What is wrong with me?

Netherlands work permit process is in progress. I was supposed upload scanned copy of all kinds of documents – 36 pages of passport, educational certificates, Cognizant offer letter, income tax receipts, etc… The list of required documents also had résumé which I’ve it in Cognizant format as a Word 2007 document. I promptly gave a printout of it and took it along for scanning. Suman who was helping me out in scanning documents tried to ask me “why do you have to scan your résumé?” Out of my mind, I replied him, “these immigration guys require it like that only…” :( When we scanned the first page and checked the checking the quality of scan, I had the “light bulb” moment… :)

What Will You Do?

I was talking about Mayan Calendar sometime in January this year to Thamba and Poppy. I came across this while reading History of Astronomy – Astroarcheology (That is my lazy 100 hours of Astronomy to commemorate International Year of Astronomy). Poppy tried to listen initially but lost me in 10 minutes. Thamba tried at least to put up a show of listening and had read a first paragraph on the Astroarcheology to later confess that it went over his head.

We watched the movie 2012 last Saturday. I’m not going to write a review of the movie here. It had everything winter solstice, Mayan calendar, geomagnetic reversal, crust displacement theory, Yellowstone National Park, blah, blah, blah… No… no spoilers as well… Thamba did not like the movie. Poppy, Amma, and I was okay with it.

Predicting doomsday is one of favorite pastimes of mankind. Why is it? Do man wants to meet his Master? Do always man needs to plan for “saving for rainy days”? Who will man meet on judgment day – Kalki, Jesus, Allah? What will happen if by some lucky chance that we know that end of days is approaching? Will you turn a believer? Will you pray? Will you live for the moment? Will you repent? Will you share? Will you sleep? Will you try to savor some exotic recipes? Will you drink wine? Will you smoke? Will you pardon your enemies? Will you apologize? Will you say “I love you” to your dear ones? Will you kiss them? What will you do??

Microsoft Ignite

This is an invite-only training for the Microsoft certified professionals in partner organizations on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This event is happening only in Atlanta, Dallas, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Bangalore. Yes, I’m there in Le Meridian, Bangalore from December 14th to December 18th :)

Princess Kundavai

I wanted to take my appreciation of Tanjore Painting to the next level. I learnt the art by creating gods and have tried to improvise on the second and third one. Next step is I wanted to work on a unique project. Kundavai and Maniam’s illustrations in Kalki crossed my mind. I talked to my guru, Premalatha aunty in my own style for 20 minutes about Kundavai and she was hooked on to it.

For the benefit non-Ponniyin Selvan readers… Kundavai is the elder sister of the king Rajaraja Cholan I who has played various roles like a legal advisor, philanthropist, and a king maker. A legendary wise woman from 10th century to show it takes more brains than beauty to save a small imprint in the colossal books of history. The 5 volumes that I own have 10 illustrations out of which two were Kundavai. I resorted to surfing the net to get a sculpture of Kundavai by Ilayaraja.V and links to repositories of scanned pictures from Kalki by Shiva. These were helpful, but not enough.

Kundavai is a real persona. I wanted authentic fashions for her instead of conjured up ones. For example, saree the traditional wear of Indian women has come to today’s form only by 19th century. Most of the Hindu Goddesses are depicted in recent saree wrapping style after Raja Ravi Varma. Why Hindu Goddesses alone? I have seen even Mother Mary in a neatly tied up saree in Saint Mary’s Basilica, Bangalore.

Ancient fashions are tough to find out. Murals of Brihadeeswarar Kovil are dominated by gods and men except for like two or three pictures. Sculptures of goddesses until 12th century is consistently depicted with bare breasts and wearing a sacred thread. Saree is draped around the waist until 5 to 6 inches above the ankles. Bare breasts were considered as a mark of divinity in ancient India whereas clothes symbolized earthly attachments. Tamil literature talks about “kachai” (கச்சை) a cloth covers the breasts and tied at the back for modesty. Kundavai would be styled with a kachai and a saree drape of 10th century. I did not want her to be very sensual and glamorous and hence be covered partially in a transparent dupatta kind of cloth.

Now that basic styling was done, we thought about the posture and background. Making Kundavai in a sitting posture might turn out to look-alike of Hindu Goddesses. 10th century Chola sculptures in standing is made in a triple-bend (tribhanga) pose with a pronounced sway and holds one arm up and another down in a dramatic fashion. Her hair would be done in a raised chignon – conical bun/crown with karandamukuta (mountain like) tiers adorned with flowers and jewels. What could I possibly give her in the hand that is up? Not a sword. She did not participate in any wars – not a physical person. No flowers – too feminine. She’ll be holding a palm leaf (பனை ஓலை), the ancient form of paper. She could be devising strategies for Arulmozhivarman or it could be a special olai from Vanthiyadevan ;) That would be left to viewer’s interpretation.

All left is the background now. She would be standing in the backdrop of a palace – Palayarai?? Palayarai is all in ruins. There is not even a map of it. It will be pulled out from my figment of imagination of old Chola temple with Chola Architecture pillars. That’s it.

I’ve all these ideas but have no clue how it is going to turn out. Almost everyone in my painting class knows about Kundavai and Rajaraja Cholan now :) Very ambitious project for an amateur :( Special mention for the enthusiastic support to Thamba for printing sketches, Bala for calling before he got into the train to Tirupathi with his suggestions [I just talked about Maniam’s illustrations of Kundavai and before I could complete the sentence, he asked me, “you wanted to do it Tanjore style?” :) ], and PeeVee for his Cholargal book by K. A.Nilakanta Sastri. Watch out for more with Jaggu’s photo story on the making of Kundavai :)

Natarajar

I’ve named this painting “Kanaka Sabhapathy” based on “Ponnar Meniyane” song from Devaram. Poppy says she’ll be writing a poem on this. I’ll complete the gold work by this weekend. Two more weeks to complete painting and stones… Here is a sneak peak ;)

Photograph by Arul Jegadish

Lepakshi

Thamba and I went to Lepakshi today as Amma and Poppy stayed behind because of their trip to meet one of Kodai neighbors in Hosur. Lepakshi is small village close to Hindupur in Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh. It is lies 120 kilometers north of Bangalore and can be reached through Hyderabad national highway – NH7. Drive past Devenahalli airport literally straight in NH7, take the left after the toll and forest check post. Andhra Pradesh tourism and ASI has not done much for this elegant temple of 16th century. There are no sign boards anywhere as you drive through tropical deciduous forests.

Lepakshi hosts the Veerabhadra Swamy temple built by Virupanna and Veeranna, treasurers of Vijayanagar Empire. Seems they both used the money in the treasury without the King’s knowledge and was ordered to be blinded for this crime without a trial. Legend has that this temple was built by sage Agasthya and later it came to this sage by Virupanna.

The main deity of this temple is Veebhadra Swamy. It has two shrines - Siva on the right and Vishnu on the left. It also has a small place for Goddess Durga. The main attraction of this temple is a huge monolithic Nandi in granite stone. You have to enter through Natya Mandapam, which has life-size representations of musicians and dancers carved to exquisite details designed in Vijayanagar style. Ardha Mandapam or the praying hall comes after that has all the shrines. Kalyana Mandapam at back is a testament to the exuberance of Vijanagar architecture. Local legend has that Siva and Parvati got married on the same spot of this mandapam. This mandapam has most of the great Gods and Goddess of Hindu mythology, the witnesses of this holy union. At the end of the mandapam, there are like 40 pillars each depicting different designs on all the 4 sides. This apparently gave way to Lepakshi saree designs.

One of the main attractions (the least sought after one) of this temple is the mural paintings in the ceilings of Natya Mandapam. It has best repository of Vijayanagar art made from natural dyes. It depicts various scenes from mythology including local lifestyle. I could get some medieval saree wrapping style and designs from those murals.

Saree Designs




Hunter and the Hunted

Diamond Girl

Well… at least one person has to call me that way… ;) Time for birthday diamonds again… Poppy got my usual diamond ring on one condition “return home before 10th of October from NY”. I would have traversed half of the globe by balloon if necessary :) They are certified conflict-free Belgium diamonds – 18 diamonds of 38 cents to be more specific – 17 diamonds are of 2 cents and the center one is 4 cents set in a floral pattern… Couldn’t take my eyes off from it :)

Private team lunch with Suman, Suresh, Chetan, and Hanan… Sumptuous dinner with Amma, Thamba, Poppy, Jaggu, and Karthi followed by a plush chocolate cake made my day :)

Back Home

Good to be back :) It was usual work this trip but was more fun than the last one. Here are some memorable snapshots:

I could wriggle of a weekend to meet Suman for a tour that we both planned before I left to United States. The I-95 highway drive on the Friday evening was awesome spanning across 5 states – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. When the window was down for 2 minutes, I literally felt wind through my hair :) When I was in finally put up in the hotel at Washington D.C., I had to pinch myself hard to ensure that I was not in office. No laptops, no worries…

Suman met me on Saturday morning with big smiles. We left immediately with our bags and cameras. It was the regular tourist thing – Capitol, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, Botanical Gardens, Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and White House. It was just one museum – National Air and Space Museum due to lack of time. We were able to witness the huge campaign against Obama’s new public health insurance policy. We walked a lot…

There were no ends to laughter in DC. Suman was stopped by the security personnel at Jefferson’s library as he walked carelessly with like 50 of the free bookmarks and all possible to guides from the library. It started there and was hard to stop after that. Gatorade explosion (quarter bottle of Gatorade, which I held on dearly to quench my thirst from our walks, was spilt in my bag), pointing to “security is no joke in DC, even a playful utterance of the word ’bomb’ could end in trouble” from one of 40 page printouts about the places of interest in DC and wondering about the consequences (apparently Tamil is not one of official languages in US), fleeting remarks like “flowers are beautiful” followed by “haven’t you seen this Kodai / Ooty?”, shooting Suman with “United States Secret Service” car as a back drop just to end up in glaring eyes of the cops a minute later, posing gaily with a Limousine that stood outside the Veteran Affairs building… This continued until the night as our bus to New York City which made a man at the back seat asking us to keep it down :)

Suman treated me as a tourist guide in NY. He wanted to see everything - Liberty Island, Trinity Church, Wall Street, Empire State, Times Square, and Ground Zero of WTC before 5 p.m. – time for his bus back to Richmond. We were able make everything except WTC. He was amazed at my knowledge of the city towards the end of the trip :) Suman commented earnestly that my high heels were posh in DC. It was vanquished in NY as my legs were swollen for stressing it too much in DC. I walked with a wince in almost every step wishing for a miracle - slip-ons or sneakers. I tried to walk with just my socks in Liberty Island. Whoever invented high heels must be a person who abhors feet in particular. It sure makes your legs long and sexy, gives a you good posture, yati yati yata… but the truth is after a long day is your feet is in danger of facing slow death :(

The walk along on the banks of Hudson at midnight with my teammates Ram and Ranjit came as an extra bonus on the strenuous last week. The view was breathtaking that would mesmerize you to believe that Heaven has descended down. The scene was perfect with the moon smugly displaying one of her rings warning a shower. The photos below do no justice to the iridescent beauty though…

Lost In New York

HAL Airport

One more week in the United States… I packed one of my bags today… I couldn’t wait to be back :) I was reminiscing about my previous travels. My first flight was to Delhi (American Embassy for visa stamping). I was shocked to find the HAL airport. It was crammy – smaller than Chennai Central railway station. The (old) airport road used to be heavily congested. It takes not less than 40 minutes to reach airport from Indiranagar which is like 6 kilometers. You might have to wait around 2 hours to get your luggage. Now, we have the international standard Bengaluru International Airport. It is quite far from the city. I don’t have any complaints.

I tend to like HAL Airport better than the new one for a simple reason that it is closer to home. This means, I would be escorted to and from the airport. Usually a big gang - Amma, Poppy, Thamba, Jaggu, and Karthi - accompanies me for the dropping ritual. It’ll be either comical or sentimental - I bumped into the security police man once as I was waving away gloriously to the gang or like the Bangkok one ended in tears being washed away in rains :) Thamba was always prompt for the pickup. The moment I switch my mobile on, I’ll get a call from him. My eyes will be searching incessantly for an eager face. He finds me out and I reach out for a hug. After that I need not worry about anything else. Thamba will take care :)

It would be nice if there is someone to drop or pickup. I’ll be happy at least to find “Mercy Ponnupandy, Cognizant” cards in official travel. BIAL sucks there. People say a “bye” at the door step and never ending nervous travel alone to the airport. It is much worse in return - I’ll have to drag the trolley, find a taxi, and call people to inform about my arrival. It is like I was left to fend for myself. I feel neither “special’ nor “taken care” here :( I really miss HAL Airport…