MCSRDC

After completing B tech in electronics, my son has got a job in the ‘Mission Combat Systems Research and Design Center’ of one of the PSUs in Bangalore. I do not know what they do in MCSRDC. According to what I have read and heard about PSUs, irrespective of the purpose for which they are built, all that the employees of PSUs do is eat Samosas or bhaji (depending up on which day it is and supplied at subsidized rates by their canteen) and drink tea while participating in a hearty discussion on topics of individual interest or (after the advancement in the field of communications) participate in a discussion on the mobile or enjoy a cricket match or a movie on their laptops. I hear some PSUs have changed now and hope they really have. Whatever it is, the name of this center is very impressive and I imagined that it may have something to do with use of electronics in warfare. Rather, it was meant to do something about the use of electronics in warfare.

We, self and my son, were out on some errand and dropped in our friend Nageshkar’s shop. Nageshkar sells batteries, stabilisers and inverters and is rarely seen in the shop. He is always running about attending to his customers and keeps complaining about his running around. He was my neighbor and my morning walk companion. I see him less these days after I shifted my residence and switched to swimming to save what is remaining of my knees. We share similar views, he is as irritated as I am about unpalatable happenings around us, equally disgusted with politicians and is growing to be an irritated old man like me. I was glad to see him in the shop and went in for a short chat. He was reading the morning paper carrying photographs of our politicians protesting the recent hike in diesel and gas prices, waving their hands and shouting slogans, pushing push carts loaded with gas cylinders, burning effigies and in general creating nuisance and scenes on the streets with the hope of catching the ever obliging media eyes.

Having seen my son since he was a child, Nageshkar was happy to hear that he got a job, wished him well and enquired in what capacity he would be working in MCSRDC. I butted in to exhibit my ignorance and also joked “if an aircraft fires a missile and if it lands in Hyderabad instead of Islamabad, you know whose work it is!”

Nageshkar laughed and addressed my son. “Instead of Hyderabad, If you can really make a mistake and get the missile to land on our parliament while it is in session, I will put up your photograph on my wall and worship it everyday”.

Mysore - Himavatgopalaswamy Hill

In my last post I said that we were away from Goa for a few days. We made a trip to Mysore and back. I had no intentions of writing a travelogue again, the one I wrote about our US trip last year being enough of travelogues for me and everyone else but I found a few pictures of our trip in the camera and the temptation to bug others with them is too much to resist. I will shorten the torture as much as possible.

After many years, all of us in our family were in a position to take a week’s holiday together and decided to go somewhere out of Goa. We kept hearing people - our friends and acquaintances - going on tours and names like Singapore, Bangkok, Mauritius, Manali, Srinagar, Jaipur and Coonoor kept popping up during conversations making us feel that, being cooped up in Ponda, we were missing all the fun. So, we had to go somewhere. After considering Udaipur,Singapore, Malaysia, Kashmir and Kannur and rejecting all of them, we decided up on the time tested Mysore which has never disappointed us. Since we do not have a direct train to Mysore from Goa, we have to take a train to Bangalore and proceed to Mysore from there. We had thought of a pleasant holiday, I mean as pleasant as four of us (all adults. Children are no more children and have their own mind and can afford to act as it directs them) with different tastes and ideas could make it together and had no intentions of passing through Bangalore which was sure to be far from pleasant. So, we decided to drive to Dharwad and take the night train to Mysore.

We started on the morning of 5th June just as the monsoon reached the Goa border, and since it was a Sunday and there were not many mining trucks on the road to fight with, managed to reach Molem, the Goa border, without damage. From Molem to Anmod is the ‘ghat section’ and the climb starts from Molem. Anmod ghat is wonderful during rains. To see it in its full splendour one has to travel by train from Margao to Londa but travelling by road is rewarding enough. The picture below is just a sample bit.



The road from Londa to Dharwad (once upon a time)was a narrow but beautifully canopied stretch of road through the forests, till the mining trucks carrying iron ore to Goa from Hospet devoured it completely. It took the government nearly fifteen years to trace it again and now it is under reconstruction. Those who are unfortunate enough to have some compelling reason to travel to Hubli - Dharwad by road, take a detour via Khanapur which traverses through a very bad patch of about twelve kilometers to join the Belgaum - Bangalore highway at Kittur, by which time they would have exhausted all the curses they have in their vocabulary. I went by that road once last year and only because I had been reciting Vishnu Sahasranama all the time, managed to come out unscathed. We heard that the road to Dharwad via Dandeli and Haliyal is good though a bit longer and had decided to try that road. It is really good. There is not much traffic on the road and both the sides are densely wooded. The road is smooth though curvy and my son, who was driving, did his best to test the stability of our car and the stretchability of our nerves. He enjoyed himself while I got an ulcer or two. We made one brief halt for lunch and another to look at the Supa dam from a view point and arrived at Dharwad by three in the afternoon.



We rested for a while at our friend Sri Dhakad’s place in Dharwad and having consumed enough fats to last us the next three years through their very tasty Rajasthani dinner, caught the night train which deposited us at Mysore the next morning.
Mysore suites all tastes in our family and we usually spend time peacefully just eating and lazing around. However this time we decided to visit our family deity ‘Srikanteshwara’ at Nanjangud and a nearby hill called the ‘Himavatgopalaswamy betta’ (‘betta’ is a hill in Kannada). The last time I visited lord Shrikanteshwara, I had to stand in a jostling queue for nearly an hour (after buying the privileged hundred rupees ticket- Lord Venkateshwara of Tirupati has taught profitable business practices to all other deities) before I came face to face with him. This time I had decided that if a similar situation prevails, I would offer my pranams from the outer precincts and turn back. Our association is long and I was sure that he would understand. It was a pleasant surprise to find the temple free of crowds and it was much more pleasant to find the surroundings clean and -very important- having a very much usable pay toilet and other facilities.



I said that I do not intend a long write up but the habit does not die easily. I will try to shorten the remaining part.

‘Himavatgopalswamy betta’, one hour from Nanjangud.

A deviation of about twelve kilometers from Gundlupet on the Mysore - Ooty highway.

The deviation bit - Horrible road, beautiful surroundings.

Buy a ticket at the forest guard posted at the base of the hill, who instructs you to be back with in an hour.

Reach the top expecting the tyres to burst anytime and once you have stopped being surprised at the tenacity of your vehicle which survived the road enjoy the exhilarating cool and misty atmosphere said to be so all through the year and hence the name “Himavatgopalaswamy’. (‘Hima’ is mist in kannada).

Splendid view as far as your eyes can take you.





Colourful temple, and a very good looking Gopalaswamy within.



The hill is in a protected forest area and one cannot stray away from the temple to explore the surroundings. One is not allowed to linger around and ‘picnic’ there. You reach the top, take a look and few photographs, offer your prayers to Lord Gopalaswamy and start back. We had heard that if you are lucky, you may see wild elephants roaming in the forest below. We halted at a view point on the way down and tried our best to locate wild elephants. We spotted them only after our driver’s experienced eyes caught them. You may see them in the photograph if your eyes are better than mine.





After a halt by the side of the road for lunch,



Returned to Mysore by three in the afternoon. A very good trip. I hear that there are many such places around Mysore and hope to visit them during our subsequent visits. please do not pray that i never make it to Mysore again.

Ah, Monsoon again!

Rains are here again. I love the rains in Goa and I consider myself lucky to be in a position to say so. I have a roof over my head that does not leak and I do not have to run through foot deep water to catch a bus or ride a two wheeler in pouring rain to reach my work place. I do not have to look for a dry spot in front of a road side shop to spread a cut open cardboard carton to sleep at night. I do not have to hurriedly spread a sheet of plastic to cover the wares that I have kept for hawking on the footpath as the drops start falling from the sky. I do not know if these people can love the rains. I feel sorry for those who suffer because of rain but love the season nevertheless. I thank god for keeping me in a position to do so.

This year we left Goa just as the demarcation between pre -monsoon showers and the monsoon rains disappeared and returned two days back to find the monsoon in full swing. It had been raining for five days and the branches of the plants next to our side walk had bent over forcing one to bend at the waist to reach the door from the gate. The cement floor was getting slippery threatening to break the back if stepped up on carelessly.

There had been a backlog of cases in the clinic and I remained indoors the last two days ignoring what was happening outside. Today being my half day I could survey around the house, clean the side walk, tie up the branches of the plants (with the help of my son who, for once, appeared to be willing), remove the dry leaves which had clogged the water outlets on the roof and then sit in front of our balcony to enjoy a hot cup of tea, enjoying the cool weather, watching the pouring rain. Feels very nice.

Medium of Primary Instruction

About a month back an old issue came to life once again. The issue of medium of instruction in primary schools. The Issue is not the medium instruction as such. It is the government aid given to primary schools.

In the beginning all schools which were eligible for aid got aid. Then the government decided that the mother tongue should be the medium of instruction at primary level and said that it would not give aid to English medium schools. That was about twenty years back. Schools which were teaching in English either switched to local languages (Konkani/ Marathi in Goa) or charged extra fee for English medium. This went on for nearly twenty years. This year suddenly there was a demand from a large section of the society that the government give aid to English medium schools also. There was also a section which opposed aid to English medium. Depending up on which side of the bread they saw butter, politicians took sides.

Arguments and counter arguments flew thick. Mother tongue supporters said that a child can grasp much better what is taught in mother tongue and so, teaching in MT forms a firm knowledge base and many more such things. English supporters said that our children are losing out because they are deprived of English which is absolutely necessary for future prospects and many more such things. After kicking the issue around for some time and passing it on to the ‘Center’ for views, the ruling party saw that there were more numbers behind English and announced that “after careful consideration of all aspects” it has decided to give aid to English medium schools too. The section of politicians who were against English medium - the ‘Bharatiya bhasha suraksha mandal’ decided to protest and held a ‘rasta roko’ and also called for Goa bundh on 6th june.

My view is that both the arguments are baseless. A child can learn in any language and can learn any language if taught properly at the appropriate time. My vision does not go far. But what I have seen near me makes me feel so. I learnt in Kannada medium till 7th standard and then switched to English medium. Whatever others say, I think that I am not bad either in Kannada or in English or in anything that I learnt using these languages. My sister learnt in English medium till 7th standard and learnt Kannada only later. She is better than me in both and everything else. My children’s primary education was neither in English nor in their mother tongue Kannada. They learnt in Konkani and are fine in Kannada, English and Konkani as well as whatever they learnt in those languages.

The whole thing was bugging me. The photograph of our leaders squatting on the highway blocking the traffic and the “Bundh”call, both of which I always hate, increased the irritation and I had to say something somewhere. So I wrote a letter to “Navhind Times”. I do not know if they were short of words today. They published it with a heading “Nuisance to Public”.

Nuisance to Public.

It was disgusting to see the ex chief ministers, sitting M L As, MP, and so called dignitaries and intellectuals posing proudly for the photograph while blocking the high way.
Blocking the road, (other than providing news coverage to these people), only causes hardships to citizens and nothing else. This is just a step away from acts like stone pelting, setting fire to buses and cutting railway lines and is a disgrace to any civil society.
These people who should condemn such acts are encouraging them.
It is a pity that our leaders cannot even think of better ways of protest.
Now they have called for Goa bundh on 6th June. Yet another nuisance. Where are our leaders leading us?

M S Raghunandan, Ponda

Mango Season

Mango season is here again. The first few mangoes were seen in the market about a month back. ‘Mankurad,’ the most sought after variety in Goa was being sold at about hundred rupees a piece and there were people to buy it at that price! Some soul who longed for those mangoes but could not afford them, wrote in the letters to editor coloumn - ‘Mangoes beyond common man’s reach’- and suggested that the government regulate the prices! After about fifteen days the price came down to about five hundred rupees a dozen and the news papers announced “Goa’s famous Mankurad with in common man’s reach”. Five hundred rupees a dozen and that is within common man’s reach! I am way below a common man then. I should ask for a BPL (below poverty line) card from the government. After that I noticed a steady increase in the quantity of Mangoes in the market but still did not dare to ask the price.

Since last week there are hawkers selling mangoes in almost every street corner. In one corner I found a small boy (less intimidating) in front of a basket of Mangoes and hesitatingly asked for the price. It was two hundred rupees a dozen. My wife is very fond of mangoes and I had noticed her eating them with her eyes whenever we went to the market. So, I bought half a dozen mangoes.

Two days after that first half dozen the price came down to about hundred and fifty, and I purchased a dozen fruits from Sandeep naik. Sandeep is a vegetable vendor who shifts to mangoes in mango season. In a market full of sellers who try their best to attract customers, he stands like a ‘sthitapragna’ (he who accepts happiness and sorrow, ups and downs, alike and in general is not perturbed by anything) in the center of four or five baskets containing fruits of different sizes and different varieties. If enquired, he will point at the baskets saying “three hundred, two fifty and two hundred” or so. His price is fixed. No bargaining. If you bend over the basket he hands you a plastic bag and looks away. You may take half an hour to select the fruits you want. Once you have selected the fruits and put them in the bag you hold it in front of him and say how many you have picked. He will not even count them. He will nod his head, take your money and give you the change. He will not prevent you from selecting what you want even if you upturn the whole basket. Very much unlike the other sellers who shout at you and almost wring your neck if you try to displace one or two from the top and try to get at those placed at the bottom. His attitude suits me and I usually buy from him.

A dozen mangoes do not last long in our house and I had thought that if the quality of the Mangoes was good, I would go back to the market and buy another dozen. Just as I entered the house I saw two plastic bags full of mangoes placed next to the stairs. One of our neighbours, who knew that we were partial to the fruit and had been to the market before me, had found the price very reasonable, and had bought two dozens for us. A goodwill gesture for having removed his tooth free. We like Mangoes yes. But what to do with three dozens? It was nearing ten in the morning and I thought I will give it a thought after the clinic and went to attend to the first case. The first patient on my list, who owns a farm, entered carrying another bag of mangoes. Now we had nearly five dozens. As I finished the morning session and was about to close the door, a car arrived in front of our house. It was the driver of one of my friends carrying a box containing mangoes all from the trees in their huge compound and all of them ripened on the tree.

That evening, the old lady who stays next to our house slowly walked in carrying her quota. During Mango season, she sits in front of her house watching her tree, with a few stones and a stick at her disposal, waiting for the ripe mangoes to fall. She collects all the mangoes that fall from the tree and is aided by the stones and stick in keeping other contenders like the cattle, crows and the neighbourhood children away. Usually she has a heap of fruits next to her by evening. They are not dessert mangoes but the ones used for making mango curry. I had given her one guava fruit from our tree and she has free access to our hibiscus plants. The investment was bringing dividends. We could not refuse her hard earned mangoes.

I do not know in what ‘muhurat’ I purchased the first half dozen. Since then It is raining Mangoes in our house and there are heaps of Mangoes in all corners of our kitchen. Different qualities in different stages of ripening. Good ‘Mankurad’ just right to be cut and consumed are placed separately. Unripe ones are in another corner. Over ripe ones to be converted in to pulp or juice are in yet another place. The ones to be used in cooking are still in their bag. We have distributed Mangoes to whoever we could reach but still have about five dozens with us. There is a pleasant mango fragrance all over the house. In case anyone is intending visiting us these days, be prepared for Mango juice on arrival, mango pulp with rotis and mango curry with rice for lunch, and cut finest Mankurad for dessert.

Osama dead - My take

Osama is dead. America got its revenge. But the Taliban, Al quaeda, JEM, LET etc etc are all very much alive and kicking. The British danced in the streets because their prince got married. Americans are dancing because their enemy is dead. Both happenings are of no consequence to the society at large. Foolish people rejoicing over these things probably because there is nothing else to rejoice over.

Major beneficiary of Osama’s death - Obama. He got something to boost his image.
Next, the TV channels. They got something to keep the viewers engaged.
Third, me. Got something to write a few lines about.

Horrible thoughts. Not befitting the situation.

After the winning of world cup the next event claiming big headlines happens to be the death of Bhagavan Sri Satya Saibaba. Our TV channels and news papers have been gross in calling it ‘death’. Bhagavan did not die. He left the world in his present ‘Avatar’ to assume the next one. Only he miscalculated the time at which he intended to leave this world and left about ten years early. On reading the news, some thoughts propped up. Just putting them down as they came.

News papers and TV channels are full of Saibaba’s death. All our political leaders are offering condolences. They have to. Saibaba’s desciple’s votes count. And they are in crores. One politician raised above others. Our CM Yeddyurappa has said that he will propose ‘Bharata Ratna’ to Bhagavan. I would consider it an insult to Bhagavan. But I also heard someone has already seconded the proposal. I am sure lakhs and lakhs of devotees would be thrilled. Bhagavan getting Bharata ratna just like Mother Theresa getting saint hood. Great country. With us, gods are not above Bharata Ratna and our politicians are never above cheap gimmicks. Yeddyurappa was faster than Kiran Reddy. Reddy visited Puttaparti before yeddyurappa but missed out a good chance. Next in line for Bharata Ratna- Kashi Vishweshwara and Tirupati Venkateshwara. But they have to leave this world first. I don’t think they will.

Many members of the trust have felt that the Bhagavan died because there is a flaw in the ‘vastu’ of the hospital, Sr Satya Sai Institute of higher medical sciences.( I hope I got the name right). They blamed the Vastu and also the doctors for not allowing the Bhagavan to be shifted out. A change in Vastu would have tremendously improved Bhagavan’s health. Just as gods are not above Bharat ratna, they are not above Vastu also. Vastu is supreme. But I have to put in my doubt too. If the Bhagavan decided to leave this world, only to be born in the next avatar, who are the doctors to prevent him? I don’t blame doctors. But vastu, I can’t say anything. I have no knowledge of it.

Now, the next avatar. There are reports that the Bhagavan has said that he will come into this world again as an abandoned child and will be found on the banks of Cauvery river in Mandya district, Karnantaka. He will be called ‘Prema sai’. So, all those who intend abandoning their children in dust bins, railway compartments and street corners can take a chance by heading to Mandya. Abandon the child, they surely can. River bank is better and hopefully cleaner than dust bin, aleast in some places and so, less guilt, if they have any. But if the child turns out to be Prema Sai, imagine the fortune. Far far better than KBC. They can always claim that they are the god’s parents and left him on the bank on his own instructions. Have the claim confirmed by DNA tests.

Expect dozens of abandoned children on banks of Cauvery.

Bye. More horrible thoughts if news papers help me.