Tag: Baahubali

Palani to Kodaikanal

Day 2:

Mr.Bee and I woke up at 4:30 a.m on the advice of the hotel admin. He informed us that we selected a particularly important day to visit the temple and warned us that the temple crowd would be akin to mini-size Kumbh Mela. He was not wrong! It was Shashti thithi, which is auspicious as Vel Murugan a.k.a Karthikeya was said to be born on that thithi.

I looked out of the windows, (our room 2** had a balcony facing the hill) and saw the most beautiful view.

Mr.Bee and I, discussed among ourselves and decided to wake GBee up first.

GBee was confused about why there was no sunlight outside and thanks to his EVS lesson in grade 2, he knows what an eclipse is! I told him, we just woke up early to visit the Murugan temple.

During bath, I heard peacocks making wailing calls! If you hear a peacock wailing or crowing near by, it is generally assumed as a sign of presence of snakes. That too if you hear them in the premises of a very popular Murugan temple, whose deity Himself is a snake, then what more to add to that? My heart was filled with devotion and fervour.

After both Mr.Bee and KBee were ready, we rushed to the winch queue. We can either climb the 700 odd steps to the temple or go in a winch to the temple which is situated on top of a hill.

The winch and the scenic beauty!

We spent 2 hours in the winch queue and hardly moved 20m from our initial spot. If you are going to popular temples, you should mentally prepare yourself that you will be pushed, shoved, verbally abused, on top of it, physically tired too!

By the time it was 6:30 a.m. , an announcement had been made that devotees need to take a break and return after 6 hours! (That’s was how heavy the flow of devotees had been to Palani)

I felt upset and low, as it seemed we may not return to the temple. We didn’t want to harass our kids by waiting in the hot weather and climbing 700 steps with 2 kids below the age of 8, seemed preposterous! We resigned to our fate and accepted defeat.

We shopped for Velaayudham and I got myself a photo frame of Dhandayudhapani (Murugan). I remembered we had not visited the Vinayagar and Meenakshi Amman temples in the premises. We visited both and returned to the hotel. KBee only ate a couple of biscuits and GBee didn’t even have those.

At the Hotel, the admin saw our disappointment and advised us to visit the other Murugan temple 5 minutes away from our hotel. He informed us that this one was the original Dhandayudhapani Murugan temple, which was later relocated to the top of the hill. We visited the temple by walk and I remember a middle aged gentleman who entered the temple with us, stayed with us, asked me to go to the front and let me pray to Murugan in peace. He was no where to be seen after talking to me.  (It felt like divine intervention, an emotionally charged moment for me)

After our breakfast, which was below average, we packed the soveneirs, checked out from the hotel and started for our next stop, Kodaikanal. Woohoo!

In barely 2 hours, we reached Kodaikanal. The driver, N made a brief stop at the outskirts, for his breakfast. He had an omelette.  Mr.Bee and I ordered tea, which was ‘one-sorry- excuse-of-a-tea’ and I poured it down the drain! (When travelling,  one should adjust to eating mediocre food and drinks or not buy them at all!)

We checked into Pine Borough, Room ££, which was built such that it was half way into the hill and that made it extremely cold to live in! We had to rent a room heater from the hotel, to stay warm!

We ordered food by WhatsApping the reception desk, sat in the afternoon Sun, under the patio umbrellas. KBee and GBee were famished and so was I, it was 2 p.m.

Mr.Bee and GBee engaged in the cell, while KBee and I chatted away.

Even though KBee was hungry and it was well past his lunch time, he suggested that the bugs were hungry and not him!

We had our lunch in the room, rested a little while and then spent a good hour in the garden outside.

As the weather became colder and since we started hearing strange sounds ( like that of a rattle), we returned to our room. The kids played with their dozen Hot Wheel cars, whereas Mr.Bee and I watched Baahubali, dubbed in Hindi!

After having Dadu’s snacks and a late dinner, we called it a day!

P.S:

1. At the entrance to Kodaikanal, one lady officer, bent down inside our car and nabbed our plastic bottles. Plastic is banned in Kodaikanal,  just like in Ooty and Tirumala!

2. I had a wild guess that the rattling sound must mean a rattle snake, since we were staying on a hill resort. God knows if I am correct or not.

3. GBee,  still in the mood to count the windmills, began counting bikes (since there are no windmills in Kodai) and his total reached to 172!

4. Interestingly,  one of the admins at the Kodai resort was named Palani!

5. The recent war atmosphere in India had an effect on me, so I could hardly write. That is the reason for my late post. #IndianArmy, #OperationSindoor.

Till the next post, cheerio!

Chhaava

We just returned home from the second show of Chhaava and I should say it is not really a Valentine’s day material!

Anyway…

During Christmas 2024, we had visited Maharastra and that was when I decided to start researching a little about Chhatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj. I also found out a little about Chhatrapathi Sambhaji Maharaj. I didn’t know then about the movie, but I found out that a city has been re-named after Chhatrapathi Sambhaji Maharaj and found it fascinating.

The trailer caught my attention in it’s tight grasp and I asked Mr.Bee to take me to this movie, even though I knew the ending of the story, thanks to my online research! (Yup, this movie was our Valentine’s day movie date!)

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The Ugly Butterfly

Those were the ‘Happy Days’ of my life! (Just like the Telugu movie, Happy Days, set in CBIT, Hyderabad, this post is of me, during my Engineering College days.)

During those days, the only worries I ever had were, does my dress look too flashy? Will the seniors decide to rag me because of my dress? What seminar should I attend? What is my attendance percentage? Is it really above 75% ?

Anyway, I have always been insect friendly.  So, naturally, the ever beautiful butterflies were also among my friends, who caught my attention every now and then. But don’t go imagining the beautiful Costa Rican blue butterflies here!

Blue Butterflies = luck

The Costa Ricans actually  believe that spotting a blue butterfly means luck is on your side. (Lucky Shivudu. Spotting a group of blue butterflies must be the reason he could climb the waterfalls, defying death! This is part of Baahubali story. Hope you watched it. It is one of the most iconic scenes, with a magnificent waterfalls in the backdrop. Never was CGI used more beautifully for creating a waterfall)

The butterfly that I am actually referring to was a far cry from these beauties. Although our Engineering college campus had its share of huge farmland insects, thanks to all the farm lands and vineyards around our campus, this one was a surprise.  I had seen big grasshoppers the size of my hand, beetles the size of lemons and some insects whose names I don’t even know.

After a fun filled day at college, I was exhausted and I lept on to my bed , ready to end the day.  We (me and sister shared our bedroom) chatted away, after turning off the light in our room. I turned to my side in my bed and put my hand on the pillow beside me. My hand touched something and I felt something flee the spot, like rushing away! I jumped out of my bed, ran towards my sister’s bed and turned on the light! I saw the most surprising thing ever!

It was a huge butterfly, with each wing, a little bigger than the size of my hand, whose wings were as rough as the skin of a crocodile! It was wheatish in colour. (That must have been the reason I couldn’t spot it before sleeping. Camouflage!)  It was completely different from the notion I had of butterflies and the tender love I always had for the colourful beauties vanished!

Once we spotted the butterfly, all hell broke loose!

The Ugly Butterfly, refusing to budge, while I and sis were at wits end.

We began jumping up and down, crying out loud. Our commotion brought my parents into our room. We demanded our dad to chase it away or we wouldn’t sleep at all.  After 10 minutes of extreme effort with a mop, dad managed to chase it out. It was such a stubborn butterfly refusing to budge. It must have been scared about the commotion it was creating!

Sadly, one of its wings was hurt. (It was unintentional. Seeing such a butterfly in our midst made us adamant. We wanted it out of our room at any cost.) I am mostly a forgiving person, but once it perched on my bed, I knew it was better to get rid of it. I can still remember how I felt when I touched it by mistake!

Looking back, I now understand that, even in the midst of the concrete jungle, a wild butterfly managed to survive!

P.S:

1.  Our college chairman once said during our Annual day celebrations, that he was torn between, whether to use the land to ‘grow’ grapes in his vineyard or to use the land to build the college to ‘grow’ students!

Our college was in the middle of farms and vineyards. I also remember seeing Sunflowers each morning. Happy Days indeed!

2. One of Mr.Bee’s friend, J from our days in Charlotte had presented him with a souvenir of a Blue Butterfly, after his trip to Costa Rica. That’s how I got to know the significance of the blue butterflies.

More posts coming up. Till then, cheerio!

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