A Wednesday – Review

Last weekend I watched this movie. Simply, I would say it is a superb movie. It does not have those masala ingredients or zingy music formula to make it hit. In fact there are no songs at all. This movie also does not cast those frontline heroes or item girls to pull the crowd. Of course there is one item girl [J] but she has got a decent role. This is just a plain thriller that would glue you to your seat till the movie ends. Nasseruddin Shah and Anupam Kher performed the lead roles and they were brilliant. The support cast was consisting of Aamir Bashir, Jimmy Shergill and Deepal Shaw. I liked the role of Jimmy Shergill who plays ATS cop.

Caution: The next part of the text may reveal the story a little, which may act as a spoiler if you have not seen the movie. I am not going to write the complete movie review but some scenes in the movie were good and funny (to me at least) which I want to share.

1. Scene related to bollywood hero Arjun Khanna: The whole underworld call ends up to a crank call by local guys.
2. Scene related to Electric Baba: This is another sequence where director introduced Deepal Shaw as a news reporter. Here she is covering a person who is alive even after accidentally getting an electric shock for 15 minutes! The questions asked are “ How are you feeling now and how you were feeling at during the shock”!! Now days some of our new channels have become full time comedy channels.
3. Scene related to Taxi driver and Traffic police: Here Aamir Bashir interrupts the traffic police who is asking money from a Taxi driver as penalty. He finds that police has taken already Rs20. Now Aamir asks the police to return the money with extra 20 rupees from his pocket.
4. Scene related to Credit card call: There is pin drop silence in the investigation room and everybody is waiting for the call from the Terrorist. They get a call, but from some credit card sales person. This shows that even police commissioners are also not spared from these telemarketing companies!
5. Scene related to young hacker: Here police hires a hacker to crack the location and identity of the caller. When Anupam Kher asks the qualification of the hacker, the hacker tells with lot pride that he is college drop out by choice. In the later scenes it is shown that Naseeruddin Shaw is better than this young hacker!!

Don't miss this movie. This shows the agitated feelings of a common man related to terrorism. Also shows what a common can do to eradicate the unsocial elements. Kudos to the director Neeraj Pandey and its crew.

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part IV (Kalhatti Falls and Kemmangundi)

As the previous day we had covered many places we were very tired and decided to start late. But everyone was ready only by 10.00 am. Our agenda was to cover Kalhatti falls, Kemmangundi and Hebbe falls.

From Chikmagalur, we started straight towards Lingadahalli from where we have to take a diversion is towards the falls. The road was good but there were many curves. We took a small break at the junction from where we have to take a diversion in the left direction. The road from here was again terrible. This route takes us towards Kalhattipura village.

Here is some info about the falls. Total height of the fall is around 400 ft. The fall passes through the village Kalhattipura. This is a scenic spot filled with lush greenery and huge rocks. Between two rocks a present is a beautiful small temple dedicated to Veerabhadra swamy. The water falls right in front of the temple.

I was not in a mood to take bath as the water was too cold but Dara had already planned to take a shower in the fall! After a small hesitation we all joined Dara. There is a small platform for the ease of taking a shower under the fall. It was a good natural back massage for us! We saw many people climbing to the top of the falls through the rocky route but we were happy at this place itself.

Once we were done, we started for Kemmangundi, which was 13 Kms away from here. By now it was around 2.00 pm. The road was bad again. We were told that there is a canteen in Kemmangundi, so we thought of having our lunch there. We reached kemmangundi by 3:15 pm.

As we all were hungry we proceeded towards the canteen first. We found the place crowded by too many people. The scene at counter reminded me the scene of our town cinema hall ticket counter on the first show of a Chiranjeevi’s film. There was only one option available was Rice and Sambar!! That too we had to wait for 30-40 minutes as the food was over. With no option available we paid him and booked our meal. In the mean time we roamed around the place. There were many rooms which were part of the resorts maintained by Govt. The rooms were not clean and walls were totally in dampened state. Before going for the trip we were planning to book rooms at this place. Thank God we didn’t.
Finally we got our plate of Rice and Sambar after 40 minutes. When you are hungry and there is no option for you, everything that is available seems tasty! But even at 4 pm there were many people asking for food. Canteen people should think again and make a good business in the weekends.

After food, we planned to go to Hebbe falls. Private vehicles were not allowed to go to this fall, so people have to travel by the rental jeep. It takes around 45 minutes to reach to the fall. So we all decided to drop the plan to Hebbe falls.

So we planned to check what else to see in Kemmangundi. There was a rock garden, a fall and a route to Z-Point. We thought of going to Z-point. The vehicles can only go up to a walkable distance from the Shanti Falls.

The fall was very small and there was very less water. But it was looking beautiful. We had some photo session at this place. Then we saw people coming from the Z-Point. We asked them about the distance and the condition of the route to that point. We found that it was around 1.5 kms from this place and some patch of the route was slippery. There were also leeches in this route. So they did not suggest us to go to the point, as it was getting darker also. Still we thought of going to a little distance and check the scenery.

After going around 300 meters, I was the one who started cribbing to go back for numerous reasons. Kaustubh also joined me. Raghu and Dara were in some enthu to go ahead for some more distance. Anyway we all came back from that point.

This was our last leg our trip. So we headed back to Bangalore. This time we took the route

Route: Lingadahalli->Birur->Kadur->Arsikere->Tiptur->Tumkur->Bangalore

We had dinner at a Dhaba near Kadur. The route starting from Birur itself was good. This route is approx 20kms shorter than the one we took in our onward journey through Hassan.

Finally we reached Bangalore at 2.00 am in the morning.

This was end of our short trip to surrounding places of Chikmagalur. I cherish all the moments, which I shared with my family and friends during this trip.

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part III (Mullayanagiri, Bababudan Giri, Manikyadhara)

After the Belur’s Chennakesava temple visit, we proceeded towards Chikmagalur. After reaching Chikmagalur to make the most of the time available for that day we directly moved towards Mullayanagiri (aka. Mullangiri or Mullayangiri). This peak (6317ft above MSL) is supposed to be the highest in Karnataka. The road condition from Chikmagalur to Mullayanagiri was bad. The starting stretch from Chikmagalur to a junction where we have to take a diversion to Mullayanagiri is good but right after the diversion the bad road starts. The route is full of greenery and there are number of coffee estates on the way. Then after 10 kms there is again a junction with two routes, one towards Mullayanagiri and other towards Bababudan giri/ Datta peeta. Ofcourse we took the left towards the peak. After few kilometres we stopped for some break and to enjoy the viewpoint. The view was treat to watch. It was intermittently drizzling so whole atmosphere was enjoyable. After taking a small break we again started. Within few minutes we were at the top.

From this place one can see the beautiful green valleys through the clouds. There was also some fog, which made it more enjoyable. Till this point only vehicles can reach, there are some small hilltop points, which you have to climb yourself to view better view of the valley.

Through the fog we could see a hilltop to which there is step way. We could see people climbing up and down. Thanks to my optimistic friend Dara who motivated me to climb to the top. It took us approximately 15 minutes from down to the top. From wherever we see it looked like a viewpoint to us. I thoroughly enjoyed this small hike with my friends.

On the hilltop there is a small temple and there are some water taps. While browsing some sites I found the meaning of the name Mullayanagiri. The word "Mullaya" means Shiva. So it is Shiva giri. I could not see the Shiva temple but I saw a small Nandi on the hilltop. We took opportunity to click some snaps at this place.


People said there were some caves on the route in front of Nandi. But we were not in much of enthu to see the caves considering the route. Especially me. Dara was ready and Raghu was neither Ok nor Nok!! Once we finished our photo session we climbed down and reached to our parking place in 10 minutes.

We spent some more time at the parking place and then headed towards Bababudangiri. As we did not have lunch anywhere we all were feeling hungry. In the mean time we were done with our stock of snacks :)

I would like to suggest everyone regarding the food point. In these routes there are no proper restaurants or cafes. Have some proper meal at Chikmagalur or carry a good amount of food items with you.

After some 20Kms we saw a small waterfall on our right side. This was beautiful!! We stopped there. This place was Attigundi. Before checking the fall everyone gathered at the snacks stall and started munching. The stall guy kept on filling the jar with Buns! We tried almost everything that was available at his small stall.....:D

Attigundi Waterfalls
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=NBDIiSMwL2Q

Then we took the steps to reach the top of the fall. There has been some kind of wall constructed on top of which the water is falling. The water was too cold to enter. But after seeing others I also decided to get into the water. It almost froze me! The water looked very clean. We spent some time there playing with kids.
Then after few minutes we moved towards the Bababudan giri. There is a shrine at this place, which is worshipped by both Hindus (Dattatreya) and Muslims (Baba Budan). There are some stories about this Sufi sant who came here to spread the message of peace without discrimination of religion. Unfortunately the shrine was closed due to some renovation. It was already 4:30 PM.

After talking to local people we came to know that there was a waterfall at a 4 kms distance from there. So we decided to check that out. This place is called Manikyadhara. Again after reaching this point we got into a coffee stall first! We ate good number of Mirchi bajjis. These were very spicy as that guy used normal green chilli. There were steps towards the fall. This fall was okay as there was not much of water. We took some snaps and headed back towards chikmagalur. It was already 6.30 PM by the time we started from there. After reaching the town we checked in to a budget lodge and planned for the next day trip to Kemmangundi.

Birthday celebrations of my son Shreyas

This 24th October my son completed his one year on this earth. So there was a small celebration on this occasion. Here are the snaps...

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part II (Belur)

From Halebid we moved to Belur which is 16kms from Halebidu. Belur is famous for Chennakesava temple, again built by Hoysala king Vishnuvardhan somewhere around 900 years ago. 

We hired a guide to know about temple who gave us good information about the temple and its history. In kannada "chenna" means "Beautiful/Handsome" and hence this is a Handsome Vishnu temple! This is a symmetrical structured temple which has minute handwork of different statues of deities, dancing maidens, maidens in different moods, animals etc.   

Guides typically have a small mirror in hand with which they reflect on the statue to focus for explanation. There are 42 statues of maidens, which are called "shilabalikas". Out of 42 statues 32 are outside the temple and 4 of them are inside the temple. The one's I remember are Darpana Sundari, Bhasma Mohini, lady with parrot, Lady with Monkey, lady hunting a bird and lady removing a thorn from her feet. Each of these statues is very intricately carved giving details of their pose. Bhasma mohini is Vishnu avatar to kill the Bhasmashura in disguise. ( http://flickr.com/photos/adarsh/316344081 )

There is a broken statue of Arjuna aiming at the eye of fish in Draupadi swayamvar. The statue contains the arrow hitting the fish but there is no bow in the hands of Arjuna as it is destroyed.

There are statues of Vishnu in different avatars. In the Narasimha avatar statue, there is a chain carved around the lord’s neck, which looks like a original chain. There is a special statue of Ganesha, people call it "Result Ganesha" as students come here and do pooja for a good result. Inside the temple the Vishnu statue is large and beutiful as its name. There is a mandap in front of garvagriha that has four pillars and the on top the four shilabalikas. One of the pillars was supposed to rotate with the bearings, which is called Narasimha pillar. But now the pillar does not rotate as the temple roof came down. There supposed to be another gopuram on the temple but it got destroyed.

This pillar has many statues carved on it and there is a blank space. There are many reasons explained by our guide are like, may be this is left blank to challenge anyone to create a new statue of this quality, or to explain other form of god that is blank/vacant or "shunya" in sanskrit or another reason explained was, if the creator missed some avatar of god then there is a place left for others to carve the same on it.

There is another statue on a pillar is a beautiful dancing lady. Our guide neatly explained this with speacial interest. According to ancient hindu scriptures there are four types of women, they are Sankhini, padmini, hastini and nagini. Padmini types of women are most beautiful and they have typical characteristics to attract men. The statue which was carved there was a typical padmini type of woman. (This is what told by our guide;)).

The entire temple is inside a big boundary, which has a kalyan mandap also. 

There is a big pillar outside the temple, which is just kept on a platform with out any joints or support. 

Information: 

Distance: From Bangalore 222

Stay: Hassan is the nearest best place. Chikmagalur is also an option.

Guide: For Rs.150 one can hire a guide. I recommend hiring a guide to know interesting details about the temple!

Spend good time at the temple and enjoy the delicate work of Hoysala kings.

More info about the temple

1. On statues:

http://www.ourkarnataka.com/states/hassan/belur.htm

2.  There are beautiful picture on this site:

http://www.pbase.com/yardbird/india_karnataka_belurhalebidu

3. More on Soapstone

http://www.hoysala.in/soapstone-sculptures-of-hoysala-temples.shtml

4. More details on Narasimha pillar

http://www.hoysala.in/narasimha-pillar-belur-temple.shtml

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part I (Halebid)

October 1st we four families started for a short trip to Chikmagalur with a plan to visit Belur, Halebid and the places around Chikmagalur. We started from Bangalore in the evening and reached Hassan by midnight and stayed at a hotel. The next day we started off to Halebid.

Halebid was the capital of Hoysala kingdom. Hoysala kingdom was famous for its fine temple architecture. During the rule of king Vishnuvardhana Hoysala they built many temples which demonstrate the skilled craftsmanship of their architects. One of the examples of it is Hoysaleswara temple at Halebid. 

Hoysala the name has two parts “Hoy” and “Sala”. In old kannada language “Hoy” means hit/strike. “Sala” is the name of a young man who was instructed by his guru to kill the tiger. Hence the name Hoysala after this brave young man. The picture of Sala killing a tiger became the emblem of the Hoysala dynasty.

Halebid temple consists two temples on a single platform Hoysaleswara and Kedareswara. The former temple was built first in 12th century. It consists of numerous sculptures of Hindu deities, animals and birds. This temple is built with monolithic soapstone, which is naturally soft due to high talc content but gets gradually strong when it comes in touch with wind and heat. When the stone is soft carvings can be done easily so this stone is chosen for fine carvings. 

The temples have two big Nandis in front, one big Ganesha idol, and there is a big lake in front of the temple premise. Because of the Lake the place was called Dwarasamdura. The whole scenery is a treat to watch.

Distance: From Bangalore 220 Kms. From Hassan 33 Kms

Route: Bangalore->Jalahalli Cross-> Nelmangala->Hassan->Halebid

Stay: Hassan is the nearest place to stay overnight. Many budget hotels are available in Hassan.

To Buy: You can buy some hand made stone crafts that are sold near the parking for a good bargain.

Google's Browser is here - CHROME

Google released beta version of their browser named Chrome!

http://www.google.com/chrome

Download, Install and have fun.

For me it is much better than IE. When I compare with mozilla, the UE looks better and clean as there is only one box for both searching and website address entry. The best part is it has its own task manager!!

Rest I have to explore!

Multi touch screens - Developed by Jeff Han

Jeff Han, a research scientist of New York University has developed a new technology in the touch screen world. His technlogy is based on sensing multiple touch points on the screen. He demonstrated his work on multi touch screens in the 2006 TED Conference. The technlogy looks amazing and it can contribute a lot to make advanced user friendly applications. This technology allows user to browse on the screen using both the hands. In this way user can type faster on a virtual key pad!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
Later he formed a company named Perceptive Pixel (http://www.perceptivepixel.com/) and continues his research. His work already found way into many applications.
Jeff has created a Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall using the same technology. CNN has alredy used this wall to cover the 2008 US presidential elections.
The second demo of his work is shared on
http://blog.centopeia.com/2007/03/21/jeff-hans-multitouch-demo-ii/
There is also a video on his website and they are available on YouTube also!

Apple has also used similar multitouch technology in their iPhone and notebooks. But the number of touch points handled are very less. Of course the screens on which Jeff has demonstrated his work are much bigger than the handheld devices. I think this technology will find its place slowly into handhelds and other devices. Hats off to Jeff for his imagination and his work.

Trip to Chikka Tirupati, Kotilingeshwar, Kolar Antara Gange, Bangaru Tirupati

August 15th weekend was a golden chance for many people for traveling to respective native places or a short trip with family and friends. In my case going to native place was not an option as three days are needed only for traveling! (Considering train travel as the only option as air travel with family now is out of budget ;) ). Planning for a journey more than 5-6 hrs was also not possible as we have a small baby. Hence the only option was to go to some place nearby. This time we wanted to go for some temple tour in Kolar. Kolar is a district head quarter which is around 70 km from Bangalore. I was at this place doing my Diploma during 1997-1999, so this plan would also serve to refresh my memories after 9 years. The day was August 15th which we decided to tour. My friend Dillip and his wife joined us.

We hired a Qualis and started at 7.00 AM in the morning straight away to Chikka Tirupati. From net I found around 3 routes to reach place but we took the ITPL-> Hope Farm-> Chikka Tirupati route. As it rained on the previous day, the road after Hope farm was not good and there were pot holes. When we crossed hope farm it was already 8.00 Am and rats just started to run in our bellies..After few minutes we started looking for some Sagar/Darshini/Upahar for breakfast. Unfortunately on this route there are no decent restaurants. Finally we stopped at a bakery in Doddadunnasandra hoping to have some light snacks till we get a tiffin point. For our surprise this bakery was equal to (or better than) some of the good bakeries in Bangalore. We tried plain cake, kara bun, potato chips and tea. Tea was awesome!!



Pic. Kaveri Bakery, Doddadunnasandra.
Then around 9 am we left from there and reached Chikka Tirupati temple at 9.30 am. There was no special car parking and as it was not any special puja day there was not much rush also. There were few shops providing the puja items. The Gopuram looks very nice and the temple structure is constructed as similar to Tirumala tirupati temple. Now one can directly enter the temple where Venkateshwara idol is present. As we went early the dressing was not complete and some abhisekams were going on. We had a good darshan and came out. We took one pradakshana around the temple, bought laddus and came out of the temple.


The next destination we decided was Kolar. Our driver decided to take us to Hoskote then from there to Kolar. The road till Hoskote was so bad that, our back was almost on the verge to break by the time we reached Hoskote. But after that it was Chennai high way and road was excellent. We reached Kolar within 30 minutes and then we moved towards the Antara Ganage temple. My friends and me used to visit this temple regularly during my Diploma days. Speciality of this temple is it is situated on a small hill with nice natural sorrounding and small deer park. It also had a view point on the way to the temple. But when we saw this temple many of the things are changed and ruined. The deer park is not visible anymore, the view point is in worst condition, number of monkeys have increased by many folds, the temple is getting renovated so it is in very bad shape and most important there was no power inside the temple. Monkeys have created terror here, people try to go to the temple in groups.
But the temple sourrouding was green and beautiful. The stream coming from the hill top was looking good. There is a tank with Ganesh temple at the center of it. Water falls from the strem through the Bull's mouth into the tank. People take this water in cans and consider it as sacred water. You will find huge rocks and nilgiri trees whichever side you look at.
Pic. Entrance Antar Gange Temple

Pic. Main Shiva Temple

Pic. Ganesh Temple in the tank
Overall we enjoyed the visit to Antar Gange, Kolar. It was already 12:30 pm by now. Now we proceeded towards the next visit to Kotilingeshwar through Bangarpet, KGF. From BEML township the directions were clear. We reached Kotilingeshwar temply by 1.10 pm. This place was also not so crowded. As the name explains for itself there are supposed to be 1 crore shiva lingas. As per the statistics we came to know that there are some 84 lac lingas are already installed. The shiva lings of all sizes are placed in a serial fashion on small galleries. There are too many lings everywhere.

The biggest shiva linga is of 108 meters. There is even a big Basava idol also.

We finished our darshan around 2:30 pm. Now we proceeded for our last planned destination Bangaru Tirupati. It was 8 kms from this place. This place was also calm and serene. Here there is a Vishnu temple and a Padmavati temple. Both the temples are situated on small hills, you have to climb around 50+ steps for darshan! But the idols very beautiful. The speaciality of Vishnu temple is that the darshan to the idol is through the window not a direct one through door. Pujari was explaining the reason to someone old person who was curious about this type of darshan but I could not understand the proper reason. From the top of the temple the sorrunding looked beautiful. After Vishnu darshan we took the steps for Padmavati devi darshan. This idol was shining with lot of ornaments as it was Lakshmi puja day.

This was our last spot and by this time we were hungry and tired. We were desperately inquiring for a good restaurant. Finally we got info that there is a good restaurant near Bangarpet. This was S N Restaurant. We reached at this restaurant around 4 pm!
This is a typical Andhra style restaurant and tariff in the menu would not burn your pocket. Food was ok. The bar arrangement here is a huts type with different capacities, which looks cool.

After finishing our late lunch we took kolar highway to return to bangalore. By 7 pm we were at home sipping fresh tea.

There are more ancient temples in the nearby places of Kolar, most famous ones were Avani and Someshwara temple which we missed. May be some other day. This trip was definitely memorable.

Visit to Gupteshwar Temple, Orissa

Gupteshwar is a Lord Shiva Shrine which is 70Kms from Jeypore, Orissa. As the name it is a Hidden Shiva ling inside a cave. Temple is situated above approximately 150 steps from the foot hills of the hill. There are many deep and dark caves present in the same hill. The Shiva ling is inside a cave in very dark atmosphere. Just next to the main shrine there is a cave extension which takes you to Kamdhenu. The way is pitch dark, either you have to carry enough torches to help yourself through the dark or take help of some local boy as a guide. One can also go above the hill to have a look of the entire area.

Many people come here for their Manasik(Mannat) and get their head tonsured, which is a hindu belief.

The atmosphere is calm and serene as we visited on a normal day. This place draws a huge crowds during Shivaratri. Gupteshwar is situated near the banks of River Kolab. It flows through huge rocks and the flow is quite good. It looked little dangerous to take a dip, though a fence has been created near the ghat for safety. But the whole sight looked beautiful. I was told that the Chattisgarh border is very near from the other side of the banks. Many pilgrims come from the other side to visit Lord Shiva and they call this place as "Gupta Kedar".

Other places to see:

Apart from the temple there are few more attractions. They are Medicinal garden, Paravadi, Swargadwar and Sangam.
The garden is next to the main road. I could not find many plants in the garden or may be it was my ignorance! Swargadwar was a cave which is very deep situated 1000 meters from the road. You have to climb to get into the cave. A shiva ling is present at the mid way of the cave. Due to lack of lighting instruments we could not explore much of it. Paravadi is another cave around 1500 meters from main road. But we found people staying there and doing some sadhana. The scenery is very beautiful.

How to Reach?

Most recommended way is to take a cab from jeypore which would take around 2 hours. Till Boipariguda the road is decent, after that road is not maintained properly.
Jeypore is in Koraput district in Orissa. Koraput is connected by train from Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar.

Where to stay?

There are many hotels in Jeypore. One of the decent hotel is "Hotel Hello Jeypore". There is a Pantha Nivas @ Gupteshwar.

What to Carry?

Water, Basic food, Torch, Umbrella.
There are some small shops where you can get some biscuits and some pakoda stalls were also present. The tribals sell Curd and some paneer based sweets.
Boipariguda is a place where you can get some basic

More Links:
Koraput Official website

Check my Korea Trip Photos on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biswanath

Intoduction