Walter Mitty moments

Walter Mitty is a fictional character in the famous short story ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ written by James Thurber in the nineteen thirties. This meek hero of the short story was prone to day dreaming. In his day dreams, Mitty was endowed with extreme skills and performed heroic acts (e.g. air plane pilot, ace surgeon, super spy etc.).

When we are little, most – if not all - of us have a lot of fun indulging in ‘Walter Mitty’ moments. This blog entry was triggered by one such incident. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and after a heavy meal, I was reading the magazine section of the news paper and had almost dozed off on the sofa. My daughter was playing alone in the corner and amusing herself chatting with imaginary friends. She was not aware that I had stopped reading and was following her banter. Her role play was so realistic that it seemed like she was having a conversation with an actual person. This triggered off memories of my childhood…

My cousin and I were (still are) crazy cricket fans when we were kids. We used to listen to radio commentary of test matches. Later in the evenings we used to mimic the commentary. In these ‘matches’, Gavaskar would almost always hit centuries and Kapil Dev would bowl deadly out-swingers! Our commentary sessions used to last up-to an hour at a time till we got bored and moved on to something else!

At the start of the vacation season, I used to travel quite a lot by ‘Express’ bus from Trivandrum to Ernakulam. At the time my heroes were bus drivers and I used to closely observe them in action from the front row. A favourite past time for a couple of summers was fantasising about driving a make believe express bus.

In 7th standard, my new friend (a new comer to my school) was literate in ‘pop’ music. More likely his elder brother used to listen to Rock and passed on this taste to him. This chappie lent me a couple of cassettes of AC DC and Pink Floyd. For a time I used to fantasise about being an electric guitar playing rock star dressed like the chap on the cover of the AC DC cassette! AC DC fever lasted about a year. Years later when I listened to an AC DC song, my connection with the band was renewed ! The Pink Floyd bug on the other hand lasted through my childhood and even today I am a Pink Floyd addict.

The extended stint of the Walter Mitty syndrome through my childhood is not surprising considering I was a single child. Maybe it was to compensate for lack of a sibling. As time passed, somewhere along the way I lost the ability to day dream....

Maybe day dreaming is not as bad it might sound – even for adults. A small dose of it might be the medicine for lack of creativity. As adults we lose the ability to dream and are too realistic and too ‘sensible’.

Impressed !

I was so impressed by a device that I came across today that I thought I would blog about it right away. My brother-in-law got me what is labeled as an ‘In-Car MP3 Player & Wireless FM Radio Transmitter for USB Flash Drive & SD Card with 12V Lighter Plug’ from Bangalore. Sounds quite impressive right? Yet in terms of looks, it is a compact metallic device with a few buttons at the front.

What is impressive about this fancy sounding compact device is what it does. I have an old mp3/CD player in my car. It also plays FM radio. When I changed cars, the mp3 player came with me to the new car. When I enquired about making my car USB ready, the mechanic told me I would need to buy a new player.

Now what this device does is that is plays mp3 music from an USB stick or an SD card. All that one needs to do is to plug the device to the lighter plug in the car and tune the FM radio to the same frequency! Sounds cool, right? No need to burn CDs anymore. All you need to have is a couple of USB sticks with your favorite music.

This is a great device that is in the market at the right time. Already most new cars have a built in USB player. This device is a boon for those who have those old CP based systems and want to have a cheap alternative to buying a new system.

First Strike !

No! I am not referring to Jackie Chan’s movie of the same name nor am I using this phrase in the nuclear context nor is this a reference to any sporting action.

I am referring to today’s dawn to dusk motor strike. Barely had the new cabinet (Kerala State Government) been sworn in than we had our first taste of Hartal/Strike/Bandh.

The motor unions gave the call to strike to protest the petrol price hike and the public complied with the call- more out of fear for life and property than anything else.

A sample of things to come in the next five years perhaps?

Did the petrol price come down at the end of the twelve hours of inactivity? NO

What else was achieved by the strike other than loss of productive time and money? NOTHING.

Will those who call for these Hartals learn anything from the experience? NEVER

There is a saying in Malayalam which states that even if you put a dog’s tail in a straight pipe, it will still be curved when you take it out of the pipe. How apt!

Every cloud has a silver lining. On the personal front, Hartals are the only occasions when I clean my Hero Honda bike and use it for my daily commute. Else it is tucked away in a corner of the garage and left to rust. A Hartal once in a few months keeps my bike clean and in running condition.

Memories of TCL (Thirumuppam Cricket League)!!

The IPL is meandering on and this constant exposure to Cricket on Television brought back memories of childhood – thought I would share an interesting Cricket related moment with you.

During our summer vacations at Thirumuppam (then a sleepy village an hour’s drive from Ernakulam) we used to play cricket in the late afternoons. There were two small teams in the ‘League’. On one side were my first cousin and me (we were around 14 at the time). The opposition team had a couple of younger first cousins and 2-3 other kids (distant cousins) from the neighbourhood (average age around 10).

Though outnumbered, we were bigger and stronger than our opponents and always insisted on the same team. Naturally they were no match for us and the results were almost always a foregone conclusion. It was like a matchup between India and Bermuda!

Whenever the opposition would raise their voice against the injustice in team formation, we would pacify them with the carrot of ‘double batting’ – each of their batsmen could bat twice. Not that this made much of a difference – it just delayed the inevitable.

Things changed with the induction of an ‘overseas player’. This kid (roughly our age) was the son of the brother of the pujari of the nearby temple. He had never played cricket before and wanted to join us. We – the ‘League commissioners’ - said why not? It was deemed that he could join the ‘chottas’. We were sure our dominance would continue.

What happened next knocked the wind out of us - the favourites. This kid who had never held a bat in his life before turned out to be a cross between Srikanth, Sehwag and Pathan. He had the recklessness of Srikanth, the hand-eye coordination of Sehwag and the power of Pathan. He could not hold the bat properly and had only one shot (expansive swing of the arms) in his armoury. But that was enough – each delivery we bowled disappeared. If he favoured the top of the coconut tree the first time, the next time it was targeted at the ‘Moovandan’ mango tree. If Shastri were there he would have said that it was raining ‘DLF maximums’. There was no way we could even hope for a ‘Karbon Kamaal catch’.

My cousin and I took a ‘Maxx mobile strategic time out’ and discussed the options. Those days we used to listen to radio commentary quite a lot and prided ourselves in our knowledge of Cricket. It was decided that one of us would bowl ‘fast in-swingers’ while the other would focus on ‘orthodox left arm spin’. Unfortunately for us the ‘overseas player’ was not knowledgeable in ‘in-swingers’ or ‘orthodox spin’!! He treated every ball the same way, same shot, same result. We were completely demoralised.

The hiding continued over the next few days (our attempts to change the teams were met with stiff resistance from the ‘chottas’ – even the offer of double batting did not work). Respite came after a couple of weeks in the form of the ‘overseas player recalled for national duty’ – the kid left Thirumuppam to spend the rest of vacation at his maternal grandparent’s place.

Thankfully next summer there was no sign of the ‘overseas player’ – not that we were particularly eager to check on his availability!

Dream come true

If the current IPL lacks zing due to its timing (scheduled as it is just after the World Cup), it did throw up a few surprises and helped uncover a few gems.

At the start of the tournament we had a relatively unknown Paul Valthaty bursting onto the scene with a quick fire century (120 off 63 balls). Since then the public have been expecting him to emulate that act in every match. Valthaty’ story is one of grit and determination. He had been injured in an under-19 world cup match (in 2002) and almost lost his eyesight. After getting cured he worked hard at a comeback finally doing so in 2009. He was part of the Mumbai squad and also the Rajasthan Royals squad for the past two years. In IPL 2009 and 2010 he did not do much except warm the bench for most of the time.

But what a turn around he has had since he joined Kings XI this year! Today he is spoken of in the same breath as big hitters like Uthapa and Pathan.

If Valthaty’s story is fascinating, Prasanth Parameswaran’s story seems straight out of a fairy tale! Inducted as a nets bowler for the Tuskers just a few days back, he impressed the coach Lawson so much that when there was a replacement opportunity Prasanth found himself in the squad. A couple of days later, he played his first match and the rest as they is history. He deservedly got the man of the match award as his dismissal of Sehwag was the most significant contribution to Kochi’s victory. Sreesanth did the translation during the post match interview. Good to see another Keralite do well. Hope he eventually makes it to the Indian team at some point.

Post script – Dada is back ! Yes he is ! Read in the papers yesterday that Saurav Ganguly has been inducted by the Pune Warriors as a replacement for Nehra. Well Pune does indeed need some inspiration – they are currently languishing at the bottom of the points table. It remains to seen whether the Dada magic will work for Pune.

I am back

Yes I am back - it has been quite a while since I blogged. It was not due to lack of topics to blog about or that I was too busy to write. As I had indicated in my last entry in the New Year, just another bout of laziness! Sometimes initiatives run out of steam (I had resolved in the New Year that I would blog as frequently as last year). But hey, better late than never, eh? So to compensate (over compensate?), this entry is a pretty long one (Never know when I will drag myself to the computer again!).

A lot has happened in the first four months of 2011. The Japan earthquake and the tsunami left a trail of destruction and thousands perished. The fragile nature of Man’s existence was exposed. In-spite of being a modern ‘developed’ economy, Japan could not withstand the fury of nature.

The subsequent Fukushima nuclear mess shook not just Japan but the entire world. Today, the viability of nuclear power as a safe source of energy is being questioned. A good time for us (India) to introspect as well before embarking on building the next set of nuclear plants.

In the Middle East, a single act – an act of self immolation by one man (Bousazizi) -led to an awakening across the Arab world. What followed was revolution and regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt. The crisis in Libya led to a civil war which continues without an end in sight. There have been protests in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen and murmurs across the most of the Middle East.

The Kate and Will show culminated in the wedding of the decade. It was British pomp and pageantry at its best and the event surely surpassed the Diana- Charles wedding. The Indian media went to town too fawning over every single inconsequential detail.

And the biggest event of them all, just a couple of days back the US announced they finally got Osama – of all places he was hiding not in a cave in the hills but in a palatial bungalow just an hour’s drive from Islamabad and a couple of hundred meters away from a local military academy. The Pak authorities are in a catch 22 situation – if they claim ignorance of Osama’s stay, it proves their incompetence, if they don’t their collusion with the extremists is proved.

Closer home we have been stumbling from one scam to the next. If one thought the CWG scam was damaging enough, on came the 2G and the Radia tapes which dwarfed everything in sight. While the politicians and the babus are laughing all the way to the bank, for the common man, inflation continues to be an existential pain.

We did have a round of state elections with some important states going to the polls. The voters have cast their votes and the politicians have a long wait till May 13. Good to keep them in suspense :-)

The silver lining for India was Anna Hazare - and the amount of support he generated amongst the general public during the week that he fasted. Anna proved that Gandhian tactics are still powerful and he brought the mighty to their knees. Good to see that Gandhiji is still relevant in this time and age; correction - his ideals are more relevant than ever before. We live in a world that is struggling to find heroes. And Anna is one of the few left.

Speaking of heroes, India finally won the World Cup after a long wait of 28 years. It was a dream run from the dream team (especially the victories in the knock out stages after the wake up call from South Africa).

Those of us who watched the 83 final at Lord’s will never forget the defining images of that day

- the outrageous banana in-swinger from Sandhu that got rid of Greenidge
- Kapil running backwards to catch and get rid of ‘King’ Richards (probably THE turning point of the match)
- And of course of the snapshot of Kapil lifting the trophy and of the wild expression of joy thereafter on the Lord’s balcony.

Now we have another set of memories to add to that list –

- Yuvraj on his knees, arms stretched, shouting out at the top of his voice after knocking out the defending champions Australia
- Dhoni’s rock hard (frozen) expression after hitting the winning shot in the final
- … and of course…of Sachin perched on the shoulders of his mates during the victory lap. What can you say – the man finally achieved what he had always dreamt of but failed to in 5 earlier attempts over 21 years. Now, there appears to be no trophy left for Sachin to win, no peak to surpass. He is at the pinnacle of the sport.

After the victory, for a while it seemed nothing else mattered in India – everyone -young or old, rich or poor, Cricket lover or not seemed to be on cloud nine.

Parting note -

Just a couple of days after the world cup, on came the IPL tamasha. I would not have been interested if it were not for the new kid on the block – Kochi. However after 3 weeks of IPL and an average performance by Kochi, it does seem like Cricket overdose after all – at least that seems to be view of the fans judging from the attendance in the Kochi stadium for the IPL matches.

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!