An IIT alumnus talk and the bet that I lost

A special lecture on "India's second war of Independence: Making Infrastructure happen" by Srivatsa Krishna, an IAS officer organized by IIT Madras alumni association recently, was held in our institute auditorium. I was not attending any lectures of recent owing to my work pressure and other issues, and so I decided to opt out of this one too. But my friend insisted that I should attend it for he believed the talk would be an inspiring one.

In order to make ourselves available for the talk, we decided to advance our Friday Research Scholar Group (RSG) meeting at 2 pm. A talk on "Turbulence: What is it?" was given by my friend Prasanna in this week's RSG meet, first in our seminar hall, and then in our research scholar's room, to allow the class to be conducted in the hall. After the forum discussion on various aspects of turbulence, my friend and myself had a cup of tea at campus cafe, and headed straight to the auditorium. The time then was around 4 pm. We do not remember at that time if the talk was  arranged at 4 pm or 4.30 pm. But seeing only handful people inside, we found at once that it can't be 4 pm. Well, but here is the catch. 4.30 pm IST stands for IIT Standard Time, which is equal to Indian Standard Time + minimum of half an hour, I told to my friend. So we are wasting our time by coming so early, for if the meeting is suppose to start at 4.30 pm, they are going to start only by 5 pm!

I don't know what made my friend to contradict me, for he usually agrees with what I say based on my past experience. In this case, he was pretty confident that the meeting will start on time for the speaker is an IAS officer. I am sure my friend was pretty impressed with the speaker's qualifications, nevertheless, he is an Indian government officer, and an IIT alumni. How could he possibly come before 4.30 pm, and start the talk on the dot? Asking this question, I challenged my friend for a Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) bet that the talk will not start before 4.45 pm. However, even before I finished my bet, we found a man in his late thirtieths walking on the aisle towards the stage, with his Mac and was copying his presentation on to the system. The time then was 4.15 pm!

Moment before, I was so confident that I am going to win the CCD bet. That the speaker arrived fifteen minutes earlier and was ready to deliver his lecture on dot was a surprise to me! The 90 plus slides lecture started at 4.30 pm and ended promptly at 5.30 pm which surprised me, and most of the audiences. During his lecture, Srivatsa covered the current scenario of Indian infrastructure policies and ground happenings, and compared our position with the Infrastructure development in other countries.

The talk was pretty impressive, however, I felt that there was nothing intellectual in it. Much of the facts he presented were already known to us, either through media or through some other source and so I was disappointed not to get enlightened after the talk. The tea organized by the alumni association was very refreshing after an hour long lecture, which was followed by a panel discussion on future IAS aspirants which I promptly didn't attend. Now what is pending is to pay the bill my friend is going to produce next time we go to CCD.

The Mylapore Festival 2011

In the year 2001, the Mylapore times, a neighbourhood paper, organized a kolam contest. The outcome of the contest over the years was a huge hit that it has grown to be celebrated as Mylapore festival, a four day event.

Mylapore Festival 2011

Not surprising, the festival is packed with events that enabled the Mylapore community to show their creative skills to the entire world. The highlight of the festival is as usual the Kolam contest, which was held on two evenings on the North Mada Street, adjuscent to the Kapaleeshwara temple.

Kolam contest

The "costliest" kolam, commented a passerby

The entire North Mada stretch was painted with rice floor, each one showing the creative talent of Mylapore housewives and their daughters. Yeah, I did not see even a single male contestant! While the adults are busy displaying their creative talents, the merry-go-round was the centre of attraction for many kids who came to witness the happening at Mylapore. I had seen the merry-go-round only on one occasion before, the car festival in a temple located at my native village when I was a kid.

The merry-go-round

What caught me out of the blue during the walk on Mylapore streets is the Kolattam, in a courtyard in front of the temple entrance. The performance was awesome, and so was the beats, which makes me to think that its been performed by the professionals!

Kolattam (the Dandiya of South India)

The food street, where you get traditional food items which are normally prepared only in few homes, is a welcome hit from the visitors. I could feel the electrified sensation in Mylapore where everyone has some talent or other to display. A walk in these streets made me to contemplate on the outcome if such festivals is organized at every localities across India! "United, we stand" we have heard someone saying. Today, I saw it in action.

Lecture series, a walk in the woods and my friend's birthday

IIT Madras had arranged for two back-to-back lecture sessions: first one was on yesterday with Nobel award winners in Chemistry, Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan on Structural basis of decoding of mRNA by the ribosome, Prof. Thomas A Steitz on From the structure and function of the ribosome to the new antibiotics; the other one was organized today with the former President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The first day lectures were on hardcore biochemistry field of which I have absolutely no idea. So, while the whole of IITians were assembled at the biggest auditorium in our institute, I decided to take a walk in the woods with my camera and have some fun time.

the woods in the institute at sunset

The woods in the institute is a natural beauty and is the cynosure for all Chennai travelers, for no other city in this world has a forest like environment at its heart! The walk was worthwhile for all my friends who attended the Nobel prize winner's talk told me later that they understood not even a word! Well, its not their mistake. Either the organizers must have arranged for the talk in a small auditorium with interested audience, or the speaker should have made his talk general to appeal to the non-chemistry audience as well.

The icon of IIT Madras with its glow

Since I had already listened to our former President's talk while he was President, and I have read most of his books and lectures and so can guess what he was going to talk, I decided not to attend today's talk too. Instead, I decided to go for a walk again, but this time on the road and not in the woods. I took some pictures of the icon of IIT Madras, the Gajendra Circle, which was glowing with artificial lightings and the fountain was on. However, I felt the icon was not in its real glow, which I am sure it can be seen during the oncoming Saarang days.

My friend blowing the candle and was about to cut the cake, with labmates around

Its my friend's birthday today! Well, it has become a norm than otherwise to organize a cake cutting ceremony in our research room for every of our friend's birthday. However, this time we decided to surprise him by organizing it at midnight, and it did surprise him! We had him cut the chocolate fantasy cake bought from CCD located in our campus and celebrated his birthday in a different way which all of us will remember in days to come.

Bike Drive on New Year Eve

Until evening, I was having no plans on how to celebrate the new year's eve. I could go home and celebrate the dawn of the new year with my parents, or I could celebrate it here with my friends, or since the music season is not yet over, I could go and listen to some concert, or I could spend an evening by watching films either in laptop or in theatre if I could get ticket, or I could simply roam around the city and be back to my room around night. These were some of the options that came to my mind when I contemplated on what to do.

The time was around 7 pm and I still don't have a concrete plan. I was making some chess moves on gameknot, reading to Shobhan Saxena's thought provoking articles of TOI, and was having room-made black tea when I got the call from my friend. He asked "Hey...are you awake? If so, I want to know if you are willing to join us to Parfait for dinner?". The idea of having dinner at Parfait located in Taramani link road was exciting as they prepare excellent cakes. So I decided to go there and so I changed my clothings from extra casuals to somewhat decent casuals and got ready in five minutes, joined with two of my friends who were waiting for me already at my hostel entrance.

We managed to by pass the traffic and reach the destination by our bike, but Parfait is such a small place that they were already choking with orders. All the chairs were occupied and more people were waiting outside to get their turn. We thought its not worth a long wait. Since both my friends are from Maharashtra, I suggested them to try Spice Masters, a small dosa centre located near Velacherry bus stand where we can have excellent south Indian dinner at low cost.

So we biked our way to the Vijayanagar bus stand from Parfait through the Taramani link road, all the way honking on our bells and braking the wheels to avoid collision with chaotic traffic and decided to park our cycles near an auto stand and walk to the place. The judicious decision to walk to the venue proved to be useful as so many people were on the roads today, some with their family and some with friends. Spice Masters has Adai avial and Idiyappam with coconut milk as their special menu today. We ordered the same, and my friends added plain rava dosa to their menu. We finished our dinner with a cup of filter coffee each.

That's me having bunny hug softie

Opposite to Spice Masters is the Kalinga restaurant attached to which is a softies ice cream shop in their basement. We decided to have a softie, and so we crossed the road leaving our cycles at the auto stand. One of my friend and myself ordered for Bunny Hug, one of their special, while my other friend ordered some other variety. We had our ice creams, returned to auto stand, took our cycles and biked our way back to the institute. None of us were ready to call it the end of our new year eve and so we thought of going to Besant nagar beach. However, my early morning appointments made me to opt out of the plan and so we gossiped outside my hostel about local and state level politics, called it an end and parted in our directions.

Christmas trip to Alamparai fort

A superposition of strokes of icy cirrus, splendid and dark heap of cumulus, and the rhythmic rhyme of bell from a nearby church marked the beginning of my Christmas day. The joyous cycle ride from my hostel to the insti's main gate in the cold and crisp air bring in some soothing experience that ended up with a cup of "hot" chips coffee. It was while having my coffee that I self-assessed my health condition - "Should I go for it?". It's only a couple of days back that I caught a cold and I have been on medication which had drained all the energy that was left in my body.

"I still can stop all this", I told myself, "by calling Prasad and come up with an excuse". "Sorry yaar, my cycle tire got punctured...I overslept and just got up...my brother is coming to meet me..." and so many such excuses came to my mind while I aimlessly browsed for an application on my mobile. "Why not I facebook one more time?, or I can check the weather forecast for today", thinking this I opened my application folder from the menu. Something odd caught my eye that time, ya... it was the application I downloaded previous night, but didn't install and configure as I slept while the downloading was in progress. What is it? Nimbu or something? No...Nimbuzz. Is it from Google (because it has "buzz" on it)? No! It seems to be a chat application.

Well, it's asking me for a tagline! What shall I type here? What's coming in my mind at this moment? Concentrate...Think hard...

I think my inner voice told, "Let's do it"! Is this a tagline? Or is there a hidden message that tells me what I should decide upon that moment? Ok...here we go, "Hello Prasad! This is Jam, I just reached the main gate. I'll catch a bus to Tiruvanmiyur now. I'll call you once I reach the bus stand. Please guide me to reach your place from there on".

No...it's not about visiting my friend's place. It's a different thing. It's a thing that sounds like "motorcycle diaries" of Che. It was decided a week ago that my friend Prasad and I will go on a motorcycle drive in his Rajdoot to Alamparai Fort and the date was fixed to be on the Christmas day. I didn't ask Santa Claus for a gift, but little did I expect that time that there was indeed a gift waiting for me to come and pick it up! My confused beginning soon started to evaporate like mist on the grass in a sunlight and soon the enthu of the drive overwhelmed me completely. And thus we started our drive, from the periphery of Neelangarai, a drive that will last for a little less than 2 hours with a break in between for breakfast and tea. A drive that would take you to the road that is frequently travelled; the East Coast Road drive to Muttukad and Mahabalipuram; the road with a view of silvery reflection of the rising sun on the tropical waters in front of Nithyakalyana Perumal temple, the road that is used to frequent between Chennai and Pondicherry, the road which is simply used to exploit the pleasure of driving. It requires a different level of enthu to search and find a location such as Alamparai fort through the road that is less traveled by, and such is the enthu my friend Prasad posses, who had frequented to this fort a number of times in the past.

 The entrance

Once a magnificent fort, but now its nothing but ruins, Alamparai fort is located in a village called Kadapakkam, about 50km down south from Mamallapuram. The fort was used during wartime and also as a port, thus I came to know from the numerous sources on the internet. When I heard the name for the first time, I thought its "Alam (banyan) + Parai (rocks)", meaning the fort with a banyan tree. We did spot some banyan tree rooted on the dilapidated walls which, once upon a time served as the walls of the fort.

Prasad (left) and myself (right) with Prasad's Rajdoot

Set in a typical village background, the village of Alamparai fort is a scenic beauty with lush greeneries on one side, and backwater fisheries on the other. The people here are found to be either at the fish market bargaining for the catch, or playing cards under a shady banyan tree. We reached the entrance of the fort, parked our Rajdoot in front of a modern-day structure that housed a village family, asked them to take care of our helmets while we are on for the venturing. I should mention the hospitality of those village people here, for only they can not only agree to take care of our helmets but also asked if we were coming on a long drive without having our lunch. In none of my world would I offer a stranger a meal and hospitality that we experienced!

 The ruined remains

After taking photos of the ruined fort from various positions, we went on a boating trip to the beach through the backwaters. The view of the fort from the backwaters tells us how the fort would have looked like once upon a time. In fact, the highlight of this trip is the boat ride through the backwaters, which has got us two new friends, the boat drivers Ranjith and Kumaran, both localities who survive on fishing and taking the fort visitors on a boating trip.

A portion of ruined fort wall lying on backwaters

It's not the "road less travelled" thing, nor the fort or the backwaters, nor the hospitality shown by the village people, nor the drive on long stretches of the traffic less road on which you could not spot even a single bumpy drive or potholes, nor the scenic beauty on both sides of the drive that highlighted our trip, but a simple and extraordinary experience of having a siesta in a temple premises in some remote village located on the ECR road! The nap refreshed both of us and we both could feel the reborn much-needed enthu in us that helped us to complete the trip. As my friend said, "If you aren't enthu of driving, you can't enjoy the ride".