November 14th, 2008

I moved my blog

11/14/08 11:08 am

Of late, I am having a lot of problems with livejournal. Couldn't post for some unknown reason whereas I can post on all other blogs!! Anyway, it was a free account after all. So, I thought it would be best to set up my own blog. Purchased a domain, used wordpress.org tools and set it up in less than an hour. Here is the blog:

www.ashwinupadhyaya.com

I guess this will be the last post at livejournal.

October 2nd, 2008

Distances

10/2/08 08:41 am

-38 months : Best friend flew out of the country for his studies. I knew there would be no more of 'watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S', 'playing NFS', etc. Now, even when he's back, it is just about meeting at least once in his tight schedule.

-10 months : 2 more best friends leave country for studies. I am sure they will be busy than ever before. I doubt if another Wayanad trip will ever be possible.

-9 months : 2 more best friends leave. Not sure if another Goa trip will ever happen.

-2 months : 1 more best friend

-1 week : another best friend

0 days : another best friend

+15 days : 2 more best friends

Nothing will be the same again. Its not that all of them are staying there forever. Its just that distances keep increasing every day. And now, with everyone flying to seemingly greener pastures, distances seem to increase even faster.

Many of the purposes and values that got engraved within me were only because of close ones; parents and friends. However, friends were the only ones with whom I could discuss these. Now, when there is not much of a chance to sit together and discuss thoughts, a new sense of 'lack of direction' seems to haunt me.

Life until now was like the first 3 kms of a marathon with lots of people around. The remaining distance is just run, run, run, on and on, on and on.

September 24th, 2008

1 Engine, 2 Auto-Rickshaws

9/24/08 06:19 pm

Now, this is something even the local people found strange!!

The auto in the front didn't have pulling power of its own. So, the trailing auto driver was providing some of his own auto's power. All this action in the middle of Mysore's busiest, Irwin road.

No comments from my side :-)

September 14th, 2008

This is not freedom.

9/14/08 12:43 pm

Imagine you had a beautiful ancestral farm which is the sole source of your income. You may not earn much over there but that is the place you were born, brought up and now live. I am not sure if the typical city-fellow can experience the kind of emotion associated with such a thing but the majority of rural India lives on such emotions. If you can somehow associate with such an emotion, imagine being bullied by a rich guy to sell your farm for a price.

Example this: "Some farmers refused to take the Rs 5 lakh, but “some politicians” are believed to have told them that either they take the money or the government will go ahead and acquire their land after depositing the amount in court. “Afraid of litigation, some farmers in our village have taken the cheques,” said Surada Venkanna in Rambilli."
I quote this from an article in the Indian Express: Corridor of Greed in Andhra Pradesh

What can you call such atrocity? Where is the right of the individual? What right do the so called "nation-builders" have, to ask the individual in concern to sacrifice himself for the development of the nation?

This I am sure was not the idea of freedom at the time of Independence. Freedom should first start at the lowest level, the individual. If every individual is sacrificed for a "greater-cause" at the cost of his freedom, then I am not sure if we are really better off than the stalinist government of the soviet era.

What happened to the poor farmers may one day happen to me too. It may one day happen to you too. Albeit in different forms. And its not really a good feeling to live with closed eyes.

September 13th, 2008

French Rocks Rocks :)

9/13/08 11:43 am

French rocks is a 2 century old name of the town of Pandavpura, 25kms from Mysore. During the time of Tipu Sultan, his French allies supposedly made their barracks at the rocky hills just adjacent to Pandavpura. As a result, the town was known as French Rocks. This week, we tried to conquer the rocks.

At the start, we thought this was a wasted trip. It was just rocks. Not much greenery too. However, after climbing some 300 feet, the beauty of the place was self-evident.

The rocks provide plenty of photo opportunities :-)

After recording all the scenic beauty in our brains, we set out on our next task. Conquering the peak.

After trying every sort of rock climbing skill that we know of, we reached a maze of caves and crevices.

In the end, our efforts to climb the last 100 foot high rock-face proved futile. There was not a single way this could be conquered without proper rock climbing tools. The French rock defeated us :-( I will be back here again another day..

Coming back was an even tougher task. There was no way we could retrace our path too. Every direction we went, we reached a cliff-edge or a crevice or a thorn bush.

Somehow, after a lot of cuts and bruises, we were back down to where we started.
This is one of those places you could visit for a real trek as there are no man-made paths up the hill. You have to make the path yourself. The entire trek takes less than 3 hours but is perfectly enjoyable. The place rocks.

PS: This place is better known as Kunti Betta.

September 9th, 2008

The perfect Pink Floyd wallpaper.

9/9/08 09:44 pm

Now, Pink Floyd would have millions of fans. But not everyone would go this far. Not unless it is my friend, Vinay Raghav.
This one would seem to you like some photoshop work. But it is not. Its a pure work of the camera and that is what makes the photo so interesting.

Have a look at this one. I cannot even imagine from where this photo is being taken.

Finally, this one. Now this is something which is straight out of an art exhibition.

@Vinay: I only wish you wrote a blog too with your photos. You'd have a lot more followers. Seriously, man.

September 7th, 2008

Sunday cycling

9/7/08 02:02 pm

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Another Sunday. Another trip.This time, we rode towards the kaveri valley. This part of the Earth is now painted green by the monsoons. Water is everywhere. The clouds act as our sun-screen. And we, the best source of renewable energy to pedal our cycles.

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KrishnarajaSagar reservoir being just 15kms from the city has various approach roads. We took the nearest one to save energy. From there, we hit unknown village roads towards edmuri. The scenery is amazing even after considering the fact that we are used to seeing paddy fields and water canals. Some more off-road cycling and we were at Balmuri. Balmuri, being a man made waterfall is usually filled with tourists. However, at 8AM in the morning, the place was ours and ours alone. Started at 6AM and reached back at 11AM with much of the Sunday still remaining intact.

September 3rd, 2008

Google chrome

9/3/08 11:34 am

The new browser from google is not a browser at all. Its almost an operation system. See this:

3 different processes are seen here in the task manager. What this means is that, each new tab you open on the chrome browser is a separate process in itself. This is exactly what is required in the changed internet environment where we use less and less of websites and more and more of applications. Opening youtube, google docs and gmail in different tabs is the equivalent to opening windows media player, ms-word and outlook on your windows OS. Obviously, these are different processes. The firefox/internet-explorer/opera way of handling all as a single process results in the browser getting bogged down. Try the chrome and you'll know how fast it is in an instant. Moreover, if one of the tabs crashes, the other tabs still remain intact.

Reflecting google's style of minimalistic design and simplicity, the chrome occupies very less space for its own buttons and looks empty empty indeed. Websites now look larger and much better. When you are working on something like google docs, it takes less than a minute to forget that you are actually within a browser.

All said, is it time to dump the old browsers and embrace chrome? NO. NOT YET. I don't know how, but google forgot to ship its toolbar along with the browser. As all my bookmarks are in google bookmarks, I terribly miss the toolbar. At the time when I write this, the google toolbar page doesn't even seem to know that there is a google browser :P However, I forgive google for this goof because chrome is still a test version.

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September 2nd, 2008

Fitness and Risk

9/2/08 06:11 pm

Both evolutionary and economic theories suggest that physically stronger decision makers should make riskier decisions,......

Do read this: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/risk-is-physica.html

That explains a lot.

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August 30th, 2008

Mysore - A treasure mine.

8/30/08 04:23 pm

Mysore is a beautiful place. For the casual tourist, we have a palace, a hill, a water reservoir, a zoo and a bird sanctuary.
For the artistically inclined, we have some more palaces (Jaganmohan palace, Jayalaksmi Vilas, Lalith Mahal).
A few well maintained lakes (Kukkarahalli and Karanji), a church (St. Philomena's Church) and a few museums (Regional Museum of Natural History, Folk Lore Museum, Railway Museum and Oriental Research Institute) all dot the city.

The best part is that all of these places fall within a 15 kms radius of the city.

And what is more? There are even more places within the city unknown to many people.

Location No.1: Varuna lake
This lake is 10kms from Mysore on T-Narsipura road. One edge of the lake is a man-made stone banking over which the T-Narsipura road is constructed. I am not sure whether this is a man-made lake or a natural one. The calmness of the lake and the near absence of people near the lake make it an ideal outing place. We went cycling to the place today morning and it almost resembled an European cycling experience.

Left: Varuna Lake, Mysore
Right: Sigmaringen, Germany.
Don't they both look the same in terms of beauty? I just love Mysore.

Left: A small wood land on one edge of Varuna lake. The trees however are being cut and I don't know whether it was legal/illegal. In any case, I feel that the lake's edge could be planted with trees. I have some work to do here.
Right: A cycling path at Sigmaringen. I wish we had cycling paths at Mysore too. I read a few months back about an European group of tourists who were building cycling paths all by themselves themselves somewhere near Madikeri, Karnataka. I feel we too could do that. I only need a few helping hands to do this.

Location No. 2: The oldest Banyan tree of Mysore
This is at least known to a few people in Mysore. The tree according to Prof.Ramalingam is more than 200 years old. The tree has been named a heritage tree of Mysore by the committee headed by Prof.Ramalingam according to whom it is more than 200 years old. I had been there in 2005 once and it was full of prop roots. However, I was told that much of the tree's aerial prop roots were cut to serve a movie shooting. The banyan being a banyan has recovered since and now it also carries 2 boards. One says the tree is "xyz God" (That is a really powerful psychological tool to keep away illegal wood-cutters). Second one says "Heritage tree of Mysore". These should most likely help conserve the tree to some extent.

As we returned back to the city of palaces, I had just one thought in mind... If only we could build a cycling path in the city, safe and away from the roaring trucks and polluting autos...

August 26th, 2008

Love to say its fake :)

8/26/08 10:16 pm

After many days, I finally had the chance to stage one of my fake rock climbing acts. This time I feel, it looks a lot more authentic with those bicycles in the background. :)
We did however climb a real 40 foot rock thereafter. However ,we couldn't take photographs while climbing that..

And this is the place where we did all of this.

Somewhere on Chamundi hills.

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August 17th, 2008

To Live

8/17/08 08:35 am

	A cyclist's nighmare. Heavy rains on August 14th converted almost all of Bangalore's roads into open drains. I guess most of the thursday evening traffic towards other cities put off their plans for Friday morning. As a result, even at 6AM in the morning on Independence day, the roads were noisy, polluted and full of impatient drivers trying to get out of the city. We definitely had a tough time within Bangalore.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Independence day in all flavors and forms. There was everything available on the road. Small flags, large flags, wrist bands, caps, stickers. All types to suit every vehicle. I couldn't understand whether people were buying these out of patriotism or whether it was just for the fun of it. The Ugly part: Indian flag outside the vehicle. Beer bottles inside. There were a few who went about throwing beer bottles on the road. Whatever has happened to the soul of this country...
	Bullets There was a group of about 30 bullets which zoomed past us at Ramanagara. The fellows were celebrating Independence day in their own way. Most of the pillion riders had an Indian flag. Couldn't capture a proper photo of them as our speed was no match to theirs :) Later however, we caught them some 10kms laterwhere they had halted. Didn't want to ruin their privacy and hence we just took a long shot.
A surprise Only I and Suraj started the cycling from Bangalore in the morning at 6:30AM. It seems that Suraj's elder brother, Ravi also wanted to come along. However, due to many reasons, Ravi was left behind at Mysore. When we reached Chennapatna, I heard someone calling me from behind. I turned back and it was Ravi who had cycled to Chennapatna all the way from Mysore (80kms). We were just dumbstruck. His cycle was not even the large rimmed one. It was a mountain bike totally unsuited for highway cycling.
	Refuelling We just burned and burned glucose. I think, the total consumption of the day was 5000 kcals.
The mighty river River Kaveri in full flow. How beautiful it looks. If only I had a raft..
	The Path The road may have been wide enough but we were pushed to the edge to take this narrow white path. The ups and downs were unforgiving. There were humps, there were barriers. Yet, we persisted and after long, long hours, we reached. No one set a goal for us, we set it ourselves. There was no reason to do it. Yet we did. There was no reason to risk the high way. Yet we lived.

August 13th, 2008

What are you doing on Independence day?

8/13/08 08:00 pm

Well, I am repeating this :)

What does cycling from Bangalore to Mysore have to do with Independence day? Nothing :) Its just for the fun. At the least, I feel it makes much more sense than watching the "Independence day special" movies on Television.

August 12th, 2008

2 Millennia and a classical status

8/12/08 08:06 am

The Ashoka rock edict found at Brahmagiri (dated to 230 BC) has been suggested to contain a word in identifiable Kannada. The earliest examples of a full-length Kannada language stone inscription (shilashaasana) containing Brahmi characters with characteristics resembling those of Tamil in Hale Kannada script can be found in the Halmidi inscription, dated 450 CE, indicating that Kannada had become an administrative language by this time.
http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಕನ್ನಡ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_language

The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BCE and the Tolkāppiyam, the oldest known treatise in Tamil, has been dated variously between 2nd century BCE and 10th century CE.
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/தமிழ்
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language

The Languages which saw more than 2 Millennia pass by, are now in a fight for "classical status". What would that status supposedly do? Enrich the language or take language across boundaries like how Purandaradasa or Muthuswami Dikshitar or Thyagaraja did?

Tamil is officially declared as a classical language of India. Kannada and Telugu were about to be accorded the same status. Kaboom!!! A Public Interest Litigation is filed against this. I don't know how any person would find happiness in doing this. Anyways, this is just more fodder for our KRV guys to disrupt public life.

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August 6th, 2008

Even God can't save this country!!!!!

8/6/08 01:41 pm

No.. Thats not my view.
That is the Supreme court's view!!!

Read this: http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20080806/814/tnl-even-god-can-t-save-this-country-sc.html

And 2 days back, there were more fumes from the court. And that was against the shame of this nation, Karunanidhi. If a court itself is as helpless as to use words such as: "Do you think you are super supreme? Do the Chief Minister and the minister think they are above the law?".. I don't know what the common man is supposed to do!!

Read this too: http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20080805/814/tnl-sethu-bandh-sc-slams-baalu-karunanid.html

August 4th, 2008

Crazy DCH series - Part 3

8/4/08 08:49 pm

These are the last of the photos. Was there a sequel to Dil Chahta Hai? I hope there will be one some day..

Clockwise from left-top: Sigmaringen, Titisee, Unchalli falls, Konigsee, Chapora-Goa, Ubersee.

Crazy DCH series - Part 2

8/4/08 02:23 pm

Continuing on my series of "Dil Chahta Hai" photos...... And its not over yet :)

left->right ; top->bottom: Breitachklamm, Goa, Heidelberg, Konigsee, Oberstdorf, Sirsi, Triberg(Blackforest), Zugspitze, Thirunelli.

August 3rd, 2008

Crazy DCH series - Part 1

8/3/08 04:21 pm

An year and about 10 months back, 3 of us got this crazy idea that we should do a photo series. I am not sure who got this idea but anyway, this series went on and on at a number of locations. Unfortunately, the series ended when 2 of us quit Bosch. Finally now, I found almost all the photos and put it in one place. I find it fun to watch. This will be one photo compilation I'd love to frame and keep. Yet more photos to be posted.

Clockwise from left-top: Breitachklamm, Bodensee, Chapora fort, Sigmaringen, Thirunelli, Bosch.

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Live "Journal"?

8/3/08 09:47 am

journal

A personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections kept on a regular basis; a diary.

Isn't that what a journal is supposed to mean? Then why do I find so less written here? Is it because most of the occurences, experiences and reflections of our life are considered so trivial as not to warrant an entry in the journal? Then, maybe it is time to spice up life :)

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August 1st, 2008

Time...

8/1/08 09:31 pm

For the past three or four hours, I am trying to focus on something else and all that is coming to my mind are old memories. Friends, youth hostels, an old discussion about a Pink Floyd song, a discussion about a great book, a wooden bridge, a spy, a river, an unforgettable dinner, a railway station,.....

If only time travel was a reality...

Current Mood: nostalgic

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