theruvadaichan - the road blocker

a return to the place from where this journey could have all began - cuddalore.
it was a year spent there - between may 1995 and may 1996 - which got me doing two important things - thinking and writing.

and as another example of remarkable coincidences, this is the very city of karpagam's childhood and summer vacations and a very lovely and very old grandmother.

and we visited cuddalore last week to coincide with the spell-binding annual temple festival of the magnificent Padaleeswarar temple. this picture should explain the superlatives.

all temples have wonderful stories behind them. here is the background of the Padaleeswarar temple.

the star feature of the 2 week long festival would be - Theruvadaichan (TV).
the festival deities (utsava moorthis) perambulate the streets daily in special floats.
one of them, is the imposing TV.
as the name suggests, this float is as wide as the street and is the veritable road blocker. here it is in its early trellis stage. 

and here it is all set to roll. (our camera packed up)
image courtesy - Cuddalore Online

it is nearing 11 PM as the decorations and aarati finish and the crowds tense up.
the cymbals and drummers up their tempo and as the priests on the float wave their towels - the float moves.
hair prickles up on its ends. the crowds' collective gasp as they scramble back is music.
it is quite the incredible darshan.

auroville

auroville is an universal town nearby puducherry.
shri aurobindo and the mother are the leading spiritual inspirations and the latter has played the pivotal role is creating auroville.

it is a happening place, teeming with naturalists and some wonderful projects and inspiring people.
1. pitchandikulam forest
2. pebble garden
3. nadukuppam
4. sadhana forest
all these and many more have converted an once desolate landscape into a green oasis.

and there is so much more that goes on in art, culture, education, etc.
planning a holiday, this could be an alternate location to work, learn and grow.

pRis luckily just around 60 kms from auroville.

dams of maharashtra - bhandardara and vaitarna

spent 2 days at the picturesque bhandardara MTDC resort. it is famous for a 90 year old dam on the pravara river for provision of water to ahmednagar city.







while we were there, we also managed to drive through the just as picturesque vaitarna dam.
a lot of mumbai's water supply is from here - over 150 kms away.



and the lake levels looked low (with no earlier standard for comparison, i am surely biased by the reports which indicate low levels).

in short, it was a nice exploration into the small/medium dams of maharashtra.
recommend to readers.
stay at the MTDC resort - book in advance either in the monsoon season or in the winters.
there are a couple of other resorts, but MTDC (for all its other faults) has the best location and excellent food.

WTF of the day - town name

here we go again on names.

sivakasi in Tamil Nadu is planning to rename itself (based on numerology) to either sivakaasi or sivahaasi.

truly remarkable levels are being attained on the idiot scale.

where our taxes go - 5

Rs 1.5 crores to transplant 100 trees from Andhra to Mumbai.

that is Rs 1,50,000 per tree.

this is treeson.

earlier WOTGOs.

holy snakes

lounging around an afternoon at my in-laws place in velachery - madras.
this place borders the sprawling (almost contiguous) jungles of IIT Madras and Guindy National Park and the Raj Bhavan (Governor's Bungalow).

wife exclaims - "look, snake!"
and lo behold, there was this nasty one, just at the door, facing away, but looking over into the house.
it was a rat snake (saara paambu in tamil), not poisonous. looked like this.



what was interesting was the reactions.
my in-laws were totally cool, and so was my wife (living for over 15 years on the IIT campus).
my dad was completely taken aback that such critters existed in the vicinity and was advising several precautionary measures to his totally un-flabbergasted samamdhi, who in turn was telling him about what the snake was and how non-venomous it was, etc.

back to our beauty (around 8 ft long and dark grey in colour) - seeing this mass of humanity surge towards him, he bolts and what speed!! just awesome. the difference between watching it on discovery channel and seeing it live is in magnitudes of googolplex.

after rushing back and forth, trying to scale the walls to reach his sanctuary, he finally gets a boost from a bush in the backyard and made good his escape.

for those who came in late, csm = crazy snake man, an appellation derived from a rant by matthew perry in a friends episode.
just to reinforce that i am very good with snakes:-)

kannamwar nagar

eastern express highway starts from sion and snakes its way through the central suburbs of mumbai till thane where it morphs into NH 3.
for its entire stretch post ghatkopar, it runs past some of the greenest parts of mumbai, namely the mangroves on the eastern seafront.
there is just one exception to this unbroken vista.
and that small township is kannamwar nagar, vikhroli east.
after seeing its name on several BEST buses over the last many years, i got a chance to visit this place to attend a wedding.
while it does not look any different than any other place, if one changes the viewing perspective, kannamwar nagar is a special place.
here is a bird's view from a long way up. the yellow line is the EEH and the small triangle on its right in the center of the image is kannamwar nagar.



coming in closer, the triangle takes on a defined form.


"what's so special?", you may ask.
the layout of this township is now visible below in a closer zoom and "doesn't it look pretty?". almost like a fluid flowing around a circular object.



so, on my last flight, i looked out while landing and could identify this beautiful location. it is a million times more beautiful than the above images.

last flight

i think i have taken my last flight of my life.
i do not see why and how i shall be able to take one again knowing its carbon footprint and also that i shall be mostly a drive away from family emergencies.

i shall miss looking at the cities and all sundry views from the top.
i will be happy to pass the claustrophobia, awful food, high pressure ramming you ears, etc.

the indian airports (can speak for mumbai and chennai) are nothing like how they were when i used to frequent them 7 years ago.
they are all sparkling and shiny all over the place.

we did something, which we reckon, that must rank as unique. from the airport exit, we took BEST to reach home. this is a stellar feature of the mumbai airport which allows public transport into the main airport exit area. all other cities fail miserably on this count.

fasting

yesterday (friday 18th sept 2009) was alvida jumma (अलविदा जुम्मा).
it is the last friday in the holy month on ramzan.
it is a very special day as it also indicates that Id-ul-fitr (ramzan-id) is around the corner.

on the suggestion of one of my friends, i kept a fast (रोज़ा) from dawn to dusk.
this was my first time ever. to stay over 14 hours without food was going to be quite manageable, but i was not sure about staying thirsty for the same time. it goes against my standard 2-3 liters of water/day.
so i decided to stay in the office the whole day (in air-conditioned environments) so as to prevent loss of water by sweating.
so i had a full stomach of water and a cup of coffee in the morning and that lasted me through the day quite well.
i could observe that life and time seemed to have slowed down. i kept looking at the time more frequently than before.

the breaking of the fast (रोज़ा खोलना) aka Iftaar (इफ्तार) is a pretty process.
we had gone shopping to Md Ali Road, which is a remarkable place most of the year, but during Ramzan, it is just moves up many notches.
if you can stand crowds (mumbai trains its citizens well in this regard), this is a must see. especially on alvida jumma.

i am considering fasting right through ramzan next year. but that's 11 months away.

now i wait for Id.

dharavi slum?

no, say the residents and the airoots team over the slumdog/dharavi issue.

The Indian media widely reported popular outrage at the word ‘dog’. But what we heard from Manju Keny, a 19 year - old college student living in Dharavi - was something else. She was upset at the word ‘slum’.

We could not agree more.

it is a "user-generated" city

Dharavi is the ultimate user-generated city. Its urban and economic development relies on the intensive use of social networks and communities. Each of Dharavi’s 80 plus neighborhoods has been incrementally developed by generations of residents updating their shelters and businesses according to needs and means. This organizational logic is neither new nor unique to Dharavi, but we have never been in a better time to understand it. Just as the development of open source software requires guidelines and coordination; all Dharavi needs is some support from the government – mostly in the form of giving its functioning some legitimacy by providing the same services as in any other part of the city– and then trusting its inhabitants to continue from there.

the urban typhoon and dharavi.org are other fabulous places to be to learn more on dharavi.
the population density stats are just staggering

Dharavi is an extremely dense environment. A recent survey by the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) established that a central area of Dharavi (Chamra Bazaar) contained densities of up to 336,643 people per square kilometer! Assuming a population of 700,000, the population density in Dharavi would be around 314,887/km². This is 11 times as dense as Mumbai as a whole (the most densely populated city in the world with 29,500 people/km²) and more than 6 times as dense as daytime Manhattan (about 50,000 people/km²).

agumbe

agumbe is a small town in karnataka.
it caught my attention when i was closely perusing the climate news in the hindu. (yes, i know i have a lot of time to kill).
among all the towns in south india, agumbe is by far the tops when it comes to total annual rainfall.
we all know the cherrapunji story. worlds wettest region with over 10000 mm of annual rainfall (i.e., 1000 cm or 10 m). which is a lot mind you.
by comparison, bombay gets peanuts - say 2500 mm a year.
to refresh your minds, in bombay on july 26 2005, it rained around 944 mm in a single day.

so....after cherrapunji, who? it is this humble town. nearly 7.5 m of rain a year.
ok, now back to more details on travel in agumbe . and here it is on wikipedia.

should go there sometime.