Wedding - Part 1 (the proposal)

I have been thinking about writing this series of blogs on our impending wedding for a while now but as always I have been very lazy about it. This is mainly for a personal record of the funny anecdotes and incidents that we have had and we are going to encounter during the course of our wedding. For the uninitiated, I am going to be married to the love of my life, Urmila on March 11th 2010. I have to admit that patience is running thin as the date approaches. :)

I am going to start off by talking about the proposal. I always wanted to propose to Urmila in a romantic way and was waiting for the right opportunity.

The Date: Since, it was kind of decided that we would get married early next year, I did not have much time left. Sometime during the summer of 2009, I decided that I would propose to her on her Birthday which is on Sept 1st. As it happened, Urmila went to Seattle for a couple of weeks and was coming back to Germantown only by Sept 4th and so that was the day I chose for the proposal.

The Ring: Having never shopped for jewelery in my life, I had no clue how I needed to go about it. I started with the most unlikely of places, a radio ad for Mervis Diamonds. I went to their website and checked out their collection. I did not want to be hasty about it and so using google maps I made a quick survey of all the jewelery stores close to my house and then I started reading reviews for these stores and technical details about picking up diamonds (the videos on mervis' site helped). Co-incidentally, Mervis Diamonds seemed like the best place to shop for the ring, they had some really good reviews and their online collection suggested that they had the better set of diamonds for similar price range when compared to the other stores. So as soon as Urmila left for Seattle, the very next day I was in Mervis' Rockville store.

Even though I hadn't been to many jewelery stores before, I was surprised by how Mervis operated. At Mervis you are made to sit in small cubicles and the diamonds and the settings are brought to you for inspection instead of you looking at a display. Michelle Axelrod was the salesperson who assisted me and within a short period we narrowed down our options to what I could afford. Disappointingly this was a yellow gold ring with a platinum head and a 0.5 C diamond. I had definitely hoped for much more, at least for a complete platinum setting but then I had to reconcile with my current financial situation . Having given the order I came back home, still feeling not too happy about the ring. I was pretty convinced that I had seen an all platinum setting on Mervis' website that fit my budget. So on coming back home and doing some research I did find a platinum setting I liked which was listed at an unusually low price. To cut the long story short, Mervis had made an error while listing the setting and so I got the platinum setting for the same cost as the other setting. :) I got the ring for half its actual value and more importantly this was the ring I felt Urmila deserved. :)

The Venue: This was the next big decision. I wanted everything to be perfect but there was a big constraint while booking a place. Urmila was flying in at 10pm and unfortunately most places in and around my home would have closed soon after. I always wanted to make the proposal personal and so I decided that I will organize it in my apartment and cook all her favourite food. So everyday I came home after work and worked on decorating my room, one piece at a time. I got some helium balloons, some buntings, stuck some photographs on the wall. Tried to make the best out of the limited space that I had. I was kind of hoping Urmila would love the setting as she has always been a person with simple tastes.


The Food: Deciding food for the event was easier. Urmila had told me once that she would like a dinner consisting of Sweet corn soup, Lasagna and chilli corn. Though this was dated, I felt she would still like these things. So that's what she was going to get for the proposal. Added to this I planned to make her current favourite, Falafel with some Tzatziki. Only issue; I hadn't made any of these dishes ever in my life. So, I googled around for the recipes and also got all the ingredients the previous day itself. Ground the falafel paste the day before the D-Day and cut a few vegetables and stuff to make sure I get done in time. For dessert I ordered a cake with her favourite cartoon character Calvin on it (She always claimed to want to eat Calvin, him being so cute).

D-Day: Sept 4th finally arrived. I came back early from work and picked up some roses on the way. Unfortunately the flower lady was not arround to wrap it up in a neat way for me and I did not have enough time to rush to another florist. So I had to improvise the packing a little and hoped that she wouldn't throw it back at me.

I came home soon after that and started preparing all the dishes. I was most tensed about the lasagna. Having had a fair share of bad lasagnas, I did not want to mess it up. Thankfully there weren't anymore hiccups and I left in time to receive her at the airport. She knew that I would have planned something for her birthday but she had no idea what it was going to be. I reached the baggage area early and was impatiently waiting for her. Finally after much delay (or so it seemed) she arrived in the baggage area, she saw me being formally dressed and with flowers and she instantly knew something was up. As we were driving home, she could not stop speculating about what I had planned for dinner. We came home and covered her eyes and walked her into the room. It seemed like she liked the setting, so that gave me some confidence for the rest of the proposal. I started bringing in the food one after the other and I must admit that I managed to surprise her with every one of them. I was glad that she liked everything and I thanked my stars that I didn't mess up any of them. At the end of the dinner, I got the cake out and she did like the idea of eating Calvin. :)

So until this point she was under the impression that this was all her birthday celebration. Then came the moment, I acted as if something had fallen on the ground, got down on one knee and popped the ring box open. I did have some stuff rehearsed to tell her but the girl just went berserk after seeing the ring. She was so excited seeing the ring that everything else seemed to have faded into oblivion (including me). I had to literally ask her hand to put the ring on her fingers. :) The ring was a little big but I was glad that she loved it. We got it re-sized the next day. I was delighted that everything turned out perfect and that there were no major hiccups.

Gandhi, 1984 and today

I recently saw Richard Attenborough's Gandhi for old time's sake. This movie was (may be still is) played on Indian Television on October 2nd every year. This was the day the great leader was born and he went on to make such an audacious mark on history. The movie was quite an inspiration when I was a kid and I remember being in awe with Gandhi. It gave me a glimpse of who Gandhi was well before I read about him in my history books.

At around the same time I read the book 1984 by George Orwell. This is a book about Totalitarianism, but I feel that it is also a book which delves deeply into the psychology of violence. The excesses of the administration in controlling its populace is explained brilliantly by Orwell in this book that he wrote in 1949. Thankfully for all of us the reality in 1984 was not as grim as the image he portrays of the fictitious 1984.

Why talk about these seemingly disjoint works of art? Today, more than at any time in the past, the teachings of Gandhi have relevance and so does the warnings of Orwell in 1984. We are at a epoch where violence seems to be exploding in our face both in the real as well as fictitious world. There is no end to violent movies or to violent bombings.

First of all, is Gandhi believable today? I saw the movie Gandhi and asked myself the question "Would I follow Gandhi if I were a youth during the independence struggle?". As simple as the question might sound and as easy as it is to answer with an emphatic "yes" given the apparent emotional tug that we feel for our country, I personally feel that most of us would have been in a dilemma. In this time of rippling muscles, macho attitude, perceived patriotism, self obsession, amorous thirst for wealth it is hard to picture our self sacrificing totally to the cause of patriotism and then in a peaceful way at that is impossible to perceive. Is it possible to get slapped and then turn the other cheek? Do you really have the guts to do it? Yes, I say guts because it takes far more courage to hold your temper than to blow it at the first outlet.

This thought again took me to another question "How did he do it?". Yes, how did Gandhi do it? Here was a man who not only made himself strong enough to bear the violence brought forth on him but he also inspired and lead millions of people to follow his principles. Just imagine if some one suggested that an Indian soldier should go to a terrorist and bear the brunt of all his violence without retaliation then wouldn't that person be called senile and yet what would Gandhi's solution be to the biggest problem that we face today?

All this lead me to the present, "What would Gandhi have done today?". There is an extremely remote chance that we are going to see a leader of the same stature as Mr. M.K. Gandhi and so we will never know the answer to this question. But we need to still think about it. How can we implement the principles of non-violence in our lives. Non-violence against the violence of spirit and mind as much as the violence of action. I do believe that Gandhian principles can still be relevant today.

Did Gandhi facilitate India's independence for us to say, "Bloody Muslims, deserve to die.", during the Godhra riots or was it for us to say, "Goddamn Hindus, need to be killed or else they will never stop abusing us minorities", just before a fundamentalist blew a whole city up. If you were amongst either one of the group you are equally culpable. Lets give peace a chance. Lets try to answer the difficult questions that we face today. Lets make our world Gandhi's 1947 rather than Orwell's 1984.

Season of Realism

This article is kind of an sequel to my earlier article Season of love . I was reading this article recently and I felt I had very strong feelings about it. Reading Karthik's article just confirmed the general state of mind I have been in.

First things first. I absolutely pan my article Season of love. The last two years has certainly made me mature and I frankly feel that the article was largely juvenile and outright silly. My highly contrasting view might be due to the incidents that have unfolded in the past few months or due to me obtaining a more practical outlook to life. Indeed Sachin and Vikram did voice their reservations towards my article and I must frankly agree with them now. Finally the bubble has burst. It is time for me to step out of the silly, romantic, optimistic view of life and change to a more practical view of life.

When I wrote the Season of love article, there was something positive going on in out our lives. To a large extent, all of us had trouble free lives and did not have any major problems in life. All we cared about was having a good time in life and we were full of optimism about the life in front of us. I had the belief then that there was a solution to any given situation or problem. I had myself come out of difficult situations without baring any long term scars. But then we just grew up.

One of my friends who was having a great relationship had to break up with his girl friend due to parental pressure. This is when I realized that there might be no solution to certain problems. The silly optimism with which I thought that most of these relationship will work out, seem to waver a bit. Again I was shaken out of my comfort zone when one of my other friends, a wonderful guy, had a very messy break up with his girl friend. This was definitely not foreseen by me or any of my friends. This was just the beginning though as two of my other friends who were having long distance relationships with their girl friends also had messy breakups because of compatibility issues. Just as an information and not trying to imply anything, in all these cases it was the girls who chose to break up. This was the real eye opener for me (eye opener being that the breakups happened and not that the girls chose to break up). If you had seen any of these relationships you would bet on them of being the "once in a lifetime" long term relationship. Why did this happen? Again we just grew up.

No, Sir, this is not an article about a point of time when all of my friends had just started dating and another point of time when most of them broke up. It is about how the bunch of us matured in this short interval of time and about how our opinions changed in this period. The reason why most of the above breakups happened were because people got more practical. These people realized that the reasons they had based their relationships on were not as concrete as they had earlier perceived. From a state of taking our relationships for granted, we had moved on to realize that any relationship requires time and effort to evolve and develop. It was also a case of people growing apart instead of growing together. Anybody who assumes that two individuals do not change over any given length of time is making a huge mistake. The most important thing is to be aware of the other persons current state of mind, feelings, aspirations and the works, but it is not as easy as it sounds.

Moving away from the topic of love or relationships totally, let us focus on the general day to day life as we grow up. It is more than obvious that complications increase exponentially as you start growing up. What's the main reason for these complications? EGO. Yes, Sir, whether you agree or not, all of us tend to grow this big ego inside us as we grow up. All of a sudden your pride and self respect is more important to you than having a good relationship. Think about it, did you care if someone abused you when you were a kid? You would fret for a day and then make up the very next day. Why is it so difficult to do that when we grow up? Haven't you felt that you have had greater number of misunderstandings now rather than when you were growing up as a kid.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the adult life is screwed up in more than a few ways. There are far more issues which are so complicated that there are no easy solutions to them. What is the way out of it? In my humble opinion I think there is a solution. Along with maturing with age to obtain heightened sensitivity to things, we also need to retain the humility of a child. Having limited ego is very important for any relationship to progress. Also it is paramount to develop a practical outlook to life as early as possible. But again these are the incidents (breakups and other hiccups in a relationship) that make us mature and make us more practical in life.

Now I return to the title again. "Season of Realism". Yes, as the title suggest we have all matured as a group of people and today we stand at the cusp of adulthood. Still having the exuberance of youth but with quite a bit of realism thrown in. I think most of us can claim to make better decisions now than we did two years ago. Hopefully whatever the path we take, we will all find long term happiness in our lives. I have learnt to be more practical when it comes to perceiving a relationship. I now understand that it is just not enough that two people are "good" for a relationship to work. There is much more to it and the answer is gray not black and white. I also understand that it is better to get out of a messy relationship instead of trying to make it work no matter what happens.

PS: I have tried to avoid any pointed reference to anyone in this article. I apologize if I have offended anyone. Also there are quite a few of those relationships mentioned in Season of love still going strong. Not all of them collapsed. I am one of the lucky few to be still involved with the love of my life.

Beautiful India - Hampi it is. PART - 4 (of 4)

Day 4 - 7th Feb 2008

Again we got delayed. No power and so no hot water at the hotel. Forced delay. :(. We left the Chalukya Mayura at 9:45AM and byt the time we had breakfast it was 10AM. Way behind our schedule.

We planned to go to the Badami Caves first. Exquisite is the word that came foremost to me. There was some issue with the guides there and so we had to do our own exploring. The rock-cut temples were simply mind blowing. Imagine carving a cave out of a rock while also carving out an entire temple within. What did they do if they made a mistake? From this high position we could see the Bhoothnath temple at the edge of a pond. Perfect picture opportunity. There are four caves, 1st is Shiva temple, 2nd is a experimental cave, 3rd is a Vishnu Temple and 4th is a Jaina temple. The most impressive carvings amongst them is the Natraja, with 81 poses in one sculpture. I also noticed that there was abundance of erotic art here when compared to Hampi. These caves being older than the ruins in Hampi, this seems to suggest that the Indian society has grown into being a very narrow minded and closed society in its recent history and traditionally we were very liberal minded people.

Next we went to the Bhoothnath temple. The most impressive part here was a carving of Mahavir in a very narrow dingy cave. I was fortunate to be in the presence of a group of English tourists. They seemed to have come for some sort of a literary survey. What was fascinating was that one amongst them was talking about the carving of Mahavira and he was telling how he felt that the carving could have been Buddha actually as it had ornamentation and hair styling which are usually absent in the minimalistic Jain sculptures. This made me feel guilty as to how little I knew about my own culture. This really got me interested and now I really want to read about the history of Badami, Hampi etc.

After that we carried on to Banashankari and Mahakoota. These are mainly religious places and did not impress me a lot, especially because they were dirty and crowded. The next stop was Pattada-kallu (Coronation Stone). This temple complex impressed me immensely. The most important part of these temples according to my opinion are the exquisite pillars. They are filled with stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharatha and Panchathantra (Hindu/Jain moral stories). They were extremely descriptive and beautiful. There were also few pillars depicting the vagaries of everyday life. Some of the temples present here are the Jambulinga temple, Galaganatha temple and Kada Siddeshwara temple. All predominately shaivite temple, the two main temples being commissioned by the two Queens (sisters I believe) of Krishna Deva Raya after his victory over the kingdom of Orissa. Shiva temples were usually not destroyed as Shive being an ascetic was not supposed to have any riches with him and so these temples were supposed to be devoid of treasures. But apparently nothing stops the pathetic treasure hunters who have desecrated these temple, going to the extent of destroying the linga's too. In the 1950's, they started performing daily pooja in the Galaganatha temple after the temple complex was taken over by the Government. These temples more than made up for the disappointment of Mahakoota and Banashankari.




We went to the Aihole temple complex again after this. The temples here predate the ones in Pattadakallu. Aihole is known to be the cradle of temple architecture. There are supposed to be more than 200 temples in Aihole. Apparently the Chalukyas used this as the base of temple architecture and so there are temples of all possible architecture to be found here. Unfortunately the locals had usurped these temples in the near past and they had been leaving in these temples over a long time. The name of the temples hence has the name of the family who lived there or the profession of the people who were leaving in those temples. Unfortunately due to absence of the main deity in the temples and a lack of clear indications to be obtained from the architecture not much is known about these temples. Scientifically these temples are very well designed: including water ducts for rain water to seep through, air ducts, beautifully designed light ducts etc. One of the proof of this being the cradle of early temple architecture is clearly seen in the layered disc-designed pillars which are found in the Belur-Halebid temples which were constructed much earlier. Another interesting architecture that I found very interesting was this weird Chinese-looking temple architecture. The reason for this observation of mine was that the temple roof was constructing by placing stone slabs next to each other and then placing a log shaped stone over the crevices between the slabs to avoid water leakage. There are insignia of the Chalukya's found in these temples to clearly indicate its origin. We just had enough time to visit one more cave temple. This temple was in a pretty bad shape. The Nandi outside is hardly recognizable but the Natraja figure inside the temple is in pretty good shape. The temple had a very eerie feel to it and I was glad to be leaving the place.

After this as usual we went to the KSTDC hotel to have food. It was about 5 kms from the temple complex in Aihole. The food as usual was pretty good. I also suggest that you have buttermilk in these hotels. It is simple mind blowing and ended up having 2 glasses of it each. This meal drew over trip towards conclusion. We had a long 9 hours drive back to Bangalore ahead of us. On the way back we had 2 major troubles. There was some major Truck traffic near Hospet and believe you wouldn't have seen so many trucks in your life. There were literally hundreds of trucks on either side. I was actually very stupid and I went on the wrong side of the road to gain some ground but then came head on in front of a truck coming from the opposite side and caused a traffic jam. Very stupid of me and it freaked dad out, but we got out of it without much trouble. The other part which annoyed me a lot was that there were a lot of road bumps which were not visible in the dark and there was no signs warning me about them. So I bumped over many road bumps at full speed and we were lucky not to damage the car. We finally reached Chitradurga at 9:30PM and we had 200 kms still to cover. After some arguments with dad about where to eat our dinner, we ate at this ok but a little dirty hotel in Chitradurga. After this is it was plain sailing on the NH-4 again. I was delighted to drive on this highway again. Covered the 200kms in 2 hours and then took another hour to get home from Nelamangala. We lost our way a couple of times again but still made it home by 2:00AM which was pretty good time.

What a trip? It was absolutely fabulous. Will cherish it forever. Have included some statistics below.

Date Time Mileage Event
4th Feb 2008 6:00AM 38550 Left Bangalore
4th Feb 2008 3:30PM 38930 Reached Hampi
6th Feb 2008 8:00AM 38993 Left Hospet (Hotel Shanbog)
6th Feb 2008 9:00AM 39009 Filled fuel at Hospet
6th Feb 2008 5:30PM 39245 Reached Badami
7th Feb 2008 4:30PM 39303 Left Aihole towards Bangalore
7th Feb 2008 10:30PM 39570 Left Chitradurga towards Bangalore
8th Feb 2008 2:00AM 39793 Reached Bangalore.


Total miles covered = 1243 Kms
Mileage = approx 25kms/liter

Beautiful India - Hampi it is. PART - 3 (of 4)

Day 3 - 6th Feb 2008


Let me start by saying that today was eventful but the least productive day of the trip. We started off at 8AM, not very early, but we did not have much of a choice as appa did not want to get up early. We had breakfast at Shanbog, the place where we had beer a couple of days ago. Then started the adventure or the misadventure. We started driving towards Badami. I was all excited and thought we could see everything in a day.

We went to the Tunga Badra day. It was very beautiful to see so much water. We could hardly see land at the end of the horizon. A cheeky policeman allowed me to taje some pictures too. He told me, "Who told you can't pictures but please don't take it in front of me, Sir." Funny, ain't it?

We continued towards Badami after this brief break. Unfortunately our luck ran out. What could be worse thing to happen on a highway? Puncture!!! We started hearing some hissing sound from one of our tires. I was cruising at 120 kph when this happened. Not wanting to take any risk, I immediately stopped the car. This is when we had the classic Dad-Son moment. Guess what? We didn't have a spanner in the car. We played the usual game of blaming each other for not getting the tool kit. Thankfully for us a helpful officer and a villager on a bike came to our rescue. They went to their village and got a spanner, thankfully it fit prerfectly. He even changed the tire for us. 30 minuted down the tube, or rather the tire. We went to a puncture shop ahead and we were in for more surprise. There was no puncture in the tire. Thats when I realised what exactly is the worst thing that can happen on an highway? A fake puncture!!!! We have still not yet figured out where the hissing sound came from. May be it was just excess air coming out of the tube as we filled in air just before we got onto the highway. Another waste of 30 minutes.

Then we proceeded towards Kudala Sangama Deva, as we thought it came on the way to Badami. We reached Kamath Hotel at Kudala Sangama Deva by 1:40pm. We had one of the best Rotti oota there, though the waiter claimed that the Rotti oota at his home town was much better. The we saw Sangameshwara and the beautiful Basavana Vedike. But I felt tat we would have been better off not visiting this place. I was not exactly on a religious pilgrimage and it did not have much to offer with regards to architectural beauty, bad piece of advice from my brother who asked me to visit this place.

After missing our way once and also due to the winding village roads, we ended up at Aihole at 4:20PM. The KSD detour proved to be very costly with respect t0 time. I still had hopes of seeing Aihole and Pattadakal by the end of the day. But one walk through the Durga temple at Aihole proved it to me that this was not possible. We needed a guide desperately . On inquiring we found out that we would get guides only from tomorrow morning.

So we figured that the best thing to do was to call it a day and see all these places the next day, so that we could see everything in peace. We then drove to Badami, the road was quite smooth and nice. Pretty amazing for a village road. Looking forward to a active day tomorrow. We drove to the Mayura Chalukya Hotel, Government place but very decent accommodation. After some driving around the town to buy to buy some soap, mosquito repellent etc, we came back and had a very nice dinner. Almost like home food. Will miss all this food in US. Looking forward to tomorrow, tired as usual.

Beautiful India - Hampi it is. PART - 2 (of 4)

Day 2 - 5th Feb 2008

Wooo!!! Hoo!!! What a day?? Let me write the one thing that I have been dying to write the entire day - "Every stone in Hampi has a story to tell". Wow!!! Hampi is truly fabulous. Well I guess you need to be a history enthusiast to appreciate Hampi as much as I did. Dad liked it quite a bit but all the walking got to him and he felt Hampi was just a little bit more than ok.

We started off at 8 in the morning, a little late but again not bad by appa's standards, he took only 1 hour to get ready. We had some egg and bread for breakfast, nothing great about it. I felt awful coming to my country and then having an all American breakfast but there aren't many options here. Yes that's right, idli and vada are harder to get here when compared to egg, bread, falafel, pasta etc. Strange you would say but I guess it makes sense as there are definitely more foreigners here when compared to Indians. This definitely is not good business by the Tourism Department. They are sitting on a gold mine here, doing nothing.

Anyways let me get on with it. We started the morning at Virupaksha temple, the only temple in Hampi where they actually do pooja even till today. Frankly speaking keeping the religious aspect aside, I feel it was not very impressive. I would go as far as saying that it was the most over-hyped places around. The best thing about the place was a beautiful and rare three headed Nandi (bull), vehicle of Shiva. The only other things of note here is the wall carving of Krishna Deva Raya, the pool and the inverted pin hole image of the gopura.

Next we went to the Rama Deva temple. It was not out of this world but it had some key interesting points. The entire garbagudi or inner sanctum is enclosed within a huge boulder. I had never seen anything like that. More importantly this is supposed to be the only place where Rama is depicted as sitting rather than standing and so there are a lot of Rama Bhaktha's doing penance here. Also the view from top of the hillock behind the temple was most impressive. With ruins visible in all the 4 directions. This is also the place of another mythology concerned with Ramayana. This is the place where Lakshmana, Rama's brother is supposed to have shot an arrow into the rock to get water. The highlight of this temple though is the musical pillars which are similar to the ones in Vittala temple. The musical pillars in Vittala temple can no longer be touched let alone be played so this is a nice substitute. Our ancestors truly had an immense grasp on science.

After this we went to the highlight of Hampi, the Vittala temple. The path leading up to the temple itself was amazing and it was a very good precursor for things to come. The first thing I noticed as soon as I entered the temple is the most impressive stone chariot. It was so realistic that a few villagers who came just after we came were speculating whether it was an actual moving chariot. Just for the record, the chariot was always stationary and has been the temple of Garuda (eagle), the vehicle of Vittala or Vishnu. The wheels of the chariot were moving earlier but they have since been cemented into place to avoid damaging the stone axle. Unfortunately as I mentioned earlier, we were not allowed to listen to the musical pillars as it has been damaged by numerous people banging on them with hands, keys, stones etc. When will our people learn to protect our heritage? But nevertheless this temple is absolutely amazing. The temple architecture is beautiful and the sculptures unique. There was a 2 in 1 monkey sculpture, 5 in 1 Lion/panther sculpture, a miniaturized plan of the temple etc embedded on the exterior of the temple. You could thing of this as the Colosseum of Hampi.



Driving around the place we saw the Raja Tulabara or the King's balance. The kings used them to weigh their weight in gold, silver, silk etc and distributed them to the brahmins (castism at its peak). Other impressive places around we saw were purandara peeta, the broken bridge which people say was never completed and other small attraction. Definitely made a perfect day for some photography.

We then went to a museum on Hampi which was badly maintained and badly archived. Very shoddy work by the tourism department. This was followed by a lunch at the KSTDC hotel, Mayura Bhuvaneshwari. Appa was hugely impressed by the lunch. He wants to stay there the next time he comes here. We finished up soon and continued our sight seeing.

Next stop was the palace complex. Phew!!! I wish Bangalore planners had studied Vijaynagar's layout. The layout of the city is so well designed that it has surprised many foreign visitors over the centuries. We started off by seeing the Queen's bath, definitely a place fit for a queen. It is a small building with a large bath at the center with changing rooms on the side. What was very funny is that it had a moat around it. I guess even the queens had to be protected from peeping toms (;-)). (let me state here that it is disputed that this place was ever used by the queens :P)

Next we went to the main Palace area where the first thing that we noticed was the magnificent Mahanavami dibba, it is about 30-40 feet high with a platform on top of it. This is where the King is supposed to have presided over the great nine (Mahanavami) days of Dussera, one of the most important festivals for Hindus. The Dibba or platform is exquisitely designed with the exterior telling the tale of the Dussera and also depicting the different aspects of the celebration during that time. Human as well as animal sacrifices were common during those days I believe. What was even more amazing was the view from the top of the Dibba, with all the diffent pools and platforms visible. What is striking here is that most of the structures in Vijaynagar were made of sandalwood and these were burnt down by the Bahamani rulers when they defeated and destroyed the Vijaynagar empire. As a result of this, what is left now is just the platforms of once great buildings and also the beautiful stone pools. The most brilliant part of this complex is the amazing canal system that you can see here. Believe it or not, water from the Tunga Badra was harvested using this canal system and this water was supplied to the fields as well as to the the plenitude of pools found here.



After this we drove to the Queen's chambers a little distance away. The most beautiful place here is the Lotus Mahal, the place where probably the most pictures is taken at hampi. Indo-islamic architecture at its best, goes to prove that the Vijaynagar rulers might have been tolerant. Close-by places which are watchable are the guards tower, horse stable, elephant table, Ranga temple and a small museum.

We passed by the Hazara Ramana devalaya but could not see any of it as our by-now-impatient guide would not allow us to. We tried to be stingy and had agreed for a fee of Rs.500 for which he was not willing to spend more time. We also passed by the underground Shiva temple without seeing it and thats when I realized that Hampi could not be seen in a day. I am sure to come back here one day and I hope that Hampi remains as it is today even then.

We wound up the tour by seeing the Ugra Narasimha and Badavilinga. Ugra Narasimha called so because the lower part of the Lion god's face had broken down giving it a very angry(Ugra) look and the Badavi Linga is called so as legend goes that a poor brahmin lady(badavi) had got the Linga(form of Shiva) installed here. This was followed by a visit to the Krishna Temple and the Kadale Kayi (peanut) Ganesha. At this point we bid goodbye to our guide.

But my appetite for Hampi was still not whetted. So just to whet my curiosity we took a walk down the Hampi bazaar in front of the Virupaksha temple and this took me to a picture museum. This was a very interesting experience as they have pictures of the different Hampi monuments from 1856, 1983 and 2004. It was interesting to see the changes in these monuments . Few of the things that were striking (a) Gopura of the stone chariot has fallen now. (b) Deepa Kamba at Vittala temple has fallen. (c) Entrance of the Vittala temple has fallen. (d) Non-existent entrance to Kadalekayi Ganesha has been assembled together again by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India). (e) Ugra Narasimhan totally transformed. This was remarkable, it was a whole new statue altogether.

Along with this, I also saw the monolithic, Nandi and also the path to Acyuthraya Temple. Being too tired already, I din't have the energy to carry on and see Achyutharaya temple and Mathanga hill. Truly every rock in Hampi has a story. We then headed to the guest house and then slept for couple of hours. Blissful sleep, both being extremely tired. We got up to have our dinner at around 8pm. I had veggie sizzler, yes believe it or not at this place recommended by anna. Though it was not the "best sizzler in the world" as described by him, it was quite good.

We wound up the day at around 10:30pm, looking forward to Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal and Kodala Sangama Deva tomorrow. Having lots of fun, but missing both Dummis.

Beautiful India - Hampi it is. PART - 1 (of 4)

I was India early this year, from 14th Jan to 14th Feb. I had a fabulous time over there and enjoyed my stay. One of the highlights of my stay there was my trip to Hampi during 4th-7th Feb. Here I reproduce the diary (in a Rs.5 notebook) that I maintained during the trip. I have reproduced it as it is with some editing only when it was totally not understandable. Pardon me if you find it repetitive or cliched. Check out the pictures at Hampi Pictures -- FEB 2008. Here goes nothing, hope you enjoy it. :)

Day 1 - 4th Feb 2008

It is very funny for me to be writing in a notebook rather than typing. I haven't done much of writing in a while and part of the reason I hate writing is my dreadful handwriting. Well I do have a valid excuse this time around. I am tired (half-dead actually) and I don't even have a table to keep the book on. Anyways lets get down to business now.

I did it finally. I am in Hampi right now, my long term dreams finally achieved. Lets start from the beginning. I got up at 4 in the morning after sleeping at 1 AM. Not much of sleep but I was reading about Hampi and I just wanted to collect as much information as possible. I so wanted to do this and the excitement certainly helped me get up that early. Waking up dad was a different ball game altogether. He LOVES his sleep and if there is one thing he has to do everyday, it is to get his full 8 ( most of the times 9 :P) hours of sleep. In the process of waking up, I also got to play a game of NFS-II hot pursuit, not a good practice for the long drive ahead but the noise did wake appa up.

Surprise!! surprise!!! Our trip started off on the right note, we actually left 5 mins ahead of schedule at 5:55AM. Now for people who don't know appa, this is quite an achievement. We set off in full gusto but "ahem!! ahem!!" we hit our first road block, quite literally. The road leading up to west of chord road was blocked but my confident appa told me that he knew an alternate route and he conveniently got us lost, little did I know this would be the order of the day. Thanks to appa being a great navigator we lost about an hour over all, losing our way and then find it again.

But anyways that apart, the drive was simply awesome. The NH-4, Bangalore - Pune highway is probably one of the best highways I have been on, including the ones in USA (no jokes). It was smooth and silky, just like butter as my dad put it. I reached a high speed of 135 kph, my personal speed record and when you consider the fact that I did it in a very modest Maruthi 800, it is quite an achievement. There are a few negatives though (a) exits are clumsily designed sometimes cutting across the opposite lane. (b) Significant portions are not complete yet. (c) No highway patrol at all, safety issues. (d) Good food is not easily available all along.
But it was great fun anyways.

We reached Chithradurga at 10:30AM. The fort is truely majestic and I was totally surprised by its size and beauty. I wanted to see the main attraction, Onake Obavana kindi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onake_Obavva). We walked for quite sometime in dry heat to reach the place. It was quite dissappointing actually. It almost seemed insignificant compared to the other beauties that the chitradurga fort had to offer. But it was good to see and experience ( yeah, I tried to climb out of the hole and stuff) this piece of history and folklore.



Having made Hampi my focus, I wanted to wind up soon at Chitradurga. But I do want to go back there and see it thoroughly. After a visit to a surprisingly clean rest room we set off to Hampi and we reached Hampi at 3pm after getting lost twice. NH-13 leading up to Hospet/Hampi was just about ok. It was quite a challenge to drive on NH-13 because of all the trucks. (Oh!!! There were so many). It felt very good to be in Hampi and it felt as if there was a whiff of history in the air at Hampi, truly magnified by the abundance of ruins visible to you as soon as you enter Hampi.


After having some torturous food we fixed up the guide for tomorrow and then we went to Hema Kuta parvatha, one of the 3 hills around hampi, to watch the sunset. Wow!!!! What a sunset it was? On the slope of the hills I got a glimpse of Hampi. There were dilapidated ruins everywhere in such beauty that I was awestruck. The beautiful sunset and ruins excited the photographer in me. It was picture perfect and it was probably one of the best sunsets of my life. After this amazing experience we headed down the hill. This is when I hit jackpot.



One of the things that I always wanted to do is go out for a drink with dad. After much persuasion I convinced dad to have beer with me. Again for people who don't know dad, this was a big achievement. We drove all the way to Hospet which is about 30 mins away to have beer. After asking around for a while we finally ended up at a lousy place called Shanbog bar and restaurant (one of the most dreadful toilets). It was a very nice experience and it was nice bonding with appa. We discussed our drinking habits, our first drinking experiences etc. We headed back shortly and yeah I drank and drove, not a good thing to do but was well worth it when you consider the fact that this was the first time appa accepted me as an adult and had a drink with me.

Oh!! By the way we are staying at this place called Padma Guest House. Appa haggled with the land lady, Padma, for half a day. Not a bad place if you ignore the bed bugs and mosquitoes. Final note: Looking forward to a exciting tomorrow and missing the two women in my life. Love them both.

PS: Excuse the handwriting, little drunk and very sleepy.

"Work" and "Morality"

A couple of things motivated me to write this blog. I was reading a book and then I read a couple of articles in the newspaper.

I am reading "Atlas Shrugged" and I am almost done with it. In my personal opinion it is a "just ok" book. It has some high points to it but the world that Ayn Rand describes is overly exagerated. The good guys are perfect and the bad guys are pure evil. I hate that kind of characterization. I feel all of us are grey rather than black or white. Also her description of love defies my logic. Initially I thought I understood what she was saying but I was disillusioned as soon as the female lead starts sleeping with almost all the male leads of the story. That was a bit too much for me to digest. It is as if, everytime she found the perfect man to sleep with, she found someone even more perfect. It is a fair assumption that Ayn Rand must have been sexually frustrated in life as all the sex scene in all her books are so violent that at the end of it the lady involved is always left with bruises all over her body.


For all it's flaws there is something to be got out of the book. The main premise of the book is about "work". As in how dedicated you are to your work and how well you do it etc etc. It, rightly, glorifies people who are mighty good at their work and are ready to undertake any hardship to make money. To cut the long story short, she suggests that "work" and money are the only moral codes of a man's life and anything done in order to achieve the best in your work is justified.

Just as I am about to finish the book I read an article (http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/nov/03msg.htm) which got me thinking. The article pertains to the Jessica Lal murder case. The country's top lawyer Ram Jethmalani is defending the accused, Manu Sharma after the case was reopened following a huge media campaign and public outcry against the acquital of Manu. Based on the initially evidence and eyewitness accounts it has been wildly publicised and accepted that Manu Sharma is the murderer (though none of us other than the eye witnesses and Manu himself, know what happened on that unfortunate day) . The article questions "Do you agree with Ram Jethmalani's decision to defend Manu Sharma?" and there are 512 replies to the query. All of them berating Ram Jethmalani, the former law minister, the well respected lawyer and declare him to be a senile old man.

What is the connection is between "Atlas shrugged" and the "Jessica Lal case"?

The point I want to focus on here is Mr. Ram Jethmalani and his work of being a defending lawyer. Are we justified in questioning Ram's choice of clients? According to the moral codes popularised by Ayn Rand, you are not supposed to question a man who is true to his profession, who does his best with whatever job he takes up. Ram is doing just the same. He is one hell of a criminal lawyer. His cross examination skills are supposed to be the best in the country, he is true to his profession, he tries his best to win all his cases. But does that justify his choice of clients? Now before you start damning me, pause for a second and think about it. It is not as straightforward as you think it is.

Everyone in the modern society accepts that "a man is innocent until proven guilty". So Manu Sharma (like Sadam Hussein) is innocent until he is proven guilty. So if you have to try him at all, then why should'nt he have the best defense lawyer in the country. He has all the right's to hire Ram. From Ram's perspective, there is a man charged of murder to be defended. He is the best so he is getting a payment worthy of his talent. So why is'nt iy acceptable that he chooses to defend Manu Sharma? Think about it and leave me your comments.