Shivasamudra and the big banyan tree

Shivasamudra waterfalls, about 125 kilometers from Bangalore, is simply awesome. The Cauvery river forms two waterfalls Gaganchukki and Bharachukki and looks majestic during the rainy season. Check out these images taken during our weekend trip. But make sure you don’t go there in the afternoon. Best time to visit would be in the evening when the sun is not so harsh. The day we visited was the inauguration of the waterfall festival.

We went to both Gaganchukki and Bharachukki to view the waterfalls. I had read in some websites, and my friends had also warned that there were no bathrooms or good hotels in Shivasamudra.

To my surprise, I saw a newly constructed bathroom and some temporary bathrooms made of metal sheets. I saw amused foreigners checking out these structures and clicking pictures. But the doors of the bathrooms were locked. Perhaps it was built for the VVIPs. While the VVIPs can relieve themselves, people like us will need to look for some cover.

I was tempted to wet my lips in the scorching sun, but decided against it. I decided it was a better idea to wait till evening and go to some hotel to visit the bathroom on our way back. But older people may not be able to wait for so long.

If only the authorities had provided basic amenities in such tourist spots instead of just focusing on celebrating such festivals. We also visited the 600-years old banyan tree on the way, the big banyan tree, which is another tourist attraction. You just can’t figure out where its main trunk is.

Racial violence in Australia, Europe, and in India

We have been reading about racial violence against Indian students in Australia. Everyone has been reacting to the government’s inability to solve the problems of Indians abroad. Well, it’s not in Australia alone. When I traveled to Europe, I must say, strangers almost seemed hostile. If you know them personally, they are warm and friendly, otherwise they are cold.

When I was traveling in a train in London, a stranger blocked my way when I was trying to alight from the train. I was worried because the train would stop only for a short while. I had to take his hand off forcefully and run out of the train. He seemed angry and said, “F@#& off”. I wonder what infuriated him! Later, when I thought about it, I thought it must be my brown skin. People told me to not to venture out at night, because it wasn’t safe for us ‘brown skinned’ people. People seemed to link brown skin with terrorism. They also rudely refered to the so called brown skinned people as ‘Pakis’.

Forget about Europe, when I was traveling in a BTS bus in Bangalore, the lady conductor refused to stop the bus at my bus stop and said I should talk to her in the native tongue Kannada, to stop the bus. I have also had bad experience from people in north India, who jointly refer to all south Indians as ‘Madrasis’. The Shiv Sena bashing up north Indians is the other side of the coin.

There is no end to discrimination based on your colour, caste, nationality, state, district, and God knows what would come up next. We are all nomads, we don't really belong anywhere. If only people understood that!

The dirty face of office politics

I am sure all of us would have, at some point, suffered coworkers, who would never give up trying to make our lives difficult. I can think of a couple of reasons - inferiority complex, jealousy, and inflated ego.

An ex-colleague of mine deleted my folder conaining all my work files, without leaving any trace. The back up did not include the recent files, leaving me to redo a lot of work. This is actually not that bad. A friend of mine was given wrong address and telephone numbers when she was travelling.

Another one, you can say, the less harmful one, is perhaps someone who makes it a point to inform the boss even if you sneeze in your cabin. Actually, some bosses seem to encourage that. In a company where I worked before, a colleaque was always complaining to the boss about me. I wondered if I should explain my side of the story. Then I decided against it. I thought, to have reached this level, the boss must be an intelligent person. Surely he has an idea about who is capable of what. I thought I should rather concentrate on work rather than give undue importance to some undeserving person. But, I must admit, it hasn't always beeen easy.

There is yet another category. They are the gossip mongers. They always give you information such as who the boss is currently seeing, a colleague getting a huge hike and all kinds of news. As a rule, they have no favourites. They simply latch on to anyone temporarily. The next moment they go back to the opposite camp to vomit all the juicy news.

Sometimes politics totally transforms the office atmosphere. It gets as bad as swimming in crocodile infested waters. Not only that you need to swim, you also need to avoid crocodiles. You'd better be good at both!

Power cuts make Bangaloreans star gazers

The night sky is clear and the bright stars are twinkling and the full moon is a beauty. The cool breeze is heavenly. No airconditioner can ever replace it. Imagine sleeping under the stars! The night is best for star gazing.

We were planning to sleep in the terrace and were ready with blankets and pillows and mosquito coils! Kids are excited. "Tell us a story", they said. I look at the bright moon and tell the story of an alien kid from the moon who wanted to come to the earth and make friends with kids on earth. I made the story up by stealing bits and pieces from sci-fi movies. They fall asleep under the stars.

Not that we have suddenly become nature lovers, we are left with no other choice. In Bangalore, we face power cuts almost every night. Sometimes it lasts the whole night. Even with an inverter, power supply does not last whole night. Although the manufacturer promise 8 hours of power supply, the inverter has to puff and pant to come anywhere closer. To overcome that many homes use only one fan and all the members of the family sleep under the fan in the drawing room.

Well, we haven't bought an inverter yet. The recession is one major factor that makes anyone shy away from any major purchase. Let's see if we can do without one for some more time.

All is not not beautiful under the moon. Kids are fast aleep, but mosquitos are not. Their music gets louder and louder. A drop of water falls on my face. Rain! Bye bye moon, bye bye stars, we are back to civilization. Another sleepless night in the humid bedroom accompanied by live concert from mosquitoes!

If this continues, most of us Bangaloreans will become star gazers and poets. Blame it on climate change or global warming, I am almost certain we are starting our journey backwards from civilization.

Acute water shortage - water, the great leveller

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry – wise words, perhaps too late!

Occupants of many apartments in Bangalore will vouch for that. Occupants in one of the apartment complexes recently shelled out Rs 100,000 for water. Reason – the bore wells dried out! Independent houses in Bangalore generally depend on tanker services during such a crisis. But apartments cannot do that. Fortunately a bore well owner agreed to sell water - for a good price! The increasing number of apartments and independent houses has made water shortage acute. Many apartment complexes, even those by well known builders are not equipped to handle such a crisis.

Things are no different in my home state, Kerala. A cousin’s house has a well, but the water is brown and salty and cannot be used for washing or drinking. The government supply of water was in abundance during the elections. Following the elections, there was no water supply for many days. This meant that people had to carry their clothes to other houses with wells for washing! Many had to make do with dirty water in bathrooms. They were too tired to fetch more water in autorickshaws.

For the assembly elections, a prominent party promised us water. No one actually believed in the party’s ideals, but voted for water - even the educated elite Bangaloreans did so. We laugh at poor people voting for one kilogram of rice, for a cycle or for a television set. But then we also vote for water supply or electricity for houses or tarred roads to our houses. Long live Democracy!

Pink slip - keep all communication channels open

Pink slips are no longer news. It’s like, a neighbour’s just received one, a friend, a colleague, or a cousin has got the sack. It’s no longer something that happens to someone else. It could be just anyone, you or I. In a way it’s a great leveler—a pink slip scares everyone, right from the senior executives to the frontline staff. No one is immune.

A job is not just the loss of an income. A job is not just a job, it’s a career. It’s not simply the loss of a steady source of income. For a person it is his/her identity. Majority of the waking hours are spent at work. A lot of energy is spent on a project to nurture it. Family and entertainment are pushed to the back burner. And then without any notice, on a fine day, an HR executive calls for a meeting and simply puts it across, “We are sorry it hasn’t worked, we tried our best to retain you”. ID cards are returned, laptop handed over. It's like you are being stripped of your identity. The HR continues with its processes to clean up after you. Now there's nothing to show for any of your earlier efforts. Be good. You sure want your papers in order. You get sympathetic glances from the other cubicles. It’s not their turn yet! You ask someone to open the doors for you as you no longer have an identity card. And then you are out of there. The end.

Initial days are filled with hope. You’re sure you will be an asset somewhere. But then, nothing seems to be happening! Is there light at the end of this dark tunnel? None in sight, especially if you are a senior person. And, frankly, there’s no opportunity out there now. No one’s hiring. Your confidence takes a beating. It simply seems like you are in this tunnel forever.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to keep all channels of communication open. Hiding the fact would never help. You never know where help would come from. You might just be surprised!

Exams and stress

My 12-year old son is busy preparing for his exams. Rather, we, his parents are busy preparing him for his exams. On one hand, the syllabus is tough. On the other hand, the portions for the final exams include almost all lessons.

Like some of the kids of his age, for my son too Maths is difficult. While I knew about the stress of exams, an incident made me understand the toll it has on kids.

Some days back, during his study time, my son came to me. His father was teaching him Maths. It was about 8pm and I was busy folding the clothes. There were other chores also to be done. He said, “Can I lie on your lap for a while?” I was lost in thoughts and casually said, “Let me finish this, I will take only two minutes”. He stood there waiting. I didn’t really pay much attention. Some time later his father called out to him, “You asked me for a five minutes break! Come back now”. That’s when I realized he was waiting for me to finish my work. His eyes filled and he was about to turn back.

Feeling guilty, I said he could continue his Maths work later. That is, whenever he felt he was ready. He lay on my lap for a while and then said, “Now I feel better. I was feeling so stressed. I think I will finish my work now”. He then went back to his work.

I am sure this is not an incident concerning just my son. This could be a slice of any kid's life. It’s not easy for parents either. But, it made me realize how important it is for us to understand the gravity of stress a student undergoes. I can only hope that every child would get the chance to bloom to his or her fullest without stress.

The variety entertainment called elections

Elections are around the corner. Take a look at the streets and you will know that. There are huge hoardings put up on both sides of the road. We can see politicians with folded arms looking down at us from these illegal hoardings. I find this disgusting. Some of these simply block the traffic signals.

There are also huge structures erected across the road. These are certainly illegal. They look crude and are dangerous as well as they reduce visibility around the corners. These political parties should be punished for these illegal hoardings, which deface the city. Perhaps people should decide that they would never cast their so called precious vote for any party that erects such hoardings and throws promotional material all around.

The election season is not actually all that bad, it is fun time also. Really! Listen to how they act, what they say, and the blame game-the war of the words. It is variety entertainment!

Like you see in the photo on the right, politicians only smile from these hoardings. Life goes on as usual. Nothing changes and no one really cares!

I hope this time there will be negative voting. At least we can at least be honest with ourselves!

Moral policing on Valentine’s Day

Well, the self proclaimed moral police have already warned youngsters planning to celebrate the day to abstain from it. According to them it is Christian. How about Xmas then? Many of the Hindus celebrate Xmas. Now Karnataka’s BJP government has made it clear that they are not for the safety of the people but for ensuring they are “morally correct”.

We know what to expect on Valentine’s Day this year. The moral police are going to beat up young couples. Don’t be surprised if you hear that girls were molested or that people were stripped and paraded. Our country is moving towards that shame. Now its citizens have to celebrate in fear of the so called politicians. Let the CM make the state a place where people can live with out fear. However, it is far from the present situation, where the fence itself eats the crops (a phrase borrowed from Malayalam).

Is there a solution to this? The only way is to nip the tendency in the bud. Once these people know that they will be punished, they will not opt for this. Considering the pent up anger of the young population, I am sure these moral police will be at the receiving end this time.

Is this the freedom our ancestors fought for? I remember the song below, which we sang in school. Perhaps Tagore knew where “free” India was headed.

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
....................................................................................................
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -

Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”

Pub culture will not be allowed in Bangalore, says CM

Karnataka chief minister (CM) says his government will not allow pub culture in Bangalore. He says it is against Indian culture. Drink at home, says CM. So does the Rajasthan CM. This is the greatest joke of the century. When did these people become the guardians of morality in India? So what is the chief minister’s role? The CM has to uphold the culture of India, which seems to be his main duty. They don’t even seem to know what culture is. Culture is giving respect to others. Does the so called Indian culture allow violence against women? He says it's ok to drink at home. Is he saying that parents and children drinking at home is Indian culture?

The government’s next move will be to say that women should not work as they had not done so before. That’s also westernization. They would soon stop couples in motorbikes to prevent women from traveling with “unrelated” men. This might also be against the so called Indian culture. They will be pushed from their bikes and beaten. You might soon get to see these on television. I am sure they would also love to bring a dress code like the Taliban. Now you know where we are headed. The Indian Taliban will say the rhetoric, “they are like our sisters, we only want to protect them.”

I remember an incident, where the Karnataka police showed their sense of duty. I was in the park with my husband and son, who was a toddler then. There was another couple in a bench on the opposite side. The police came and asked them to get into the police jeep. They pleaded with the police saying they were only talking. But the police did not budge. It was barely 6 pm. We were spared because the child was proof of our marriage!

Is this part of a policeman’s duty? There is so much for them to do, rather they do not do. Bangalore would be a much better place if they concentrated on their duty instead of looking at something absolutely needless. May be their job is not as interesting as chasing women.

But then what choice do we have? Well, keep yourself glued to the telly as the drama unfolds. We can only hope it wont be us!