Maravanthe...

This is the first sight that caught our eye as we entered Maravathe. As seen in the picture it is a clean, isolated beach framed by gray rocks. The mere sight of it was enough of an invitation for us to jump right into the water. But we had had a long journey of 12 hours and needed our refreshments, so we headed in the opposite direction instead, towards the home-stay.

The "Sagar Kinara" beach resort: Not a resort as such, but it has around 6 - 7 rooms good enough for a pleasant stay. The rooms are unsophisticated, neat, clean and small. No A/c or generator but still it is pleasant place and an affordable one with a beautiful view of the beach from the veranda. The view is good especially in the moon light. The cost of each room comes up to Rs 500/- per day. The food is great, a typical udupi brahmin home food complete with pickle and pakodas.

The view of the beach from the resort

The Home-stay owner Mr. Srinivas (Mobile - 9448724861) is a very friendly person and took care of all our needs from the word go. He also gave us suggestions on the places in and around maravanthe that we can visit. I made the mistake of calling him "Uncle" and later in the night we all had an "entertaining" lecture on why only people above 50 must be addressed as "Uncle"and how we must not generalize the term.So thus began our "vacation" and the entry to the refreshment joint could not have been better.

A stroll by the beach:
After a short while we decided to take a stroll by the beach. We crossed the rocks lining the shore and started to take in the surroundings as we walked.

The picturesque water, white foam of the waves, broken sea shells brought ashore by the dancing waves of the sea, the feel of water and the receding sand against the back of our feet, the tiny little white crabs moving on the surface of the sand, little birds sitting on the shore as though watching a brilliant performance and flying away over the sea as we neared too close to them giving a spectacular performance themselves, the fishing boats, the coconut trees and everything around seemed picture perfect.

Maravanthe has a beautiful beach on one side of the highway and sowparnika river on the other. We walked by the beach and walked by the river and in the meantime all of us started switching over to our cranky sides. Saurabh pretended to be a ghost by a broken down, blackened house. Shashi and Deepti started posing on the bark of a tree, Chetan started taking pictures of every flower in the vicinity, for Deepti offcourse. I almost stumbled twice trying to take pictures of every thing from broken sea shells to dead trees. In one way or the other all of us were trying to do a bit of 'nortangi' in our own style. I dont remember what Prithvi was doing though. Either he is a very decent boy or I was too busy doing 'nortangi' of my own to notice what he was doing.

Without any doubt the vacation mood was sinking right into us. It must have got into our stomachs first though, as all of us were hungry at this point of time and off we went to have lunch.

Boating and the sunset:
After a hearty lunch and a quick nap, we went towards the river for a bit of boating. 30 min ride in the river was good enough where most of the time was spent in taking profile pictures of the concerned individuals :P. It was almost evening by the time we finished boating and the sun was beginning to set in the sky. As though by magic the river in front of us was transformed into pure gold and left all of us mesmerized. It also made the 650 bucks we paid for boating worthwhile.
It was time now, really time for sunset. All of us ran towards the beach and lo behold what a view it was!
Sunset happens everyday at every place, but its amazing how the experience can be so special at certain places.
A small golden orb sinking low, gloriously on the horizon, so simple yet so special...

Beauty is often perceived as that what lies in the eye of the beholder.
But sometimes both the vision and perception become mere see -through glasses, see -through glasses framing a window of the soul....
and real beauty, surpasses them both and touches the soul directly.. stirring deep emotions from within..
Perhaps that's why, we like what we see and perceive it as delight......
To cap it, the spectacle took place against the backdrop of the dazzling full moon.
It was a triple treat, sunset on river, sunset on the beach and the moon rise.

rising moon

After the sunset we started to play on the beach. The waves are high on this beach and it can be pretty dangerous so we did not go deep into the water (none of us knew swimming anyways ;)) but sat very close to the shore and let the waves catch up. The waves were hitting us and going back, and sometimes taking our stuff with it too. It took my duppatta and Deepti's rubber band. But beaches dislike slippers as Shashi found out, she lost her slippers but got it back as well :)

Soon it was dark and we had no choice but to go back. But after dinner all of us felt like going back to the beach again.

It was 9.30 in the night and the tides were really high. We sat silently watching the sea. The sea was bathed in moonlight. Above us the sky was silhouetted by stars. We could hear the sea thundering as the waves rose high and low. None of us spoke a word but simply sat there for nearly half an hour. I thought i had discovered the true meaning of so many words that day, yet there was one more left.

It was here, sitting under the stars and watching the moonlit sea that i discovered the true meaning of the another word. Another word called "Tranquility".

Next Adventure: Kodachadri...Dont miss it!

Few more photos....

Shimoga- Thirtahalli-Agumbe-Someshwara- Kundapur- Maravate

Did i hear a cuckoo somewhere?

That was the first sound i heard on Saturday morning.
The last time i heard cuckoo in bangalore was at UAS campus nearly 3 years ago...
While i mulled over the thought of what happened to them, we had already crossed shimoga and were at the threshold of western ghats.

I have visited different places in the western ghats in the past few years and every single time i am enchanted by its beauty. Its unbelievable how much nature can soothe your mind. Just sitting in the car and watching the surround from the window was a refreshing experience.

The fresh light green trees around, the soft glow of the morning sun peeping here and there through tender leaves, the chirping of birds, the hairpin bends of the ghat, dotted by wild flowers, greenish blue mountain peaks covered in morning mist, the country folk going about their day to day business, the cattle, the children....
every small thing seemed to enhance the beauty of the place tenfold.

There seemed to be a kind of melody in the place. Except melodious music always comes from your ears and fills your heart, but here the melody seemed to be in my heart and was slowly filling my senses.

In the meantime we reached Agumbe, The place is famous for its beautiful sunset spot.
Though we missed the sunrise we nevertheless enjoyed the magnificent scenery of the place.
From agumbe it is roughly around 45 kms to kundapur. We took the route of Someshwara and reached kundapur in roughly about 1 and a half hours.

Maravanthe is exactly 13 kms from kundapur.
Maravathe is a little known place with easily the most beautiful beach that i have seen.
On the left of the highway is the beach and on the right is the sowparnika river.

What was in store for us when we reached maravathe?
The homestay where we stayed, the great food, the beach , the river...

More to come in the next post...

Agumbe

Maravanthe beach as seen from the highway

The much awaited refreshment joint.

Lately, my life seemed to be filled with c’s.
chaos & coding...
Complexities & coding
Confusion & coding
Coding , coding, coding & coding

I was so fed up with all of them that I decided it was high time I added a few more c’s
Companionship, Celebration, comfort, comedy and a bit of color.

And with that came the pleasant Friday evening, when a bunch us decided to take all the good c’s with us and head towards the country side for a peaceful, adventurous weekend.
The Arrangements were made, a Quails was hired and off went the party zooming along on NH4.

There was still a dull buzz going on in the back of my head. The images of the events of the day, the meetings, project details, the design, and code still kept flashing across my mind. The sounds of the office, the cafeteria, the Bangalore traffic still running in the back of my head were now accentuated by the steadily growing peals of laughter around me.

Slowly but steadily the chaotic feeling of arduous monotony was being replaced by the warmth seeping across my heart, A feeling arising from the fact that I hadn’t met any of my friends for over a year, but when I did it felt like I had seen them only yesterday.

The highway seemed to disappear under the wheels of the quails at a very fast pace.
It seemed to mimic my life which too kept disappearing under the wheels of time, just as fast. Across miles and miles of grey stretch, monotonous and continuous,
But today seemed different, it looked like I had stumbled upon a refreshment joint.
A warm, friendly one, promising lots of fun.

So when I looked at the highway stretching wide in front of me, both the real and the metaphor, I could not help but smile.


The Qualis



The Highway

(To be continued..........)

ಆಜ್ಜಿ ಕವನ

ಕೈಲಾಸ ಪರ್ವತದ ಅರಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ,

ಶಿವನಿಗೆ ಬಂದಿತು ತಲೆ ನೋವು ಅಲ್ಲಿ.

ಕಾವಲುಗಾರರ ಅತಿ ಗೋಳಾಟ,

ಪಾರ್ವತಿಗೆ ಬಂದಿತು ಪಿಕುಲಾಟ.

ಗಿರಿಜೆಯು ಹೊಡೆದಳು ಗಣಪತಿಯನ್ನು,

ಮುರಿದಳು ಕೈಲಿದ್ದ ಕಡುಬನ್ನು.

ಕೆಲವರು ಹೋದರು ಕೆಲವರು ಬಂದರು,

ಕೆಲವರು ಮೇಲ್ಗಡೆ ನೋಡುತ ಕುಳಿತರು,

ತಲೆ ನೋವು ಸಹಿಸದೆ ಈಶ್ವರ ನಾಗ,

ಕಳುಹಿದ ಕಪಿಯನು ಕರೆತರಲಾಗ,

ಓಡುತ ಹೋದರು ಮಾರುತಿ ಬಳಿಗೆ,

ಕಾಡಿಸುತಿದೆ ತಲೆನೋವು ಈಶ್ವರಗೆ.

ಬಂದರು ಜನಗಳು ಒಂದಾಗಿ,

ನಿಂದನು ಮಾರುತಿ ಮುಂದಾಗಿ,

ಏನೆಲೊ ಮಾರುತಿ ತಾರೆಲೊ ಔಷಧಿ,

ಎಂದ್ಹೇಳಿದ ಶಿವ ತೊದಲುತಲಿ.

ಬಾಬಾಬುಡನ್ನಿಗೆ ಹಾರಿದನು,

ಗಿಡದಿಂದ ಬೀಜವ ಬಿಡಿಸಿದನು,

ಕೆಂಪಗೆ ಬಾಣಲೆಯಲಿ ಹುರಿದು,

ಮರಳುವ ನೀರಿಗೆ ಪುಡಿ ಬೆರಸಿ,

ಶೋಧಿಸಿ ಹಾಲು ಸಕ್ಕರೆ ಬೆರಸಿ,

ಬಿಸಿ ಬಿಸಿಯಾಗಿ ಪಾನವ ಮಾಡಿ.

ಈ ರೀತಿ ಹೇಳಿದ ಕಪಿಯೊಡೆಯ,

ಮಾಡಿಸಿ ಕುಡಿದನು ಜಗದೊಡೆಯ.

ಅಂತೂ ಈಶ್ವರನ ತಲೆನೋವು,

ನಿಲ್ಲದೆ ಓಡಿತು ಅಲ್ಲಿಂದ.

ಕಪಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟ ಬೀಜಕ್ಕೆ ಕಪಿ ಬೀಜವೆಂದು,

ಜನಗಳ ಬಾಯಿಗೆ ಧೀರ್ಘವು ಬಂದು,

ಆಯಿತು ಕಾಫಿ ಬೀಜವೆಂದು...

ಆಯಿತು ಕಾಫಿ ಬೀಜವೆಂದು...

ಎಲ್ಲ ಕನ್ನಡಿಗರಿಗೂ ಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಹಾರ್ಧಿಕ ಶುಭಶಯಗಳು.
ಈ ಹಾಡನ್ನು ನಾನು ಚಿಕ್ಕವಳಿದ್ದಾಗ ನನ್ನ ಅಜ್ಜಿಯವರಿಂದ ಕಲಿತೆ. ನನ್ನ ಅಜ್ಜಿಯವರಿಗೆ ಈ ರೀತಿಯ ಜಾನಪದ ಗೀತೆಗಳು ಹಲವಾರು ಗೊತ್ತಿದ್ದವು. ನಾನು ಈ ಹಾಡನ್ನು ಮರೆಯುವುದರೊಳಗೆ ಇದನ್ನು ಇತರರಿಗೆ ಪರಿಚಯಿಸಬೇಕೆಂಬ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ.

ಅಜ್ಜಿಯ ಕವನ ನೂರು ವರ್ಷಕ್ಕೂ ಹಳೆತು. ನಿಮಗೂ ಇಷ್ಟವಾಗಲಿ ಎಂದು ಬಯಸುತ್ತೇನೆ.

ek anek

Way back in the 90's when i was still in school, i used to wait expectantly for Children's day.
On November 14th every year all the teachers of my school became very busy arranging cultural programs for the students. In a reversal of roles, the teachers used to prepare skits, songs and dance and perform for us students, while we clapped, cheered and enjoyed ourselves.
Now, I have a haunch that my teachers also used to look forward to this event as much as i did, because i have realized that it is wonderful to be a kid when you are grown up.
The excitement simply cannot be expressed in words but must be felt and experienced.

So i will not talk much in this post, but will leave you with the pictures and the video.

I will end this post by saying that this play was a part of the cultural fest at office.

Watch the video, enjoy and do leave your comments. I hope it will remind you of all the old Doordarshan programs, as it did to me :) :)

The original Doordarshan video is here

Aaja bachpan ek baar phir

What is it I hear after a gong is struck? After the actual music disappears….

Should I call it an echo?

The sound waves are lost, but not quite...they seem to reverberate again, and once again…

I hear them in my ears or do I hear them inside my head?....

Do I really hear them at all….or do I just feel them?

Floating around a long time after the sound of music has actually passed…

Some memories are exactly like these gongs.

They come back again and again, even if they have happened in the long past

I seem to hear and see them so clearly…

and feel them in my heart too …

They reverberate inside me and leave me enchanted...

And I wish nothing else but to go back there just once more,

Just once more to those beautiful childhood days….

.

Who wouldn’t want to go back to those carefree and jolly days?

Days which were spent playing hide and seek,

Catching butterflies with huge saucers…

Scouring snails in abandoned houses....

Of all the naughty stuff done..some caught and some uncaught….

For that unblemished laughter, for that limitless fun….

After growing up, not many will get the opportunity to find them back.

If you do find it, it is priceless.

Subadra kumari chauhan has expressed this longing beautifully in her Hindi poem

Bar bar aati hai mujko, madhur yaad bachpan teri,

gaya le-gaya tu jeevan ki sabse madhur khushi meri.

Chinta rahit khelna khaana vaha phirna nirbhay swachand

Kaise bhula jaa saktha hai bachpan ka atulit aanand.

Unlike subhadra kumari chauhan, who found her childhood again in her daughter,

I too found my childhood, but elsewhere….

Though for a short while, it made me nostalgic and I felt like a kid once more…

How and when?

Coming up in the next post….stay tuned.

Time....

She sits by the clear blue creek,

watching its grandiose mystique,

waiting for the golden sun on horizon,

tossing little grey pebbles one by one.

Time flows forever, like a stream

Or does the stream flow in time?

Time stops for no one they said,

Yet it stops the whole world, instead.

For it shall only turn on its own slow wheels,

all the bugging while its enigma it conceals.

The water and sky shall glow gold and sublime,

She has to fling her stones now, fling until its time...