Remembering the decade gone by

I'm sitting at a customer location in Phnom Penh, pondering over my inability to keep blogging regularly despite the fact that I do seem to have ample time to procrastinate everyday. Pathetic! I say to myself only to be drowned in the ocean of mental lethargy that seems to be filling me up over the last 2 years. Enough of gloom!

There are much reasons to be cheerful as a new decade dawns on us even before most of us are left scratching our heads on where the last 10 years went. A short flashback on some of my memories on the decade gone by:

2000

• I began my career in June 2000 at Indus Networks and the memories still very fresh in my mind. The very first time I saw the ATM spitting out my very own bank balance (Rs. 10000) and really dint' know what to do with so much money!
• My first experience with the Internet, Yahoo Chat, Google.
• I bought my first two wheeler (second hand of course) for a mind numbing Rs 3400
• The nights of fun, frolic and beer with friends in Hyderabad
• The first encounter with WAP and the mobile mania
  

2001

• Got my first passport on Feb 13th
• Boarded my first flight , an Indian Airlines flight to Bombay from Madras enroute to Germany. Mom dropping me off at the airport and I still remember her face , proud that her son was joining the great big bandwagon of desi's marching towards a better future outside India
  
• My first visit abroad to Germany in March. I remember pinching myself to remind me that this was not a dream.
• First taste of German beer and my first visit to the Oktoberfest and the resulting worst hangover of my life
  
• My first soccer game
• Visit to Rome, Venice and Pisa, Brussels and Paris. I was living my dream!
• My first cell phone, a neat looking Sony (forget the model) and my first call to dad and mom telling them about my purchase.
• Working on the first GPRS capable devices
  

2002

• Moving to Munich on a work visa for 3 years
• Got my first camera a Canon EOS SLR
  
• More football games and my first (of nine) visit to the fascinating Neuschwanstein Castle
• The first time I was away from friends in family for more than 3 months
• Feeling snow for the first time!
• Bought my first Walkman (a Sony Discman) and first DVD player
• Second visit to Paris
• Going around Europe
• Windows Mobile 2002
  

2003

• Don't seem to remember too much here except that it was a year where I worked on an average for about 14 hours a day and spent well over 25 full weekends at work
• My first visit to Switzerland
• Birth of my nephew Thakkai Paya!
  

2004

• My very first house (or was it 2005?)
  
• My first trip to the United States and Portugal
• My very first trip to a Formula 1 race at Hockenheim
  
• Gaping at the magnificent Grand Canyon and trying my luck at gambling at Vegas (eventually ended up losing $30)
• Picked up my first Xbox
• Bought my first camcoder
• Cousins wedding celebrations in India
• My first iPod
  

2005

• Getting married and my first honeymoon
  
• My fifth Oktoberfest
• The project with SWM (Stadtwerke Muenchen)
• My first iPod Nano
  

2006

• Losing my job at Aventeon and subsequent closure of Aveteon just 5 days after I had returned back from India
• Moving back to Bangalore getting a job with Sabre
• My first trip to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Thailand
• Shattering news that my father had cancer

2007

• Wife's battle with depression and dad's continuing battle with cancer
• Trips to Mauritius and Jeddah
  

2008

• The worst year of my life - losing my beloved father and wife
• Working on the JetLite migration and first trip to Vietnam
  

2009

• Coming to terms with my everything life had thrown at me and accepting the hard truth
• Trips to Indonesia
• Finding solace in god and nature
• My very first digital SLR
• First trip to Angkor Wat
• Working on the Vietnam Airlines migration
• My first iPod touch
• Seeing a tiger and the elusive Lion Tailed Macaque in the wild for the very first time
  

Wow, certainly not a boring life! There have been so many highs and lows that have shattered the very fabric of my being. But if there is one lesson I have learned from the decade gone by it is that life has to move on and I realize with each passing day that the only person in control of your life and destiny is the almighty and I can only thank everyone in my life and the almighty for making me the person I am today.

What changes will the new decade bring? I hope they are positive and bring about peace and prosperity for every living creature that calls this wonderful planet its home.

Random thoughts - 17 Dec

Took about 7days to get my new passport and fora change they have printed the name,address etc and not written it by hand. Now the only problem I have is to carry 2 passports together.

My blogging frequency has once again been pathetic this year and I wonder how long I will let my mental lethargy take control of me. Plenty of new books are also waiting to be read.

The holiday season is here again and it's off to Rameswaram this time and hopefully a trip to Valparai to relax and spend sometime with myself and maybe catch a glimpse of those lovely Lion Tailed Macacques.

The iPod touch continues to amaze me and I'm in love with it. My latest obsession seems to be playing games on the iPod.

The new year begins with a trip to Cambodia. May the holiday season bring cheer,good health and happiness to all!

2010 is going usher in a brand new life as far as I am concerned and I am looking forward to it with eagerness and supreme faith in the almighty.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Hello world

Hello world. Can't stop marveling at the new iPod touch


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Road Trip to the "Iyer" Belt

Had a major road trip from the 24th to the 29th of August, clocking about 1500 kms on a nostalgic trip to Kumbakonam, Chidambaram and Trichy (an area I'd like to call as the Iyer Belt). The main purpose of the trip was to undertake a pilgrimage to certain temples in the above mentioned areas to correct some problems in my horoscope.

Started from Bangalore at about 8:30 AM with mom on 24th and proceeded towards Tiruvannamalai, making the customary stop at the Adyar Ananda Bhavan located a few kms before Krishnagiri. I was in two minds to either use the route via Salem, Namakkal and Trichy and most forums on the net advised against this and encouraged me to take the route via Tiruvannamalai.

The road to Tiruvannamalai from Krishnagiri is pretty good except for the occasional pot-holes. One can do 60-70kmh without too much hassle. I was surprised to see the Eastern Ghats emerge suddenly about 10 or 20 kms before Tiruvannamalai. The entire range seems to be thickly forested. We din't have time to visit the temple at Tiruvannamalai and headed to Kumbakonam via Thirukovilur, Panruti and Sethiya Thopu. We managed to grab a decent meal at Panruti. I was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the roads till Kumbakonam. Neatly laid out and the Swift was doing about 80 km/h on an average.

We reached the village of Tirupanandal (about 15 kms before Kumbakonam) at about 2:30pm and decided to check-out the location of the first temple which was supposed to be close to the village. We found ourselves at the gates of an old dilapidated temple at about 3:30 pm. The temple houses the Hindu god Rama. It was believed that the guru of the Asuras, Sukracharya prayed to Vishnu and Garuda at this temple and got his eyes restored in the process. The temple care taker gave us details on what needed to be done for the pooja the next day. We reached Kumbakonam and checked into a decent hotel called Rayas. An A/C room costs about Rs 1000 a night for two persons. We drove through the street where my grandmother used to live and waves of nostalgic memories gripped me. We used to spend our holidays as kids here. I always use to pester dad to take me for an evening walk and he would always oblige. However he is now gone only etched in my heart and memory for ever. So has grand mom and the place she used to live in (55 Mutt Street). The house has now become a hotel. But nothing else has changed here. It is as noisy and crowded as it was before. There was a sense of peace..some kind of bliss that I experience whenever I visit Kumbakonam which I find hard to explain or to express.

Mom was keen to go to our ancestral village of Swamimalai in the evening and I was only too keen to oblige. Lord Swaminatha captivates me like no other god does and we soon found ourselves at Swamimalai at 7 pm. The lord did not disappoint us and we were blessed with an excellent darshan as usual. Thursday's are considered auspicious as the lord adorns his diamond crusted "vel" (spear). We also made arrangements to have an "abishekam" done the next Monday. It was a long standing wish for mom to get this done. We drove back to Kumbakonam and had dinner at the famous Venkatramana hotel and crashed for the night.

We proceeded to the Ramar temple the next day and performed the necessary pujas. The next stop was Uppiliappan temple located about 10 kms from Kumbakonam. This temple is again dedicated to Vishnu. The main deity, Oppillappan (one without equal) or Uppillappan (one who does not take salt) is considered to be the elder brother of the famous Tirupati Balaji. The deity stands at an impressive 7 feet and is truly a sight to behold. Our next stop was the temple at Ayyavadi. The main deity of this temple is goddess Pratinkara (similar to Kali, a violent manifestation of Lord Shiva) and the temple is surrounded by burial grounds and the goddess is terrifying in appearance. She does not leave you with a sense of calm but with a sense of fear. No archanas or special poojas are performed at this temple. It is when one places like these that one truly comes to understand the enormity and vastness of Hinduism as a religion/philosophy and call me a fanatic but there is in my opinion no religion that comes even close in terms of being able to describe the very fabric of the cosmos and creation like Hinduism does. However I digress. After Ayyavadi we headed back to Kumbakonam for lunch (at Venkatramanas as usual). The change in weather from the cool confines of Bangalore to the sweltering heat in Kumbakonam was extreme to say the least.

We headed to my fathers ancestral village of Vaishtacheri (about 45 kms from Kumbakonam), passing the town of Mayiladuthurai on the way. Mom even showed me the hospital where my sister was born. If the trip was nostalgic for me, I could only imagine the flurry of emotions mom must have been growing through. We visited the temple of our Kula Deivam (Governing god of the family). The temple is situated in the middle of paddy fields and houses Sannasiappan. The keys to the temple doors were with a villager and he had gone to the fields to do his work and we ended up getting darshan of the lord from the outside. The village surroundings in this part of the world haven't changed for probably centuries. The peace and calm that one finds here is pretty overwhelming. I was sad to leave the village and promised myself to come sometime in the future, hopefully with my family. I was surprised to find out that Traquebar, a seaside town once a Dutch colonial outpost was only 15 kms from the village.

We headed to Thiruvarur on Saturday morning, the birthplace of my mother. Thiruvarur is home to the lord Thyagaraja (a form of Shiva) and visibly nostalgic mom showed me around the school she studied in and the places she lived in etc. We were fortunate enough to witness multiple abishekams (bathing of the idol in milk, curd, sandalwood paste etc) at the Thyagaraja temple. It was a fantastic experience and often as is the case with spiritual experiences, words cannot or do not seem to justify the feelings that one has during such experiences. On the way back we visited another unique temple. The temple was the abode of yet another avatar of Lord Shiva called Sarabeshwar. The main deity has the head of a lion and is shown holding Lord Vishnu upside down. The lord also has two wings on which sit the goddesses Kali and Pratingara. Legend has is that Vishnu in his avatar of Narasimha was becoming uncontrollable due to the blood he had taken when slaying the demon king Hiranyakashipu. In order to pacify the world, Shiva in his avatar of Sarabeshwar holds Vishnu while Kali and Pratinkara take out the blood of Hiranyakashipu from Lord Vishnu's mouth.

We headed out to the town of Chidambaram in the afternoon to see what arrangements needed to be made for the pooja we had to perform on Sunday (the following day). We were greeted by one of the temple poojaris who agreed to make all the necessary arrangements for the pooja the next day. Chidambaram did not seem to have any decent lodging and the ones that were decent didn't seem to have any car parking facilities. We decided to head back to Kumbakonam for the night.

We traveled back to Chidambaram early next morning and had an excellent darshan of Lord Nataraja followed by the pooja we had to do for Lord Chitragupta (who is Lord Yama's accountant). The poojari was kind enough to invite us to his house for lunch and we duly obliged. All the non stop driving was now getting to me and we got back to Kumbakonam and hit the sack.

The abishekam at Swamimalai on Monday was fantastic as usual. All through the trip the signs seemed to be positive all the time and this was very encouraging for the both of us. The only regret I had was that I did not bring along my digital camera and was left cursing myself everyday. We headed to Trichy later that morning and reached Trichy at about 12:30 PM. We headed out to the final temple we needed to visit and once again did a breif recon visit to find out what needed to be done to perform the puja.

The temple was situated at a village called Thirupainjili, about 20 kms from the main city of Trichy. The temple at Thirupainjili houses Lord Shiva and Lord Yama. This temple apparently is the place where Lord Shiva gave back Yama his life (after he had taken it protecting his disciple Markendeya at Thirukkadaiyur). We performed the necessary poojas the following day and headed back to Bangalore via Namakkal and Salem. The roads by theway are excellent and is four laned from Namakkal to Hosur.

We reached Bangalore at about 4 PM on 29th August and the odo read 1500 kms and I was well and truly exhausted physically. Mentally and spiritually this will go down as one of my most memorable trips.

Om Nava Shivaya! Thennarudaya Sivane Potri!

Kundremukh - An Unforgettable Weekend

1830 hours on 12th Sept - My body parts were all singing their own symphonies. My knees went right, while my feet wanted to rest, the body screamed for some warmth and the mind was blank. Sounds like a nice opening scene for some thriller movie but it wasn't. It was how I really felt after just having hiked for about 8 hours and 30 mins to Kudremukh peak and back. Flashback time....

As mentioned in a previous post, I have always wanted to see Kudremukh and jumped at the first (well not the first but the first feasible) chance I got. I was picked-up at 11pm on 11th night from Kinds Kemp at MG Road by the trip organizer Santosh. Giving me company were Dinesh (a photographer by profession), Sunil and Ram (both IT geeks like me) for the trek. I was happy to see that the group was a small one for I generally hate being in the midst of too many people (probably something to do with the sheltered atmosphere of the Nilgiris where I was brought up). The transport was comfortable too (a Toyota Qualis) and with the customary chai break in the middle of the night (actually 2 or 3) and a puncture later we found ourselves a few kilometers before what was to be our base camp at about 7 am the next morning and what a fantastic setting it was.

The monsoons magic spell can be seen everywhere and the Western Ghats is Karnataka are probably the best places in India to view this magic. There is so much greenery everywhere you see. The smell of the damp earth along with the singing of the birds, the droplets of water from the previous nights rain dripping slowly, making up their own music and last but no the least the silence of the jungle. No cocktail of alcohol or drugs can quite give you the kick of seeing, feeling and hearing nature in her true primordial form.

The base camp which was actually a small hamlet at the foot of the Kudremukh National Park, could either be reached via walk (about 4 or 5 kms) or via a 4x4 jeep and being the lazy city bums we were the decision was made to take the jeep and it turned out to be a real fun ride. The while 5 odd kilometer stretch is built only for a 4x4 and it is amazing to see the old Mahindra Commander (probably a 1970's version) handle the terrain with such ease. The ride took us uphill and we finally reached the house of our host (whose name I shamefully admit, have forgotten) and I would kill to have a place at such a location. The house was surrounded by Shola forests with the majestic grasslands of the park bordering it on all sides. Breakfast consisted of akki roti and chutney and after a quick wash we began the trek at about 8 am.

The trek started off with a brief climb and 5 mins into the climb, I was already panting and gasping for breath. We reached the first forest stream 10 mins or so into the trek and I had the first of many small falls and found my shoes drenched fully. But all that was forgotten when we reached the first clearing. The grasslands opened up in all directions and the scenery was splendid. It seemed so much like the landscape one sees at Eravikulam National Park in Kerala and Grass Hills at Valparai, Tamilnadu. Giving us company were hundreds of leeches waiting to prey on fresh blood that seemed to be coming so willingly to their territory.

The first part of the hike apart from the initial climb is pretty nice and flat and gives the hiker a chance to really soak up the surroundings. The shola forests we passed smell of rotting vegetation. The sun barely reaches parts of these forests and the result is that the conditions are pretty damp. Such is the wonder of nature that the keen eye can spot a whole host of living creatures thriving in the rotting damp vegetation too. About an hour into the trek we reached a huge bison swamp, still bearing hundreds of footprints of young, old, male and female Gaur. You imagine seeing a huge herd of these gentle creatures grazing away at dusk passing an occasional glance at their surroundings. There is also an old house, now in ruins that once belonged to person called Lobo who made the park and their surroundings his home many decades ago. Nature has quickly reclaimed much of the house and the surroundings which are now only topics for tea tables among the nostalgic.

I find a sense of peace a belonging (despite my body complaining for rest and other comforts) in the midst of such surroundings and I always get the feeling that somewhere I was made for a life in the wilderness. The mind quickly returns you to reality and agonizing hours of climbing that lie ahead. The climb gets steeper after the ruins and I was now taking a break every 5 minutes and poor Ram who was doing his first trek was worse off.

The next 3 or so hours were tiring to say the least and clearly the body was signaling to me that I was woefully out of shape. The panting became faster and the only rhythm I could hear was that of my heart that was working its sock off (probably 130 beats a minute) trying to pump blood faster into a body who demands were becoming unreasonable. The last trek I had done was more than 18 months back at Coorg and clearly the lack of stamina was beginning to tell.

At this point the mind really becomes a devil is disguise constantly prodding you to give up and take rest asking you what is going to come out of such a stupid effort.Nevertheless I forced myself to continue and screams of the guys who were already on top of the peak only encouraged me to give the last push and voila! I made it after about 5 hours of hiking.

No sooner had I sat down to catch my breath and have some food than it began to drizzle. With the vegetation offering no cover, we had to beat a hasty retreat from the peak which was already covered by clouds on all sides thereby robbing us of the splendid views that it offers on a clear day. We could only curse our luck and I for one was cursing the loudest because I conveniently forgot my jacket at home in Bangalore.

It rained non-stop for about 3 hours on our way back. Steady and heavy drizzle. My shoes were not cut-out for hiking and I was again cursing myself for not having a pair for hiking. I was slipping, prodding and falling all over the place and managed to pull my calf muscle too. The leeches in the meantime were having the time of their lives spreading to every nook and corner of the feet sucking warm blood. Stops were made every 5 mins to weed out the annoying creatures but it was impossible to get them all out. The terrain made it all the more difficult. Rocks and boulders strewn all over the path with small streams of water gushing down. It is one of those very rare moments in life where you are in pain, cursing your luck, wishing you were at a better place but at the same time enjoying the experience. After all who in the right senses would want to hike down a leech infested landscape for 4 hours in a downpour?

Flashback over.

Back at the hut we managed to get some hot water and after a refreshing bath I just found the nearest bed and fell flat and dozed away for a hour. Dinner was served at about 2000 hrs but was bosy was in too much pain to relish anything that had been cooked. I spent the night twisting and turning on my bed and at about 3 am I moved down to the floor and made myself a bed with the blankets that were available at dozed off.

We left after breakfast the next morning at about 8am, making a stop at a nice little waterfall a few kilometers down the road and then the famous Annapoorneshwari temple at Horanadu (which is magnificent) and at Hassan for lunch. I reached back home at about 2100 hrs beaten and worn down but having just experienced a trip that I will probably speak about with my kids and grandkids.

Thank you life!

Photos of the trip are posted on Picasa

Alternatively go to http://bit.ly/19lKDr