Trip to Varichiyur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009

Had been thinking for a while, should i do this ? I mean once again troubling you with this post of mine, stating what i did, what i didn’t do blah blah blah.. It is this thought that has prevented me a lot many times from posting something, anyway here we go.

As the title suggests, it is about great things i did last year 2009. I had a good amount of time to waste, and the dance and song shows in TV was not impressive. So i tried hard, really hard to recollect what i did throught out the year. For a moment i blamed my memory power, as i could not recollect anything. Later i realized, how long i spend thinking about 2009, i wont get anything. Ha ha that was my 2009, in the sense quite ordinary without any trouble or surprises. Work was fine and other than work it was movies, trips and journey back home. 2009 will be remembered for a lot of significant events in the world but to me it was yet another normal year which went away happily.

Anyway, Happy new year to all.

Wait, hold your patience for some more time while i talk about new year resolution. I managed to think of a resolution for this new year and it is not to take further resolutions.

2 States

I presume that everyone is aware that 2 states is the name of Chetan Bhagat’s latest book. I got an opportunity to read this book last week. I had read, Five point someone, and felt that the book was a little ok. But when i started reading his other books, i felt irritated. Somehow i felt them to be a repetition. 3 guys, a hero among them, a gal, screwed up family, they get into trouble and finally escape blah blah blah. I felt i had nothing to take from his books. So i had stopped in the middle of his other books.

But there was lot of hype about 2 states and moreover it involved TamilNadu. It kindled a little of my curiosity to know what Chetan had to say about TN and Tamil people. But the story was impressive. The book was a bit fast paced and had something not to let my interest die. Both Punjab and Tamilnadu had suffered some serious humiliation at his hands. But it was enjoyable, has humourously brought out the defects or funny sides of both the cultures, starting from the dressing sense, education, food, society etc etc.  Also at few places, some philosophies here and there.

Though on the whole, it was a mass masala like a hind film with just songs missing, i liked it. Worth reading once….

A short Break

An unintended short break from Blogging. Not that i am totally occupied with work. At the same time, i am not totally free too to think about something and blog about it. Is twitter a reason. Yes think so. If not for twitter, i might have tried posting about few social or personal happenings.

Anyway, the habit of blogging helped me a little last weekend. I was fighting with a bank, regarding Credit card fee blah blah blah. Had been sending them a series of mails and i was getting a number of junk replies. Was really pissed off with them. So wanted to send out a mail, containing all the information, the dates when i had called, when they had called me etc etc. If it was an actress birthday or movie release date, i might have remembered something. But dates of call, was something that i never paid attention to. Fortunately when i had received the call, i was in theater, about to watch “Unnai Pol Oruvan” and i had blogged about it. So visited my blog, got the info, mailed them with the exact date. I did see some positive response and action after that mail. Blog is in a way acting as a tool to immortalize the feelings and happenings. So I am determined to blog about significant, unsignificant, rubbish, repeated stuffs. My determintations and resolutions are volatile, lets see how this goes.

Thirumayam Trip

During the diwali holidays, had been to Thirumayam. Thanks to the effort of the organizers, as a result of which i was ready early on Sunday morning for the trip for the trip to Thirumayam. The trip was different, and first of its kind since it was not a fun trip but rather a trip to learn something about the history. If we had gone alone it would have ended with discussion about film history or heroine history. But this time we were accompanied by Dr. Venkataraman, archaelogist & retired history professor from Madurai Kamaraj University and Prabhu anna’s father. At the age of above 70, Dr. V as he is called, remained active and energetic. Rich in the subject, his beautiful explanations left us awestruck. The temple was absolutely free, giving us a lot of time and space to explore. Then we visited Kundrakudi rock cut shiva temple, to look a number of beautiful statues left to ruin. Looks like the original temple was built by Pandiyas for shiva, the Murugan temple was built later on the hill.

Thanks to Prabhu anna for coming up with a full list of what we discussed that day. I have a copy of mail to read, and dont want to replicate the same here in blog. You can check Prabhu anna’s post and also my pictures for which i had tried adding a lot of comments so that it explains something. Pics at Picasa.

Hope to have few more in the future.

Unnai Pol Oruvan

Three days leave but i was here in Bangalore for a change. So one full day to be spent. The obvious choice was a movie. So decided for Unnai Pol Oruvan. As usual, headed to Balaji theater for the movie. I had not seen the hindi version “A Wednesday” that got released last year. So UPO is like a new movie, with nothing to compare to find flaws, and very little idea about what the story is. The movie turned out to be good one. It does create an impact. Few good things about the movie is fast screenplay, fabulous acting from the veterans Kamal and Mohan lal, no masala moments, not using technology as some magic, strong story borrowed from hindi version, good selection of artists. The music by shruti hassan, did not disturb the flow of movie, so i would safely quote that it was good. The film was short and ended in just 2 hours including the 15 minutes break. No unnecessary songs, no separate and idiotic comedies.

The movie has a strong message at the end. But the movie seems to be strictly for A class audience. Heavy usage of English which evoked some instant comments from some audience. One such dialogue was “Please talk in binary”,  when Kamal needs  a yes/no response. Not sure how many would understand dialogues like that. So i am not sure about the response in B and  C centers. Usually i  feel Kamal is over acting, in this case, i could not find anything like that too. So i liked the movie, it is worth watching and should be watched atleast once.

Thats it, got to get ready for office, so leaving now, do watch the movie.

Trip to Jaladhama

After a long time, a trip once again. This time it was a different one and first of its kind. Weekend visit to a resort. After some discussion, the place was fixed as jaladhama, the resort near Talekad. We started from bangalore at around 7.30, basically to avoid all the traffic and reach the mysore road witout trouble. The drive through Mysore road was cool. First pit stop was at Bidadi, idly shop. It is just a road side shop, but the crowd there ascertained that it is going to be good. It lived upto the expectations and idly superb. Next at shivalli MTR shop, where we had bisibele bath, which was also superb.

The road was good upto Malavalli, after which the tough times started. Every 50 meters of good road was interrrupted with 500 meters of worn out, demolished, road that contained just stones. So had to go slowly. Finally reached the resort at around 1.00 PM. Have to cross the river in motor boat to reach the resort. People there welcomed us with a welcome drink. The room was neat and clean and had all the amenities. The resort has two basketball, volleyball, badminton court and a cricket and football field. So we had 24 hours to spend with all these. After a nice lunch, started playing with badminton, followed by basketball and then with volleyball. After that went for a rowing in the river for around an hour. The most interesting part was the swimming that followed. It was great to swim after around 6 or 7 years.

Next morning, once again started with early morning swimming where we tried some underwater swimming. Then a heavy breakfast and then some badminton once again. After that we headed towards Shivasamudra. This is the third visit to the falls. This time our friend took us to a different view point, near Dargah where i had not gone during my previous two visits. The view of Gaganachukki falls from there was awesome. This is the first i am seeing so much of water there when compared to previous visits. Bharachukki also it was the same, the place where we had taken bath during was nowhere to be seen. After that we started the trip back to our Bangalore. Thus ended yet another good trip.

A quick recap

Quite long, since i logged into wordpress and blabbered something. Was quite busy with my distance learning MS programme and last week completed the mid semester exam. After that it has been quite fun with three movies in two days and a mind that is more or less empty with nothing to care about. Before two days, i was struggling to stay awake when i tried studying, today when i wanted to watch movies i am doing it with ease

Also last week saw Kanthsamy. The movie was a mass masala one, with lavish spending on the locations and very little spending on shriya’s costume. Vikram’s acting was as usual good. Other than that, not much in the movie.

As far as the exams are concerned, it is the same old strategy of burning the midnight oil before the exams, looking at the question paper and laughing to make sure that you stay happy even you are going to lose everything, writing non sense without pity for the guy who will be correcting it, and after the exams blogging about it. The best part of the answer sheet is the margins.

Other than that not much as of now. Hope to blog often from now, till the next exams.

Few Updates from Madurai..

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

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

Weblogger mode with Tag support

Right from May, all posts to this blog were made from Emacs. Slowly losing the habit of using the web interface. Thanks to the hard work of geeks out there, who have tweaked the weblogger.el to a greater extent. With the new version of WordPress, and introduction of Tags, the main problem i faced with the weblogger mode in Emacs is the lack of support for the tags. Hence though the draft is created in Emacs, used to edit the blog posts once it is posted and add tags. Was searching for the weblogger mode with Tag support for wordpress. From the wordpress site found that it can be done specifying the tags in the mt_keywords in the metaweblog API. Thats all it ended there. Did not go beyond that.

After some time came across the link, http://blog.nethazard.net/emacs-weblogger-mode-with-wordpress-tags-support/ where the weblogger with the Tags support was available. From then, it has been a satisfying experience while i blog from Emacs. If i could find someway to type in Tamil, will soon try posting to my Tamil Blog from Emacs. Still without luck, If anybody is aware of some way to type in Tamil in Emacs, let me know.