Hoganekkal trip

Went on a day's trip to Hoganekkal. Hoganekkal means "Smoking Rock" . But you cannot take a puff of your cigarette while anywhere near the rocky waterfall...the misty spray will puff it out.!! We left Bangalore at 7 am on May day. Took the shorter route via Hosur/Denkanikota because of the incredibly picturescue sights and almost nil traffic except for some occasional buses. After Denkanikota the road is winding up and down the hills & quite narrow at some places. At some stretches its so narrow that if you meet a TN bus you might have to reverse back till you find a clearing for allowing the bus to pass!! The road has been done up recently though at patches it is very bad ---in all about 10 kms road is bad. The virgin forests on the sides.....the sound of the crickets and beetles and strange songs of unseen birds made the journey pleasant. We reached hoganekkal around 11.30 only to find the place literally teeming with people / cars / tempos /buses. It looked like all the holidayers from bangalore and small towns of tamilnadu have zeroed in on hogannekal!!! Right enough, there was no accomodation available at Hotel Tamilnadu (a TTDC Hotel) & we got two A/C rooms at CM Hotel. Quite dingy, but with clean beds /toilets the Rs 1000 per room was not so undaunting. By the way Hotel Tamilnadu at hoganekkal is not well maintained like in other cities so it did not make much difference to stay in this place!!

Normally, the boatmen of Hoganekkal crowd around visitors and try to lure you into accepting their rates for rides. But on May day we had to search for boatmen...but we were fortunate to see a boatman near the hotel itself. After much bargaining Babu the boatman agreed to scale down from Rs 2500 to Rs 1700 ....the package was for taking us in a jeep with his coracle to a place 10 kms uphill (Billigundlu) & bring us back in the coracle to Hoganekkal with a stopover for snacks / drinks in a desolate island. (you have to carry everything!!). We placed the order for fish fry, fish curry and rice with Prabha (pirabha) an excellent cook whose name we remembered since the last trip. She said it would be ready when we reach hoganekkal from billigundlu.

The first leg of the boat ride was fraught with problems as Babu had not bargained for the water level being so low and that the rocks would every now & then stall the coracle. He had to get down into the water and guide it to avoid hitting rocks. Of course, we lent him a helping hand by getting into the water ..as our spirits added with cool vodka were also soaring with the temperature in mid afternoon. In one of those misadventures I slipped and fell backwards very clumsily into the water which my sister even now doubles up in laughter. She recalled so many times the comical way i fell into the water that i should attempt acrobatics more suitable to my age!! Fortunately, the video camera was not being used as the there was a lot of water in the coracle itself...or by now she wd have shared the spectacle of my fall with all the nieces /nephews and their kids etc etc. :)

The boat ride took nearly 3 hours and we were ravishingly hungry.. the small island we chose to have lunch abounded with monkeys who were up to their tricks to get a morsel. Prabha,the cook stood sentry with a stick in hand. Babu, the boatman was also exhausted but he took us again for a ride near the falls and under it too soaking us fully.

We left Hoganekkal at 6.30 am and returned via dharmapuri. Just before dharmapuri there is a left turn towards Hosur - signage says 80 km...good we did not take it though the road was supposed to be good. Another left turn just before Dharmapuri ....is the toll highway and it was sheer bliss of driving between 120 & 140 kms to reach Krishnagiri where we had our breakfast at Saravana Bhavan. The return journey was an uneventful fast drive in the four lane highway...reaching bangalore at 10 am.

Distance from Bangalore to Hoganekkal via hosur / Denkanikota 134 kms

Hoganekkal to Bangalore via Dharmapuri / Krishnagiri/ Hosur 190 kms

Tips: Go by shorter route and return in the longer route.

Boatman Babu +91 9442352902 ; Cook Prabha +91 9442824557

(you have to bargain)

St Josephs Boys High Scool , Calicut...nostalgic memories
Basketball Champions- Earlier Posted on Orkut Community site of " St Josephs Boys High School, Calicut".
Many of you past and present students of St Josephs may not know that we in St Josephs when I was studying was a much feared team in Basketball. The techniques and fouls were simply outrageous. The forwards were excellent scorers with precision & the defenders (I was one) knew how to defend St Josephs, even if it meant not following the rule booknd hitting below the belt!!! The School Victory was more important than holidays, exam results, girls of next door St Josephs Girls School et etc... And for the very first time we had a National coach from Delhi...He was Abbas Ali Baig's (the famous cricketer) brother.Our traditional rivals used to be Ganapathy High School, Zamorins College and St Josephs College. And all the time we used to beat them in the yearly sports meet...In particular, I remember the final of the tournament which was held in West Hill Indoor stadium (wooden floors those days) when we won with a slender margin...and we were carried in a procession all the way from west hill to silk street in calicut(5 miles). Many of the boys had taken a hire cycle (10 ps for an hour) which was quite a sum those days (1967)...A father (priest) who was also with us in the procession was the most rowdiest of all in celebrating the victory all the way to school, but Head Master Anthraper SJ did not know that!!! And of course he was not wearing a cassock!!When I think back of the times in School, its truly a nostalgic memory and I am sure all of u would have had such fun times also...plz post your memories of events happenings at St Josephs, Calicut ..

That was for Orkuters on the community....plz do post ur memories of school life. on ur blog.. Insignificant events are significant memories to be treasured and shared for what they are worth!

Rama Sene and their ilk are basking in the glory of their projection into the limelight. The cost equation - benefit churns the magic potion of snatching the bytes, be it TV or the Newspapers. They never realised the spontaneous support from Nincompoops, Riff raffs, wayward despicables without a useful vocation, thieves hit by safer locks and CCTV (recession time?), pilfering bus conductors, auto rickshaw drivers who have joined the bandwagon of moral policing of India!!!! The shameful politicians who garnered votes on such pathetic criteria like caste/language/ are now soft pedalling the disgusting episode of Rame Sene goons hounding innocent girls having an outing with boys in the afternoon.

All the hooligans are now on bail and preparing with renewed gusto to get into the limelight once more .......they can do it with more boorish/rowdyish acts only, all in the name of protecting our culture. Should'nt we put a stop to this madness?? Their leaders are mad with ideas medieval to the core...the likes of them will push us back many centuries ...so is'nt it time to update the provisions of the Indian Penal Code provisions to deter such goons taking our Country into a retrograde mode? The hooligans should be tried under section 153 A which encompasses offences like disturbance of public tranquility and has deterrent sentences of upto 3 years. Rigourous imprisonment of 3 years should surely deter the likes of Rama Sene to be emboldened to do what they have done.

Holiday in Singapore

Landed in Singapore on 27th Dec & from then on its been a whirlwind tour of this beautiful country. The sights take your breath away. Everything is precision controlled. Its a dream city for those who drive cars in Bangalore. Here you do 120 0r even 140 within the city and very safely too..Normal cruising speeds within city hover around 90 kmph!!!!The Mass Rapid System (MRT)& LRT are popular and most citizens use them regularly. You have cars with a red number plate which indicates that they are for weekend & Public holiday cars!!!! Everything around this place is impressive. More to come from here...iN THE MEANWHILE wishing you a very happy 2009!!!

Decadence

The current political system spawns the local cable network guy / real estate agent / milk booth vendor /jobless rowdy elements/ Regional language chauvanists and the likes of them to aspire for being catapulted into the political arena with strappings way beyond their ultimate dreams. Believe it or not , milk men, petty shop keepers and cable guys have acquired Scorpios/Innovas/Accents by just selling a fraction of their land in Bangalore....& eying the political scenario!!! Where are we heading to at this rate???? The divisions of our Country started in 1956 just a few years after freedom. While Dr Bala Saheb Ambedkar initiated the freedom of downtrodden classes another class worked differently and divided us on linguistic basis...& today we have the scourge of language dividing the masses...its sooooo ridiculous and shameful that we have the seperatists in different forms in south of india.We can combat adversity of this form by dessimination only...Plz write to newspapers expressing your concern for decadence of the political system....and maybe more will ventilate vociferously.

VP Singh Passes away. Somebody asked why - a holiday?

HOLIDAYS FOR MOURNING?

Of course, a holiday should be declared whenever a former Prime Minister or President dies. In fact, a holiday should be declared when a politician dies cutting across party lines. Many of us miss the mournful sad tunes, which used to be aired on DD and radio whenever a leader died. This used to help us to grieve much better and keep solemn faces during the mourning. Oh, how we miss those bygone days!

Now, I do look forward for an unexpected holiday for my office so that those unfinished domestic odd jobs / like a repair job / repotting pots or lazing on the easy chair or even catching up with a movie in the multiplex can be done. The last time some one died I thought of the person so many times during the day - when I was in queue at the theatre I thought about the person - when I was shopping in the mall I did think of the great soul for if he hadn’t conked off I wouldn’t have been there. Even when I was having beer with friends in the afternoon I did think of the leader. Now, tell me how can you mourn when you go to office? You would be doing your routine mundane work without any thought or grief of the poor departed soul. I now keep a list of people holidays, who which might happen suddenly. You never know.

Editor dear, how can you even think of having a public debate on the subject? By this you might unwittingly elicit views so strong that the Govt may even get into a rethink mode on the idea. I dread the day!

Ajit Lakshmiratan

bangalore gridlocked on18th Nov 2008

silent sufferers phew!!! what a tolerant lot we are!! that we can tolerate nincompoops & sychopants rule the roost and take us for a ride (5 hours to cover 4 kms!!) in our own city we have stayed all our lives??? Farmers, who have never ever tilled the land landed in bangalore from the hometown of the guys who cry hoarse that they are "sons of the soil" - made merry whistling at women and girls alighting from school buses....do you feel like burying the so called sons of the soil in deep soil?? I do!! Where is judicial activism to put in place such happenings affecting the lives of peace loving law abiding Bangaloreans??? Shame on the leaders for insensitive utterances ..dont forget to throw them out in the next elections