A mild pain at the tip of the nose, my lips tend to curve and the tear glands finally yield under pressure. This was how felt when I had the first glimpse of Sai Baba at Shirdi.

My parents had wished to visit Shirdi over the last two decades but couldn’t make it. They say its God’s will. This is something I don’t understand and would never argue with my parents.

I am a believer in God. But, unlike our family circle, prayers and hymns are alien to me. So, my motivation to visit Shirdi was driven more by my parent’s wish than my own.

My brother and myself did all the planning. This was a trip of so many ‘firsts’. Made my first air travel. Between Bangalore and Pune. Pune to Shirdi… bus was at 12:30 a.m. So once I boarded the bus, I don’t know what transpired for the next 5hrs.

Reached Shirdi on a Sunday morning. Most hotels read House full and the pricing was exorbitant (as expected). Finally we got a room close to Dwarkamai for Rs.1200 ! It was really pathetic.

Sunday is not really a good time to be at shirdi, it is over crowded. So dropped plans of visitng the samadhi mandir. The shirdi temple is one big complex now. The Dwarkamai, Chavadi, Lendi bagh and other places are in and around the temple complex. We visited all these places on the first day.

We got a lot of help from Mr.Vichu Iyer, Sai Madras Hotel. He pointed us to “Dwaravati Bakthanivas”. It is run by the Sai Sansthan Trust itself. We got the rooms there on Monday. The price was Rs.550/day for 4 people. The hygiene was excellent as well.

We went to visit the samadhi mandir on Monday, early in the morning. Stood in the queue for 1Hr and after the darshan went again for another darshan. It was really heart filling. Another good aspect was, there was only one single queue; I mean, there was no economy class and business class queues in here.

Another thing was the dogs. You could find dogs roaming inside the temple, they were well fed, clean and very social too

Shanisingnapur… Its a almost 70km journey from Shirdi. Cars ply to this place, they charge you Rs.70/head to and fro. They will take you to there and will ‘command’ you to take bath, rent a dhoti and buy ‘puja’ stuffs. Beware, they are cheats. Before gettng into their car better tell them that you won’t buy their stories. I read in web about this and paid no heed to their flimsy rituals.

If you wish to perform Abishekam, you need to bath and come in dhoti. That too, I am not sure, better check with the security office. But, don’t listen to the car driver.

So Tuesday morning was spent in visiting Shanisingapur. We had a darshan of Baba again in the evening. I felt very content.

Need to mention the Bhojanalaya. The complex could serve thousands in one sitting. Well maintained. And the charge is Rs.6/adult. Its a bit far from the temple.

We had the flight from Pune to Bangalore in the evening so left shirdi by 8:45am. The Prasanna tours vehicle…. this was the worst part of the trip. The bus actually left Shirdi only 9:30am. Till then … sigh… 6hrs of travel for a distance of 180km. The road and the bus were horrible but it was much better when compared to the driver’s attitude.

At the end, I felt fortunate enough to have visited Shirdi. In my parents’ words, it was Gods’ will.

Sairam Rajaram.

After reading about Mr.P.Kakkan in an article in The Hindu (here) today, I thought of writing something which I had heard from my father. But a brief search gave me what I intended to write (here).

It is said, he didn’t have the money to pay for a special ward and was lying in the veranda of the Govt Hospital, Madurai. Dr.M.G.Ramachandran was on a visit as Chief Minister, he noticed Kakkan and helped him.

Some time back, I visited Thirumogur (an old temple near othakadai). It was late in the evening, a convoy of SUVs made a halt opposite to the temple. The lead car had two dobermans ( no pun intended!) enjoying the view of the road; for a second I thought it could be some minister. But the person was just a ward head of some ‘local’ party.

Mr.Kakkan was really a great man. The sad part is, in contemporary terms, people would call him “pozhaika theriyadha manushan”.

If I have to give a word of advice to the current politicians, I would quote from the Tamil movie Roja Kootam, Raghuvaran’s advice to Srikanth; But, who am I to advice them?

The UPA is back to power. The Left is left out. The economy has picked up in a day (sorry, in minutes!). The Share market indexes have touched the ceiling.

Sounds Great!

But there is another way to explain this propulsion. Of course, its an imagination. 

Suppose I operate in a market where there are 10 companies listed and 3 companies determine the index. I have a group of friends who do just what is told to them. I split them into 2 groups, buyer and seller.

A scrip which is at 10 will be sold at 20 and the other group will promptly buy that. I do that so fast that once the opening bell rings the index touch the ceiling!

Just wondering if that can be done with huge markets like NSE or BSE! If yes, I would love to try it out. But, for that I need to be …….

He..hee..hee…

Courtesy: The Hindu 

They mean that they have voted and nothing else.

“All power to the people!”

Cloud computing… Every other day I find the term mentioned at some place. Recently, I came across a few cloud computing models. So, if you are not much bothered about privacy, then cloud could (wow! displace ‘l’ by 2 places) be a decent proposition for reducing costs. But, I don’t see cloud computing to be completely new, its more like an enhancement to the idea of thin clients; Old wine in new bottle.

The first site that I came across was :

http://cloudo.com

Later on, found EyeOS to be much better. Better, because, you have it available as a package which you can deploy in your own system (webserver + php required), its licensed under AGPL and few parts under LGPL and a lot of applications are available.

How about giving a try? Yup, I did it. With the free account available on their site as well as installing in a local system (thanks Nachi for sys, well, he may come to know this only after reading it here!)

Mahatma Gandhi’s metal-rimmed glasses might have been ’saved’. But, the world he wanted to see through those glasses will remain at large. It has no takers as yet.

Honestly, I hated that man in my childhood. I won’t use the word ‘Mahatma’ for him even in my exams. I was inspired by militant nationalists during my history classes. I felt, only a fool would get thrashed like that. When years passed he grew in stature in me.

Now, he is my inspiration. In his own words, “my life is an open book”,  it showed how one average  man (he wasn’t a genius) can change the world. 

Any takers for those belongings of the Mahatma? btw, you can’t buy it but only imbibe.

<note>

Mahatma hated liquor to the core. The new owner of his personal belongings has a nickname, “Liquor Baron”. I can only laugh at this ‘cruel’ conjuction. 

</note>

Ever dreamt of being hit by a crane?  Neither do I. But, yesterday I escaped from it, in reality, by a half a dozen yards!

Last evening I returned from office a bit early than usual. While crossing the road near my home, I heard a few construction workers raising an alarm. There was a truck-mounted-crane going berserk . The sensible driver was looking for a place to crash his errant beast. At last it was a tree which ’sacrificed’ its existence. Fortunately no one got hurt.

I live!

Too many movies indeed (in my terms!). In the past week I saw 3 new movies with family. Bharathiraja has always amused me and given an option I would prefer him to Mani Ratnam, all because of the originality. So, Bommalattum came first in my itinerary.

But for various ‘unknown’ reasons Bommalattum was not even running in a single cinema hall in Madurai. And Vaaranam aayiram was running in a lot of theaters [1] [2]. Probably, Bommalattum was a superior competitor. Has anyone got a different reason?

Vaaranam Aayiram , Bommalattum & Abhiyum Nanum. Bommalattum (minus vivek ‘jokes’) was the best among them ; the other two were also good.

I never believed that the RTO has started issuing names to vehicles instead of numbers…. untill I saw this.

who is the 'annan'?

This shot was taken in Madurai. 

Is there anyone in Madurai who has the guts to penalize the owner of this vehicle?

I have no regrets for making the Vulture-Television Journalist comparison… Even The Hindu came up with one such in this week’s Magazine supplement, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/12/21/stories/2008122150060100.htm . Surendra’s cartoon was apt.