Europe Trip 2013

The trip to Europe was replete with nitty gritty details and a lot of pictures. The company of a few good, interesting and virtuous people made this trip a memorable experience. They came from different parts of India, Gujarati’s from Surat, Kannadiga’s from Bangalore and Jamkhandi, Marathi’s from Mumbai and Telugu’s (my husband and I) from Bangalore. I got a flavor of the Indian culture as well.

In Europe trip, our tour manager, Vinay from Cox and Kings promised us the glimpses of Europe. Indeed, we did get a glimpse of everything, with just enough time to pose, take a picture and rush to the next place. We traveled 4240 km in 12 days. It would have been an ideal tour for my father, who always likes to squeeze as many places possible, in a 2-3 hour sightseeing program.  After a certain point of time, the fellow tourists re-named our tour from European Anubhav Yatra to Bus Yatra. We were fugitive tourists on the run to get our money’s worth.

We have seen the house of the Queen. Unfortunately she was too busy with her great-grandson to invite us to an afternoon tea at her residence (The Buckingham Palace). The place was so grand that even the lamp posts had crowns on top of their heads.

The magnificent Eiffel tower robbed the glory of the twinkling stars, by sparkling on a grand scale. An American woman was so fascinated by the beauty of the tower that she married it, just like our Aishwarya Rai, who married the tree.

The little naked kid in the Belgium city center has not stopped pissing since 1619.

The people had so much cheese in Amsterdam that they had to cycle to burn it all off and they did have  bicycle lanes on the road for exercise. 

 The drive through Switzerland was very scenic. The cows greeted us with their tinkling bells, as they grazed mutely on the green pastures on the mountains. Sometimes, I wondered how they got up there. That must have been quite a trek for the cows.

Lucerne was a place out of the fairy tales, with mountains surrounding the lake. We saw a few swans in the lake, may be they were transformed princes under the curse of some magician.

We had the opportunity to stay in a wooden hotel in Les Diablerets. From the balcony of our room, we had the view of the mountains, which turned golden yellow during sun rise and sunset.

In Venice, we went through the narrow lanes lined by shops with cryptic masks. The masks invited us to solve the mystery behind their vacant eyes. Our only disappointment was that our gondola driver did not sing for us, as he did for Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman in the movie, The Great Gambler. We even asked our guy, ‘Do you know how to sing?’ With a coyish smile he replied, ‘No’. May be he also knows about the movie.

In Pisa, we saw so many people stopping the tower from falling down by posing in front of it. Without the tower in the background these poses look ridiculous.

In Florence, we saw the private parts of Michelangelo’s David being glorified throughout the city’s souvenirs, on shorts, on T-shirts and as fridge magnets etc. (I cannot post in the blog due to censorship issues). Florence is a city that is proud of it’s museums and art.

In Rome, the pope did not appear through his famous window to tell hello to us. Our visit to Tirupathi and Vatican is complete; we have yet to visit the Mecca.

The Trevi fountain in Rome was magnificent. We dropped 50 pence in the fountain. Whoever drops a pence in the fountain, while leaving the fountain gets to visit Rome again. We were a bit cheap. My hubby and I held one coin and threw it into the fountain.  Who among us, do you think will get to visit Rome again?

There are a lot more stories to share, so read on next week.

To be continued …

World War Z

I do not like zombies. There you go, I said it. All the zombie fans can come and attack me in the zombie style but I do not care. I belong to the vampire club. To my great surprise, one fine day I picked up a zombie book to read. What can I do ? I had no other book within my reach and I was itching to read a book. This is how history was made, Soumya reading a zombie book.

World War Z is written by Max Brooks and is now made into a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt. This book is the oral history of the global zombie war. A series of oral interviews are compiled by the narrator who is an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission. The book starts with how zombies were first found in China and how the epidemic spread to the rest of the world. It ends with the description of the socio-economic & political situation after the war.

                   

 The humans go to war with the zombies. Zombies are living corpses which feed on fresh human flesh. Max Brooks writes about having to deal with a new kind of an enemy, who is fearless, ruthless and emotionless. All the military strategies are based on striking fear in the enemy but this particular enemy cannot be stunned. The strategies had to be revised. For example, the military is trained to shoot in the upper part of the body. This strategy does not work for the living corpses; they have to be shot in the head to be killed. Military personnel had to be trained, to instinctively shoot the zombie in the head. Another strategy was to use humans as the bait to trap the zombies and kill them. These were a few strategies that were thought by the humans to win the World War Z. The military also came up with new weapons to kill the zombies.

After war Cuba becomes the super power, whereas America still needs to catch up with Cuba to get the super power title. The reversal of the superpower status was an interesting concept and it brought a smile to my face.  

The writing style of Max Brooks got me hooked to the book until I completed 70 % of the book. It is through progression of interviews that the reader comes to know about the zombie epidemic and the wars in different parts of the world. I got goose bumps when I read about the invincible enemy and the way zombies attacked and devoured the humans. I really loved the way the author analyzed the socio-political and economic angles of the zombie menace.  As I reached the end, I skipped through the pages, because I was bored reading about too many zombie killing strategies and political details of different countries.

Max Brooks writes as though this fictional history took place. It was so unreal, yet so real. This book is a survival guide if we were to be attacked by the zombies. All the zombie fans out there must have already read it. For all those, who belong to the vampire or the werewolf clubs, zombies are interesting as well. This book is a good zombie book. Do not blame me, if you feel like changing clubs after reading the book. 

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All images from google images

Jai Telangana - Part 2

In January 2010, I was returning to my hometown, Warangal, from Hyderabad. I was with my parents in a car. That day was a bandh in Telangana region. We passed through several villages along the way. In the town squares a few people sat down and protested peacefully, with banners made of cotton cloth. In one of the villages, they stopped the traffic from passing through the village. We waited behind a long line of trucks and cars. After some time, we drove through the narrow by lanes of the village to save time and reach home early. While passing through one of the houses, I saw a lean old man in a white dhoti, and a young boy, who sat side by side on the step in front of their house and protested with the placard, ‘Jai Telangana’.

Few of the people said, ‘Why are you allowing them to pass? Stop them.’ Before they could take any action we were far ahead.

These people who protested for the formation of Telangana were common people in Telangana region from a nondescript village. They were daily wage workers/farmers who supported the cause in their free time. They showed their desire to be a part of the movement, in every small way they can. They took a piece of cloth, wrote slogans with paint on top of it and chanted, ‘Jai Telangana’.

The next morning, in the newspaper, I looked at photographs of protests in the Seemandhra region. The protesters were all well dressed and they held flashy banners of ‘Samaikhyandhra’. Wow! What a contrast! All the more, nobody even reported in the papers about the protest in the small village that I passed through, yesterday!

This movement is a people’s movement and is not fueled from rich politicians’ pockets or their motives, because every rung of the society from farmers to doctors to lawyers, in every village, in every city in Telangana protested peacefully from 2009 to 2013 and even before that, in 1969. Just think about it, how much money would be needed to organize such mass scale protests, for such a long time? 

Whenever, I saw the police patrolling in Osmania University (O.U.) campus, it hurt me. I am the product of this great institution. I lived in the campus for four years during Engineering and experienced the beauty, the intellect and calmness of O.U. During the Telangana movement, I saw the students, having a clash with police. Rubber bullets were shot at them, as though it was a merciful alternative to killing them. They were beaten up ruthlessly like animals and random police cases were booked on them, destroying their future. I vicariously experienced the anguish of the students, since we are from the same institution. O.U. and the students have been maligned by the press as close to being an anti-social institution, producing anti-social elements, when it is not so.  

                Campus is meant for students to roam around free, not for the police to patrol

                                                      Telangana struggle in O. U. 

Every Telanganite who has lived in Telangana region at least for a short period of time experienced the struggle. I read a very beautiful article about Telangana movement in which author compared the relationship between Seemandhra and Telangana people as the relationship of husband and wife. The wife wants divorce from the husband; she is psychologically separated from him. All she needs is the physical separation. Instead of giving the divorce, the husband beats her, rapes her and tortures her every single day and he has been doing that since 1957. In a very simple sentence, this is the story of Telangana struggle.

I want to leave you with a question. Take any job organization, any educational institution be it government or private, be it within the country or overseas. What is the ratio of Andhra people to Telanganites? Andhra people are at least twice as that of Telangana people. Why do the people from Andhra dominate everywhere? Are people of Telangana so stupid, that they could not improve their lifestyle? Or is it because the poverty of the region prevented most of the people from getting access to basic education and thereby a better lifestyle?

                                                        THE END
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Images from google images

Visit to Tirupathi

                                            View from the security point located on entrance to Tirumala

My husband and I visited Tirupathi last weekend. When I told to one of my colleagues that I am going to Tirupathi over the weekend, he said, ‘I did not expect that you would go there.’

I asked him, ‘Why?’

He replied, ‘I do not feel that you are that kind of person’

I laughed and said, ‘Last year, my husband prayed that I if get a good wife, I will visit you along with her next time. So we had to be there this year, before we completed our first year of marriage.’

This is the story behind my visit to Tirupathi.

We took an APSRTC bus from Bangalore to Tirupathi. We started at 4.30 in the evening. The bus unfortunately had a ‘Coolant Tract Infection’ so it peed coolant all along the way and it delayed our journey by four hours. We reached Tirupathi at 2:30 AM in the morning. We stayed at SVU University Guest House, booked by my father-in-law through his contacts at SVU University.After I reached the guesthouse, I just hit the bed and dozed off.

The next day myself, my husband, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law started to Tirumala in an Innova. I was amazed by the security and the road safety measures taken at Tirumala. Before we reached the top of the hill our driver stopped at one location alongside the road. 

We asked him, ‘Why did you stop?’

He replied, ‘There is a time limit to reach top of the hill. The minimum time should be 28 minutes. If it is less than 28 minutes then they fine.’

I thought, ‘Wow.’

                                                                             On way to Tirumala

I was also impressed by the windmills on top of hill and the solar panels on one of the temple buildings. 

                                                                       Tirumala has gone green!

After we reached the top of the hill, we waited at the police station for about 1.5 hours to get the required permissions to skip the line and to make our waiting time shorter. This is my first visit to the police station and that too for a good reason, of course.

After we got the permission, we went through closed doors which were opened up by the power of money and entered the line a few yards away from the sanctum sanctorum of Lord Balaji. The temple was crowded. I saw a lot of shaved heads, crying children in the line, and people stood in the line with almost no space in between one person and another. The line moved on an automatic pushing system, you just need to stand in the line and the people behind you push you. There is almost no effort required from your side to move.

When we entered the sanctum sanctorum, I almost thought that there will be a stampede. I can understand the religious fervour of the people to see Lord Balaji but I did not expect it to be so intense. The sanctum was decorated in gold; there was gold colored plating all around and huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling. This view almost reminded me of the grandeur of Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, which is Queen Elizabeth’s official residence. 

    

The volunteers in the sanctum looked like regular people. They were dressed in yellow colored sarees, with a red colored kerchief draped around the necks. Contrary to my opinions about their docility, they must have been trained in arm wrestling. As soon as we came in front of the God, they caught me by my arm and literally hurled me away from God. I was amazed at their strength. I did not get to see the idol more than one second; my brain just registered the presence of an idol inside the sanctum.

On the way back to the guest house, we had lunch and we went to the Rock Garden and Srivari Padalu. 

                                                                 Delicious thali lunch at Tirumala

                                                                  Lord Ganesha at the Rock Garden

                                                         View of Venkateshwara Swamy Temple from Srivari Padalu 

One of the many religious offerings that people tie to trees and pray for their wishes to be fulfilled. I found this pretty thing tied to one of the trees at Srivari Padalu.

On the way back to the guest house from Srivari Padalu. We saw a small size commotion. A few people were standing in front of a tree and clicked pictures of something with their cell phones and cameras. When we came close to the tree, we saw this rock star squirrel enjoying the attention of the people. It came down the trees took the food items that people were offering to it and went back up.

                                                                         The rock star squirrel at Srivari Padalu 

After a long siesta at the guest house, in the evening we went to the Govindarajaswami temple. Since we went at the closing time, it was crowded. I saw the idol for 3 seconds here.

                                           The entrance to Govindarajasami temple was lined with shops on either side

The next day we went to the Kalyana Venkateshwara Swamy temple at Narayanavanam. Here we sat for the Kalyanam for about 2 hours there.

                                                                 Kalyanavenkateswara Swamy temple

In the evening we returned to Bangalore in bus. It was a KSRTC bus. Other than the torture of having to watch an old kannada movie, the journey was pretty much comfortable.

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Photographs by Pradeep Kumar Gouda

Jai Telangana - Part 1

After 57 years of suffering and struggle, the people of Telangana are finally close to independence.  On July 30^th, 2013, the CWC has declared Telangana as the 29^th Indian state with Hyderabad as the joint capital for Seemandhra and Telangana for 10 years. I do not like the proposition of sharing Hyderabad but this decision will be a starting point for a bright and glorious future.

My first experience of the Telangana Udyamam was in December of 2009. I was in Warangal for my vacation. On New Year’s Eve, I was comfortably sitting on the bottled green colored sofa and flipping through the channels in search of a program to while away until midnight. The news channels showed New Year celebrations across Andhra Pradhesh. They showed some location/club in Vijaywada in which the stage was bathed in dimly lit blue and pink colored party lights. The anchor wore a white colored salwar  and she was entertaining the crowd.  Her beautiful tresses waved to and fro as she spoke. Renowned singers were singing the latest tunes in Tollywood and people, both young and middle-aged couples were dancing, with no care in the world. This is the ideal way to celebrate 31^st December. People welcome the New Year with vigor, happiness and hope that all the troubles will magically vanish on 1^st January.

When I changed the channel to news coverage in Hyderabad, I saw people gathered at Art’s College grounds in Osmania University. They were all students, most of them men and they were standing in front of a stage draped with plain white cloth. They had an intense expression on their face, not of joy but of interest and awe. The stage was made with almost no bells and whistles, yellow incandescent lights just gave off enough glow so that the stage was visible. Gaddar was performing on the stage. He sang and danced. When he danced, his white hair glistened and his black shawl with red and white border competed with night’s darkness and the darkness that covered the land. As he sang songs in support of Telangana in his harsh and authoritative voice, a group of men and women dressed in traditional clothes, sarees and dhotis danced around in circles. The songs were mostly vocal with just the sound of anklets in the background adding a slight music to his otherwise serious songs. The youth were listening to Gaddar’s songs and welcoming the New Year. They were reconnecting with the Telangana culture and heritage.

In my opinion, listening to Gaddar on New Year’s Eve is a boring way to welcome 2010. It is similar to asking Gen Z youth to listen to the hit songs of Gen X.  Osmania University student’s could have as well hit the pub and shake their leg to the mast dance numbers, drink and party all night. They had different options for entertainment, but they opted to listen to Gaddar in a sober way. They chose to learn more about the culture which was downtrodden, ridiculed and put aside for several decades. I could easily reconnect with the students because I graduated from the same University three years ago. The desire and passion for Telangana which was flowing in their veins was vicariously transfused into mine as well, as I watched them, listening intently to Gaddar. At that point of time, I understood that this Telangana Udyamam will be a tough road and it is there to stay until a new state is carved out.

                          My alma mater, Osmania University (shown here is the Art's College)

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Image from google images