Aftermath

Pentapetal – Macro test – Nikon Coolpix L120

govindanpotti — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:30:03 +0000

pentapetal - testing macro of Nikon L120

Wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

govindanpotti — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:26:04 +0000

The light of hope!

Wax Apple / Water Apple / Bell fruit / Wax Jambu (Jambakka)

govindanpotti — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:26:03 +0000

Wax Apple

Weaver Ant

govindanpotti — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:22:57 +0000

Weaver Ant

Dam(n) the two states!

govindanpotti — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:13:02 +0000

Mullaperiyar Dam(n)! What the heck is wrong? Buses are being pelted with stones, transport is getting disrupted, people are being manhandled, stores are getting attacked and forcefully shut down! Enough is enough. People of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, please try to understand, political gimmicks are ruling your world now. Adding flare to the spilled hot oil, works hard the good for nothing media of both the states. Struggling hard to control the situation, the outnumbered police forces from both the states getting exhausted. Does this solve the issue? No! One CM sending mail to another, MLA sending mail, MP shouting at assembly, mass petitions, mass mails, human chains etc – everything makes just one industry rich – the media. They blew this situation out of proportion by spreading baseless roumers in both places. Now, there is nothing that could be done. Just sit and watch the show. Thanks to our spineless central government for its dormant stand, I don’t wonder, it takes more than 10 years for them to decide whether to hang or not, the terrorists who waged war against our nation, this is just a dam, it can wait or burst. Thanks to the politicians who sent mails to CM of TN, CM of Kerala, PM etc, those papers replenished the respective recipient’s toilet tissue rolls. Thanks to the dam, for still holding on, it knows how fast (read it slow) decisions are made, so it will wait for sure without collapsing. A nation like India will never learn from its own past. We will see more and more AMRI fire incidents, even more Thekkady boat tragedies etc. Thanks to the all-pervading corruption for the role you play in preventing development, for I can see my cities, towns, roads etc the way it is now, even after ages. UN has listed India 134 out of 182 in its development index (about a month back, now if they again take a survey, it could be worse). And here we are, still fighting each other for issues that can be discussed over a round table and solved. Way to go! Destroy more buses, pelt each other with more stones, stop the traffic, cause more trouble to human life but remind yourself frequently that this fever is only seasonal. Now itself media has diverted a bit to Chidambaram and his enemies, after a week or so, it will be chasing Anna Hazare and his diet plans, and later, God knows what.

The memory remains …. \m/

govindanpotti — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:59:12 +0000

Hetfield would never have imagined such a crowd in India. I’m sure Metallica wouldn’t've taken Sam Dunn’s Global Metal documentary and his relevation of the metal scene in India, for its face value, but we proved them wrong. Bangalore, together we proved our love to heavy metal and Metallica. Metal heads from different parts of India had occupied the area surrounding the venue since Saturday. Everyone was worried if the show would be conducted or not, considering the fiasco in Delhi just 2 days back. Vladivar has done a wonderful job in organizing the event, it happened without any hiccups. Gates to the grounds were opened by 4:00 PM and people moved in queues through metal detectors and security frisking into the venue. Nobody paid any attention to the rain which failed to quench an inch of excitement in any one. I saw some people making it to the grounds in wheelchairs assisted by their friends/dear ones, for them I give my metal salute! The Bangalore based band Inner Sanctum opened the stage followed by Scottish band Biffy Clyro. Both the bands perfomed amazingly but the crowd was eagerly waiting for the manifestation of the heavymetal Gods. The sea of black t-shirts erupted into cheering once Metallica boarded the stage. Organizers insisted the audience to leave space in between and adequate space from the barricades and said that Metallica would perform only when they feel that the crowd is safe. Metalheads abided. Around 8:00 the show was on. Creeping Death was the first song. The crowd’s reaction was awesome. No words to describe the overwhelming response. “So let it be written, let it be done. I’m sent here by the chosen one”. The crowd took over the ‘Die, by my hand’ part. It was an amazing experience to sing along thousands of other metal bloods. Energy of audience multiplied as they started Ride the Lightning. As I darted around air guitaring and banging my head like never before I agreed to the fact “There is someone else controlling me”. I was tranced. ”Flash before my eyes, Now its time to die, Burning in my brain, I can feel the pain” crowd recited. Then came Fuel, fuelling the already burning excitement. “Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which i desire … ooh yeah hey”. The audience were frenzied by ‘For whom the bell tolls’. “Take a look to the sky before you die, its the last time you will” I saw thousands of hands pointing up to the sky. “Stranger now are his eyes to this mystery, he hears the silence so loud” the crowd filled the following silence with what it required, you know it. The best participation from the audience was for the anthem Nothing else matters and the final portion of ‘The memory Remains’. As they started to wind up the show, the crowd forced them to play more with their desperate ‘We want more’ cries. Blackened, Enter Sandman, One, Master of Puppets and Seek & Destroy made the metalheads go crazy. Hetfield promised to visit Bangalore again soon, before calling it a day. I hope he makes his promise come true very soon. A lot of people missed Newstead in the band, but Trujillo is an ideal fit for Metallica.

Metallica – you have made the dreams of the Indian Metal community come true by your visit. Please do it more often

The memory remains … forever!

\m/

My fingers crossed ! \m/ to +

govindanpotti — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 07:38:12 +0000

Excitement has turned to anxiety. Metallica concert has been cancelled in Delhi. Would it happen in Banglore tomorrow or not? Everyone has the same question to ask, to google. I’m here, keeping my fingers crossed

A day @ Bheemeshwari

govindanpotti — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:59:41 +0000

I did some very good trips in last 2-3 years, but was too lazy write about them. I need to take a dip into my memories and record them in the blog. Now, I’ll share some fresh memories @ Bheemeshwari Jungle Lodges and resorts.

Vivek brought the idea of a tour on the Ramzan, Vinayaka Chathurdhi holidays on Aug 31st and 1st of September. He now has a car, a Ritz and he has been eagerly waiting for long drive opportunites. I also have been looking forward to getting into some kind of travel,. The last time I travelled was for the amazing Chembra Peak trek, which was done some months back. (I should jot down that one too) So I jumped into accepting his idea and we booked Tented cottage rooms for our families in the Bheemeshwari fishing camp for the aforesaid dates.

Vivek and his wife Krishna picked us up on the morning of 31st around 8:30 and the journey was on. Vivek already has the route map and everything in place. We followed this route: whitefield – marathahalli - silkboard – jayadeva circle - banashankari – kanakpura – sathnur – muthathi – Bheemeshwari. The ride was good, I’m sure Vivek was enjoying his captaincy behind the wheels. We planned to have breakfast once we move out of the city limits, which we later found was a difficult decision to execute. Karnataka, unlike Kerala, is less dense in population and also I feel development here in Karnataka is city centric whereas in Kerala it is uniform. I hope it continues this way because Kerala can import goods from its neighbour Karnataka atleast. It is embarrassing to learn that Kerala is buying flowers for Onam (Athappookkalam) from its neighbouring states. It is even more saddening to know that Kerala has started buying coconuts and tender coconuts from Karnataka. Kerala, the name of which was supposedly derived from coconut tree, is shamelessly losing its self sufficiency in the production of the same. Anyway, as Karnataka’s development is city centric, its population is less dense and much of its land outside cities are dedicated to agriculture, we had a tough time finding a hotel to eat and our search ended once we reached Kanakpura. Through the journey, the four of us kept on talking incessantly, things ranging from Kannur malayalam, which my friend Vivek is proficient at, to music, to veg food, to non-veg exotic dishes etc to you name it. It helped, we reached the destination even before we knew it, sharp 12:00 Noon, the check-in time. The road was very good till Sathnur, from where we took a left to Muthathi, which was a narrow but not-so-bad country road. We had to literally push cows and goats out of our way to move the car forward

Once checked in, we found that the tented cottages are not really tents but tent-like-cottages, clean and tidy, spacious and luxurious. We came out from the rooms and roamed around climbing nets and tyre swings to digest whatever breakfast we had so as to have the Jungle Lodge’s lunch. The lunch was a buffet which was ready by 1:30pm and it was good. After the lunch we again roamed around the camp. It is quite big a camp with Cauvery flowing on one side adding to its beauty. Monkeys are everywhere, making weird faces and hate speeches. Be careful about carrying food in hand and be ready to face an ambush by the monkey army any moment. We climbed up the hurling net and tried sleeping there which was interrupted by a Malabar giant squirrel that marched past us on the tree branch close to the net. We heaved down and went for the evening tea. After the tea we went for a good coracle ride. There were paid activities like zip-line, kayaking etc which we didnt opt for as we found them not very worth for the charge. After the coracle ride, we had a photo session particularly for Vivek to flaunt his new Rayban He got a long piece of stick and suddenly came up with the idea of stricking a mock-fishing posture and it was a very nice idea, i should admit. Later I saw a lot of comments on FB from people who really got decieved by his idea. While the photo session was still on, two guards in the facility approached and beckoned to look to the hill on the other side of the river. We, after a real long attempt, could find a herd of elephants. We could zoom and get some good pics.

After sunset, everyone gathered on the riverside where a campfire was setup. They had veg and non-veg barbeque, followed by a decent dinner.The campfire was quenched by a gush of rain when everyone sought haven at the dining hall.There, We found a lot of families gulping down different kinds of liqour at dinner and were surprised because they sell only beer there. We sipped down the beer imagining it to be black label So if you are planning for a JLR stay, make sure to carry some drinks if you would like to, they have only beer there, that too a bit highly priced (100 for Fosters and 130 for KF premium 750ml). We called it a day after a few rounds of walks and went to sleep.

Day 2 began when we got a wake-up call and hot coffee from a JLR personnel. We found a lot of monkeys fighting each other for reasons we cant interpret. At around 7:30am we went for a jungle walk. It was just a small-hill climbing, should be approximately 3% of Thadiandamol or 2% of Chembra . We didnt spot anything except for some dried up elephant dung. Must have been 2 weeks old dung. we were back in the facility by 9:00 am and went directly for breakfast. Breakfast was really good. After that we climbed up the net one more time and packed up. We called it a day. Took a slightly different return route Bheemeshwari – halagur – sathanur – kanakpura – NICE road – Electronic city – silkboard – marathahalli – whitefield.

Green miles

govindanpotti — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:38:59 +0000

This is a new venture. I’ve thought and talked about pollusion. I have tried to walk the talk by following measures

1) Reducing usage of plastic – Easier said than done. Try to keep away the polythene bags from your life and you will see how difficult it is. Anybody can implement this with some effort. Always carry one jute or cloth or the plastic bag that you got from the shop, the last time you shopped, so that when the shopkeeper starts dumping the goods to a bag, you can stop him and give your own bag.

2) Trying to plant trees – well, not true, not trees, just planting plants, yes I’ve tried that. I am not yet successful but will still keep trying that in the balcony of the apartment. I don’t know if that is going to change the world, but it will surely bear some fruits Today I was very happy when my wife informed me of one tomato in the budding stage in our balcony “veggie garden”. In malayalam there is one adage that roughly translates to this – “even a small-kid-squirrel can do what it can do” [Adages lose their beauty when they get translated, especially by an amateur] I had a plan of starting a bonsai cultivation which was nipped in the bud , If possible I’ll revive that plan some day. Those who have the option, can plant trees!

3) Reducing paper wastage – Taking printouts only if 100% needed. Anyone can follow this rule.

4) Using public transport – Whenever you can, use public transport.

5) Ride bicycles – I think this is a measure that could change lives. I changed mine. I started riding a bike (bicycle) last month. This leaves no carbon footprint, but tread marks Other advantages – its a very good cardio workout, improves appetite, metabolism and general health, No need worry about stagnant traffic – just push your bike through the footpath (Do not ride on the footpath, I see a lot of people doing that, please don’t. Footpath is for pedestrians, even pushing a cycle on the footpath is bad, but chance of hitting someone is thin)

I will soon post the details of my bike. Please stay tuned

Back here, back now!

govindanpotti — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:18:18 +0000

I forgot the fact that i used to blog. Life has been on a roller coaster ride lately and expecting more thrilling experiences in the coming days. Anyway am back here, will try to stay back and keep the world updated.

The day started as usual, my wife desperately trying to wake me up and at around 6:45 my sleep succumbed to her importunate attempts. I came straight to the sofa, struck my usual sluggish pose and started watching Manorama news expecting a very inquisitive program named “Counter Point” which is a habit I inculcated in the recent past. It was not the anticipated program but an old interview with the great music director Johnson mash. He was there, talking in his usual humble but strong language. I don’t listen to most of the crappy new-age film songs in any movie industry, which just come as a hit one day and be dead the very next day, forgotten by everyone, even by its creators; but I love Johnson Mash’s songs, so I sat there watching the program, sipping my tea. Soon my eyes caught attention on the news flashing beneath, that his body is being flown from Chennai to his hometown. I was completely shocked. I didn’t watch any news program yesterday night and so was not aware of his demise. Too bad a news to start the day! Indeed.

I have always felt his songs are different, the reason being his skill to create melody which is very hard to forget. He also made it a point to give importance to just one particular instrument during interludes, unlike usual film songs where all the intruments will be competing to contribute to the hubbub. My favorite – Njan Gandharvan

Johnson sir, Your songs will live eternally. May your soul rest in peace. The void you have left can never be filled.