As most of us know the origin and destruction of LTTE and hue and cries of tamilians across the world for E(e)lam and Srilankan tamilians, which unveiled many political dramas across the globe, many protests, many condemns on and for this island issue. Discussing pros and cons of this is beyond my capabilities and knowledge however the recent political stunt by TamilNadu CM and his team, as a soothing act for indignant tamilians, has forced me to pen down on this.
One thing which was gnawing me for a long time is why the name Eelam, and why not anything else, I thought I should gather the information on this before discussing about this topic, I googled little bit about this name, where I mistyped it as ELAM, in English it still pronounces the same, I was surprised by the meaning, it is the modern Iran way back centuries, say in BC’s was called ELAM, which is known for its warlike people. It sounded very similar to this modern Eelam as well or may be not, tamil purist may grin on this opinion, and might say that Eelam is not known for warlike people but for revolutionary people, I agree may be Elam too had revolutionary people and projected as war prone, only an historian can answer this question, I was not able to get any info on my opinion in the web, it may be coincidence that they both happen to pronounce the same, it seems to be a perfect accident, the way I found this coincidence and the coincidence itself. Anyways let me continue.
After Prabakaran’s dismiss (is it still questionable?), there was daily political stunts and dramas by various political parties in TamilNadu, this includes the ruling government as well, there were allegations against the Srilankan government for violating the human rights for the tamilians in their country, moving a step a head some even said there were both physical and mental tortures on the tamil refugees there, for which they demonstrated hunger strike, this and that, extending their support across the borders and highly agitated for their welfare, every tamilian across the globe felt the heat in their blood by there speeches, dialects rather. For which Tamilnadu CM forced to write a letter a day to keep the opponents attack away to PM of India, requesting and entrusting the welfare of tamilians in that island, and force them to take care of there welfare, where he did flied to discuss when it was sharing of central/cabinet ministerial for his family members.
All those piled up letters of stunts were of no use as opponents were outraging, so he forced to pick some 10 Tamil MP’s, as usual from his party and party which supports him, out of which one was Thirumavalavan, who is the head of his party, who even said violations in Srilanka has crossed its tolerance level, and India should declare a war against Srilanka and suppress its army to save Tamil souls there, his rebellion speech, boiled my tamilians blood in TN, even before the flight to Srilanka he said, that his agency reports has said that tamil people suffer a lot there, srilankan army was/is torturing tamil people and many were killed brutally and so on. By the time he reached Srilanka things were changed drastically it seems, his agency reports seems to be falser, tamilians camps are seems to be well handled and maintained except for drinking water which was little bit contaminated, as reported by one lady MP in the group, otherwise its all fine, and people are not ill-treated, I wont be exaggerating if I say, that MP’s said that Tamilians in Srilanka are happy to stay in camps, and its not satire.
In just two days, Srilankan government has transformed from Bad to Good, government and people who were cursing in less than 48 hrs started praising them, the turmoil in TamilNadu has calmed down, I’m not sure is it the end of tamil turbulence, but it will be soon, and it will be like this always as it has been before.
Tamil MP’s have happy ended this drama with tapestry of their mind.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Chennai to Goa
After a long time, my quest for travel, came true, me along with my colleagues and with their friends, planned a trip to Goa, a beach paradise in north western part of India, we called day off early on Thursday and headed to Goa. We had our first pit stop in less than a kilometer, yeah! You got it correct, as we forgot to take our alcoholic goodies. We called one of our friend back in office, asked him to bring our goodies safely to the pit stop, with the goodies in the cab, we continued our journey, we picked three more on the way and headed towards the National highways, and before we could take a nap I just learned that the driver is getting ready too for the nap, best part is with wheels, it got the shit out of me, thanks to Ravi V one of our travel mate who started a conversation to keep the driver awake and us safe, just like 1001 nights tale
Roads are pretty good it was like a slide after a bumpy ride, however toll stops are sickest things, I’m exactly not sure for how many kilometers we had such toll stops, but it seems to be more often then the highway motels, after several toll stops we reached Bangalore. By then it started drizzling we started enjoying pleasantness of the weather and headed towards our next destination Tumkur, by this time it started raining, but it was not our concern at this time, as the roads are becoming little bumpy now, for the ongoing highways project, roads are digged every where, suddenly we halted on high way traffic, it’s an accident, I don’t think it is fatal, but sandwiched with huge iron rods.
We started snailing from there, with haunting accident scene, really bad roads ahead, that was roller-coaster ride for next 10 hrs or so, heading towards Mangalore with the hope that the roads will get better soon after, but things are not getting better at all, after couple of pit stops for lunch and dinner, it is still a bumpy ride, and it was raining cats and dogs, with the hopes that things wont get more worse, I took a small nap, in couple of hours van halted, and we learned from the driver, that there was a landslide ahead, and things wont get better until tomorrow, things are getting worse now, its raining cats and dogs, and the language barrier(no one knows Kannda in our van) worsening the situation more.
We quickly had a informal meeting within ourselves, and decided to figure out if there is any alternate route to Goa from there, and if not we will go to Hubli wait till dawn and ahead to Kollore, Udipi, Dharamasala and Saravana, a jolly trip now almost become a pilgrimage if we don’t find the alternate route, “lets see” I said to myself. We figured out there is an alternate route in about 70 kms on the way to Hubli, which is good news, because if that alternative route fails, our second plan is still executable, in few minutes we reached the alternate route junction, and we enquired about the route details with the truck driver near by, he said earlier this route too was blocked the bridge overflowed with water about 10 feet, and two vehicles returned, and few hours back two other vehicle went the same way and it didn’t came back, so assumed the route was clear, it some how sounded sarcastic to us, to be on the safer side, we decided to ahead towards Hubli, driver was feeling sleepy by this time, we decided to halt for few hours, facilitating him for a nap, and we reached Hubli by dawn next day.
We lodged, for few hours to refresh our self, post lunch we vacated and headed towards udipi, roads are still bumpy I think except Bangalore and out skirts of the same, rest of the state yet to be infrastructured, we reached Udipi next day 2 AM, we lodged in a hotel and had a quick nap for few hours, got refreshed headed to Shri Krishna Temple, as many temples in Kerala, in this temple too, shirts are need to be removed, with shirt tucked into my pants exposing my torso, I’m standing in the queue to get the glimpse of Lord Krishna, I thought this is barbaric and uncivilized I mean removing shirts and all, as I was nearing the Karbagraha, I felt so light my so called commonsense started disappearing, I started feeling commonsense itself a burden to man, I started feeling I was nothing, and I owe nothing, and that very feeling was so good, with that emptiness in my soul I had the first glimpse of Lord Krishna, I forgot myself for that moment, I was completely lost, until someone dragged me away, that moment I regained myself, my commonsense recaptured me, I realized I didn’t wished anything to lord, I went back into the queue to wish few things, this time I was not light, this time I was fully occupied, just planning what to ask the Lord, just preparing the list mentally, but the early one was extempore, that feeling was really good, I felt the enjoyment in myself, but this time it was mechanical, conditional, I was not happy with this darshan, I revisited the queue again, and again and again for few more times, to resurrect my first experience, all in vain, with that unknown feeling of pleasure, and wanted to know what the pleasure is I left the premises with astonishment and we reached hotel for a break.
We actually planned to visit Kollur Mookambika temple, same day after that break, but the plan again changed after reaching the hotel, making it true that there is nothing constant except change, and decided to go to Malpu beach near Udipi and to Manipal. As decided we went to beach, had couple of ice creams and headed to Manipal, there is nothing much in there except the university, it is rightly called as university town, we spent few hours discussing what to do there, we didn’t come up with any fruitful ideas, we headed back to hotel, on the way we brought few bottles of beers, to chill out that night, we came to know that we need to vacate the hotel by 2:30 AM tomorrow, to avoid another day rent, as planned we vacated by 3:30 AM next day, and ready to reach Dharmasala, I bought a Dhoti this time, in the process of getting myself prepared to revisit the enjoyment I felt in Udipi, but in vain, I was little bit depressed, the emptiness with I felt in Udipi, which I thought is spiritual and trying to recreate in Dharmasala, but I failed, as I read in many books, it is true, if you are preoccupied, when you are already filled with your opinions/thoughts, this gives no accommodation for the new thoughts, In Dharamasala and in Udipi (except the first time) I was experimenting with my preoccupied theories, however if I would have experimented by true conscious which I did accidently in Udipi, I probably would have reached that stage of emptiness, I read this in many books written by great scholars like Osho, K.V Kamath and all which I failed to recollect. With that amount of satisfaction in myself, I rejoined the team and headed to Bangalore, on a bumpy ghat road, our tire got flat, it took 30 mins or so for the driver to change the tire, and another couple of hours in a near by town to fix the tire. Which delayed our progress, it’s the fifth day of our trip and we reached Bangalore by 9 PM or so, pit stopped for tea and snacks, and then in Hosur for dinner, and started our journey to Chennai, our destination, I was awake for couple of hours, and requested Krishna Das to give company to driver, and I stepped back to have a nap as I need to reach office next day and I slept off, Rajeev woke me up, it was already 5:30 AM and we are in Koyembedu bus stop, greeted everyone and I got down near the bus stop, hired a auto reached home, and I slept like dead for hours.
Roads are pretty good it was like a slide after a bumpy ride, however toll stops are sickest things, I’m exactly not sure for how many kilometers we had such toll stops, but it seems to be more often then the highway motels, after several toll stops we reached Bangalore. By then it started drizzling we started enjoying pleasantness of the weather and headed towards our next destination Tumkur, by this time it started raining, but it was not our concern at this time, as the roads are becoming little bumpy now, for the ongoing highways project, roads are digged every where, suddenly we halted on high way traffic, it’s an accident, I don’t think it is fatal, but sandwiched with huge iron rods.
We started snailing from there, with haunting accident scene, really bad roads ahead, that was roller-coaster ride for next 10 hrs or so, heading towards Mangalore with the hope that the roads will get better soon after, but things are not getting better at all, after couple of pit stops for lunch and dinner, it is still a bumpy ride, and it was raining cats and dogs, with the hopes that things wont get more worse, I took a small nap, in couple of hours van halted, and we learned from the driver, that there was a landslide ahead, and things wont get better until tomorrow, things are getting worse now, its raining cats and dogs, and the language barrier(no one knows Kannda in our van) worsening the situation more.
We quickly had a informal meeting within ourselves, and decided to figure out if there is any alternate route to Goa from there, and if not we will go to Hubli wait till dawn and ahead to Kollore, Udipi, Dharamasala and Saravana, a jolly trip now almost become a pilgrimage if we don’t find the alternate route, “lets see” I said to myself. We figured out there is an alternate route in about 70 kms on the way to Hubli, which is good news, because if that alternative route fails, our second plan is still executable, in few minutes we reached the alternate route junction, and we enquired about the route details with the truck driver near by, he said earlier this route too was blocked the bridge overflowed with water about 10 feet, and two vehicles returned, and few hours back two other vehicle went the same way and it didn’t came back, so assumed the route was clear, it some how sounded sarcastic to us, to be on the safer side, we decided to ahead towards Hubli, driver was feeling sleepy by this time, we decided to halt for few hours, facilitating him for a nap, and we reached Hubli by dawn next day.
We lodged, for few hours to refresh our self, post lunch we vacated and headed towards udipi, roads are still bumpy I think except Bangalore and out skirts of the same, rest of the state yet to be infrastructured, we reached Udipi next day 2 AM, we lodged in a hotel and had a quick nap for few hours, got refreshed headed to Shri Krishna Temple, as many temples in Kerala, in this temple too, shirts are need to be removed, with shirt tucked into my pants exposing my torso, I’m standing in the queue to get the glimpse of Lord Krishna, I thought this is barbaric and uncivilized I mean removing shirts and all, as I was nearing the Karbagraha, I felt so light my so called commonsense started disappearing, I started feeling commonsense itself a burden to man, I started feeling I was nothing, and I owe nothing, and that very feeling was so good, with that emptiness in my soul I had the first glimpse of Lord Krishna, I forgot myself for that moment, I was completely lost, until someone dragged me away, that moment I regained myself, my commonsense recaptured me, I realized I didn’t wished anything to lord, I went back into the queue to wish few things, this time I was not light, this time I was fully occupied, just planning what to ask the Lord, just preparing the list mentally, but the early one was extempore, that feeling was really good, I felt the enjoyment in myself, but this time it was mechanical, conditional, I was not happy with this darshan, I revisited the queue again, and again and again for few more times, to resurrect my first experience, all in vain, with that unknown feeling of pleasure, and wanted to know what the pleasure is I left the premises with astonishment and we reached hotel for a break.
We actually planned to visit Kollur Mookambika temple, same day after that break, but the plan again changed after reaching the hotel, making it true that there is nothing constant except change, and decided to go to Malpu beach near Udipi and to Manipal. As decided we went to beach, had couple of ice creams and headed to Manipal, there is nothing much in there except the university, it is rightly called as university town, we spent few hours discussing what to do there, we didn’t come up with any fruitful ideas, we headed back to hotel, on the way we brought few bottles of beers, to chill out that night, we came to know that we need to vacate the hotel by 2:30 AM tomorrow, to avoid another day rent, as planned we vacated by 3:30 AM next day, and ready to reach Dharmasala, I bought a Dhoti this time, in the process of getting myself prepared to revisit the enjoyment I felt in Udipi, but in vain, I was little bit depressed, the emptiness with I felt in Udipi, which I thought is spiritual and trying to recreate in Dharmasala, but I failed, as I read in many books, it is true, if you are preoccupied, when you are already filled with your opinions/thoughts, this gives no accommodation for the new thoughts, In Dharamasala and in Udipi (except the first time) I was experimenting with my preoccupied theories, however if I would have experimented by true conscious which I did accidently in Udipi, I probably would have reached that stage of emptiness, I read this in many books written by great scholars like Osho, K.V Kamath and all which I failed to recollect. With that amount of satisfaction in myself, I rejoined the team and headed to Bangalore, on a bumpy ghat road, our tire got flat, it took 30 mins or so for the driver to change the tire, and another couple of hours in a near by town to fix the tire. Which delayed our progress, it’s the fifth day of our trip and we reached Bangalore by 9 PM or so, pit stopped for tea and snacks, and then in Hosur for dinner, and started our journey to Chennai, our destination, I was awake for couple of hours, and requested Krishna Das to give company to driver, and I stepped back to have a nap as I need to reach office next day and I slept off, Rajeev woke me up, it was already 5:30 AM and we are in Koyembedu bus stop, greeted everyone and I got down near the bus stop, hired a auto reached home, and I slept like dead for hours.
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