MIXED BAG

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu PART ONE MY DIARY DATED 3-3-04—DURING A LONG MYSORE TRIP TWO DECADES AGO. WE STARTED FOR OOTY ON THE MOUNTAINOUS ROAD Next morning (i.e morning of 3rd March 04 ) we woke up by 4am. We switched on TV and simultaneously started our journey preparations. Our journey to Ooty was to start around 7-30am . On 3rd March our tight program did not include Mysuru but a road trip to Ooty through jungle and mountainous roads . The distance from Mysore to Ooty --for travel by the winding mountain roads with about 35 hair pin bends---is about 150 kms. It takes about four and half hours only for the up trip and another four and half hours for the down trip. At 7am we ordered light breakfast and coffee upstairs into our room. We quickly started off to the bus stop. We also took our sweaters as per advice of the travel operator when we talked to him on phone. It may be very cold at Ooty even by 3pm or 4pm, people in the van also said. By 7-30 the Swaraj Mazda v...

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu (1) MY DIARY DATED 2-3-04—ABOUT OUR VISIT TO THE HILL TOP TEMPLE OF THE GREAT GODDESS SRI CHAMUNDESWARI It was only 6pm(2-3-04) and was not yet dark. We had still the most important( fixed) program of visit to the famed Sri Chamundeswari Temple on the hill. We immediately took an auto to the bus stand. Luckily there was a bus about to leave for Sri Chamundeswari hill and we entered it . We all could get seats . It has to be noted that all through the day and also in the evenings there are sufficient vehicles, government buses and private cabs, for taking people to the hill top every 15 minutes. The bus moved speedily through the wide roads. After travelling for a time through the outskirts the bus started climbing the hill and entered the forest area . Quickly it was gaining height. The grand royal palace (the main royal palace complex) and the famous and the most beautiful majestic Lalith Mahal palace (shining like a dazzling precious gem and now an interna...

 By PragyanSharma Polavarapu (1) DIARY TEXT 2-3-2004-A TIGHT PROGRAM-A VISIT TO THE GRAND ROYAL PALACE IN MYSURU ON 2-3-2004 Because we had to follow a government approved tour program , we could not take rest even for a day at Bengaluru even though we visited our daughter after an year . We all decided that on our return from Mysore and Ooty we would stop for a day or two at Bangalore. So,on with our exciting trip.It was really very painful but we had to hurry within a few hours as per our fixed tour program . We had to start for Mysore by 11am bus. My younger daughter, ( a college student pursuing computer science) , was the happiest of us. She was very happy that her sister was coming with us to Mysore and Ooty. Our son-in-law had to be at his office by 10am to attend a important staff meeting . He started for his office and wished us a happy journey. My elder daughter was very happy to travel with us and be with us for three days. We started by auto to the big a...

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu DIARY TEXT 1-3-04 HYDERABAD TO MYSORE AND OOTY-A JOURNEY 22YEARS BACK AFTER RETIREMENT (1) On Monday the 1st of March at about 10 am my wife, my younger daughter and I started our journey from the distant district town. We travelled to the the central bus station and got into a super-express bus to Hyderabad easily. The season was not yet hot. The bus started at about 11am travelling through the calm rural outskirts. Cool air streamed through the bus. There were endless green fields . Greenery and calm every where.There were blue hills in the distance. But in an hour it grew a little hot . On the way I got down at a roadside big village and had tea in a thatched hut.It was a pleasant little experience. By 3-20 pm we reached the big Hyderabad central bus station .It had dozens of plat forms with scores of buses entering and leaving. Every platform had big name boards. The endless rows of cement benches were full with people. The tea stal...

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu (1) INTRODUCTION A TRIP TO MYSURU TWO DECADES BACK - A BEAUTIFUL ROYAL CAPITAL WITH DAZZLING PALACES AND GREAT TEMPLES This matter is written --almost copied from a very old dairy of mine discovered after 22years accidentally during a casual search of a cabinet containing old books. The diary was not a simple old book but acted like a cinema projector generating images of 22 years back when I read it page by page, sentence by sentence! There was date wise narration, in total a matter of about sixty pages in a continuous section of the book ,about a visit to Mysuru and Ooty at that time. I remember the trip well even now as it was such a wonderful trip to a beautiful cool neat city of palaces,temples and gardens. Mysuru ( in faraway southern Karnataka state about 800 kilometers from Hyderabad) is one of the cleanest cities of India with a cool pleasant climate and is also famous wide and straight streets with gorgeous royal buildings and grea...

By Pragyansharma Polavarapu A SIMPLE STORY OF HINDU PHILOSOPHY 3000 years ago ancient Vedic Aryan philosophers meditating in the beautiful forests of Himalayan foot hills concluded that human life is most holy, that a soul equivalent to god almighty himself exists in every creature and that man after a cycle of hundreds of thousands of births gets a permanent place in god’s high heaven made of 100% divinity. It was a picture of happiness and high morality treating earthly life as unreal and treating only the god’s heaven as real. India is a vast multiracial society boxed between seas and icy high mountains. Since 3000 years the philosophy of high spirituality and otherworldliness was preached by Ramayana and Mahabharatha.Lord Buddha(5th century BC) a mighty royal prince renounced his kingdom and power and worked for 50 years among the poor and downtrodden people along with his great disciples and worked tirelessly for uplift of socially backward people. The philosophers recogniz...