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.