scribblings

office going

2011-03-25T21:07:00.003+05:30

It has been a few weeks since one joined a job

The first taste of corporate life has been rather mixed. One isnt particularly happy with everything.

Firstly, the need to wear an ID card always is something one has never been used to and it makes life tough when the ID is needed for anything at work. Starting from entering the building itself to getting a cup of coffee at the cafeteria.

After being used to attending and organising meetings and seminars just for the tea and the snacks, and on some occasions even lunch and dinner, it is rather surprising and boring to be sitting thro' pointless and sleepy meeting with nothing at all.

It is good that one is able to go to work early in the morning and come home for a late lunch. Thus, one has half a day for pursuing other activities and interests.

It is totally unappreciative to see security guards acting as if they are the bosses.

However, job isnt strenous and demanding for now. Hence, it is ok. lets see where it goes from here and when

An EML after a long time

2010-11-18T23:10:00.006+05:30

After what would be years, I happened to attend an extra mural lecture at IC&SR auditorium this evening. The speaker was Sri N Gopalaswamy, former CEC of India. The topic was 'Whither Indian Democracy'

Firstly I was rather surprised at the crowds, or the lack of it. Considering who the speaker was, I would have expected the CLT to fill up and here I was at IC&SR auditorium 10 behind the scheduled time, only to find quite a few empty seats. Being myself, I chose one of those seats as close to the stage as possible.

The speaker was pretty good and impressive. For a while actually, I thought he wasnt reaching anywhere, but with time and more slides and the points he was making, he was indeed driving a strong message which isnt unknown but needs to be realised and acted upon immediately, which is need to clean up today's Democracy in India.

I dont know that people were allowed inside IC&SR premises in half pants and shorts. Since when has this been happening?

When will people learn to switch off or put their mobile phones on silent? The most noisy of phones were those of faculty members and a certain member of faculty had been getting calls continuously for not less than an hour and he kept pressing the cancel button. Would it not be easier to have the mobile in silent or just quietly slip out to take the call, or just switch off the phone?

The saga of incomprehensible and incoherent questions continues. People still do not want to understand what others have asked and reword the same in different ways.

The number of post graduates and research scholars was pretty high compared to the undergraduates. I dont wish to say is it good or bad.

While the speaker kept remarking about the corruptness and lack of credibility and integrity amongst the educated elite, when it came to the election scenario and the democracy and bureaucracy in general, there was a roaring applause. I am still digesting it and figuring out as to what was the reason to applaud?

A better master of the ceremony was warranted. While I do not wish to get judgemental with the accent, somebody with a better fluency and command on english would have certainly been much more helpful.

All this, while a stone-throw away, Chetan Bhagat was having some interactive session at CLT, with i m sure a full house...

2010-09-06T00:03:00.001+05:30

blog is 6 yr old today

Footwear blues

2010-06-09T15:55:00.004+05:30

Last week, I had gone to a temple. After having a good darshan, I come out of the temple to not find my footwear. I did search for a good while and eventually came back bare foot. This happened on thursday last.

I hence, went out shopping on saturday morning to get myself a new pair of footwear. After looking around the shop, I had chose to try out two somewhat similar looking pairs and choose one of them. After the trails and other considerations, I chose one and got it billed and brought them back.

Come monday, I open the packet to find that, I have one from each pair packed. I go back to the shop on monday evening only to find that the other "pair" is not traceable and probably sold to somebody else. Now, they both look somewhat similar but not the same. The shopkeeper asks me to come back the next day so that he will arrange for a replacement.

On tuesday evening, I am offered a new pair of the same size and design from a fresh stock, but, that doesnt fit me.

I now have a not-so-fitting pair of footwear and the shopkeeper has the mis-matched pair which he has pledged he would get it replaced with the wholesale dealer or the manufacturer in a day or two.

I am still stuck with dad's spare pair of footwear

Update:
eventually, story ended on saturday.

The other mis-matched pair is untraceble. I end up bringing an absolutely different pair of sandals that fit me, for want of better options.

The End Begins!

2010-04-01T09:41:00.002+05:30

After all, my stay at IIT seems to be coming to an end.

I gave my Pre-Thesis Seminar yesterday evening and it went off peacefully. I can now write and submit my thesis asap.

This marks the formal beginning of the process of finishing Ph D in campus :)

Will I miss IITM? i dont know..
Will IITM miss me? m guessing it shouldnt..

of dreams and nightmares...

2010-03-04T14:24:00.003+05:30

Everybody has their share of dreams and nightmares.

It is believed that people dream of things they want to do or things that might happen to them in future.

I had one of the weirdest and scariest of dreams/night mares this morning. It had me clearing JEE with a 2 digit rank and getting into IITM CS :P

gosh...

Music Season 2009

2010-01-13T12:51:00.001+05:30

Period taken into consideration: 3rd December to 12th January
Number of concerts sampled ~ 35

i. Best Concerts (in no particular order)
Almost all evenings I was in raga sudha and they were all thoroughly enjoyable concerts. I am not able to decide which to list.

ii. Best Singular Renditions (in no particular order)
evarikai - V Subramanian & Palai Ramachandran at Raga Sudha
nekkurugi - Sangeetha Sivakumar at BVB
nIrajAkshi kAmAkshi - Prasanna Venkataraman at MA
cEta srI - Ritha Rajan at Raga Sudha
moratOpu - Rama Ravi at Raga Sudha

iii. Best Violin Accompaniment (in no particular order)
V V S Murari for Ritha Rajan at Raga Sudha
R K Shriram Kumar for R Vedavalli at Raga Sudha

iv. Best Mrudangam Accompaniment
V Kamalakara Rao for Trivandrum Venkataraman at Raga Sudha
K Arun Prakash for Chingleput Ranganathan at Raga Sudha

Best tani:
Erode Nagaraj, N Guruprasad and Nerkumar Shankar at Raga Sudha for Jayalakshmi Santanam

v. Congeniality Prize for Most Popular Ragam of the Season
Heard many kAmbhOjis and madhyamAvatis during this season. hence, no complaints.

v (b). Raga I Missed the Most during the Season
shankarAbaraNam, sAvEri

vi. People i wish i had heard atleast once during the season.
T N Krishan, R K Srikantan, Parassala Ponnammal, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy, J Venkataraman, Seetha Narayanan, Sanjay, TMK, TNS, Sowmya,Manda Sudharani, V Sumitra, Amritha Murali, Vidya Kalyanaraman, D Vardhani, Prema Rengarajan, Sathur Sisters,

vii. Best Sabha Food
ate only at Academy canteen and liked their coffee

viii. Best Listening Environment
Raga Sudha Hall & Music Academy Main Hall (downstairs)

ix. Word/ Name of the Season:
bore

I pretty much ended up at Raga Sudha Hall on many days and enjoyed almost all the concerts there.

I found myself pretty much unmotivated thro' the season. Had to drag myself to concerts on some days.

Random thoughts:
Ranjit Warrier is a good upcoming youngster and sings very well. hope to find him more often in concert circuits.

Jayashree: her one hour concert at Tamil Isai Sangam. I am still shocked to see that list. She did not hurry, nor did she skip sangatis. Her presentations were crisp and weighty. should find more about her.

Prasanna Venkataraman seems to have got all the more impressive and popular this season.

Jayalakshmi Santanam, into her 70s is still spirited and attends concerts all through the day and gives stunning concerts too.

Attended the last concert of Trivandrum Venkataraman, never knew it would be his last back then.

For the first time I was on stage. Not a concert, thankfully, but a panel discussion. Never knew that, once on stage time flies faster.

Wish I was little more motivated, had some more time, attended more concerts of popular/unpopular/young/old artists and found more people to listen too.

Name on paper

2010-01-12T16:27:00.000+05:30

Reason to blog:

An article about a panel discussion that I participated has appeared on 'The Hindu'. And what more, it has a group photo too with some carnatic music greats.

Link:
http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/music/article77511.ece

Sarcasm, or the lack of it.

2009-09-04T10:34:00.004+05:30

Sarcasm is something which has to come by practice and it needs all the more practice to be able to catch and appreciate it.

The following is a set of dialogues involving some friends/wingmates told at various points of time, arranged chronologically...

S to me: did u know A is a stud. some of his status messages are just too good.

S to me: u heard A's latest one-liner, "the only place to think in chennai is Bangalore"

S to me: Saw A's status. "my musically challenged neighbour is playing on the electric drill"

R in general: I dont know how whatever A does, becomes news!

me to S: did u know, A took bath in cold water today...

They all flew

2009-08-13T10:56:00.002+05:30

It were the birds once, and now its the Swine...

Well, it all comes from animalia and because of some of the homo sapiens who find it interesting/exciting/tasty/what-not to be associated with them fauna as nutritive constituents raw or otherwise.

many such diseases, epidemics, ailments, have been because of men/women indulging them animals into something they are not meant for.

Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Avian Influenza, Swine Influenza, what not...

why cant humans exercise some control over themselves?

e-waste

2009-07-27T21:45:00.002+05:30

This morning i happen to read the article cited below.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/27/stories/2009072759450300.htm

It talks of e-waste management and all the related issues.

later during the day, i was walking on the road in nandanam, when i noted this particular flower vendor. The old lady has a 4-wheel-ed mega-size UPS cabinet for the shop and has her flowers over it. Once she closes business, she dumps the stuff into the cabinet and pushes it home...

Trip to Salem

2009-07-15T21:30:00.003+05:30

I had been to Salem on saturday for a wedding reception. I had left for SA in the morning by 6627 West Coast Express and returned the same night by 6670 Yercaud Express.

I left home at 10:30 am. I was lazy enough to walk to the MRTS station and hence took a bus to Central Station. As our bus was climbing down the Flyover opposite to MAS, KZJ WAG7 27834 was pulling a filled BOXN rake thro' MPK towareds MS. I was at the lobby of MAS at 11 am. 6627 was already on Pf 1. Pf 2 had the rake of 2681/82 with KZJ WDG3A 14943 at the head of it. 2028 had arrived behind AJJ WAP1 22000 and AJJ WAP4 22624 had brought in some other train.

I made my way to Pf 1 and my coach, S8 was 3rd or 4th from the loco. A fresh consignment of fish was being loaded into the MCPV (motor cum parcel van), it also meant we would have the smell of fish throughout the journey. ED WAP4 22661 showed up from BBQ and got itself attached to our rake. BZA WAM4 21237 was spotted at the other end of the station detached from some other train and TNP WDM7 11008 was doing shunting work.

All the berths in S8 were in SA quota. I was allotted S8/39 SL. We were 4 of us travelling together and were allotted 33, 34, 37 and 39. As we made to our bay, a couple of ladies were occupying the window seats and an old man was already lying down on my SL. He was travelling alone was allotted S8/40 which is SU. However, whoever had come to drop him at the station had told him that the lower is his berth and he can sleep all the way to SA. As it was on the left side of train, which meant that i cant do any spotting if I sit there, I wasnt particular about sitting there and could let somebody else use that seat. i was very unhappy with the fact that somebody had misguided this old man, who was all of 88 yrs of age, and made him occupy my seat as well. Clever people. As we claimed our seats, one of the ladies vacated the window seat and let us sit. At 11:20 another man had come to our bay and it only then did we realise that the ladies were not reserved passengers but general travellers.

Of the 8 people in our bay, one of them did not turn-up at all. One of them was a silent man who kept to his books and walkman. One of them was this old man. And the other was a low-rung politician who was an aide to some bigger political guy who was travelling in the next bay. I guess they were all accompanying some big-shot who was on one of the AC coaches.

I explained to the old man that his was not a berth but just a seat and his berth was upstairs. I had to make a lot of explaining to convince him that he cannot sleep all thro' the journey, as that would mean one of us would be seat-less. We got our starter right on time and we departed merrily. 1042 was waiting to depart from Pf 3.

There were lots of unreserved travellers all of the coach, in our Upper Berths and the SU as well. Some of them even slept off. Most of them alighted at AJJ and rest of them at KPD. However, every halt meant a set of these people got down and another set got in. Thankfully, none of them pressurised for a seat, and just walked away if we refused to let them sit. There were 2 such people sitting in our bay. I let the old man sleep for a while and I sat on the window seat 33, facing the journey of the train.

BBQ yard had many locos. TNP WD7 11004 & 11013, WDS4 19257, 19258, 19299. KJM WDM3A 17994, WDP4 20029. LDH WAG7 27286. ED WAP4 22294. and many more WAP4s and WAM4s. We were doing good speeds and went thro' stations one after another in good speeds. There were a few SRs enroute. We even halted a couple of times in between. 6054 TPTY ICE crossed us somewhere near ABU/AVD with AJJ WAM4 21232 in saptagiri livery. At TRL, we had to slow down to move from the Up fast line to the Up line. TRL-AJJ third line has been almost completed at most places. I think it is yet to connected at both ends though, and some signalling works also should be remaining. There were some SRs here too. We came to a complete halt at Puliyamangalam. And eventually pulled into AJJ at 12:45. Late by 22 minutes.

The catering people had started coming right from MAS. They were selling chapati (with veg, egg or chicken curry) and veg/egg/chicken biriyani for lunch. There were cooldrinks, biscuits, chips and water bottles too. I wanted to take the Chapati with veg curry. Others in my group went against my advice and got 2 Veg and 1 Chicken biriyanis. I was particular in eating the lunch as soon as it was served so that it would be some-what hot. However with the group being lethargic and indifferent, by the time we actually opened our packets, the biriyanis were cold and pathetic. The Chapatis were ok and the veg sabji was somewhat warm and i could eat it without much ado. The Catering vendor mentioned that the pack would contain 3 Chapatis for 35 Rupees, but my packet had 4. The Veg Biriyani was being sold for Rs. 30 and the Chicken Biriyani for Rs. 50.

I did not note all the crossings. There were many many passenger trains and freighters which kept passing by. I was totally amazed at the traffic on this section. This was the first time i was travelling on this section during the day time and i was very excited about it and rather shocked at the amount of traffic our IR handles.

We departed from AJJ at 12:50, (late by 25 min) as as we departed 2680 from CBE pulled into the adjacent platform behind AJJ WAP4 22618. The CGL line platforms at AJJ had a passenger rake behind TNP WDM2 17570.

Quite a few of the unreserved passengers had got down at AJJ and there were a few others who had replaced them.

We reached WJR (walaja road) at 13:20 and left after a momentary halt. We were having a good run all the way to KPD, except for a SR near VIT campus where a RUB is being constructed. We even halted momentarily before reaching KPD at 13:50. There were some frieghters and passenger train rakes at KPD station. A DMU towards TPTY was waiting to depart from the other end of the station. It was a SCR rake.

We departed from KPD at 13:55. (late by half an hour) ED WAG7 27470 and 27904 were both spotted around KPD. The line to VLR takes off from the main line on the right side and then climbs a ramp and turn left to pass over a bridge and go southwards to VLR.

We crossed Vaniyambadi at 14:40 and reached JTJ at 15:00. (late by 20 min) AJJ 22003 was on the adjacent line with the rake of TPJ-ED-JTJ Passenger. TNP 19260 was spotted with some shunting work.

We did not make up much of the delay. We halted at Tiruppattur (TPT) at 15:15, Morappur (MAP) at 15:50 and Bommidi (BQI) at 16:10. 3352 to DHN/TATA crossed us at BQI behind AJJ WAP1 22015.

One station short of Magnesite Junction, at Karuppur, a BOXN rake was standing without a loco. AJNI WAG9 31099 was detatched and standing separtely.

We pulled into SA at 16:50.(late by 15 min) we were on Pf 2. Pf 3 had the rake of 853 SA - Mettur Dam Passenger with CNB WAG7 27510 as its power. This passenger has a RSA with ED - Mettur Dam Passenger. It is the train which carries the slip coaches on 1063/64 to Mettur Dam. 6332 to CSTM was departing from Pf1 behind ED WDM2 18698. empty rake of 1063/64 was standing with ED WDM2 16657 attached to it.

All thro' the trip we could see the rural North Tamilnadu and the dried fields, the scare vegetation. Much in contrast to the middle Tamil Nadu, which is usually lush green with Paddy fields and sugarcane and maize and all the other cultivations, this part of the country has some sugarcane, groundnut and an occasinal maize field only. This part of the area is predominantly black soil and some red soil in some parts.

Now the people in our bay. The old man was to himself, he sat for a while, slept for a while, had his meal somewhere between AJJ and KPD and he was sure to not let any of the unreserved people use the SL. The most interesting of the lot was the politician. Talking in a typical accent of the rural north Tamil Nadu, one was reminded of the comical way the politicians are portrayed in films. Talking on phone in the typical accent, taking name of high profile politicians and ministers at ease, saying we will get anything done and about somebody visiting some wedding somewhere, and all that talk going on, we were quite amused and laughing inside, though the kind of group they were, we were actually scared with the kind of movements they were making and in between, after they had got their food, this man went off somewhere for a while and then came back with a 'bottle' hid inside his folded dhoti and thats it, i refused to even look that side because i was so scared.

I also noticed that there is ROB right in the middle of KPD station. And Sholingar Station has a level crossing right in the middle of the Platforms. Also, saw that the Up and Down lines were not having the same alignment in some strechtes. Particularly near Vaniyambadi, i found that the alignment drifts off totally.

All thro' the journey the catering staff were selling biscuits, chips, bottles of cooldrinks. They were frequenting with more cooldrink bottles than water bottles. There were non-IRCTC vendors too, selling fruits, boiled peanuts etc. Guavas, Chikkus, Pineapple slices, you name them, they all came. And as the evening started to show up, there were people selling strands of flowers too.

Yes, indeed a day-time journey on a train gives a lot of insight not only into the Railways, but also about the country thro' which one travels, the people, the food everything.

During the return journey, we had come back to SA station by 21:35. our train 6670 from ED was supposed to arrive and depart from Pf 1 at 22:00. We made our way thro' the Pedestrian Subway to reach the Island platform Pf 1, 2. ED WDG3A 14638 was standing idle and alone in the sidings. 2644 Express from NZM to TVC was expected on Pf 2 around the same time. YPR - SA passenger ahd come into Pf 3.

Our train had arrived a few minutes late. ED WAP4 22381 was incharge. Our Coach S11, was 01271/A. It was the 19th coach from the loco. This train is also a 23/24 coacher, and has an RSA with 2603/04, with primary maintainence at ED. Our tickets were in the last bay, 67-70. however, only one of the doors of the coach was open. Which meant we had to walk all the way thro' the coach to reach our berths. Only to find that the Lower berths and side berths were already occupied and the passengers were all sleeping already. We had to sit on the MBs and stay awake for the TTE to come and check the tickets. The train departed around 22:15 only. There was no sign of 2644 yet. I thought we could atleast spot a crossing somewhere on the way. I was awake till about 22:45, till the TTE checked our tickets, still one couldnt spot that train.

After a long and tiresome day, i settled in my MB for a good sleep. Usually, even during the nights, when the train halts, i wake up. This time however, i did not note down the passing of stations. AT 0245, we were just halting at a station. I wanted to check where we are and prayed it was KPD, so that we would arrive late at MAS. However my hopes of sleeping for some moretime were shattered as we were pulling into AJJ. As we were pulling into Pf 2 of AJJ, i could see another train trailing us and coming into AJJ. I thought they would get the signal ahead of us. However, it was not to be. We pulled out almost immediately while the other train entered Pf 5, or one of the far off platforms at AJJ. I thought we might arrive at MAS rather early, and went back to my MB. We reached TRL around 0315. We halted for a moment. Some EMUs were there. Atleast one of them was lit and must be getting ready for the first departure. We crawled thro' AVD around 03:35-03:40 and pulled into PER at 04:00. We left after a moment halt. The others in our bay had woken up by then. The 2 old men in the LBs were both dressing up and we crossed VPY and were greeted with a red at BBQ outer. 3351 was leaving towareds ALLP behind WAP4 22647. We pulled into Pf6 of MAS bang on time, 04:30. 6310 to ERS was waiting to depart. It had ED WAP4 22232 and AJJ WAP1 22001 on either side of it. The WAP1 would pull her for the rest of the journey.

At BBQ, AJJ 22792, 22015, 22005, LGD WAP7 30238, TNP 19418, 11004, 19301 were all spotted. The Raj rake was waiting to be shunted into the Station. AJJ 22776 had brought in, the Howrah mail. 21232 was attached to the rear-end of the Saptagiri rake.

I came out of MAS and took a bus home.

Overall, a nice trip. I particularly enjoyed travelling on the MAS-SA section during the day time.

The Black Cap

2009-07-04T23:20:00.004+05:30

People close to me might know that I am mad about black colour. Anything that I would choose for myself, I would prefer black and always choose some shade of black or its allied colours.

--

I am going to buy a cap. I called my mom and said I am going to buy a cap. She wants me to buy some light coloured one. She knows I cant resist a black. Yet, she keeps telling. I walk into Gurunath. I look for possibly good looking and fitting caps. Something black keeps coming back to my hand. I cant help it. I am not impressed with anything else. I buy a black cap. I call mom again and say, I bought a Black Cap. She says she knew that I cant buy anything else. Moms know their kid very well.

--

I lost my black cap. The most favourite of my black caps. I dont remember where I left it. I m very desparately trying to recollect as to where I could have missed it. Where did I wear it to, where did I leave it, Who could have taken it, Who could have know its whereabouts. Its not even a few months since I got it. I am pained. I am confused. I am depressed. I am mad. Where is it?

--

The older Black Cap has been hence put to much more use. I have been using the older black cap for a few weeks now. And I dont know where i left this one too. I went back to my room and checked, I couldnt find it. I go out to T Nagar for some work and keep looking for shop which sells caps. I dont find a cap vendor. I come back without any black caps. I open the door, latch it behind me and strip. I put them clothes into the wash bucket and there it is, between the wall and the bucket, the old black cap. Yes i have a black cap.

--

I am walking into the hostel and I notice that the security has a black cap in his hand. My heart races. Could it be my new black cap that has been missing since a few weeks. I fill water into my bottle from the dispenser and climb the staircase. However my attention to that Black cap has not yet ceased. I keep seeing it to confirm if it is mine. I have reached my floor. I still see his hand and I now know that what he has in his hand is my Black cap indeed.

--

My heart is racing. He has my Black Cap. My Favourite Black Cap. I want to go tell him its mine, and snatch it from his hand. I want my cap back. I take my empty water jug and go down again to fill it. He seems to have kept my Black Cap somewhere inside one of his draws. I should find it out and take it from him. I should tell him its mine and ask for it. I fill my jug and start talking a friend passing by. My mind is still trying to find out where he has kept it. When do i ask him to give me back my cap?

--

I start climbing the stairs yet again with this friend telling something, and I still look at the security and there he takes my cap out of one of his drawers. And I keep looking at it. I prolong the conversation as we reach my floor. I keep talking to this friend while my mind and eye are still watching the security and his hand which has my black cap. He puts it back below the table. I keep watching I should go and tell him its mine and talk possession of my Black Cap.

--

The friend has left. I start walking to my room. I turn back and peep downstairs. He is not at his seat. Where has he gone? I look up and look to the other side of the corridor. He is there at the other entrance and he is not looking here. I keep the jug on the staircase and take a dash downstairs. Without his noticing, i crawl up the table and put my hand to frantically fetch my cap and i run back to my floor. I got back my Black Cap but my heart is beating faster. He is still at the other end of the corridor. I come to my room and put my Black Cap for a much needed wash.

--

I am sitting in my room under my laptop. My door is open and the bucket with My black Cap in it is right there near the entrance. I hear some noise from the next room. I know that people have kept stuff and would keep moving things in and out of that room. And there he is, the security at my door for a moment. I ask him what he wants and he says he came with some students who wanted to keep/take stuff from the adjacent room and goes away. I realise that the black cap is visible. Did he see it? Did he see my black cap in my bucket???

madurai trip

2009-06-17T14:02:00.008+05:30

Warning: It could be somewhat long and boring.

I went to Madurai with my extended family for a cousin's wedding. we left by 2637 pandian express on 9th June 2009 and returned by 6128 guruvayur - chennai egmore express on 12th June 2009.

On the 9th june 2009. i was suppose to be at MS station as early as i could, so that i can be receiving all the relatives who would come and we were 2 dozen people who were to travel together.

My brother and I reached MS around 20:10 and 2637 was already placed on Pf4. Our coach was S8, the 3rd or 4th from the loco. 104 PDY-MS passenger had arrived on Pf 2 behind ED WAP4 22222. KJM 20062 SHF was already attached to the rake of 2637. adjacent Pf5 had 2631 with AJJ 22712 in charge. Pf 6 had 2661 Pothigai Express behind GOC 15532. 2665 to CAPE was on Pf9 behind AJJ 21235.

Earlier, i got news that 6101 MS-RMM Express had ED 22380 as its power.

I couldn't venture much, as people had started arriving. Our coach was SMB-ed and all 81 berths were allotted. The choice of berths for LB/MB/UB/SL/SU was kept intact and the berth numbers got changed hence. In the middle of our group, there was one person each allotted in each of the coupes to the SMBs, and thankfully they all agreed to shift to the last of our bays and hence we had all 9 berths in 2 coupes and some people shifting to the third to just sleep. Our coach was 06210 and it was a neat coach. not much of complaints. The tables were working, the lights/fans were all working too. there was actually no confusion amongst the passengers. everybody seems to have looked at the charts and hence all of them occupied at their newly allotted berths.

that evening, 2665 left on time. later 6128 came into Pf 9 behind AJJ 22774. This should be the power of 6177 later in the evening. ED 22222 which had brought 104 went and took charge of 1063. 11013 was spotted doing shunting duties.
2661 and 2631 also departed on time. empty rake of 6107 was put into Pf5 and ED 11103 was the power of this train for the day.

We departed on time. I wasn't expecting any crossings for a while and there weren't any till VM. My mom and I chose to take a SLB and SMB so that we could sit and/or sleep at our will. We were sitting till VM. after which i climbed into the SMB and slept for a while. We reached TPJ around 4 in the morning. we had put the SMB back in place and were sitting again, after a hot cup of coffee. (usual railway coffee.)

as we were pulling in, a TNP WDMx was pulling an empty rake out of Pf 1A into the KRR line. The stabling lines beyond Pf 1A had GOC 15524, GOC 17674, ED 11239 all light. We were admitted into Pf 3. Pf 2 had the rake of TPJ -RMM passenger behind ED 17811. We departed in about 5 minutes.

at DG, ERS 18532 was standing light on the next platform. We were more or less keeping time i guess. At Vaiyampatti a freighter was waiting behind GOC twins, for us to cross.

We pulled into MDU around 6:30 am. 783 MDU - SCT passenger and MDU - VM passenger rakes were seen. also spotted were GOC 18337, ED 17699. 2636 Vaigai Express to MS was on Pf 5 waiting behind ED 11105 to depart at 06:45 am.

Return trip was by 6128 on 12th June. The train was supposed to arrive at 11:00 and leave at 11:10. So, we had all of ten minutes to dump in 2 dozen people and enough number of suitcases and cartons and hand bags.

We had all arrived with all the baggage by 10:30 in 2 batches and had got into Pf1 of MDU station where the train was supposed to arrive. As we were entering SCT - MDU Passenger pulled into Pf4 behind ED 16805 and within minutes 0683 SBC-NCJ spl pulled into Pf 2 behind GY WDG3A 16484. 0683 departed after a brief halt, which is when i spotted the slip coaches of 6128 behind KJM WDP4 20022 LHF on Pf 3. It consists of one SLR, S5 - S8 and D5. Our tickets were on S6. The porters on seeing this said they would take all our luggage to Pf 3 and put it into the coach. which also meant some people of our group also went along. Just as the porters dumped all the luggage into the s6 coach, and half of our group had got in, the short rake started to move. It was only 10:50 and the rest of 6128 had not yet arrived either, but this short rake started to move. Thankfully, all our luggage was loaded and with some of our people inside the train to take care of the boxes, the rest of them came back to Pf 1 and we were waiting at the position of the coach so that we can get in, when it is attached.

6128 from GUV pulled in at 11:10 behind ERS WDM 2A 16565. She immediately got detached and ran off. The MDU slip coaches came back from the yard and got itself attached and we all got in. It was all done by 11:25. The coach was pretty old one, 98351. However, it looks clean. The mobile chargers weren't working however. However, we were to wait for the starter. And even after we got the starter, we werent moving for sometime. Eventually, at 11:55 6340 NCJ-CSTM Express pulled into Pf2 adjacent to us behind ED 18533. And we departed MDU at 12 noon, full 50 minutes late. Outside MDU station we had a momentary halt just before the Vaigai bridge and after that we were off in style. The DP4 showed some of its capabilites. We were doing good speeds till KQN where we were put on the loop. the main line had a long BCNA rake with GOC Twins 17619 & 17835 (leading & JHF) waiting to move towards TPJ. We pulled into Dindigul (DG) at 13:05 hours. on the adjacent platform was the empty rake of VM-MDU-DG passenger with the vinyl posters of 'SMTM silks, Madurai' stuck all over it. 383 CBE-NCJ Passenger came in behind ED WDM3A 16479R freshly painted in orange with a silver stripe. I guess, this loco is just back from DMW. We left DG after a 5 minute halt. At Ayyalur(AYR), we were put on the loop line and one was expecting 6127 to be the one we were waiting for. However, it was a BOXN rake behind GOC WDG3A 14944. We had a minute's halt at Manaparai (MPA) however 6127 was still not seen. At Samudiram (SMDM), 6127 was waiting for us. The power was a WDP4. however i couldnt notice the road number. I guess it must be 20062 which had pulled 2637 on 9th june, according the loco link, it must have taken 6128 from MDU to VM during the day on 10th and then gone to TEN with 2631 on the night of 10th. it must have come back to VM with 2631 on the 12th morning and hence would be pulling 6127.

We pulled into TPJ at 14:30. At the yard, empty rake of the evening's 2664 was waiting behind GOC WDS6 36001 to be pulled into the station. The UR coaches were already getting filled at the yard itself. There were quite a few locos all around TPJ station. TNP WDM7 11002, ERS WDM3A 18700, ERS WDM3A 17894, TNP WDM2 17570, ED WDM2 18600, GOC WDP3A 15504, GOC WDM2 16864. There was also a BOXN rake behind ED WDG3A twins 14667 & 14664. We departed after a 5 minute halt. At GOC, there was a BCNA rake behind ED WDG3A 13511 waiting to move towards SRGM. Also spotted light was TNP 11004 on the loop lines. We halted at SRGM and ALU for a minute each.

At Mathur(MTUR), 2635 Vaigai Express was waiting for us behind ED WDM3D 11105. At Ichangadu (ICG) a BCNA rake was waiting behind ED WDM twins. We pulled into VRI around 16:15. On the adjacent platform was the 701 VM-MDU passenger waiting behind GOC WDM2 16867. We left after a minute's halt. At Ulundurpet was a BOXN with the loco detached. It looked like a WAG5. We pulled into VM at 17:30. AJJ WAP4 22696 was going to take-over our train from here. On the adjacent platform was VM-PDY Passenger behind AJJ WAM4 20647. This train departed as soon as we arrived. Other locos spotted were ED WDM3D 11201 and GOC WDM2 twins 17620 & 17676. The loco change happened rather fast. We however waited for 2605 to arrive. It arrived behind AJJ WAM4 20671 at 17:50 and we departed immediately. At Perani outer, we halted briefly though we had the signal to proceed. 6735 Chendur Express was waiting here behind GOC WMD2 17674. 6713 behind an ERS loco was waiting, for us to cross, at Thozhuppedu. We reached MLMR around 19:00 hours. We were waiting for 2633 to arrive. The horn i heard was quite shrill and for a moment, I thought if 2633 started getting a DP4 or some electric loco. However in a moment, 2633 pulled in behind ED WDM3D 11228. We reached CGL around 19:30 and departed almost immediately. It started to look very cloudy and a slight drizzle started also. It was pretty dark also. I hence couldnt notice crossings or spottings after CGL. TNP WDM7 11003 was at CGL behind a short passenger rake. By the time, we crossed a couple of stations the rain had caught up heavily and all the windows had to be shut which meant, all the more bad visibility. We reached TBM around 20:00 and by then the rain had got thinner. AJJ WAP4 22712 pulled 6101 which crossed somewhere in between. a momentary halt at MBM. we reached Chetpet station and had to wait for 5 minutes, till 2663 would pull out behind AJJ WAM4 20652. We finally pulled into MS Pf9 at 20:30 hours (late by 15 minutes). The Pf8 had a solitary HCPV, prolly detached from 2663. AJJ 22696 which pulled us all the way, immediately got detached and went to wait behind 2631 on Pf 5. It would have later pulled 6177.

Given the number of people in the group and the loads of luggage, with the lack of porters and trolleys on Pfs 8&9 adding to the problems, one had to take care of stuff and leave home soon, rather than try do some railfanning. We used the Vepery side entrance to get out of the station and left MS station around 9 pm.

The GC of TBM-VM MG to BG is happening. The MG rails, and the iron-rod type sleepers have been ripped off at many places. The new sleepers also seem to have arrived at some places. However, lots of work does need to happen before one can see a double line till VM.

The second line between DG and MDU is almost done. It runs parallel for most of the stretch except for the Ambatturai - Vadipatti section, where they come close to each other at the KQN station, in between. The linking of the line to the main line at MDU station is still left.

Also I noticed 3 or 4 BG-MG diamonds outside DG station where the DG-POY-PTJ/PGT MG line crosses over the full BG network. All of them are at acute angles. These diamonds would become history as the MG section is already closed for GC. The only other place i have seen a diamond is outside MSB station on the MRTS line. There is a diamond connection for the Pfs 7 & 8. At CGL, where the AJJ line has to cross over the MG line, it is a dual gauge line for a short stretch.

Overall, it was a nice trip to remember for a long time. though, there were no surprise links or eventful happenings, I guess it is quite a thing for everything to be happening normal too.

trip to trichy - report

2009-05-18T12:05:00.006+05:30

Trip to Trichy

My parents and I were travelling to Trichy by 6713 on 14th May and returning by 6108 on 16th May.

On the evening of 14th May, we left home rather late around 16:15 and thankfully my uncle dropped us at the auto/taxi entrance of MS by 16:35. We took the escalator on Pf 4 to the FOB and as we were descending the stairs of Pf 7, the rake of 6713 was being shunted in with the loco already attached. a TNP WDM2 was pushing it from GSN yard. I was getting excited to know that a TNP loco might be pulling our train. As it was pretty late, i resisted checking the MS loco shed for the locos that were present. The charts of the morning arrived 2662 were still on the coaches. This confirms RSA between 2661/62 and 6713/14.

Our coach S4 was 8th from loco behind a Extra Sleeper and SLR and 2 UR coaches and S1-3. It was a pretty old coach (91315) but was decently clean and maintained. My excitement was very short lived. The TNP diesel got detached and went away. she later reversed and got attached to MS-NCJ special on Pf3. this was 17677. ERS WDM3A 14046 came and got itself attached to our train. Also noticed that the rear end of the train had a 'shatabdi' liveried coach. i dont know what it was doing there.

Pf 6 had the empty rake of 2661/62 pothigai express with no loco attached. Pf 5 has MS-KCG express with LGD 22517 at the helm. Pf8 had Circar express waiting behind BZA WAM4 21224. We got our starter bang on time. We departed at 17:00 sharp, and so did 7651 on the opposite direction. At the GSN yard, spotted TNP WDM7 11010, and some WDS4 shunters too. Being the first departure for the evening and with not (m)any crossings scheduled we had a clear run and were going good. At the MKK loop line, TNP WDM2 18319 was ready to take the rake of another of MS-NCJ spls towards MS. All the suburban stations flew past us.

We reached TBM in 25 minutes. we were taken into Pf 8. Pf 9 had 113SR TBM-VM passenger with AJNI 27228 heading it. I have observed that as a rule, 113SR always gets WAGs from shed far in the north, always.

We moved out in a couple of minutes. The run to CGL was good. There is difference in the kind of surroundings after TBM. It gets a little more rural. A mix of buildings and fields and some industries scattered. We entered CGL around 17:50. At CGL were two trains on adjacent platforms waiting to move towards AJJ. 6352 NCJ-CSTM express was waiting behind ED 11186 and PDY-TPTY passenger was behind GOC 18699. As we came to a halt, 6352 got its starter and moved, only to stop immediately. We left after a 2 min halt and 6352 started again at the same time.

Reached MLMR around 18:20. Usually the 6128 and 6713 crossing happens at MLMR. however, the 6128 was late and had not yet showed up at MLMR. We were given the starter in a minute. 6128 was waiting for us as Poovanur (PVN) behind LGD 22354. We had our one minute halt at Tindivanam & earlier a momentary halt at Madurantakam as well. VM reached bang on time at 19:30. As we pulled in, PDY-VM passenger also walked in behind AJJ WAM4 20656. In the CGL-VM section, the MG line is removed in many bits. At stations especially, the line has been removed to make way for crossings/loops and possible doubling(?). The surroundings beyond CGL get all the more rural and with lush green fields on both sides and a evening sun-set. it was quite a sight to watch.

We departed VM by 19:45. The catering guys had taken dinner orders well in advance. The food that was loaded at VM was almost immediately served. 3 Parottas with veg curry (carrots, beans, potatos, green peas, channa) was pretty hot and tasty as well. It was a little spicy for my tongue though, worth the 25 bucks.

We reached VRI at 20:20. The biggest surprise of my full trip was here. a freshly painted WCR loco 18869 with no shed markings was standing the sidings. It had WCR and 'pa ma re' prominently painted on the cabin.

Our only crossing in this section happened at Kallakudi Palanganathan, were a passenger train was waiting for us to clear the line. After a on-time arrival and scheduled stop at ALU, we reached SRGM at 21:50 or so. We were taken into Pf 1. Usually if 6713 is late it is taken into Pf 2 & 6178 and 6713 have their crossing at SRGM. However, that day 6713 was on time and got the starter immediately as well. We were made to stop on the main line at Trichy Town station. As we were coming to a halt, one could see 6178 The Rocky was coming towards us. She entered the loop behind ED 11206 and came to a halt on Pf 1. Both trains departed immediately and almost simaltaneously in opposite directions. We moved smooth and in good speed thro' GOC and entered TPJ station at 22:30, 5 min behind schedule into Pf 4. 6108 was waiting to depart from Pf 3 behind 11213. She departed almost immediately after our train came in.

At TPJ, the Pf 5 had some short passenger rake and a WDP3A a little far from it. The pf 2 had a push-pull type train with TNP WDM7 11001 having coaches attached on both sides. Pf 1 had a inspection special train with WDG3A 14944 attaching itself to it as we were leaving the station.

Over all, it was a pretty good run with the train sticking to its schedule all the way. I could not measure speeds, and have no guesses on it either.

On friday and saturday i had made a few trips around Trichy by bus and spotted some trains while passing through the R(o/u)Bs. 11181 pulling 2636 on 15th may. 11195 pulling 2636 on 16th may. 36021 doing some shunting jobs.

On the 16th May evening, we were to return by 6108. My brother was also coming with us. We had lots of luggage and hence chose to be at the station early enough to be able to get into the train on time. We reached TPJ station by 21:05 for the 22:20 departing 6108 MAQ-MS express.

2605 arrived on the Pf 1 behind 11195 at 21:15. simaltaneously GOC 14844 came in from MDU side with a freighter and departed in a few minutes. Pf2 had the rake of 0634 special from TPJ to MAS via KRR, ED, JTJ. It had the boards with reach TPJ <-> MAS <-> MAQ. It was shunted in by GOC 36188 and later the ED Shakti 13500 got attached to it. It was scheduled to depart at 22:40. at the pit-lane beyond pf 1A 18869, 11006 and 36021 were all sleeping.

Soon the empty rake of 2605 was shunted out. 6178A from KMU arrived on Pf1 at 21:45. The power was GOC 14641. The loco got detached almost immediately and ran off making way for the rest of the coaches of 6178 to be attached. The earlier practice of 6178A arriving on a different platform and then getting pulled out and pushed into Pf1 did not happen. 11195 which brought in the 2605 got attached to 6178 and the train pulled out at 22:05.

our train 6108 arrived at Pf 1 at 22:15 behind 11258. The same loco reversed and got attached. Our coach S10 was the 5th from the loco, with an SLR and 3 UR coaches behind the loco. Coach was not new (97231) but had been maintained good. However, as it seems like a practice, we had to wait for 6713 to arrive before we could depart. 6713 arrived at 22:45 behind ED 18561 and dead ERS 18555. 0634 departed on time towards KRR. A little before 0634 pulled out, 18869 got energized and moved into the pit-late between Pfs 1 & 2. We departed around 23:00 and were held up at GOC for the 2633 to cross. ED 11105 was doing the honours. As we moved out of GOC, i saw a short passenger train from TJ side waiting to enter the station and proceed towards TPJ. SRGM was reached at 23:30 and I went to sleep after that.

Only spotting that i noted that night was at Sendurai. 6123 Anantapuri went towards TVC behind 14046. I think this was at 00:35 hours.

I woke up after TBM and we reached MS at 0530 into Pf 6. Rocky had been brought into Pf4 by 22666. 2164 to DR was waiting on Pf 7 behind AJJ 22004.

It was a good run and what more would a rail fan want, after 2 full-ALCo hauled journeys. I personally enjoy the sound of ALCos and always loved diesel hauled trains. All thro' the trip, i resisted from trying to be over inquisitive about spotting trains/locos and totally refrained from fishing my camera out, as i was afraid of being caught. Also, thanks to my extra-cautious mom, i could not door plate at all.

We reached home in an autorickshaw and were settling down when all hell broke loose. My brother had missed his mobile phone. And we were sure it was not in the auto or anywhere else. It had to be in his berth. Our coach was locked on all sides by the TTE even before SRGM came and there were no casual travellers at all. hence, we were sure it was not somebody who generally picked it up. we decided to take a chance and my bro and I rushed to the station on my two wheeler.

I parked the vehicle in front of vasanta bhavan, opposite to MS and ran to the Platform, after taking the Platform tickets. It was 6 am. Rakes of 6177/78 and 6107/08 were not there. 2638 had come into Pf4 with GOC WDM2 twins 16875(leading) and 17363. I made a dash to the enquiry desk and the Station Master's office and requested the in-charge to help. The Platform in-charge directed me to go to the Yard at Gopalswamy Nagar(GSN)and contact the yard master.

We rushed to GSN on the two-wheeler again and made a good round of the place to only find locked offices and a couple of buildings with nobody around. An old lady was at a small temple near the yard cleaning the frontage of the temple and another man was found filling water bottles. Taking a chance, i went into the RPF out-post outside GSN and requested the person-on-duty to help me.

The RPF were absolutely cordial and immediately they sent a man with us, looking for the rake of 6107/08 and to check our coach. in a matter of minutes we were in the S 10 coach. And the phone was still lying there on the Upper Berth no.3. All that the RPF personnel wanted was a letter stating that we had travelled by this train with coach and seat number mentioned, stating that we had missed a mobile phone and came looking for it. we thank the RPF staff at GSN who helped us trace it and retrieve it for us. I was expecting the RPF people to ask for some money and also for details of ticket/PNR etc. However, they asked nothing and were totally cordial and immediately helped us get the phone back. As we were driving out of GSN, empty rake of 6127/28 was being pushed into MS. Kudos to the RPF!

The kind of garbage that is found lying on the tracks of GSN was very disturbing. The number of water bottles, abandoned clothes, footwear, food packing materials, tetra packs... Oh my gosh, i felt very bad and was wondering why shouldnt IR provide dustbins in its compartments. Or is it that it is provided and I am not aware of it. I am rather convinced that i should use the dust bins and not litter the coaches.

And what happened to the WDP4 which was supposed to bring 2638 on the 17th morning? what was the link of that day's 2609? did the twins go with 2609 or went back south-wards with some other train?

The electrification of VM-TPJ chord line is done. I dont know if the energising has happened beyound ALU though. The pillars are up, they are wired and even the turn-outs and sidings have been wired fully. All of TPJ station is under wires now. I am planning a trip by 2637/6128 to MDU to attend a cousin's wedding sometime in mid-june and hope the WDP4 link continues till then atleast. If it does, that would be my first taste of travel behind a WDP4.

Hostel Night Cribs - revisited

2009-03-27T22:33:00.005+05:30

WHY DO WE NEED HOSTEL NIGHT?

Year after year, we have been ‘celebrating’ what we call as Hostel Night.

Year after year, we recycle the same theme in a different name. While other hostels have no dearth of ideas when it comes to theme and ambi and all else, we have to have the same theme in a different name, every other year. Well, I must accept, it needs a lot of creativity to pull that off. In the recent past, we have had same stuff thrice, in name of ‘Rock Music’, ‘Blast from the past’, ‘That 70s show’ and this time it is ‘Wild Wild West’. Come on guys let’s call it ‘Guitar’ or something next year.

We eat food that is worhester than mess grub and pay 10 times the money. The same thing as mess would be served. Same chilled and rubbery rotis and naans as mess. If you go early, you will not find paneer coz, its buried deep into the curry. If go sometime in the middle, you’ll have to stand in a long queue. If you go late, then paneer would be over. You can’t eat any of the curries any way.

We don’t even care to put up proper RGs. Toasts don’t get over, even after the breakfast is served next morning. Let’s not even take the name of Roasts.

Discussion meetings and decisions are not announced on notice board. This year, I have not seen even one proper IP regarding hostel night. Well, the present bunch of secretaries got thro' with a 5 minute GBM where a total of 6 people (including the warden and 2 freshies) attended, while there are a total of 9 elected representatives. What else do we expect from them.

It is better to stop celebrating hostel night, instead of doing a shabby job as usual. If it is indeed going to be ‘celebrated’ in the usual way, it’s better to boycott rather than be a part of what one doesn’t like.

I m not going to be around for hostel night at narmad this time...

To Dilip...

2009-02-06T14:06:00.008+05:30

As I drove into the campus this morning at 7:45 am, my eyes were looking for the tall man with a stubble and a stick in his hand. i would have loved to pick him up and drop him at his office. Well, i havent found him there for a while now..

Half an hour later, I had to console myself seeing 'The Hindu' that carried his photo in the Obituary column.

Yes, I can never see him again. After those few minutes I stood by his mortal remains yesterday morning, I have been telling myself, I cant see him again. Never at all.

Blankness and Darkness sets in every time I think of the fact that i can never go back to his room and find him, the ever charming self, who was everything to many of us over generations of IITM students.

A Walking Encyclopedia. A rare combination of a vaishnavite and a communist. A connoisseur of pristine classical music of the best quality. A perfect listener. A Practical person. An Optimist. An Agony Box. A Confession Counter. A perfect teacher. A very learned professor. the list goes on...

The very sight of seeing him off at Alwarpet Bus Stop, sometime in March 2008, keeps coming back to me. That was the last time, i took him to a concert with me. I never knew that day that i would never be doing it again.

In the past few weeks, it was rather disturbing to see him undergo all the pain in a fight for survival. That did not stop one from hoping, wishing and praying that someday he will come back and be his normal self, the same man, we knew for a long time.

I still cant believe I cant see him again...

Dilip, I know you will be at the highest heavens and would be The blessed one closest to God. I know you will constantly think of all of us whom you were associated with and help us in every way. Still, I'll miss you forever...

Inspiration

2009-01-28T22:33:00.003+05:30

Couple of days ago, I was waiting an EMU(electric train) at Kastruba Nagar Station. When this some-what-familiar face was looking like a-child-lost-in-a-fair, on the opposite platform. He wasnt sure if he should stand there or come to the otherside. He enquired to somebody and realised he was indeed on the wrong platform. However, he was still lost on how to get to the right platform. He was contemplating if he should use the stairs or just hop across and eventually he did hop across.

I remember now, i had seen him in the Campus bus earlier that day. He came to me and confirmed if he was on the right platform. I told him where to stand, so that he could get into the right compartment. And then, this happened. He asked me if I was Bhaand. I replied in positive. He then went on to say that he knew me from my blogs and how they inspired him to prepare for JEE and end up at IIT KGP. He knew quite a few of my friends from here, who all were active bloggers once upon a time. He specifically mentioned Shamanth and Siddhartha.

This feeling was new to me. To have a stranger walk upto you and say "you inspired me in a way" was indeed a feeling of its own kind. And it was all of a sudden. And Inspiration in itself is a big word, being associated with it was something too much to handle.

well, Life goeth...

Saarang 2009 Classical Night

2009-01-22T10:52:00.004+05:30

I must say and I can with good conviction that this was THE most crowded classical night at saarang I have ever seen. The OAT was FULL.

The 50 violin ensemble lead by Kum. A Kanyakumari started with vAtApi gaNapatim with a round of svarams each by a different person. The second was a composition of the leading artist in chArukEsi. With raghuvamsa sudhA and nagumOmu being main, I was satisfied with the fact that it was what i was expecting. The tail had english notes, tandanA nAhi in bauLi and raghupati rAghava. All pieces were speeded up after the caraNam. Pretty much the kind of music which would go well with the Saarang crowds and I am happy that i had a small part in suggesting such a thing in the first place. Even people who would stay miles away from classical music had come to see what would it sound like and many of them were indeed convinced that classical music isnt all that bad after all.

The kind of versatility the artist showed was amazing. Her capability to adapt to from fine quality carnatic music for the intellectual and to popular pieces for the crowd is great.

The second part of the classical night, had 'Maya Ravan' by Danseuse Shobana. I did watch quite a bit of it. Here again I was able to see a great deal of popular-crowd-appealing stuff. However, i was put off with rather-not-fitting film songs and un-clear-orchestra(was it pre-recorded?) and the kind of lag the main danseuse showed on stage. I have seen older performers do a great job with much grace and I only get a feeling it was not her day.

Time Machine

2009-01-21T22:31:00.003+05:30

A friend of mine, Aditya Kothari m.k.a. DAS, presently has this status message "anyone with prior experience in time machines may apply"

i begin to wonder, what would i do if i had access to one of those machines...

i would prefer a fast forward...
atleast 30-40 yrs
directly into a good retired life

and he says, it seems like i m already there!

how i wish it be true!

huh! i dont believe i m putting this on my blog. well, i m suffering from a very long and never ending writer's block!

Music Season 2008

2009-01-06T10:55:00.002+05:30

Period taken into consideration: 29th November to 5th January
Number of concerts sampled ~ 50

i. Best Concerts (in no particular order)
Alamelu Mani at Raga Sudha
Mysore Balakrishna at Music Academy
R Vedavalli at Raga Sudha
Rama Ravi at Raga Sudha

ii. Best Singular Renditions (in no particular order)
1. nAgasvaram AlApanai of AbhOgi and a tAnam which followed, with the accompaniment of thavil at Nanganallur Anjaneyar Temple, on 2nd January preceeding the evening deeparadhanai.
2. chAyA ranjani RTP by D Vardhini for Chennai Fine Arts.
3. ravichandrikA AlApanai with niravati sukhadA by Chingleput Ranganathan at Raga Sudha Hall.

ii (b). Forgettable Renditions
many many...

iii. Best Violin Accompaniment (in no particular order)
Vittal Ramamurthy for Rama Ravi & Chingleput Ranganathan
RK Shriram Kumar for R Vedavalli & T K Govinda Rao
(all the above at Raga Sudha)
Ambika Prasad for D Vardhini for Chennai Fine Arts
N C Madhav for Manda Sudharani at Nanganallur Maruthi Bhaktha Samaj

iv. Best Mrudangam Accompaniment
Vellore Ramabadran for Rama Ravi at Nada Inbam

iv (c). Best tani: Guruvayur Dorai & Thirupunitura Radhakrishnan in the concert of Trivandrum Venkataraman at Raga Sudha Hall.

Special Recognition for Best Ghatam/ Khanjira Player:
KV Gopalakrishnan for the tani he played with Shertalai Ananthakrishnan in the concert of Chingleput Ranganathan at Raga Sudha Hall

v. Congeniality Prize for Most Popular Ragam of the Season
pUrvikalyANi - 18 times. i m soon going to define carnatic music at 'pUrvikalyANi'
(accounted only if there was some manOdarmam part attached to the kriti. not included are tukkaDas and the number of times just a kriti in pUrvikalyANi rendered)

v (b). Raga I Missed the Most during the Season
shankarAbharaNam - heard it just twice
bhairavi

vi. Concerts I Wish I had Attended
TNS at Mudhra, for the Ahiri RTP he had sung there.

vi (c). People i wish i had heard atleast once during the season.
Sanjay, TNS, Sowmya, R K Srikantan, Parassala Ponnammal, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy

vii. Best Sabha Food
usili sEvai at Vani Mahal GnanambikA Stall.
ashOka halwa at MFAC canteen

viii. Best Listening Environment
First (tie): Raga Sudha Hall & Music Academy Main Hall (downstairs)
a distant Second: Tattvaloka

viii (b). Worst Listening Environment
MFAC (too noisy), German Hall - IFAS (acoustically not so great)

ix. Word/ Name of the Season:
pUrvikalyANi.

I pretty much ended up at Raga Sudha Hall on many days and enjoyed almost all the concerts there.

I cant take any more of pUrvikalyANi. Wherever i went, pUrvikalyANi chased me and hit me hard.

Horlicks Thirattupal

2008-12-22T16:13:00.002+05:30

This is culinary post.

I wanted to boast about this sweet i made myself. A Self conceived receipe.

Ingredients:
Milk 2.5 litres
Sugar 1 Tumbler
Horlicks 1/2 Kg

Take a heavy bottomed vessel. Pour in the milk and boil it till it starts to shrink. After it shrinks to about 70% or so, add the sugar. After the sugar dissolves, add the Horlicks in parts. Keep stirring to avoid formation of lumps of horlicks. The heat should always be low.

Keep stirring till it comes to a thick non-sticky consistency of a sweet. Add a table spoon of ghee on top of it, to add to the taste.

Preparation time: 4 to 5 hours

The Boat attached chariot.

2008-11-27T18:16:00.003+05:30

I am a fan of this author called Kalki. His has written a lot in tamil and I just love his works.

Reading thro' one of his best works, Ponniyin Selvan, i m fascinated by his description of the life in tamilnadu during the Chola Regime in the 10th Century. It talks about all the issues in detail.

what i m reminded presently is the description of a particular vechicle which is called a boat attached chariot. It is a horse driven chariot on the roads, however when it reaches a river, the horses are let loose to swim and climb on the other bank, while the chariot can go into the river and can be driven as a boat till the wheels reach the other bank and can be used again as a chariot. The boat part and chariot part are detachable as well.

while i have no clue of how it would look like and what are the designing parameters, the fact that they had so many innovative things that early is amazing and given the amount of rains Madras is experiencing presently, they should be more than useful.

Perfect Mismatch

2008-10-30T13:32:00.002+05:30

After a gap of years, i happened to go to listen to the Light Music Solo at the Inter-hostel Lit-soc competition here. As expected, it dint start on time and when junta started to perfrom, it was utter chaos.

Nobody who played the guitar, were able to have it tuned properlly. There was a mismatch in the tuning of most guitars, lest we worry about what they played on them. Wrong notes were rather common and the people who sang along had no clue of what is the pitch the guitar was tuned to.

I could barely manage to sit for about less than an hour.

If you are confident enough to perform in public, but dont have the faintest idea of how to tune the instrument you are playing, you might as well find the nearest well to jump in.

Its a new ball game

2008-09-23T22:48:00.002+05:30

On sunday evening, i had to come to travel a bit around the city. And my usual prefered mode of travel are the public transport and i prefer trains to buses. I landed at the station and missed the train by a whisker.

Being the lazy sunday late-afternoon-early-evening time, i had to wait for a good 20 minutes for the next train to come. I hence happened to peep outside the window. Triplicane station is on the elevated section of the Suburban railway line and the peep out side the window made me learn a new game that day.

A group of boys had earmarked a rectangular area and split into two teams. They had a tennis ball. The crux of the game is to pass the ball to your team mates and keeping it within the play area. The number of times, the ball hits a person from the opponent team, without them taking over the ball yields points. If the ball goes outside the arena, the opponent team gets the ball.

Some adaptation of Soccer and Hockey to street play.

another movie

2008-09-22T15:31:00.002+05:30

On saturday evening, i watched this new tamil movie, Dhanam. The storyline is simple. A college students falls in love with a professional prostitute. Convinces her and his family(with help of some astrologer) to marry him. The astrologer does the help to take revenge on the heroine who once refused to take him as her customer. The revenge is in the form of advising murder of the child born to this couple. The heroine eventually acts smart and poisons the full family. The investigations act in a humanitarian fashion and makes it a case of accidental food poisoning and she is back to her old state.

It is well picturised with all the essentials of tamil cinema, including a comedy track and music, some item numbers, some melodies and blah blah.

I find this kind of a subject rather appealing. Especially that of a guy coming forward/falling in love with a lady of this kind of a background and going to extent of marrying her and keeping her in his family. It is true that the director has clearly hit the bad sentiments that are prevalent in the society and how some people blindly believe all kinds of rituals and superstitions to get things done in the family. It also nicely outlines the way some people utilise such beliefs for their cheap tricks. These society related issues are indeed rather important to be showcased and in the event of atleast a few people realising the kind of horror it can lead it, the impact on the society would be good.

However, i found the end of the story appalling. I find that the movie fails, in the fact that the heroine is back on the street and again looking for customers. She does not attempt to make the family realise and identify the villain. Neither does she realise the truth that her husband was also not party to what the family did to their baby. All those family members who die at the end of movie do not really know who the culprit of the whole event was. I would personally have preferred either she fighting all the problems makes a happy life after the family realizes the misgivings of the villain. Atleast, a confession from the villain would have been a little appeasing. I m helpless but to feel pity for the hero, who for no fault of his, gets killed by his own wife who thinks he killed their baby while he was actually not party to it.

Ilayaraja has shown his stamp all over the movie. The cinematography is good as well. Some of the shots are very well done.

Well, a nice theme handled decently but fumbled at the end.

Soya Chuks Upma ver 2.0

2008-09-20T10:40:00.002+05:30

out of all the courage i got from the first made version, i decided to upgrade the receipe and hence the ver 2.0

apart from those mentioned in the previous version, the extra ingredients are...

The cooked soya chunks were left to dry on a plate and later chopped.

In a pan, after the tempering with green chillies, mustard and cumin seeds, add the veggies and along with salt and the masala powder. Cook till the veggies are done and then add the chopped chunks and mix well. Saute for a few min and serve hot with some coriander sprinkled.

And guess what, i had a guest to taste it.

RIP Sneha

2008-09-10T19:18:00.001+05:30

Snehalatha Reddy, our wing cat, met with an accident in the evening and succumbed to the injuries.

RIP Sneha.

Soya Chunks Upma

2008-09-09T23:07:00.003+05:30

This evening, I had to go out of campus and came back rather late to go and check out the Mess. On any other day, I would have headed to Tiffanys or Gurunath or Quark and dinn.

However, I wanted something different. Noticing the Khadi vendor's van, I was gazing thro' the stuff he had. I am usually surprised by the number of things this guy sells. What caught my attention was a pack of what I am told are called 'Soya Chunks'. They are basically made out of soya beans and are easier to cook. I got a pack of them and made this particular Upma for dinner. The Receipe is as follows.

Ingredients:
Soya Chunks
Salt
Coconut, Thur Dhal, Red chillies, Hing for the coarse masala powder
Oil, Mustard Seeds and cumin seeds to temper

In a pan, heat Water. Add salt and Soya Chunks when the water is hot. The chunks are usually rather hard when raw. Cook them till they are soft.

Once the chunks are soft, remove them from the water. You can chop them if you want. I did. Squeeze out excess water.

In a pan, heat a little oil and then fry the dhal, red chillies with the Hing. Once the smell of the fried dhal comes, add the coconut and saute for a few min and remove from Heat. Cool this mixture and grind in a blender as a coarse dry powder. It can be stored for a while and can be used for mixing with rice as well. (I have this made from home and well stocked!)

In a pan, temper the mustard and cumin seeds. Add the masala powder and fry it a little, and add the chopped chunks. Add a little salt and saute well till it is dry and is mixed well.

You can add onions and other veggies also. I like the taste as such.

PS: This upma is a self made receipe. This post marks the beginning of yet another genre of posts on this blog.

The Cute Bug

2008-09-08T23:35:00.000+05:30

Sometime back, i saw this bug in the BOG. It was rather big for a bug and was quite cute as well. Immediately got my cam and clicked it.

Poor Quality of picture regretted.

Self Help Group

2008-09-04T19:38:00.002+05:30

Self Help Groups are rather popular these days. The Women's Self Help Groups are being supported by the Government in large excess. Lots of them seem to have sprung up taking care of cottage industries and other domestic industries. Small scale Industries have also been happening thanks to these groups. They claim to lift the level of Women in the Indian Society.

While getting back to Insti from somewhere in the city, I saw the name "Men's Self Help Group" behind a certain Autorickshaw.

PS: all puns unintended.

absent minded ness.

2008-08-27T23:15:00.000+05:30

This is something i have become of conscious off. I have been growing increasingly absent minded and forgetting to do, even very important things at times. There have been very many incidents in the past i would want to quote, however this one is a class apart.

Last week, I was getting ready to go to a wedding reception and was in a hurry getting ready. I was to go home from the wedding and hence was getting my bags done. I took my bags and went to my vehicle. Opened its storage space below the seat. Left all my bags and the keys of the vehicle and closed the seat. It got locked automatically. I started walking back to the hostel and then started searching for my keys.

I walked back to my vehicle, feeling up all my pockets and not finding them keys to the vehicle. It is then did i realise, it could be inside the storage chamber. Though I wasnt sure that I left it there, I couldnt find it anywhere in the vehicle, or in my pockets or on the road. Hence, it must be inside the storage chamber only.

I tried requesting a few others in the area to lend their keys, so that I could if it helps. No lucks. It essentially meant i take a bus to the main gate, and then a bus or train home, find a spare key and then get back to the institute with a spare keys and then hope my original keys are inside the storage chamber of the vehicle. Well, i did take the long trip and i did find the keys inside the chamber.

It essentially meant, I had to skip the reception that day and ended attending the wedding itself in the morning, and i eat Dinner at hostel and not outside, as i was expecting, and most of all, I have start to even more believe that I am growing a lot more absent minded.

PS: I have been thinking of writing this post for a while. but kept forgetting till today. And i was going to blog on something else as well, which i forgot now.

I tamed her!

2008-08-26T16:14:00.003+05:30

She has been here for a long time...

I kept seeing her for a long time. i dont know what she thought of me. nor did i care for her him. And on one fine day, he left her. and since he left, she has been there alone, all by herself and one fine day i decided to take her.

she had no clue about what was coming. As she was there, i went around and started to first stare at her. She was dirty and wasn't really in her best. Well, i dint mind. i went on to first wipe the dirt at some parts and then slowly i began to caress her. she did not react. Was she happy with it? I had no clue. However, i had crossed the point of no return.

I decided to go ahead and feel her up and fill her up and ride on her. As i started to go for it, it was a little not-so-smooth, come on she has not been used that way for a while since he left. however, over time she began to get smoother and cooperative.

And soon, i was nearing the end but she wasnt. I had reached and wanted to stop, she was in no mood. she was getting faster and taking me deeper and deeper. what do i do? How do i stop, i cant hold on and i dont know how to stop her either. All my methods and tricks failed to work. There was a deep plunge.. and i closed my eyes.

I could not control her anymore. she was controlling me. I let her have whatever she wanted. and took a deep breadth. I was getting ready for anything to come. It wasnt very long but, those moments were scary and i cant tell you how i was feeling.

However, there were suddenly a couple of bumps. I immediately opened by eyes and realised the situation. She was going to fall and take me along and it might be a problem. In no time, i took over and did a balancing act. We were both safe. She looked sorry and i could understand. And successfully she was tamed.

I gave her some stuff she needed and she is now mine. Life goes on!

Before you people get into other thoughts, let me clarify. This is the story of how I tamed Leftit's cycle. And the brakes had failed.

Madras 369!

2008-08-22T10:24:00.002+05:30

This day, 369 years ago, the city of Madras was born!

It had both the names Chennai and Madras till the mid-90s. Earlier, Chennai was the area outside the fort, called Black Town and eventually George Town. The Fort was called Madras or White Town.

Feels Great to live here!

two more movie reviews.

2008-08-02T14:06:00.000+05:30

sudhish kamath is making me a laugh like mad...

review of Money Hai Toh Honey Hai

review of Mission Istaanbul

Why!

2008-08-01T10:54:00.004+05:30

Yesterday morning, while walking thro' the campus from SAC to Tiffanys i noticed a rather disturbing scene.

It is but natural for anybody to dress up for an occasion. Across the globe, breaking all cultrual and economic and gender barriers, dressing up for a occasion is a common theme. To their personal capabilities and tastes, the kind of make up varies.

IIT Madras is not exception either. She dresses up for any occasion, be it her golden jubilee or be it welcoming of the new students, or be it the digging of a new ditch for the only reason that the contractors employed to dig cannot be left jobless. Each occasion makes her makeup different though.

For some reason, she loves putting serial light all over her. The green saree which she wears is already glittering day and night and the serial lights over that, makes her look gaudy.

For a recent function, she chose to have herself even more decorated. She chose to keep a pot of some plant (it should necessarily not be a flowering one!) every 2 ft, all the way from her entrance to the auditorium. And she also increased the density of the serial lighting making it all the more glaring.

Going back to yesterday morning, on one of the trees, there was a monkey gang trying to find some berries and fruits eat. They got hold of the serial bulbs. Many of the monkeys were trying to break and/or eat the bulb thinking it is a fruit. I am tempted to call it call it the dasAvatAram effect, after the monkey 'anu' that eats the bio weapon and dies.

With every passing day, IIT Madras is indeed growing indifferent to all her residents. The deer and black buck have an ever shrinking habitat. The plight of monkeys was just elaborated. The SAC has been Airconditioned, hence the house-swift birds are homeless. They are left high and dry. The plight of students need not be elaborated.

For the same function yesterday, there was a full battalion of men in white and khaki overseeing arrangements. They were posted at every pillar and post and in front of every building. They were restricting everything from walking on the road, parking the cycle or two wheeler, standing, talking... eventually adding up to dont come out of your building.

Why all this!

Will somebody do some soul searching? or is it just me who is feeling all this?

Vegetarian Mess

2008-07-28T16:02:00.002+05:30

For ages now, i have been one of the students of IITM who have been advocating the need for a separate pure vegetarian Mess facility on Campus.

All along, all Messes have had a basic Vegetarian Menu and the Non-Vegetarian being served as extras. We all comfortably chose to believe they were cooked separately and served seperately. Many of us chose to ignore the existance of Non-Veg in the same mess or avoided mess on occasions when non-veg was served. There were a very few who took to the extreme and chose to not even drink water from the mess, because it serves non-veg at times. Hence, there was always a group of us who wished a separate Veg Mess.

After enough signature campaigns and false starts and reasons like not enough patronage etc., since yesterday, IITM has indeed established a separate Vegetarian Mess Facility at the Ganga Hostel Mess.

A reason to celebrate and blog!

Train Trip Report 2

2008-07-21T19:05:00.008+05:30

another trip to trichy.

this time it was to be made in two-and-half days notice. however, i was lucky to get a reservation on 2605 Pallavan Express from MS to TPJ on 19th july. being sunday night, i couldnt get any train reservation for my return journey for 20th night. i was still high on hopes to find some train connection for my return, even an afternooon train was not available. Thanks to pressure at home, i m not allowed travel un-reserved and hence was madly looking for some train connection. I couldnt even find a passenger train. I was hoping to find some train connection after reaching trichy.

I reached Madras Egmore station on 19th july at 14:55 for the 15:30 2605 pallavan express. The 2636 vaigai express had just arrived and passengers were finding it tough to move out of Pf5 thro the two narrow FoBs. there was a lot of confusion and crowds shouting as passengers from 2636 were coming out and passengers for 2605 were going towards the Pf. The luggage each person carried adding to the problems. It needed a few women PCs to come to the site and regulate movement in lines.

Pf 4 had 6125 MS - JU express. I couldnt go thro' the crowds to the North end of MS station to see the power on 2636 or 6125. my compartment D9 being almost near the south end of MS station made sure i reached the seat at 15:15 and found the compartment still not even 30% full. 6125 departed on time at 15:15 pm. There were ppl coming in and by departure time, the compartment was fully and the unreserved
passengers standing the aisles. Our power was ED WAP4 22268 in traditional WAP4-red livery. we started on time. Pf 3 had MS-KCG express with ED WDM2 16853 attached to it. There were empty rakes of other evening trains and the loco sidings had quite a few WDMs and WAMs. The rake of 2605 was in this order. E-SLR-UR-UR-D12 to
D5-PS1-Pantry-D4 to D1-C2-C1-UR-UR-SLR. The C2 coach was in the green and yellow livery while the rest of the train was in the usual blue. Some of its window panes had cracks which were sealed with tapes and stickers.

At the gopalswamy nagar yard, empty rake of 7643 Circar express was waiting behind AJJ WAM4 20601, which in all probability would be heading the train in the evening. There was TNP WDM7 11015 and a few WDS4Bs in the sidings in the yard. also was the empty rake of 2631/32 nellai express and that of the recently shifted to Madras division 113/114 TBM-VM passenger.

Though i wasnt expecting many crossings, i stuck my window seat and occasionally went to the door to see if there is anything that i should not miss. We pulled into tambaram on time. on the adjacent platform, was another rake of 113/114 with AJJ WAP4 22693 heading towards VM. We stopped at CGL for a moment and i got a good view of the old loco shed and its water tanks etc. Till here are the EMU limits and one could see island platforms and passengers waiting on them. We had a slow run-through at Tindivanam. This station might soon become a junction, once the new line from tindivanam to nagari is cleared. Between CGL and VM we had just two crossings first was PDY-TPTY passenger with ED WDM2 17750 and the second was AJJ WAM4 21297 with a passenger train. i would guess this could be 6128 GUV-MS express. We pulled into Villupuram on time. The goods yard had WAG5 23621 and some goods rakes. couldnt see many other passenger train rakes of locos in sight. At VM, our loco gave way for GOC WDP3A 15518. Quite a brisk loco, this was and gave pleasing horn. I have always
enjoyed running behind diesels for the horn and the sounds they make, which i find very soothing much in contrast to the electrics. Sooner than later, the electrics would go beyond VM till Ariyalur, ALU. the electrification is complete till ALU is waiting necessary clearances.

After VM, the PDY branch line branched off to the left while the underconversion VM - CDM - MV main line gave us company for a while before hearding leftwards. Stations after this were all the usual one run through, one loop two platform stations, all of them deserted and just a couple of railway staff waving their green flags. The catering staff on 2605 had quite a variety and the aroma was good. There was dal poli, biriyani(veg, chicken & mutton), cutlets, dal vadas, masala dosa and plantain bajjis making the rounds other than the packed chips and biscuits and water. Though the aroma was very inviting, i wasnt hungry enough to try any of them.

We reached VRI on time, with the TPJ-CUPJ passenger waiting on the adjacent platform behind ED WDM2 16850. There werent many other crossings in this section either. GOC twins WDM2 16864(leading) and 18419 went past us with an unknown train. We pulled into TPJ right on time into Pf1 after the one minute stoppings at ALU, LLI, SRGM and GOC. At TPJ station, there were ED WDM2 twins 16462 and 16479 with a rake of coal leaving from Pf 4 as soon as we pulled in. Pf 2 had TPJ-RMM passenger with ED WDM2 16480. Pf1A had the rake of TPJ-ED-JTJ passenger with ED WDM2 17584 in blue and white livery. As i was about leave the station, 1044 MDU-LTT express pulled into Pf4 being KJM WDG3A 13331.

My hopes for finding a train back on sunday were not answered yet. On sunday again, i was back at the station at 2 pm with hopes of finding some train, atleast a passenger for some distance and then some connecting train, but i couldnt find any. however made some interesting spottings. As i entered the platforms after taking the
platform ticket, announcements were made for 6127 MS-GUV express to arrive on Pf3. Pf 4 had the 826A MV-TEN passenger waiting behind ED baldie WDM3A 14055 (ACD Fitted). Pf 1A had TPJ-ED-JTJ passenger's rake with ED WDM2 16564 at the helm. ED WDM2 18554 was in the pit line between PFs 1 & 2. The pit lines behind Pf1A had GTL WDM3A 14039 in a blue-yellow-grey livery and ERS WDM3A 14076 and GOC WDS6 36013. 6127
arrived behind GOC WDM2 twins 17258 and 17699. As 6127 was arriving, a passenger from Palghat Town also arrived on Pf2 behind ED WDM2 17703 unannounced. As soon as this passenger arrived, the leading loco got itself detached. and 18554 ran to the sidings to come back and get attached to the train at the GOC end of the station. Announcements were being made for arrival of 6128 on Pf1 and 6127 left at 14:15 or
so. As i walked up and down the Pf1, i noticed that another GOC loco was also making its way towards the passenger on Pf2. I immediately walked down to find that WDP3A 15518 (which had pulled 2605 the previous day) was also getting attached to the train which was now re-boarded as the TPJ-CUPJ passenger. The WDP3A and WDM2 were both alive and the men were also seen connecting some wires in between them.

http://irfca.org/gallery/openline/S7300256.JPG.html

also seen at the far end of the pic is 16564. There is work for the extention of the shelter at TPJ platforms and also Pfs 5,6 are being converted to BG to facilitate better handling of the traffic. at 14:30 6128 pulled in behind the familiar combo of 16864 and 18419. And i left the station to go and book tickets on bus.

The bus journey had its own problems with the rains delaying departure and some vacuum lines started leaking and hence the bus started about 2 hours behind schedule. i got down at tambaram and took an EMU. While our bus was doing the Chingleput - Tambaram stretch, a passenger train went past us behind WAM4 20671. The railway line and road were quite close that i could spot this. At TBM station at 8 am, 2693 Pearlcity express pulled in behind ED WDM3A 14126. I wanted to see the out-going 6127 express. however, there was no sign of it, till i got down at
Guindy at 8:30 am. i couldnt wait more and headed homewards.

Train Trip Report -1

2008-07-09T13:31:00.001+05:30

This is my first report. Kindly tolerate errors.

We reached MS railway station at 16:20 hours. 6713 (formery 7613)
was in Pf 3. The power was ED WDM2 17710. The empty rake of MS-CAPE
express was being pushed into Pf4 by ED WDM3D 11187. In all
probability this train would be pulled by the same loco. Pf2 was
empty and Pf1 had MS-PDY express with a sleeping AJJ barbie doll
WAM4 21320. The stabling lines beyond Pf1 had a couple of WDSx, some
WAM4s, ED WDM2 17811 (in white and blue WDM3D livery) and GOC WDP3A
15518. Pf 5 had 7651 MS-KCG Exp and Circar was on Pf 8. I couldnt go
and check the power on these two trains. Pf 7 had KJM WDP4 20054
light. Pf 9 had an unknown train with GOC WDP3 15504 facing towards
TBM side. WDS 4B 19533 (TNP?) was bring a coach to attach at the
rear end of Circar. We got our signal to start at 17:00 hours sharp.

The Gopalaswamy Nagar Yard between MS and Chetpet had empty rakes of
the night trains and WDS 4B 19534 (TNP?). 19533 and 17811 had moved
into the yard by then. We were going good till Chromepet. Near
chromepet there seemed to be some signal problem. We were waiting
for sometime. The EMU line had 3 units one behind the other waiting
for the signal to proceed towards TBM. Quite a sight it was, to
watch them queue up and passengers jumping down to get in the EMU in
front and on to the UR coaches of our train. There was a Gangman
flagging signal for the trains to go...

We pulled into TBM at 17:40 (15 min behind schedule). The adjacent
platform had TBM <--> VM <--> TPJ passenger with a AJJ WAP4 22294
waiting towards VM. There was also an AJNI WAG9 with a BCNA rake
heading southwards.

From here on till VM we had a MG line giving us company. Most
stations in the section had a MG platform or two. The masts of the
electrified line are still intact thro' the section. Only at
Tindivanam station the MG lines seems to have been ripped off to
give way for the platform. Some station had loop lines with some of
the MG goods coaches and tankers and caboose.

In between Paranur and Chingleput an unknown train (it was short
enuf to be a passenger train and too short for an express) was going
towards TBM with an ED WAP4 22357.

We entered Chingleput (after the obligatory wait outside the
station, near the lake) at 18:10 (this is about 20 min late) or so,
to be greated by the MS <--> PDY <--> TPTY passenger with a GOC WDM2
16789 waiting to go towards kanchipuram side.

The next stop was Melmaruvathur. We pulled in at 18:45 hours. The
loop line had LGD WAG9 31157 heading a BCNA rake waiting to proceed
towards Chingleput. And the second platform had 6128 GUV-MS Express
with a WAP4 (couldnt note the shed or road number). The wait here
was almost 5 min or so. The next stop was Tindivanam at 19:15 hours.

We reached VM at 20:05 hours (a good 40 min behind schedule). a KZP
WAG7 was waiting with a BCNA Rake in the goods lines. The pit line
near the platforms towards MS had LGD WAG5 23905 and another AJJ
WAG5 234xx. The other end of the platform had another pit line with
GOC WDG3A 14641 (a palindrome!) There was a small train (prolly a
passenger) with a AJJ WAM4 21228 waiting in one of the platforms. I
guess its a passenger to PDY as there were announcements made for
the same.

We left VM at just past 20:15 hours. With not many trains to spot or
scheduled to cross for a while, i dint care to look for them. There
werent any trains till SRGM. We passed Vriddhachalam at 20:55 and
Ariyalur at 21:35 (both being 1 min halts). The wiring for
electrification is done till here. AFter this there were only masts.

We reached SRGM at 22:10 hours (a good 30 min late) and were in Pf2.
The Rockfort express towards MS pulled into Pf1 with GOC twins 16880
(leading) and 16883. Most stations between VM and SRGM (included)
dint have any platform lights and all stations were pitch dark. we
left SRGM at 22:20 and headed towards TPJ. 6108 MAQ-MS Exp crossed
us between GOC and TPJ with ED WDM3A 17803. It had a white and blue
livery.

We reached TPJ Pf4 at 22:45 hours (20 min late). Pf 3 had the MDU-
JAT link express towards ED with GOC WDM2 17677, waiting to leave.
Pf 2 had empty rake of some short train and ED WDM2 17599 and GOC
WDS6 36018 (live and roaring).

While we were walking out of the station, 17710 which had pulled us
all along had got detached and went towards the GOC side of the
station thro the pit line between Pf 1 & 2.

---------

The original plan for the Weekend was to take the 13:25 826A Tirunelveli - Mayiladuturai Passenger to MV on Saturday and to return to TPJ either by 6232 Mayiladuturai -Mysore express or 6178A from KMU to TPJ. We had to make a couple of religious stoppings around mayiladuturai.

However, as we reached TPJ station on saturday afternoon at 13:25, 826A had left for MV already. We hence had to do the trip to-and-fro by buses, hence i was pretty upset for not being able to travel by train. This is one section that i have travelled a lot in the MG days as a kid. It wanted to see if i could remember any of those places and how they look like presently. however, it dint happen. The only solace was that, while crossing MV station by bridge, one could spot a lot of MG rolling stock and the MG line towards Thiruvarur was still there. While returning past midnight, i also spotted MG coaches atop BG flat wagons on sidings near GOC workshops. The other observation i made, when the railway line was running close the to roads, was WDM2 17710 which had hauled our 6713 on friday night was pulling some passenger train in the TPJ-TJ section.

On sunday night, we reached TPJ station at 21:30 a good 50 min early for our return journey by 6108(formerly 6608) to MS. It wasn't easy to convince my parents that i wouldnt wait with them at the lounge, but would wanna walk around the platforms. However, i had it my way.

In Pf1, WDS6 36018 had deposited the TPJ-MS part of 6178 and was heading back towards the loop lines with one 3 AC coach alone. This loco had a Jumbo-type short hood. The short hood was not as wide as the cabin, but it was shorter than the height of the rest of the loco, that having straight windows. Does that qualify as a Jumbo?

Pf3 had two trains with their locos facing each other. One was the TPJ-RMM passenger with ED WDM2 17914 facing towards MDU side. The other was an unknown passenger with ED WDM2 17599 facing towards GOC side. Both these locos dint show any signs of being live. GOC WDM2 16867 was going across the pitlanes, light. Pf 1A had another unknown passenger train with ED WDM2 17475.

10-12 minutes to 22:00 hours the KMU-MS part of 6178 was pushed into Pf1 by GOC twins WDM2 18317 (leading) and 16882. It is quite a strange thing that happens with 6178(A) at TPJ. The TPJ-MS part of the train is pushed into Pf1 much before the KMU-MS part arrives from KMU. The KMU part of the train is received in any of the other platforms which is empty, and then the leading loco comes back to the other side(or new loco attached?) of the train to pull it out and push it back into Pf1 to be attached to TPJ-MS part of train. When some delays happen, there is a lot of confusion. 6178A arrival is usually not announced. While there might be passengers waiting for other trains, this short train arriving, pulling out and coming back into Pf1 causes quite a confusion on somedays. (on one of the previous visits, i myself was running all over TPJ station coz of this confusion). 6178 departed from Pf1 at 22:00 hours. Also, noticed was the presence of non AC First Class coach in 6178. In the meantime 6351 CSTM-NCJ express arrived and left from Pf4 with ED WDM2 18537.

6108 arrived on Pf1 at 22:12 behind ED WDM3D 11121. This loco's Short Hood was modified to look like a WDP4 or WAP4. The train came into TPJ from Karur side in LHF mode. Hence, when it reversed at TPJ, it was SHF from TPJ to MS. WDS 36018 attached the 3AC coach to the front end of 6108 before the Luggage Van. 11121 reversed and got itself attached by 22:25 pm. However, we did not get our starter signal.

Announcement were being made for 6713's arrival. In the meantime, a BCNA rake came into Pf4 from MDU side with GOC twins 17620(leading) and 16883. AT 22:45 6713 Madras - Rameswaram express pulled into Pf 2 with ED WDM2A 18698 from GOC side. It was interesting to note that the though announcements at TPJ station still referred to MAQ-MS express as 6108, all the display boards and electronic display screens still refer to it as 6608, which is the old number. Also, the announcements referred to 6713 by its old name, Sethu Express. This name is not being used these days, officially atleast.

When we got our signal to depart it was almost 23:00 (a good 40 min delay here!). The curve from Pf1 to join the TPJ-GOC line is a nice place to see the full train from Loco to the last coach. Spotted the 2633 MS-CAPE express between TPJ and GOC waiting to get an entry into the station. It was lead by ED WDM3D 11200. While waiting for entry, its head light was off, and only the markers were on.

We reached SRGM at 23:20 and Ariyalur at 23:57. Pearl City express came in with GOC WDP3A 15534. There was also a BCNA rake headed by WDMx 14032 in the sidings. I felt it was having the usual ED shed livery. After a weekend full of Road Travel, i couldnt stay awake for long. However, i did note down crossings whenever i woke up.

At sendurai, an un-spottable express went past towards TPJ. At Mathur, a very late running 2642 NZM - CAPE express was waiting for us to crawl in and leave after a momentary halt. At Ichchangadu, WDP4(?) headed Nellai/Pandiyan went across zipping thro'. I was half asleep and couldnt really go to the window/door to check the road numbers of the loco. The horn was of a much high pitch compared to the normal WDMs. We reached Vriddhachalam at 01:20 hours. an unknown passenger train headed by a sleeping ED WDMx 18533 was in the adjacent platform.

We reached VM around 02:20 hours. As we entered, 6178 was leaving from the line of the other side of our island platform. There were some WAMs and WAPs resting the sidings, i couldnt note details though. As we were leaving VM, MDU-MS Pandiyan express pulled into the other platform with GOC WDM2 twins. 16880 (leading) and 16861 (a palindrome!) Also spotted in the sidings a BCNA rake with VSKP WAG-7 27885.

I slept again to be briefly woken up at CGL, by the absence of breeze. We reached TBM, a good one hour late, 05:15 or so. We pulled into MS pf6 at 6:15 am.(one hour delay!) Rockfort had gone to the yard. The TNP WDS4B shunters were doing their duties. MS <--> PDY <--> TPTY passenger was in Pf1 with AJJ WAM4 20613 (panto down). 7644 Circar express came in from MSB side into Pf7 with AJJ WAM4 20573. Announcements for Pandian Express to come into Pf4 was being made.

I found that travelling by SL is much more comfortable than normal Lower berth to be peeping out and seeing things from a train. Going to the door is much better, however i couldnt drag myself out of my berth most of the time.

We had a good weekend.

bharathwaj

PS: i hope the numbers and details are right. I did note down the numbers and details on a sheet of paper, thro' the journey and hence am that much confident about them. It is very nice of IR to display the Loco numbers on the sides so prominently.

Fan of trains.

2008-07-08T15:55:00.000+05:30

The Indian Railways are fascinating.
I love the trains and train journeys and have been obsessed with seeing trains and travelling in them.

Sometime back a friend of mine got me to visit www.irfca.org and have been hooked on to their website for their photos and info from then on. And since not so long ago, i have also been part of the Indian Railway Fan Club Association's yahoo group reading and posting messages there as regular as i would love to.

And even more recently i have started wanting to write reports of train journeys and since, i have a blog that has not been updated for a long time, i thought i can atleast put them reports here to have a copy of them.

PS: people of limited acquaintance to trains and other terminology used by the IR will find it tough to decifer the reports.

The chronicles of the silver screens

2008-06-16T16:19:00.004+05:30

I have been on a movie watching spree for something like a couple of weeks. Watched two of them on theatres. atleast 5-6 on tv and computer and a couple of them or so on websites, which let u watch them streaming. and almost, all of them were tamil movies.

Three movies on the Dad-Son relationship. One of them is a little old, and is called 'Em-magan' translating to 'My Son'. This movie shows the turmoils of a guy who is tortured by his dad, and then he runs away with his lover, coz his dad chases him and then eventually guy becomes a big shot and comes back to the dad and takes care of family and all. This movie came on TV over the weekend. The second one was 'Bommarillu' in telugu, and its poor remake 'Santosh Subramanian' in tamil was the third. These two talk of how a dad over feeds and saturates the son and again the son feels bad for not getting what he wanted. All of them had a decent story line, however they all boiled down to say that the son has been suffering coz the dad dint really think of asking what he wants and then suspects him etc. Essentially they all went on to say that the Dad were correct and the sons were happy suffering. How many sons of the society that we live in are this ideal? Well, i have a darling of a dad, who doesnt impose upon me at all. not a bit. however, should all cruel dads be justified by such movies. While 'bommarillu' was(and is hopefully still available) at hostel comp room, the tam movie is still at the theatres. I watched it at Sathyam.

Watched this tamil-dubbed (originally mallu) movie called 'arputa theevu'. This talks of a island where all the men are short and the women are of normal height. A set of navy officers land here, coz of a mishap and then one of these navy guys falls in love with the princess of the island and then on and on the problems coz of this love. Dint like it much. Packed it mid-way. courtesy: www.tamiltubevid.com

Watched 'yaradi nee mohini' again from the same website. this is again a love story of guy falling in love with some female on road, who eventually ends up being his boss, when he gets employed. and then he proposes to the boss, who declines, only to be found later that the female and this guy's good friend are related to each other and are already engaged. and then the love and "the pain"... I am told that, this is also a remake of some telugu movie. watched it fully though.

Watched 'dasAvatAram' yesterday morning. This was probably the second time ever, when i watched a movie within a week of release. I for one, failed to understand the motive of the movie. The storyline wasn't really great, though it does exist somewhere. Like most of Kamal's hyped movies, this one too wouldn't make big commercially or otherwise. There were quite a flaws in logic. Some loose ends. Some unbelievable miracles. Eventually, the movie dint make a mark with me. I really felt i could have afforded to skip it. Mentioning the words "choas theory", "bio-terrorism" etc here and there, to make it sound pseud and high funda doesn't really yield. From one point of view, it looks like a movie made just for the sake of doing 10 roles. However, why should one do 10 roles? are we short of actors? spending fortunes on make-ups has become a fashion amongst movie makers. It generates a hype and probably does yield at times. However, Is it really nice to spend on make-up to make a guy look different as 10 different people etc, when some 10 people could have done these roles with similar perfections for appreciably lower costs. It means business and work and money for 10 people who might need it. "thankfully he did only 10 roles in the movie" was a loudly overheard at INOX, as i walked out.

Also watched 'seena thaana 001' a recent "comedy" movie and 'mudalvan' and some more amongst those on TV.

messages from no-where

2008-06-03T22:12:00.003+05:30

I have been going thro' a series of lectures on 'Easy Solutions to Tough Problems in life'. It also involves a little bit of astrology and numerology. This person who does these classes also asked me for my birth chart.

When i took it to her, in the first look she said, 'you must be arrogant and short tempered and autocratic. this tendency will increase with ur age. so keep ur cool and contain ur anger.'

Now, i know that i am a little arrogant and short tempered, but to hear it from a total stranger, who just knew me for a few hours and saw my birth chart momentarily. I was just shocked.

It only reaffirms my belief that the indian sciences are far more beyond comprehensive limits.

These classes also tell me that god sends messages thro' people and one should know to listen to them.

---------------------------

On sunday evening, Lord Jeffery Archer was interviewed on some channel. Like a typical english man that he is, he spoke with a lot of ego and pride and head weight and what not. However the one point he made was very sensible. 'Never look back at your mistakes. Its a waste of time. Dont repent for them either.' Now thats a really sensible point that i wish i could take and imbibe in me.

---------------------------

There is this recent habit that has stuck me. I go to some temple of Lord Ganesha every morning. yesterday morning, as i was leaving the temple, an old lady was entering and was telling something like "porumaiya po". which roughly translates to 'go with patience'. I did hear this but dint know if she told me or otherwise.

About an hour later, i was on road, driving down towards insti. There is this signal on my way, closer to home, that usually junta dont care for. while i usually stand for the green lights, yesterday i accidentally jumped the red and was caught by the policeman. Over and above being the son of a senior administrative staff in the city police (my mom is a senior officer in the administrative wing of the city police crime and traffic wing) i had to pay fine etc... was the old lady telling me?

-----------------------------

PS: i don't know why i wanted to write this as a blogpost.

The sun's star

2008-05-30T10:41:00.002+05:30

Ending yesterday was yet another of those 'agni nakshatram' or 'kathiri veyil'

and i have successfully finished 27 summers in madras. phew! what a feat! i m sure i would have to spend many more...

however, the latest discovery for me is that drinking warm water in summer helps much better in quenching thirst than anything cold.

tender coconut is awesome, however the ones we get these days taste weird and are very small and priced very high.

I went to see the match

2008-05-22T22:29:00.009+05:30

I had to go and watch a Twenty-twenty cricket match at M A Chidambaram Stadium, yesterday. Basically, there was mom, dad and a huge group of uncles, aunts and cousins who had planned to go an watch this match. yes, this match of all the others! They ended up having an extra ticket and i was being dragged along. Given my involvement and inclination to watch a game of cricket I went to watch it, only because the ticket was getting wasted and they could not find anybody else at all.

Observations:

If you are a comfortably placed team and your opponent is particularly not so competent, you can afford to be casual. So much so that, all your bowlers and fielders would let them score and all your batsmen should play the ball right into the fielder's hands.

Even after your opponent makes a record for the slowest 50 in the tournament, you can loose the game.

The display boards are quite bright and informative, so much so that you can wear sun glasses inside the stadium even during a day-night match.

However sophisticated your display system is, the traditional scoreboard will still get updated more promptly.

They had nets put nets on the cheap stands, so that people don't throw stuff into the play area. However, the cheap junta actually were sitting in the non netted stands.

One Cheese Sandwich, which is essentially 2 slices of bread with a slice of cheese in between, costs 50 bucks. Well, we all know of inflation don't we. And hence, one can calculate the price of all that was sold using the simple laws of extrapolation.

If you go to watch a cricket match, especially of this genre, you are not suppose to sit and watch. Hence, the TNCA should do away with chairs during the matches for want of convenience.

Size of dress of the cheer leaders is directly propotional to the darkness of skin colour. And essential qualification to become one is that the letchability quotient should be as low as it could get. So much so that, one of them ladies in front of my stand looked like a slimmed linear combination of item, bra, ducky and chittad. (all of them are names of people and have no other meanings and/or interpretations. For more details, contact nearest iitian, unless of course if you aren't one yourself)

A guy actually wore a tee which said, "I was born intelligent. orkut ruined me". How could he? I am seriously considering ways to find his MENSA scores.

Men don't get calls from nature. There were toilets only for women, in our stand.

You had to play cacophony live or otherwise, in between every ball and every over and every other second that does not have a live ball in the ground. And the decibel levels have to be twice as much as your ENT surgeon would recommend. Higher the number of popular artists performing, the higher is the amplification.

For security reasons, Exit gates are only half as many as those for Entry. And none of them have directions or sign boards.

However, going to watch a match live does help in curing a splitting head ache and severe back ache. (Let me not mention the pills...)

PS: If only the Rain God were to be kinder, i would have been saved of all this. He stopped crying just in time for the match to begin.

next change

2008-04-28T11:05:00.001+05:30

announcing the next change...

SGH X 100 to LG KE 590

A couple of articles

2008-04-11T11:41:00.000+05:30

I was referred by a friend to read the following articles.

Does India need more IITs?

The author of this article is Prof. P V Indiresan, Former Director of IIT Madras. This article cited above happens to have a sequel in the following article by the same author.

IITs: Quality only because of exclusivity

I would urge you to read these articles and then read this blog post.

In both these articles, Prof Indiresan has made it evident about his feelings against the reservations and increase of the number of seats at elite institutions citing examples and drawing conclusions. It is indeed very beautifully written, and the fact that this man does belong to the system is very apparent from his writing. While, I am against the reservations and increase in the number of seats mindlessly myself, I do think there are some points on which Prof Indiresan could be countered.

Does Prof. Indiersan say that IITs can be centers of excellence only when surrounded by a sea of mediocracy? Why does he not take into account the increase in intake in Oxford or Harvard or the expansions that have happened in those campuses since their inception? Does he say that the students of IITs dont have a standing to make an assessment of the people who teach them?

Isn't there a measured silence in these articles on issues he might think be even a trifle counter to his stand and arguement?

Well, thats journalism. You only write what will sell your story. A critical outlook is usually lost.

And with the recent Judgement from the Supreme Court on the quota and reservations, the issue is going to be all the more in news.

Being bald - is it a bane?

2008-04-02T11:44:00.006+05:30

A couple of days ago, I happened to watch this particular talk show, Neeya Naana on Star Vijay. The episode had a set of young men who were bald and a set of young women who expressed their views about the problems caused due to baldness at young age.

The guys who were present, had much more hair than i do. however, they all spoke in such a sober mood, i felt very bad. There were a few who made sense in speaking. Comments like "we have tried our best to avoid, we cant do much about it", "We dont care for it", "It does feel bad when people make fun of us" came out from the men. There wasn't much difference in the opinions of the men.

The attitude of the women was quite striking. Statments like "They don't look normal and hence we find it tough to accept them", "The society will make fun of me, if i accept a bald guy as my husband", "what will my friends say?", "I cant go in the public with him, i will feel awkward" were made. There was just one woman, who boldly said, "i married a bald man by choice. i like him."

Watching all this, my dad, once again started his usual discourse on why i should use a wig or go for a transplant treatment, blah blah...

While all those guys look totally depressed and/or dejected, the females were acting as if being bald is something like being an untouchable.

Is being bald, something the person has a say or opinion about? after all, it is natural. When it starts and when it ends is not in your hand. in such a situation, why are the bald men discriminated?

well, the society, especially the young ladies of the day need to do some soul searching and realise that external beauty is time bound for anybody.

PS: i am not writing this post because i m feeling bad for being bald or because i m being pressurised to get it treated etc. i am happy being who i am and how i look. the reason i wrote this blog is the attitude of the society.

A Luncheon at Narmad Mess

2008-03-28T23:45:00.000+05:30

This afternoon, i had the (mis)fortune of lunching in what people call as the erstwhile narmada mess. I wish to take objection and still prefer refering to it as, Narmad Mess. It is still part of our hostel and the Taramani House has occupied it.

While sitting there for about half an hour, the place doesnt look one bit what it was in those days. In those 30 short minutes, i had a full recollection of most of the events, all the way from my first ever roll call. With a little effort, i could even recollect each meal i ate there.

The iron-stairs which take one to the mess from 3rd wing directly was over used by us in those days. The breakfasts we ran for, the lunches we ate over all the talking, the tea we drank at the stage, the dinners we ate for all that it was worth, they all came back. The day when we all left our dinner plates outside, the day when uncooked rice was served, the day when raw chicken curry was made, they day when plastic bags were found in mattar paneer curry, they all came back in a moment's time. The innumerable fights with the mess staff, the mess council meetings, each guy's face came back to memory.

All those discussions and GBMs we had there, the fights among junta, the ambiance and models we made for various things in that hall, each chart that was painted, each drama we had practiced, each nut that was bolted, each day came back to my memory. I could even remember all those days when the hall was used as a carpentry for all the doors we have in our rooms.

Well, they all remain memories now. They will remain as memories. Such once-in-a-while lunches and dinners, to which one gets invited, makes one feel nostalgic. else, having grub there regularly is a distant probably an impossible dream.

I hope, we get back this hall, after Taramani House builds its new kitchen.

Should we celebrate hostel night???

2008-03-27T22:43:00.004+05:30

Disclaimer: This is one of those posts where i m going to be a little harsh about some things and people. Anybody who has cribs with anything in this piece, are requested to either skip those parts and/or read and stay quiet.

Yesterday night, there was this notice on the notice board which said "Junta, Final meeting to decide on Hostel Night Theme. 10 pm at common room. All final years junta are requested to come." signed by the Lit-Sec and Soc-Sec.

Probably it was interpreted by people that only final years were called, at 10 pm there were about 25-30 final year junta and the two people who signed, present. Nobody else from the hostel, including the secretaries (finishing his term or elected for next year) was available. Later, one or two of them made an appearance and left.

However, discussions were on. At the end of about an hour and half, a few suggestions were made to the Lit-Sec (by then the Soc-Sec was missing also)

At half past midnight, somebody knocks my door to wake me from deep thought, saying the gen sec has just arrived and can there be a meeting to discuss stuff. And this bloke wants to convince me for something i wouldn't accept. They want me to accept that a DJ is very important and has to happen for 2 hours at hostel night. Left to me, i wouldn't have a DJ at all, but why should i be convinced for having one? whats the point in convincing me?

Does one have to necessarily celebrate hostel night with such people around?

PS: On second thoughts, it looks like this post is rather less derogatory than what i wanted it to be. I think its ok to be subtle also, at times...

a movie review

2008-03-26T21:12:00.000+05:30

And another post on movies.

However, this time not on a movie, but on a movie review i enjoyed reading. So, please read it in the link given

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2008/03/28/stories/2008032850570200.htm

quite a well written review. I am not a fan of Sudhish Kamath's writings and his style, however this one was just too much. had to keep a record of it, and hence a blog post.

sadhu miranda...

2008-03-19T15:51:00.003+05:30

"Sadhu Miranda.." this it the title of a tamil movie i watched a few weeks back. We had guests at home and for want of a better thing to do, we made our way to the theatre most easily travellable from home to find this movie being screened. we did watch it.

It is a usual revenge story. hero taking revenge for the murder of his sister by the villian and his gang by acting dumb and forging and all the other usual means to get to his goal. Eventually substantiating all this deeds to that fact that he had to take revenge for what was done to his sister and blah blah...

However the movie was quite thrilling and made well actually. i dint get bored at all.

for those who can understand tamil and have a couple of hours or so to kill, go watch it.

PS: for those who wonder what "sadhu miranda" means, it is approximated translated as "what if an innocent guy is agitated?" in english.

Jodiac

2008-03-04T11:29:00.002+05:30

For those who think this is about Jodha, well i dont like Aishwarya or Hritik and wouldnt wanna blog on them..

This is about Jodiac, well.. ahem... Zodiac compatability.

Lets101 Quizzes - Fun Quiz

now, what do i interpret from this circle?

101%???
102%???

gosh... there should be a limit...

not weird

2008-02-07T16:26:00.001+05:30

i aint a weirdo.. :)

Madras Skyline - Next Part

2008-02-06T14:43:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago, i happen to attend a seminar in the Humanities Dept by none other than Sri S Muthaiah himself, about Madras and its contribution to the growth of mordern India.

He spoke of the City's growth and also it being the seat of the growth for the development of india. Madras was the first permanent settlement of the Britishers in india. It is from here that most things started. The first engineering college of the country, The surveyor's school is what later became the College of Engineering, Guindy and eventually the Anna University. The Madras University was one of the first 3 universities in the country. The Madras Crafts College was the first college of fine arts in the country. Fort St George was the first Fort built by the British in india. Though we might attribute all these to the british, Sri Muthaiah reiterated that though started by the british, all these had a strong indian presence in all forms and the Indians and were regarded very high. He listed very many things to support his claim that madras was teh seat of growth for mordern india.

Coming to the part i was more interested in. The buildings which he showed.

Regular readers of my blog would remember the following two posts from the past.

Madras Skyline

Madras Skyline - Part 2

Sri Muthaiah mentioned some more buildings. Here are some of them i could recollect.

The GPO building - opposite to beach station. thankfully savoured by the Department of Posts.

The Dare house - A corporate house. Hence, the owners have realised the value of this building and maintained it well.

The madras Collectorate - Which has been pulled down and a sick looking structure is in its place.

The Spencers - The old super market was destroyed in fire. it could been renovated, however they choose to build the new mall.

The Garden House - It is in saidapet. The garden is lost, however the building remains as such and some old couple are resisting from moving out of there.

The DPI campus - on college road. It was a highly regarded school

The Bharath Insurance Building - owned by LIC. facing demolition anytime soon.

PS: not able to find pics on net.

Saarang Newsletter

2008-01-31T21:20:00.000+05:30

i was saarang newsletter this time...

wasnt totally happy with what happened. however, from what people tell me, i guess it was good, though i wasnt convinced at all.

http://www.saarang.org/08/Newsletter

has the links.

Colossally Lame Theater

2008-01-25T21:25:00.000+05:30

After a Saarang without the CLT, it does feel good to know that CLT is usable. With an extra pair of doors, it looks quite different from the green auditorium it was. It looks bigger in space than earlier, however the number of chairs might be less in the future. Also it is comfortable sitting on carpets is indeed much better than the plastic chairs which were originally planned.

With 4 of its entrances not usable, thanks to the AC equipment that obstructs your way inside the Audi as well, one barely manages to gain entry into CLT with hopes. Multi coloured carpets which can dirty your dirtiest jeans, greet you with a wide smile. We do accept that it is covers us from the sun, is well lit, isnt sultry etc. however the smell of unwashed stockings and fresh paint does make you move towards the nearest exit. The apology of a stage only adds to the other forces which drive you away. Construction Debris add to the misery as well.

Some venue is better than nothing seems to have been the motto of the Core group in having chose to use such a half-baked place. It is anybody's guess about how ready it is going to be for the Formal Inauguration slotted for the first week of March.

a new low!

2007-12-01T15:17:00.000+05:30

after the long queue to sign up, one entered the mess hall this morning to find cold and rubbery rava dosas with boiling dal and stinking onion chutney for side-dish. once i was done with swallowing the stuff to keep me going for the next few hours, i headed to the plate-dropping area. The surprise was in store. A sign board in telugu, with the english translation saying 'please put the cups and spoons and plates in appropriate containers'.

This is new level.

It is assumed that everybody who enters does have a rock-bottom basic knowledge of english. They have passed the entrance exam in english medium. With the recent introduction of 'English For Academic Purposes' (which unfortunately only teaches people who already know the language and people who are dumb, continue to be) the need for telugu sign boards is just disgusting.

Sooner than later, the lingua franca would be changed i guess.

I am not biased against people who speak telugu or the language. It is also fine with putting notices in vernacular by individual ethnic groups for their social activities though an english notice there would make them more visible. however i m appalled by the usage in public facilities giving instructions for usage, while the english literacy is supposed to be 100%

wondering where to eat?

2007-11-30T21:56:00.000+05:30

with a huge ambitious aim i started to write about all those restaurants in the city, i have dined at. however, it stopped with just the list for a long time.

however, i m doing it in bits and pieces...

Note: some of these places dont exist anymore. some have undergone wholesale revamping. still i write what i dined.

Treat - in adyar, below the bridge. Has two outlets right next to each other. The same food from the same kitchen is served in a airconditioned restaurant and a self-served-take-away counter. food is good. reasonable prices in the restaurant and the counter is just rock-bottom priced.

Blueberry - a small icecream boutique near sangeetha and krishna sweets. amazing ice cream. decent prices. shady ambi. (closed now i suppose)

Cup 'n' Saucer - a tea pub, next to odyssey in gandhinagar. The first time i went there, we asked if they serve something to drink, they said, its only for tea and no hard drinks. i was floored. A nice spread of teas and sandwiches. perfect for going with a girlfriend and to empty your wallet. two teas and one sandwich costed 100 bucks.

Grand Sweets - arguably the best place for sweets in the city. just behind odyssey in gandhi nagar. authentic sweets made traditionally and quite rich as well. priced according to the quality and richness. If you go in the evening, you will get a free serving of something for sampling and testing. some rice or something... also, make sure u taste some of there savouries and samosas and all else they make there.

Krishna Sweets - poor cousin of grand sweets. quite popular but not as pseud as the grand sweets. decent place. their 28 buck lunch is supposedly very good.

Vasanta bhavan - on LB road, opposite to the telephone exchange. one of those restaurants of the old guard. amazing southie grub. their crispy rava dosas are my favourite. prices are quite affordable.

Adyar Anandha bhavan - on LB road as soon as u turn into it from Gandhi nagar. nice place for sweets and chat. decently priced. They have a million branches all over the city. I personally hate their curd vadas, coz they are served with all the chat masalas...

Jus Parathas - They had two outlets. one next to new college, near satyam and the other on LB road. An amazing spread of parathas and stuffed parathas with awesome sidedishes. And decent prices also. Sadly, both the outlets are closed presently.

Vishranthi - A small restaurant, near bessie beach, of the same kind as "treat" described above. nice place to eat and decent prices also. It is somewhere next to eden on the road leading to besant nagar bus stand.

Dhaba Express at Bessie beach - nice place. dint like the ambi though. food is ok.

The food court there - a host of restaurants are there. food quality and quantity and pricing depends on which counter you buy from. not advisable for thin wallets

Pupil - the burger place on bessie beach. i dint like the ambi or the burger. slaish over priced also. Cozee which existed at this place earlier, was much better.

Gangotree - arguably best chat place in the city. the main outlet is opposite to stella maris. they have other outlets also. amazing chat and really worth the money you pay. must visit place.

Mathura - One of the few restaurants in the city to have a Jain menu (for those who dont like onions and garlic in their food, this place is heaven). A surprisingly posh and fully vegetarian restaurant of the old guard. still maintains quality and standards. decent pricings also. good spread of food. Located on Mount road, near anna road post office, in the second floor of tarapore towers. I love the place for their jain menu.

Cedars - this mediterranian restaurant in kotturpuram serves amazing food. their pizzas are thinner than dosas. the food is good. the variety is nice also. their lebonese coffee is worth a try. priced a little high. they have buffets also.

Cornocopia - another foreign food restaurant. its on cenatoph road. the menu is nice. the half salad they serve fills you to the brim and yet costs only 50 bucks. and what more, The bread and butter are unlimited.

Suryas - it is in alwarpet. right under the bridge. not bad either in food or pricing

Sangeethas - amazing place in gandhi nagar adyar. awesome pricing. quite crowded thanks to the quality and service. want more perks, iit students get a 7% discount on bills more than 200 bucks at the first and second floors.

Sangeethas at RA Puram - Over priced. food is not bad.

Sangeethas at Triplicane - two outlets. both are awesome.

Benjarong - thai restaurant. good food. make sure you load your wallet and take all your credit cards.

Ratna Cafe - the original triplicane ratna cafe is still known for its idli-sambar. Old men who take morning walks at marina beach, come here for their morning tiffin with huge bowls from home, coz the bowls in which they serve at the hotel are a little smaller. The waiter serves two idlis and fills the bowl with sambar, and also serves chilli powder with ghee along. you can get any number of re-fillings of the sambar. Other southie grub are amazing also. decent pricings as well. For lunch and dinner, you get a full square south indian meal served on plantain leaves, for something like 30 bucks.

The franchised new outlets arent that good though. the T Nagar and Vels outlets have the same taste, however the waiter looks at you as if you are an alien when u ask for a second filling of sambar. The prices are a little high. I am told the newer outlets are quite expensive.

Rain tree - On St. Marys road, this hotel's 'rainbow' restaurant serves a nice buffet. food is good. They also have a roof top restauant.

Bajji shop below shakes - one of the well known places for tasty and hot bajjis and bondas and samosas and cutlets. eternally crowded in the evenings. dont go here, if u are a hygiene freak.

Karpagambal mess - The most famous place in Mylapore. Right on the east mada street. Amazing southie food. a bit appreciated pricing. almost home made food served in plantain leaves.

Vasantha Mami shop - officially called some murugan caterers or something. its on a bye-lane opposite to karpagambal mess. self serving counter like place. totally home grub. rock bottom prices.

Royar's cafe - its some total home only. open only from 7 am to 9 am and 4 pm to 6 pm. closed on wednesdays. inside some smallest of the smallest of the smallest bye-lanes off some road on kutcheri road. grub is amazing. prices are very very affordable as well.

Geetha Cafe - This is a restaurant in the middle of pondy bazaar. one of the restaurants of old guard. still retains the old charm. the food is amazing. and ambi is also ok. prices are decent as well.

Madras Bhel - This is some chat bhandar off pondy bazzar. totally tam-ised chat. tastes very nice though. prices are quite ok as well.

Welcome Srinivasa - This is a restaurant in vels. slaisha some distance from ncc gate. grub is nothing great, not bad either. prices are ok also.

Chacha chachi - This is a place in vels again. 35 bucks buffet. eat anything u want. its actually a house in some bye-lane.

Sandeepa - Went here by chance. They have an outlet in G N Chetty road and another on TTK Road. very decent grub and affordable prices.

Sukh nivas - at luz signal. typical mylapore restaurant. i love their rava kichadis.

sukh sagar - its in anna nagar. opposite to the ayyappan temple. awesome food.

ramprasad - on LB Road, right at the signal where u turn for bessie. very decent food and affordable also.

Ganesh hotspot - its on the kutti road which goes into gandhi nagar at adyar signal. self serving place. coffee is awesome. other stuff are not bad either. slaisha over priced for its level.

dhaba @ mangaldeep - usual dhaba. nice grub. decent prices.

Abirami - on LB road. loved their pudina parathas. decent prices also.

Palimar - another chain of restaurants. the outlet i ate was a little spicy. otherwise a very fair place.

aiwo - its a health food place. however no foodie would feel bad. amazing ambi and the 200 bucks conveyor meal rocks. you can never expect to be thulping so much and still not feel full. what more, they serve free juice and tofu. defly a place to check out.

barista - typical coffee shop.

sandhya - its in Kilpauk Garden Road. Amazing grub though. i loved their bombay thali for lunch. it was huge in quantity yet 35 bucks. nice food.

dasprakash - very nice place. on Ponamallee High Road. Food is good. Prices are matching.

carnival - its the revolving restaurant of madras. food isnt all that great. can visit for the novelty only... (closed now i guess)

redE - they have quite a few outlets. i have been to the chetpet place. amazing food and ambi. quite high on pricing. paradise for non veggies

main land china - the chinese restaurant of Quality Inn Aruna on Sterling road. The food and ambi are excellent. i loved their starters a lot. prices are matching... they serve booze also.

raj bhavan - at sterling road signal. very decent southie place. nice good and affordable prices. (they keep changing the way they spell the name of the restaurant.)

Wangs - in Kasturba nagar. amazing food. loved the ambi more. pretty filling and worth the money. nice place.

sakthi fast foods - another place in vels. pretty low end place. food isnt bad though.

Mathsya - its in egmore. pretty famous place in that area. awesome grub. their special rice and soup, changes everyday. nice place.

i started this for a sequel for aafi's 2 part writing on filter copy. however, gave up eventually. started writing on 27th september. eventually posting on 30th november.

PS: i have no enthu to check for grammar or edit anything. just read and adjust for the problems with reading. for directions to any of these places, mail me.

some foot notes:
ambi == ambience
tam == tamil
grub == food
vels == velachery
tarams == taramani
slaisha == slightly
booze == of coz, it means alcohol
aafi == Aaftab. some alumnus of iitm
filter copy == some iitm campus publication.

The Pleasure is mine...

2007-10-01T14:38:00.000+05:30

After a faithful relationship, just short of 7 years, we are forced to separate.

There was nothing which ever went wrong between us. I knew that I was exploiting her from the first day to the last day and she knew she was exploited. Yet, i never bothered and she never complained.

Almost everyday, i would push to the limits at least once, if not many times, and she has always obliged and delivered the best she could. We had widely traveled together and even done some otherwise scary stuff rather frequently. Yet, she was always with me. Many of our endeavours have been at unholy hours, at obscure places and even damaging, still she was always with me.

It was not that i dint take care of her. I did. In fact, i was more particular about her wellness than anybody else would. I never hesitated to get something she wanted. We did have a good relationship and nice rhythm working. I always the relationship would never end and i could have her for myself forever.

Like all good things, this also comes to an end. And this is sudden. In fact, very sudden. Probably an over night decision, about with both of us had no clue, nor did we think about it. It was not our decision either. It was just told to us. Though we could have resisted, we dint. Did we see it coming, in our inner minds? Did we not like each other? Or did we just not have the courage to stop the decision?

Well, the answer to these questions are better left not thought about.

However, the bottomline is that, my companion for 7 years is not going to be with me anymore.

And now, the pleasure is mine.

First letter of your name.

2007-09-10T21:02:00.000+05:30

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the questions. They must be real places, names, things . . . nothing made up! If you can’t think of anything, skip it. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question. If your name happens to start with the same letter as mine, sorry, but you can’t use my answers!

Famous Singer - Balasubramanian SP

Four letter word - Ball

Street - Bandi Venkatesa Naicken Street

Color - Black (What else could it be?)

Gifts/Presents - Basket

Vehicle - BMW

Things in a Souvenir Shop - Bowl

Boy’s Name - Balaji

Girl’s Name - Bharathi

Movie Title - Bale Pandia

Drink - Bovonto

Occupation - Barber

Celebrity - Barbara Streisand (nobody else coming to my mind, right now!)

Magazine - Bhagya

U. S. City - Buffalo (Now, isn't there a city by that name?)

Pro Sports - Bayern Munchen

Fruit - Banana

Reason for Being Late for Work - Bad Weather

Something You Throw Away - Banana Peel

Things you Shout - B#@#% @$%D (something to do with some illegal relationships and incest, so let me not spell it actually. and yes, this is only thing that starts with 'B' and i can think off right now)

Cartoon Character - Bugs Bunny (of course!)

not tagging anybody

PS: another apology of a post.

PPS: the post which has given me maximum problems with formatting and posting. since the day it was made as the first draft, even html refuses to work...

2007-09-06T12:27:00.000+05:30

my blog is completing 3 yrs of existance today.

how useless have i been to my blog writing nothing useful for quite a long time...

rate my life

2007-09-05T21:32:00.001+05:30

71.7/100RateMyLife.net - Find out if you suck at life

Another Ad

2007-08-11T12:41:00.000+05:30

This is presently the 4th month of most indian calenders. It is called 'ADi' in tamil. i dont know what other calenders refer to it.

It is considered an auspicious month of doing religious rites, worshipping the Divine Goddess in all her forms. Most temples of the Devi, have month long festivals going on. Also, Saints of Hindu Religious Mutts go on special poojas. However, it is not considered good for doing a wedding or house warming or even changing a rented house and all such activities.

It is also the month when almost every shop in the city, comes up with discounts ranging from 5% to even 70% by some people. Also, they shower tons of free gifts on all customers. Already low-cost shops, also reduce the price. There are even beliefs that some of these shops might pay you some money, if u take some of their commodities.

It is also quite understandable that these shops get rid of all the old stock they have stuck in their godowns for ages.

Be that all as it may, Why am i making all this noise on my blog now? why would any reader of the blog have interests in knowing all this? what on earth is the connection between the title and the post?

Yesterday wasnt a particularly nice day. I had to spend one hour trying to cross a, otherwise empty free moving, 3 km stretch, right outside our campus. Thanks to the Chief Minister laying the foundation to some part elsewhere in the city, all the city's traffic was here on this road.

Well, i m not testing ur patience anymore. i can see you just waiting to hit me.

At the end of this stretch, is a set a billboards. One of these boards was displaying the ad of a Popular Cloth Store in the city. I was particularly interested to have a look, coz it the place we do our shopping at home. And we have always found it a very nice place and having a collection which suits our tastes.

Now, coming to the ad. This is what it says.

kaNNAl kANbadu poi
kAdhAl kETpadu poi
thIra visArippadu mei

thodarndhu 52 ANDugaLAga ADi thaLLupaDiyinRi

Kumaran Silks
www.kumaransilks.com

which roughly translates into

dont believe what u see
dont believe what u hear
belive only after through examination

Since 52 years, without aadi discounts.

Kumaran Silks
www.kumaransilks.com

I have one more reason to visit the shop now. The courage and audacity of the shop owners is much commendable. While, every other competitor around is making tall claims of gifting the moon with a spoon, here is a shop which proudly says that they dont give any discounts.

The quality of the goods they sell and the crowds and the always full car parking area, stand testimony to the shop.

PS: This, is a post, i have written for my blog after quite a while. so, there might be migrations in style and also, the inherent lack of grammar would be lot more apparent.

an ad.

2007-07-16T13:30:00.000+05:30

AD
BC

two letters can define an era..

this is an ad Deccan Chronicle has come up with. real nice one...

number of hits

2007-07-06T16:35:00.000+05:30

in the past one year, that is from 5th july 06 to 6th july 07, the visitor statistics is below...

The above map depicts: 2,047 visits from 5 Jul 2006 to 6 Jul 2007

i m quite happy for the number of ppl who have visited my blog.

for more fundaes, visit www.clustrmaps.com

The Old Highway

2007-06-28T22:32:00.000+05:30

From what i remember out of some casual reading thro' Madras Miscellany of The Hindu, by Historian S Muthaiah, i am to believe that one of the old highways of the Madras Presidency is the road which went all the way from the entrance of the Government Estate, (which was called the Governor's retreat then) towards south, thus connecting Triplicane and further down, to the Santhome Palace and the Basilica and to Mylapore. (Triplicane and Mylapore were the first sub-urbs of Chennai-pattanam - They are in the heart of Greater Chennai now)

This road still exists, though far from being a high way.

The road as such begins as the Triplicane High Road and then continues thro' Triplicane as Dr. Natesan Road, to reach Mylapore, where it is called Bazaar road.

The road is rather narrow for today's city space and has changed enough to have no remains of those early days of its existance. It must have been the path for every other Britisher to go to the Santhome Basilica and also for all those people who lived in sub urban parts to go to the city.

Now, why am i worried about this road? I use some parts of this road, to reach IIT campus from home, on most days. Every time i travel on it, i m reminded of its historical importance...

Eight Random Paths to Narcissim

2007-06-23T09:32:00.000+05:30

Lakshmi dared me to disclose eight random facts about myself. So here goes:

1. I have got both my toe nails removed quite a few times, while in school.
2. One day at our school ground, while trying to bowl a ball, i tripped and fell down. I was left with a torn muscle in my left forearm. That was the last time i played or watch Cricket.
3. I think I sing decently in solitude only. Have never made any impression with public singing. The number of times, i have cupped in public is too many to keep track.
4. I have a liking towards talk shows on TV.
5. I was a regular viewer of soaps like Shanti and Swabhimaan and even, the kyunki sans bhi kabhi bahu thi, till a few years ago. Always liked Friends.
6. I had the opportunity to play tampura for Sri Vijay Siva for a concert, when he came to our school to sing for Spic Macay. However, i couldnt play the full concert because, i was tensed and dint strum the strings properly. The tampura went out off sruti and hence, i left stage.
7. I like going on long rides on my moped in lonely roads. So much so that, i quite frequently go on such rides quite late in the night, into the city roads, which are empty only during those hours.
8. My english Grammar is rather weak. But i never accept it.

Here are my eight, of course, they need not take it up if they have other more pressing commitments :

1. Shankar Prasad at The Daily Chime
2. Kesavan, the modest genius
3. Karthik's Pertinent Observations
4. Ashish on Mozzarella
5. Gayatri at Paint my note!
6. Mohan whenever he is vetti
7. Amrit at vatsap?
8. Vinay when he psyches less

Here are the rules:

1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

does my blog own me?

2007-06-05T16:50:00.000+05:30

12.5 %

My weblog owns 12.5 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

this is quite high, considering my blog updating frequency.

englipees

2007-05-30T10:08:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I had to go and book some hotel room for a friend's friend who is visiting the city. So, this friend and I went around adyar area looking for a hotel...

We reached this place which had name board for two different names put one below the other and went in. we inspected the room and booked a room for the visitor and this is what the receptionist noted down in his diary.

Mr XYZ - some-blah-pur boking one doble nont ac room. 30-5-07. arivel-6 am. far two dais.

couldnt help feeling bad for the level of education our country is imparting to its citizens.

The Long Loud Call

2007-05-24T23:29:00.001+05:30

This post is a dedication to those 4 or 5 people whom i usually address with a Long Loud Call. However far they are, across roads, across wings, across visible distance, i always endup addressing the following people with a Long Loud Call.

Mind you, i mean, a real Long and Loud Call...

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal (Baal of Godav 5th wing) who was first in my memory, whom i would address with a LLC

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppppppppppppppp (EP for Ganga 7th wing and later Narmad 2nd Wing) we still call each other this way on chat.

BhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaJuuuuuuuuuuuu (Sarayu 1st wing, then Narmad 1st wing and now in 6th wing) Much unlike the others, this guy doesnt reply with a LLC

Cuuuuuuuuuuppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr (godav 10th wing) we also share a telepathic hug along with the call. Though we would never hug each other in real.

The last, a surprise to those who know me too well.
Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaak (not all that often as u guys would think... very very rarely. the number of times i run away seeing him is usually quite high. if all i happen to bump into him, then i m forced to give the LLC to radiate the pain.)

புடவை பார்த்தல்

2007-05-23T10:35:00.000+05:30

புடவை பார்த்தல் என்பது திருமண வைபவங்களில் ஒரு முக்கியமான சடங்கு ஆகும். திருமண வீட்டார் தனது உற்றார் உறவினர்களுக்கு வாங்கி வைத்திருக்கும் புடவைகளை பார்த்து ஆராய்ந்து அங்கலாய்த்துக் கொள்வது, நம் வீட்டு பெண்களின் ஒரு முக்கியமான வேலை ஆகும்.

எனது புடவையில் ஜரிகை குறைச்சல்
எனது புடவையின் ஜரிகை design நன்றாக இல்லை
எனது புடவை நிறம் பளிச்சென்று இல்லை
இதே நிறத்தில் புடவை வாங்கிவிட்டார்களே, இந்த நிறத்தில் என்னிடம் வேறு இரண்டு புடவைகள் இருக்கிறதே
அவள் புடவை தான் நன்றாக இருக்கிறது
இன்னும் கொஞ்சம் புட்டா இருந்திருக்கலாம்
எனக்கு மேல்தாரி புடவை வாங்கிருக்கலாம்
நான் ஒரே அத்தை, எனக்கு வைர ஊசி புடவை வாங்கித் தந்திருக்கக் கூடாதா.

என பலவாறான குறைகளை (ஒன்றிரண்டு நிறைகளையும்) பரிமாறிக் கொள்வது நம் வீட்டு பெண்களின் உரிமை ஆகும்.

நிற்க, பெண் வீட்டார் மாப்பிள்ளை வீட்டு பெண்டிரை அழைத்து தாங்கள் திருமணத்திற்கு வாங்கி வைத்துள்ள புடவைகளையெல்லாம் காட்ட வேண்டியது மிக மிக முக்கியமான ஒன்றாகும். அப்படி காட்டும்போது மாப்பிள்ளை வீட்டாருக்கு பிடிக்காத புடவைகளை இரவோடு இரவாக மாற்றியும் விட வேண்டும். இது நடவாத பக்ஷத்தில் திருமணம் நின்றும் விடலாம்.

The importance of learning music from the basics

2007-05-15T16:18:00.000+05:30

A friend of mine, posted on a general forum about how he went to music classes and dint like them because they taught him the beginners lessons, which are mostly the varisais and he said he would have appreciated probably, if they had taught him a certain piece which he had listened to quite a few times. I see this as the problem of people listening to a lot and start learning late. I dont say that listening to music is wrong and everybody should first learn and then listen. I wouldnt dare to make such statements. However, when u go to learn, you should realise that the learning and listening are two different cups of coffee and one shouldnt mix them up.

I have always strongly believed in the fact that the basics are very important. As meena says, one needs to go thro' the rigorous basics just to be able to not only sing intricate stuff but also to appreciate them, when somebody is doing it on stage.

When one goes to listen at a concert, it is not enough if u get the ragam and composer of the piece being presented. Thats only the beginning. Many a rasika, think identifying these two is the end of the game. For heaven's sake, i wish they understand that, it all begins there. After identifying the rAgam, to be able to appreciate each svaram and each phrase and each usage and to absorb it all, u need to be having a sharp and rigorous trained mind. The saraLi, the jaNTai, the alankArams, the gItams, the varNams, well they are all very important and add a lot to the way one appreciates music and hence enjoy more.

There are some music schools, which start with short and simple songs and later on come to the basics and teach some simple songs along with the basic stuff. There are some supporting theories to such practices also, which say that the interest of the learner is kept alive this way. However, these methodologies claim keep the interest alive but have enough arguements going against them.

I was trained in the traditional way. Varisais for an year. gItams and then varNams. about 25 of them. Then with 'mahA gaNapatim' and 'girirAja sutA' and slowly. It was only after about 50 kritis, did my teacher venture to teach me a vilamba kAla, reNDu kaLai piece. The first one she took up was 'jagadIsvari' in mOhanam. It was not till about 100 pieces did she let me learn pieces like 'sarOja daLa nEtri' or 'EtavunarA' or 'enduku peddalavalE' while pieces like 'mEru samAna', 'akshaya linga vibhO' and 'tyAgarAjAya namastE' came much later. She still is not confident to teach me 'sri subramanayaya namastE' or 'kAmAkshi anudinamunu maravakanE'

In today's fast world, people wish to get things done as soon as they can. Many a parent, while admitting their kid to a music class, dream that their kid would start performing on stage in 2 years and become a star performer in say 5 years or so and finish learning music by then. Such attitudes make life miserable for a teacher who find its it difficult to make the parents believe that such fast paced stuff are not easy. The kids get juggled up and end up loosing interest in music anyway.

Music, still being a fashionable thing to learn and/or perform, has such people who do things without knowing what they loose and what they end up doing to the art of music on the whole. Well, its all part of evolution and one man's shouting on his personal page would do nothing to it. That wouldnt stop him from shouting...

PS: this was written primarily for my music blog. Later felt, it might find some readers here as well, hence copied to this page also.

The Cousin

2007-05-08T00:14:00.001+05:30

My mom and dad were very keenly discussing things about their cousins and their families and things about what all they did together while they were kids. The ways they enjoyed their vacation together at some grand parents' or uncle's place in some village in the interior parts of Tamil Nadu.

While silently watching them busy at such an interesting discussion, My mind had the spinning wheel and going back in time. I have indeed spent time and vacations with cousins and at villages and at my grand parents's place and my great grand parents' place. Villages where buses never came. One had to travel by bullock driven carts to reach there. The typical village household.

I have played with them all kinds of games, lived in villages; do know some things about some cousins who are approximately of my age. However, of younger cousins is much less and by observation one feels that the gap between the cousins keep increasing with every passing year.

The cousin is a very important relationship and integral part of life. There are many things which you cannot talk to siblings and you can’t dream to be open to parents, and yet, you could tell your cousin and discuss these issues freely.

When there were joint families, there was never dearth for cousins. During vacations, one would travel to places were one would meet another set of cousins and it was all play and enjoyment. Today with the concept of nuclear families becoming inevitable, kids have only their parents to talk and socialize. The parents who work tend to not spend enough time with kids and as a result kids know more about TV and computer and video games and less about neighbours and still less about cousins. When the vacations came, gone is the era of visiting grand parents, it is the time to learn swimming, to go to guitar classes, to learn karate and do what not. And to make up for not taking their kids on long tours, parents tend to satisfy their children with trips to theme parks and cinemas. With the lifestyle changing a lot of the cultural and ethical and social bondings get broken.

The cousin would also be a penalty to this sooner than later.

Five reasons I blog

2007-04-25T14:18:00.000+05:30

thanks to the tag from Lakshmi, who now happens to be my meme-mom, i have something to write about on my blog.

Five Reason why i Blog:

When i began blogging, it was more of a daily duty to blog, check blogs and comment and all that.

I find blogging to be a vent for thoughts which i cannot otherwise express anywhere.

I started blogging on music, as i dint know what else to do to keep a record of all the concerts i attend. Starting with just lits of songs, and then short notes and then full fledged articles about conecrts i attend have been posted there.

I blog to keep a copy of all that the fellow IITians have made me write for the various campus publications.

Well, Finally, i write blogs because i wanna blog.

I tag all those who wish to get tagged.

My latest Possession

2007-04-10T21:29:00.000+05:30

Its been a week, since i got her. She insists on staying atop my lap. At least, she is named to be so!

She is my latest possession. And it is all the more a matter of pride, as i have acquired from hard earned money and not thro' irreversible loans from 'The Dad Bank'.

There are beliefs and hopes that She is gonna speed up my working capacities and also let me have all that i want, whenever and wherever i want. Hope Floats!

The City of Gardens

2007-03-21T15:00:00.000+05:30

For all those who thought, Bangalore is the only city of Gardens, here is an answer.

The following is the list of some of the Gardens in the City of Chennai (formerly called Madras)

Thottam (தோட்டம்) in tamil means a Garden.

Border Thottam
Kapali Vana Bhojana Thottam
Narayanasami Thottam
Raja Thottam

K R Vijaya Gardens
Jaishankar Gardens
Bharani Gardens
Sridevi Gardens
Sullivan gardens
Bheemasena gardems
Karpagam gardens
Rohini gardens

Underwood gardens
Rostervor gardens

Kilpauk garden

This are just off the cuff. the list can and will grow.

I must also add that i have not added the Gardens which have some amount of greenery left in them.

Ideal F1 Track

2007-03-08T23:52:00.000+05:30

Being an ardent fan of one of the costliest sports in the world, Formula One Auto Racing, i have always been mesmerised by the talks and discussions about an indian circuit and the possiblities of India finding a place in the F1 calendar.

Like every other true fan of this sport, I cant help but admire Monte Carlo. However that doesnt stop one having hopes of watching (atleast) one race in Home Country itself.

When one fantasises and visualises and designs (of course, not in real) possible ideal circuits which would fit the bill, one has always wondered as to why cant iitm roads delhi and bonn avenues be used? The form a nice round circuit with enough twists and turns and can easily be upgraded and all. People can stand all over the country side to watch.

Receiving 7 Boeing aircrafts within 20 min of each others is not all that big a problem either. Afterall, the Madras Airport can be upgraded.

ஆனை வாங்கறவன் அங்குசம் வாங்க முடியதா? If one buys an elephant, cant one buy a stick?

அங்குசம் வாங்கினா ஆனையும் வாங்கித்தான் ஆகணும். If one buys the stick, one has to buy the Elephant as well.

எது ஆனை எது அங்குசம் என்பதை படிப்பவரது ஏஷியத்திற்க்கு விட்டு விடுகிறோம்! which is the stick and which is the elephant is left to the readers' perspective.

All said and done, You couldnt expect IITM authorities to be more obliging to this idea, they have already installed not just one, but 4 chicanes thro' this circuit.

the bed bug that i am

2007-03-06T11:43:00.001+05:30

காலை உணவு

2007-03-03T00:30:00.000+05:30

இன்று காலை உணவுக்காக சென்ற பொழுது தட்டில் இடப்பட்டதை கண்ட உடன் பெண் பார்க்கும் படலம் தான் நினைவுக்கு வந்தது.

ரவா கேசரியும் உருளைக்கிழங்கு போண்டாவும் ஒரு சேர பார்த்தால் வேறு என்ன நினைக்கத் தோன்றும்? முன் அனுபவத்தில் எழுதுவதாக நினைத்துக்கொள்ள வேண்டாம். திரைப்படங்களில் இருந்து கொண்ட பல விஷயங்களில் இதுவும் ஒன்று.

ஒரு கரண்டி கேசரியும், இரண்டு போண்டாக்களும் தின்றுவிட்டு 4-5 மணி நேரங்கள் வகுப்புகளில் கவனத்துடன் உட்கார்ந்திருக்க முடியும் என்று எப்படி தான் இவர்களுக்கு தோன்றியதோ? காலை உணவுக்கு செல்வதே கொஞ்சம் அபூர்வம் தான், இதில் இப்படியெல்லாம் வேறு செய்தார்களென்றால், என்ன செய்வது?

இப்படி வாராவாரம் டிப்பனை மட்டும் கொடுத்துக் கொண்டு வந்தால் பெண்ணை எப்பொழுது காட்டுவார்களாம்?

சொஜ்ஜியும், போண்டாவும் கொடுத்தால் மட்டும் பொதுமா? கூட தேங்காய் சட்னி இருந்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும். தக்காளி சாஸ்(tomato sauce) சகிக்கவில்லை...

caught my attention.

2007-02-27T15:41:00.000+05:30

as i was rushing out of the bathroom, after my usual bath, this sight caught me.

a spider with one half black in colour and the other half, red, was balancing itself on just one of its 8 legs.

The way it walked was real different as well. It kept doing a zig-zag walk like one of those sine waves. and whenever it stood, it stood on just one leg.

now, is it a property of all spiders or was this one injured or something.

like most other occasions google or wikipedia wasnt of much help on these issues.

an excuse of a post

2007-02-12T23:07:00.000+05:30

for some reason, i have a feeling that i havent really written anything on my blog in sometime now. this feeling has been creeping up in my mind for weeks now actually. i dont know why this is happening but i have been feeling that i have completely neglected the existance of my blog for quite a long time. however i dont know it is true or just a feeling i have acquired.

regular readers of this blog page would be able to help me if its a correct feeling or just an illusion.

on a update, there is atleast one idea for a post, if not two. and i shifted from the old blogger to new blogger and i aint a old skool member at flickr anymore.

by george, what an excuse of a post is this?

Saarang 2007

2007-02-02T21:43:00.001+05:30

And another edition of the Mother of all culfest just got over. while the festivities were rather toned down compared to that of yesteryears, there essentialities did not loose out.

The main turn-off was the unavailability of the Central Lecture Theatre. It started leaking during the november rains and had to be completely closed for renovation. At the present state of affairs we hope to see back in action only by next semester.

With all the usual hue and cry and with things getting done till the 12th and 13th hour saarang kicked off with a low profile inauguration as all previous years. The first evening had the band Global Rhythms who i am told began with a varNam and then a tillAna and then went to with the show to finish with 'chayya chayya' and 'shakalaka baby'.

All the pro-shows were low key and were dissappointing at times. The events werent as usual. Some of them were boring while others were obscure or tangential to the objective of the event. Some of them were however good and were conducted witht he usual vigour.

On the whole, this saarang was probably one which could have done better in all fronts.

happy and sad.

2007-01-22T10:59:00.000+05:30

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=813

looks like grad students all over, face similar problems...

A much needed trip...

2007-01-04T15:29:00.000+05:30

After what could be ages, i had an opportunity to go out of madras on a week-long tour. Though predominantly academic, it was indeed a nice one to enjoy as a break from routine.

Having left on a hot friday noon, it was a rather eventless train journey of about a day. There was this mallu couple, who were all over each other all thro' the journey. And then a couple of guys, from some where in madras, going to write some exam in b'bay, and other guys, i dont remember. I reach pune and find my way to the venue of the conference, hoping to be able to check into my accommodation and find some rest. We are greeted with a message that the bookings are available only from the night and we have to spend the day with some others, in a flat for the time being. I land up there with the gumbal which came on the train and after freshening, meet up with Shamanth, good old friend. Choice of company for the day, did matter a lot.

We start off on his bike for a quick and nice lunch of parattas and hit the Bombay - Pune highway. It is an awesome road to drive and/or ride one. The traffic being a bit on the heavier side, we had to reduce talking and hence quite a lot seeing until we got out of the Pune/Pimpri-Chinchwad metro. The country side on the warm saturday afternoon was a pleasure to watch. He drove me thro' the road which seems to have been a well maintained one, prolly too new to get tampered with yet. The plan was to drive to Lonavala and get back by the evening. We did accomplish that. Some of the places on the road did make us get off the bike and take stroll along or feel bad about not getting a camera along. The ups and downs and the long stretches of road with mountainous terrain on both sides was good to watch.

The mountain-top view of Kamshet Village and the railway line the road and the river running parallel still lingers in the mind, i must go back to that place and take a picture. We did walk along the railway line for some distance, watched a couple of trains pass from the top of the hill, and one other speeding express while just standing right next to the railway line. Getting hit by a speeding train is one particular fashion in which, i do not wish die.

The ride itself was so good that one did not feel bad for not spending a 'long' time at Lonavala. We just visited one lake, whose name never got registered. Got back just in time to find that we had to check-in at shikshak bhavan and take care of dinner ourselves. So we decided to eat and then he would drop me off, just that my luggage was too heavy to go around carrying on a bike. We did however go to a restaurant, which arguably served the best tomato-noodles-cream soup i have ever tasted. The sizzlers for dinner were nice, though i couldnt finish it. Got myself on an auto to reach the place, only to find that i would have to share the room with some others. it so happened that i was put up with a bunch of kannada speaking guys from dharwad, and that was in the 3rd or 4th floor of the building (*though they actually called it the second). (Aah i had to climb stairs...)

The next morning gave me time to roam around this building. To me, it was a perfect example of an ill-designed, not-maintained, building which must atleast have a good view from the road, if only it were maintained properly. For the morning, i ended up exploring some parts of the area around this building by walk. Believe me, A sunday morning walk is always refreshing. After meeting up with Shamanth for a late breakfast, at about lunch time, on his advice reached the Govt Engg College, Pune for to its Boat Club and possibly also witness a session of the BCQC. The boat club is nice place with good shade and breeze to sit alone only. If only one could find good company, it couldnt get better. The BCQC dint seem to happen anyway there, till i left, which was after spending about an hour there. Just watching the scenes and the boats.

Got back to our accommodation, and we were picked up for the conference inauguration. Like any other lecture and conference inauguration it was a strain for one to stay awake, which i actually managed to. The dinner was served there.

The next three days (Monday - Wednesday) saw the sincere man inside of me. Being a regular person to take the bus sent and attending the conference and lectures and eating the food there and all that made it impossible for me to roam around the city. (not that it had many inviting places, still i dint roam around a lot) Did learn some bit of science and made a good load of friends there.

The wednesday evening, i got chance to again invade the city. By then, we were shifted to this place called Hotel Central Park. This was in a more busy area of the city and i went around the place trying to see if i can do some real shopping, rather than the windows. However, i couldnt do much else.

The thursday morning left pune to reach bombay that afternoon. My uncle was there to pick from the station and then till saturday was just the eat-sleep cycle with some 3 movies with cousins and some more of window shopping at the malls there. I realise i am very bad at shopping. I cant ever get myself to feel that i should buy a thing. and then for the records, i left bombay on saturday evening to reach madras on sunday night. This journey will remain in my mind for sometime to come because, each other person with one berth in that coupe had a guest occupying his/her berth along. I was the only solitary reaper. Quite surprisingly, all the trains i travelled kept time and i dint lose of my belongings thro' the trip.

Ended up mailing some of the ppl i met at the conf and i m told i was prolly the only one to mail after conf. may be i m the only one who wishes to know ppl along with science while others wish to know either or neither.

huh!

2006-12-06T14:33:00.000+05:30

Thanks to firefox, which screwed up the code of the template i had while posting something last night, i have a new template in place.

comments and suggestions welcome. however, i might not change much of it.

Friday Re-View

2006-12-05T21:09:00.000+05:30

Friday Review has been a supplement of The Hindu since i know.

The history of it, dates back to the mid 80s when it was actually started as a 2 page supplement away from the main sheet. Thus detaching the culture and arts pages of the main issue. Today Friday Review consits of atleast 8 pages.

Friday Review has been The source of movie info since its inception. Anybody looking for a movie to watch over the week, would fish out the latest issue of Friday Review and look at the ads and listings.

Today, however, thanks to Metro Plus, which comes 5 days a week barring Friday and Sunday, the movie info and the listing appear daily. Friday Review still continues to carry the information on Fridays. If you decide to watch a movie on sunday, then you can check Saturday's Metro Plus or Friday's Friday Review and make a choice and go to the theatre accordingly.

This however seems to not work properly. Three sundays back, Mom and Bro decided to go to a particular movie and looked at the Friday Review and called all the theatres that were listed to find out that one of them had a different movie being screened and others had been fully booked already.

Two sundays ago, yet again, Mom and Bro decided to try seeing the same movie and actually managed to find a theatre not-so-far-from-home and dragged me along. We reach the theatre to find only find that there was different movie being screened. With no other option, we returned and when we cross checked the Friday Review and Saturday's Metro Plus, the movie was indeed listed in the theatre on both the issues. Also, a thorough review of all the ads and listings revealed that there were a lot of such wrong informations. This particular theatre's name, for example, was present in more than one ad. However, the ad of the movie which was actually being screened did not carry its name...

PS: The Family did watch the movie in yet another theater, last sunday evening.

Double Celebration

2006-11-27T23:55:00.000+05:30

Today marks a Double Celebration.

I turned a quarter century today.

and my blog has a 100 posts.

predominantly spent the day, replying to all the birthday messages. Had Breakfast at Triplicane Sangeetha's, Lunch at Gurunath and Dinner at Adyar Sangeetha's. Also, attended a lecture on Muthuswami Dikshitar Kritis on Thiruvarur in the evening. Watched a movie on comp for the night. And quiet surprisingly, nobody in my wing ever noticed my presence in the wing (not that i was there always, but still, even for the small amount of time, i was in the wing, it went un noticed)

அம்மா நான் quarter அடிச்சிட்டேன் :P

Be Indian

2006-11-20T15:27:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago, while travelling on road by my 2-wheeler. I happened to reach a signal. To the utter surprise of even the police constable in duty, everybody stopped just before the stop line as the Red Light came. As if that wasnt surprising enough, a couple of men of foreign origin, (prolly europeans) had ignored the red signal and went ahead cycling across to the other side of the road. Thankfully, there werent any vehicle crossing the signal from the side which had the Green Signal, and hence these two guys escaped unhurt and they also escaped the police personnel who were on duty.

Well, I see it as a proof for the fact that people tend to change according to where they are. When you are in Rome, be like a Roman.

By corollary, when you are in India, be Indian.

Blograph

2006-11-17T16:16:00.000+05:30

The following picture is this blog in graphical format.

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

If you want to make one for your blog, go here

Nerd Test

2006-11-16T23:04:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Arunn and Lakshmi, i took the nerd test. and this is what it said about me. quite a high score compared to what i was expecting...

Overall, you scored as follows:

24% scored higher (more nerdy), and
76% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Mid-Level Nerd. Wow, it takes a lot of hard nerdy practice to reach this level.

home without gadgets.

2006-11-03T17:21:00.000+05:30

http://www.hindu.com/yw/2006/11/03/stories/2006110300140200.htm

After yesterday's TV bashing post on my blog, today i read this article on some household which lives without a fridge.

nice to know that ppl actuaally wanna live without these gadgets. it shouldnt be impossible. just that nobody wants to be this way.

i know households which dont have TV. We ourselves dont have a washing machine at home.

today's world has more and more gadgets and less and less of physical work.

aah, another of those pointless posts which start somewhere and end else were tangentially.

to TV or not to TV?

2006-11-02T10:42:00.000+05:30

"This is her second husband and he is now seeing her first husband's third wife and hence wants to ditch her." My mom was telling me the story of some popular daily soap on TV. My dad was involved in explaining the crux of yet another one, whose story line was not much different.

Every other day, in each of these soaps, one finds a court and a group of gangsters and some family being attacked, over and over again some kind of violence and absolute murder of indian family values and ethics. And this is being portrayed in all of these productions across all channels through out the evening. Language no bar, Channel no bar, Time no bar, soaps 'bar bar'.

To add to it, these things get repeated once or twice so that viewers all around the world can watch them without any problems of inconvinient timings. And all these things have very high TRP ratings.

While my parents say that they watch all this just for the sake of entertainment and some relaxation from strenous work load at office. I dont know if such things can actually relive of tensions.

I have only known people who died of cardiac arrest, when some nail biting suspense was happening on some such TV soap.

All i could think of after seeing these serials is, what kind of attitudes will develop in the minds of kids and housewives who would watch these all day? I wouldn't be surprised if actually some ladies and kids think of such things happening in their area and actually take some genuine people for granted and feel something wrong about them.

well, verdict, i dont know. The idiot box does have some advantages, we can wish it off totally. However such things are very disturbing

RKN

2006-10-09T20:56:00.000+05:30

Today marks hundered years since the birth of somebody who made me like english fiction. The man who made me read non-textbook english. This was the man who made me like English Fiction.

It is still afresh in my mind, the first time i ventured into my school library looking for a book to read. I was in middle school and had no idea of anything called english fiction. Had however started to read some tamil fiction by then.

Cruising through the racks, the small thin book with an Indian name caught my attention. "Swami and Friends" was as indian as you could get. The name of the author was actually not unknown to me. R K Narayan was a name i had seen in some english textbook and the ever green television series, 'Malgudi Days'.

From that day onwards, I have been fascinated by this man's works. I have read many of this works and I finish them in record time. I have of course read others, but the charm with this man is something i have not felt with any of the others.

I am literally short of words to write about him. What can i write about him? Who is this somebody, who needs to fetch a dictionary for quite a few words, to write about somebody who has made millions of humans spellbound by his words?

Navarathri

2006-10-06T23:37:00.000+05:30

This festival is arguably the longest festival for the hindus. It is 9 days long. Usually starting on the new moon day, the tenth day is the day called 'Vijaya Dasami' which is suppose to be the day of victory.

In the middle of some conversation, there was question as to why is this festival celebrated? What is the significance of it?

One was told that, it is to welcome the colder months which begin after the festival and the climate change is being celebrated. Also, the climate change is a good time for the mosquitoes to bring in all kinds of epidemics and it is time to worship the goddess to keep the place safe from such spreads.

It is true that it is a festival to worship the divine mother, the goddess is worshiped in various incarnations, but, the other things are not things which have verifiable proofs. In West Bengal, this festival is celebrated as Durga Pooja and in Karnataka as Dussera.

To me, we do celebrate navarathri at home with what is called the 'kolu'. This is a unique arrangement of dolls in the drawing room. Usually some old boxes and tables and other such objects are brought together and arranged to form a staircase like arrangement in the drawing room or some other convenient place. The number of steps has to be necessarily odd. On which, we usually spread some coloured cloths and then arrange dolls of gods and goddesses and others in different forms made from a variety of substances.

The dolls can be those of gods, goddesses and other divine people and objects. Of men and women depicting various acts of day-to-day life. Some people also decorate their kolu with statues of national leaders amongst others.

Creativity that is hidden in each person at home is brought out during this festival. The arrangements of the kolu and other decorations and then making more stuff, like parks, zoos, making rangolis from flour or by sticking rice or a plate and filling it with colour powder. Having different kinds of lamps and wall hangings from all over and even serial lights is the order of the day.

People who are initiated to it, do 'Sri Vidhya' pooja everyday during the 9 days. Others perform normal pooja and in the evening the kids are dressed up with different ways. Like a fancy dress competition, each evening, kids at home are dressed up in different costumes and they take pride in going around and showing off to their peers. The good part which is the food part is also there. Sundal (baked cereals with salt and garnished) is made every evening and distributed to everybody who comes. This festival is also an opportunity for the womenfolk to socialise. This was essential in the yesteryears when the ladies were usually never seen outside the house.

The 9th day of the festival is the saraswathi pooja, which is a pooja to goddess saraswathi, the goddess of knowledge. This day, all the books and other study equipment and even other tools are all worshiped as a form of the goddess herself. The 10th day is the vijayadasami which is considered an auspicious day to start learning any new thing. As it is considered the day of victory, it is believed that things started on the day would be victorious always. Young kids are put in school on Vijayadasami day. It is also our version of Teacher's day, when we go and seek blessings from all our teachers.

This year's navarathri got over 4 days ago. And as usual i had to go and sing at quite a few friends' places.

Music Tag

2006-09-27T11:54:00.001+05:30

I was tagged by Lakshmi on the following:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your Live Journal/blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Something i wouldnt resist doing.

1. RTP - nATTakuranji - T R Subramanian
the sAhityam goes as 'ninaippOm maNi mOzhi vazhi naDappOm. mahAtmA gAndiyai'

2. srI kamalAmbhikAyAh param nahi rE - bhairavi
the navAvarNa kriti of today. 5th day of navarAtiri

3. ambA nIlAyadAkshI - nIlAmbari
yesterday afternoon, Sankaran Namboodri sang it on Radio. The TNS version is always on my mind.

4. ETi janma midi hA - varALi
The KVN and Ramnad Krishnan versions are my all time favourites

5. aDukArAduni galku nApai - manOranjani
Another of my current favourites. Namagiripettai Krishnan on his nAdasvaram just creates the effect that keeps me mesmerised.

6. vEnkaTa saila vihArA - hamIrkalyANi
seeing Mysore Duraiswamy Iyengar's name on the blog which tagged me reminds me of his rendition of the song. i was humming hamIrkalyAni this morning and did what i usually do, went into bEhAg.

7. srI kamalAmbAh jayati - Ahiri
another of my all time favourties.

not tagging anybody in particular. anybody who wishes to, can go ahead and write this tag.

Ideal Diet

2006-09-19T23:25:00.000+05:30

The following is something a Dietician suggests as an ideal diet suited for the average south indian family. As recollected by my mom after watching a show.

Morning 6 AM - Coffee or Tea or many MILK based drink. about 200 mL

Breakfast between 8 AM and 9 AM
Any indian tiffin item. Idli or Dosa or Upma or Pongal with side dishes like sambar and chutney. To avoid noodles, corn flakes, sauce etc.

Quantity: As much to fill your stomach. Do Not Eat more than what you can fill your stomach with.

11 AM some kind of fresh fruit juice, with enough amount of sugar. about 200 mL again.

LUNCH 12:30 pm to 1:30 PM
A Good Indian Meal. Rice, Sambar, Rasam, Butter Milk, Vegetables, Chapati/Puri. To eat equal amount of Vegetables as Rice and Wheat stuff.

Quantity: As much to fill your stomach. Do Not Eat more than what you can fill your stomach with.

4 PM a Fruit or salad or a cup of boiled pulses (sundal like stuff)

6 PM any milk based drink about 200 mL

Dinner 7:30 PM to 8 PM
Same as Breakfast or Lunch.

NIGHT 10 PM One serving of Butter Milk with salt and other seasoning. about 200 mL

This post is a sequel one of my earlier posts.
Heavy Weight Champion

The doctor apparently claimed that if one could follow this diet meticulously and do enought routine physical work, one can keep the waist size in control. Also, according to the doctor, the key issue is to avoid exotic food. Just because one has access to it, it is not good to thulp a generous serving of Spl Mysore Pak or Thirunelveli Halwa.

One only hopes to stick to it, to the extent possible. The one thing i can definitely not follow is "Sleep atleast by 10:30 PM and wake up by 6 AM"

எருமை மாடு - Buffalo

2006-09-16T15:51:00.000+05:30

சென்ற வாரத்தில் ஒரு நாள் மாலை அவசரமாக நம் ஐ ஐ டி வளாகத்திலிருந்து வெளியே போய்க்கொண்டிருந்தேன். வண்டியில் நான் வாயிலை கடக்கையில் சில எருமை மாடுகள் உள்ளே வந்து கொண்டிருந்தன. காவலர்கள் அவற்றை விரட்டியடித்துக் கொண்டிருந்தனர். ஆஹா, இவற்றை பார்த்து எவ்வளவு நாட்களாயிற்று. நேற்று போல தான் உள்ளது, ஆனால் வாழ்க்கை எவ்வளவு மாறிவிட்டது. எங்கே அந்த ஆனந்த நாட்கள் ஏன்றெல்லாம் தோண்றியது. பள்ளி நாட்களில், வீட்டு வாசலில் எத்தனை எத்தனை எருமைகளையும் பசுக்களையும் விரட்டி விளையாடியுள்ளேன். இப்போது இவற்றைப் பார்ப்பதே அரிதாகிவிட்டதே. திருவல்லிக்கேணியிலாவது இன்னமும் இவை இருக்கின்றனவோ இல்லையோ? யார் கண்டார்கள். நான் அந்த பகுதிகளிலும் பார்த்து பல நாட்கள் ஆகி விட்டது.

இப்போதெல்லாம் எருமை மாடு என்று திட்டும் போது மட்டும் தான் இவற்றின் ஞாபகம் வருகிறது.

For those of you who cant get the fonts right or cant read and understand tamil, here is rough translation:

One of the evenings last week, i was speeding on my moped and noticed a few buffaloes being chased out of our campus out gate by the security guards. Just looking at them, made me feel nostalgic of those days when i could chase a number of them on the streets. I dont see them anywhere these days. One only hopes they are still around atleast in Triplicane.

I m reminded of buffaloes only when somebody scolds me..

2006-09-06T21:16:00.000+05:30

My blog celebrates two years of existance today...

kudos to me for keeping it going...

I should also place on record my sincere acknowledgements to all those who have been visiting this page occasionally and sharing their comments on all that i have written here.

Heavy Weight Champion

2006-08-30T13:30:00.000+05:30

Yesterday morning i was sipping my coffee and reading through the newspaper when this news item struck me. A research study at Cornell University has found that people eat less if they are given smaller plates and spoons. And hence, they also reduce weight.

On the first glance when i told this to my father, he said he will start eating in a smaller plate from immediate effect. my mom recollected as to how one of her mom's uncles would eat in a small plate but heep it up so much that he would find it very difficult to mix rice with any of the gravies and also have multiple servings of each dish. and hence she concluded that such studies arent valid for the indian society.

We in the indian society have always had the tradition of lavish, yet planned meals over the years. The concept of eating in plates was brought into the system by the muslim invaders. The traditional indian way of eating food was on leaves. They were plaintain leaves, predominantly though a variety of other leaves were also used.

A good old saying on a rough translation says "one who eats one a day is a yogi (a man of mental strenght and maturity and who has attained a level beyond the material world) , one who eats twice is bhOgi (a man who is more interested in material comforts) and one who eats thrice is a rogi (a physically unfit, unhealthy man)." If one has to follow today's doctor who say eat less but at frequent intervals, then what does one call a man who eats many times a day.

All the above being random thoughts which might have some connection, my actual idea about the write-up was to find out the original research publication if possible and read through what they have surveyed. The article on the newspaper said a survey was conducted at the canteen with smaller cups being given for desserts and smaller plates for the main course. People who came back for a second serving were less and hence they all ate less and hence over time lost weight.

Though such measures at canteens might work, the quality of food is very important. If one were to think of our hostel mess as a place to study, then the quality of food has anyway brought down the size of many a person giving visible differences. And for the amount of laziness infested in most students, a second serving is just out of question unless you are dead hungry. At home however, when somebody is going to serve you the food, assuming quality of food is good, the size of the plate is going to make no difference. Even if u r full to the brim you might want to have another cup of some dessert because u cant resist.

So, how do i loose weight?

and notice this.

2006-08-29T16:23:00.000+05:30

another notice at the same hostel described the post before the last one..

'I thank all those who helped me celebrate ganesh chaturthi in the hostel.
avd
sdy
sbjd
and others and myself
- social secretary'