To the still Unknown Her

A sequel to this, inspired by these beautiful eyes

I dont know why,
But strangely sometimes
My eyes handle one-way traffic.
Some people, only get in.
And you have reached the furthest.
I know its cozy in there.
But I only wish you stay there forever.

You are not the end of my world.
Times will change, and who knows,
I might even live happily without you.
But you know? I am a content man.
I know this has hit you off-balance,
I am selfish, 'cos I told you.
But I would be stupid, if I hadn't.

As I gaze into your eyes,
That had forgot to wink
With tears brimming, I tell you
I cannot swim my way in.
Please make way for me, and
Just open your eyes, to let me in.
And I would close mine.

P.S: This is not a poem by any means. The line breaks were given only for the pause.

Vinayagar Chathurthi special

Jaya TV, telecasted an interview of the voluptuous actress Namitha on Vinayagar Chathurthi.

Naan indha post ezhudhum bodhe sandhega patten, ippadi edhavadhu nadakkum-nu!!!! Adhu sariyaa pochu...

Vettayadu Vilayadu - Kaaka Kaaka 2

In more ways than one, VV is a fitting sequel to KK. In fact the title screen itself tags the movie as "Another episode in a Police Officer's life".

Vettayadu Vilayadu is a semi-thriller that focuses more on crime investigation and doesn't have the kind of romance, that people could fall in love with, as in the case of Kaaka Kaaka.

Impressed to no ends with Kamal's performance. He looks as old as he is in a few scenes. Apart from that he is dashing and can give any present day hero, a run for their money. Not sure if today's Surya or Vikram can be as smart as Kamal, at his age.

Kamalinee Mukherjee - Does a meteoric role and makes me want to say...."Ivvalavu naaL nee enga irundha?".

Jyothika - Does what is expected of her.

Villain stands out yet again in Gautam Menon's movie. Certainly deserves credit. Title song is awesome.

VV is not flawless. It has scenes that will constantly remind Kaaka Kaaka. Picturisation is not perfect. In fact the first 60 seconds of "Paartha Mudhal Naale" is pathetic. Movie loses its way in the middle. Its too gory at places.

Yet it stands out for the gripping climax, Kamal's performance and the maturity in Raghavan's character. Time has the ugly tendency to make great creations appear mediocre. May be that's what made Gautam Menon to come with yet another cop movie and realise what he missed out in Kaaka Kaaka.

Watch it. And don't forget to forget Kaaka Kaaka before you enter the movie hall.

Phone-ambulism

Recent survey suggests that 90% of the girls in Chennai, who own a mobile phone suffer from Phone-ambulism (nadakkum bodhu phone pesara vyadhi).

Typical symptoms of this disease is that the patients are always glued to their mobiles while walking on the roads, engrossed in their conversation sometimes they suddenly stray towards the middle of the road. Often the patients do not bother to look at the road before crossing.

They cause lot of hardships for fellow motorists, especially in places where the roads are narrow.

Is there a cure for Phone-ambulism?

Who should be responsible?

Yesterday on my way to work, I happened to see a very tragic road accident involving a lady who seemed to have travelled on her scooty. The other vehicle involved was a tipper lorry carrying full load of sand to a nearby construction site.

As I crossed her mortal remains lying on the road in a pool of blood, I noticed that apart from her head which was severly damaged, there was not even a scratch on her body.

That scene was haunting me for the whole of yesterday. From what I guess, she should have been in her mid-thirties. Probably married and a mother. I cannot help but think about the state of her husband and kids. What disturbed me more was that, hardly 100 metres from the site of accident, I saw another lady, probably in her late thirties riding her moped with a helmet dangling from the helmet lock.

Some organisations including mine have made it manadatory for the employees to wear helmets, otherwise the employees are not allowed to enter the premises with their vehicles and they have to end up parking their vehicles outside the campus. Some people, like the lady on her moped try to be smart and wear their helmets only while entering their office compound.

I hope she realises who, is being a made a fool here. If she herself is not responsible for her own sake, then who else can. May be Chennai should follow Bangalore and make helmets mandatory for all two wheelers.

Weekend Darshan - 12

Hot summer coupled with other important work, had forced us to take a break from our Weekend Darshans. Sometime in May we went to the 11 Divyadesams in Thirunangur near Chidambaram. We didn't put up a post, as there was nothing much to write about it. Most of the temples had been renovated recently.

However this weekend we managed to visit a couple of places.

Thakkolam:
Thakkolam is a place of historical importance. Its about 15kms from Arakkonam. Thakkolam also has a railway station, but its 6 kms from the actual town itself.

Gangadheeswarar temple here, is very beautiful and has lots to offer to History enthusiasts. The temple has been rebuilt several times and this is evident from the different stones one can observe on the walls and the compound. Even the inner and outer prakarams seems to have been constructed during different periods. There are quite a few interesting idols on the gopuram also. But I didn't have a good camera to capture them.

Dried up tank

There are lots of inscriptions on the walls, but nothing much could be grasped from them using our limited experience in reading inscriptions. The inscriptions on the inner walls have been whitewashed and the ones on the outerwalls have weathered.

Other striking features of the temple are unique idols of Dakshinamoorthy and Durgai. They are much different from what we get to see in other temples. In addition to that, the sivalingam here is on Navapashanam.

I am seeing this kind of Pillar for the first time

Route:
On the Chennai-Bangalore highway, go beyond Kanchipuram. You will come across a flyover. Go beneath it and turn right. Proceed further for another 10-11 kms until you reach Thakkolam railway station. Turn right there and proceed for another 6kms to reach Thakkolam

Thanks to Pooniyinselvan yahoogroups. We got the route from a thread there.

Thiruparkadal:
Thiruparkadal is also off the Chennai - Bangalore highway.

Both these temples are very old. It is said that this place can be considered to be the 107th Divyadesam. There is a massive renovation work going on in these two temples, which have erased all traces to their original constructors. Nevertheless the location of the temples is awesome.

Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal temple:

This temple is considered to be testimony for the unity of Shaivism and Vaishanavism. The Lord here, stands on "Aavudaiyaar" (base of Lingam")

Main Gopuram

The gopuram of the "Moola Sthaanam"

Tank and a small mandapam in front of the temple

Ranganathar Temple:

The main deity in this temple is made of wood from the tree of "Aththi". It is believed that Yama's assistant Chitraguptan was releaved of his diseases here and hence this place is said to have healing powers.

The main deities here are very beautiful. And the fact that commercialisation has not yet reached these temples is more than a reason to visit them.

Route:
From Kanchipuram proceed for another 30 kms approximately along the direction of Bangalore. You will come across a place called Kaveripakkam. Take left there and another 3 kms drive will take you to two beautiful Vaishnavite temples.

KANK

A megaserial that glorifies adultery...



Abhishek shines. So does Preity, in whatever little time she occupies the screen. And then there is the usual histrionics that we see in Karan Johar's movies. (Can't bear them anymore). Rani's character is shallow and defies all logic. SRK is aging. He is not dashing as he was in DDLJ, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or even K3G for that matter and its very hard to digest him as soccer player.

One thing that amused me in the movie is that, SRK seems to have taken Vivek's opinion. "Love-na enna????... Room podaradhu".

P.S: I had booked tickets in Sree Elite, without knowing that the section had couches instead of seats. Thankfully we were not the only guys sharing a couch in that section.

"Enna irundhalum... ippadi couples irukka vendiya edathula naanga ukkandhu paavam pannittomey.... adha nenacha, enakku KANK padam pathadha vida romba varuthamaa irukku... Aandavaa... edho theriyama vandhutttom, endha couple-aavadhu engala sabichi irundhaa, adhukkaaga engala dhandichiraadha-pa..."

A trip to Wayanad

Had been to God's own country over the weekend. One might need a week's time to see enough of Wayanad. We had only three days, but we did not rush to squeeze in many places.

Kalpetta seems to be the prominent town in Wayanad district and other places of interest are easily accessible from there. One cannot afford to sleep along the route from Calicut to Kalpetta, unless he/she is colour blind.

On Cloud 9

Can't afford to sleep

Rain or Sun - Its always beautiful

Although this place is second to none of the hill stations in Tamil Nadu, I could barely see a queue in any of the places. Thanks to lack of commercialisation.

Pookot Lake:
Situated some 20kms from Kalpetta, this lake is ideal to visit in the evenings just when the Sun falls behind the adjoining mountains. It is advisable to wear shorts or three-fourths, a good pair of sandals and have a watchful eye unless you want to donate blood involuntarily to the leeches surrounding the lake.

Probably one of the fewest lakes, where I didnt see couples lost in love on the boats.

Edakkal Caves:
Takes about an hour's drive to reach there. There's steep concrete path stretching for about 1.5km between the parking lot and the mouth of the cave. The main cave is another 200 metres climb from there. After all the pains one can witness the cave that recaptures the days of cavemen.

Inscriptions of the cavemen

There is another small peak to be scaled from there. Worth every bit of effort to reach the top.

Soochipara falls:
Easily the pick of our trip. There can be no better camera than the human eye, to capture all that the falls offered. We were welcomed by a gorgeous arc of rainbow. There was no way one could go near the torrents. We were lucky to find a small bed of rocks that was shallow enough to let us have a dip. The water was so pure and fresh, that we never felt like stepping out of the water if not for the darkness.

Breath-taking

Rainbow

Feels like heaven

Thirunelly temple:
This a 1500 year old temple, about 60kms from Kalpetta. Housed within the woods, whatelse can one ask for on a bright morning. Just behind the temple is a small stream trying to find its way through the woods. Named Papanasini, the stream is believed to have a cleansing effect.

The dilapidated structure showing Chola style of architecture

Except for the food, it was a very memorable trip and a nice retreat.

Message on Boat

The message in the following picture was supposed to be
"Plucking of Flowers, Plants etc from lake premises is punishable".

Some miscreants have changed a couple of letters, and created a new message altogether.


Taken from a boat in Pookot lake, Vythri, Wayanad

Spelling Bee

Although it was long over, I happened to see the "Scripps National Spelling Bee" championship on ESPN, only last weekend. On seeing that, I was pretty surprised for two reasons. One, what has a spelling competition got to do with sports and two, why on the world would some one conduct a 'good-for-nothing' competition like this.

I fail to figure out any logic behind testing kids by asking them to spell words which they probably would never use in their life time. You must see the words that were asked... sciolto, yizkor, croquignole, psittacism, bdelloid, ursprache... are a very few that I can recollect. The rest were even more weird. (Aamam... ivaru Shakespeare-ku pakkathu veedu... vandhutaru pesaradhukku-nu neenga thittaradhu enakku kekkudhu)

I wonder how this competition would help the kids to hone themselves. Obviously, the kid with the largest hard disk space and fastest RAM on its head would win the competition. Anyway it doesn't improve their analytical skills. I am just curious to know how these kids fare in their lives.

I had yet another interesting observation. There were many kids of Indian origin in that competition. Dabba adikkaradhula namma pasangala minja yaarala mudiyum :)