Pondicherry

A long lasting trip was fulfilled as I travelled to Puducherry as its called now. Vijay and I hit the roads early in the morning at 5 am. Its am amazing experience to ride cutting across the chill wind of the ECR Road. Our 3 hour-long journeys ended at 8 am as we had breakfast at The Promenade, A hidesign hotel across the beach. I was quite impressed looking at the no of foreigners staying at the hotel. The restaurant was packed with French tourist.




We started the day by taking long walks along side the beach; the shore of the beach is covered with bed of rocks on which there is a pedestrian walkway is built. Hence once can only see the water hitting the rocks and gushing back to where they came. At around 9 am we decided to visit the “malakulam vinayakar”; the irony of the temple is that long long ago there used be a pond on which a tree grew up and hence the god Ganesha was name Malakulam Vinayakar. Out side the temple you will find a very friendly elephant that bless all tourist on their head as they bend. Mind you the elephant does not eat bananas, so get him a loads of “Arikam pullu” if you like.






After the temple we headed to aurbindo ashram, a quite place where all devotees of “The Mother” go to pay visit to her centenary. The ashram has also got a bookstore and library. You also get information booklet, which tells about the different stores at the French Colony. You can browse through http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ before heading here

We then headed to my favourite shop Auroville where I went on shop for loads of agarbatti and lanterns. Please don’t miss shopping at auroville its definetly much cheaper than their shops in Chennai and Pune. Next was shopping at MG road, one of the oldest and busiest road in the town. Here you will find some branded shops and showrooms. You will also find garment shops selling Tirpur export stuff. They are really cheap but you will have to hunt for good fitting clothes.

We next headed off to Auroville, which is 20km before Pondicherry on the way to Chennai, before going we did take a look at the governors house, which was a beautiful huge mansion. We reached auroville around 12 noon after riding through bumpy and muddy roads. This is an international township established by The Mother who created auroville to fulfil her mentors Vision – “ A new forms of individual and collective life, preparing the way towards a brighter future for the whole earth”. In the centre on Auroville is loacated “ Matrimandir”. The beauty of this place cannot be expressed in words. Please browse through http://www.auroville.org/ for more details about this place. It takes you a good 2 hours to look at the beauty of this township. We had lunch at the Auroville café, the food here is extremely good. They are made of organic ingredients and the best part is its not expensive.

As we finished our lunch we headed out back to Nama Chennai.

........ somethings that I cannot forget about this trip.

The colonial feel of the city.
The rough waves of the sea hitting the rocks.
The small two wheeler-hiring shops.
The French riding bicycle and two wheelers through the city.
The sight of rickshaw wala.

The names of road written in French.

Good Day

After a long time, today i felt good about my day. Woke up on time, which enable me to relish and sip up my morning Kapi; followed by a good half an activity. Reached work on time, spent the day working hard, no wasting time, no bitching :).
Surprisingly also left work on time, was also able to catch up with a new member at work for an activity; Then some shopping, cooking & Dinner, finally spend some with personal e mails and uploading snaps which due for a very long time. I also spent time calling and catching up with long forgotten friends.

Extremely exhausted by the end of the day but still relishing as i complete this Blog.

Bombay

A city full of life!

That's wat one can say about our Mumbai. A city that never sleeps. Business is plenty, people work out of shops which is hardly 100 sqft and located in the basement of buildings. Each one of them doing extremly welll and have been established for years together. At night this city looks more beautiful than during day. The roadside restaurants do not close before 1 am in the morning.

A view of this city through the 12th Floor of my anunts house is breath taking. Look down and you will find the railway track, and then the slums, and then the multistoried tall buildings.

This is the only city which has the rich and the poor, people belonging to all cast and religion. where every one has ways and means to survive.

in short Lively is what i can say

A genuine Policewala

It was 8 30 in the evening on a saturday, when my sister and i finshed our shopping and approached the auto near commercial street entrance. I thought this would be another day where we will have to request each and ever auto wala to take us back home; but to my suprise i found a police wala standing near the auto stand.

As we approached him, he asked us where would we like to go? i said Jeevan Bheema Nagar, and then as usual few of the auto refused to come and the others asked for more money. This attidude of the autowala put me off and I immediately asked the cop " Sir ye log kyu nahi athe hai?". He replied in kanada, but in a very expressive manner. I could understand only a bit of his conversation. Just after that we got an auto, jumped into it and thanked the policewala.

On my way i was discussing with my sis on what the COP spoke... He actually told us that " He was standing for our safety, after 8.30 all auto wala's want to go home. if he forces any one they could drop us half way. Hence he make sure that he co ordinates and sends both the traveller and auto wala on the same route"

How sensible i thought.........

Movies & Media.....

Turn on to any Hindi TV channel, News papers and even the radio... all you could here about is about Om Shanti Om, Savvaria, Jab we met and Nach Le....


I wonder what is the motive of such movie makers.... making a good movie or just earning their money back , Why do movies need such enromous propoganda...? Does advertisement really lead to revenue and profits for the movie makers? I am sure it does... which is why this industry is one of the most important revenue generator for Media Industry.

Thinking about it i cannot understand who's mistake is it? the movie makers or the viewers.. They are encouraged only because of public like us who help them achieve their goals in life....

I till date have not watched any of these movies... and i have not lost anything in life. Infact i am happy i am not one of those who desperately watch all the over hyped movies on the first day- first show.

My recent Holiday

One of the most boring things is to go on a holiday to go back home to coimbatore, i had not been to that place for the past 9 months. Living in bangalore and not going home was avery wiered thing for lot of people around me. well i never went as i just dint enjoy there. Well !!! we dint have a choice this time my sister and I had to go home for this Diwali.

I must admit that this trip was a amazingly diffrent. The day after we landed, we decided to take a cab and go to the famous "Annakatti Ashram". The last time i went there was 7 years ago and i remembered nothing more than the entrance to Ashram. It was a journey of 40 mins from my house passing by a villages, muddy roads and speed breakers on our way. We finally reached there.

It was a very calm environment; we went in to realise that it was called "Ashra vidya Gurukulam" run by "Swami Dayanad Saraswathi". Our first meeting was with a retired elderly gentleman, my dad as usual ran into a detailed conversation with him, we realised that he takes care of the admin work at this place and regularly visits the ashram trevelling 40 km per way once a week. after our conversation he asked us to go around the palce and also visit the temples inside the Gurukulam.

As my mom i were waiting after our regular "pradakshinam", i realised that my sister and dad were missing... after a minute i realised that they had landed at the library. I too followed them where we met this Young gentleman named rajesh. He was a software engnier who had given us his profession to learn a 3 year course at the "Ashra Vidya Gurukulam" at Nasik; A school of Sanskrit and Vedas. after his course he is being posted and trained for the past 2 months. We landed into a conversation of mind and body. he made me realise a very wonderful fact about God. He made me realise that we do not do idol worship; rather we pray to the mighty lord and idol is just a medium of worship. after a long conversation we thanked him and left the place to go to the The BookStore as suggested by rajesh.

My sis and i went to the Bookstore where in my mom and dad went to meet another gentleman to works for Aim for Selva.. In the bookstore we realised that there were loads of books which read about swami ji and many other philosophical writers. As i was not a books person my eyes quickly his the billing counter where i saw some agarbathies kept. I realised that there were made by a kids who belonged to the School supported by swami ji in chennai. As i was gonna buy this i saw this elderly lady who came out of her way to talk to me. She mentioned that she has been living in the ashram for the past 4 years and had studied vedas under Swami ji. She encouraged us to visit the ashram regularly and meet and speak to swami ji. She said that Swami ji likes youth as the world tomorrow is in the hands of youth and people like her have already lived her life. I asked her about her familiy she mentioned that she only has a mother and aunt and visits them where ever they need her. There was so much love and passion in her speach. i realised how fulfilling and satisifed her life was. I bought the agarbati and a Spatikam Mala and left the palce thinking and hoping to be fulfied with my own life.

Winter always Turns to Spring

Our Life is full of challenges.
But there is always a brighter side to all our challenges.
We all get so carried away by the troubles that we have to face whitout looking at solutions for it. Its hard to look beyond your problems, but the challenge lies in doing that.
The only way is to be patient, have faith, think and act positive!

The Power of One

A single person can change the World.

Everything starts and ends with One….

so why do we hesitate to take responsibility?

Responsibility over self, over ones family, over society, and the environment that we live in?
Every action that we as an individual take has a ripple effext. You change some thing in yourself… which influnces your family and friends. which inturn relflects their friends and so on and so forth.

One man can change the world… every thing begings and with Us. So lets wake up and change something about us.