North Karnataka

Would like to start with a quote of a famous American writer Mark Twain“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

As said by Twain I do not want to sit in Bangalore and spare the holidays watching TV programs rather check out long pending wish list. Unlike 2016 the year 2017 has the privilege of having more long weekends and one among them associated with our Independence day. I was fortunate to pick this early in the month of May when Indigo Airlines floated an offer that was almost the price of 3AC train ticket to Mangalore.

Almost all planning including hotels and places to visit are all done by June. In-congruent to my previous travel this one had lot of anxieties till the date of travel and the cancellation made by one of the hotelier created more fuss among all of us.

As mentioned earlier building an enthusiasm to keep the interest high is important especially with kids but this time Prathiba too was excited reason being meeting her school friend Shalini after 2 decades. Of course Ananya got excited with Jog falls and beach.

Initial plan was to start from Kukke and reach Gokarna on the last day of the schedule but has to change the entire plan on the eleventh hour that was exactly opposite to the original which means to start at Gokarna and end at Kukke. Major issue associated with this big change was cancellation of rooms and re-booking to the revised dates and thankfully I was able to overcome this hurdle.

From Mangalore started early morning and reached Honnavar around Saturday noon driving through the western coastline. Gave a sweet surprise to the front desk and requested him to change the dates, initially the request was declined later accepted. After our lunch and a trivial rest started towards Jog falls which is east of Honnavar and later to Apsarkonda beach to glimpse the sunset. Reason for choosing Honnavar is that it is midpoint to Day 1 and Day 2 places.

Day 2 early morning started to Gokarna which lies north of Honnavar and from there to Idagunji on the way to Murudeshwar which is south of Honnavar. Spent a good amount of time in Murudeshwar and post lunch headed towards Kollur. 

Lack of knowledge along with the misguidance of the Jeep driver spoiled meeting plan of Prathiba and Shalini. We are supposed to reach Shalini house late evening but the Kodachadri was the culprit in spoiling the plans. Kodachadri is a place some 20 Kms from Kollur that has to be either trekked or travel by Jeep. Last 10 Kms will take 1 hour of Jeep ride that will break all bones from neck to lower spine sometimes you could see something popping out of your mouth that could be your liver or stomach, tough ride.



On the top you have Adi Mookambigai temple and the place where Adi Shankra did his meditation which needs one hour walk from the place where the Jeep drops and return to Kollur 1 hour. We did wrong estimate of this 3 hours and 2 hours of darshan time in Kollur temple ate the friends's meeting time. Reached their beautiful house near Udupi late night, and Prathiba and Shalini made use of the available time to recollect their old memories.

Day 3 – After a good breakfast from Shalini house headed towards Udupi temple, being Janmastami the queue was flowing to several streets which was expected. Since they have special darshan was able to complete the darshan in an hour. Sringeri was our next destination that was completed as per plan before noon closure and had a wonderful lunch. Finally reached Horanadu in the evening and again surprise to the hotelier for an unscheduled check in but it was accepted.

Day 4 – very early started to Dharmastla and from Kuke Subramanya where again big serpentine queue being Adi Kirthigai. In both the places made use of special darshan to buy invaluable time. Reached managlore and from there 40 Mins to Bangalore by Indigo.

Some of the key learning or highlights of this trip

I normally use booking.com for hotel reservation reason being there is no upfront payment required. Since I booked in June got a good deal and on the day of travel called the hotel to come to know that they have given it to someone else, could be they got better deal considering the heavy demand. Henceforth need to call hotel and confirm a month in advance and pay some nominal amount as advance so that we are at peace.

Due to personal emergency need to make a lot of changes as mentioned above that had lot of anxieties in our minds which created tension and when we realized that the plan change helped us to be on special days like on Janmastami at Udupi and Aadi Kirthigai at Subramanya erased the pain and also availability of rooms was at ease than expected.

As part of the planning got a travels contact who belongs to Tamil Nadu and this helped in communication all through the period.

Normally there won’t be any fuss for food from any of us and these travels will help you get accustomed to any food. Typical to this region the food was extraordinary and in Mangalore the evening snacks was rated as 5/5 by each one of us.

Best period to visit these places are post monsoon, August to December to enjoy the greenery of western Ghats and to avoid the humid climate during other months.

Unlike other tourist places especially temple parking area we will normally find someone collecting parking charges and these people will be locals from the ruling political party. I never paid any parking charges and the toll charges was less than Rs 200 for all days (mostly near Mangalore).

This travel helped me to test the strength of Jio and Airtel, clearly Airtel was winner but Jio never let me down.

If you are planning to make a trip to these places and any guidance required please feel free to mail me at gbramy16@hotmail.com

Click this link for pictures PHOTOS

Snippet - துணுக்குகள் 03 / 17

After nearly a gap of 2 months my renaissance towards sharing my learning/reading/experience erupted, this impediment was due to my steadfastness to my routine schedule. Need to catch up a lot and starting with something that has been flashing for some time.

LATITUDE Vs GOOGLE MAPS

During last week of March 2017, Google unveiled a new feature to its popular Maps app where users can share their locations with friends and contacts in real time.

Yes! Google Maps users will now be able to quickly let friends know if they are running late for meeting and if you are wondering why Google never thought of this earlier then you are wrong. In fact they came up with this idea in the year 2009. The pillar of this great company is its innovation and that too light year ahead of its competitors in bringing innovation to its products.

In 2009 when Smartphone were still at infancy stage Google introduced this Latitude app. At that time this app drew privacy concerns and several articles were published highlighting the risks by enabling this app.

After 8 years they brought this back to public after working on the feedback received on the privacy meanwhile the world has also changed since 2009 when they first tried this. Now more people are in social media when compared to that period in spite of the unaddressed inherent risk associated with the status updates we provide in these social media.

In this particular instance I personally feel there are more benefits of sharing location if you can take care of privacy risk by sharing the information only with known people. For instance allowing parents to keep track of their wards in this highly threatening environment will be welcomed whereas that husbands/wife who party outside without knowledge of his/her spouse will still be hesitant to install this wonderful app.

Whether we make use of this app or not is a personal requirement to each of us. But a key thing to observe is that, let us turn back and take stock of exactly what we gave up some years back and if it is good time to embrace now we shouldn’t be waiting to adopt. It might turn out to be a life changing hug.

RPA and AI - Phobia

If you are associated with IT or ITES industry the buzzword that will obviously encircle you is RPA or AI. When Robotic Process Automation or Artificial Intelligence are talked about then people immediately start picturing about tiny robots that look like humans that renders some activity. Agree to some extent but in reality it is different.

Each day AI surrounds us in all activities we do, be it while browsing internet where it guides you to certain pages or some relevant pages are flashed based on your recent searches. Most of us presume that manufacturing industries are the early adopters of AIs but personally I feel it dates back to evolution of wheels. Necessity is the mother of invention.

AI is no more a “nice to have” choice, it has become integral part of process innovation and cost optimization, which will bring tangible business benefits. Choice is when and where you want to start from?

These innovations can’t be adopted overnight, this needs adoption by organization and its people without any fear.

Ever since RPA/AI came into limelight there has been fear that machines will take over humans. Imagine if the same thought had erupted in the past during the invention of wheel then evolution of human would not have progressed. The way we work is going to change and role we played is going to evolve. Personally I feel that role of humans cannot vanish and it is going to evolve further. Technology cannot take over whereas humans can take over and make better use of it. Having said that, definitely we will have challenges facing this evolution and the foremost one that comes to my mind is how we are going to handle this in designing the curriculum for school or colleges. Though in the past we have made changes to curriculum but this time the magnitude and pace of changes are different to relax.

This reminds me of Philip Kotler’s quote “If you will remain in same business you are in now in next 5 years, you will not exist in the business”, which means you have to be on the wheels of innovation at fairly decent pace so that you are not left out of the race.

21st Century Meerabai - Azerbaijan to Andhra

I was fortunate to read this story in one of the magazine that made my eyes wet and hence thought of sharing the condensed version as part of my blog.

Before proceeding and to get an idea of this blog, would recommend to watch this short video of 6 mins that will help you to correlate the article.

This is an amazing love story from the land of Azerbaijan erstwhile part of USSR and now an independent country. The love story is between Lord Krishna and Ms.Sevanam a 70 year old lady from Azerbaijan.

Click the below picture for Video

I would request you to believe in destiny and rebirth, yes to me this lady was destined in her previous birth and this destiny brought a copy of a Russian translated version of Bhagavad Gita to her place. Someone was distributing this and she got a copy and started to read. In her first reading she got dissolved by the content. Curious to get more knowledge she followed the address in the book that lead her to a local ISKCON temple in Baku the capital of that country.

On her visit to the ISKON temple in Baku, she met a devotee who was giving lecture on Gita. There was an urgent call for the devotee and he excused the class and when returned he was astonished to see Ms Sevanam was providing the lecture on Gita with much more clarity and passion. Though this was the beginning she slowly got engaged into other activities like participating in Kirtana, Bhagavad Gita class etc.,

One fine day she decided to sell her property as her kids were grown and was able to sell in quick time. She requested the temple authorities to accept the proceeds from the property and provide her a small room in the temple premises till her end. After much deliberation it was accepted by temple authorities and from then on it was serving the temple, Chanting and Singing was the duties of Sevanam in the ISKON temple of Azerbaijan.

Some of the positive things I found in that book about this lady are

1. Not only the thoughts were positive but her action and words are full of love
2. Love was towards both god and fellow human being who visited the temple.
3. She used to give small gifts to selected people and would inform them that it was an order by Kirishna. That was her love.
4. She treated Lord Krishna as a kid, had a small cot for him in her room and even toys for him to play. Among them a significant toy was a battery operated toy car and she would seat Krishna in that car and operate the remote and enjoy the ride made by Krishna.
5. She used to feed Krishna similar to how we feed our kids

She had a personal relationship with Krishna and I would call her a Meerabai of Azerbaijan.

Now the turning point in her life was through the above video. She happened to watch this movie and in that an ancient temple of Lord Narashima will be shown, the deity in this temple can be approached if we pass through a chest deep water with bats hanging over your head.

Voice in that video will narrate that since the temple is situated midst of a jungle the priest would come weekly once to perform rituals due to the hardship in reaching the temple. As soon as she heard this in the video she wanted to be in this temple and perform daily rituals, her immediate shout was “Krishna My Krishna is suffering in his land”. Imagine is it feasible for a normal person, then how can it be for a 74 year old lady?

People around her gave terrified views about India and the ISKON people suggested to worship Radhe Krishna so that the 74 year old lady stays back and prevented from any adversity.

In spite of all these arguments she found her way to Andhra Pradesh, nothing stopped this lady in reaching the village. She approached the priest in that village for help to reach the temple that is 5 kms into the forest and the same was obliged by him. Sevanam told him that Lord Krishna wanted her to serve Narashima hence she travelled all the way to India.

Along with her she carried only the idols in her suitcases with couple of clothes, from a developed country she landed in a forest where there was no potable water and electricity. The priest who accompanied her thought she will return back on witnessing the reality but as soon as they reached the cave she lost in admiration.

She requested the priest to build a small tent so that she can live near the cave. Tent was built with temporary materials and she was left alone but the priest on reaching the village spread the news about this Grandma to the people. Curious to see her people started to visit the temple and our Sevanam transformed into a Saint.

The transformation happened to the entire place and she was invited for wedding and new born functions to bless. She also started to perform abhishega to the deity, news spread to far off places and people throng the temple to see this lady and hence priest started coming daily and daily rituals are back.

Now it is the turn of local newspaper to publish an article and then came Governer of Andhra Pradesh with his family to seek blessing of both Lord and Sevanam. On seeing the condition of the place he took personal responsibility of collecting money and built road, water connection, marble steps etc., now it is one of the celebrated temple of Lord Narashima in AP.

Years went and on a Dvadhishi morning people came in as usual to the temple and to the house of Sevanam where they witnessed that she was on her feet embracing Krishna in one hand and Gita under her arms. People thought she was sleeping and no movement for some time created doubts and when checked she had left the body and the Soul joined HIM. Readers might be aware of the significance of death on a Dvadhisi day and how sacred it is?

Earlier in the article I called her Meera of 21st century hope you too agree now…

Snippet - துணுக்குகள் 02 / 17

Varavu Ettana Pathanna Selavu Pathanna Ettana 

Made a small change to Kannadasan’s song from Bhama Vijayam that perfectly fits this situation. Income is Ten whereas expense is Eight annas.

On any given day I am for Namo’s Demo. But the major flaw was in its planning and too flexible in making amendments to combat those who found avenue to sneak through.

One such flexibility made during that period was suspension of toll collection on all national highways. The exemption was made to avoid inconvenience to commuters due to inadequate smaller denominations. By this act it was evident that the vision to foresee future issues was definitely missed.

Some of the following figures will raise our eyebrows

• Average daily toll collection is 70 to 75 crores per day on national highways
• Roughly there are around 320 toll plazas 

For both the operators in the public & private partnership, the Estimated Revenue leakage was Rs 1212 crores for the period Nov 9th to Dec 2nd 

To boost the confidence of these private investors so that in future they stay invested it has been proposed to pay Rs 922 crores to these institutions as a relief measure and balance Rs 290 crores will be borne by NHAI and ultimately written off.

The current contract with these private players has clearly laid out such calculation in case of decisions like these by Government, but NHAI is not venturing into those since it is cumbersome process and might lead to litigation. Hence this onetime compensation.

NHAI has already requested finance ministry seeking funds for the compensation and we all know from where the money will be funded by finance ministry.

• Indirectly net revenue from this Demo operation gets reduced by this amount or
• Additional Tax or Cess for Income tax payers.

Unfortunately people and Government think that tolls are taxes but they are charges for those users who use the roads. Millions of people like me who have not used the exemption during that period will also contribute is the mocking truth and alas can laugh at this situation, nothing else can be done.

ReNEWable Energy

Any Innovation in the energy sector is a blessing to our natural resources and paves way for this world to be a better place to live.

In that context in 2016 a phenomenal breakthrough was made by a French Company Newwind, generating energy from wind. I could understand the perplexity about what is new in wind energy, yes this is brand new.

There is no need for monstrous and noisy turbines that require good amount of wind to generate energy. In this new one we can use a turbine at our backyard and it resembles like a tree with tiny silent blades that could produce energy from breeze, yes I meant breeze that can be as low as 7Km/h speed.

The base frame is made of steel and the turbine sheet called “Aeroleaf” is made of Plastic and 72 such turbines will be placed in a tree. The story of this invention is quiet interesting, When Jerome was relaxing in his Garden on a windless day he observed the leaves on the trees are moving in-spite of the stillness around. He exclaimed there is energy and wanted to harvest it and came this wind tree.

France has already built 2000 such farms and planning to build another 8000 since it believes this as a clean alternative to the current sources.

Initial investment will be around $20,000 and will be able to recoup in one year if the average speed of the wind is 12Kmh. More than recouping the cost it should be considered as natural resources saver.

Energy savings from one tree is equivalent to 1905 Lbs of coal or 3.2 tons of carbon di oxide for the same amount of energy output. One tree can supply power to 15 street lamps of 50W or 1000 sq ft low consumption office or 83% of one household consumption.

Message to Minister of Urban development Mr Venkaiah Naidu to spend some time on these developments that is happening in conjunction with Mr Piyush Goyal instead spending a day near a coffin.

Actually these should be made mandatory to the IT parks and to huge residential apartments to generate power for lighting the common area. Another advantage is that in case if there is no power these people will use Diesel to generate power to light the common areas which could be saved.

Mere having the target as a banner in your webpage will not help Mr Goyal, we need to keep our eyes and ears open and always explore.

Snippet - துணுக்குகள் 01 / 17

I have been persuading myself to include snippet as part of my Blog, with this started my first edition for 2017 though not as part of my 2017 resolution whereas the resolution is to find a suitable Tamil name for each header hence the name "துணுக்குகள்". 

Actually Snippet implies small and interesting news or information, I will try to pick some major that gets unnoticed by most of us since we are tied down with our routine busy schedule. 

X replaces E

Last year it was NEET (National eligibility & Entrance test) for medical college aspirants and now it is NEXT (National Exit Test) for those who leave medical colleges.

After a hard tussle of 5 1/2 years irrespective of further education or practice medical students need to finish NEXT. The logical reason quoted by Indian Medical council is that NEXT will standardize and improve the quality of medical education and help to benchmark which means this will equate a student from X university to that of Y university.

Personally I am not able to understand the logic, IMC (Indian Medical Council) accepts that there is no standardization in the education. Ideal solution should be

• Standardize  the syllabus across the nation
• Ensure  that quality faculty and infrastructure  are available in all colleges

Instead of IMC taking responsibility it is shedding and transferring it to students in the name of standardization.I could foresee only one result, student’s NEXT score will be used by medical colleges to attract more ignorant people and become billionaires from millionaires by these business tycoons.

CESS follows Insurance Premium

Railways want to create a safety fund of 1 lakh crore and requested Finance ministry to sponsor 93% from its budget. However it has been agreed at 25% so for the deficit a cess will be levied from passengers.  I believe this is an outcome of the recent derailments that happened. Normally in our CAPA (Corrective Action & Preventive Action) we quote negligence as the reason for most of the transaction errors. Similarly these people have a common reason for the safety failure “Inadequate Fund”.

We have to wait and watch how this fund creation impacts on the number of accidents. We need to THANK the person who mooted this proposal, reason being this is not part of another CESS in Income tax. It would have been if Finance Ministry accepted the 93% proposal.

Recently the Insurance premium was included as part of the ticket and we all know who gets benefited. Soon we can expect water charges considering the scarcity of water or these educated brats will find an avenue to increase revenue.

IOC Vs IOA Vs Sports Ministry

Like the 5 circles that represent Olympics,Politics and Sports are always tangled together and the intrusion of former is inevitable. But in this country alone we can witness the filthy part due to the invasion of politicians. 

Currency not only plays a pivotal role in electing the General Sectary of a Political party but also in electing President of IOA (Indian Olympic Association).

Suresh Kalmadi’s and Abhay Chautala’s election as life president of IOA clearly indicates how money plays its role in sports. This subject was brought into the agenda of IOA AGM as a last item to maintain its secrecy and got elected. As per the norms a person convicted cannot be elected but in this case how an exception was taken is unclear. 

Obliviously Sports Ministry headed by rival party of Kalmadi will react and they have taken a resolution not to fund IOA until the decision is reversed. Out of the two one is defiant that he will step down if IOC( International Olympic Committee) asks him to whereas Kalmadi refused the position  till he is cleared from CWG games issue.

Let us keep our fingers crossed on IOC decision.Undeniably this impacts our next Olympic preparation if this is stretched beyond some months.