Children's Books

Reproduced below is a compendium of children's books that appeared in Young World of The Hindu today. A good list, I thought, when you are in the market next time to buy a book for your child. The first ten in this list were called out as 'Must Read.'

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass: Lewis Carroll
• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
• Charlie And The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Heidi by Johenn Spyri
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The Mahabharatha by Vyasa
• The Narnia Chronicles by C.S.Lewis
• The Ramayana by Valmiki
• What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
• Hardy Boys by Enid Blyton
• Swami and Friends by R.K.Narayan
• Feluda series by Satyajit Ray
• Stories from Ruskin Bond
• Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson
• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
• The Boggart by Susan Cooper
• Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Chikka Tirupati

Another day, another trip. This time to a nearby place, Chikka Tirupati which means 'Little Tirupati'. Twenty-seven kilometers from Bangalore city limits and a nice short drive away is this cute little temple. There are signboards on the way (my advice: when in doubt, just take the left!). Areas in and around Sarjapur are quite green and that makes this short drive, a scenic one.

There are many farms en route and we stopped in one of the Chrysanthamum farms on the way back. In addition to being great spas for the mind, these stops also offer good photo opportunities. While clicking our way to glory in the field, there was this one small boy who came running and was curiosly watching what we city aliens were up to. He figured out none of us had seen so many flowers in one single place together before and he let us have fun. I offered to take his snaps and in his true village innocence said, Yes and readied himself for the click. And when we walked back to our car 10 minutes later, there was placed on the windshield of our car a nice big chrysanthamum flower. Oh boy, you really warmed our hearts by this nice gesture.

Every short trip through a village always gives back nice memories. Village is where life is playing out. Producing real products from the earth. Where men and women are naturally in harmony with the environment. Where there is still place for little pleasures. Villages are real, authentic. For all the material comforts a city offers you, sad that it still lacks genuineness. Never warms one's heart and mind.

So here I am, blogging from a big city about a nice little village on the outskirts.

Happy Onam!

The Drive of Life

Have been making more long-distance road trips these days and made another enjoyable visit to Trivandrum couple of weeks back. Unlike the earlier trips which were all marked by a sense of urgency to get to the destination, this time it was a pretty relaxed drive.

From Bangalore started pretty late, around 7:00 or so in the morning, had a 1-hour long breakfast buffet near Hosur and still managed to be in Palakkad for lunch by late-noon. Taking the Mettur dam route and thus bypassing Salem helped (while taking this route, look out for a diversion on the left couple of kilometers before the Mettur dam and thus avoid getting into the dam to save some time unless of course you necessarily want to drive through the dam, which by the way is a beautiful drive). We stopped over in Palakkad for the day with a visit to Malampuzha dam in the evening (relived the memories of a trip there with my parents and sister 25 years ago!).

Next day was another one of lazy driving with generous stops for breakfast and lunch (a sumptuous one at a new-found place called ‘The Travancore Palace’ in Cherthala; would highly recommend that if you are in the area). Stopped at Kollam, Jyothi’s ancestral home for a break and reached Trivandrum by around 7:00 in the evening! Contrast this with my earlier trips to Trivandrum; when we start from Bangalore at 4:00 A.M and reach Trivandrum by 6:30 P.M the same day and you realize how relaxed the trip this time around was.

The next five days were spent savoring ShashiTharoorville!!! (borrowing the term from one of my colleagues in Bangalore)

The return journey was also made a two-day affair with the change being that the stop-over was in Guruvayoor instead of Palakkad. And was in Bangalore by lunch time the second day.

Done with the mundane details of the trip, was musing how a drive is more than a drive really. Isn’t it a metaphor of one’s life itself. A microcosm of the macrocosm of life.

Planning a trip, the build-up of expectations as we approach the day, kicking off the trip, the journey itself with it’s share of experiences and then touching down to the destination; don’t all these resemble one’s journey of life, in a way. You (and your family) is out there on the road trying to get to some place, so is the case with everybody else out there. You are on your own and but also not completely on your own. Potholes on the way that you have to avoid smartly. There are guys ahead of you and behind you any time and all the time. Some close, some not so close. Some in more hurry than others. All forms, shapes and sizes. In your direction and opposite. Some racing, some slowing. Some overtaking, some falling behind. What is beyond the next curve is unknown. But you have to face it and then look out for the one after. And at the end of it all, if you manage to reach your destination safe and in good spirits, you arrive.

But by that time the journey is over!

All For This One Moment

Flying back to India after a two-week looooonnnnnnnng trip to the US. Unlike my previous trips , this time around in one single place all along, Burbank off LA.

The business trips are fun and not-fun. Fun for the work that gets done in the face-to-face meetings, thrill of going to new places and meeting new faces. And not-fun for the trouble of being away from the family. But then the not-fun part morphs into the greatest joy of a travel when you are packing your bags for the return trip. I have my bags packed, hotel bills settled and will be shortly on way to LAX to catch the return flight.

The feeling of anticipation of getting back to one's family is something special. As a leading airlines puts it, 'All for this one moment'.

Daughter

On a hot day, sitting alone in a hotel room in LA had few options but to surf channels. And doing so chanced upon a movie, 'Knocked Up'. Enjoyed it. For good reasons, was moved by a song in the movie. Takes only a little over 3 minutes. Highly recommended for fathers with daughters.



Credits

By: Loudon Wainwright III
Lyrics: Peter Blegvad

"Everything she sees
she says she wants.
Everything she wants
I see she gets.

That's my daughter in the water
everything she owns I bought her
Everything she owns.
That's my daughter in the water,
everything she knows I taught her.
Everything she knows.

Everything I say
she takes to heart.
Everything she takes
she takes apart.

That's my daughter in the water
every time she fell I caught her.
Every time she fell.
That's my daughter in the water,
I lost every time I fought her.
I lost every time.

Every time she blinks
she strikes somebody blind.
Everything she thinks
blows her tiny mind.
That's my daughter in the water,
who'd have ever thought her?
Who'd have ever thought?
That's my daughter in the water,
I lost everytime I fought her
Yea, I lost every time."

Kerala and Back!

After a long time, made a quick trip to Kerala covering Guruvayur, Chottanikara and Ambalamugal over the weekend. In all, 1200+ kilometers in a span of 60 hours. Not bad I think, looking back.

I am not a big fan of pilgrimage trips that too covering a series of ones in one stretch but a trip to Guruvayoor was something I had promised my better half a long time ago. And since any way we were going up to Guruvayoor, it made sense to cover the other two places as well. We had been postponing our long distance trips for a while now because of the pending car upgrade. Now that the car upgrade is itself being deferred, wanted to cover whatever we can in the smaller car. And the fact that we have at home a new I10 of my SIL is helping matters, of course. For me, any trip (any day for that matter) is incomplete without something to say about food, so this trip also had some fond food memories. Especially the meal near Alwaye with steaming brown rice and beef!

First leg of the drive from Bangalore to Thrissur was a breeze with nice roads all the way up to Palakkad. Though the stretch from Palakkad to Thrissur which had a lot of potholes scattered all around the place considerably slowed down my averages, we were well in time in Thrissur for a relaxed lunch at the Spoon restaurant. The last 28 kilometers or so from Thrissur to Guruvayoor had it's scare though with the multi-coloured private buses zooming past through the comparatively narrow roads. They come at you at 80KM or plus from behind and honk like hell till you give way. I soon realized it is a battle I should not get into and religiously gave way every time I sensed a rainbow (in the form of a bus) behind me. I sorely missed our dear vehicle inspector Srinivasan ...



We were off to Chottanikara and Ambalamugal the next day morning and the drive was a pleasure. Driving through some plantation areas in Ernakulam were really energizing. The drizzle lashing against the rubber trees were an awesome and priceless sight. The only disappointment was that in the hurry to cover all places in our agenda we could not stop to savour the environment. No photos either! Back in Guruvayoor in the evening and after a darshan and a Thulabharam with Nidhi on my lap, we called the day off.

Sunday morning gave opportunity for another round of darshans at Guruvayur and we were off to Bangalore by around 7:30 in the morning. The drive back was uneventful and by evening we were back in Bangalore, with a heavy heart.

Missing Kerala. There is nothing like one's own home land, I guess.