Srisailam trip

A couple of months back a few of my uncles and aunts planned a trip to Srisailam during the Christmas break. My parents also decided to join and tickets were booked well in advance for the whole group. In early December, there was a back out - and that is how I came to be invited to tag along.

We (wife, kid and self) boarded Sabari from Trivandrum on the 24^th. Wife and kid got off the train at Ernakulam. At Aluva the rest of the group boarded. Besides my parents, aunts and uncles, the group also included my uncle’s colleague, a Professor hailing from Nellore. He turned out to be (literally) our friend, philosopher and guide for the whole trip.

It was an interesting train journey. More than half the compartment was occupied by Ayyapa devotees – those returning from the Sabarimala pilgrimage. Around 7:30 PM I overheard bells ringing nearby and went over to investigate. Well, around 7 or 8 bare footed, bare chested devotees were hunched around a stand. There was a photo of Lord Ayyapa in the centre and the ‘periya swami’ was performing an arti (he was burning real camphor). The coupe had been converted to a makeshift temple. Feeling rather pious, I turned around to return to my seat when I happened to notice the chap on the side berth adjacent to the make shift temple. He was immersed in a Malayalam film magazine (Nana) drooling over a bikini clad picture of a starlet. The contrast could not be more striking!

Since our stop (Ongole) was at 4:30 in the morning, we had an early dinner and retired early. My father got a wake up call at 12:30 AM at Tirupathi ! A traveller had boarded the train with the previous day’s ticket (the confusion was because the train reached his boarding station, Tirupathi on start date + 1). A couple of hours of heated discussions later, the crestfallen traveller had to pay a heavy fine. The TTR was obviously a happy man having extracted the amount from the hapless chap.

From Ongole we proceeded by car to Srisailam via Podile, Markapur and Dornala . The ‘Prof’ informed us that it would take us around 4-5 hours to get there - three fourths of the distance to be covered in the plains followed by around 50 Kms of ghat roads. The fearless Innova driver got us to Markapur in double quick time. The roads were not exactly wide or in good condition. That did not seem to deter him. He also did not seem the least bit intimidated by trucks or APSTRC buses and always seemed to veer off from head on collisions at the last minute. All of us were praying to Lord Siva even before getting to Srisailam.

The stretch around Markapur is granite country. One interesting innovation we noticed was that thin granite slabs (waste from quarries) were used to build walls. The trick seemed to be to tightly wedge the thin slabs together.

Markapur, a sleepy little town was just waking up as we arrived. It did not seem to have a decent, clean restaurant. We picked the one that looked the better of the lot and quickly dug into breakfast on offer.

The roads got worse as we moved further into the heart of Andhra. But the terrain started giving way from dusty and rocky grey to various shades of green with yellow sprinkled in for good measure. For a while it was sunflower country…..

Then it became red hot …..

We also saw miles of tobacco crop and thuvara parippu crop.

Our Prof informed us that while the main crop in the coastal districts was paddy, this area was good for cultivating crops like tobacco, chilli, sunflower, thuvara dal, kadigu etc.

And soon the ghat section started…

After a couple of hours of scenic journey, we finally made it to Srisailam. The climate there was quite pleasant. We checked into ‘Ganga Sadan’ which is one of the Devasthanam (equivalent of Kerala’s Devason board) built accommodations. The rooms were spartan but spacious and clean. Unlike Guruvayur, the rates were reasonable and facilities plenty.

They had even provided access to clean drinking water (1 rupee per liter). The purifier seemed impressive (quartz filter-carbon filter-reverse osmosis-active carbon filter-UV standardization etc!!)

Before we go any further a bit of background history/mythology on Srisailam -

The holy town of Srisailam is located on the banks of the Krishna river in the heart of the Nallamalla hills in Kurnool district. The Bhramaramba Mallikarjunaswamy Temple dedicated to Lord Mallikarjuna Swamy (Shiva) and Devi Bhramaramba (Parvathi) is located here. This is one of the 12 Jyotirlinga temples dedicated to Lord Shiva. A Jyotirlinga is a shrine where Lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of a "Lingam of light”. Amongst the Jyothirlinga tempes, after Somnath, Srisilam holds the most significance.

The story behind Bhramaramba Devi is also interesting.

A demon named Arunaasura performed Tapasya for a very long time and pleased Lord Brahma. Arunaasura asked for a boon that he should not be kílled by a two footed or a four footed creature. Lord Brahma granted his wish. Soon Arunaasura started terrorizing the three worlds. In response to prayers from the Gods, the goddess created thousands of bees (which are six legged creatures) and herself turned into one. The bees got rid of Arunaasura and his whole army in no time.

And now back to the blog. We quickly had a hot water shower and proceeded to the temple. Since the ‘free’ queue was quite long, we took the Rs 100 darshan ticket and proceeded to wait. It took us about an hour to get to the sanctum sanctorum. In-spite of the wait, we only got a brief darshan.

By now all of us were hungry and thirsty. Went to a makeshift restaurant nearby and had spicy Andhra meals.

Post lunch it was time to visit the Pathalaganga which is a deep gorge near the Srisailam Dam. To get there, earlier one had to walk down the hill to the reservoir valley. Now there is a ropeway which starts just one KM away from the temple.

View of the dam from the ropeway

Professor explaining the significance of Patalaganga to the rest of the group

From here, one can visit the Akkamahadevi Caves where the famous ascetic Akkamahadevi performed penance. However as it was getting late and as we had to visit a couple of more places, we decided to skip the one hour boat ride to the caves.

Once we were back up where our car was waiting, we decided to visit the Shivaji Spurti Kendra created to commemorate Shivaji’s visit to Srisailam. We stopped a monk to ask for the way and he guided us in exchange for a lift.

Imposing statue of Emperor Shivaji.

Next we visited the Chenchu tribal museum situated at the entrance of Srisailam town. But first we took snaps of the large statues at the main round about.

The museum itself was disappointing. Though the exhibits were well kept, there was no description. Interestingly the exhibits were numbered meticulously but as I mentioned before without write-ups the numbers were of no use.

I felt that Nandu (my daughter) might have had a good time in the garden if she had been there. For some weird reason, there were swings, a large play area and even a dinosaur. Maybe the intention was to have a museum (for the adults) and a garden (for the kids).

By now most of the members in the group were tired and we headed back to Ganga Sadan for a short late afternoon siesta. In the evening, after a warm shower and steaming hot coffee, we decided to try for one more round of darshan. As we neared the temple entrance we realized it was going to be next to impossible. This being a long weekend, the rush was increasing by the hour. We had to be satisfied with darshan from outside.

As it was getting colder by the minute, we had dinner on our way back to Ganga Sadan and retired for the night.

Woke up to a foggy morning (which meant a late 8:30 AM start). This gave enough time to the driver to get someone to try out some colorful art work on the car.

The first stop of the day was the Sakshi Ganapathy temple located 3 KMs away from Srisailam. Lord Ganapathy here keeps a record of all the pilgrims to tender evidence of their visit. The idol holds a book in the left hand and a pen in his right. The devotees are supposed to visit this temple on their return from Srisailam and inform Ganapathy of their name and ‘Gotra’. For a small fee, we got the pujari to chant our name and Gotra so that Ganapathy could log our visit!

From here we proceeded to Hatakeswaram. As per the local folklore, Siva appeared to a potter devotee over here. Within the peaceful temple premises, there is a small temple of Lalitha Devi as well. Under the watchful eyes of the resident monkeys, we offered our prayers.

From Hatakeswaram, we proceeded to the small but beautiful subterranean streams – Panchadhara and Phaladhara. Legend has it that the Phaladhara originates from the forehead of Lord Shiva. Panchadhara signifies the five aspects of Shiva. We were informed by the Prof that the water from these streams flow uninterrupted through out the year.

The last stop just before we returned from the Srisailam area was the highest peak in the surrounding area – Shikaram. As per the Skanda puranam, whoever can successfully see the Shikhrama (you have to peep through the ears of the Nandi statue) of Mallikarjuna temple from Shikaram is free from rebirth. Eager to attain Moksha, all of us tried our luck (Rs. 2 for an attempt) but alas it was not yet time!!

Interestingly at the heights of Shikaram, one can also see the height of commercialization. Since viewing the central gopuram (with the naked eye) through the ears of the Nandi is extremely difficult, help was at hand nearby – for a price of course. Just before we approached the Nandi statue, there was this resourceful chap with a pair of binoculars at a vantage point. For Rs 10, he was helping the pilgrims focus on where to look at!! With modern day technology one can cheat even the Gods!

With that we descended from the hills and by 1 PM we reached Markapur. Our intention was to visit the Sri Lakshmi Chenna Kesava Swamy (Vishnu) temple but we were late by half an hour. We had to be content with visiting the outer precints of the temple.

We had lunch at the same restaurant we had stopped enroute the day before. There for the first time during this trip I managed to get hold of my favorite daal powder. Whilst I loved the food, the others found it a bit too spicy. Even the beet root thoran was hot!

By evening we reached Ongole station.We had nearly 4 hours till the train would arrive at Ongole. We spent the time resting, walking from one end of the platform to the other and generally ruminating over the events of the past two days.

We boarded the train at night, tired but satisfied. All of us slept very well unlike the onward train journey. Thus ended our short but sweet trip to Srisailam.

Shiva Shambo!

Break Ke Baad…

It has been a while since I blogged. Not that I was busy – I was just plain lazy. Also nothing exciting enough caught my eye.

Over the Christmas break, I happened to go on a trip to Srisailam. Thought I would pen a rather detailed travelogue to compensate for my silence over the past couple of months J

Wish every one of you a very Happy and Prosperous 2011

Interesting site - Uncyclopedia

Came across this site by mistake but for those who are interested in humour, it should be worth a visit.

I was googling for a wikipedia entry and clicked on one of the search results by mistake. It opened up an entry in Uncyclopedia which is a spoof of Wikipedia (the title says: Uncyclopedia - the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit J )

URL - http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Some of the entries are funny, some boorish, some outright distasteful but I did find a couple of gems.

Jinxed destination

Thenmala is an ideal weekend getaway around 70 Kms from Trivandrum. Easily accessible from the city (just a two hour drive), you can cover the destination in a day trip from the city – though ideally one ought to ideally stay overnight to enjoy the nature to the fullest.

Thrice we have made an attempt to visit Thenmala and each time the trip never really took off. The first time we made it as far as 20 Km from Trivandrum. By then one of the travellers took severely ill and we headed right back. The second time we did 30 Km before a sudden heavy downpour meant that we had to return (no point in going there if you are holed up in the car all day).

After a long gap, we thought we would be third time lucky and made plans with another family. This time we did indeed make it to Thenmala (Honey-hill is the literal English translation of Then-mala). We reached there well ahead of the planned time and straightaway bought tickets to the various attractions there. After spending an hour and a half in the ‘adventure zone’, we went to the deer park. The kids had a great time there and post lunch we were planning to visit the other attractions. Just before exploring the deer park, we decided to climb up the tree house in the park. As our friend was climbing down from the tree house, she slipped and sprained / twisted her leg. There was no point in remaining there as she was in considerable pain and needed medical attention. We rushed back to Trivandrum.

I have not given up yet – though the destination seems to be jinxed, it has been getting progressively better. Next time I am sure we will spend a whole day there. If so, I promise, I will write a mini travelogue in this blog.

Onam

Last year around the time of Onam I had written about the celebrations in Technopark.

Earlier today I was reviewing what I had written then with the happenings in the park this year. Happy to report that the tradition continues . The week before the Onam break was busy as ever with the various organsiations vying with one another to outdo each other with their pookalams and other celebrations.

Our company celebrated in the usual grand fashion last Friday (20th Aug) . Since I was busy I could not watch the programs live (pookalams, mavelis, pazham theeta malsaram, kottu etc) but of course I did not miss the sadhya that day !

Wave your flag

The football fever seems to have got to practically everyone. I had jokingly mentioned to my daughter about the time (1986) when my cousins and I were so football crazy that we even started making flags in anticipation of some of the games (see my blog entry on June 11, 2010 titled “Gooooooaaaal !!’ for details)

My daughter wanted to know the whole story and then wanted to make flags for this world cup. This weekend we proceeded to do exactly that. Truth be told even I was excited to participate in this activity.

Wifey cut down some branches from the ‘Muringa’ tree . The stouter twigs among them were our flag poles. She also covered the chosen twigs with cello-tape. The leaves of course were not wasted as they were cooked for our dinner curry on Saturday night.. I drew the outlines of the flags on A4 size paper. Nandu and her acha-chan (grand father) did the honours of painting (colouring) the flags.

The whole thing got Nandu excited. I am hoping that I can use these tactics to get her interested in other sports as well so that she will watch with me (or at least let me watch in peace)!

Wonder if I can do something similar for F1?!!? Maybe next weekend’s project could be painting the Red Bulls and Mclarens ?

Barber Nazi !

One of my favourite sitcoms in the nineties was Seinfeld. The setting for the sitcom was simple. But what made it fabulous were the simplicity of the plots, the definitions of the characters and most of all the script. The script writers would take mundane ordinary things and create an extraordinary plot with sharp punch line. The characters would deliver the lines almost perfectly.

One of the things that stood out in the show were the usage of catch phrases that themselves had a cult following. In fact Jerry Seinfeld later wrote a best selling book called 'Seinlanguage' that included all the catch phrases.

A few memorable examples -

're-gifter' - a person who receives as a gift, has no use for it and gifts the item to someone else

'close talker' - someone who stands embarrassingly close to you during a conversation

'soup Nazi' - this was the nickname of one character who ran a soup shop. The soup was very tasty but the owner was a very strict and mean person. If he did not like the way the patron behaved, he would shout 'no soup for you'. This last statement became a buzz word in itself.

Why I am writing all this here and why now? Well, earlier this week I got a haircut at my regular place and the barber's demeanour and behaviour reminded me of the 'soup Nazi' and of Seinfeld.

I have been frequenting this barber shop for nearly 25 years now. In the past whenever I have been in Trivandrum, I have gone to his place for a haircut. For the past four years that I have stayed here, I have not gone anywhere else in Trivandrum (for a haircut that is !).

While he always goes about his work diligently and sincerely, he is very much against change. Also, he is a very strict person and extremely sensitive to comments - especially on the subject of cutting hair!

The shop is located strategically at a major intersection. The mushrooming of apartments in the area and upward mobility of his potential clientele might have prodded a slightly more proactive person to modernise his saloon, spruce up the place, hire staff to expand operations and start charging a premium. Not so our hero. He is still the same old person working in the same old fashion. The only time change impacted him was when the authorities had to demolish his shop to make way for road widening. He moved to a better and bigger place next door and proceeded to quickly make it look as messy as his old shop!

Why do his clients patronise him? Simple - he does an excellent job of what he does: that is cut hair!

Now back to the soup Nazi business, I was waiting in line and thinking about the fact that I ought to tell the barber this time to crop more hair in the area above the right part of the forehead. Otherwise in a month's time it could get messy. Just as I was thinking about this, the customer whom he was attending to asked him to do that very thing! 'Cheta, can you please cut here' he said indicating the area above the right forehead.

Our friend stopped the clip-clipping of the scissors, took a step back and let loose on the customer - 'Are you the barber or am I?. I will cut hair as I please. If I listen to you now, you will come back later saying it looks bad' he was getting more animated with each statement he made. ' If you cannot be silent when I am cutting hair, you can go someplace else'

Needless to say, when my turn came, I hopped on to the chair and did not utter a single word till he finished, then I quietly paid up and left!

Next time I need a haircut, I am sure I will go back to same old saloon. Some habits die hard - even if the barber is a 'soup Nazi'!