The bay area is a cold place in winter. You don’t feel it much if you are flying from Seattle. But from Bangalore, California is a whole different beast altogether. Brave attempts to summon up old Seattleness and turning up with just one jacket doesn’t usually work, especially in cases like mine when Seattle is a fast receding memory where recollecting road names and locations gets faced with an increasingly stronger wall in the mind. Yes, it’s been only just over an year, but this is the time the little details get polished off from the surface leaving only the broader summary.

This time am forced to share a suite with a colleague (2 different rooms, common kitchen and living area). Moments when I wrestle for control over little things, I am painfully aware how blissful having one’s own kitchen and house just for oneself is, and how much of a control freak I had(have) become! (Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say!) When it comes to shared kitchens and company you are forced to look at questions on food and other things like how much of an intrepid traveler you are when it comes to food and how much you yearn for the good ole comfort zone. Reminds me of my cousin’s post when she was visiting Seattle for 3 weeks. Can relate better now!

Anyway, off to Seattle for a weekend, and one weekend doesn’t seem enough. Trying to catch up with as many of the ole folks from there as possible! Going to be fun, and going to be an interesting experience revisiting that place.

The one in ‘The club‘ which falls conveniently between my place and my colleague’s place is at best a normal flat land with some tennis court lines drawn on it and a hole-y net gracing the middle. There are two such ones and usually one of them has lines missing at parts which we usually extrapolate from other sides. Considering the good old age of 30+, we have less fights over where the ball fell and if the extrapolation is wrong. Of course, some days even the court gets slushy with water from the previous night’s rains, but we gamely soldiered on, deciding to train instead of having a game when the conditions were less than ideal.

Later I learnt that that place was also used as an overflow parking lot! Which usually left deep tyre marks from where balls would shoot up or down at random. But the worst was reserved for the end. The court disappeared completely, replaced by a massive pandal-ish roof erected on poles. Thinking that it might be a year-end thing, we went away only to realize a few weeks later that it was actually permanent! They promised to finish the court below, but only one instead of the two which is bound to increase contention!

With no courts in hand and needing some activity, I found the lake near the house almost complete. Well, just a path around it and water in the lake. Being not heavily frequented, the lake is now home to a variety of birds. Herons, Moorhens, Coot ducks, swallows, ducks are seen frequently. When lucky a couple of white-throated Kingfishers can also be spotted. The distance around the lake is a decent 2.5 Kms and I barely manage to complete it in one go. No goals yet, just enjoying the run.

Coming back to tennis courts, it reminds me of times when me and Shankar squeezed ourselves(Opening in the fencing!) into National College Basavanagudi’s court and used to play for hours without interruption. Later, the maintenance guy found us when I was playing with Shankar’s bro and Praveen and after a huge fight where he confiscated our racquets and we had to pull it out of him after much pleading and ego-massaging, we put an end to that place!

Those years were spent looking for courts. The one in JP Nagar club was well maintained except that members got higher priority and we usually had to share it with someone or play ‘half-court’. Once we even played in an open private court which was being converted to some building with construction workers milling around preparing for the digging up of the place.

It’s easy to crib about the lack of tennis courts in Bangalore, but considering the rate at which even cricket grounds are disappearing it’s not much we can do about it I guess. But the hunt continues to find a court. Sometimes, even looking up on google maps to scout for something from the top!

Most of ನಾಯಿ ನೆರಳು is along those lines. Weird things happen to people, many of whom have been cowed by the effects of their past Karma and then there is Jogayya, the Yogi/Sanyasi, who disappears at crucial moments and returns later to clarify things, who only laughs when asked “why?”, but sometimes gives a “Think for yourself, you’ll know”. Most things you don’t get (at least I couldn’t!), but over a period of time they start making sense. There are no “Aha” moments, only slow understanding. Of course, even then there are further questions. Venkamma (the wife of the reborn man) at the end is left wondering what role she had to play and why she had to go through all that. She goes through the most pain for everything or seems to. There are no easy answers here and no attempts are made either.

Having read only ಆವರಣ before, I was expecting a rational tale with no make-believe. This is a novel where you concentrate on the theme. You nod along when the grama-devathe comes to the house in the form of the possessed priest, when the jogayya tells you stories or when Acchannaiah recounts his tale. The ending is very abrupt, but along expected lines. This is not a fairy tale.

If you can read Kannada, I cannot recommend this enough. At only 168 pages, it won’t take much time either.

[Disclaimer: I haven't watched the movie by the same name, directed by Girish Kasaravalli. From what I read about the movie, there are significant differences between the plot lines with only the character names and the concept of reincarnation as the only common points. So if you've seen the movie alone, I suggest reading the book if you can. What it deals with is an entirely different set of concepts and goes more into the ethos of Hinduism exploring Karma in its fullest.]

Day one saw us racing our way within one Km of the accommodation only to see the last Km being a 4X4 path requiring us to navigate with “lefts and rights” to plan out ways to avoid projecting rocks causing dings on the fender! Once that done, we tried to figure what would work best to keep the car there and not take it out. Turned out, we had to!

Day two saw us venturing out in the quest of the highest point in Karnataka – Mullainagiri. This trek is something I’ve had in mind for close to 8 years now, realized only now with mild disappointment. There were steps leading to the top from the parking lot taking only close to 20 minutes to get to the top! Getting to the parking lot involved driving up inclinations on single lane roads without any fencing on the side, with a steep drop if you get off the lane! Awesome, except that it was used for two-way traffic. The moment when you go up the inclination on first gear, just so that you don’t stop anywhere, only to see a Red Maruti Swift appear at the top and make his way down. Moments when you have to drive on the right side of the lane to pass that Swift coming downhill, so that the driver is closer to the edge and knows his bearings while Anush gets down to check about it tipping over, making it through inches from plunging down. Moments you can reflect on and laugh with relief later on, but faced with shaking legs that had to work the clutch, brake and the accelerator!

The return saw us having to negotiate 15 kms through Bhadra wildlife sanctuary area on non-existent roads, rattling on at 20 Kmph, wondering when the torture would end, only to have to go through that for the last 6 Kms in pitch darkness too, finally reaching the place and thanking our stars while cursing the guy who had suggested that path saying the roads were good!

Day three was when we hired a 4X4 to take us to Hebbe falls and the driver took us through roads which are just flatter paths with rocks and loose soil like all around. On inclinations you would think twice walking up and wonder how anyone could make it past the jeep rattles on and you see another lying by, having lost its axle or having the fuel pipe cut off. Vehicles coming in the opposite direction twist above you wheels turning in all directions possible, filled with people who somehow want to make it Hebbe with no clue what the journey held for them when they started. This ride is Chikmagalur’s best kept secret. All people tell you is “visit Hebbe falls”, not what it entails. “Why are there no roads?” we ask. “The forest department does not allow repairing, to discourage tourists” answers the driver. “Why don’t they ban tourists then!” you think. Only to wade through ankle deep water so cold that you can’t feel your legs for a while (making it easy to walk on the paths with stones pricking your legs) and then behold the water falling from that height in the midst of utter wilderness, and you regret ever thinking of that! And then as you get back, you see all the Kingfisher bottles and paper plates lying around, and wonder if we really deserve what we have, and maybe they should go ahead and ban all tourists.

Day three was also when we turned up late for the wildlife Safari at Bhadra Sanctuary and dropped by the Bhadra reservoir instead. Mild disappointment was replaced with awe as the Sun went down in a more than usual riot of colours behind the distant Western Ghats fencing the massive river Bhadra.

Day four was when we woke up 4 AM to make it to Bhadra sanctuary at 6 in the morning. The jeeps for the safari piled on the tenants of Jungle Lodges leaving only the three of us standing. We split up, Sharad with one group in the front with foreigners behind him and the spotter and driver next to him. Me and Anush in another with a family of 4 with us in a jeep which was more of a pickup with an open hold behind. We offered to stand there, only for them to turn it down as it was against Forest guidelines. 20 minutes into the safari, the jeep stopped to let us shoot (pics of) a serpent eagle, where I renewed the request, this time to be allowed. What followed was an exhilarating ride on the back of the jeep holding the railings in the cold morning(12 degs it was!) while doing spotting and shooting. Sensation in the fingers was gone. No tigers or leopards spotted. We saw only the usual deer(most of which were shy), some birds, a family of wild buffalo and the usual peacocks which flew away on approach. None of that mattered as we stood there on the back of the jeep in the middle of the jungle while the Sun came up, its rays sneaking in through the thick Evergreen forest canopy, the mist floating off the surface of the full and blue lakes.

As for Kemmannugundi, 20 minutes from there are just flat roads and villages. You enter and there are mountains with green grass tops and evergreen canopies below shielding all light all over them. The driver reels off big names – Khodays, Rajeev Chandrashekar, Coffee Day at every estate gate and enumerates the area of each to awe you. All you care about are the mountains rising all around you, shaped like rising waves at the top and layers of them stretching to eternity behind each other. And then you drive on for half an hour and you are back in State and National Highways. No signs of the magic land close by.

Pics:

Chikmagalur-Dec2011

Books are a sort of journey. Into the world created by the author with the time/era part of the setting. Be it Burma and Malaysia in ‘The Glass Palace’ or Dickensian England in Copperfield, we venture out and into that world and come back, hopefully, with an altered perspective of things. In the same metaphor ‘home’ for me, would be R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi. Sometimes I wonder if I can lump in Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle or the world of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves into it. But the ‘connect’ to those is somehow missing.

In a way Malgudi is the closest we can have to our childhoods in the literary world. A world where a ‘Chettiar’ shopkeeper believes in not answering in negatives to anything you ask of him, even if he doesn’t have it, or is not likely to deal in. Postmen, cab drivers, printing press owners, school teachers, people who sit around and talk in shops about Government policies, Grandmoms, schools, vacations, temple festivals, cousins and the whole lot! Yes, as each of these characters become real, like Nataraj of the printing press in ‘The Man-eater of Malgudi’, the association with a role we know might waver, but it only ends up creating a connection with a friend or relative whom we know better.


The Painter of Signs started off with a similar connection to a signs painting shop on 1st Main, Chamarajpet right opposite where the longest road we knew – 3rd Cross aka Bazaar Street which becomes Bull temple road after Uma talkies- starts. In an era where the whole world was compressed into Chamarajpet, where every relative and friend had an address with pincode 560018, Gopi Arts was seen on all streets, a ubiquitous signature under all boards for shops, all paintings on walls, be it for Family planning or a shop advertising everything it sold on its walls.

PoS is easily one of the best works of RKN. Using his trademark style of humour, he binds you into one perspective and relates the story of one man’s obsession with a woman and their complicated relationship. Like many other RKN stories, this one deals with human emotions and their interplay seen from one perspective, which is what endears his works. This time however, he does not desist from raising the tone a notch or two. Apart from the two characters, the painter’s aunt forms a significant character, something he (and thus we) realizes well into the end.

At the very end he leaves you with a feeling similar to that of Orhan Pamuk‘s Snow, as you realize how weak the main character seems to be, and how he seems helpless in forcing anything around stronger characters around him. Like in Snow, towards the end you just know what is going to happen and the ending just is made into something inevitable. Like in snow, you are left wondering if it’s just because we see too much of that one perspective, through that character’s frailties and insecurities that we are able to sit in judgement easily, to mete out what we feel he/she may deserve.

Soon I was on my way, driving through newly laid empty roads to Ullal and making a small halt for Anand to join. We started at 8:30 AM, the morning chill not yet thawed, the mist/fog still hanging low. We rode along the outer ring road towards Kengeri, playing cat & mouse with the buses and lorries. A right at Kengeri and we were on Mysore road, racing by cars and mini-trucks with the buses asserting their dominance by stopping in the middle of the road.

The traffic was usual Mysore road style, free-flowing until you hit populated areas where the occasional auto-driver or two-wheeler would try to steal a quick one across the road bringing traffic to a halt for close to a 100 meters. Kengeri, Anchepalya all went by as we made our way towards Bidadi, and just out of nowhere a traffic jam sprung up! Worming our ways between buses and lorries, taking deft off-roaders, we made our ways to the front only to realize that it was caused by a bunch of humps laid together bringing the whole traffic to a crawl for a whole half a Km!

The traffic snarl notwithstanding we were at Bidadi for our breakfast by 9 AM. Breakfast in Bidadi is always Thatte Idli. Legend goes that there was one shop which used to make awesome Thatte idlis which soon got famous. Now the entire stretch of Mysore Road along Bidadi is dotted with tiny outlets proclaiming to make ‘Bidadi’ Thatte Idlis! The one shop, close to the bus stop was crowded as expected and unlike the haughtier places in Basavanagudi or Malleswaram, neither does the fare burn a hole in your pocket nor do you have to endure snooty waiters. Anand waded into the crowd while I found a strategic location close to the very red chutney. He waded out balancing two plates of idlis and a Vada each with a tiny dollop of butter melting over the surface of the idlis. The delicious idlis and the vada made it into our stomachs generously aided by the at-hand chutney. Once done, we figured we couldn’t get coffee there as the place was too crowded. This is one of the disadvantages of the place. Unlike the more famous outlets in Bangalore the coffee cannot hold water to the main fare here! After doing some adjust-maadi with the coffee from a nearby shop we headed out again.

Now the plan was to go North to hit Magadi road instead of returning via Mysore Road. From a previous ride, I had promised Anand of a ride through villages dotted by verdant green fields and pristine blue lakes. The road was initially dodgy and I promised good roads right after a bridge was passed around a KM inside. The bridge came and the roads became magical snaking through vegetation, smelling of early morning dew and drying hay. Within a few minutes we were near “Nelligudde Kere”. There is a bike path that goes right by the river where I had seen a biking team being put through its paces on a previous ride. This time it was empty. The fog had still not lifted as we rode by the lake getting as close as possible.

Nelligudde Kere(iPhone pic, might be low quality)

We hit the road back and rode along cruising at around 60, never going too fast. Given the proximity to the lakes and the Arkavathy river, the fields around were well irrigated and the farmers prosperous. Houses and people looked well taken care-of and well-nourished with cars and bikes parked outside. Villages appeared every 3-4 Kms each with their own schools which boasted of blackboards all along the walls with drawings and announcements taking up every available inch.

Soon we reached the crossroads where the road to the left announced Manchanabele dam in 2 Kms. We took the detour and rode through similar roads and over hay spread on the road to dry. An incline took us up and we turned right and dropped straight into a huge valley with the Manchanabele lake lying at the heart of it. It was a breathtaking ride to go down the valley by the lake and we tried to get close to it, but were beaten back by the quality of the roads leading into it.

We continued along the same direction, but after a short distance decided to turn back as the road seemed to be getting bad. We came back to the same crossroads and I missed taking a pic of the valley from the drop-down point. We continued north and reached Magadi Road, the road getting progressively wider. We joined Magadi road around 7 KMs beyond Tavarekere and raced along at an easy 80 KpH on the pristine highway. A shortcut after the NICE road meant that we were at our respective homes by 11 AM, after promising to do another ride sometime.

Route map:

View Larger Map

As far as epics go, this is EPIC. It was written for the Tamil weekly Kalki and appeared as episodes for close to 3.5 years, from 29th Oct 1950 to 16th May 1954. The story spans 5 parts, of which the fifth has two volumes. Each book is around 300 pages long, making it around 1800 pages. Some of the pages contain illustrations, usually an artist’s view of the character most prominent in a particular chapter or an event. Not entirely unlike the kinds you see in ‘Illustrated classics’ etc, these are for serious readers and are not as frequent.

The story is set in 10th century AD in Tamilnadu during the reign of the Chozhas. History records that Aditha Karikalan, the crown prince and son of Paranthaka Chozha II (aka Sundara Chozha) was killed in 969 AD. No one knows how he was killed or who killed him. The story of Ponniyin Selvan (eponymous with Raja Raja I or Arulmozhi Varman), traces the events leading up to the murder of Aditha Karikalan but staying true to history, leaves you guessing as to what happens at the moment of the death, even though the author takes you right into the room where he is killed.

After that, much chaos ensues as attempts are made to crown Arulmozhi Varman, the brother of Aditha Karikalan the emperor as Sundara Chozha decides to retire. The last part of the story deals with whether he ascends the throne or not. The family and ascension tree given at the beginning records that Maduranthaka Uttama Chozha, who is the cousin of Sundara Chozha becomes the emperor after Sundara Chozha and rules for 15 years, so we know what happens, but the story deals with how it happens and with enough twists to surprise.

It is set over 8 months from the beginning of the monsoons, the month of Aadi(July) till the month of Thai(January-February), and along with the changing seasons, the changing fortunes of the empire are mapped out as they come close to all-out civil war as the rains gather force, with cyclones and rivers flooding the plains before a pleasant winter sets in as things cool down and Ponniyin Selvan takes control of happenings.

Like any epic, there are a huge number of characters, some of them Pandya conspirators, some on the side of the Chozhas. Different people with different motives which keep fluctuating and remain unclear drive the story in different directions. The story mostly revolves around Vandiyathevan, a warrior in the ranks of Aditha Karikalan who come to Thanjavur with a message for the emperor and the sister of Aditha Karikalan. Along with another delightful character called Azhwarkadiyan Nambi, he stumbles from one adventure to another, mostly ending up in the wrong place at the right time and somehow extricating himself from his troubles. He gains the confidence and trust of Ponniyin Selvan and his sister whom he ends up marrying at the end.

Azhwarkadiyan Nambi is a Veera-Vaishnavite spy and his debates with Shaivites and Advaithins over who is the greater God are seen throughout the novel and mark his entry into the scene most of the times, and the author does present most of the debates. The story stays true to undercurrents of the time like the Saivite-Vaishnavite frictions and passing mentions of people from the North-west of the country invading the North of the country and destroying temples and looting kingdoms.

The descriptions of TN during the monsoons are beautiful and he paints a superb picture of the place. The story uses a lot of rivers as reference points as most of the important cities those days are set near rivers. Part of the story takes place in Sri Lanka and he goes into detail describing the Stupas and Buddhist paintings in places like Anuradhapuram etc.

As far as historicals go, it stays true to known history and does not take any liberties with it, although historical characters are part of the storyline and are as real in the story as the Pandavas in the Mahabharatha. It stays a superb read, although a tad long and paints a good picture of the life and times during the reign of the Chozhas at the turn of the millenium. Although long, it reads fast and is difficult to put down as the author switches deftly between different threads at different places using Cyclones and floods as timeline reference points before bringing them all together whenever needed.

Every book or literature on meditation talks about that state, where the mind is blank and there is no conscious thought in it. Every time I think about it in particular, I realize something creeps into it. But then there’s always hindsight. You look back at moments where things really were that way. Like the crazy bug that draws you deep into the code, where nothing exists in the mind except the pursuit of the bug and then, there is this fleeting moment of blankness which is filled up by the whole sequence adding up, with the bug that you are seeking, sitting out. Somehow, you just know it’s right!

Came across this interesting post by Prem Panicker on a discussion between Abhinav Bindra and Rahul Dravid where they talk about being in the zone where the mind is blank at the time of execution. The zone which every sportsman tries to achieve where mind and body are in a kind of alignment, where you do something just because it needs to be done and you don’t play a conscious role in the decision making. In cricket it’s the moment when a ball is hurtling at you and your hands, legs just move to execute a shot perfectly, even though you never consciously made the decision to play that. To say that the mind knows how to play that shot just like that, from instinct is foolhardiness. The shot comes from hours and hours of practice, or just plain experience from before, which condition the mind to decide what will work and what won’t for that circumstance.

Reading that post, to use Dravid’s phrase it is intimidating what sportsmen in fields which have the Olympics as the main goal go through. Four years of rigorous practice aiming for perfection, which all culminates in a few seconds of the real trial. You miss, and you go back to the drawing board to come back 4 years later to go through the same process again, and you realize that you are also growing older! Helps understand why athletes get so emotional on winning? And why they are heralded as such champions! The closest I came to this was with the CAT, where you answer 100s of mock papers only to face the real one which can make or break the deal for that year. The first one was a disaster, but it thankfully got annulled as the paper had leaked. The second one, the re-test, was perfection. The third one, a disaster, where the mind froze on one easy question, making a mess of something which was simple and a clincher, eventually screwing up the rest!

How do you deal with such scenarios? It is easy to say let the mind deal with it. Easy to say you need to relax. But then you are staring at a not-so-fast bowler and the ball stands up after pitching, giving you a fleeting milli-second more than you planned for, and the mind comes screaming in with endless possibilities on dealing with it. At the very end, you scoop up a dolly to the man at extra-cover.

Also takes me back to weekend mornings, where I wake up and realize there is nothing to do. The papers have been read, the coffee done, shower finished. What do you do to pass time? Is it one of the side-effects of an entertainment-driven life that with a few minutes of nothing to do, we are helpless? What is the other option, just sitting quietly, doing nothing, mentally or physically. Is that even possible?

Anyway, the first 100 took 52 months to get, at the rate of close to 2 a month, although the last one-two years of the first 100 also averaged closer to 4/month. My first few years barely saw any action. The last 100 have seen a doubling in speed. Has taken 2 years and 4 months to get there at the rate of almost 4 posts a month, almost once a week.

I don’t expect the pace to pick up. Kind of comfortable keeping it at 40-48 posts a year. Considering that the 300, if it will happen, will be only in late 2013 or early 2014, many things to hope for by then. Like the Bangalore Metro.