of the
paragraph!].

And its time now for people to air their opinion. But
thankfully, i was part of a evening Tea-group which used the ocassion to
discuss innovative scenarios out of this milestone of Tondulkar. So, what are
the takeaways for Bangla after this historic milestone? The bowler can tell his
kids n grandkids - "See, he scored his 100th run of 100th 100 in my over.
see see... ". To help him further, cricket channels will keep airing this
innings till eternity(borrowed this word - eternity - from a fb update on same
topic ;) !! increases the impact of the sentence).

Back to the office, I was made to attend a meeting (why
didnt i take my bike key while going for tea-break??????). Outside the meeting
room, typpical indian ishtyle statements started to come out of the
self-proclaimed cricket experts. "So did he announce
retirement?""No no, he will announce it tomorrow". "Only
against team like Bangla he can score". "Ya, bangla, Kenya....
(pause).... Afghanistan". Afghan?? How on earth could you imagine them
even play gully cricket ?

Then it was our country's finance minister's turn to slam a
similar slap on us with his budget. The day just ended with lot of confusion. I
kind of ended up linking the two incidences of the day. When i logged into my
laptop and opened the IE, the default homepage opened up msn.com which was
showing the slides of rare photographs of master blaster. The different phases
of indian economy was visible in those snaps(i thought). When he started his
cricket career, hardly any sponsorors where there to sponsor his bat or jersy.
Post 91-92, when the indian economy got liberalised - opening the doors for
global market - the changes started becoming evident. WILLS replaced POWER from
his bat . MRF then dethroned the Wills occupying a permanent place almost till
he reached his 90th century. The indian team jersy suddenly felt the pressure
similar to real estate. Companies started fighting in tender wars to get a
prominent place for their logo on the jersy. All this signified how the govt's
monopolistic grip on the country's economy, due to socialistic policies, got
loosened and liberated as the time progressed, thus letting the market to
incubate the new companies as well as welcoming the global majors. Even the
cricket stands seemed to be a witness for this. Growing job markets offered
more employement opportunities for the people. This made them afford the luxury
of buying tickets to watch the match at stadium, buy the team jersy,
after-match celebration etc.

But then, i had a fear whether i've been thinking too much
about indian economy. Because, i felt i've become so insane in linking Sachin's
photopgraph with Indian economy. will any normal cricket fan will do this? I
quickly closed the browser and started watching you tube video!

Bottom item: I had this question in my mind recently as to
why i write blogs and waste time. The only answer i could get was that it makes
me happy to see my thoughts getting a shape in form of a blog. when the mind
seems to be too much troubled with overflow of various thoughts, I put it in a
paper and give it a shape. Thus i can take off the load out of mind, as well as
give a shape to the thoughts.

Tirumala - By steps

2012-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

For the 2nd consecutive time, I went to Tirumala by walk
from Tirupati. But unlike last time - when I went from Srivarimettu
(Chandragiri) , this time I went thru the much commonly used walk way -
Alipiri. And like my earlier post - travelogue on Mantralaya, I am going to
enter my experience here.

Start : Left bangalore at 10.10pm sharp in KSRTC Volvo and
reached Tirupati at morning 3.30 am ( as usual I had got sleep around the time
when we reached. so woke up with burn in eyes, but with less intensity this
time around since I was logistically well prepared this time around and had
slept tight the night before, knowing that I dont get proper sleep during the
night journey , that too in such short journey of 5 hrs).

The walk paths : There are two walk-ways leading to Tirumala
from the bottom of hills.
1. Srivarimettu - (Chandragiri) - approx 10 - 12 km
from the Tirupati Bus stand. This is supposed to be oldest of the two routes.
There are approx 2000 odd steps in this route. There is no buses (as per my
knowledge goes) to this place. Hence you may have to take an auto. When i went
last year (2011), the auto wala charged 180 R.s . Fair enough i thought since
he honestly told us that he wont get customers while returning at such early
morning time (approx 4.30am). Free darshan tickets are issues at approx half-way
mark. Security check on the ticket will be put when we reach close to the top.
This route is better for the elderly people and those who cant walk for such
long distance as Alipiri route (which I explain next), since the Darshan ticket
and facilities that come with it are going to be same for both the route
options.

2. Alipiri - Approx 4K.M from Bus stand. Approx
11-14 km, 3550 steps. But reaching here is quite easy compared to earlier
route. Because this point starts from Alipiri Toll gate itself, through which
any bus going from Tirupati to Tirumala has to cross. All you need to do is to
buy tickets to Alipiri from the same ticket issuing counter in bus stand, where
they give tickets to Tirumala. Ticket fare - 5R.s. But they wont allow you to
take seat in the bus since the preference is given to those who travel till
Tirumala. No its not partiality. The Buses are not supposed to go to hill with
standing passengers, as its banned by AP Police. The buses wont even pick
passengers from anywhere apart from bus stand. So, once the seats are occupied
with those who travel to hill, they allow passengers with alipiri ticket, in
standing. Since its hardly 4KM, its not a issue at all.

Start from Alipiri : around 4.45 am we started our
expedition. I was surprised to see such a huge crowd at this early morning
time, climbing steps with us. The path is maintained so clean inspite of such a
huge traffic of piligrims using it. Not a single step you need to take on mud
way! Entire path is perfectly laid with stone steps, maintained clean by an
army of cleaners employed by TTD. The whole path is well illuminated by
tubelights at ceiling and both right and left side walls. There is security at
certain points, to protect the piligrims from any anti-social elements. Also,
ambulance is stationed at 2500th step for emergency needs.
Divyadarshan tickets were issues at Galigopuram junction - 2083rd step. Lot of eateries are
here in this junction where people take light snacks or tea or soft drinks to freshen up for
the remaining part of the journey. But i prefered not to take anything since I
didnt wanted to take any risk of vomiting or any other problem.

Reached : Around 8.20 am we reached the top - covering the last 3550th step. It was a
wonderful feeling to achieve this. Like everyone, we too walked barefoot by
carrying our footwear in plastic hand bag. But owing to the excellent
maintenance of the path, I didnt even had a single scratch or stone-pain in my
foot. Also, it was good experience walking barefoot over different surfaces and
climatic conditions - the stone laid steps, the concrete path in between, the
tar road stretch (at certain point in tar road stretch, there is natural water which drips down thru the rocks on the left. This water is so ice cold that even though we tried our best to avoid it,
we had to walk over it for some 10 steps where it had crossed the road. Legs became numb after walking over it) at chilling cold climate.

Overall it was comfortable journey I would say. We got the darshan within 2- 2.5 hours
after we entered the Q hall ( for almost an hour we were seated in a waiting
hall, which is better than standing in Q continuously). I could say that its
god's grace that we were able to do this. For all those who want to go to Tirumala,
and thinking about taking walking route, I would say go ahead. God is there to
guide and support you.

Economic Marathon

2012-01-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

“Over next 10 years value of 10,000/- will not be as much as what it is today. SO start investing today....” You might have come across this kind of ads many times daily. Have you ever wondered why this happens? What is inflation? Why can’t we stop it from happening? Let me try to take you thru these economical jargons, with simpler way of explaination ( noo, trust me... stop yawning... this will not kill you to death, honestly).

Defining it -
Inflation is the state of economy where the value of the money drops. Now what you mean by value of money? 10Rs is 10 rs. It can’t be 9 Rs due to inflation rite? Yes, true. But look at the currency note at your hand. What is it? Nothing but a piece of printed paper. Where does it derive its value from? Before answering this, let’s look back into history. We all know that earlier, gold, silver and copper used to be the mode of currency. Gold being very valuable, we never had any doubts whether its value would diminish over a period of time. But owing to its limited supply, there was need for some alternative for this form of money. Thus came a new system of money - FIAT currency.

Hisssssssstory
The democratic Govts. of different countries (read US of A), came up with an idea. Why not keep the gold in our own safe and print currency papers equivalent to value of gold? This will remove problems like transport of gold, minting of gold coins, deterioration of the coins in circulation etc. Thus the paper currency came into existence and along with it new terms such as inflation, deflation, recession, depression and what not. Last but not least, it lead to the origination of this article!

Owing to growth in population, industrialization and advance in agriculture etc., the economy started to expand at gradual speed. And over the decades, GLOBALIZATION converted the world into a village - the whole world is your market for your products, not just your own country. The economy started to grow crazily. What is the base of economy? Money. Rapid growth cannot happen without the availability of constant flow of money. But if the Govt has just 200kg of gold worth of say 1lakh rupees(cough, cough… I was just trying to give example, so those who know the price, please don’t start cursing me, and those who don’t know the price, please don’t start googling, you can avoid massive attack on your heart), what to do now? Print more money of course. A common man like you and me don’t have time, energy or courage to go and ask our PM what amount of gold is there in our RBI’s reserve. Naturally more currency will be printed to sustain the growth in economy!!

Eurekaaaaaaa

This printing of currency notes, more than the worth of gold in the treasury, continued fine for a while. People were not worried as long as the entilligent (economically intelligent, don’t worry, I shall coin more and more such words in the course of this article) guys discovered the truth. But once they did, they didn’t stop at just unearthing the bitter truth that nobody wanted to hear, but also coined the names like inflation, deflation etc thus prompting the Govt to sit and listen to them (There you go, first step at guessing wrong answer. No, the Govt didn’t stop printing the currency. Who else is better equipped to solve the problem than one who discovered it? Thus, like IAS, we now have IES - Indian Economy services, which is less heard among our people). People started to panic when they realized that the stacks of currency bundles that they have in their lockers is nothing but paper, and can lose its value over a period of time (like perishable food). The Govt was thus shaken from its deep sleep. It had to do something to bring in the confidence back into people mind. The only way that the value can be restored into money is by making its supply limited - which means; put the brakes on currency printing pace!!!!!

America Geschichte

What US does to keep the value of dollar, not any other country can do.It follows simple formula – value of anything is directly proportional to its demand. Now, how to achieve this? Make the world to do day to day transaction in dollars. Ah come on, are you kidding me? Beware, if you don’t fall in line, you could be next IRAQ of the world. Yes, in simple terms, like a teacher forcing the kid to learn by waiving cane at hand, scare the shit out of the national govts and make them use dollar as common currency in international trade that they do. More and more demand for dollar makes its value go up in international market and voila, it becomes a pseudo gold now!! Well, that is it? Come on, I may be kidding myself if I say so when the Americans themselves have exposed their dirty tricks in movies like Green zone, Shooter, Bourne series, Vantage point etc. They forced nations to do oil trade in $ (yeah, u got it now why petrol rate sky rockets every time the $ value appreciates?). But that did not meet their expectations still. So what next? Well, the world is so so huge, isn’t it? Then why not dump the industrial produce in all the countries and make them pay in $ for this? But, the world will agree? Ah, just come up with one more fancy economic term and coerce the leaders of the countries to sign the agreement. Wow, Good idea!! So what could be the new term? Hmm, it should be something that sounds very complicated to understand. Yes, GLOBALIZATION will do. And what you see and buy in the fancy malls of metro are nothing but these stuff dumped on the developing countries by the Americans.

Back to theory

Enough, let me not deviate my topic and get deep into the America’s dirty secrets(Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t even start it I think). Let’s come back to core discussion of inflation now. So not all the nations can imitate America's methods rite? So what are the options available to it? There is one and only one option - control the supply of currency, as I mentioned before. Too much of money in the system means everyone has the power to buy the things (How cruel, Why shouldn’t everyone have money? Ah, first sign of economical sentiments. Need to keep it in control, since we will bump upon more such senti-situations as we proceed). But unlike money, things cannot be printed by the govt. So it means that we all go and attack the limited supply of goods with the currency, leading to the fall in its (money) value. Suddenly, you begin to realize that the stacks of cash are not able to meet your daily requirements. This drop in the purchase power of the money is nothing but inflation!!

Ok, so now naturally anyone will say let’s not be so stupid in printing currency. Let’s keep its supply limited. Is it a smart option? A big NO. A country has to develop constantly. And development is nothing but technological improvements in industrialization, agriculture etc. which can lead to their increased output with better utilization of resources, thus helping us to afford them within our budget. In Economics, stats play a very imp role. So, now that I talked about growth, naturally we need to measure that, so that statisticians can statitise its statistics. The economic growth is measure by a parameter called - the GDP - Gross Domestic Product. It is nothing but the total market value of all the final Goods and services produced within the country. So for the country to develop, we need a constant growth in GDP, which means, constant supply of money!!!

Now, Don’t blame me for putting you in a fix as to decide what is the solution out? Printing more currency or not printing more currency, both seem to be invalid option. Then, what needs to be done? There is no perfect solution for any problem in economics, only “The nearest best solution”(That’s why I always think, If the need comes, becoming economics lecturer is best option. You don’t even have to worry if you don’t know the answer, or if you give wrong answer in the class. “Son, this is economics, not math class. Don’t be the Rancho of my class!!”). So let’s see what they are.

Entelligence at work
A govt has to estimate what should be the growth rate for the current financial year. Based on this data, it can estimate the amount of currency to be in circulation, to support the growth. So considering all this, the central bank of the country - RBI in our case, takes a call to decide the quantum of currency it has to print for that year. If everything goes as per the govt’s estimate, like a bollywood rom-com, there is no cause of worry for anyone. But, fortunately or unfortunately, it can never be as expected. There will be over growth in GDP during a particular quarter of the year, and the inflation will begin to see upward trend. But why? Why the over growth triggers inflation? Simple. Increase in industrial output means more profit for the industry, which can happen only with increase in employee headcount, and to keep pace with more demand in pipeline, it has to still increase the headcount. Now, the supply of skilled workforce will also be limited (yes, in country of billion people!!) which means the wages will go up. All this directly means that more and more people will gain the purchasing power, often chasing behind such goods which are limited in supply like food, housing etc. Thus kick starting the process of pulling down the rupee value.

RBI-di.. Why this Kolaveri di??

Its time now to see how the govt and central banks control this inflation. In order to put brakes on the over growth, the central bank has to tighten the tap from where the money flows into the system - Banks of course. When central banks print money, it funnels that into system thru banks. (That is the reason why banks make profit so easily. Being the first in the pyramid to get the money from RBI, they get it at cheaper rate. By the time they make it available to public, the prices of most of the essentials would have shot up and the customer, who wants to buy it, will have to inevitably come to these banks and borrow the money at whatever rates they are available!! Daylight robbery!!). The RBI which made the money flow freely into the system thru banks, now turns the tap in opposite direction. The way it does this is very interesting. It will first tell the banks that they now have to pay more rate for the money that they borrow from it(RBI) - i.e the Repo rate (repurchase rate) will be increased. Next, it will lure the banks saying, it will pay more rate for whatever money the banks keep with RBI - Reverse Repo rate will be increased (thus the money with banks keeps reducing, sucking their liquidity). Banks will have no choice but to park their funds with RBI now. Why? Very simple. Whenever the repo goes up, the banks will pass on the burden to its customers – in the form of increase in interest on housing loan and big ticket loans to industries. This will increase the default rate due to the rise in EMI’s, meaning it’s not safe anymore to lend the money to public. So left with no option, banks will think that it’s safe to park funds with RBI instead and reap the benefit of rise in reverse repo. The money tap of RBI will work in opposite way by sucking in whatever it had let flow out of it!!

But banks are not charity institutions. They are business organizations and naturally they find it irresistible to not to lend money, since there are people who are willing to pay increased cost for borrowing it. When RBI senses this, it will use some more tools available with it to rein in the banks (yeah you can imagine RBI to be charioteer and the other commercial banks as horses). Theoretically, a bank accepts the deposit from public and lends it at higher cost to borrowers thus making the profit from the spread available (theoretical definition). For every 100 rupees that the bank accepts as deposit from public, it has to keep 9 Rupees with RBI, as risk capital. This is nothing but Cash reserve ratio or more famously - CRR. Yes you got it right, if the CRR is increased, the amount available for the banks to lend will go down thus limiting the supply of money in system. Now, in worst case, if the inflation is still not coming down (rare case, thankfully), RBI will ask banks to keep with it certain valuables like Gold, Govt bonds(G-secs) or money, in addition to CRR. This is called SLR - Statutory liquidity ratio. (Straying out of the topic little bit here. If you are interested to see the difference between US English and UK’s, the word Statutory is the best example. Just go to any online dictionary sites and use the “read out” option for US and UK version. Really funny. But my mom never makes out any difference. No, not at all funny, cos I need to explain to her now that US English is like Bihari Hindi blah blah..).

The decrease in money supply will bring down the IIP - Index of industrial production (brother of GDP), bringing down the economic growth with it. People now start cutting down their monthly expense, put off or delay the car / home purchase decisions etc. Money value slowly starts increasing as the retailers - the shop owners, showroom owners, home developers etc start offering their products at cheaper and affordable rates (but still see downward trend in demand). And the cycle repeats. Thus the economy of any country has to follow a cycle. It can never have an upward growth always or the downward (though the later is becoming reality now. US is still clueless about their economic condition and Euro-zone is still battling out the worst crisis ever happened since its creation).

But it’s not always advisable to use the same methodology to control the inflation. There are several other ways. As the economy grows, the supply of money also goes up. To avoid its value from falling, the supply of essentials has to keep pace with the growth in economy. This can be achieved with use of technology in the critical sectors – agriculture and industry to boost its output. Thus the food inflation (or the WPI) will be under control. Also, use of technology in agriculture will stop the migration of youth from village farms to city and towns in search of more lucrative jobs, thus reducing the pressure on the over-growing cities. Not everyone will try to own a home or own a car when he gets an increment in his pay or gets a new job. So the pressure on reality sector is relatively less when there is growth in economy.

The Palace of illusions opens.
Its time now for moving out of theoretical definitions of inflation and to look at it from the macroeconomic point of view!! Yes, whatever you read till now is just 10 %( or even less) of what the reality is! Let’s now look at the practicality of economics. Most of us don’t dare to open a financial news paper owing to its boring color and look (I hate that orange-ish color of ET). And those who do it will see the word “FISCAL DEFICIT” a min of 10 times even if they just glance through the headlines. Alright, here I’m going to introduce one more term. So what is this fiscal deficit? It’s a routine for every salaried person to have his own expenses every month like EMI’s, bill payments, rents etc. When we take the net effect of it per month, the money whatever is left with him from his salary, is his savings (Please consider an austere salaried class person for the example and not a guy who finds it difficult to control the joy and luxuries that this world offers, though his salary cannot afford it). The same applies to the Govt of our country. It has the sources of income like revenue from tax collection, excise, dividend from PSU’s etc (excluding the money borrowed from public) and it has its own expenses - that of public welfare program. The catch here is that, the expenditure of the govt is always more than its income - which is called as “Fiscal deficit”. Welcome to the world of most confusing economic jargon now. From here afterwards, whatever is written here is solely my viewpoint. It can be right, or wrong depending upon the personal view of anybody.

A govt has to spend money to kick-start the growth of the State. This spending could be towards the infrastructure, food security, social welfare programs etc. This spending is done with several goals in mind such as

To push up the demand, by way of improving the things like infrastructure and other things which will improve the employment, accessibility to the goods etc. This in turn increases the productivity of the industries to meet the demand that comes up, thus increasing the revenue to govt in terms of tax and excise duty payment.
To Control the inflation - a controlled fiscal deficit means the demand for money is maintained at steady rate, neither increasing it nor reducing it, thus making the rupee more attractive for foreign investment.

The fiscal deficit may sound like a negative thing. But it is actually essential part of economy. Like inflation, this factor also has to be maintained and controlled carefully.
When the money is spent wisely, i.e in the projects which are going to generate the revenue after its completion then, the money whatever the govt spends is recovered over a period of time. For example, if the govt promotes the SEZ for textile industry in certain regions, more and more companies will there. The increase in output generates more excise revenue for the state as well as central govt. The tax payment by the employees will increase the tax revenue. Also, this will benefit others indirectly - like the real estate demand goes up, the city/town standards of living will improve - prompting the municipalities/corporations to take up the development of the town... the list goes on... so in longer run, the govt is going to get back whatever they have spent.

All is well??
I warned you that the palace of Illusion has thrown open its door. But, you ignored the warning. You now have believed that Govt has to constantly keep spending more and more so that money value is maintained constant, since anyhow I have showed how in long term the govt will get back its investment. Rite? No. The govt spending is justified as long as it really brings in the required kind of revenue for the govt as well as promotes the economy of state. But in contrary, it can lead to uncontrolled inflation. In order to bridge the huge deficit that can arise due to errant spending, the govt will resort to printing more currency as last option. This unplanned flow of money could result in the loss in its value. Even if the govt goes for borrowing money from market (instead of printing), it has to service the debt by paying interest for it, thus leading to increase in the interest rates (Interest rate increases mainly because the money value goes up with time and demand, and one cannot expect to borrow the money at same rate always). So what is the solution? Simple. Wise spending. Agreed that social welfare is responsibility of the govt and it has to spend money for it. Even after more than 60 years after our independence, malnutrition and hunger death are still common. Govt hospitals lack basic infra to serve the poor. Hence the govt has to look after the welfare of its citizen by spending for them in order to eliminate these social problems. But what our govt is doing in this direction is totally absurd. Let me quote a few examples from the articles that I read -

Very recently, Sonia Gandhi has realized (when the UP election was announced) that people are starving in our country even after so many years of independence. So she told her PM, sorry our PM Mr. Manmohan singh to ensure that the poor will get the foodgrains at cheaper rate. A simple analysis would show how stupid this can be. The PDS (the same old ration shops) is already ridden with all kind of illness. Now, more subsidy for this food security bill means extra burden on the already cash strapped govt. That's not all. If a person starts getting a kilo of rice at 2Rs, he is bound to become more lazy than productive, as expected by govt. Beggars will suddenly start finding their income to be more lucrative. And last but not least, due to the amount of food grains required for this scheme, the foodgrains available for rest of the people in market would reduce, thereby shooting up the prices!! If you ask me what is the other solution, I would frankly admit I don’t know. May be we can strengthen the existing PDS logistics itself. Help it overcome the problems plaguing it. Make use of AADHAR id - ask BPL people to open a savings account by linking it with the UID and update it in some database. Any kind of financial assistance then could be directly credited to these accounts! This is called targeted subsidy which is current buzzword.

To give one more example, a couple of years back, the govt brought in Rural employement gurantee program called MNREGA. Although it sounded great, like any other ambitious govt program, it was soon plagued with the corruptions and scandals. Under this program, a person who registers for the scheme is guaranteed some min. days of employement (in doing various blue collared labor like construction of dams, canals etc,) at 150Rs/day (not sure about the current rate). This turned out to be a nightmare for farmland owners. The laborers who were working in the farms, quite obviously, started quitting it and registered for the program. This made the wages for laborers to go up significantly. That was not a big prob. But a more detailed survey revealed that people started to sell their land, keep the money in bank FD, and then registered for the program also, thus getting the dual benefit of constant inflow of interest income as well as the guaranteed wage per month!! What is the solution for this now?

The Million dollar question

The above discussion will now obviously brings us to one question - why does a govt should have deficit when it has the power to print the amount of money that it wants? Now this question can send Amartya sens of economics crazy. There are multiple reasons behind why the govt cannot do away with the deficit, and I will try to mention only a few which I know (meaning, those which I understood after reading in net). If u remember what you read in initial part of this article (what an insulting question to ask!! Conversely, the question tries to assess whether you are suffering from Ghajini-disease!! Apologies for my stupidity. I was just trying to wake you up from terrible sleep induced by highly terrible boredom, caused by this article), I said that the govt prints currency equivalent to the amount of the gold that it has in its treasury. It was a blatant lie (I Can hear the screams. But I’m helpless. Please forgive me). Owing to the limited supply of gold, long back the federal govts of most of the countries decided to stop using the gold as the backup for printing the currency!! This happened mostly during 70’s. At that time, most of the countries decided to tag their currency to the dollar. i.e 1$ = 35 yen etc. But like everything, this also had to change, owing to various reasons. So over a period of time, the mode of currency valuation evolved based on the govt policy of the respective countries.

So coming back to my last question, why fiscal deficit is required? This answer that I'm going to share is purely my own opinion (I know its repeated, but wanted to drive the message loudly). Just like an ordinary salaried class person, the govt’s credit worthiness (ability to service the debts) is determined by its capacity to handle the deficit. As I said earlier, to manage the deficit the govt will issue bonds (in other words, borrows money from public, banks etc). Just like how Banks disburse the loans to creditworthy individuals alone (Ok, at least lets assume this is true for time being. If needed, we can discuss about Subprime crisis) and not to the people who spend more time near Jhonny walkers or Hard rock cafe instead of their homes, Investors in govt bonds also do the investment only when the Govt is trustworthy in its spending initiatives. The countries get credit ratings, just like the corporates or individuals. And FII will invest in the govt bonds only if the credit rating of that country is good enough. Which means, the Govt spending should be aimed at economic growth of the country, which implies that the environment for the industry to grow and expand is satifsfactory, thus leading to generous income for the govt. Any drop in investor sentiments can be disastrous for the country, as seen in euro zone now.

Lets take a peep into the much discussed Euro Zone crisis, which can help us understand the need for efficient handling of deficit, in a better way. The countries there decided to have a common currency called euro. Though this had many advantages, it backfired for a few economically backward countries like Greece and Portugal. The govt there are not able to manage their deficit due to its failure in attracting any investments, and hence the inflow of money has got completely stopped. To add to their woes, the ECB (common central bank for the Euro currency - European Central Bank) is not obliging to buy their bonds. There is no need to add that these countries don't even have the option to print the money, since it’s not in their control. Hence these countries are on verge of economic breakdown now, unless otherwise rescued by ECB or other member nations of EU. It has to be noted that the euro has not lost its value because of this crisis. But what uses of this stability in its value when the member countries will fall like chess pawns? Countries like Germany are exceptionally stronger and the great Britain has completely avoided the disaster for itself by not becoming a member of the union itself.

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
I can go on and on and on this topic. But for anything that starts, has to end. And therefore I’m stopping at this point now (sigh). Before ending this marathon-article, it’s time for me to introspect. Several incidences or the articles motivated me to write this article and share my thoughts. The subject of economics is very interesting since it is based on statistics. Stats can be twisted the way the person who is going to do a presentation wants it. But in the examples that I picked, I abstained from showing any stats, since I believe that the stats are used most of the times to prove something as wrong, even when we know it’s not!! But, I didn’t have any such intentions here. In the course of writing this article, I had the chance to read quite a few newspaper editorials on same topic, and not to mention the GOOGLE. One of the sites was completely of the opinion that huge fiscal deficit never leads to inflation since the expanding economy can act as a cushion by increasing the supply, thereby keeping the price rise under check. I don't know how many will agree to this viewpoint, given that we can never guarantee that this, and only this way alone it shall happen always when the deficit gap is widening.

Another instance I would like to share here is regarding the article that inspired me to write about the wastefulness of food security bill. I read the article in the night before going to sleep, and I naturally decided to reproduce the same here in my article the next day. I’ve mentioned that the food security bill leads to inflation because of drop in supply of the food grains for non-BPL community in free market, as well as drop in productivity of the BPL people. I was sure that I've reproduced the same what I’d read, though something inside me kept asking me to read it again to confirm. For next few days, after I completed writing about that piece, I forgot about it completely. But two days later, I came across the same newspaper copy and the same article page (as I had not folded it back properly after reading the editorial). But to my surprise, the editorial there had expressed completely different opinion. He had actually mentioned that in raising inflation times, increase in subsidy expense towards food security bill means increase in fiscal deficit. Paralelly, the RBI would be tightening the money flow taps, in order to control the inflation, thus slowing down the economy. This further leads to increase in deficit due to slump in inflow of revenue. Thus, the larger picture would be that, the govt prints more money and the inflation would still keep rising up (due to more money in system), thus pushing up the food grains price and the subsidy bill along with it. All complexly interwoven, never ending chain reactions. But what surprised me more was, I had actually ended up giving a different explanation altogether when I was discussing this issue above!! Strange me..

I actually wanted to discuss about the liberalisation, the license raj that was existing pre-liberalisation era, subprime lending, recession etc in this article. But I stopped from doing it because the main subject I wanted to discuss here was about inflation - causes and control. Hence I decided to refrain myself from discussing about them. It has been really very tiring to compile so much of information. The mood kept swinging each day, and I had to exert a great deal of pressure to make it work in my favor. The boring topic that I had selected made me extra careful to retain the interest of readers (eager to know what extent I’m successful). I had to be choosy even in picking some humorous lines, since I didn't wanted to dilute the effectiveness of whatever I was discussing(ah, pretty smart way to duck the comments, on the quality of humor). Thanks to Mr. Sidin Vadukut, whose blogs gave me an idea how and where to insert the funny comments in write-ups (yeahh, you now know who to blame if my humor or the too many bracketed-statements have had any negative impact on you ;) ). It was a good experience for me too. This actually increased my admiration towards a few of my fav authors, who write such huge novels. How much effort has to go into making such wonderful literary works. The biggest of all is to make sure that your personal feelings/ emotions/ and happenings in life doesn’t reflect in your writings. I hope I’ve done my home work correctly here. Would love to write more like this, based on the feedback I receive. Till then, it’s resting time for my ever-typing-rest-deprived fingers!!

A trip to Mantralayam

2012-01-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to delay this anymore. A lot of people seem to be under impression that its difficult to go to places like Tirupati and Mantralaya. They will have reservations about the travel options or the accommodation. In this blog, I will discuss my experience of going to mantralaya on 31st dec of 2011. I will also write a similar blog on Tirupati also shortly.To start with – the travel options. There are a plenty of buses from Bangalore to mantralaya run by KSRTC!! Yes KSRTC and not APSRTC even though Mantralaya is in AP. The reason being, over 80% of people there are kannadigas and also more than 90% of pilgrims who visit there are from kar (yeah this may evoke the first question, y den it is attached to AP. Honestly, I don’t know the answer. For that matter, more than 60% of infrastructure in and around Mantralaya is built by kar govt only!!!! ). The journey is more or less 8 hours (approx 430km). Roads are far better now than what they used to be earlier – given that 55 to 60% of the distance is covered by NH running from Bangalore to Hyderabad ( which is being converted to 4 lane now). Though you can get tickets online easily, its better if you book it well in advance during peak seasons like New year day, aradhana, special Thursdays etc. Apart from bus, there are Trains to mantralaya. The drawback here is that the railway station is some 15 km away. But not to worry, there is shared auto – plenty of them. They charge 25 bucks per head and 150 rs if u r not willing to share with others. If you ask me, I prefer train. I booked ticket in Udyan express which left Bangalore at 8.10 pm and was supposed to reach Mantralaya at 4.30 am, but reached at 5.30 am. (beware, if u oversleep then you will reach Mumbai!!). The moment we came out of railway station, a huge number of autowallahs jumped upon us, almost pulling us to their auto. We reached mantralaya at about 6 am.Next – accommodation. This could be a challenge at peak time. Mainly because there is no reservation in the lodges managed by the Mutt. But don’t be worried. There are more than 6 to 7 lodges now which are built and managed by Mutt (including AC ones). Though there is no advance reservation (except for the donors), almost 85% chances are there to get a room in any of these lodges even on peak days. But there are a few things to be noted here - 1. Though there is one central reception office, not all the 7-8 lodges are managed by it. So if you see “rooms full” board there (in CRO), please don’t think its end of road. 2. How to locate and check in other 7 or 8 lodges whether any rooms are available there? Agreed that this could sound challenging, but not in Mantralaya. The lodge staffs are extremely helpful and polite. If you don’t get room in one lodge, ask them where else you can find. They would let you know. If you want to know the directions, ask the security guard at temple gate or any guy who is in the Mutt’s uniform and badge (Yes, Mutt has recently started giving its employees the badge and uniform, to keep the touts and other middlemen at bay)3. Is it difficult to run from one lodge to another? Before I answer this, I want to make it clear that there are very less chances that this may happen. As I said before, 85% of the times you will get room at first lodge itself. But if your luck falls in that 15% category then also, its not difficult for you to go from one lodge to another, considering the fact that the whole place is not even bigger than two Chinnaswamy stadia put together. If there are elderly people who cannot walk easily then, make them sit in waiting room of any one of the lodge while you go on search.4. This whole task of finding vacant room may sound it bit straining? Don’t worry, for those who are willing to spend generously, our country has no dearth of facilities. There are numerous pvt lodges – A/c and non A/c. You needn’t even go to them. They come to you the moment they see you carrying luggage and going into mutt’s lodge office. But during peak days, there is no limit for their attitudes and prices they demand for the rooms.So after you freshen up in room, its time for Breakfast and Darshan. For breakfast, there is MTR in mantralaya!! No, its not namma MTR of bengaluru. It’s Mantralaya tiffin room, which is as old as namma MTR itself (I guess). Though there will be huge crowd there(come on, its MTR after all ), I prefer to go to that hotel only, because of nostalgia (I’ve been going to that hotel ever since I was a kid. As per my dad(and also my faint memory), I used to nag him too much to buy me 3 vadas for bf. I was so particular about 3 vadas that if I don’t see exactly 3 vadas in my plate, I used to create huge ruckus it seems! Aanu, makka teeni vottambado, aanu makka teeni vottambado was my chant it seems.). But there is one catch here. If you love the meals/lunch at temples like me then, I suggest you to keep your bf as lite as possible – just a single idli or upma. The reason being, the lunch at temple starte as early as 10 am. And the moment you are done with the darshan, you can go for lunch. So these days, I’ve stopped having normal kinda bf before going for darshan in mantralaya.Coming to the Darshan part. This is the most simplest part of all. There may be serpentine q outside. But it doesnt take more than an hour max, on peak days. Other days, you will get darshan within 15mins. No pushing and shoving, no hurry burry, just pray your mind out. There is a temple outside the mutt called manchalamma temple. People say that its good if we pray in this temple before we go to mutt (which most of the times i am not able to do since the q in this temple is too longer on peak days and also slow moving. Owing to my super lite bf, I always look forward to have the lunch at the earliest once I get the Darshan of Guru Raghavendra.) On peak days, dont forget to book the return tickets. The same number of ksrtc buses and trains are available for return journey. If you dont manage to get a ticket in direct ksrtc bus then, there is another option available, which i myself experimented for the first time on my latest trip. 24Km from Mantralaya there is a town called Yemmiganur which is Taluq HQ. From this town, there are quite a few APSRTC buses going directly to Bangalore. From Mantralaya there are lot of apsrtc buses to yemmiganur - almost one in 15mins. So, you can book the ticket to bangalore from yemmiganur and reach there by bus from mantralaya atleast an hour before the scheduled departure of bus to bangalore. Its also worthwhile to mention here that APSRTC expresss buses (counterpart of karnataka sarige buses of ksrtc) are much much more comfortable than the karnataka sarige buses, with ample boot space, and less bumpy ride. So dont hesitate to book the ticket in APSRTC express bus. On non peak days, you need not book return tickets ( in bus) as almost all the buses would be running half empty. But I suggest you to look at the time table of the buses well in advance so that you can decide which one fits in your time-comfort. But the advantage of booking return ticket (in night bus, or train) is that, you can have a good nap in room after the morning darshan and lunch and can again go for a 2nd round of darshan in the evening. The mutt opens at 4 pm in the evening. IF you happen to be there at exactly 4pm, the q at manchalamma temple will also be too short and you can visit this temple before going to mutt, thereby adhering to the traditions. Also, no matter which bus or train you have booked return tickets, i advise you to either eat or take parcel from MTR. Because most of the buses will stop inside AP itself for dinner and if you are not from AP, you may not like the hotel/restaur (no intentions to hurt AP guys here, just wanted to share my opinion).If you have 2 days to spare and want to get away from the madening crowd and traffic, and take blessings from HH Raghavendra swamiji, dont think twice. Just take a printout of my blog and chalk out your plans accordingly. Anyone who wish to have more details can always email me. For the benefit of googlers to land in this page(while searching mantralaya details) I am trying for the first time, the “Tags”feature provided here. Wish you all a very happy new year. And happy journey for those who are planning to travel to Mantralayam.

Movie and reality konnection

2011-12-27T08:55:00.000-08:00

After a long time, i enjoyed watching a Kannada movie made
with original story. In fact, last week has been lucky for me with regard to
the kind of movies i watched. All have entertained me upto my level of
expectation.
There is a reason why we indians are so much attached to
movies. Well, i'm not going to discuss about those fanatics who build temples
for their movie stars or do milk abhisheka of their stars cut outs on the day
of release. for that matter, i should not have even made a mention of them in
the above lines also.
TZP, Lagaan, Ghajini (ok ok, i dont want to be branded as
AK's fan) most recently Desi boyz, and namma Vishnuvardhana., if we consider
all these famous movies, there is some element or factor which makes us get
connected with the movie instantly. We love it. Though we dont admit it, there
is something in these movies which connects with some elment of our past, in
the back of our mind, in sub concious. Or may be conciously itself. And why we
like them?
Not long back, i was watching the people connect program
that the renowed director of kannada serials, Mr. T.N Seetaram used to conduct
at various parts of the state, when his serial Muktha was getting telecast.
Anyone who has watched the serials being made by him will first remember the
court cases in them. A lawyer by profession himself, his serials used to have
atleast two court cases in it. All of them, made to look as indigenous as
possible with the witness trials, cross examinations, defence etc., used to
have happy ending, with the director, who always used to be the lawyer for
unfortunate victims, winning the case. During one such connect programs in
Mysore, a person asked him how come there is always a happy ending for the
court cases in the serials, and always he will win. He justified it so
beautifully saying, all of us know how tedious the court cases are in our
country. many a times, the victim may never get the justice due to the delay [Our
courts love to send out the message "justice delayed is justice
denied" with frequent examples]. This has ensured that none of us have any
faith in judiciary. In the serials, contrary to the true case, the justice is
delivered to the victim at the end of the legal battle. And watching it happen,
we all feel happy. we feel happy because we see ourselves in the victim,
thereby feeling victorious ourselves. This ensures that we get connected with
the serial!! what we dont get in reality, we love to see that happen in screen.
But if we look out of movies, the other place where we can
see this kind of connection with reality was (I use the word "was" here
for a reason which i explain later) in Cricket. Rahul Dravid recently delivered
a speech at Don Bradman oration thus becoming first non-aussie to do the same. The
speech brought out the several interesting facts about cricket and history that
the two nations share. India's association with the Australia started as long
back as world war, when the two countries were british colonies, fighting for
the common enemy. Thus Sir Don Bradman easily became the favorite among Indian
cricket fans. At the peak of freedom struggle, each innings that Don bradman played against England was
like a war against them for Indians. The slaughter of Gora's bowling attack
bought joy and smile in our face.
Coming back to movies, there are several examples of
Movie-real life in southern part of our country. Tamil Nadu has seen a temple
being built for each of their movie star, at any available gap in the crowded
chennai city. This Blog will be highly incomplete if i miss to mention the
superstar of Indian cinema, the one and only Rajnikant. Shivajirao gaekwad, as
he was called before getting renamed by his debut movie director, Rajnikant
came up from grass root level without any godfather support. We indians condemn
racism when it happens on us in foreign countries like UK, US and Australia.
But back home, it is daily practise of Northis, who are comparatively fairer
than southis. This has ensured a complete dominance of fair skinned northis in
Bollywood. Thus, when a black guy came up in the industry, there was immense
support for him from people. As my colleague puts it, people saw themselves in
Rajnikant. Most of his movies are about fighting against oppression on black(ugly),
downtrodden, poor people ,which got instantly connected with the masses. he
reinforced the lost hopes in millions of poor people. The another reason for
his immense popularity was the fact that he never broke his connection with the
people, even at the peak of popularity. He made it a point to keep in touch
with common man thru several social works like building kalyana mantap etc.
There has been several examples where people indeed worshipped him like a god
in their homes, not because he was a superstar, but they were all beneficiaries
of his social service.
During 1950's and 60's, when the nation was tired after the
freedom struggle and trying to cope with new challenges, the new lover boy of Bollywood Dev Anand offered a
fresh set of romantic movies to then younger gen. People enjoyed by immersing
themselves into the romantic chartbusters churned out one after another by Dev
Saheb. But when the different social crisis like unemployment, socialism vs.
capitalism etc started to reach peak during 70's and 80's, people's taste
started to change. Enter Angry Young man - Mr. Amitabh. Labour unrest was at
peak during that period, and movies that sympathized with the labour class like
coolie were instant hits. Thus for those two or three decades, movies talking
on the National issues(against the usual trend of rom-coms) were also coming
out, which no longer is relevant now (except for one or two movies like peepli
live, no one killed jessica, etc.)
Taking my own example(no, i'm not a movie star), a couple of
days back when i was returning home by car after attending a function, there
was a minor accident. I was coming straight on my lane when a car that was
standing still on the left lane(to my left), suddenly took to its right and
brazed mine. The honest me didnt wanted to stop the car right in the middle of
road and block it. So i moved to left side, got down and checked the damaged
side. By the time i did this, the scoundrel fled the scene in his car. I
managed to note the number. But in that hullaballo, i forgot to write it down
on paper and eventually forgot also. I was clueless what next to do. I couldnt
even find him anywhere later. I was so helpless, i wanted to find that guy and
hit him black n blue (not sure if I would've really done that). I felt so
ashamed of myself. A surge of emotion, anger, helplessness started to cause so
much trouble inside. That time I realized how good it feels watching a hero
tackling a situation like this in movie. If it was a telugu movie, after the
scoundrel flees the scene and reaches his home gate (feeling how lucky he was),
he will see the hero standing at the gate waiting for him. A few punch
line-dialog from the hero and the dishum dishum starts. The scoundrel learns
his lesson.
Tailpiece : I always get comments from my friend that my
blogs ends very abruptly. Well, all i can say is that people get so engrossed
reading my blog that they hate it when it ends :)

Birth(burden)day

2011-12-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Birthdays have always been a difficult to manage affair for
me. Not just my birthday, my near and dear ones also comes under this ambit.
Well, what is so difficult? To put it in one simple phrase - “”Expectations management””.
Lord sri Krishna says that, Desire (synonym of Expectation)
is cause of problems (well I don’t know the exact line, atleast I don’t know to
put it in English, but I guess the summary of it will be this). But no human
can totally live like a saint. And as I realized, life teaches us a lot of
things, changing us over every day, just like how a sculptor shapes the statue
he works on. Only difference being the sculptor of the real beings is the
almighty.
Well, coming back to my topic of birthday. This birthday was
kinda eye opener for me. “Don’t make anything special ma, lets just bring the
ready made jamun tin from nandini outlet and have it……..” “Restaurant?????? No
pls….. Mom, y waste money on things like this which comes every year????
Anyways, we go to restaur irrespective of whether there is any spl occasion or
not, so y again specifically tomorrow on my bday…. Lets not……” “Gift?? Ummmmm…
well, I Don’t want anything as such, just got a new mobile and laptop for
myself, there is nothing specific I need as of now… so let it b… I don’t want
anything…. “
And then 2 days later my bday came.
“Just chapathi for bf??? Err ok””ma any gift for me????
Well, yeah was just like that asking, not serious….. “
Evening - “are we
going out for dinner??? Oh you have already cooked?? Phovu? Ummm… yeah I myself
asked not to go out to any restaur, but felt like asking, never bother, lets
have phovu only“ (the last two phrases came out without any sound)
The saint inside me who gave out weighty declarations just
the two days before, had died and was replaced by the person, whose character
was dead contrast to what Lord Krishna preached. He made it sure that whatever
decision I had taken two days before, come to haunt me on the D day. It was very painful to accept the reality. I
learnt how easy it is to say something but, follow the same in practical.
Well that was about my birthday. Now coming to my near and
dear ones. Well, there is nothing as such to say what is difficult here. But I
strongly like the expression on the face of the person when I call him/her up
on the D day and wish. People become really emotional and senti when they
realize that their best buddy not only remembered the spl day, but even took
time out of the busy day to cal and wish as well. At the same time, it is too
painful for me when I forget the day and wish them the belated bday wishes.
Asking sorry wont do any help. So I always abstain from using sorry if at all
if I happen to wish belated bday.
Good Night J

Evil vs good

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

It has always been my practice to write blog when my mind is
flooding with thoughts and interpretations of certain things. But I’m going against
the trend today since, I don’t have anything particular in mind, nor I’m
feeling like writing anything in particular. It’s just that I didn’t wanted to
finish the day in usual manner as I do always. Let me write up something, said
my mind. Well, that makes the saying “Change
is only constant” stronger now.
People are up against FDI in retail market. There are protests
everywhere in the country lead by several “Leaders” who go unnoticed other
days. Bal thackery, the self-proclaimed protector of Marathi
Manoos, growled in his party’s mouth piece “samna”, saying he would kick
the new jnanapith awardee of Kannada- Mr. Kambar for his references on Belgaum.
Vinod Kambli (the ex-indian cricketer, if any of you have forgotten already)
suddenly remembered that he was part of 96’ world cup match. It would have been
good if his memory worked only till that point. But unfortunately (for rest of
team india players), some cells overworked in his brain to remind him that it
may have been fixed.
All this happening around me, used to invoke genuine
questions in mind. Like why this protest? Why Mr. Thackery said like that….e
tc. I was honest to such a extent that I used to read the whole content of such
news headlines in newspapers. But over a period of time, Ëxperience – the teacher,
is teaching me “lessons of life”. I don’t want to discuss anything in detail
here, since the teacher inside each of us would have explained all these in a
unique way. But to put it in a simple way, all this is jus part of the system
where everything is based on greed & need. We put different masks to others
need projecting it as greed, and honest mask to our own need. For media to
survive, they have to be top on TRP charts. For Political parties to survive,
they should not fade out of Public memory. For opposition party to come back to
power in next elections, they should be carrying out protests against Govt
policies, good or bad. It is all part of system. Everything happens for its own
survival and need. The perception differs.
Why we are part of such a system where everything seems to
be bad. Everyone is chasing his own need. Does that mean everyone is greedy? Being
greedy is evil? Here I’m. I started with blank mind, and I’ve a big philosophical
question hauting me now.
Mr. Amish did a wonderful job of explaining evil in his Shiva
Trilogy book. As per my understanding, he tries to say that the universe is
always balanced with evil and good. What does a person do to be a evil? Just
because he murdered/ looted some one cannot be judging point. What made him to
do that? He has dropped into a mind-set which lets him believe that its okay to
loot someone for his own survival. Punishing him may seem to be possible way of
giving justice to victim. But what needs to be done is to make such person
detach from such evil thinking. Though it is impossible to do so practically,
it does help you to understand that a person should not be seen as evil, it’s
the evil principles to which he his attached, which has to be seen as real
evil. Think this way, and I’m sure you will be more calm in dealing with such
people in your daily life. After all, he has got attached to some evil
thinking, lets help him overcome that – think this way.
Gaining publicity seems to be ultimate motive of people I illustrated
above. I’m unable to see anything evil in that. Since it is very much part of
their profession. Everyone cannot be expected to work in a 9-6 job, get paid,
shut- the- mouth- and –lead- your- life kind of life. But if it starts causing
problem to aam-admi by halting traffic, disrupting basic services etc., then we
need to do something. Lets help them realise their attachment to evil thinking
that disrupting public life wont do any good to either him or anyone. I’m sure
many people can come with many more solutions for this on similar lines.
Well, that is it. My mind has done a wonderful job today by
unloading something which did not exist inside it. Was it evil???? LOL…. Time to
sleep.

Monsoonomics

2011-07-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

How nice it feels when it showers at evening after a hot day. Of course it depends on which side you are when it rains, inside your home or rushing back to home from office. But nevertheless it is a nice feeling to smell the mud when the rain drops fall on ground. I’m sure that, given a chance many of us would feel the urge to sing and dance to some song, jump and splash the water on the small pools that gets created when it is raining.

But today when it was raining, I was travelling in company bus back to my home. My mind sailed through all the different thoughts about monsoon. I couldn’t help but to think about the people for whom the rains are very important aspect in their life. Their livelihood depends on the monsoon. Yes, I am talking about the Farmers. If we are struck in rain at the time of going to nearest supermarket to buy groceries or vegetables, we may curse our bad luck or even the rain itself for coming at such ‘bad time’. But the very same Rain is essential for producing the goods which we buy from there.

Over the last decade (ever since our country welcomed the globalization) there has been increasing trend in the growth of economy. The GDP has always reached the target of financial planners. But have we done enough for the improving the life of farmers who strive hard in any climatic conditions to produce the food for us? Politicians champion the farmer’s movement till they win elections and then the same people will exploit these farmers by inhumane and unlawful land acquisitions. Movie makers who have tried to highlight the plight of farmers in their movies have seen the movies running in near-empty theaters as people are more interested in new expletives and cuss words teaching movies.

While there are plenty of challenges facing the farmers today, almost all of them could be linked to either literacy or financial independence. Getting subsidized fertilizers and seeds, compensation on land given up for SEZ’s and other projects, support price for the crops etc, depend on the education level and access. Access is a broad concept. Reducing the number of middlemen between the farmer and the market solves many a problem for the poor exploited farmer. This is nothing but the access to fair market. Likewise the access to financial source is also very crucial. A farmer cannot be expected to handle everything that is required to get his produce to market directly (precisely the reason for which he is still dependent on the ever-exploiting middlemen). Forget about the marketing the produce, getting an agricultural loan from bank itself is herculean task for an average farmer. This in spite of the fact that RBI mandate that all public sector banks should give 40% of their total loans to priority sector which include the Agriculture.

It’s very high time that the financial inclusion exercise by RBI meets the desired target. A financial inclusion is a program launched by RBI to help every person in country to at least have a basic saving account with him (and gradually the access to credit facility – at least the micro finance). The advantage of this could be plenty. The government gives the subsidy on fertilizers to the manufacturer (expecting him to pass on the benefit to farmers by lowering the M.R.P) instead of the farmer himself oblivious of the fact that it leads to illegal selling of fertilizers in open market. Same goes with the domestic LPG, diesel etc. But if the financial inclusion is achieved, and the other innovative efforts like the AADHAR (Unique ID for every citizen) these illegal rackets can be curbed or minimized(I abstain from using “stopped” word keeping in mind the IQ power of the mafia people in our country). The savings account of the farmer can be linked with his UID and the government can transfer the subsidy amount to his account directly (with the help of local panchayats and SHG). Though the method is not foolproof, it is effective in long run.

The Anna hazare’s fast proved one important point if nothing else – the youth are not oblivious to the problems plaguing the country. They can be mobilized for social cause provided the leader is creditworthy. Jaago re movement, janagraha NGO etc add to the list of proof. Whatever be the problem, if the govt shows the commitment to work towards it, the citizens will welcome such move with open arms. If there are any loopholes in any plans like the one discussed above, NGO’s and other youth groups are more than happy to help. We’ve the right mind and right energy, what is required now is a leader who can show the right direction to them. I hope the coming monsoons in our country are welcomed by more and more farmers with smiling faces rather than those with frustration and disgust in their face.