Everyone and their aunt want to wish you

I have often heard from my colleagues that the "politics" in Tamilnadu is far "advanced" compared to other states. They say the kind of things being seen in Karnataka political circles now-a-days were tried and perfected in Tamilnadu decades ago. I don't know whether that is true, but they sure seem to be ahead in erecting gigantic flex banners. In the above banner, more than 130 people seem to be wishing rest of the village (if anyone is left out) whatever they want to wish. "Happy Pongal", I suppose... sorry, I cannot read the language.

Pondicherry

Recently I did a trip to Pondicherry that I had been thinking for quite some time. As a typical techie, I did a lot of research on the internet before heading there to make my trip smoother. However, I found many new things that I think might be useful to people planning a trip. This is not a travelogue, just things I did not find by googling, but learnt first hand. I was planning to have a leisurely vacation, so I did not make an attempt to maximize my sight seeing there.

While there are good bus services from Bangalore to Pondicherry, I chose to drive my Santro because of a few reasons. Having a car makes it easy to get around Pondicherry. I didn't want to mess with the autorickshaws there. You can rent 2-wheelers in Pondicherry, but that is not suitable for families. Lastly, the distance to Pondicherry is around 310Kms, which is well within what I can drive in a day.

I took this route, which is by far the shortest at just 310 Kms. The alternative is this, but it takes the distance up by another 110 Kms. The road was smooth till Krishnagiri as expected, because it is the Chennai highway. However, from Krishnagiri to Tiruvannamalai I hit one of the worst National Highways I have ever driven on. It was 110 Kms of pure misery, with not even a single Km of stretch in a decent shape. I took more than 3 hours to cover this distance. I had high hopes on the roads of Tamilnadu, which this road totally destroyed. The road from Tiruvannamalai to Tindivanam (67 Km) was in a decent, though not great shape. From Tindivanam to Pondicherry (40Km) it is the Chennai-Pondicherry road, which is an excellent 4 lane road. Total drive time: 7 hours. While returning, I wanted to avoid the Tiruvannamalai-Krishnagiri stretch like I would avoid Plague. I took the advice of taxi drivers: I knew these guys would know best. They advised me to take the state highways from Tiruvannamalai-Dharmapuri through Tanipadi, Naripalli, Harur, Morappur and then drive on the NH from Dharmapuri towards Krishnagiri. Google maps doesn't know about this road! This added 50-60 Kms to my journey, but the roads are very very nice. Just 2 lanes, but very little traffic and a scenic road. Recommended.


I stayed at Kailash Beach Hotel. There are many "beach resorts" in Pondicherry and some of them are just lodges, calling themselves resorts. Kailash turned out to be a good place. You get whatever they claim on their website. Their swimming pool is pretty good. Rooms don't face the beach, but it is just a 2 min walk away. This place is 10 Kms south of Pondicherry.

Pondicherry beaches have apparently become very hostile since the Tsunami. The slope of beach is very drastic, so you can hardly go 10-20 feet into the water. The water brings tonnes of sand with it. Hence it is not a great place to play in the beach. I listed 3 famous public beaches in Pondicherry, but it was possible to play in the water in only 1 of them: Auroville beach.

Do not under-estimate the traffic of Pondicherry. The traffic generally remains low throughout the day, but during morning and evening busy hours it can get very crowded. Traffic moves at snail's pace along the main arteries of the city (Cuddalore road, roads leading to ECR in the north, etc). it took me 30+ minutes to drive 10Kms at 6:30PM. Drivers are better behaved than in Bangalore (probably any other big city). Most signals have free left turn and the drivers are decent enough to leave the left turning lane clear. Bicycle riders seemed to be on a suicide mission though. The roads in the core of the city (shopping areas and french quarters) become very busy during evening shopping hours. The police cut off 4-wheeler entry on many of the roads to avoid traffic jams. Parking can still be found in the smaller lanes. Watch out for 1-way roads.

The people were very helpful. Whenever I asked for directions, the people were willing to stop what they were doing, walk up to me, give clear directions and make sure I understood the directions. They would realize that I do not speak Tamil and try to explain in English. I had seen such people in Paris long back... may be it is the French culture thing!

Language wasn't a big hurdle because I realized that I could understand more Tamil than I thought I did. However, I realized that I could barely talk even a couple of words in Tamil. I started asking them to talk in Tamil, but I would reply in English. At least one road-side seller in Promenade beach, (who was probably a Muslim), was more comfortable with Hindi than with English.

Promenade beach is the show piece of the city. However, there is no sandy beach here... the water directly hits the embankment rocks. It is a beautiful place to sit in a roof-top restaurant on a full-moon night (which was the case when I went) and enjoy the beauty of the ocean while having your food. There are many hotels and 'guest houses' on this piece of road.


I visited the Chunnambar water resort. This is a highly advertised and recommended place. However, there are some drawbacks. The main (only?) attraction of the place is boat ride in the backwaters, leading up to Paradise Beach. This was one of the most beautiful and clean beaches I had seen. However, they were not even letting us touch the waters in Paradise beach. This killed most of the fun for us. We took a speed boat ride in the river, which was worthwhile.


Everyone talks about Auroville, which is 15Kms from the city. The place is peaceful and nice and is filled with westerners. You will see pictures of a spherical building in golden color in many websites: It took a 1.5 Km hike to reach that place from Auroville parking lot. They were not allowing us into that structure, so we only got to see it from quite a distance. I put the zoom on my new Canon to full use to take some pics. I couldn't associate myself much with Auroville or even Aurobindo Ashram, which is in the heart of the city.


Visited the Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar temple. Air conditioned, which I guess will be very useful in summers. Tamil was essential to understand anything the guy at the counter says.

Sacred Heart Church is a good place to visit. 110 year old. Right in the city next to Railway Station. Good architecture. Belgian glass that looks so good. Also visited the church at Villianur, which is 10Kms from Pondicherry. Though older, the building was not all that great.


I ate at Hotel Surguru, Adyar Ananda Bhavan, Hotel Ajantha Sea View (nice terrace restaurant facing sea), Sri Krishna Sweets (restaurant attached), Auroville cafeteria. All good, nothing to write home about. Being a vegetarian, wasn't too interested in trying out French cuisines.

There is a memorial for French soldiers who died in the First World War on the Promenade Beach.


I went there in the 3rd week of January. The weather was nice: 30 degrees and a bit sticky at noon, but comfortable in morning and evening. I suppose December and January are best months to visit.

How many Indians are vegetarians?

While I was studying college, most of my class-mates were vegetarians. Later, while working in Bangalore, it just turned out that the majority of my colleagues in my group were vegetarians too. Whenever we went out for a team lunch, it was common to renegate the non-veggies to one side of the table by the majority vegetarian gang. A colleague who eats non-veg often comments that vegetarians should just graze on the lawn!

I have heard many of my colleagues and friends comment that the majority of Indians are vegetarians. That opinion was understandable, considering the surrounding we were in. Most of the restaurants (self-service fast food types, a.k.a Darshinis back then) were purely vegetarian. Whenever I attended any function, the food wood be vegetarian too.

I slowly learnt that my surrounding was not a true sample of this country. Though India indeed has the highest number of vegetarians in the world, the percentage of vegetarians in India is not more than 40% and is just 20% per some sources. Further, contrary to my expectations, the southern states have smaller percentage of vegetarians than the northern states (not the north-east).

Recently, at a team lunch in office, I turned out to be the only vegetarian in a group of 10. I knew that this was closer to true percentages of vegetarians in this country. However, I felt quite strange about this change. It made me wonder whether this was just a co-incidence that I was the only vegetarian in that group or whether the demography changed significantly in the last decade.

Grand offer: Save 0.0625%

Save 2 paise per Kg of atta. Worth 4 minutes of talk time!

What are these?

These are a type of cucumbers popular in the coastal belt of Karnataka. What is unique about them is that they can be preserved for months when stored in this way. Looking at these at one of my relatives place recently brought back my memories of my grandfather's house on the western coast of Karnataka between Udupi and Kundapur. More about this some time later.

From Russia, with Threads

Getting Canon Lide 100 scanner to work with Fedora Linux

Recently I needed to use Canon Lide 100 scanner. When I plugged it into my Fedora laptop I realized that this scanner is not supported by Linux (sane or simple-scan). A bit of googling took me here. Looks like support for Canon Lide 100 is already in the git repos of sane (sane-backends package, specifically), but you have to do a bit of circus until your favourite distro starts shipping more recent version of sane.

I followed the instructions from there, but slightly customized it for my Fedora 13:

# yum install libusb-devel

# git clone git://git.debian.org/sane/sane-backends.git

# cd sane-backends/

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var

# make

# make install

Now edit /lib/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules to add these lines about the scanner:

# Canon CanoScan Lide 100
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04a9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1904", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

# reboot

At this stage the scanner should have worked, but it did not :-( I took another look at the sources of sane-backend. It looked like the file backend/genesys/conf should have been copied to /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf, was somehow wasn't. I manually copied this file over:

# cp ./backend/genesys.conf /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf

Voila, Canon Lide 100 now works with my Fedora 13 using xsane.

Yeah, we are that bugged!

Did you ever sit near the entrance of the floor in your office and see all kinds of people stop by to ask you "Where does X sit?" or "Where is meeting room Y?"

We also do this!

You might think we are too busy improving our search engine or churning out features for Android, but we also find time to run this internet surfing centre in Mysore.

This blog is now 5+ years old

I never thought this blog would live this long when I started this on 26th July 2005. It is now a bit more than 5 years old, which, in today's digital age, means it is one generation old! I have 241 blog posts on this blog, which translates to roughly a blog per week. Thanks to everyone who read this blog.

A major milestone

or an aging car!

End the day with net gains

The daily drive to the office begins. Today I am somehow more irritable than usual. I am driving through a fairly narrow stretch of the road, stuck behind a fully loaded tractor that is barely making 30kmph. There is a steady stream of traffic from the other side, making it impossible to overtake the tractor. My patience is running thin when I spot a momentary gap in the oncoming traffic, giving me just enough time to overtake. However, a guy on a motorcycle moves to the right of my car, doesn't move fast enough and prevents me from overtaking. My blood boils. I honk and move my car threateningly close to his bike. This infuriates the bike rider, who gives me a mouthful, receives some from me as well and moves along. Not the best start for the day.

By the time I reach Koramangala I have cooled down completely and am driving much more sensibly. At an intersection without traffic lights I am about to make a right turn, when I notice a motorcycle coming into the intersection at a very high speed from the road to my right. The guy sees my car and quickly realizes that he is in trouble as he isn't sure he can stop in time. I stop my car immediately and let him through. I notice that the guy has a smile on his face as he waves to me while passing through the junction.

Later in the day I am driving back home. One of the roads in BTM has a steady stream of traffic during these hours. The drivers are pretty aggressive and crossing the road at this time is not for the faint at heart. I notice an elderly gentleman, may be in his late seventees, trying to cross the road. He makes an attempt to cross ahead of a few cars in front of me, but the car driver blazes his horn and prevents the man from crossing. I quickly glance at my rear view mirror and notice a long chain of cars behind me. This man is not going to cross the road any time soon unless he risks his life or limbs. When the man is directly in front of me I stop my car and ask him to cross. The driver of Tata Sumo behind me goes mad with anger and blares his horn. I stay calm. The elderly man says a big "Thank you" after he crosses the road. I hear him trying to give some advice to the driver of Sumo as I pass.

Looks like I ended the day with a net positive: I did more right than wrong on the road.

It's very clear what we sell here

"Things necessary for pooja shop"

A collapsed bridge

I am sure many would still remember the devastating floods that hit North Karnataka and Andhra last year. I had missed being in the middle of action (read 10 feet of water) by a short margin back then. One of the major impacts of the floods was collapsing of the bridge on the State Highway 13 that connects Mantralayam with Raichur. Recently I got a chance to visit this place and see the devastation for myself.



There is now a temporary bridge built by placing a few large pipes along the mighty Tungabhadra and filling up the remaining distance with mud. It is not easy to cross this bridge on cars more used to the city. This temporary bridge is sure to wash off if there is even a fraction of the rain that came down last year. I didn't see any activity of reconstructing the main bridge.


Update: The temporary bridge has already washed away.

Political correctness? What is that?

I hear that "Chronologically advanced" is more correct than "senior citizens"

Victory is sweet

I walk into the store and find a number of sales people dressed in smart uniforms (jeans and t-shirt, but a uniform neverthless). It is one of the most famous mobile phone outlet chains in Bangalore. One of the sales persons greets me at the door and asks me what I need. My response, more specifically my meagre budget reduces his enthusiasm, but he still manages to smile and directs me to one of the counters.

I tell the sales guy the model I am looking for. He shows it to me and as I am looking at it he tells me "Sir, if you are looking to buy this mobile, why don't you buy that instead?" and shows me a comparable model from another brand. I know that they push the brand that gives them the most margins and I am usually not a sucker for this. However, I am somehow tempted to consider his suggestion and take a look at the other phone and ask him "How is this better?"

Now the sales guy knows I have bitten the lure, so he goes on to explain why the phone he suggested is the bestest, wonderfullest thing to have ever been invented, whereas the model I had originally asked for is just average. He quickly blurts out a list of impressive specs. Wireless FM, dolby stereo speaker, a battery that lasts forever, megapixel camera that gets wonderful photos, bigger display, the works. Now I am sceptical when a well known brand of mobile phone gives all this for the kind of price I am paying. I take a close look at the phone and it's box. It has wireless FM alright, it says so in big bold letters on it's front facade. The camera doesn't list the megapixels, so I suspect it is just a VGA camera. The box doesn't say anything about speakers being dolby or even stereo. The guy still insists that it is dolby speaker and megapixel camera. I suppose the phone manufacturers themselves did not know about these impressive specs or just plain forgot to mention them. By now he probably thinks I don't know anything about mobile phones and he can get away with pretty much anything. So he says "Sir, this is ion battery. Hence it surely lasts much more than other phones".

Now that ends my patience and I decide to give it back to him. It goes something like this:
"What do you mean by ion battery? Do you mean Lithim-ion?"
"Yes sir, it is the best technology...."
"Wait. Don't you know that every mobile phone in the last few years has come with a Lithim-ion battery? Can you show me a mobile phone in your store that does NOT have a Li-ion battery?"
"No sir, but this one is best quality..."
By now I am on the offensive.
"I know that the same company makes the battery for the two brands we are talking about and the same technology is used in both"
I don't know anything about this, but I know he won't contest this. He doesn't know what to say. I decide to pile it on. I had started the browser on my own phone when I started looking at this phone and started loading it's specs page. By now the webpage has loaded. I can now look at it and authoritatively tell him that the phone has a VGA camera, display is same size and type as other phones in it's class and a pretty ordinary mono speaker. The guy is speechless. I raise my voice a bit and tell him that it is not correct to misguide the customers this way and demand that I be served by someone who is more honest.

The owner of the store has now overheard some of this conversation and comes over and tries to calm me before other customers get to hear what is happening. He scolds the sales guy and sends him off. I know that the scolding is just a drama. In fact I guess that sales guy is the star performer of the store and the owner totally likes the way he sells. However, I have won this battle and will cherish this victory.

What good is a social network unless you login?

I have an account on most well known social networking websites. That doesn't mean I am active on any of these. The routine I follow with most of them is:

1. I get notified of a friend request
2. I login and process the friend request
3. I log out.
4. Do nothing until step 1 repeats.

I don't grow farms, nor do I join any groups. In most cases others have to discover me on these websites, I don't do it pro-actively. Considering this, it is not surprising that I never signed up on one very popular website: Twitter. I had assumed it is a passing fad and had hoped to hop on to the next one that comes along. By the time I realized I underestimated how big Twitter was going to get, everyone and their aunts were busy tweeting. After the Dalai Lama got on twitter and tweets played a role in bringing down a minister, I decided it was finally time for me to join.

There is one problem though. Now that I have signed up, I am treating it the way I treat my Facebook account... not log in unless someone nudges me to. So I have a twitter account to boast of, but not to use. I wonder how many people are my type of social networkers...

Happy animal?

If this is how 'happy' animals look, I pity the sad ones.

Please let me help... myself!

There was a stranger at my door recently. I guessed this must be one of the numerous salespeople who visit our house regularly. I feel sorry for the salesperson who spends a few minutes trying to convince us to buy something because we have not bought a single thing from door-to-door sellers for more than a decade. However, this guy at my door wasn't going to speak to me. He was trying to find the person in my house who was recently knighted: "Saar ilva?" "Isn't sir at home?" I now assumed he must have some business with my father, but insisted on knowing who he was. His reply was the same. He would deal only with the saar. I then called out for my father. "Appa..." To my surprise, the stranger immediately left the scene. I stood puzzled for a while until the reason for his behaviour dawned on me. During the above conversation I was sitting next to my bike, trying to clean it's spark plug. The stranger must have assumed that I cannot be the owner of the house because I was doing the work of a mechanic! I looked again at what I was wearing and it looked alright to me... but then I am a guy, so I don't know much about dressing :-)

After building my house I realized that it is the house that really owns me, not the other way around. It is like a cranky little baby that demands constant supervision and feeding. There is always something to fix or improve. After having haggled with the plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc who either refuse to do any such 'minor' jobs or do a bad job of it, my father and I decided that self help is the only effective way to get things done. So we equipped our house with enough tools to carry out any repair and improvement jobs. We do most of the things like plumbing, electricals, painting, primitive carpentry, etc ourselves as far as possible. Since the last few years I am cleaning our overhead tank (Sintex) myself. However, a LOT of people just can't understand why we do these things ourselves. For example, while buying electric wires and pins, the store owner insists that he will send his electrician with me. He looks at me strangely when I say I'll do it myself. I have been asked various questions when people saw me painting our gate, trimming our plants and so on. Our neighbors are not an exception to this, though they are getting used to it now. I guess they think I am stingy or strange or both when I tell them I don't need any help. Thanks, but I'll happily soil my hands rather than go after the elusive repair guy.

Bandipur vs Bannerghatta

It is almost summer vacation time and a lot of people will be thinking of going to a National Park to see wildlife in it's 'natural' habitat. So typically people travel all the way to Bandipur or Nagarahole National Parks, book expensive resorts like Jungle Lodges and take expensive safari trips into the forest in the hope of finding some tigers or lions or godzillas in the forest. By the time their safari ends, they would have seen hundreds of deer and if they are really lucky some bears or gaur. However, tiger, which is the prize catch, remains elusive. Sometimes you wonder whether they are any tigers at all in this forest. If you ask the safari guides, they will tell you the last time anyone spotted a tiger in one of these safaris. You will then learn that your chances of seeing a tiger was as narrow as winning a lottery.

They don't tell you that you are unlikely to see tigers in these National Parks. You go there believing you will see at least 1000 of the 1411 tigers still left. However, if you want to be sure that you see tigers and lions, the place to visit is much closer home. Bannerghatta National Park, anyone?

Just take a Vayu Vajra Volvo bus to Bannerghatta National Park on a leisurely weekend. The bus drops you right at the gates of the park. Don't expect to see too much of jungles like Bandipur or Nagarahole. Remember, this National Park is closer to Bangalore than some of residential apartments :-) You need to buy tickets for lion-tiger safari and board the safari bus operated by the forest department. The safari is very similar in structure to the ones you see in Bandipur or Nagarahole, though there is less jungle all around and much more chance of seeing animals. The animals of Bannerghatta are not afraid of humans. They stride carelessly into the path of your safari vehicle. They might even give you a bright smile when you take a picture! The driver may sometimes need to honk and make way through the group of tigers who have assembled right in the path of the safari to hold a meeting or something. The safari lasts about 45 minutes.





Once back, take a stroll through the zoo (which is the inverse of safari, they are the ones in cages!) to see other animals. Then buy something to snack on in one of the numerous shops and head back to the bus stop. See, you didn't have to sweat even as much as you would to catch the greatest deals during a sale in your favourite mall and costed even less!

None of this is to say that it is not worth visiting the real serious National Parks elsewhere. Go there to experience closeness to nature without any expectation of seeing these animals so you won't be disappointed. When you want to be sure to see the animals, you know you won't have to go too far.