The River Mother

Narmada Falls

Don't know why the Narmada river occupies such a fond place in my heart. Whenever I think of Her, I am off into some other world. Even the mighty Ganges leaves me cold. But mention the word Narmada and a frisson of joy courses through me, like that mighty river.

Should be something to do with the fact that:

• It flows west, the only major river in India to do so
  
• As a D8C8, I am totally ruled by Saturn, who looks west :-)
  

The Wikipedia entry for the River has many interesting parts:

It is said that the mere sight of the river will make a pilgrim pure because of its sanctity.
…
The Narmada is closely associated with Lord Shiva. Naturally formed smooth stones called banas, made of cryptocrystalline quartz, are found in Narmada which are known as Shivalingas; the rare and unique markings on them are regarded by shaivaites as very auspicious. The Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur has one of the biggest Bana Shivalingas.

You can see how big that bana is. Did you notice the priest at the bottom left?!

Bana Shivalinga in Brihadeeswara Temple, Thanjavur

MohanR, my good friend who's celebrating his b'day today, writes:

The river Narmada goes through Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. If you want to meet the river at Madhya Pradesh, please visit Omkareshwar temple on its shores near Indore. This is really a very powerful and picturesque spot. You will not find any problem in getting accommodation and food in this place. Actually the beauty of this great river is that it remains pristine pure even just before its sangam in the sea near Bharuch in Gujarat.

In case you want to meet this river at Gujarat, I suggest you to a place called Barkhal on its banks near Vadodara. From here Narmada takes only another 40-odd km towards Bharuch to meet the sea. Even here the water is pristine clean and nothing will happen if you happen to swallow this river water at this place.

What's the reason for this purity? The many crocodiles in the river ensure that all carrion is cleaned up, so much so that that the River Goddess is portrayed as riding a croc!

The Goddess Narmada

The river is so old that it even has a dinosaur, whose bones were found in the Narmada basin, named after it.

Rajasaurus Narmadensis

And, of course, there's the Parikrama. Hope to do it sometime in Life, the old River Mother willing.

Khan Bachchan Contest?

That's WiFi's take on KBC. And it's all over the place.

Liked what Derek O'Brien has to say about it:

"A quizmaster's job is to make it interesting. Since the format is an international, standardized one, the show here is about the host." He doesn’t consider Shah Rukh too familiar or gimmicky, as others might. "I love his style. It’s not about crossing the line, it’s about connecting. Both are great talents, but I know for a fact SRK appreciates quizzing more, though he’s no quiz-nerd. A quiz show must have humor, sadness, bonding, and he provides it all."

Between the Measured Commander of the Shahenshah and the Luxuriant Philosopher of the Badshah, I am inclined to go with my fellow Snake.

Btw, don't miss Stephen Colbert's version.

Con-science?

Enjoy the Voices section in NatGeoMag, which started ever since Chris Johns took over as the Editor. Particularly enjoyed:

• Alaa Al Aswany: Voice of Reason
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude Unwrapped.

Feb's voice is that of Francis Collins. I found this part surprising:

Horgan: Many people have a hard time believing in God because of the problem of evil. If God loves us, why is life filled with so much suffering?

Collins: That is the most fundamental question that all seekers have to wrestle with. First of all, if our ultimate goal is to grow, learn, and discover things about ourselves and things about God, then unfortunately a life of ease is probably not the way to get there. I know I have learned very little about myself or God when everything is going well. Also, a lot of the pain and suffering in the world we cannot lay at God's feet. God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.

Sri Ramakrishna (SRK) clarified the "problem of evil" for me a long time ago with his searing allusion to the nature of God:

There's poison in the snake, but the snake itself is unaffected.

Last evening, read something truly beautiful, a quote by Bucky Fuller:

God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.

This really exploded my mind and made another observation by SRK even more clear:

God is the container as well as the contained.

Like a cricket match that happens in the context of a stadium, all stuff in this Universe is happening in the context of God, the Formless and the substratum of the Universe. There's nothing else except God, it's just that the One has become the Many. As SRK clarifies to one of his 16 chosen disciples:

MASTER: "This world is the lila of God. It is like a game. In this game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. The game cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation.
...
HARI: "But this play of God is our death."

MASTER (smiling): "Please tell me who you are. God alone has become all this-maya, the universe, living beings, and the twenty-four cosmic principles. 'As the snake I bite, and as the charmer I cure.' It is God Himself who has become both vidya and avidya. He remains deluded by the maya of avidya, ignorance. Again, with the help of the guru, He is cured by the maya of vidya, Knowledge.

This understanding is amusingly brought out in this old RD joke:

While the War of the Worlds radio broadcast was being done, one MidWest farmer got very scared and ran to his neighbor shouting: "The Good Lord is destroying His world". The neighbor's response was laconic: "Well, it's His, ain't it?"

And today, I run into Mikel, a Leo Dog, whose profile goes:

At 21 I had my first conscious experience with what many call God. In a moment so brief, that stretched forever, I tasted the Infinite and awakened to the Universes within me, witnessing our Oneness with the All.

Feel a bit like Swami Vivekananda when he asked SRK whether God could be seen and was responded to in the affirmative.

Compound 8 Strikes Again

The guy who taught me numerology used to say that Compound 8s (C8s) were more dangerous than Day 8s (D8s—8, 17, and 26). Since today (2+5 + 0+1 + 2+0+0+7 = 17) is a C8, I was a bit apprehensive as I drove towards Jayanagar for some business engagement.

On the Outer Ring Road, my Santro started making some serious noise in the overdrive gears and I was wondering why the heck I got it serviced a couple of days back. Why fix it if it ain't broke?

I felt sad that I had no shoes till I met a man who had no feet. Near Accenture, ran into a major commotion on the service road. I investigated to find this.

IndiCab IndiGutter

HPR used to say that autorickshaws were the cockroaches of the Bangalore roads. That epithet has been usurped by IndiCabs of late, as their scurrilous drivers scoot, scuttle, and scurry their way past us. And one of them had its comeuppance (pun intended) today.

There's a surreal quality to accidents; how the heck did that happen?! I squeezed off a couple of quick shots before I attracted too much attention. Didn't want any driver (and there were quite a few of those white-uniformed ones hanging around) to take panga and bust my DigiCam.

Later on, when I checked the shot asynchronously, I was not surprised to find that the RegNum of the IndiCab added up to an 8. Like so: (with the numerical values of the letters of the alphabet below)

KA.02.D.1340
21.02.4.1340 = 17

Saturn rules and there's nothing anyone can do about it, except fall in line.

The Universal Religion

Felt very nice to read this piece of news:

An Elizabethtown College religion professor has written a book that presents Hinduism as the "universal" religion, capable of providing a model for global inter-religious cooperation and world peace.

A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism builds upon Jeffery Long's arguments for religious pluralism developed in his doctoral dissertation for the University of Chicago. In his book, he argues for a traditional pluralistic understanding of Hinduism—as articulated by such figures as Sri Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi—in opposition to the narrow identification of Hinduism with Indian nationality and ethnicity that characterizes contemporary Hindu nationalist movements.

Long asserts that Hindu nationalism is not only destructive of communal relations, but that it also prevents Hinduism from emerging as a world religion in the true sense of the term. He presents a vision of Hinduism as a tradition capable of pointing the way toward a future in which all the world's religions manifest complementary visions of a larger reality - and in which they all, in various ways, participate.

Sri Ramakrishna explains it in his usual pithy way:

Different people call on [God] by different names: some as Allah, some as God, and others as Krishna, Siva, and Brahman. It is like the water in a lake. Some drink it at one place and call it jal, others at another place and call it paani, and still others at a third place and call it water. The Hindus call it jal, the Christians water, and the Moslems pani. But it is one and the same thing.

All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole.

The choice of water is significant in the light of one of his stunning XPs: (pp. 830—831 of The Gospel)

God talked to me. It was not merely His vision. Yes, He talked to me. Under the banyan-tree I saw Him coming from the Ganges. Then we laughed so much! By way of playing with me He cracked my fingers. Then He talked. Yes, He talked to me.
…
Further, He revealed to me a huge reservoir of water covered with green scum. The wind moved a little of the scum and immediately the water became visible; but in the twinkling of an eye, scum from all sides came dancing in and again covered the water. He revealed to me that the water was like Satchidananda, and the scum like maya. On account of maya, Satchidananda is not seen. Though now and then one may get a glimpse of It, again maya covers It.

Bikathon 2007

It was a gorgeous Sunday morning at Palm Meadows and a perfect setting for the Bikathon 2007.

To be updated…

Please see the page on Flickr for the time being.

Believe in Allah, but tie your camel

Was reminded of this funny one from the Bedouins when I saw the camel in today's Times Trends.

Q: What's the reason for the imperious look of the camel?

A: While Man knows only 99 Names of Allah, the camel knows the 100th one as well.

Crouching Tiger, Chidden Monkey

There was an intriguing reference to an observation by Dennis Overbye in a MoDo article in the NYT earlier this month:

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggests that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

Steinbeck illustrates the perils of the subconscious mind in his usual inimitable manner in East of Eden: (page 148, top)

It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

The old saw about there being two reasons for anything: a good reason and the real reason, now makes eminent sense.

How does all this reflect on that quintessential human activity: giving free advice?

One always assumed that advice given, even when unasked for ;-), was at a rational mind-to-mind level. But if the same has to percolate through the morass of the subconscious mind, better to refrain from such silliness.

Guess this is the reason why even a person with the stature of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says that he doesn't give advice unless asked for! And even then, I feel he's treading on quicksand.

This was the last nail in the coffin of my recent "mule"ings over giving advice to people. Just shut the phuck up and get on with Life.

Who knows what will happen if one practices this funda long enough? One can start becoming like the Father instead of the son as stated in John 5:22:

The Father makes no judgment, but hath committed all judgment unto the son.

Something fishy about the iPhone

Apart from the ruckus that is being created between over the iPhone* name, noticed something unusual when I signed up for more info on the iPhone.

It looks gorgeous, but where had I seen it before? It's a photo by David Doubilet, of course.

* Amusingly, Feeling Lucky on Google for "iPhone" takes you to the page on the Apple site :-) Would the judge decide based on that?!

Shiva's Regal

It was impossible to imagine him in the second place. Wherever he went he was the first…. Everybody recognized in him at sight the leader, the anointed of God, the man marked with the stamp of the power to command. A traveler who crossed his path in the Himalayas without knowing who he was, stopped in amazement, and cried, "Shiva! …" It was as if his chosen God had imprinted His name upon his forehead….

—Romain Rolland on Swami Vivekananda, seen on the back cover of the biography of Vivekananda by Swami Nikhilananda

Swami Vivekananda was born 144 years ago on a Monday, supposed to be the day of Shiva. In the Early Years of the biography, one finds:

Before Vivekananda was born, his mother, like many other pious Hindu mothers, had observed religious vows, fasted, and prayed so that she might be blessed with a son who would do honour to the family. She requested a relative who was living in Varanasi to offer special worship to the Vireswara Siva of that holy place and seek His blessings; for Siva, the great god of renunciation, dominated her thought. One night she dreamt that this supreme Deity aroused Himself from His meditation and agreed to be born as her son. When she woke she was filled with joy.

No wonder he followed the path of knowledge. But Swami Purushottamananda raised this interesting observation about him and the Master:

Ramakrishna was a man of devotion on the outside and one of knowledge within while Vivekananda was a man of knowledge on the outside and devotion within.

Day out in Chennai

Was in Chennai for the day and, as Wednesdays generally turn out for me, it was a most interesting one. As they say in Tamil:

You might get gold, but you can't get a Wednesday that easily.

Visited Uncle & Auntie at "Karaayi" in Besant Nagar. It was a bit sad to see their lovely independent house converted to an apartment block, but, as soon as I entered, saw the Guruvayoorappan that gave me the nice XP in 1991-1992, so it was OK. Uncle was still sprightly and sharp and his salt-and-pepper bushy eyebrows looked even more interesting. They are still having Paying Guests: one of them is a Japanese lady who's learning dancing and worships Ganesha & Shiva. Heard that she takes the dust off the feet of Uncle and Auntie before she leaves the house. The other is the Director of the Alliance Française, Chennai. Auntie was kidding that that's the way Uncle keeps young: surrounding himself with ladies!

Was early for the 3:30 PM Lalbagh Express and, in my walkabout around Chennai Central, stumbled on the Ramakrishna Math stall out there, where I bought the following:

Wasn't too sure about the Maha Shivarathri Puja, but it turned out to be a solid CD, the singer's nasal voice creating an effect of Homagery.

When I finished my purchase, ran into a most unusual guy called Krishnama Raju, an ex-professor, who narrated a long Sanskrit song without as much as a blink.

His face reminded me quite a bit of my good friend, Dinesh Gopalan, from IIM-A and now at Palm Meadows as well. Mr. Raju was equally garrulous and, like Dinesh, knew a million languages. He told me how he argued a case (his salary was wrongly stopped) all by himself in the Supreme Court. In his own words:

I was in Delhi but didn't know the route to the Supreme Court. Went into a Krishna temple and, when I came out, there was an auto with some people, who took me straight to the Supreme Court. The judges were interested in adjourning the case, but I started arguing strongly and, by the end, the judges had no hesitation that my salary should be reinstated. They passed the judgment in half an hour as I didn't any money to stay in Delhi and had to catch the train back.

His philosophy was: Satyameva jayate. With this philosophy, he said that he was afraid of nothing and, even if someone wanted to beat him during the case, the Paramatma, which was in the rowdy's heart as well, would convert the raised hand into a salute!

He was a most interesting guy and treated me to some nice tea. He said that he keeps chanting the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam internally whatever he's doing and, for that reason, never loses his temper.

He kept killing me by saying that he would win the Nobel Prize very soon.

The best thing was when I said that I got to leave, he said bye and faded off, which reminded me of Swami Vivekananda saying:

One should be able to attach and detach at a moment's notice.

On the train, I had a pleasing person for company, Mr. Bhugra from Satna. He was a farmer speaking good English. The mystery was resolved when he revealed that he was in the UK for several years, before he came back to look after his father's lands.

Heck, one runs into the most interesting folks in India.

Truth and the economist

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxRR

Got this in a Google Alert:

The senior faculty would kind of line up to talk to him. He seemed never to be interested in promoting himself. You always had the impression that he was after—it sounds corny—the truth.
—John Huizinga, Chicago Univ. on Raghuram Rajan

Totally agree; i was his batchmate at IIM, Ahmedabad (1985-1987) and he was a real gem of a guy.

Excellent in both studies (he finished No. 2 on the ISchol list at the end of the first year, a trial by fire for most folks) and sports (was superb in cricket, shuttle badminton, and tennis) and the best part: had a heart of gold.

Still remember how he dismissed me with the slower ball in a cricket match, and later apologized!

A "Feel" That Never Ends

Saw this on the Outer Ring Road and somehow maneuvered* to take this shot.

Groucho Marx, who said:

A man's only as old as the woman he feels

would have loved it.

* Tata Sumos and Toyota Qualises are road hogs in Bangalore, in case you are not aware.

Why Maneaters remain so

I feel it's prudent to warn readers of the grisly nature of this post. I am a vegetarian by choice, but my mind is omnivorous ;-)

The New Year had a weird start with the "Panther" of Noida. CP Surendran writes in today's Sunday ToI:

A few years ago, a New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, for purely research reasons, procured from a hospital hand in Sorbonne human meat from an accident victim. What did the dish taste like? "It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was not like any other meat I had ever tasted….It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeable edible.”

He's putting it mildly. In his immensely delicious Maneaters, Peter Hathaway Capstick points to two cases that seem to indicate that humans finish at the top of the pecking order. In the chapter on Lions, one reads: (page 58, middle)

A trademark of these particular man-eaters was their love of human brains, every victim's skull carefully bitten open and licked clean of its contents. As is also very often classic with confirmed man-eaters, they would eat nothing but humans, disdaining cattle, goats, even chickens in their fondness for dark meat. Even the village herds of cattle seemed to lose their fear of lion scent as if knowing that it would be the herd boys who would be killed and eaten.

In the last chapter, on Cannibals, one reads: (pp. 238—239)

(George) Rushby asked the man (a cannibal) out of curiosity whether he preferred game or people as a staple diet. Describing the fact that human flesh is nicely marbled, rather the same property found in prime beef, variegated with streaks of fat through the lean, the cannibal advised George that human flesh behaves much more actively in the stew pot than does game flesh. Being much "lighter" than animal meat, it bounces and bumps around as if it were alive. Charming! Oh, yes, decided the cannibal sagely, human flesh was by far the best.

It's All Connected

Today's the 114th birth anniversary of PY, who wrote that wonderful AoaY. Within a week, we have the birth anniversary of another lion among men—Swami Vivekananda—coming up. The two of them are connected, for me, in a very intriguing way, which is the highlight of the 47th chapter of AoaY, which goes as follows towards the end:

"Mr. Dickinson!" The next parcel contained a gift which I had bought in a Calcutta bazaar. "Mr. Dickinson will like this," I had thought at the time. A dearly beloved disciple, Mr. Dickinson had been present at every Christmas festivity since the 1925 founding of Mt. Washington. At this eleventh annual celebration, he was standing before me, untying the ribbons of his square little package.

"The silver cup!" Struggling with emotion, he stared at the present, a tall drinking cup. He seated himself some distance away, apparently in a daze. I smiled at him affectionately before resuming my role as Santa Claus.

The ejaculatory evening closed with a prayer to the Giver of all gifts; then a group singing of Christmas carols.

Mr. Dickinson and I were chatting together sometime later.

"Sir," he said, "please let me thank you now for the silver cup. I could not find any words on Christmas night."

"I brought the gift especially for you."

"For forty-three years I have been waiting for that silver cup! It is a long story, one I have kept hidden within me." Mr. Dickinson looked at me shyly. "The beginning was dramatic: I was drowning. My older brother had playfully pushed me into a fifteen-foot pool in a small town in Nebraska. I was only five years old then. As I was about to sink for the second time under the water, a dazzling multicolored light appeared, filling all space. In the midst was the figure of a man with tranquil eyes and a reassuring smile. My body was sinking for the third time when one of my brother's companions bent a tall slender willow tree in such a low dip that I could grasp it with my desperate fingers. The boys lifted me to the bank and successfully gave me first-aid treatment.

"Twelve years later, a youth of seventeen, I visited Chicago with my mother. It was 1893; the great World Parliament of Religions was in session. Mother and I were walking down a main street, when again I saw the mighty flash of light. A few paces away, strolling leisurely along, was the same man I had seen years before in vision. He approached a large auditorium and vanished within the door.

"'Mother,' I cried, 'that was the man who appeared at the time I was drowning!'

"She and I hastened into the building; the man was seated on a lecture platform. We soon learned that he was Swami Vivekananda of India.1 After he had given a soul-stirring talk, I went forward to meet him. He smiled on me graciously, as though we were old friends. I was so young that I did not know how to give expression to my feelings, but in my heart I was hoping that he would offer to be my teacher. He read my thought.

"'No, my son, I am not your guru.' Vivekananda gazed with his beautiful, piercing eyes deep into my own. 'Your teacher will come later. He will give you a silver cup.' After a little pause, he added, smiling, 'He will pour out to you more blessings than you are now able to hold.'

"I left Chicago in a few days," Mr. Dickinson went on, "and never saw the great Vivekananda again. But every word he had uttered was indelibly written on my inmost consciousness. Years passed; no teacher appeared. One night in 1925 I prayed deeply that the Lord would send me my guru. A few hours later, I was awakened from sleep by soft strains of melody. A band of celestial beings, carrying flutes and other instruments, came before my view. After filling the air with glorious music, the angels slowly vanished.

"The next evening I attended, for the first time, one of your lectures here in Los Angeles, and knew then that my prayer had been granted."

We smiled at each other in silence.

"For eleven years now I have been your Kriya Yoga disciple," Mr. Dickinson continued. "Sometimes I wondered about the silver cup; I had almost persuaded myself that Vivekananda's words were only metaphorical. But on Christmas night, as you handed me the square box by the tree, I saw, for the third time in my life, the same dazzling flash of light. In another minute I was gazing on my guru's gift which Vivekananda had foreseen for me forty-three years earlier—a silver cup!"

"Kadupa? Cheruva!"

All the folks in the M (Marine, Mechanical, and Metallurgy) Engineering groups had gone on an Industrial Tour for the day sometime in 1982 and, by lunch-time, we were all pretty ravenous and that's what Ratan said when he saw me eating, loosely translating to:

Is that a stomach or a lake?!

I still recall how hilarious Ratan and Vissu were on the way back home, but unfortunately none of their jokes can be repeated here.

Anyway, today I read about my elder brother: (page 491, middle)

Trigunatita had a strange capacity for food. He could eat an enormous amount of food, and again, he could fast for days at a stretch. About his eating habits, Premananda said: "He had an occult power. Once I thickened seven and a half seers of milk [two gallons approximately] and served him the whole quantity. He ate it all without stopping. On another occasion, he stayed under the bel tree of Belur Math for several days, eating only one banana a day." Once Premananda's mother invited three of the Master's disciples to Balaram Bose's house. She cooked various dishes, but because of unavoidable circumstances only Trigunatita was able to go there. She was unhappy that much food would be wasted. However, Trigunatita began to eat and gradually finished the entire quantity. Premananda's mother was frightened, thinking that the swami would be sick. The next day, when she saw the swami well, she remarked: "It is amazing how Sarada (Trigunatita) eats! he has traveled over many mountains and learned many mantras so he can make any amount of food vanish. Otherwise it is not possible for a human being to eat so much."

Swami Vivekananda showed a similar ability, but only during his experience of Cosmic Consciousness.

Do you take a journey or vice versa?

At the start of every new year, I make a trip to Swananda. Since it's like some 36 km away, it's a major effort to get going. John Steinbeck explains it the best:

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.

Guess he's right. Once I start moving, the spirit of the journey just takes over. It might take some time, but it's just a matter of that.

When I stopped over at Adiga's, there was this street fight that just happened. I recorded it surreptitiously and stopped way before it ended—you never know when someone might notice it and vent their ire on me!



Just after turning off Kanakapura Road, saw this creepy mastodon.

The temple was closed, but since the lady-in-charge was around, I could ask her to open the door. The darshan was wonderful, as always.

There were some young turks around, who were amused by my speaking to the lady-in-charge in English, but when she asked me to join them for lunch, I overcame my hesitation, remembering Shirdi Sai Baba who said that one should never refuse food offered.

The young folks turned to be sculptors who were working on the MahaGanapati temple and I was soon in conversation with Sadanand, in my not-so-comfortable Hindi. But what the heck. They even gave me a tour of what they were doing on the MahaGanapati temple.



Later, I took a close-up of a relief to be used at the MahaGanapati temple.

On the way back, there was this truck spreadeagled on the Kanakapura highway, with folks recovering whatever cement bags they could.