Thoughts from QWERTY

6. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Sarchu - Leh

2011-10-15T14:18:00.013+05:30

By the time we reached Sarchu it was 7:30 PM, and all of us completely wet. No body was sure we are going to make it the whole night. We were shivering and we looked around for some kind of wood or dry leaves where we can have some fire to keep us warm. But it was complete barren land. Take a look below,
http://gigapan.org/gigapans/84420/

This photo was taken next day when we were in Sarchu without any work.

Now the owners of the camp told us its not cold, we thought these people must be kidding. Then we started observing all those people were wearing only sweater and woolen socks and they were standing next to us and pretty comfortable. This gave us little confidence that the weather is really not as bad as we think. It only feels worse because we were soaked. We requested the guys to make some fire. They finally did nice thing, they got some cartoon boxes and diesel and set them on fire. That made us to regain our senses. The police at check post told us since the road is blocked you might have to stay here for a day. So we knew we had lots of time to spend in Sarchu, we unpacked in the tent and went out for dinner.

The tent was very well set, with lots blankets to keep warm. We were discussing about how bad or good the day went. We went for good sleep.

Next day morning me and Ramesh had little head ache which does not seem to leave us. We were thinking of AMS. Dayanand got fever and the altitude made the health even worse. Since the roads were blocked we had a whole day to kill and we hoped Dayanand will recover in that time. Previous day it was all rain, and today it was too sunny and wind was going crazy. So much change withing 24 hours. Since Dayanand was not recovering we decided to go to army camp's hospital.

Ramesh took Dayanand to army hospital. Dayanand got pure oxygen treatment and some pills. We did carry the emergency pills for fever, cold, cough etc.. the army doctor told at this height those are not at all useful hence he gave some other pills. He also suggested not to do any kind of physical activity as the oxygen was less. Dayanand came back with full of energy and described the scene in army hospital the hospital became kind of camp for all AMS affected travellers.

In the mean time the Sarchu camp became refugee camp till the road block is cleaned up. We met two cyclists from Bangalore. Need to admire their physical and mental ability. Since the road blocked we were thinking twice or thrice to walk for about a kilometer or so, these two kids went on 7Km cycling just to keep their momentum.

Each Tuesday the BRO closes the road from Manali to Rhotang for road repairs hence there was no traffic for almost whole day, only few buses and tourists who were able to pass Rhotang by Monday 7 PM were started slowly arriving to Sarchu camp. There was one Korean who came in HPTC bus and took out his 'veena' started playing it. It was really great to have veena playing in background of Himalaya's. Here is the video

The road block was kind of blessing in disguise for us. This helped us to get acclaimed for the altitude.

By 5 PM the news came that the road block was cleared. We decided to start next day depending on Daryanand's condition. By about 7PM Dayanand caught fever again. We were really in fix now should we go head or stop here. By the time one more group of bikers came along and we discussed with them, and they gladly ready to ride Dayanand's bike to Leh if Dayanand unable to ride it.

The next day Dayanand's health becomes even worse and staying here might things to downwards. So we decided to move ahead. Ganesh one of bikers agreed to take Dayanan'd bike. One of gypsy gang agreed to take Dayanand along with them to Leh.

Finally we started off to Leh from Sarchu. The drive from Sarchu to Leh was one of the most memorable. The roads bad condition continued without any pause. The next stop was Pang about 90 Kms from Sarchu. Some visuals

We had lunch in Pang, and met Dayanand in Pang, we started worrying more about him now. The road was pathetic and he got tired too much. We got some electrolyte for him. I was kind of fed up with the bad condition of road by now and wanted to check with some one if the road from Pang to Leh was good or bad.

The problem is if you ask locals they never say road is bad(probably because they never know what good road is). A group of foreigners came from what it seems to be Leh road. I went to them and asked 'how is the road towards Leh? Is that good'. I was shocked to hear the answer in perfect Hindi. 'Road to idhar she accha nahi hain.' I said 'okay' and do not know what else to say as if his perfect Hindi was not surprise thing he told me clearly the road is bad very bad.

After about 5 kms from Pang we encountered a road which was like dream to us. The place is quite famously known as Moore Plains. At such an altitude its surprisingly flat. The road is around 100Kms and it is dead flat. The road was laid around a week back and it seems to be superb. The location is also wonderful. We stopped for snaps and thought finally we got good roads. And started cursing all those people who told the road was bad. Because road was nice.

But our dream shattered after 8Kms. The road was just getting laid hence it was so perfect. They had new road only for 8Kms. All existing roads was also dug up.We left with dusty road with chalk like mud, in which wheels can easily sunk in, if you stay long in same place. After Moore plains we reached Tanglang La. Decent from Tanglang La was scenic.

After Tanglang La, once we enter Ladakh, the roads are nice and small villages on the way are treat to watch.

The first sign of civilized amenities can be found in a village Upshi. We were in Upshi by 5PM and had much needed Tea Break. We took another 2 hour to reach Leh.

What happened in Leh below is just glimps of how Dayanand was.

5. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Khoksar - Kelong – Sarchu

2011-10-08T15:58:00.014+05:30

As mentioned in previous post, you can catch a view of Khoksar below,

We were able persuade the pea truck driver to take my bike next day to Keylong(of course we had to tell him route first). Driver hesitated first because Keylong is about 20Km off route to his preferred destination. The local police took our side and asked truck driver to help us telling, 'chal chod de unko, tera naam lenge, kyaa karega jaldi jaake?'(help them, they will thank you, what will you do by reaching your place so early?). Police personnel called us inside police station and gave little bit travel advice to us and also mentioned about the road condition and distances and asked us to be mentally ready for these things.

Previous day because of my condition, I did not gave much attention to the beauty of Khoksar, but this morning it was just wonderful. We had Tea and started from Khoksar about 7AM. The roads were quite good compared to previous day, we were able to drive fast. Ramesh decided to jump on to truck and I took his bike. The early morning ride without rain was quite enjoyable.

On the way to Keylong we passed many beautiful villages and group of cyclists.

One important piece of the Leh travel is getting snap in front of 'very famous' sign board and here it is

This petrol pump is situated in a place called Tandi. Tandi is about 10Kms before you hit the Keylong. We filled all our bikes and took extra 10Lts of petrol, you know for those 'just in case' situations. In the mean time our truck drivers got really lucky. As I told they were getting bricks from Manali to sell them. The brick usually costs Rs3. Since Keylong is difficult place to reach obviously cost is more. Now our truck driver did not know about this. For his surprise one guy wanted to buy brick and he quoted Rs9. Thats like getting lottery, the guy never imagined that he will get thrice as much price. He immediately agreed. But the problem was he did not know how much profit really he was making(believe me people are very innocent there), Ramesh helped for the calculation of profit and our truck driver's jaws just dropped by looking at the number. The guy was just happy. The guy who bought the brick was little skeptic and he came along with truck to get the delivery.

One interesting observation I made about these truck drivers, they offered bricks to some random temple in the valley. I asked him why is this?. He told we offer one or two bricks when ever we come across this temple(similar to other drivers) finally when enough bricks are collected some one from village will build small temple around the god. That is really something, I thought.

Finally when we reached Keylong it was about 11 AM and the mechanic was busy in minding his business. We went and introduced ourselves(when I was waiting in Rhotang top, some random guy made call to this mechanic). The mechanic helped to offload the bike. Chunni the mechanic was honest in his job and he started to work on my bike. The bid farewell to our truck friend and thanked them for there help.

We started to take a walk in search of breakfast. Keylong is actually the default stop for the journey between Manali and Leh, due to the number of lodges hotels, the last place to get internet between Leh and Manali and of course for the view it offers. We settled for local kinda restaurant for momos and the noodles.

By the time we finished our breakfast and came back to Chunni's shop it was buzzing with bikers. As this is the last place to get your bike checked. We met Delhi-dudes and the students who helped us in Rhotang. All of us discussed about our best-worst of the Rhotang and exchanged our wishes. We started for Sarchu. Since we were already off our plans we did not wanted to hurry and planned to call it a day to Sarchu.

We started from Keylong about 12:30 PM. The roads were mixture of good tarmac and gravel stretches. Next human habitat will be Jispa and Darcha. Both as small villages not more than 30 houses. Darcha has a police post where registration is necessary.

Once we leave Darcha there is absolutely no human soul till your reach Sarchu. The initial stretch of the road are in quite good condition, then it starts getting bad and then to worst. To increase our difficulty it started raining. At such an altitude cold wind and rain are just the right ingredients for disaster recipe. By the time 5 PM we were drenched in rain and no place to stop. The valley is called Baralacha La. The valley was beautiful filled with mountains which are of different colors. We were so cold that the my left hand almost went numb, and I checked them the tips of all fingers were turning pink. I wanted to check how numb my fingers are so I held the exhaust of the bike to realize my hands were not at all experiencing any heat. Oh that was scary. Only thing which came to my mind was I should not stop until Sarchu and get there very quickly. And once I am in Sarchu I should get some fire.

But the problem became more when we were near a place called 'Zing Zing Bar'. This is not a village actually but just temporary Army camp. The name was interesting and I came to know later about the origin of the name. This used to be Army's temporary camp during old days and army personnel used to have a bar here and they were having good time in this place with music and booze and hence the name 'Zing Zing Bar'. Oh and the problem with this place is the ice caps from the mountain melt during the day and they flow over the road making driving very difficult. The water flowing so fast, it erodes the road and the you cannot see bottom of the road in that water. To make things much worse the water is 'ice melted' and the moment the body comes in contact with this water the bones will feel the cold not just the skin. And the result was.

We were lucky in one part the flow of water is at its height during afternoon, we came to this stretch around 4PM or so. In addition to the ice cold water flowing on the road, there were many bridges. These bridges are made of metal sheets, and these sheets have been displaced. Its difficult to find place to ride the two wheelers across the bridge. We had to 're adjust' the metal plates in that cold by our hands to cross the bridge. By the time we finished the Baralacha La it was around 6:30 PM and we had pleasant road of 20KM which was surprisingly straight no curves at all, straight to Sarchu. On the way you will find ample tent guest houses ranging from few 100's a night to Rs 3000/- per night.

Sarchu was the last village in Himachal Pradesh and we need to register at police check post. When we went to check post the police told the road between Sarchu and Pang(next stop before Leh) was closed due to land slide in many places. So you have to stay in Sarchu for about a day or so. We decided to spend night in Sarchu, but looks like we had to spend more time in Sarchu. The police guys suggested us the tent house very next to their check post as the guest house was very good for hot food. Which is kind of luxury in such areas. So we decided to stay in the Guest house suggested by them.

4. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Manali and Rohtang Pass

2011-09-03T22:15:00.005+05:30

We had to catch our bus to Manali from Kashmiri Gate, Delhi. That is the Inter State Bus Terminal, popularly known as ISBT. Although I visited Delhi twice or thrice, some how I forget about the weather of Delhi. Ramesh reminded me that the weather will be hot as hell. Added to this difficulty, the Karshmiri Gate was under renovation. Kashmiri Gate, you can only experience the discomfort, it cannot be described. So hot-hell and waiting in Kashmiri Gate for 3 hours, we were just running to each and every conductor who comes to Himachal's bus booth and ask if he is the conductor for the bus we were supposed to board. I was shocked to hear that many people do not know that bus tickets can be booked in advance. Many people were looking at our reservation ticket and used to ask where you get this from!!. For those people who want to know, Himachal Pradesh Govt's road transportation dept has website where you can book tickets online. The current limitation is you should have Axis bank account. The website is http://hp.gov.in/hrtctickets/

Once we were in bus, I fell asleep. It was early morning Ramesh tapped me and told 'look outside', the view was fantastic. The crust gates of Dam for Beas river was opened and water was shooting more than 100 feet.

Beautiful View of Beas River early morning.

Manali was quite and small town. We just relaxed that day and did last bit of shopping needed for our journey. We met a person Sriram who spent last five months in Himalayan range from Sikkim to Manali. He was cycling from Leh to Manali for 12 days. He gave us useful tips and latest condition of roads.

Next day we started 7AM from Manali. The roads are in quite good condition. Our initial plan was to travel till Sarchu and stay at Sarchu. Next day start from Sarchu and reach Leh.

Initial plan for first day was to cover 200 and odd Kms.

View Larger Map

But we actually able to cover only 72 Kms till Khoksar and why is that? you can get small glimpse below

View Larger Map

We started to drive in rain early morning it was drizzling. We just gave one stop for breakfast about 9 AM after that the Rohtang up hill drive started.

Good roads initially when we left Manali.

Beginning of Rohtang Ascend, the cold was too much Ramesh searching for his gloves.

The rain always accompanied us whole day. As we started to climb the Rohtang pass, the road completely vanished, we can see is just mud and slush, slush was about a feat or two. By the time we crossed about four hairpin curves we were completely exhausted and the traffic came to complete halt. Many truck drivers warned us and asked us to turn back and go. Without any clue we just stopped at one small shop for lunch. We spent about and hour just waiting.

Ramesh probably thinking 'Yeh kaha aaa gaye hum'

'Ah this made our life difficult'

'Vehicle moving stopping fighting'

Then group of guys from Delhi came. They were seasoned riders. And they started to squeeze their bikes where ever they find space. We decided to follow them and boy did they ride. They just needed about 2.5 to 3 feet space that's it. We were about 2oo mts away from Rhotang top the mud and slush became too much for us. We did not had any prior experience in riding such conditions. The Delhi guys helped us, first they parked their bike and started to push our bikes. There was cold and fast wind in addition drizzling. Almost all vehicles were having tough time to move. Some how we made it another 5o meters and my bike gave up. It was not ready to move. The Delhi guys tried to fix it without any luck. They told us to get some help and tow it up back to Manali. There is no way we are going back to Manali. If it has to be forward not backwards. So I was waiting for some help.

Someone told me to ask the army guys, and pointed me to contact a guys standing there. I asked the fellow and he told you have to wait. Then I asked who are you? !!!! He told he was office from Army and responsible for that road. Looking at that road I felt, thank god I don't have this job. We waited for another 45 minutes and asked him again. He told , 'see I will help you but rain has to stop, till then I am helpless. More over VIP movement is here now. So you have to be patient'. Oh great!! VIP movement in best maintained roads itself block the public traffic for hours and In Rohtang. We were worried then, really worried.

Ramesh some how got feeling that waiting for the army people is not worth. So he suggested to take a walk and see how far this road is in such bad condition. Because we were hardly able to see anything beyond 20-30 feet due to rain and mist. We started to take a walk and our heart came to mouth when we say the land was still sliding about 100 meters from where we parked our bike and started walking. Because of this reason the police blocked the traffic. The BRO's workers stationed in that place and waiting for stones to fall. If the stones were small group of two or more people just run to it and clear it off the road. If the slide is more, then bulldozer will do that job.

We see that the muddy road ends as soon as this dangerous land slide ends. This gave us more hope. Ramesh suggested instead of waiting for MLA(the VIP movement) to pass and then tow our bike, we all three people can push one bike at a time to cross the muddy road. Although the job looked tough, we did not had any other way. Either we wait for something which was not sure or take matter into our hands.

So we started to push bike, and by the time we were near that land slide the stone started falling again. We were just 20 feet away from it, it was scary. We asked for help from the BRO workers who were there, they came and pushed the bikes. We also met research students from JNU, who were planning to spend next few months in Spiti for their research work. Lucky lads. One fellow explained what exactly wrong with my bike and gave us little confidence boost by assuring Kelong is the place where you can get your bike repaired. The place where this landslide was happening is known as Rani Nala. The two pulsars did not gave much trouble, once they got little pick up and out of mud they were slipping on the road, but there was nothing to stop unless we wanted to.

By the time we came out of that slurry, it was already 4:00 PM, we thought we will cover 200+ Kms in one day but it seems we were not able to cover even 50Kms. We waited next to small tent shop for some tow truck or some vehicle which can tow my bike to Keylong. We waited for another half an hour. Nothing came, because police had stopped vehicles coming from Manali and they were allowing the vehicles towards Manali. So I suggested Ramesh and Dayanand to continue and see if they can find any mechanic. If they find any its good. Otherwise they can stay in Khoksar. I will wait in the same place till 6:30 PM. If nothing comes up I will leave bike there and join them in Khoksar. We can think about bike next day. By this time we knew that we had to drop our plans of reaching Leh in next day.

After pushing all three bikes.

There was only a tent tea shop as shelter and I was waiting there. I asked that fellow when are you going to close the shop, closing shop means its not really closing, the guys will just switch off the stove and keep all his belongings into one bag and keeps it in same tent and goes to his home. Next day he comes again :). He told he usually leaves by 5:30 PM each day. There was a lorry which was broken down and the driver and cleaner were waiting for mechanic from Manali. There was too much cold. I saw a corn selling guy who was also getting ready to pack up for the day. I went and asked this guy to leave his charcoal as it is so that I can use it to get warm. He happily agreed and gave it to me.

Now the funny thing happened, the driver and cleaner of the lorry started talking something in Punjabi and took that lighted charcoal away. I asked the guy from shop what are they up to? He told that the charcoal heat is too less, so they put more charcoal and instead of blowing from mouth, they will keep it next to exhaust of the lorry so that it can light up easily. Now my technical mind started working 'the exhaust contains Corbon-monoxide or dioxide' and without Oxygen its very difficult to light it up'. But there is no point in convincing these people. Much to my surprise, the idea worked like charm and we had nice and burning charcoal which was very apt at that time with hot tea the shop owner prepared.

It was almost 7PM when mutter truck came, who agreed to take my bike to Keylong. They were coming form Manali by delivering the mutter(pea). They were getting some bricks back to sell . The lorry driver, cleaner and the shop owner helped to load the bike into the truck an tied the bike so that it will not fall off. And we started to descend Rohtang Pass. The moment we took turn from the top of Rohtang Top, I started to curse my bike, the view was so wonderful that I just lost myself and was enjoying the view. Until the driver asked me question 'Where is Keylong?'. I was like 'what the @#$@#!!!!!!!!' . Then I thought myself, OK this is not a time to get excited. I told that guy ' OK if you don't know where is Keylong, then its fine, you can just drop me to Khoksar, and also once you drop me to Khoksar we will discuss the settlement again'. I was hoping that Ramesh and Dayanand would decide to stay in Khoksar'. As there was only BSNL connection and none of us got that connection we were almost in stone age in case of communication.

By the time I reached Khoksar, there was big scene happened. Ramesh and Dayanand were told by locals and even by police that 'you should not have left your friend alone in these areas, now you go back and get him'. The problem was, now they did not know I was at Rohtang top or I have left to Kelong. So they started to stop all the vehicles on the way and started look out for me. As soon as the truck entered Khoksar I asked him to stop for few minutes and asked the first shop how many hotels in this village. He told only two. That makes my life lot easier because only to places to search for my friends, otherwise I had to push the truck guys to Keylong. And as I was just about to go to HP govt's guest house, next to that there was police station and Dayanand was outside waiting for Ramesh to do talking with the police. It was big relief to end the day in Khoksar, as It was cold and my shoes were completely wet and cloths to some extent. We persuaded the truck guys to start next day and drop the bike at Keylong. The police guy was also nice and he also did his bit of 'police power' to push the truck guys to drop us to Keylong.

Khoksar is small village probably radius is around 200-300 meters, and its exactly between two mountains and single road. Probably about 50 houses. But its one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It has river and falls and you can see ice on top of mountain. There are only two places to stay on is privately held guest house which is quite clean and comfortable. The other one is HP govt maintained guest house and dormitory. As we were late we had to stay in dormitory as no rooms were available.

That's the story for the first day. Until next post......

3. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Why I hate India and why I love India more than I hate India

2011-08-22T23:59:00.005+05:30

We zeroed down our bike transport guy. Like all (or many) people we went through website and gave call to the contact number provided there. Since Gati, Blue Dart and other reputed logistics quoted price which we felt little bit high. The person on phone quoted the price as 13k for three bikes to be transferred to Manali. Also agreed that 75% of the payment can be done in Bangalore and remaining 25% in Manali. We told him about travel plan and other details. The guy assured that he has storage in Manali, and the bikes will be delivered there. Once we are in Manali we can get the bikes by paying remaining amount.

We had little idea how this is going to work. Basically the guy who got bikes from here will have some business contact at Delhi or other place. He will make sure he will send bike to his contact and give him a cut. Then the guy next sends bike to his nearest contact to Manali and finally bikes will be delivered in Manali. Its like playing Kho-Kho. The guys came and packed the bikes very well and took the bikes.

Bikes getting packed.

The next day I was in office and Ramesh called to give me shocking news. The transport guy called and told he got confused Manali with Mohali. And to send the bikes to Manali he needs more money than agreed 13k.

Yes this is what I am talking about. Just because they want to earn more money some people just change their mind when ever they want and take advantage of other peoples' position. This makes me hate people. The story did not end here. As we did not had any other option we agreed to pay more(finally the cost came to same as Gati and others). He called me 20^th July and told me that he will be sending bikes to Manali from Delhi. I told yes you can send and we will collect it. As we were reaching Manali on 23^rd and planning to collect bikes from his storage. Now the shock of life came to me on 21^st morning the guy telling me that the driver is in Manali with bikes where should I unload them. Here we go again, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. We had to do something and one thing we did not had in our hand was time. Now we started digging out our contacts in Manali. There were none, really none. There was one feeble chance left. One of our friend's winter time ski-instructor was our only hope. The problem was his house was about 5Km from Manali and his phone was not reachable on his mobile. We could ask driver to just go to his home and see if some one is available there. But the guy was adamant that he wanted his money on delivery and he was not ready for online transfer of funds. It was like complete dead end.

Even though I hate people in such situation, I still have good amount of faith left in some kind of communities like reddit, imdb and Lonely Planet which are of the people, for the people and by the people. And I found the first hotel which comes in the Lonely Planet website and called the guy. I told him long story in short and told him our position and I requested him to unload the bikes for us in his hotel. And I also very hesitantly told him that he had to pay 5K to driver on deliver and we will repay him when we reach Manali. The guy was very polite and he told me 'aap chinta mat keejiye sir, main gaadi chudaaloonga aur paisa bhee de doonga'(Don't worry I will get the bikes unloaded and pay the amount). What a relief!!!. He was very convincing and I could not have wished better start for the journey with such Indian touch. Because it does not matter how difficult situation you are in our great country one or the other person will help you and he will be your angle.

I have experienced such things in many places. Once we had to go to farmers house at night 2AM when heavy rains ruined our tent in Tadiyandamol and the people in house did not hesitate little bit to get us inside their house. Not only that they gave us with warm mats and bed sheets so that we can stay as comfort as possible, although some of us had to sleep below cot :)

Such helping nature of people was repeated in Khoksar ( a police guy), in Sarchu where our hands were almost freezed, the guys at camp were kind enough to make us some fire (you will get to read more in 5^th blog entry). In Rhotang pass unknown 'Delhi-dudes', some students helped us, even corn selling guy was kind enough to leave his charcoal to me to warm up myself in such bad weather .

Ramesh still had some doubt till we reached Manali and saw bikes from his own eye.

Our bikes being safe and Us with Dinesh.

Some times we take all these for granted. By 'we', I mean people who are born and brought up in India do not see something special in such gestures. But when we see these from another persons point of view we see glaring differences and value of the culture we are in . For example following is extract from Shantram.

A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offense. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing and solicitous with one another.

At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows.

Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded tural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the mist of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unshamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own.

The real hypocrisy, I came to realize, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where no-one had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less.

And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimeter of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper.

-Gregory David Roberts(Extract from Shantaram)

Similarly some incidents and stories mentioned in “Indian Summers” by Jhon Write(Former Indian cricket coach) are also quite interesting.

Another reference to such stories are from book “The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom” which gives story of Slavomir Rawicz who escaped from Siberian concentration camp to India during World War II.

Yet another eye opener is The Story of India by Michael Wood. Which tells probably how and why's of India and its history.

Probably I cannot explain better than all above references how India works and ticks. And people awe you always. It does not matter which part of India you are in. As my friend Ramesh was describing me some part of conversation which he overheard while browsing in Leh. One of girl sitting next to him was on Skype talking to her friend saying. 'Baby you should come to India, now I am near Himalayas, which is full of mountains and snow'. Her friend on other side should have asked ' but you were in beach last month'. Girl from this side said ' you know its India with billion people........' and she goes on.

Yes, with 1.2 billion people and counting the only possible explanation I can find is 'It works in practice but not in theory' and its always 'We – The People' and I love it more than I hate it.

2. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - The choice of bike and bike trip

2011-08-17T23:23:00.003+05:30

As some ad says 'Every travel has a reason' and for some kind of travel it's not the destination, but the journey that is important. In India most of the travel attractions are either religious locations or tombs. Its only recent days national parks, Eco-tourism and other nature related tourist places are getting more attention.

If you are traveling for particular place and it does not has any interesting drive then it does not make any sense to drive bike. On the other hand bike travel usually good for places which has beautiful scenic view, which you can enjoy riding bike rather than sitting in bus,car or van. Trip to Leh is one ride which you can enjoy on bike rather than sitting inside a four wheeler. You just have to be responsible rider and ready to ride on some difficult roads added to that frequently changing weather.

As far as getting bike in Manali. Delhi and Leh you have following choices
1. Get your own bike transferred (either by train or by transport company)
2. Rent a bike.

Getting your bike via train, you can do in two ways. You can send bike as luggage along with you on same train. This option is really good because bike will travel along with you. There is another option where you can send bike as parcel and you are not traveling along with it. As far as I heard this option is little risky as Indian railways might decide that your bike is not so urgent package and remove it from train and replace your bike with some other luggage. You are not sure when your bike is going to board the train again.

Sending with transport companies like gati/vrl/blue dart is also one option, they will do it if they have their office in destination place only. Other option is with local movers and packers, they work in 'typical Indian business' ad-hoc delivery, they make sure deliver is done but you won't be having any kind of tracking. You just have to believe word of mouth. For your information Jammu, Srinagar, Delhi and even Leh has Gati transport office you can make use of these options. Manali does not has Gati, you might get Blue Dart.

Renting bike is also good option. The only problem is you have to bring back the bike to same place where you have rented it. Say you rent the bike in Delhi and you decide to end your trip in Srinagar then renting is not option for you. The same case with us, hence we decided to send our own bikes to Manali rather than renting one.

If you want to rent from Delhi you have options like

http://www.tonybulletcentre.com/
http://lallisingh.com/

From Manali you can hire
1. Anu Auto Works - 9816163378
2. Himalayan Inder Motors - 9816113973

I found these from LP India. There are many more bike renting shops in Manali near Buddhist Monastery.

In Leh you will find plenty of shops which will rent the bike. The rates remain same as that of any other place.

If you are planning to rent the bike then I would suggest you to choose Leh. Because you can travel around Leh and finally end your ride in Leh and find cab or mini van to Srinagar or other place. Leh has this culture of sharing cabs, usually most travel agents do it and you can find small notice board outside each travel agent announcing people needed to share expense of travel and trek.

The rates are from 800-1000 and probably more depending on bike make and model. Usually only Royal Enfield bikes are available for rent. If you are lucky you can get pulsar and other bikes as well.

Any 150CC and above should be fine for single rider. If you are planning to do the trip with pillion, then 500CC is must.

1. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - The inspiration and planning

2011-08-17T07:28:00.002+05:30

The inspiration

It was one of those normal working days in the year 2007, when my friend Ramamurthy and me went for lunch. He did not told me that he was going for trip to Leh on bike(or at least I remember so)before he went. Once he was back from trip, he shared photos and my jaw dropped. I am not such hard core bike rider, but bike ride always thrills me. The best thing about it is you get to feel the nature, air and you can stop whenever and wherever you want. Specially if you have spare time with you, it has its own joy. Ramamurthy also blogged about his trip here.

Once I saw those landscapes and a burning desire started to ride on these hills and as they say 'once in a life trip'. Started doing some research and searches in internet and I found out that the trip is quite doable. And thus my planning started from 2007.

The one complete reference I found about the trip was from bcmtouring website. These guys are one of the best traveling forum I found and the information provided is of pretty good quality. Not only the standard routes, the forums also discuss new routes to roam around in Ladakh and other regions of India. Kudos for your forum bcmtouring you are doing great job. Keep it up.

The planning

Since 2008 I started planning about this trip. And each and every year, for one or the other reason it was getting postponed. So I decided, it does not matter what happens this time I have to complete this trip and finally it happened. In fact the complete route and details I prepared and was about to execute the plan in 2010 but last moment it got changed. So I used the same plan this year no changes, just extended it to correct dates as per the road opening time.

There are 3 option to reach to Leh
1. Start from Manali and reach Leh by road( you can also do Delhi - Manali - Leh)
2. Start from Srinagar and reach Leh by road.
3. Start from Delhi and reach to Leh by flight.

As per many blogs and articles, we decided to start our trip from Manali as the route is quite scenic and kind of challenging.

The major problem to start from Manali was shipping our bikes to Manali. We checked with many transport companies and finally decided on one who was absolutely sure that he will make sure that the bikes will be delivered to Manali in time. There was also option to drive from Delhi but we did not chose that option because we did not wanted to waste two days driving in normal highway, instead we can utilize these two days on road and tripping.

Our trip suppose to start from July 22nd and we had time till 8th of August. The transport people told they need 8-9 days to ship the bikes from Bangalore to Manali. So we decided ship it by July 10th and we did it one day late.

Once the bike shipping was settled we had to do shopping for other things which are necessary for the trip. We have prepared the big list of things to carry which you can find in following link

Things To Carry List

Once this list is ready, which helped us to follow up what are remaining things to buy and prepare for the trip. Out of the list, we bought things in Bangalore which we are not sure we will get in Manali. Remaining things we decided to take from Manali. Most important things in list are

1. Spare tubes for the bike.
2. About 2 mt long petrol pipe.
3. Good pair of shoe
4. Manual air pump.
5. clutch and break wires
6. Take extra clutch plates (if you ride Royal Enfield, which we missed)
7. First Aid kit.
8. Sun screen (more SPF value better)
9. Glove, helmet and jacket.(Water proof is must)
10. Big plastic cpverand nylon ropes and some bungee chords to tie up your luggage. This will keep your luggage off dirt and firm to your bike.

Other things are listed in the spreadsheet you can check.

Apart form this we had prepared couple of rough guide

Guide 1

Guide 2

Both guide gave rough idea about routes, accommodations available, distances between important stations and altitude of these stations. We decided that we will still be flexible if something goes wrong. Hence it was 'no reservation trip' altogether except for Manali hotel. We were forced to do the reservation in Manali, you will know reason in part 3 of the blog series.

Apart from this we also had ToDo list which was kind of keeping track of where are we with respect to our trip planning.

With all these things in place our route was like

Bangalore -> Delhi -> Manali -> Leh ->Khardung La -> Numbra -> Leh -> Pangong Tso -> Leh-> kargil ->Srinagar -> Jammu -> Delhi -> Bangalore.

With all the things kind of ready we checked with our friends who had been to Leh some time back and also current travel season we got fair idea about the road conditions there and we set off with well planned (at least I think so) trip.

By the way we did carry almost all the things in the list of things to carry except Tent and we did use all the things except the manual pump, lucky we did not had puncture any where.

With all these things we set off for Leh ride.

Bye for now, tomorrow there will be short post on why I chose bike ride and the bike choice available from Delhi, Manali and Leh will be penned down.

The Leh trip and the blog

2011-08-15T22:10:00.004+05:30

This one is already due by a week and I am not 100% sure how much justice will I do to journey. Let me at least start a post which gives you details about how I am planning to blog my Leh trip entries.

1. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - The inspiration and planning
2. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - The choice of bike and bike trip
3. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Why I hate India and why I love India more than I hate India
4. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Manali and Rohtang Pass
5. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - khoksar - Kelong - Sarchu
6. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Sarchu - Leh
7. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Leh - Khardung La
8. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Leh - Pangong Tso
9. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Leh in and around
10. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Leh - Kargil
11. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Kargil - sonamarg
12. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Sonamarg - Srinagar
13. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Srinagar - Jammu
14. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - Jammu - Delhi- Bangalore
15. Leh Motorcycle Diaries - The wind up.

If you want a sneak peek of what these blog entries are all about, its all the experience we had during our trip, the people, their helping nature, the road, the bikes, the nature, our trips to army and govt hospitals, what went wrong and how we changed our plan.

So keep watching here, if you like other blog entries subscribe to RSS feed. Let the Leh Motorcycle Diaries begin :)

P.S: if you want to enjoy only pics then you can visit below link
Leh Motorcycle Dairies photo entries

ಹಳೆ ಬೇರು ಹೊಸ ಚಿಗುರು - ಭಾಗ ೨

2011-06-20T19:21:00.005+05:30

ಭೈರಪ್ಪರವರ ಜೀವನಾನುಭವಗಳ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗಳನ್ನು ಓದಿ ಮುಗಿಸಿ, ಕೆಲಸ, ಜೀವನ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಳುಗಿ ಹೋಗಿ ಈಗ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಬಿಡುವು ಸಿಕ್ಕಿದೆ. ಈ ಬಿಡುವಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಓದಬೇಕೆಂದಿದ್ದ ಕೆಲವು ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಮತ್ತಿತರೇ ನನ್ನ ತುಂಬಾ ದಿನದಿಂದ ನೆನೆಗುದಿಗೆ ಬಿದ್ದಿದ್ದ ಕೆಲಸಗಳನ್ನು ಒಂದೊಂದಾಗಿ ಮುಗಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವೆ. ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದು ಮುಖ್ಯವಾಗಿ ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಸಬೇಕಾದ ಕೆಲಸ ಎಂದರೆ ಡಾ. ಕೆ. ಎನ್. ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯ ನವರ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ 'ಕನಕ ಮುಸುಕು'

ಡಾ. ಕೆ. ಎನ್. ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯನವರ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಪರಿಚಯಿಸಿದ್ದು ನನ್ನ ಅಕ್ಕ. ನನ್ನ ಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಯಾವಾಗಲು ಓದುವ ಹುಚ್ಚು ಹಚ್ಚಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ಮಂದಿ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಜಾಸ್ತಿ. ಹಾಗಾಗಿ ಒಂದಲ್ಲ ಒಂದು ಹೊಸ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಕಣ್ಣಿಗೆ ಬೀಳುತ್ತಲೇ ಇರುತ್ತದೆ. ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ 'ಕಪಿ ಲಿಪಿ ಸಾರ' ಎಂಬ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಕೂಡ ಒಂದು. ಅಕ್ಕ ಅದನ್ನು ತಂದದ್ದು. ೨ ವೀಕೆಂಡುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅದು ಮನೆಯ ಮೇಜಿನ ಮೇಲೇ ಬಿದ್ದಿತ್ತು. ಹೆಸರು ಆಕರ್ಷಕವಾಗಿ ಕಂಡಿತಾದರೂ ಓದಲು ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಹಿಂಜರಿಯುತ್ತಿದ್ದೆ. ಹಾಗೇ ಕೈಗೆ ಎತ್ತಿಕೊಂಡು ನೋಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದೆ, ಅಕ್ಕ ಬಂದು ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿದೆ ಅದು ಅಂದ್ಳು. ಸರಿ ಒಂದು ರೌಂಡು ಫಿಲ್ಟರ್ ಆಗಿದೆ ಅನ್ನೋ ನಂಬಿಕೆ ಮೇಲೆ ಓದಲು ಶುರು ಮಾಡಿದೆ. 'ಕಪಿ ಲಿಪಿ ಸಾರ' ದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಸಣ್ಣ ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿ ಕೊಡಬೇಕೆಂದರೆ,
ಡಾ. ಕೆ. ಎನ್. ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯನವರು ಭಾರತದ ಪುರಾತನ ಮತ್ತು ಸವಿಸ್ತಾರವಾದ ಇತಿಹಾಸವನ್ನು ಅಡಿಗಲ್ಲಾಗಿ ಇಟ್ಟುಕೊಂಡು, ಇಂದಿನ ಮನುಷ್ಯನ ಅತಿ ಆಸೆಯನ್ನು ಕಟ್ಟಡದ ಇಟ್ಟಿಗೆಗಳಂತೆ ಬಳಸುತ್ತಾ ಅತ್ಯಂತ ರೋಚಕವಾಗಿ ಕಥೆಯನ್ನು ನಮಗೆ ಹೇಳುತ್ತಾ ಹೋಗುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಅವರಿಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತು ನಮ್ಮ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಓದುಗರಿಗೆ ತೀರ ಹೊಸ ಅಥವಾ ತೀರ ಹಳೆಯದನ್ನು ಹೇಳಿದರೆ ಓದಲಾರರು ಎಂದು. ಹಾಗಾಗಿ ಎಷ್ಟು ಬೇಕೋ ಹೊಸ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನು ಬಳಸಿ ಭಾರತ/ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ ಗೆ ಒಗ್ಗುವ ಹಾಗೆ ಕಥೆಯನ್ನು ಬಿಡಿಸಿಡುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಮುಖ್ಯವಾಗಿ ಹೇಳಬೇಕಾದ್ದು ಪ್ರತಿ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗೆ ಇವರು ಮಾಡುವ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ. ಇತಿಹಾಸದಲಿ ಎಲ್ಲೋ ಕರಗಿಹೋದ/ಮರೆಯಾದ ಸತ್ಯಗಳನ್ನು ಹೇಳುತ್ತಾ ಹೋಗುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಮೂಲತಹ ಕೃಷಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಿಗಳಾಗಿರುವ ಇವರು ಸಸ್ಯ ಥಳಿ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ. 'ಕಪಿ ಲಿಪಿ ಸಾರ' ದಲ್ಲಿ ಇವರು 'ಸಂಜೀವಿನಿ' ಯನ್ನು ಹುಡುಕುವ ಕಥೆಯನ್ನು ಹೇಳುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಅಲ್ಲದೆ ರಾಮಾಯಣ ಆದಮೇಲೆ ಹನುಮಂತ ಎಲ್ಲಿ ಹೋದ? ಅಂಡಮಾನ್ ಗೆ ಅಂಡಮಾನ್ ಅಂತಾನೆ ಯಾಕೆ ಕರಿತಾರೆ?. ಹಾಗೂ ಜೀವ ವಿಜ್ಞಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಇತ್ತೆಚೆಗಾಗಿರುವ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆಗಳು ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳನ್ನೂ ಬಳಸಿ ಸುಂದರವಾದ ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಕುತೂಹಲಕರವಾದ ಒಂದು ಲೋಕವನ್ನೇ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ.

ಇಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲಾ ಹೇಳಿದಮೇಲೆ ನಾನು ಅವರ ಅಭಿಮಾನಿಯಾಗಿದ್ದೀನಿ ಅಂತ ಬಿಡಿಸಿ ಬೇರೆ ಹೇಳಬೇಕಾಗಿಲ್ಲ ಅಲ್ಲವೇ. ಹಾಗಾಗಿ ಮತ್ತೆರಡು ಪುಸ್ತಕ ತಂದಿರುವೆ ಇವರದೇ :) ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದನ್ನು ಮುಗಿಸಿರುವೆ. ಆ ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಹೆಸರು 'ಕನಕ ಮುಸುಕು'. ಈ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಚಿಕ್ಕದಾಗಿ ಚೊಕ್ಕದಾಗಿ ಹೇಳಬೇಕೆಂದರೆ, ಇಸ್ರೋ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯ ಚಿತ್ರ ಒಂದು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಸೋಮನಾಥ ಪುರದ ಸುತ್ತ ಅಸ್ವಾಭಾವಿಕ ದಿಬ್ಬಗಳನ್ನು ತೋರಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಇದನ್ನು ಅರ್ಥೈಸಲು ಹೋದಾಗ ಕೆಳಗಿನ ಕಥೆ ನಮ್ಮ ಮುಂದೆ ಹರಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತದೆ:
ಚಂದ್ರಗುಪ್ತ ಮೌರ್ಯ ಜೈನ ಸನ್ಯಾಸಿಯಾಗಿ ತನ್ನ ರಾಜ್ಯ ತ್ಯಜಿಸಿ ಉತ್ತರ ಭಾರದಿಂದ ದಕ್ಷಿಣ ಭಾರತಕ್ಕೆ ಜೈನ ಮತದ ಪ್ರಚಾರಕನಾಗಿ ಶ್ರವಣಬೆಳಗೊಳಕ್ಕೆ ಬರುತ್ತಾನೆ. ಇದು ನಾವೆಲ್ಲಾ ಓದಿರುವ/ಕೇಳಿರುವ ಸತ್ಯ. ಆದರೆ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ತಾರ್ಕಿಕವಾಗಿ ಯೋಚಿಸಿರುವ ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯನವರು ಹಾಗೂ ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಆಳವಾಗಿ ಇದರ ವಿವರವನ್ನು ತಿಳಿದಿರುವ ಅವರು ಕೆಲವು ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಗಮನಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಹಲವಾರು ಶಾಸನಗಳು ಹೇಳಿರುವಂತೆ ಚಂದ್ರಗುಪ್ತ ಮೌರ್ಯನ ಜೊತೆ ಸುಮಾರು ೧೨೦೦೦ ಜೈನ ಮುನಿಗಳು ಬರುತ್ತಾರೆ!! ಯಾಕೆ? ಇಂತಹ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳು ಕೊನೆಗೆ ಕೈ ಮಾಡಿ ತೋರಿಸುವ ಉತ್ತರ ಸುಮಾರು ೫೦೦ ಟನ್ ಚಿನ್ನದ ಕಡೆಗೆ. ಈ ಚಿನ್ನವನ್ನು ಮುಸುಕಿನಿ ಜೋಳದ ತೆನೆಯ ರೂಪದಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಸುಕಿನ ಜೋಳದ ತೆನೆಗಳ ಜೊತೆಗೆ ಉತ್ತಮ camouflage ಮಾಡಿ ತರುತ್ತಾರೆ . ಹಾಗಾಗಿ ಕನಕ ಮುಸುಕು.
ಚಂದ್ರಗುಪ್ತ ಮೌರ್ಯ ನಿಂದ ಶುರುವಾಗುವ ನಿಧಿಯ ರಹಸ್ಯ ಹೊಯ್ಸಳ ಸಾಮ್ರಾಜ್ಯ ದ ಶಕುಂತಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕೊನೆಗೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತದೆ. ಈ ನಿಧಿಯನ್ನು ಹುಡುಕಲು ಹೊರಡುವ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯ ನಾಯಕಿ, ಆಕೆಯ ಗಂಡ, ಆಕೆಯ ಗುರು ಹಾಗೂ ಸಕಾರಣಗಳಿಗೆ ಇದನ್ನು ಮುಚ್ಚಿಡಲು ಪ್ರಯತ್ನಿಸುವ ಜೈನ ಧರ್ಮದ ಹಿರಿಯ ನಾಯಕರುಗಳು ಹಾಗೂ ಇಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲಾ ಸಾಲದು ಎಂಬಂತೆ ನಾಯಕಿಯನ್ನು ಬೆನ್ನು ಹತ್ತುವ ಅಂತರಾಷ್ಟ್ರೀಯ ಕಳ್ಳರ ಗ್ಯಾಂಗ್. ಇನ್ನೇನು ಬೇಕು ಹೇಳಿ ಕಥೆಯನ್ನು ಇನ್ನಷ್ಟು ರೋಚಕವಾಗಿಸಲು? ಇಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲಾ ಇದ್ದರು ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯ ಕಥೆಯ ಮುಖ್ಯ ಲಹರಿಯನ್ನು ಬೇರೆ ಕಡೆಗೆ ಹರಿಯ ಬಿಡದೇ ಓದುಗನನ್ನು ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಮುಗಿಯುವವರೆಗೂ ಕಟ್ಟಿ ಕೂರಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ.

ನಾನು ಸುಮಾರು ೪ ವರ್ಷದ ಹಿಂದೆ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನಬಳಿ ಇರುವ ದೇವರಾಯನ ದುರ್ಗಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದಾಗ ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಒಬ್ಬ ಹೇಳಿದ್ದ ವಿಷ್ಣು ವರ್ಧನನ ಹೆಂಡತಿ ಶಾಂತಲೆ ಇಲ್ಲೇ ಬಿದ್ದು ಆತ್ಮ ಹತ್ಯೆ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಂಡಳು ಎಂದು. ಆಗಿನಿಂದ ನನಗೆ ಒಂದು ವಿಷ್ಯ ಅರ್ಥ ಆಗಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಬೇಲೂರುಹಳೆಬೀಡಿನಲ್ಲಿದ್ದ ಶಕುಂತಲೆಗೂ ಇಲ್ಲಿಗೂ ಏನು ಸಂಬಂಧ, ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಬಂದು ಸಾಯುವನ್ತದ್ದು ಏನಾಗಿತ್ತು? ಈ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆ ಗೆ ಕನಕ ಮುಸುಕು ತಕ್ಕಷ್ಟು ಉತ್ತರ ಕೊಟ್ಟಿತು. ಇಷ್ಟೇ ಅಲ್ಲದೆ ಮುಸಿಕಿನ ಜೋಳದ ಇತಿಹಾಸ ಮತ್ತು ಅದು ಏಷ್ಯಗೆ ಬಂದ ಬಗೆಗೆ ಇಂದಿಗೂ ಇರುವ ಕಗ್ಗಂಟು ಗಳನ್ನೂ ಕುತೂಹಲಕಾರಿಯಾಗಿ ಕಥೆಯ ಮಧ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲದಂತೆಯೇ ನಮಗೆ ತಿಳಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಇದಲ್ಲದೆ ರಾಜಕಾರಣ ಮತ್ತು ಧರ್ಮ/ಜಾತಿ ಇವೆರಡರ ಮಧ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಬಿಡಿಸಲಾಗದ ನಂಟನ್ನು ತಿಳಿಯಾಗಿ ಹೇಳುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಜೈನ, ವೈಷ್ಣವ, ಶೈವ, ಇಸ್ಲಾಂ ಮತ್ತು ಕ್ರಿಸ್ತ ಧರ್ಮ ಗಳ ಹಿಂದಿನ ತಿಕ್ಕಾಟಗಳು ನೋಡ ಸಿಗುತ್ತವೆ. ಇಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲಾ ಸಾಕಾಗುವುದಿಲ್ಲ ಎಂದರೆ ದೊಡ್ಡವರ ಸಣ್ಣತನಗಳು ಹಾಗೂ ನಿಮಗೆ cryptography ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಉತ್ಸಾಹವಿದ್ದರೆ ಹಿಂದಿನ ಕಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ಬಳಸಿದ ಕೊಡೆಡ್ ಸಂದೇಶಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಿ ನಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಚಕಿತಗೊಳಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ.

ಕೊನೆಗೆ ನಿಧಿ ಸಿಗುತ್ತದೆಯೇ? ಸಿಕ್ಕರೆ ಯಾರಿಗೆ? ಸಿಕ್ಕರೂ ಅದು ನಿಜವಾದ ನಿಧಿಯೇ? ಇದನ್ನು ತಿಳಿಯಬೇಕೆಂದರೆ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಬಳಿಯಿರುವ ಯಾವುದೇ ಸಪ್ನಾ ಬುಕ್ ಹೌಸ್ ಗೆ ಹೋಗಿ ಇಲ್ಲವೇ ಕೆಳಗಿನ ವಿಳಾಸಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿಸಿ
ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಲೋಕ
ಜನಪದ ಲೋಕ
ಬಿ ಎಂ ಹೈವೇ, ರಾಮನಗರ
ಫೋ: ೯೮೪೫೦ ೭೦೬೧೩, ೯೮೪೫೪ ೬೦೧೫೬
ಇ-ಮೇಲ್:ibhprakashana@gmail.com

ಇಂತಹ ಉತ್ತಮ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯನ್ನು ಕೊಟ್ಟ ಗಣೇಶಯ್ಯನವರಿಗೆ ಧನ್ಯವಾದಗಳು.

ಹಳೆ ಬೇರು ಹೊಸ ಚಿಗುರು ಕೂಡಿರಲು ಮರ ಸೊಗಸು..

2010-11-13T22:46:00.004+05:30

ಪ್ರತೀ ವರ್ಷದಂತೆ ಈ ವರ್ಷವೂ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಪ್ರಯುಕ್ತ ಕೆಲವು ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳನ್ನು ಒಟ್ಟಿಗೆ ತರಲು ಯೋಚಿಸಿ ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಅಂಗಡಿಗೆ ಹೋಗಿದ್ದೆ. ಭೈರಪ್ಪನವರ ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗಳನ್ನು ಓದಿ ಮುಗಿಸಬೇಕೆಂದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದ ನನಗೆ ಅದೇಕೋ ಸಮಯದ ಕೊರತೆಯೋ ಅಥವಾ ಮತ್ತಾವ ಕಾರಣಕ್ಕೋ, ಒಟ್ಟು ಈ ಕೆಲಸವನ್ನು ಮುಂದೂಡುತ್ತಲೇ ಇದ್ದೆ. ಈ ಬಾರಿ ಎಲ್ಲ ಓದದೆ ಉಳಿದ್ದಿದ್ದ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗಳನ್ನೂ ಒಟ್ಟಿಗೆ ತಂದೆ.

ಇತ್ತೀಚೆಗೆ, ೧೦೧.೩ ಎಫ್. ಎಂ . ರೇಡಿಯೋ ದಲ್ಲಿ 'ವಸುಧೇಂದ್ರ' ಲೇಖಕರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಕೇಳಿದ್ದೇ ಅಲ್ಲದೆ.. ಆ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ನಡೆಸುವ ಬಾನುಲಿ ಗೆಳೆಯ/ಗೆಳತಿ ವಸುಧೇಂದ್ರರವರನ್ನು ದೂರವಾಣಿ ಮೂಲಕ ಮಾತಾಡಿಸಿದ್ದರು ಕೂಡ. ಆಗ ಅವರಬಗ್ಗೆ ಕುತೂಹಲ ಮೂಡಿತ್ತು.. ಅವರ ಅನೇಕ ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳನ್ನು ನೋಡಿದ್ದೆ ಆದರೆ ಎಂದು ಅದನ್ನು ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವ ಗೋಜಿಗೆ ಹೋಗಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ ಏಕೆಂದರೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಇತ್ತೀಚಿನ ಓದುಗರ ಅಥವಾ ಲೇಖಕರ ಮೇಲೆ ನನ್ನ ನಂಬಿಕೆ ಅಷ್ಟಾಗಿ ಉಳಿದಿಲ್ಲ.. ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಿನಿಮಾವನ್ನೇ ಕನ್ನಡ/ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ ಎಂದು ಅರ್ಥೈಸುವ ರೀತಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಇವತ್ತು ಮಾಧ್ಯಮಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಅಂಗಡಿಗಳು ವರ್ತಿಸುತ್ತಿವೆ. (ಬಾಲಿವುಡ್ ಅನ್ನು ಭಾರತೀಯ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ ಎಂದು ಹೊರದೇಶಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಬಿಂಬಿಸುವಂತೆ...)
ಹಾಗಾಗಿ ಹೊಸ ಲೇಖಕರ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕಾದರೆ ನೂರು ಬಾರಿ ಯೋಚಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ. ವಸುಧೇಂದ್ರ ರವರ ಯುಗಾದಿ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ತೆಗೆದು ಕೊಂಡು ಬಂದೆ. ನಿಜಕ್ಕೊ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಪುಸ್ತಕ. ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಥೆಗಳ ಪುಸ್ತಕ. ಹಳೆ ಕಾಲದ ಬರಹಗಾರರಂತೆ ಜೀವನದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಅತೀ ಆಳವಾಗಿ ಹೇಳದೆ, ಹಿತವಾಗಿ-ಮಿತವಾಗಿ ಮತ್ತು ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಸ್ವಾರಸ್ಯಕರವಾಗಿ ಕಥೆಗಳನ್ನು ಬಿಚ್ಚಿ ಇಡುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಭೈರಪ್ಪ ರವರ ಪ್ರತೀ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಓದಿದ ಮೇಲೂ ಮೂರು-ನಾಲ್ಕು ದಿನ ಅದರ ವಿಷಯದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಯೋಚನೆಗಳು ಉಳಿದು ಹೋಗುತ್ತವೆ. ಆದರೆ ವಸುಧೇಂದ್ರ ರವರದು ಬೇರೆ ತರಹ, ನಮ್ಮ ಸುತ್ತ ಮುತ್ತ ಇರುವ/ಸಿಗುವ ಆಗಿ ಹೋಗುವ ಸಂಗತಿಗಳನ್ನು ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಥೆಗಳ ಹಾರವಾಗಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಮುಂದೆ ಇಡುತ್ತಾರೆ..

ಇಂಥಹ ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಥೆಗಳನ್ನು ಓದುತ್ತಿದ್ದರೆ ಯಾಕೋ 'ಮಾಲ್ಗುಡಿ ಡೇಸ್' ಮತ್ತು 'ಸ್ವಾಮಿ ಮತ್ತು ಅವನ ಗೆಳೆಯರು' ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳು ನೆನಪಿಗೆ ಬರುತ್ತವೆ.

ಚಿನ್ನ ಮುನ್ನಗಳ ನಡುವೆ ನನ್ನ ಕವನ/ಬರಹ....

2010-08-29T23:40:00.001+05:30

ಬಹುಷಃ ಜಯಂತ ಕಾಯ್ಕಿಣಿ ಹಾಗೂ ಯೋಗರಾಜ್ ಭಟ್ಟರು ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಿನಿಮಾ ರಂಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಿನ್ಚದಿದ್ದರೆ ನಾನು ಈ ಅಂಕಣ ಬರೆಯುತ್ತಿರಲಿಲ್ಲವೋ ಏನೋ? . ಯಾಕೆ ಹೀಗೆ ಹೇಳಿದೆ ಅಂದ್ರೆ ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಿನೆಮಾ ಹಾಡುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಸಂಗೀತಕ್ಕಿಂತ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಗಮನ ಕೊಡುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಮುಂಗಾರು ಮಳೆ ಬರದಿದ್ದರೆ ಕಾಯ್ಕಿಣಿ ಬಹುಷಃ ಯಾವುದೋ ಸಣ್ಣ ಪುಟ್ಟ ಸಿನೆಮಾಗಳಿಗೆ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ಬರೆಯುತ್ತಿದ್ದರೋ ಏನೋ.. ಒಟ್ಟಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಆಗುವುದೆಲ್ಲ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯದಕ್ಕೆ ಅನ್ನುವಂತೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಿನೆಮಾಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅಳಿಸಿ ಹೋಗಿದ್ದ ಉತ್ತಮ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಮತ್ತೆ ಬೆಲೆ ಸಿಕ್ಕಿತು. ಹಂಸಲೇಖರನ್ನು ಬಿಟ್ಟರೆ ಇತ್ತೀಚಿನ ದಿನಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ರಚನೆ ಕಾರರು ಬಂದಿದ್ದೇ ಕಡಿಮೆ, ಬಂದರೂ ಕೂಡ, ನಿರ್ಮಾಪಕರ ಒತ್ತಡಕ್ಕೋ ಇಲ್ಲ ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕರ ಆಜ್ಞೆಗೋ ಒಳಪಟ್ಟು ಮಚ್ಚು ಲಾಂಗುಗಳ ಹಾಡುಗಳು ಹಾಗೂ ಅಸಂಭದ್ದ ಪದಗಳನ್ನು ಬಳಸಿ ಹಾಡು ಮಾತ್ರ ಬರೆಯುತ್ತಿದರೆ ವಿನಃ ಕಥೆಗೆ ಬೇಕಾದ ಅಥವಾ ಸಂಧರ್ಭಕ್ಕೆ ತಕ್ಕಂತಹ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ರಚನೆ ಸಿಕ್ಕಿದ್ದು ಬೆರಳೆಣಿಕೆಯಷ್ಟು ಮಾತ್ರ.

ಕಾಯ್ಕಿಣಿಯವರು ಮಾಡಿರುವ ಅತ್ಯುತ್ತಮ ಕೆಲಸ ಎಂದರೆ, ಒಬ್ಬ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯವನ್ನು ಬಲ್ಲವನು ಸಿನಿಮಾಕ್ಕೆ ಹಾಡು ಬರೆದರೆ ಹೇಗಿರುತ್ತೆ ಎಂಬುದನ್ನು ತೋರಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಭಟ್ಟರ Oxymoron ಗಳಂತೂ ಒಂದಕ್ಕಿಂತ ಒಂದು ಮಿಗಿಲಾಗಿವೆ...

ಜೀವ ಕಳೆವಾ ಅಮೃತಕೆ ಒಲವೆಂದು ಹೆಸರಿಡ ಬಹುದೇ?
ಪ್ರಾಣ ಉಳಿಸೋ ಖಾಯಿಲೆಗೆ ಪ್ರೀತಿಎಂದೆನ್ನ ಬಹುದೇ?

ಕಳೆದ ಕೆಲವು ತಿಂಗಳಿನಿಂದ ಒಂದೇ ಯೋಚನೆ ಕಾಡುತ್ತಿದೆ ನನಗೆ. ಕೇವಲ ಪದಗಳನ್ನು ಪೋಣಿಸಿ ಅರ್ಥವಿರುವ ಒಂದು ಕವನ ಬರೆಯಬಹುದೆ? ಹೀಗೆ ಯೋಚಿಸುತ್ತ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನಿಸಿ ಕೆಳಗಿನ ಸಾಲುಗಳನ್ನು ಬರೆದಿದ್ದೇನೆ.. ಹೀಗಿದೆ ನೋಡಿ..

ಕನಸೆಂಬ ತೋಟದಲಿ ಮನಸೆಂಬ ಮಲ್ಲಿಗೆ ಹಿಡಿದು ಕಾದಿರುವೆ ನಿನ್ನ
ಹೂವು ಬಾಡುವ ಮುನ್ನ ಮುಡಿದುಕೋ ಚಿನ್ನ.

ಇನ್ನೆಷ್ಟು ಕಾಯಿಸುವೆ ನನ್ನ..

ಇರುಳಲಿ ನೆರಳು ಕಾಣುತಿದೆ
ಹಗಲಲಿ ಶಶಿ ಮೂಡುತಿದೆ
ಜನ ತಲೆ ತಿರುಕ ಎನ್ನುತಿಹರು
ಒಮ್ಮೆಯಾದರೂ ಮರುಕ ತೋರು
ಒಮ್ಮೆಯಾದರೂ ತಿರುಗಿ ನೋಡು.

ಮಾತು ಮೌನವಾಗಿದೆ , ಮೌನವೇ ಮಾತಾಗಿದೆ,
ಈ ಮೌನ ಮುರಿಯಬಾರದೆ ಚಿನ್ನ
ನಾ ಮಾತು ಮರೆಯುವ ಮುನ್ನ..

World War(s)

2010-05-08T22:30:00.002+05:30

Ever since I saw movie Schindler's List back in 2002/2003 I am interested in World War - I and II. So when ever I get time and opportunity to dig more about this topic I won't miss it.

Until last year I never knew how World War I was started.
Until today I thought Japan did not had much in World War II(!!!!!).
I came to know Hitler had Unmanned Aerial Vehicle back in 1940s.
The number of fighters present were in tens of thousands and artillery, ships, destroyers, cruisers were even more in number.
Last but not least, number of Jews reduced I can't imagine it....

After giving some thought I wonder...

1. Was it possible for India to get her Independence if WWII never started or even England left alone against German?
2. What would have happened if Subhash Chandra Bose got support from Japan?
3. Did Hitler helped directly or indirectly for India's independce?

The more and more I think about world war and history it gets more interesting..
I got Kannada book named "Dweteeya Mahayuddha" authored by Dr. Krushna Kolharakulkarni, from my friend today it has major events which occurred during world war II and what might have triggered the WWII and possible statistics about second world war. Its must read for have over all view WWII.

Just an example how much free time I(we) had back in college

2009-11-01T18:18:00.003+05:30

Today I was just cleaning up my old collection of CDs software and things like that. So I found these.

I will tell exactly what these. It was about second/third year of my engineering and we used to install operating systems(yes operating systemS) more than one at least once or twice in a month. Reason is simple, we want to try out all things, to list few
windows 95/98/me/nt/2000/xp linux-Red Hat(my fav at that time) Mandrake,qnx, knopix... and many more which I cannot remember and we used to try all kinds of software starting from system utilities too various multimedia software. Let it be evolution copy free ware or even cracked versions.

I got this new Red Hat 7.3 I remember, and I got too much impressed by it. So I started to make my customized cover for it.

I took screen shot of the logo,
Drew by hand,
Filled the colors,
Finally searched 2 the Tux logo from LFY magazine(of which I was very regular reader..)

And finally my customized cover was ready for new Red Hat CDs...

Whats the use.. I don't know, I was happy that time to do it.. and to see it even today..

If you really like something, go and do it. If you want to see what real obsessions then check this out.

its four months without a post..!!!

2009-10-26T20:15:00.003+05:30

Never new how the past four months passed. Was too busy in work, life, study, holiday and travel... goodness.. in these four months I had half-finished lots of things.. and here are list of things to do for me...

1. Stopped reading Shantaram
I felt the book is written to make a bollywood movie. Some incidents in book are tailored to show greatness of character. One thing I liked about the novel was India's interpretation of foreigner and "Prabhakar Khare" what a character!!!! I am really interested to see who plays that roll in Johnney Depps upcoming movie.
2. Started reading "The Fountain Head" - A 1943 classic(will write a post regarding same some time, once I finish it)
3. Of course completed my first sem exams(that's it, no more questions or discussions :) )
4. Started reading more things about Linux, specially This one
5. reading about Linux is more to do with this one
6. And my office shifted to ORR so I have to travel another 2-4 km extra each day!!
7. Want to develop something serious in Linux, I will share it once I have concrete idea. So again started reading the GTK programming...

These are just bits and pieces of thoughts i had in last 4 months. In nutshell I have not done anything apart Googling and reading books..

Oops time to become practical...

no more typing ... hit the road...

Student Again

2009-06-23T19:29:00.002+05:30

I decided to be more active in general both in real world and virtual world. So you can see my 'thoughts flowing into QWERTY' often than before.

After completion of Engineering I wanted job badly as any other graduate from Indian middle class family. I just wanted to support myself nothing else. Hence my wish for master degree was kind of stopped. I was waiting for right time to start the same but timing was pretty bad. Here how it was. About a year and half back I decided to pursue higher degree and started looking out for option. I had three choice.

Choice No 1. Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Choice No 2. BITS, Pilani
Choice No 3. MAHE, Manipal

If I went to choice #1 I had to complete the degree in Motorola and I should stay with Motorola for another two years. Considering various options I decided go with Option #2. So finally in 2008 I filled up the form, I was about to inform my manager about the same and get the permission. Fortunately or unfortunately the due date to send application and my last working day at Motorola was one and the same. Daugh!! what a situation, I cannot ask my manager at Moto as I was leaving, I cannot ask my new manager of course he does not know me well, more over I just accepted offer and I was not official employee yet.

So finally here comes 2009, I got everything right(at least till now & I think) and I declare that 'I am student again'(OK hold on.. I have not left my job, its work integrated program.) after five long years. I have enrolled for MS in Software Systems. So if you drop by to my home don't forget to help me a bit in preparing notes or helping with some subject.

Another two years to go.. to get masters... Wish me luck ...

Is it greed or is it M&A

2009-06-05T20:41:00.000+05:30

I am not new when it comes to buying something. Buying is buying right? Buying was just commodity buying(do not confuse with share commodity) for me. You go and pay money instead you get something else. Fine its as simple as that.

When I was a fresher (back in 2004) I joined EMC. When I felt my interview went well I started googling for EMC and major thing I saw was EMC was shopping too much from last four years(staring from 2000 till 2004 EMC had acquired some where between 15-20 companies). Something struck to me 'oh.. companies can also be bought'. Later as you all know we see lots of these happening. Later this 'buying of companies' is coined as Merger & Acquisition and gloried as M&A and executives finance firms started earning like anything because of this so called M&A.

Some how I feel M&A is nothing but greediness. Lets consider following things

1. In case of above said example EMC, the major motivation of EMC according to 'industry analysis' was EMC till 2000 was just hardware company like Seagate or Western Digital. So EMC understood it cannot rule the storage industry unless it has support of strong software arm. So it stared acquiring VMWare, RSA to name very few and went on and on. Finally today EMC is in very strong position. Some how I feel EMC acquired the companies to create so called 'eco system for its product'. It is acceptable but still greedy.

2. The second example is MySQL. (Monty, what made you to take such a wrong step). Lets be very clear here. Open Source and Money never mix very similar to alcohol and driving. Open Source is more of sharing knowledge & desire to achieve something/perfection, making money is secondary issue. Specially given the credential of MySQL its one of the best available out their. Monty creator of MySQL took unusual step(although we cannot decide this is wrong step, but it might become one in near future)agreeing when Sun proposed to acquire MySQL. Probably the story would have been 'And They Lived Happily Ever After' unless the greediest Oracle would not have bought Sun. Oracle is too aggressive in buying companies which seems to be threatening its business. Yes that's correct, just go through list of the companies which Oracle acquired i-flex, Sibel, Peoplesoft all of these are one of the biggest database companies. More over what Oracle is going to do with hardware business of Sun!!!. Acquisition of MySQL is really very cruel step to kill free software world's most reputed database. Thanks to GPL, which might make MySQL to come up with new name/life as Monty already started The Open Database Alliance

3. Third one is Intel. Recently it also stared shopping too much. Specially the acquisition of WindRiver The interesting thing about this acquisition is it came in time when Intel's market share is going down and WindRiver supports many embedded hardware platform other than Inel's, so you can think what Intel's intentions are, I do not want to insult your intelligence by telling it explicitly.

4. The fourth case is none other than the super brand of the universe and first 100 billion dollar company and owner of the site, currently you are reading this blog, The Google. Just check THIS LINK I do not want to write anything else on this.

Just I would like to end this blog entry with "Vyaaparam Droha Chintanam" it does not matter you buy some one or fancy name it as M&A......

This is what I think......

2009-05-28T22:39:00.001+05:30

I am living with these almost about thirteen years. These are none other than 'computers'. Although initial 5-6 years I really did not understand the way they work or the proper utilization of these creatures. It was in my Third semester of Engineering I came to know about the real power of these & started to analyze these from Engineering point of view and understand them. Questions like how they work? what make them tick? and how you can ruin them dismantle them etc etc.. More importantly how they talk to each other!!!

[The EDSAC computer image is under Creative Commons License]

After all these years, I have seen some times people really struggle to understand them even people in profession of making software and making them tick. When it comes to computers and making it work I follow these simple rules..

1. Computers are dumb. Yes believe me.
2. We have to tell each and everything to computers about what should they do.
3. Get it done either in memory(RAM) or file(Hard disk)
4. If you cannot win then change the rules, that means if computers do not allow you to do 2+2 = 4 then just do 5-1 = 4
5. If something is not working, have patience and think like computer.

[The PARAM Padma image is taken from CDAC website]

These are basics I have learned all these years, and very basic things which should be always kept in mind.

What are your rules when working with computers?

The Outsiders, Insiders & India

2009-05-24T17:47:00.000+05:30

As all of you know I am born and brought up in India, and many things in this country are just common to me or to put it in different words I take it for granted!. Many things does not seem to be something special at all. Like fan following in cricket. Struggle by and Indian to achieve something. Lets say bribery or even in simple case of believing some one even some information about some place.

Following examples show such incident seen by Outsiders

John Wright former coach for Indian cricket team who took Indian cricket to new heights writes in his book "Indian Summers" few incidents.
1. Whenever Indian team used to travel in buses, remember the curtains used to provide privacy to players. But fans in India the cricket is not just sport but religion and cricketers are gods, well at least next to god. So fans used to run,pedal, drive two wheelers and four wheelers next to the bus in which crickets used to travel for kilometers after kilometers to just to get glimpse of their cricketing god and they never even cared about their lives!!!
2. I do not remember the batsman's name that John refers(as I read the book about two years back) but the batman was from Orissa. John went to Bhubaneswar once when he was invited by batsman and he went to see the practice in stadium. John was shocked to see the ground. He wrote in his usual good sense of humor that 'Batsman will get sea sick by the time he walks to center of the pitch the ground was in so much bad condition'. Coming from such a background and making it to national team of cricket is not at all ordinary.
3. Same case applies for Zaheer Khan. Is one of the leading speed bowler for India. Zaheer Khan got chance to play with leather ball just about couple of years before he selected to Indian cricket team!!!.

Gregory David Roberts, a author, robber, smuggler, charity organizer and screenplay writer, quite a profile uh a? better known for his novel 'Shantaram' pens following in his novel

1. The simple and astronishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely then your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite so true.
2. There is a difference between the dishonest bribe and the honest bribe. The dishonest bribe is the same in every country, but the honest bribe is in India's alone.!!!

Finally last but not the least Michael Wood, famous for his 6 episode documentary about India and Pakistan's 60th independence. In his documentray 'Story of India' tells

"There is India as it is always does, stirring those ancient memories. In the world where identities and tradition of ancient civilizations have been wiped away in few
generations, here in India alone they have kept touch with their deep past and indeed what my say with the past of all humanity and that fact is the key to the 'Story of India' "

I was and am always proud of India and being Indian. But as I continue to know India more and more being Insider and through the eye,ear and thoughts of Outsiders, my respect to India builds up more and more....

They say.....

2009-01-19T22:42:00.000+05:30

I have always heard read this note/quote 'Time is the greatest gift you can give it to some one'.

I had thought about it some time back. Imagine giving one day of your time once in a year to the village/town/city/country you live in. No matter what discipline you are in or from. The idea goes like this, the govt authority will announce a day to be this 'service day' like currently we have Aug 15(Independence day) or Jan 26(Republic Day) or Oct 2(Gandhi Jayanthi), and provide the list of things that needs to be done say cleaning park, subway, side walk. May be cleaning the water reservoir, or say if you are good at electrical work then you can choose to fix nearest street lamp.

If.. If even half the population of city like Bengluru gets together their hands in this we can make Bengluru more beautiful than it is today. All though the idea sounds great and simple to execute in such a large scale really needs some decent preparation.

I was doing my routine checks on YouTube and I got this video just in time.

I am glad that a country like America now has fresh, young(for the post which he has been elected) and new thinker. Who is ready to harness power of communication and technology. Obama is going to implement such an idea in huge scale. Its really herculean task. I Wish him best of luck to start his new responsibility officially, because like it or not, the world economy depends on them and he is taking over in such a difficult time.

Finally & I promise :)

2009-01-16T22:55:00.000+05:30

As always I don't want to start this entry saying that I was busy blah blah... any way as I said it already. I shifted my house and as I knew that Airtel does not provide its broadband service in Malleshwaram area, I opted for Reliance WiMax service. The service was quick and easy, within 4 days I got my laptop again up and running.

These days made me realize how much I am dependent on 'the internet' & the answer is very very very much. In fact I really do not know what to do when I came back to home from work.

I always had this idea of knocking off Windows completely from my laptop and putting Linux into it. I had little problem that when ever I download the iso image of Linux the md5 was always faulty one. Finally I was able to get it after couple of trials for 64 bit architecture. So Finally I prepared date to bury Windows into my machine and raise Ubuntu into it. So here I am.....

It took me about two days to set up my laptop with basic minimum required software. Last time I used Linux as full fledge desktop machine was about 4-6 years back when I was in college. At that time we did not had easy access to Internet(it was very costly and slow like hell too) and we had to struggle for each and every device drivers. But now I see a big difference, all necessary drivers and hardware relates stuffs get detected and installed automatically. I cannot be more happy.(at least as of now)

Second thing after installing your basic set of software next thing is to configure them according to your will and wish. I started of with Firefox. If you are power user of Firefox then you know about option of "about:config" . You just enter the above mentioned string in address bar and boooom.. you will be given power and height of configuration option(I love Firefox). Remember how do you feel when something completely un expected and funny thing happen? same thing happened me with this about:config. This thing I have never seen in Windows version of Firefox yet check out below image

[I'll be careful, I promise!]

Instead of normal boring message of "change at your own risk" or something else they have given really funny way to pass on same information. I was laughing like hell when I saw this message..
Its like you are promising your friend or mom :)

Future of mobile phones...

2008-10-25T23:19:00.000+05:30

Yes this might be one of many things which you can see each and every day that future could be
like this or like that etc.. Let me clarify one thing now itself, this is not about how the future mobile phone would look like or what cool stuff it might have. But I am talking here more about the mobile business ecology and options for us in future as customers.

Every since I first heard about Google creating its own software platform for mobile, it was very evident that internet is going to be key feature in it. One thing which we can see very common in any kind of platform is to create it and maintain it. This needs a huge effort and resource. Because unless and until your foundation is good there is no point in building big and huge building.

The whole industry is learning quickly that doing something in house and in closed doors does not make their products more robust or even they cannot roll out the products in time. The Cathedral and the Bazaar explains beautifully how Linus used the power of internet to harness the programming talents out there in the whole world to contribute to Linux development. Yes its a old story, but remember the old saying again, history repeats in its own way?

[Open Handset Alliance Symbol]

I am seeing the telecom biggies have formed new forces like Open Handset Alliance and Nokia's Symbian Foundation or Motorola's own Moto Dev. The major goal of this is to get the new applications, ideas and other useful features from the innovators out there in the world and not just depending on their in house resource.

[Motorola's effort to get developers involved in their products]

I saw the same thing Novel India used to do few years back. They used to invite college students to fix bugs in Linux and they are more happy if some students ready to provide new features too for applications like Open Office Org and thus making the open software world more powerfull and making profit out of it. As Jeol says as long as big companies can sell their platform as commodity they can win big. You need and example, 'Microsoft'

[Nokia's effort to get new apps from developers out there]

So what is the point in making whole this platform open? As customer what I get? I am asking this question to myself. Here is what I believe future mobile industry look like. It might be very similar to what assembled or unbranded computer industry looks like today.

Say you want to buy a computer which is not branded. All you have to do is, go to a computer parts vendor and choose all the equipments, assemble them and form your own computer.

So in future more and more open things enter into mobile business just the very same thing can happen here. The vital part missing for this factor is the semiconductor industry. The companies like TI, Freescale, NXP, Qualcomm has to come forward and release chips which can does lots of things, when I say lots of things I am specifically pointing at functions like SMS, MMS these are already defined standards and if these people are able to make affordable chips for such features then using which users can configure their own mobile phones. Imagine a website which does following

User logs in
Selects customized mobile creation page
Selects the main processor required for the phone
Then selects the default feature which he needs (like SMS,MMS,call etc..)
And chooses an operating system for the same(or in today's language Platform)
Chooses screen size
Later he can opt for a QWERTY key board phone or a touch screen phone etc..

Ok now the user checks out his phone and pays as per his configuration...

I know it sounds funny, but do you recall 1GB RAM was funny about 20-30 years back :)
So lets hope we get more freedom not only in software but also in hardware..

One of few good things

2008-10-07T23:39:00.000+05:30

I am proud of few things I have and really proud of few things I have. And this blog entry is about the later. If you know little gadget side of me, then I bet that you know I have a jazzy thing called PMP(which some times I feel blabber about). To be more clear its Portable Media Player. Just FYI PMP is a embedded entertainment device in which you can watch movies or listen to your music. I have COWON A2 and again I am proud of it. Let me get into little bit of history here :)

My friend Ramesh showed me this device about 2 and half year back when he came back from his Tokyo trip. Without doubt I knew I wanted one for me, the reason ?

It has 4" Screen
It support almost all damn video formats
It has FM radio
It has voice recorder
It can record FM too
It supports many image format to store and see
It supports text file viewing
Its output can be fed to TV and watch the movie on bigger screen
It can record the programs in TV
It also supports DMB(which is not in India as of now)
Aha... last one it has 30 GB storage plus very good battery life.

So what else you need?. If you need tech specs then here it is

So Ramesh ordered me the same from Amazon. I played around with it and I still use it quite some time and my friends too when ever they want to record some programs from TV.

This blog entry is new feature of COWON A2 I found a week back, and you know this not only applies for COWON but also applies for your other hand held devices. Here is how it happened.

I have one more hobby which is probably the most common hobby you can find 'reading'. The problem with this hobby is you need to take book along with you where ever you go and you never know if you have mood to read it or not. There is smarter solution for this, have soft copy of the book and take your laptop where ever you go. I still feel its tedious as laptop is too big and considering the credibility of the batteries of today's laptops you cannot read for more than two or maximum of three hours. So I was just thinking about Kindle. The customer inside me really hates proprietary things say SONY's memory stick pro or itunes.. heck you need to wait for their mercy to get anything new. Kindle is also added to this list because of the following reasons

Kindle has its own file format, you cannot use the open formats directly(PDF,DOC etc)
If we need new titles then we have to wait for kindle store's mercy to get the title.
oh yeah!! one more reason is its costly for me

As I already has COWON A2 I started searching if there is any way to read my current documents(specifically non-txt) using A2. As a matter of fact yes we have. Here is the procedure.

Cowon provides a software called mTrans using which you can convert any of standard files to "CSD" files. It works as a virtual printer hence any document which you can print can be converted to CSD and load it into cowon. If you have question what is CSD file? Then I can give you very short answer "Its ideal document and content format for mobile environment" as per csdcenter website. For more information on CSD visit here.

I had little problem with mtrans probably because I am using it with Vista. I need to sort it out. Any way you can get trial version of CSD writer from the csd center website itself for one month. Which worked great for me. So now I can take all my documents into my A2 and enjoy reading them where ever I go and when ever I have mood to read. As I told this should work for your mobile phone also.

But this is not yet perfect. Specially with COWON A2 where we need to work on adjusting the zoom level and scroll level settings. Hopefully A3 which has touch screen has this interface better.

So without keeping you waited here is CSD on COWON A2 in action....... An offer you can't refuse ;)

[Click to enlarge]

Gulabi Talkies

2008-09-27T16:48:00.000+05:30

So I was able to get time for Gulabi Talkies before it went away from PVR. Writing review for Girish Kasaravalli's movie, quite frankly I think I need some guts.

As all of you know this time Girish has taken Vaidehi's Gulabi Talkies for his movie plot. Vaidehi is well known women writer in Kannada. In short Gulabi Talkies is a moive about a muslim mid wife who loves movie and few insidents happen in and aoround her, and how she is affected by political and economical changes happen in society. Movie is shot in beautiful back drop of coastal Karnataka.

Movie opens in a market where fishes are being sold. Gulabi character is played by Umashri well known veteran Kannada actress. Gulabi is looking for prawns to cook specially for her step son 'Addu'. Her husband 'Moosa' married another women and lives with second wife. And Gulabi is hated by every one in that family. Hence she lives alone in another home. She works as mid wife and also as maid servant for daily bread and butter.

Gulabi loves movies, and she will not move from the seat unless movie finishes. So once due to 'medical emergency' Gulabi's presence in required in one of the house and guess what Gulabi is in theatre. Even after requesting Gulabi refuses to come out of theatre. So the persons lift Gulabi out of theatre and take her to the house where her presence is required. The people were successful in bringing Gulabi to house by boat but she is not ready to get out of boat as they ruined her movie. Gulabi's argument is wonderful, 'I missed the movie this show and I will not get same show again'. So finally the mother of pregnent women promises Gulabi to get new Television set with cable in it, so that she can watch movies in it.

Once Gulabi gets TV into her house things starts to change. Untill now people who does not talk to Gulabi starts mingling with her. Her step son 'Addu' also visits her house often to watch movie but refuses to talk to her as the same was ordered from his biological mother. All the women in and around her house spend their boring hours of the day watching TV. Even men are happy that wives stopped nagging them as a result of bored day.

Even Musa, Gulabi's husband who had left her long back visit Gulabi's house because of TV. This is one shot Umashri has sown her acting excellence. Emotions brought by Umashri on screen as a women who is accepted by her husband after so many years are simply great.

[Still from Gulabi Talkies - Gulabi with her Husband]

Gulabi a ardent lover of movies, once spot a boy posting movie poster on the road side. Suddenly she is moved by the movie poster and decides to steal one from the bundle of posters which are piled up on cycle next to poster boy. The scene is simply adorable, equally funny and all credit goes to Umashri, she just moves as if some magical power is dragging her and does take a poster, hides in her burka.

The TV and other things bring Gulabi close to many people. Actress/Singer MD Pallavi's role as 'Netra(Netru)' is one among them. A newly married young women whose husband is in gulf country. She thinks herself as a widow with husband! Quite strange. She is inspired by a daughter-in-law character in typical saas-bahu serial, in which the widowed daughter-in-law takes her MOL and dares to marry one more person and start new life. Gulabi and Nethra starts sharing their thoughts, desire and fantasies. Which provoke Netra to run away from her home in search of new love.

[Still from Gulabi Talkies - Gulabi with Nethru]

One incident leads to another and people start blaming Musa, Gulabi's husband being the reason behind Netra's disappearance from village. The story happens in back drop of Kargil war. As Musa is a agent who buys fish from fisher men and also uses the influence of the money flowing from Gulf into country. Hence some people use their political skills to gain economic advantage from fishery business make sure that Musa as prime suspect in case. Some young lads in the town were able to spot Netra and gets her back to village and start rumour that Musa was with her when they found Netra but he fled away.

By the time Netra comes back Gulabi and her community is treated entirely differently by very people who treated Gulabi as the part of their own society. Some of the people in village who want Gulabi to leave village (because of her husband) provoke thought of the others and make sure that Gulabi is sent out of her house forcefully. Gulabi refuses to do so with determined will.

[Still from Gulabi Talkies - determined Gulabi]

The same scene in the beginning repeats. People forcefully lift her out of her house and place her in boat & load the boat with her all belongings. They leave behind Gulabi's TV and her dish antenna just for people to enjoy the TV.

A couple of orthodox women who refused to enter Gulabi's house just because she belonged to particular caste finally enter her house and watch the blank TV(switched off TV) and 'enjoy watching it'

[Still from Gulabi Talkies - Orthodox women in Gulabi's abandoned house]

The story is in back drop of Kargil war and lots of communal tension was at its peak in coastal Karnataka. Govt of Karnataka later installed TV in all remote villages around coastal Karnataka.

The movie touches many sensitive issues present still in our society, the mind set of people and their response to what is going on around them and also utilising the opportunity for benefit of their interest is narrated very well. The beautiful back drop of coastal region does help movie a lot. The movie is declared as best Indian movie at 10th Osian's Cenefan Festival and Umashri is honoured as Best Actress for the same. Umashri's acting brilliance is once again at display. The only thing which worries me is the movie has been screened only in PVR. Such movies should be encouraged more by opening in many screens.

All in all Girish has done it 'as always'. And I am waiting for his next movie, hopefully he is searching for produces as usual.

After a long time....

2008-09-14T19:04:00.000+05:30

ahem ahem... I am back... Probably I could not think any better title for this blog. There are two things which support the title for this blog entry.

First one is I started blogging after long time say about a year, and if you notice all my old blog entries are gone. The reason is I ruined all my old blog entries when I was playing around with my google account. So if you are looking for my old blog link and things such as my 1750Km trip around coastal karnataka or my life experience of finding good expertise(SME) and other Chicago, Niagara, New York or even my favorite quote list then here is the answer 'pooof' gone.. they are gone. As I recently changed my job I had to prepare personally and professionally for the change. Hence I kept myself away from blogger for quite some time. So this is new beginning... and here it goes.

Ok, the second reason for the title is. At last after long time.. I mean really long time one more good movie has been delivered by 'Sandal Wood'. OK for those of my non-Kannadiga friends, Sandal Wood is nothing but Hollywood of Karnataka, or Bollywood of Mumbai or even Tollywood of Hyderabad. The movie name is "Dhemaku". Here is just a small review about the movie. This is my first movie review being written hence 'swalpa adjust maadkolli'

First of all since the audio of the movie released I was some how having soft corner for the movie. As the songs are quite different from normal kind of trend which is going on in Kannada movie industry now. The main character is played by 'Naveen Krishna' is son of Srinivar Moorty a veteran kannada actor(also happens to be producer of the movie). Naveen Krishna is in Sandalwood for quite some time, and has good reputation for his support role. This time he played big.

Without beating around bush, here is the story plot, which is same as you see in another thousands of movies. Hero loves the girl, to get her he takes help from friend of heroin... finally heroin's mother comes in between love, finally hero convinces all. Nothing different isn't it? But the real fun comes from script and witty dialogues and the story telling technique adopted by Magesh Kumar. Till first half you can expect good comedy and witty dialogues. Which keeps the pace of the movie. Later in second half good character of hero and his action skills and of course the sentimental scenes are there, but thanks to director for not crossing the limits.

One thing I am noticing after Mungaru Male is 'Sudha Belavadi' has become 'The Mother' of Kannada film industry now. She is mother of either hero or heroin in 90% of the movies recently being released in Kannada. So MM not only lucky for Mr.G and Pooja Gandhi, but also Sudha madam too. Having said I don't want to insult your intelligence by saying agian that Sudha is mother of Bala Murali Krishna(Naveen Krishna) in the movie. Sudha given justice to her role. For a change in this movie father is the one who display more affection to son and mother is very strict(she is teacher by profession in the movie so, its natural ;) )

One more thing which strikes in the movie is both Srinivas Moorthy and Naveen Krishna very well utilized their contacts in film industry to its fullest. Many more actors/comedians just float around the movie just for one or tow scenes and thanks again to director who has kept all these characters very well in the film story boundary. So you can say no extra character addition just for sake of comedy. Just two example

1. Sharan comes into picture as the rhyming auto-driver when ever herion wants to go in auto. With moto such as 'Ati Veega tiThi Bega'

2. Jaggesh enters into picture as police inspector who inspects 'ladies special city bus' only to catch hero travelling in it.

You can expect many such scenes, I am not going to ruin your fun by giving complete details.

All in all the movie is completely watchable, OK let me re-phrase it, 'completely watchable with family'. Time pass movie and you do not get time to complain about many things. 'Kanna gudde meliruva' song you might start humming after you came out of theatre, other songs are good to watch and enjoy. Every one has given justice to their roles. Few things which you can notice in the film are, its very very difficult to understand who is heroin and her mother. Because both are equally beautiful and hopefully would be right candidate for 'Santoor Soap'. No wonder Komal gets electric shock when he touches heroin's mother ;)

Finally last but not the least. Why did they name the movie "Dhemaku". Keep guessing and if you happen to understand please do not forget to leave a comment.

P.S: After a long time one good movie has come. One thing is assured, different approach in story telling and good comedy. All I can say is Go and Watch :)

OK next thing in To Do list is Gulabi Talkies...

Bye for now...