Gangadwara and the Doon Valley

This winter has been a great experience for me when it comes to travels. That I was missing my visit to himalayas this year, I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to visit the Doon valley on the foothills of himalayas. And compared to the filthy ganga I witnessed during my trip to Varanasi, the same ganga that enters the Indo-Gangetic plains of North India for the first time at Haridwar is fantastically beautiful and much cleaner for sure. I was also lucky enough to get some time to visit the amazing Forest Research Institute (FRI) at Dehradun. It is one of the oldest institutions of its kind. Presenting here some of the panoramic shots from my short visit to these places.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them)

Haridwar town on the banks of river Ganga seen from Mansi Devi Temple - looking East

Valleys on the way to the Chandi Devi Temple at Haridwar

Haridwar Town seen from Chandi Devi Temple- looking West

Haridwar town and River Ganges looking South

River Ganges at Har-Ki-Podi in Haridwar

South-East corner of Forest Research Institute at Dehradun

Southern face of the Forest Research Institute of Dehradun

Forest Research Institute established in 1938

Cheers,
Srikanth

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saga of notes

Excerpt from the book An appetite for wonder by Richard Dawkins

Theoretically the idea was to use your lecture notes in revision, but I never looked at mine ever again and I suspect that most of my colleagues didn't either. The purpose of a lecture should not be to impart information. There are books, libraries, nowadays the internet, for that. A lecture should inspire and provoke thought. You watch a good lecturer thinking aloud in front of you, reaching for a thought, sometimes grabbing it out in the air. A good lecturer thinking aloud, reflecting, musing, rephrasing for clarity, hesitating and then grasping, varying the pace, pausing for thought, can be a role model in how to think about a subject and how to transmit a passion for it. If a lecturer drones information as though reading it, the audience might as well read it - possibly in the lecturer's own book. 

~~
Every time I read such stuff, it rages me to the roof. We never had any such lecturers who would put us into thinking or think themselves for that matter. All we did was to copy notes from one book to another book. I remember our lecturer telling us that he had a tough time collecting good notes from a student who used to go to a good college/school. And the notes from those students (most of the times girls because of their good handwriting) used to be our bible at the class. The teacher used to copy whatever written in the notes (including a Math problem) on the black board and all of us used to write it down in our notes. We used to mug up the notes before the exams. I never used to like writing down notes or even copying from someone else. But I had no other option. If you do not have notes, you are bound to fail in the examination. That used to be our state in places I studied (till my graduation). I will be surprised if there is any improvement in those institutions even today. It makes me feel sad to look back and think the way we got educated.

But on the other hand, I remember a positive story about notes. During my graduation, we had no lecturer for Statistics subject and all 17 of us failed during the first year. It is one of my greatest failures in life. For the first time I had failed in a subject I liked the most. We used to fight with the college management asking for a lecturer. They had a tough time getting one considering their budgets. We used to see some faces for a maximum of few months and they used to come in different colors and languages. I remember one lecturer who came to teach us Statistics from Tirupathi. He used to teach us in Telugu language and we had no other option but to listen. So some of us  (most of the time three of us) decided to visit a few institutes in Bangalore and beg-borrow-steal Statistics notes from the lecturers there. And we happened to visit Vijaya college, St Joseph's college and a few others. Some of them were very kind to us and asked us to copy the notes. Some of them even taught us important chapters and also helped us with some tricks to solve bigger statistical problems. Most of the time we copied the notes sitting in the library or if we had access to a near by xerox shop, we used to get it photocopied. And we did that for a few months till we got enough notes to pass in the exam. While returning back from Bangalore with the notes in our hand, we used to feel a sense of achievement for sure. We shared the notes with all our classmates and some how passed our exams. So the notes from a-good-college-in-Bangalore saved us in the end.

I think we have a long way to go. Only in some institutes in major towns one can get good access to teachers and resources; while the other major parts of the state (mostly rural areas) will continue to face challenges.

Srik  

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holy land and holy colors

I used to read about it a lot; I used to see them in photographs; I used to hear from people about it and finally I made it to the place. Its the holy land of Varanasi or Banaras or Kashi that attracts perhaps most number of tourists in India to make sure they watch the best of the worst in the history of mankind. Its a very unique tourism that projects both Indian filth and Indian wealth. I still wonder why people from all over the world visit this place full of filth and dreadful activities happening all the time. At least I wanted to witness for sure all that I had read and was curious to know about.

I took a boat ride for 30 minutes across the ghats and saw all the drama of spirited people working hard enough to make sure the dead people reach heaven. Its the act of cleaning up bodies in the river Ganga and burning them till the ashes mix up with the river. And at the same time people take bath in the river and drink up the holy water to make sure their lives are cleansed off the sins they've committed (or will be committing). I feel sad for gorgeous Ganga having consumed most number of dead bodies in the history of any river and being a carrier of dead bodies till where ever it flows ~ A river so lively with the dead.

Talking about people, Varanasi is full of people, a random look with both the eyes anywhere on the streets of Varanasi can capture a minimum of 1000 people in the frame I guess. Its people everywhere; people walking in the holy costumes; people riding bicycle rickshaws with 2 foreigners sitting and watching the whole drama around; people trying to imitate priests on the street to make sure the visitor drops a penny or two in their pocket before entering the temple; people who are busy making money by selling everything and anything on the streets; people who are urinating right across the streets not noticing others who are trying to ignore the sight; people with long beards who are spirited enough so that they can sit on the banks of river in the holy costumes and smoke the holy drugs to get high; people who carry dead bodies to the river bank and make sure the dead gets a good place on the ghats-of-their-choice till their spirits gets washed away in the holy river; people who can row a boat and convince a foreigner or a tourist to pay 1000 bucks to see the ghats burning dead bodies; and people who are living in the town from ages who doesn't care a damn about what is happening around; holy cow! I can go on and on. Varanasi is absolutely jam packed and is a live river of people.

Here are some photographs from my trip:

Reserved for the dead

Flower vendor waiting for the bodies to arrive so that he can decorate them with flowers

Tourists taking a pleasure boat ride watching the ghats burning dead bodies

Boat men working hard to make sure tourists like the ghats. They ensure they take you to the ghat where you can see bodies burning. 

The smoke and the river - a very symbiotic relationship

The ghats on the banks of the Ganges

A submerged temple

For some reason the place was full of sky-baskets

The one who posed at the right time

They smile at every tourist and make a living

Crowded streets of Varanasi

Sunrise over the Triveni Sangam where Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati meet

Yamuna river so serene in the morning

Sunrise over the holy sangam

The new Yamuna bridge at Allahabad

Boats returning from Sangam early in the morning

Where you see the congregation of boats, that's the Sangam point

Cheers,
Srik

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the most eyes on earth

Excerpt from the book Second Suns by David Oliver Relin

It may be possible that the Nepalese have the world's most striking eyes; it is also likely that Nepal contains the most eyes, per-capita, of any country on earthy. There are the third eyes, or tikkas, that peer out from so many Hindu foreheads. There are the eyes framed by the carved wooden windows of Kathmandu, surveilling all that passes below them in the capital's crowded streets. There are the eyes that stare out of the headlamps of transport vehicles, painted there by drivers hoping for the foresight to avoid a collision. There are the all-seeing eyes of Buddha, gazing mindfully from the flat surfaces of stupas, mani stones, and monasteries where they've been painted. And there are commercial versions of these eyes, embroidered on the T-shirts, sweaters, and handbags marketed to tourists, who yearn to preserve a fragment of the visions they've experienced, to capture and carry them home. 

~~

Absolutely. These were the same thoughts that came to me when I visited Nepal. I was walking around in the streets of Thamel in Kathmandu and I could see eyes everywhere; I was hiking around in the hills of everest region and I could see eyes everywhere; every monastery I visited or every temple or a village I visited, I could see eyes and only eyes everywhere. 

It is amazing what these two doctors - Dr. Sanduk Ruit and Dr. Geoff Tabin are doing in Nepal. Restoring sight of many who do not have access to good quality eye care (in some case not even aware of such things existed) free of cost is the greatest of all the deeds I have ever seen. To me personally, what is the point of not having eyes in the most beautiful country in the world? and those deserved souls are getting their vision back because of these doctors and their greater Himalayan Cataract Project. 

More power to them.

Cheers,
Srik

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93 and 89

Few weeks ago, I was asked to take half-a-day workshop for the new batch of MBA students in the same college that transformed my life nine years ago. I readily agreed and volunteered to speak about the topic of my interest ~ 'passion'. It was a very nostalgic experience for me to visit the same classroom and interact with the students and share some perspectives with them. While browsing a bit on the web and preparing myself for the class, I came across a video and thought it would give a perfect closure for my talk. I watched the video 5 or 6 times before I played it in the class and every time I watched the video, it gave me a very unusual adrenaline rush. It is about Fred Becky, 89 year young boy climbing the Dolomites. The only reason for him to climb, he says, "because I've never climbed Dolomites".

(Link here)

And today I came across one more video and was absolutely bowled over by the same. It is about Jack English, 93 year young boy, a violin bow maker living in a remote cabin of Big Sur, California. The reason he moved into the wilderness he says, "I love this kind of life".

(Link here)

and there will be many more...to pick ourselves and move on!

Cheers,
Srik

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In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell

Thanks to HN, I get to read some amazing stuff always. I often used to think that world is moving at a faster rate than required and there is no pause in the process anywhere. People are working continuously without breaks, making more money (whether they are happy or not) without giving themselves some time to be idle. Idleness is simply not acceptable in this modern society and we all think that being idle is a bad thing to happen. 

Here is an interesting read that make us learn how important it is to have idle time in our lives. It is a long read but worth every word. Here are some interesting excerpts that makes us think:

Link to the post: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

…This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

…Why Idle time is necessary?

In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism.

Cheers,
Srik

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An appetite for wonder

One of those books I bought just for the impressive book title :)

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