Destiny..elephants.. memories..

San has successfully managed me for 20 years now! A milestone that I am extremely grateful to pass. The kids who always take my side, finally acknowledged "yeah. you are not an easy guy to deal with. you are very complicated. so amma did do well to handle you for 20 years". 

They are her toughest and biased critics and this came from them.. 

Was still under travel pressure, so we just kept it simple this time. Lunch at Chaat House as usual for our anniversary (this time with my in laws) and a visit to the local temple to say thanks. There was no ice cream at Ghirardelis.. 

We also ended up on a whirlwind India trip for 5 days. This time to do a Sadhabishegam function for my dad and mom. Have written a recent post on this..

My dad's 1000'th moon happens in early December and technically (the sankara sastri in me rears his ugly head again).. we should have celebrated this next February. Then there are astrologers, older people, fuzzy logic, health concerns etc.. and the quantum computing ended up with last week as the "last Revathy birth star of the first half of the year where the earth moves northwards (between Jan14th and July 14th)".. If your head is spinning faster than the earth after reading that, you are in good shape. Like they say in Yoga class "it is normal to feel dizzy after that!". 

It was hectic for us, as Jr. is going to Senior year in high school and we have a packed agenda. We did go as a family and celebrate the event. It went better than expected, given my dad was in diapers three months ago when I went for a 5 day visit. His parkinsons is under control, but he had a fall and was recovering from it. Looks like he is back to where he was before his fall. 

We literally entered the house at 5AM and the function started at 6:30AM.  Chennai was going through a water crisis. So there was the waiting for water truck on some days. It was also the first time we stayed in a hotel in Chennai. Hotels have water and star hotels definitely have water. That was a good decision to move to a hotel.

Two days for the function, two days for rest and we flew back on day 5!

In those two so called "rest days" we managed to

- go meet my grandma (who could not make it to the function)

- meet San's grandma

- eat out in three places

- visit Kabali temple and

- do a quick round of shopping in old Cupertino/ Old Fremont..

sorry.. Mylapore and Mambalam.. I have to write a separate post on why folks who are in Mylapore side end up in Cupertino and Mambalam side end up in Fremont.. the statistics are interesting.. think BART and Station road might have something to do with it..

where were we? Yes.. quick visits on two "rest" days.

We visited Kabali temple .. the place where San and me met for the first time..a place where "our fates changed" in San's words.

The kids went to the elephants and quickly realized that the elephants were sitting in the sun all morning and were at 41 C. One quickly jumped off and the other managed a smile knowing she had already done the damage..

Don't how many kids have sat on these elephants and had fun over the last centuries.. 

We also walked through one of my favorite places in the temple where they keep the cows and peacocks.. Didn't not spot any peacocks this time but this little calf came and was all over me.. kissing me and wanting to play with me. Brought back so many memories.. 

As usual I am now down with a cold virus from the flight.. so taking it easy and resting as much as I can for the long weekend.

My one achievement for the trip was to take a family group picture of my parents with all their kids and families. This group has never been together under one roof ever.. this was the first time. Hopefully it will be repeated many more times.. Have waited a long time to take this picture!

Will have more pictures to edit and share soon. This trip was only 5 days and 20k miles but felt like we went to the moon and back and over decades of time in memories..

Elephantography

It is no secret that I have a soft corner for elephants and monkeys.. especially elephants.

Here is one of the pictures of the elephants in San Diego Zoo..

Loved processing this one into a Black and White image and retain the color only on the leaves he was eating. Had done a similar picture years ago where only the eyes had color . . . 

More pictures tomorrow..

Two elephants, two hours, memories for two lifetimes

We did two trips within trips this year. The first one was a trip to Kerala with my parents, brother and sister and families. 

We stopped first at Thekkadi and went for an elephant ride to view the Western Ghat mountain range from vista points along a ridge. 

There were two elephants, one male and one female that took the family in batches of four through a 30 minute ride. The male elephant is apparently the fourth largest elephant officially known in Kerala. 

They were magnificent creatures and were happy to take the 4-5 kilograms of bananas divied up and distributed through everyone in our group. 

There were pictures.. lots of them.. here are a few.

Throughout the trip Jr. was a very serious person. The only time I saw her smile, even blush was when she was on the elephant! 

Then came the session where we fed the elephant and the kids got blessed by them. They were happy and scared to go near the giants but soon realized that the animals were gentle creatures. 

That was a kid who is scared and happy at the same time! Should caption that image "Scrappy"! 

Jr. did warm up to the elephant and fed it first. Did not expect her to be that bold. She surprised me.

and once she did it, was all proud. "Did you see what I just did?" 

The little one was really scared and needed a little help from the adults to go near the elephants. 

Then she was their "best friend"!

She got up close and personal !

There were many unforgetable moments on that trip. My parents who were not sure of joining us because of their health concerns, jumped in last minute to join us. Watching them go around on an elephant made my day! 

The views from the ride were breathtaking as well. You could see the mountain ranges, the towns and farmlands below and the sunlight doing a spotlight show through the break in the clouds. 

This reminded me of the views on the way back from Whittianga to Auckland in New Zealand. There is so much sightseeing to do in India. Don't know when we will get time to go soak it all in..

After this we went on a boat ride in the lake to spot wild animals and birds. That is a post for another day!

Chasing Elephants... really!

Daddy spent two weeks with the kids and grandparents in Chennai when Mommy could not fly out thanks to insufficient vacation days and looming deadlines!

We spent a lot of quality time that week by making many visits to dads favorite Chennai hangout, the Kapaleeshwar Temple.

It happens to be a favorite for the kids too, with the star attraction being the stone elephants. They remembered the last encounter with the elephants, Jr. from memory and the little one from revisiting the blog.

We went there before "mottai"...and the little one started her termite act. Every 5 minutes she would make a request to see a real elephant and have it bless her. So I told her that we will see a real one when we get the mottai in Gunaseelam.

She was very happy and played to her hearts content. She reminded me so much of my brother because he would do the exact same thing, sit dangerously on the top and beat the head of the elephant!

We kept looking out for elephants between the Trichy station and Gunaseelam temple with no luck. There were none on that route this time. No elephants at Gunaseelam temple either. So the little one was really disappointed.

To make her happy we took her back to Kabali temple after "mottai" to play with the stone elephants again. Given a choice she would have stayed on that elephant forever.

It was pretty late and she came out crying "I want to see a real elephant and make it do buchchu for me!"

That was when we started asking all relatives, auto drivers, strangers on where we could possibly find an elephant that would accept our money/bananas and bless us in return.

Only temple elephants do that. So the few elephants in the Guindy / Vandalur zoo's didn't count. Apparently it is not easy to access these elephants either as they are sleeping or hard to find within the park/zoo.

A wise auto driver suggested "Maangaadu Kaamakshi temple". He remembered seeing an elephant there 6 months earlier. So a trip was made to that temple. Nice temple, but no elephant.

Another wise auto driver in the "maangaadu" auto stand told us that an elephant did visit this temple every alternate week or so on auspicious days, but it possibly came from Thiruverkaadu Karumaariamman temple! So off we went searching for that temple.

The little one was praying frantically to every "pillaiyaar ummachhi" (the elephant headed god) she saw on the auto route for one thing and one thing only. An encounter with a blessing elephant.

So she was almost heart broken when we went behind the temple to find "no elephant" where there was supposed to be one. We could smell elephant, but it was nowhere to be found. Then the temple authorities took pity on the little one and dispatched the elephant manager to help us view "Ganesh" (he had already been named .. even if the he was really a she). We walked behind the temple to a padlocked shed to view this gorgeous elephant. You should have seen the smile on the little one's face!

This beautiful creature took the money from the little one and gave us both a long blessing! Brought back so many memories.

Later when we were in Manali and driving towards Bilaspur we saw two elephants that were used to carry heavy loads on the mountains. They were shorter and stockier than the elephants we see(or used to see)in south India.They looked a lot healthier and happier.

Well who wouldn't be with that fresh air and fresh water in Manali?!

Not sure if Jr. and the little one will be able to give their kids this experience.

Elephants are more and more difficult to find these days, but we were glad that we got this on camera.

One thought kept coming back to my mind. We are leaving the world in a lot worse state for our kids than our parents did for us. That is really sad.

On the bright side, the stone elephants haven't changed a bit in 35 years!

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Stone Temple Pilots

As we were going through the old CD collection, a CD of the "Stone Temple Pilots" was spotted. They were a popular rock band in the early nineties. Popular for a very short time, but they had one single that I liked and hence the CD in the collection.

At that time, it was my opinion that,

Amitabh Bachchan : Mithun Chakraborthy :: Pearl Jam : Stone Temple Pilots

Anyways, this post as usual, is going to steer away from the opening paragraph. To a different world, a different time and place!

The very first time the name of this group was mentioned, and we (Myself, my friends Sedat Alkoy and Indradev Samajdar, may god find them happy wherever they are!) were watching the group perform live on one of the late night shows, it remined me of a different type of Stone Temple Pilots, and for some weird reason, that memory came back! Now we are going deep into my brain, for this is a flashback of a flashback, something not attempted, even in K. Balachandar movies!

Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a custom called Pradhosham. Every 15 days, the entire family would assemble at the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore and watch the idol of lord Shiva (on his silver bull) being carried around the temple three times, with a short break after each round. The temple would be "standing room only", and the oldies and the kids will go hours in advance to reserve vantage positions to see the prayers during the breaks.

Think of it as stadium seating where the half time show is viewed best!

My brother and me, would have our own agenda when going to the temple. While grandpa would be busy choosing a safe view point for grandma, we would go do our thing. We would watch and chase the peacocks behind the "punnaivana naathar", chase each other around the entire temple, put vennai to the hanuman on one of the pillars outside the Kapaleeshwar sannidhi, and last but not the least, chase each other on the stone elephants in the hall facing the subramanya deity! It was by far our favorite activity.

We would race across fantasy lands, throw in some Mahabaratha lingo learnt recently from grandma and beat the elephant on the head to go faster, faster! We would hog the elephants as much as we could till grandpa would dislodge us to give the the other waiting kids a chance.

The beauty of the pradhosham, is that if you pray to Lord Shiva over that narrow 90 minute window every fifteen days, he would forgive you for all your sins and grant you all your wishes! The other beauty of the pradhosham is that as soon as the final deepa aaradhanai is done, the crowd disperses within 10 minutes! The ladies disappeared to feed their family while the men had to go around the Mylapore tank and bargain with the vegetable vendors to buy veggies for the next days menu! The gaslit lamps, the crude weighing scales which made the bargaining moot, the cows that would be running the backlane between the open stalls for the discarded vegetables, the smells, the visuals... someone needs to come up with a software that can take the image in your head and convert it to .jpg and upload to blogger! Better, make that a request for video upload directly to youtube.

Where were we? Ah, the rapidly dispersing post pradosham crowd! You see, grandpa was a very patient man and he loves us dearly! That said, he would let us play on the elephants for an extra half hour. This would be followed by a request for drinking Kalimark goli soda outside the temple and he would yield. Then we would make our way to the Ambika Appalam Depot and buy :

1 piece Palkhoa each (wrapped in a translucent butter paper)
1 bag of kara sevai
1 bag of ribbon pakoda

and we would start the long trek back home. Occasionally I would roll and the floor and throw a tantrum outside the book store near Leo coffee for the latest issue of Chandamama and grandpa would buy me that too!

Every India trip over the last fifteen years has included a Pradosham, call it an old habit, a prayer for shiva or whatever. Except this trip!

We went to the temple one evening, to stand under the same Dakshinamurthy who was in some ways instrumental in me marrying San, while my brother pointed out the real Dakshinamurthy shining high and bright over the Madras sky!

Jr. is now about the same age as my brother was when we enjoyed piloting the stone elephants. She really enjoyed it. The little one will have to wait a couple of years, and then we can have the next generation race all over again!

San tells me that I live in the past when we visit India, and it is true. When you spend less than a month out of twelve in India, one does tend to live in the past, look for those connections, grab for roots, all in the hopes of refreshing the DRAM's in your head!

All said and done, it is great to go back to this temple, anytime, any day, be it Pradosham or otherwise, and take a look at those elephants!

I can be eight years old again!

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