Tirupati

Its been a long time since I posted here (this has got to be my standard opening lines here!). Frankly, writing is fun, but preparing to write is a chore, and a writer is one who does not get bowed down by the first few steps.


But I degress. The reason I post is because I am feeling rejenuvated by a vacation after a long work spell. how long was my work spell? it was so long, that I did not know that I needed a vacation. So, it was a godsend that my bro-in-law's son had to have his mundan at Tirupati.

The best part of the trip was that it was a holiday within a holiday.

I always welcome a trip to Mumbai, and like always, I immensely enjoyed it. After the still cold Delhi, Mumbai's heat was a nice change. I hadn't sweated for months in Delhi, but was seating an hour after reaching Mumbai.

The Mumbai trip was a nice way to prepare for a trip down south, to Tirupati. Now, this was my first trip to Tirupati, but a journey to south excites me. Leaving the dryness of the north to the lush green south is a calming experience. Plus there is the added bonus of authentic south Indian food.

We left for Renigunta by a midnight train. Any hopes I had of going off to speel immediately were dashed by my bro-in-law's two year old son, who could not comprehend the sudden constricting environs of a railway compartment and immediately made his displeasure know. When you are small, you are a king.

The journey itself was quite pleasant. I was expecting lush greenery when we entered south, the view didn't change much, in my opinion, than when we were in Maharashtra. Maybe the lush freens aer further south, towards Kerala, or maybe the difference would have been more pronounced on a Delhi-AP trip.

Now, the railways are notorious for train delays. So, imagine our surprise when we arrived at Renigunta a full hour earlier! The entire family had gone to sleep, setting our alarms to 15 minutes before arrival. A chance enquiry about the station by my BIL about the stop had all of us jumping out of the berth and running to the station, lest the train leave. His son was suitable bewildered to cry out aloud.

The Renigunta station itself was very clean, which is a good indicator, in my books that one has reached south (though by that definition, the Tirupati station could be any station in the north, but I am talking impressions, not specifics).

The gate that leads up to Tirumala close at midnight, and reopens at 3 am. We reached at the gates at 1:30, and so had an hour and a half to kill, which we did by drinking very sweet coffee

Coffee Break

and walking around a huge statue of an apsara near the gate.

Apsara

For a temple town, Tirumala is very well organised. When we reached to the top, I had to wait in the line for a room, which was easily got, and which was pleasantly clean and spacious.

Tirupati is a town that never sleeps. Though the temple is closed for certain times, the flow of pilgrims never stops.

It was heartening to be in the midst of all the devotees, all there to pray to Lord Balaji. You cannot help feeling pious by being there, all your pent up devotion flowing. There are public toilets constructed for the pilgrims everywhere, and food stalls that serve good food round the clock. And the look of all, men, women, children with their shaved head is endearing. I was also suprised to notice that the place was not just frequently by south Indians, but by people from north of the Vindhalays as well. I heard people talking in Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, and there was even a family of traditional Rajasthani's. In fact, the number of people coming from Maharashtra was quite a revelation.

Everybody who goes to Tirupati has to get their head tonsured, and I mine tonsured as well. The entire process took less than five minutes. All we had to do was to go a temple-appointed barber with half a blade provided by the authorities, and he did the rest. The number of people getting their head shaved is mind-boggling. I suspect more than a tonne of hair must be shaved everyday. Incidently, my bro-in-law's son only had his hair snipped a little, while his father, grandfather and myself shaved ours!!

The Tirupati temple is a sight that can't be described in words. The majesty of the place is worth seeing. We waited for three hours in a queue for the visit, and when we finally reached there, it was a wait well worth. Its not just the gold and silver walls of the temple, its the feeling of peity that exists throughout the visit that I liked. People were focussed only on the deity, and not on anything else. The amount of wealth on display did not seem to impress them. They had eyes only for Lord Balaji. The sight of the inner sanctum in the temple is a sight to behold. No camera in the world, or the world's best photographer can capture the sight. Theres the shine from the gold on the wall, the light from the lamps, the darkness of the wood. In the center, behind many doors, lies the statue of Lord Balaji, dark and majestic.

Heads shaven, praeyers offered, we made our way down, stopping in the way to feed the deers:

Tirupati town is more crowded and a little more chaotic than the shrine, but as usual, the good people of the Tirupati shrine board have made arrangements for the pilgrim going to or returning from the hill top. As usual, the rooms provided were very nice (the building looked like a recent construction). We were all tired after the journey downhill, but were also missing meat, not having eaten it for two days (my wife's family are big meat eaters!). So, it was time to go meat hunting.

Outside the town, all we could find was pure vegetarian restaurants, but we didn't give up, and after nearly an hour of walking around, located a non-veg restaurant in a Muslim neighbourhood. The gorging on the food was intensive, and we feasted on chicken, mutton and eggs. The food wasn't great, but when you have not eaten meat in two days, it gets a taste of its own.

Back to Mumbai, we had a face a case of serious illness in Mumbai, but things worked out well. The three days I spent back in Mumbai was enough for me to recharge my bateries. I even met my friend Arun after nearly  three years, though I missed Anu. Returning, I had the feeling that the vacation ended too soon.

All in all, the trip was enjoyable, except for the illness when we returned. Though, I did miss out on a few planned trips, like a trip to Cafe Baghdadi for their fried chicken, to Mumbai Docks, to see the Flora Fountain, a possible trip to Matheran, but I can look forward to those in my next trip now that I have renewed my association with the city.

Another R.I.P.

As far as tragedies go, 2011 is turning out to be a really bad year. First M F Hussain, then Steve Jobs, and now Jagjit Singh.
Jagjit Singh was responsible for bringing the ghazal to the common man. True, there are other noted singers, like Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hassan, Munni Begum, but few have been able to transcend from the high art and reach out to the common man. Jagjit Singh managed to do that, with his soulful and soothing voice. Ask a layman, and he will be able to recall a Jagjit Singh ghazal before one by Ghulam Ali.
His songs for films like Arth, Saath Saath right till Sarfaosh were a testament to his talent.
All one can say is,

तुम चले जाओगे तो sओचेगे , हमने क्या khoya, हमने क्या पाया

note: the trinsliteration does not work as well I ad hoped it would.

R.I.P Steve Jobs

Today was a momentous day in tech history. One of its brightest stars, Steve Jobs passed away today. The world wide mourning for his passing is to be understood, for, in a field full of innovators, he stood out.
A lot has been written about Steve Jobs since he retired from his company last August. He has been uniformly been praised as one of the bes CEOs, who has turned Apple around, ever since he came back to its fold in 1997. From being a bankrupt company, it is now the second most valuable company.
A look at the various message boards has people discussing Jobs' legacy. While many would like to remember him as a tech innovator, who invented stuff and created products which other people had not thought about, others would like to think of him as a marketing genius, who took existing technologies made them desirable.
Personal, I always felt that Apple fell somewhere in between.
Steve Jobs had a great understanding of what people wanted, coupled with the means to package them in a manner that want became desirability. Apple products were always packaged beautifully. And that, there was the reason for the success for Apple. Though mp3 players existed before the iPod, it was the snazzy packaging of the product that made the product as a must buy. The same was with the imacs. With their colorful, translucent looks, the imacs again were great to look at, making people buy. But that is not to deny that these products were in anyway technically inferior. In fact, they were as good as, or in many cases, better than their windows counterparts, but I say it again, that was not the reason the people thought about buying them. For them, first and foremost, it was the look that mattered as it should, when buying anything.
This attention to looks and details is what led to the advancement in Apple products. The strive towards a small form factor resulted in smaller, slimmer computers. The bulky CPU was done away with, as everything was fit along with the display unit. The iPods and iPads to started becoming slimmer and packed nearly the same power as their bulky brethren.
The iPad, in fact, seemed to be a logical progression of all the advancements, since the casual use rarely uses the keyboard, preferring instead to use the mouse, using the keyboard only to update the social status.
The success of Apple, and also Steve Jobs must also be seen in view of the fact that they operate in very closed environments - interoperability with products other than Apple has always been an issue. While the Apple products seamlessly  work with each other, this is is not possible with the non-Apple products. So, to take full advantage of Apple, one has to buy Apple products from end to end. I personally used an iPod and while I liked it, I found it too restrictive  with regards to loading songs and deleting them. I later switched to Phillips GoGear, which let me listen to my music without much bother of how to load and delete the files, with the same audio quality.
Steve Jobs was able to build Apple to a cult, with loyal users who would buy whatever he built, and that must be appreciated. He was the one rare technologist, who also had the aesthetic sense in him, to make beautiful products, which people later copied. The cult like status allowed him to make risky decisions, like doing away with the floppy drive in the imac, claiming them to be obsolete and sticking with only optical drives, and then later doing away with them as well in the MacBook Air. These decisions had an industry-wide impace, and we are all the better for it.
The future technologists would do well to study the works of Steve Jobs, to learn about how he built an empire, a cult. Like or hate him, one cannot deny that he changed the world around him.

still around...

still around, with the sincerest intention to update my blog and the littlest intention of doing so. in the meantime, a new look for the blog is always welcome

A Quick Note...

To anyone visiting this page, check out the music of Shor In The City....wonderful music. I have been listening to Saibo in rotation for an hour now, and that hasn't happened in a long time.

Added later:


Contrary to reports of blogs dying, if my blog stats are true, they are only reviving. The visits to my blog have never been this high!! It seems that bloggers are only staging a fightback, proving to world that blogging is not dead.

You're so 2000 late...

So I reconnected with a very old friend of mine, a chaddi-buddy, whom I haven't met or talked to in years. Such are the pleasures of Facebooking, your past catches up on you.
But thats not he point I am making here. We got talking and to my query about how he is, he replies' 'cool'! To put that line into context, let me tell you that the said friend is a small town guy, who was not conversant in English till the year 2005, when I last met him. Come 2011, and he is all 'cool-ed' up!! In fact, he also caption most of his photos as cool, which brings me to the conclusion that cool is the most uncool word now, from being uber hip, the word is now downgraded to ghati status. Everybody and their grandfather are using that word now.
So, to all the young people out there, stop saying you are cool, your fathers are probably cooler than you when they use that word. You need to come up with another word.

One For The Road(ies)....

Roadies is back!! And how!!!

I am not much of a reality show person - I like my fantasy, the more fantastic the better. Hence my preference for sci-fi and superhero cartoons.

But Roadies is a different beast. Every since I saw it from season 5, I was hooked. This is one show that has managed to be interesting throughout its run. The concept of the show is quite simple - a bunch of youngsters leave on thir bikes, with tasks thrown in. But what makes it interesting is the presence of Raghu.

Raghu is one host that knows how to make the show interesting. He has taken the shows linear format and turned it over its head, Every episode has an interesting twist - I wont call it unexpected, because we actually wait for the unexpect twist.

The past two years, Roadies was losing its unexpectedness. Gone were the youngsters looking for an adventure. In their place, there was this tribe of Roadies, people who have seen every episode, and come with their guards up, impenetrable. Roadies 6 was watchable, mainly because of Kiri, who was a treat to watch, his passion for Roadies visible to everyone. As for Roadies 7, I have trouble remembering even one memorable person from that bunch.

But now, with season 8, Raghu and team have managed to do the impossible. They have somehow managed to bring the unexpected back into the show. Quite frankly, this year's contestants are not better than the previous years, each playing their cards too close, their guards always up. But Raghu, Rajiv and Rannvijay have been able to get some interesting characters for the show. From the over confident Avtar to the totally obscure Suraj, this group has every personality type.

To be sure, this season has managed to come up with a few surprises. Firstly it was the first Roadie to be voted out, Rahul, who turned out to be quite urbane, as opposed to his village boy persona on teh show. Then there was the secret pact between Avtaar and Dev,which took everyone. When these two got voted out, Renee, with her women-versus-men plotting got our attention. These tricks have managed to get the viewers attention, rather than the tasks and the vote outs themselves.

The previous two shows were quite bloated, meaning, the tasks were too high concept to be entertaining, case in point being the season 7 finale. They actually built a replica of an auditorium for that and had the contestants running around like gladiators. Thankfully in season 8, they have shed all the excess baggage. Its back a bunch of youngsters on bikes, with a takla testing them.

In future episodes, expect to see boxer Vijendra Singh, ex contestants Ashutosh Kaushik, Nihal, Tammanna, Polomi and a naked Suchit.

With the unexpected back in Roadies, I am looking forward to an entertaining season.

Another Kranti...

A nice piece by B Raman on the recent fasting till death by Anna Hazare. I totally agree with what he has to say about the fast. the fact that the government has capitulated to the demands of Anna Hazare is down more to the youth power than to the man himself. Of late, the youth participation in social issues has been very encouraging - the caandle light vigils at India Gate for Jessica, the protests in DU for the broad daylight murder of a girl being two of them. The reason police acted swiftly in the second case was clearly because of the youth power. The politicians realize that the youth today, for all their couldn't-care-attitude, are socially aware. It takes a brazen criminal act  to get them to worked up about an issue. Mr Raman rightly points out that the recent success of the agitation has been thanks to the youth rather than because of them.

That said, I do have a point to say, namely the youth, for all their social awareness, are quite fickle minded as youth down the ages has been. The agitation is as much about social awareness for them, as it is about being in the right crowd. Indian history is replete with youth movements that have not amounted to much, the Mandal agitation, being a prime example. This agitation against corruption will be a success if the youth emerge more dedicated to root out corruption.

An asking point among the youth should be about the Lokpal Bill, which is what Anna Hazare has been demanding the implementation of. Do the youngsters taking part in the morchas know what the bill is, and what are its implications? The bill itself lays the onus of removing corruption on the civil society, since the general public can initiate corruption charges against government officers. To do so, the civil society must be aware of the laws to defend it, but we as a society with seniors included may rant against widespread corruption, but at the end of the day, we will settle for a little jugaad.

We Are The Champions!!!

Congratulations India, you did it!!!

It was a thrilling end to an exciting match. Personally, I don't follow cricket, but this being the world cup, it was hard to stay away.

Throughout the series, India played consistently, putting up a score and then chasing it. Thought we faltered against England (tie) and South Africa (lost), we finally pull our strings together for a thrilling India-Pakistan semi-final, and the India-Sri Lanka final.

With the world cup coming to India after 28 years, I am proud to say that I was there both the times.

Jiyo India!!!

To Blog or Not To Blog?...

Still here, still wanting to post, but seems to have become reticent. Maybe just got a little too scared when I noticed that my blog resembled a personal diary, except that it was not personal. To be honest, I have come to the conclusion that to be a good blogger one has to learn to be impersonal. A blog, from a writers perspective, is a very personal thing. a bloggers uses a secret username and password to enter his or her private domain, expresses himself before a screen....its when the Publish Post button has been clicked, that the entire exercise becomes impersonal. A panic sets in...did I reveal too much, was I too evasive?
That said, blogging can be addictive as well. Its your own personal space to pontificate on all matters mundane..the occassional anonymous comments emboldens the blogger.
These past weeks when I havent been posting anything, I have still be thinking about the ideal thing to post...guess the blogger in my refuses to die!!
Si I guess, I will be around, but not sporadic. A little more blogging is what the doctor would recommend for me..

2011...

Heres wishing the regular visitors to this blog (hello Googlebot) as well as the random visitors a Very Happy and Prospersous 2011....

...a word of caution though...2012 is very close now, so go live all your unfulfilled dreams, kyunki kal ho na ho...

A Trip to remember

Its been a long time since I posted anything, but I did mean to, every single day. Which goes to show that my intentions were good....not that it matters when your blog is left unattended for months....
In the time I was silent, a lot has happened. I got married, lost my bachelorhood, woke up to the joys of matrimony, and if the advise of my married friends holds true, should start pining for bachelorhood any day now....
But even this life changing event elicited just a small post from me....chiththi ke badle bheja taar. I had been meaning to post more about how my post marriage life has changed, but was too busy living it, to actually comment on it. But now, from a safe distance of four months, I can confidently say that getting married was the best thing that has happened to me in recent times. (yes, sweetheart, I know you are reading it, but I really meant it!).
But what prompted me to start blogging again, was a trip that I took recently with my sweety to Landsdowne, a quite cantonment town in Uttarakhand, with the most beautiful of weather to accompany. After the chaotic living in Delhi, the change in pace of the hillstation was very welcome. As hill stations go, there is not much to do in Landsdowne except trekking, which is always, but in good company, it is the place to be. Its a great stress buster and brings one really close to nature.

The words of a prophet....

Been absent for a long time, but was propelled when I read this on another blog:

You should start a blog so we can all not read it


....the words of a prophet are written in a blog post...

Announcement...

Hi everyone (hello googlebot :-)), its been a long time since I posted anything here. I would like to announce to the world that I am getting married on June 23rd. The girl I am marrying is called Rupali, and she is from Mumbai. We hope and pray that we have a long and understanding relationship.
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Updates...

About a week after my janeu, I am happy to announce to the world that I am now engaged!! The ceremony took place on 29th May, and I am not engaged to be married next month. Among my friends, I am the last one to be married, and I have been inundated with suggestion for a successful marriage. I have so many suggestion and tips now, that I might become a successful marriage counsellor!! Heres me looking forward to a new innings in my life

An Afterthought

The janeu ceremony finally makes me a twice born.....so does that mean I am a Born Again Hindu?

Born Again...

Hi world (hi googlebot :-)), I have not been successful in my pratigya of one post daily....lots to say, but when it comes to penning it down, a really nice excuse comes up (my perennial fav is my writer's block, which I am beginng tosuspect, is really a case of laziness to write).
But a major event occured, which I must be share. I was born to a Brahmin household, but am not a Brahmin - at least I wans't, till now. Today I have my Janeu ceremony, and so, am a certified bona fide Brahmin...Yay!!!
Personally, I am not the religious kind. I don't pray, I don't rarely visit temples, and the only reason I don't eat non-veg on tuesdays is because I told my mommy dearest that I would not do so. But even then, I have realised that I am quite the traditionalist. I value my tradition, where I am coming from, and all the values that these traditions mean. It is for this reason that I value my Janeu thread and what it stands for. It does come with riders though, I cannot listen to songs, except bhakti songs (a rule already broken as I am writing this post while listening to songs on the comp), should not look at sunrise and sunset (I work in a call center, dude!!), must not curse (ohfercryinout.....OH FU.....Crap!!! this will be difficult), must not look at a bald woman (I think I might be able to do that) or a woman who has cut her hair (hmmm, better start practicing walking with my eyes shut).
The ideal age for a janeu is 7 years old, and I can see why. Cross the age of 13, and each of these rules becomes difficult to follow.
The ceremony itself was a short one, and was over in one hour. I was able to understand most of what happened, right from the invocation of the gods till the time I ask for the bhiksha. Post ceremony, I didn't feel any different, but I realise there must be more to this...

Stand By Me...

This is a shout to someone...you know who you are. Here goes:

Laut Ke Budhdhu....

I have been jobless for nearly four day now, but I am not worrying, the reason being the kind of industry that I am in. In the last four days, I have secured a job, applied for another, and rejected the first, and promptly accepted the other.
That there is why I like this industry!!! There's never any shortage of jobs, never mind the fact that its usually bottom rung jobs, but at least they pay adequately!!
Given how boring and monotonous my life had become, I really needed the break. Now that I have had my rest, I am dreading the return to calling.
The one bright spot to my bekaari was that I discovered The Beach Boys. To lift up a mood, you can't get any better (with the exception of dil daance maare).

Bekaari aur khushi....

Day one of joblessness, and I am feeling relaxed, actually!!! Not today, the dread of getting ready for office....YIPPEEEE!!
Another reason for the upbeat mood is my discovery of the Beach Boys' music. Their music is so upbeat, about the surf, sand, cars...vintage California stuff. But listen carefully, and you notice the complex song constructions, contrasted with the simple lyrics.
People, if you are feeling down, listen to the Beach Boys.
Like they would say...Catch a wave, you'll be sitting on top of the world