Rain vs Bangalore

Whenever it rains, it pours! How could anybody form a better meaning sentence in the English language than this? Looks like the rain gods are smiling over Bangalore. Rather, I must say, the rain Gods are guffawing so much so that, Bangalore is in tears now!

One of the newspapers that was covering the rains in Bangalore actually said, 'Bangalore's infrastructure (whats left of it that is) is creaking'. I think the author must have been satisfied that he had hit the raw nerve when commenting on Bangalore's 'creaking' infrastructure. Here are some of the photos that say the story of Bangalore so clearly

Picture #1: I have always wondered how the silk board bridge was built over a river. Did I just say, a river?!!

Picture #2: Time for some brown water rafting baby!!!

Picture #3: If you think this is the traffic condition on a rainy day, you have never been mistaken! As it happens only in Bangalore, the traffic is in the same state as it is everyday - in a state of suspension

Have our public servants, namely the politicians and the PWD, read a lesson from all this avoidable disaster?

Deep thoughts!

Here are some interesting thoughts that I picked up on the net

• Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
• Insanity is my only means of relaxation.
• Forget the health food; I need all the preservatives I can get.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they are sticking to their diets.
• You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
• Perhaps you know why women over 50 don't have babies: They would put them down somewhere and forget where they left them.
• My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely.
• Every time I think about exercise, I lie down till the thought goes away.
• God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind, I will live forever.
• It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
• If you can remain calm, you just don't have all the facts.
• Stress reducer: Put a bag on your head. Mark it "Closed for remodeling." Caution: Leave air holes.
• I finally got my head together and my body fell apart.
• There cannot be a crisis this week; my schedule is already full.
• The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Meenkolathikkavu, Pallasena

This article by Sri T K Ganapathy was first published in The Hindu of Jan 12, 2002

A drive skirting Palakkad and towards Kollengode on a chill December afternoon, along paddy fields and lush green vegetation, is a memorable experimorable experience for more than one reason. The emerging sleepy village of Pallasena fills the mind of the visitor with a celestial aura exuded by Meenkulathikkavu Amman, its presiding deity.

Halasya Mahatmyam eulogized the significance and greatness of Devi worship. Small Bhagavathi temples in several parts of Kerala have acquired importance over the years. Meenkolathikkavu is the oldest temple of Pallasena with a mysterious origin.

Tradition has it that centuries ago three families belonging to the Veerasaiva Vellala Mannadiar clan worshipped goddess Meenakshi as their deity. Acute draught conditions in Chidambaram (Tamil Nadu) drove them to seek greener pastures. Soon after their worship of their destiny in Madurai one of them took a stone from there along with their other possessions. Worshipping their stone as their friend, philosopher and guide, they trekked several places before reaching Pallasena. Enchanted by the sylvan surroundings of the villages they settled there and prospered in diamond trade. Whenever they went on business, they offered their customary prayers to the family deity.

An aged member of their clan as was his wont, went for a dip in the tank, before leaving for Madurai. He left his saleable goods and palm leaf umbrella in the care of two youths. When he came back, he was shocked when he could not lift the things he had left with the youths. An astrologer said that goddess Meenakshi had manifested herself under the umbrella and that was why this umbrella could not be moved. The place came to be known as Kudamandhu. Huge crowds came to the place to witness the miracle.

Reports claim that only after four centuries, the present Meenakshi temple and the adjacent temple tank came into being on a four-acre plot. A Thirumandiram stands in testimony of the event.

The Mannadiar clan has grown into 85 manais (veedus) and they conduct Navarathri, Pongal and Bhairava festivals with fervor. A majestic structure in the Kerala style of architecture at the entrance greets the visitor. There are two entrances to the, one in the north and the other in the west. The temple tank is next to the western entrance. It is unique in that the shadow of the wall never falls on the ground. Crossing the imposing dhwajasthambha made of teakwood and covered with copper, the devotee enters the sanctum sanctorum to stand before the divine beauty and the indestructible sublimity radiating from the face of Meenakshi Amman.
Devotees are not allowed to ago around the Garbhagriha. Around the main idol, the Saptha maathas or several female deities - Brahmi, Maheswari, Kaumari, Vaishnavai, Indrani, Chamundi and Varahi are installed. There are separate shrines for Ganapathi, Veerabhadra, Durga, Shiva, Bhairava, Brahma Rakshas and Ayyappa. In the adjacent hill called Vamala there are shrines for Muruga, Ganapathi, Siva, and Shasta. Navarathri, Karthigai, Mandala Vilakku, Maasi Thiruvizha, Pallivettai and Bhairava Pooja are the most celebrated events in the temple. The eight-day maasi festival includes Ottamthullal and Kathakali programs depicting scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharatha.

It is customary that the deity's sword and lamp are taken in procession by the descendants of the youths who stood guard for the articles and the palm leaf umbrella. Though the Mannadiar clan is given a privileged place in the activities of the temple, members of all communities stand by one another in the conduct of the temple festivals. The unique structure of the temple and its mode of worship have gained immense popularity among the natives of the village. Devotees firmly believe that the bath in the tank (known for its abundant fish) rids one of all chronic ailments.

There are rest houses near the temple complex under the control of the Mannadiar Samudaya Trust, which is in charge of the temple administration. On prior intimation the temple authorities arrange accommodation for the devotees. They can be contacted on phone (0492-368278). The tariff ranges from Rs.80 to Rs.100/-. Buses from Palakkad, Shoranur, Calicut, Kollengode, Nemmara and Vadakkancheri ply through Pallasena. The following are the times the temple is kept open for devotees:

Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays5-30a.m. to 12-30 a.m.

Mondays, Wednesdays,Thursdays, Saturdays5-30a.m. to 10.30 a.m.

Evening all days 5-30 p.m. to 8-00 pm.

Note by P K Ramakrishnan, the contributor of this article: It should have been meen-kolathu kavu. The abundance of fish in this tank gave it this name as meen-kulam. Kavu means a Bhagavathi temple. Meenkolathu kavu changed to Meenkolathikkavu.

Conflict...

Conflict. Dilemma. Quandry. Confusion. Uncertainity. Perplexity. I am sure all of us would relate with those words, or rather, the above state of minds. Why are we confused? Why do we sometimes find ourselves in a conflict? Why do we experience a raging war within us?

The reason is friction. Sounds elementary? Almost all the conflict and dilemmas that we face almost incessantly is due to the friction between individual desire and societal norms. We constantly oscillate between two choices - Individualism versus Collectivism. Does this sound like one of the many plebeian conflicts that afflict us?

I believe that the future is not what happens to us, but what we make happen. When one digs deeper, one is to wonder who is it that shapes our future. Is it really the individual or the society in which he/she belongs to? At this moment, I would like to clarify what 'society' means here. I am going to assume that society points to our close circle of relationships; parents, friends and significant others, because, I believe that these relationships have the power of chiselling one's future to a greater extent. Mind you-when I say these relationships have the power of influencing once's destiny, take it at face value.

Take a look around you, you can draw abundant examples of how one's destiny is not an absolute function of his/her own needs and/or wants. I am reminded of a case where a person applied for his medical studies. This person did amazingly well in all the preliminary rounds and was excellent in the interview board too. However, the interview board was perplexed that there was a gap of four years in his profile which was just not logical. When queried on the same, the applicant replied 'Sir, I did my engineering in that period of four years. My Father wanted me to be an engineer and I satisfied his wish. Now that my Father has passed away, here I am, to pursue my dream'.

Each one of us have dreams. When some of our loved ones do not understand the emotion that we attach to our dreams, how do we feel? Why are we automatically obliged to satisfy our loved ones wish and not pursue what we really wanted to do? Its easy to say resist all external temptations, sometimes yield to trivial things and continue working towards your dream. So many questions cloud my mind now. What am I to do? How will I handle this conflict between my wants and my society's wants?

Sitting thus, I am reminded of what Benjamin Disraeli said about life and everything seems to fall in place like a completed puzzle. This is what Disraeli has to say about success - 'The secret of success is the constancy of purpose'. Yes, once I realised that instead of pursuing my dreams, which is littered with all sorts of friction, I would rather begin my journey to fathom the purpose of my existence. Perhaps, I have made a good start in understanding my purpose! Stay tuned and watch me in my journey of self-discovery...

How stupider can I get??!!

Incase you were wondering what a stupid oaf can “accomplish”, read along to find out.

The Beginning

Yesterday was a great day in Bangalore. The climate was, to borrow the term, 'awesome'. Cool winds galore, the sun was probably taking a short nap. I woke up at 7 (wanted to wake up at 5 and get ready for a meeting) and managed to press my clothes and descended down the steps rapidly only to find that one small slip of the leg is a huge hole in the trousers. Started pressing another trouser and at the end, forgot my mobile at home and came to the office.

At the office

I reached office at a shade closer to 9.30 and scrambled to some meeting that had no purpose (Perhaps, the word meeting translates into good-for-nothing) After the meeting, had some great time at the office. Before I knew it, it was 6pm. After frustrating people who were staying back I packed my li'le 'luggage', forgetting a little thing that would prove (or is it re-prove?) that I am indeed a stupid oaf!

Climax (anti-climax is more apt)

I reached home at 7, happy in the knowledge that some were still at the office bending over backward to get some work done. Dug into my 'luggage' and much to my chagrin, found that I had left my house key at the office! Next, I did an even more brilliant thing; put my 'luggage' in my neighbors care and started my journey back to the office to retrieve the keys. Reached office, took the key and walked all the way to the main road (Fact: It is about 1.2 kms from the office to the bus stop). There, I dug into my pockets and found that I had left my wallet with the 'luggage' at my neighbors place. How I wished I wasn’t born! I again came to the office hoping that I would be able to get some notes from friends. When I came back, all my office mates, who are used to staying till 9.30pm at least, had left quite early. The office was deserted at 9!! Had to borrow from the security guard - who was in the meantime, giving me some ugly looks - and with some more obstacles thrown in by the evil enemy reached home! Like some anonymous pal said – “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”.

Theory of multiple intelligences

Intelligence - How does one define intelligence? Since ages, many researchers have tried to define intelligence and have put forth one theory after another. Four main paradigms have been extensively used in the course of this research.

1. Psychometric Theories - Researchers employing this paradigm have tried to define intelligence by comprehending how it is structured. Accordingly, they wanted to find out what are the various abilities that constitute intelligence and resorted to testing psychologic experiments to evaluate that minds' abilities
2. Cognitive Paradigm - Cognition/noesis is the result of the perception, learning and reasoning. Likewise, cognitive theories of intelligence attempted to unfathom what were that processes underlying intelligence. Simply put, cognitive theories stated that a person's intelligence is his ability to organize information in its various representations and to process them
3. Cognitive_Contextual Theories - These theories explain the manner in which the congnitive process works
4. Biological Theories - I somehow have the feeling that this paradigm is wierd. Biological theorists of intelligence are trying to study intelligence in terms of is biological basis. Maybe someone would come up with a gene for intelligence sometime in the future!!

Of all these theories, I found an interesting one in a book called 'Frames of Mind' by Howard Gardner a Harvard professor . Howard has outlined the constituents of intelligence into seven basic sets. The seven intelligences are

• Linguistic Intelligence - This is the ability to read, write and communicate with words
• Logical_Mathematical Intelligence - Ability to think logically and be proficient in numbers
• Visual_Spatial Intelligence - Ability to imagine, to think in pictures
• Musical Intelligence - Ability to compose music
• Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence - Athletic ability and manual dexterity
• Inter-personal Intelligence - Ability to work well with others, and relate with them
• Intra-personal Intelligence - Ability to comprehend self and plan ahead

All said and done, how do I define intelligence? Well, quite simple - common sense. Probably I must try to make some sense out of all this intelligence no(n)sense

The Concert

Those of you, who know me, would be pleasantly surprised to know that I actually danced during the A R Rahman concert on October 8, 2005. To say that the concert was a mind-boggling experience is an understatement. The golden threads of music that caressed us all on that night, seemed to dim the refulgence of the sun himself!

The day began with the sweet strain of Saxophone music coming out of an antiquated Phillips tape in my bedroom. After palavering myself to wash my dirty linen, I fixed up 4.30pm to meet up with my group for a concert that was to start at seven. When I recall that moment now, I remember trying to fathom the phonetics of a lizard. Little was I to know that the kind little lizard was telling me that there was no point fixing up a time when my friend happened to be a girl!

I reached the venue a quarter of an hour before the agreed time and was greeted with vast emptiness. (The venue for the concert was the Palace Grounds). This is when God decided to play with me (better still 'play with us'). I got a sad affirmation of the magnitude of my ignorance when I realized that there were N number of entrances to the palace grounds and I happened to be at the wrong entrance. I remember Sun Tzu saying in The Art of War that 'any time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted'. Well, I got to agree with him! I would have lost at least a kilogram walking around the grounds and came across all the entrances to the concert without deciding on one.

Now, onto the second trick. If you remember, I was supposed to meet my friend at 4.30. Probably I must have added 'Indian Standard Time and not Indian Stretchable Time'. Along came our great friend almost an hour late and not a trifle apologetic. Well, I shouldnt have expected anything, should I? As if to compound matters, my good friend conveniently 'forgot to bring along the glasses that are necessary for watching a 3-D show! We entered the venue at around six and despite our surprises on getting a strategic place to sit; we scrambled to our chairs (a small group of nine stupid little oafs). Apart from the small confusion between IST and IST, I was overwhelmed by how things were running smoothly.

About 10 minutes after we settled into our chairs, it started to drizzle. We had one umbrella amongst us and being generous, I gave my jerkin, which I happen to dislike, to another friend, who as always is the case with such scenarios happened to be a girl! If I would have known before hand that it would be raining bollocks, I would have thought otherwise and probably, just probably, I wouldnt have made it to the concert too. What started as a pleasant drizzle turned out to be down pour. Here we were a crowd of about 10000+ braving the rain-god to listen to a different kind of sermon. We were literally shaking a leg or two even before the music started. All said and done, God was really sympathetic and he conked off the 3-D hi-tech instruments, lest we suffer the ignominy of watching a 3-D show without the 'special devices. I heard my friend heaving a sigh of relief when we learnt that the 3-D instruments have conked off.

The man himself came on stage at about nine. If someone would have asked me what I exactly felt at that moment, I would have quoted the following lines that the British author Sir Henry Rider Haggard used to describe the moon in King Solomon's Mines - "The full bow of the crescent moon peeps above the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence, as the glow of a good man's deeds shines for a while upon his little world after his sun has set, lighting the fainthearted travelers who follow on towards a fuller dawn". We were exactly like a group of men possessed by spirits, grooving to every beat, every rhythm, every word and every raga. Apart from the all-time favorites like 'Vennilave vennilave' the song that stole my heart was ARR's soulful rendition of his theme music for the fight against poverty, spearheaded by the UN. Some of the groovy tunes like 'Chaiya chaiya' and 'Mangal mangal' kept the crowd on its feet and when 'Mustafa Mustafa' was on air it was like the nostalgic bug has bit everybody...I saw everybody reveling in their own thoughts, those sweet memories that sometimes are the only things that keeps us going. The insensate hands before the beginning of the concert were clapping almost involuntarily during the concert. Sivamani playing the drums was arts in motion. When the show was coming to an end, an end that we never wanted, nature was resplendent in its second installment. It was as if, nature itself was in a state of euphoria when it remembered that such a genius came from its bosom.

When I woke up the next day at another friend's place who had agreed to give me lodgings for the night, I took stock of the things that were hopelessly drenched. Both of my mobiles were not working. As if that's not enough, two of the books that I purchased just a day before were completely drenched. Luckily my watch was working. I was asking myself - was it all worth this trouble? Hell YES! After all, who gets the opportunity to listen to a maestro in full flight on a lovely evening with a lovely group? My only suggestion to you when you go for an open-air concert would be - do not take any umbrellas and lest it must rain, enjoy the rain!