Dubai

My one hundred days in India.

 

 

When I retired from work in the year 2002, my wife and I thought we would spend substantial time each year in India. A substantial time meant at least three months in a year. We thought we would escape the harsh winters of North America and enjoy the salubrious winters of India during the months of December through March (hemanta and sisira rithau). Our wish was to visit our old friends and family members. We also wanted to visit towns and villages in India we had once lived in, dig up fond nostalgia, revel in leisurely travel without any specific agenda and squeeze in a substantial dose of pilgrimages to remote holy places so beautifully described in the various Indian epics!

 

We did such long stints during the winters of 2003, 2006 and now again in 2007. Let me share with our readers what we did during our one hundred days in India.

 

Yes, we were in India for exactly one hundred days this time! We arrived in India on November 29, 2007 and left on March 6, 2008.

 

We left Richmond, Virginia on November 25, 2007 arriving in Dubai in UAE the following day. We rested in Sharjah for three days and left Dubai for India on November 29, 2007. We stayed in Sharjah at my wife’s niece Meera’s residence. Meera and her husband Ravi are always warm and affectionate every time we visit them. We arrived at Cochin the same day. After a night’s stay in Ernakulam at my in-law’s residence, we reached Chennai on December 1^st by train. We were able to make the railway reservations from the US.

 

We left Chennai by train for Bhubaneshwar to see my mother, sister and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law (a former IRSE who had retired from the Indian Railways) is now on a railways project to build a bridge on the Mahanadi river. We stayed in Bhubaneshwar for a total of 40 days (one week in December and five weeks in January and February). We really enjoyed our Bhubaneshwar stay. Life in Orissa is laid back and the local folks are easy going and friendly. My brother-in-law, sister and my mother live in a locality known as Shahid Nagar, a somewhat quiet mohella giving us a feeling of a small town.

 

We returned to Chennai on December 7^th and after a week in Chennai, we left for Bangalore to visit some relatives.

 

We arrived in Bangalore on December 13th. After four days of stay in Bangalore, I could feel that my health was deteriorating. The crowded life in Bangalore was a bit too much for me!. Air pollution, mainly contributed by the large fleet of private automobiles, two-wheelers and public auto rickshaws was a major challenge to my health. 

 

We embarked on a journey to Sringeri and Mysore by road on December 17th. I had difficulty getting clean food and nice place to stay at night. We managed to survive on whatever was available. We enjoyed visiting the shrine of Sri Sarada Devi in Sringeri and had darsan of His Holiness Sankaracharyal on December 18^th and 19^th.

 

We reached Mysore on 19th night. We stopped at Mysore for a night. We visited Chamundi Temple and Swami Sachidanandaji Asramam. We had darsan of His Holinesses Swami Sachidanandaji and Bala Swamiji. The asramam has grown very big now with many temples for various deities. We returned to Bangalore on December 20^th. We left the next day for our Gujarat destinations.

 

When we returned to Bangalore from Sringeri, my health had substantially deteriorated. We wondered if we should abort our planned pilgrimage to Guajarat. We must sincerely thank Uma Jayaraman, our darling bahu, who made our Bangalore stay much easier in spite of the challenges that the city offered!

 

Somehow, I gathered courage and we left Bangalore on December 21^st reaching Jamnagar the same day. We stayed with a friend and his family in Jamnagar. Our host family stayed in the Reliance campus, a beautiful campus with many facilities. Our host took us both to the medical facility and we received excellent medical care there. After resting for a couple of days, I felt much better with the medication I received. Our wish was to travel to Dwaraka, Darukavanam (one of 12 jyothirlingams) , Somnath (another of the 12 jyothirlingams), and Porbandar. We did all this by road. The road trips were somewhat arduous and we had to manage with whatever was available as meals and places to stay. Our host lady traveled with us to all these places and we cannot forget the care they gave us throughout our Gujarat stay. Though our religious fervor enabled us to stoically bear the difficulties of traveling by road in this region, I wonder if I will have the guts to do this sort of travel again. Our host family was so affectionate and generous in their hospitality, I remembered the line from a song in the movie Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behtee Hai: “mehmaan jo hamaaraa hotaa hai – woh jaan se pyaaraa hotaa hai”  

 

I enjoyed our visits to Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka. I had carried a small bag of rice flakes (pohaa) as our offering to Lord Krishna, remembering how Krishna’s friend Sudhama (Kuchela) carried one such parcel as offering to his friend! We left our offering at the Lord’s feet with fervent devotion! We also visited the temple of Rukmini just about when they were closing for the day! I entered the temple chanting the seven slokas from Srimad Bhagavatam that Rukmini is said to have sent as her message of love to Lord Krishna. To my surprise, a group of pundits was also chanting the same slokas as their evening concluding prayers to Rukmini! We stayed till they completed their chant and closed the curtains for the day! I must also mention here the delectable lunch we were given by the friend of our host family in a small town close to Dwaraka, a town that reminded me of the abandoned towns of the old west in the USA. 

 

We also visited Somnath via Porbandar. We had to stay one night at the town of Veravel, a fishing and boat making town. That was quite some experience! I made my pilgrimage and homage to the Mahatma, visiting his abode in Porbandar. I climbed up and down, entering every little room in that big house that Gandhiji was born in. They have kept it nice and simple much like the man who was born there! Somnath temple is a truly great temple of exquisite architecture. I visited the temple twice, once at night and once in the morning. When I was there the second day, a group of brahmins was chanting all the verses from Siva Mahimna Stotram, the work by one Pushpadanta. I remembered His Holiness Kanchi Pramacharyal Sri Chandrasekhara Saraswati swamigal’s lecture circa 1950 in Chennai. He recites a verse from the Siva Mahimna Stotram and asks the audience if anyone could recognize the origin of that slokam. He says that some fifty years earlier, several would have recognized that the verse was from Siva Mahimna Stotram and some seventy years earlier folks would even have remembered its author Pushpadanta! He recites the seventh verse (thrayee saankhyam yoga:….”) and explains its meaning!

I sat down and listened with rapturous attention the entire recitation. They sang in a musical tone, everyone in unison! I later did some special bilva archanai and ganga abhishekam for the Lord! The experience was worth all the trouble I had gone through in traveling through those tough roads in Gujarat!

We left Jamnagar for Mumbai on December 27^th. We stayed at the residence of my wife’s sister’s family in Chembur. While in Mumbai, I visited several relatives and a few friends. I was happy to see Indhu, my former classmate during my engineering college days in Nagpur. Indhu (now Mrs Narasimhan) has always been an outstanding intellect. Her brothers who were a year senior to me in high school and also in college are outstanding folks, people with great values. It was my good fortune that I again ran into her elder brother when I joined the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. They continue to be our family friends. Indhu had also retired after an outstanding career with Tata Power. She and her husband (another outstanding engineer, I am told, who had also studied in the Hoosier state, at Purdue) now live a retired life in Wadala, Mumbai. I was happy to visit them. We reminisced our college days, remembered some old classmates and faculty. I also paid a visit to my old alma mater, the South Indian Education Society High School in Matunga. The school building has remained unchanged all these fifty years. I hurriedly climbed up to the third level to have a darsan of the room where we had our eleventh class F section. I had graduated from this school in 1958. Though I remember many of my classmates (boys and especially the girls!), I am in touch with just four of my former classmates. Thanks to the internet and my other schoolmates, I could manage to get the whereabouts of these four. I visited two of these old pals during my India stay this time. One of these classmates, Rajagopalan (now goes by the name of Thoopal) had worked for the Indian Railways for a long time and had retired a few years back as a member in the railway board. His wife, Geetha also retired as a railway employee a couple of years back, as general manager of Calcutta Metro Rail. They both now live in Hyderabad. We were so happy to spend a few days with them in Hyderabad, recalling all the pranks we did while in high school. My wife, Dhanam and his wife, Geetha became good buddies quickly and our stay in their home was very enjoyable. We have invited them both to visit us this summer. I also visited my other classmate, Chandru who now resides in Calcutta. We were with him and his wife, Indira for four days. They both had earlier visited me in Virginia. We had great time with them also. While in Calcutta, I stopped by the Bharati Tamil Sangam on Lansdown Road, the National High School (my alma mater) and a few other places that brought a surge of old memories. Our old residence at 264C Rash Behari Avenue remains untouched (literally). The building has not been remodeled in all these 54 years and remains the same as it was in 1954. Bharati Tamil Sangam also remains unchanged.

 

While in Calcutta, we did visit the Kalighat Kali mandir and Dakshineswar mandir.

 

While in Bhubaneshwar, I visited one of my former colleagues at Regional Engineering College, Raurkela back in 1964-69. Purna Chandra Sahu has since retired as the Chief General Manager of Maharashtra Telecom and now resides in Cuttack. We were so happy to see each other. I stayed in Bhubaneshwar from January 4^th to February 6^th. My sister and her husband took great care of us during this entire time. We simply enjoyed our stay in Bhubaneshwar! The folks that own the house they rent are great friends! My wife and the owner’s wife have common interests in flowers! We visited a flower show and had great time!

 

While in Bhubaneshwar, we visited the sun temple at Konark and Puri Jagannath temple a couple of times. I stood at the sanctum for a few minutes and recited Jagannaathaashtakam by Sankaracharya, each ending with “jagannaatha swamee nayana patha gaamee bhavatu mE”. We also visited Kindubilwam, a small, picturesque village near Cuttack where lived the great poet Jayadeva (circa 1200 AD) and his wife Padmavati. Verses from Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda Kaavyam are sung everyday in almost all temples in Kerala even to this day! These verses are sung even in a Durga temple such as Kodungallur Bhagavati temple!

 

India visit is not complete without a visit to my ancestral village of Odaiyalur in Thanjavur district. We visited temples near Kumbakonam, Trichy and Chidambaram. We also visited Guruvayur, Mannapra, Thrissur, Kalati, Ernakulam, Aluvaye and of course Punkunnam Sitharamaswamy temple. The hospitality we get at my late father-in-law’s brother’s home (Subbarama Iyer who is the Chairman of the Sitaram Group) is unmatched by any! He and his entire family in Poonkunnam shower affection on us, on every visit by us, however short the visit may be! We are so fortunate! We did stay one night at our friend and relative Dr. RG Krishnan’s home in Punkunnam.

 

We delayed our departure from Chennai by two days so we may attend a family wedding. My wife’s cousin’s son was getting married on March 5^th. We enjoyed this grand event! We could meet so many of our relatives at this wedding! We are so happy we did not miss this grand event!

 

While in Chennai, I had stayed with my brother for a few days and at my brother-in-law, Sujatha’s residence in Besant Nagar. Everywhere, great hospitality! In Kumbakonam, we stayed at my uncle’s home. Cannot forget the warmth and affection showered on us!

Same goes for our stay in Mumbai at my brother-in-law’s place and at Ernakulam at my in-law’s residence!

 

We left India on March 6^th and reached Richmond, VA on March 7^th late night. My 86 year young mother decided to pay us a visit here and she is with us now. This is her third visit to the US. She was here 20 years ago! We are so happy to be back at our home. My health is returning to normalcy.

 

Looking back and analyzing my visit to India, I see that I enjoyed certain things that India offered. There were many things that blunted my enthusiasm to visit places in India. Things like air and water pollution, somewhat challenging infrastructure, shortage of cleaner eating outlets and boarding facilities at medium sized towns, transportation issues all create a great challenge for an old fellow like me.

 

I have a great wander lust and unquenchable thirst for nostalgia. I would love to visit many more places strewn across India. But, I have to do all that in smaller dosage and in several trips of shorter duration. Keeping healthy while there is a major challenge at my age.

 

Let us see how we do this in 2008-2009.

 

Temples and Asramams we visited:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My travels were mostly by air; five trips in second AC 2 tier train; one trip in three tier AC and once in second class NON AC train. I never traveled by bus or minibus. I did use good automobiles with AC for most local travels.

 

What I could not bear were the following:

 

What I loved in India:

 

 

I did see India twinkling now and it might one day shine certainly. I am back here in the US now and US is certainly NOT shining economically now! It is now twinkling dimly! It too might shine one day soon!