At Gubbi

The weekend before we went to Coorg, I went to a rural area near Gubbi, Karnataka to meet Chitra Krishnan, a batch mate at IIT who is doing organic agriculture there with a couple of friends. Chitra is a cool person, a PhD from IIT Delhi who worked on irrigation systems (traditional tanks I think) for her thesis. I went with Balaji a common friend and batchmate. It was quite a humbling experience. They want to do farming as simply and authentically as possible so they do pretty much all the work manually. The land is quite infertile, and they are slowly regenerating it using natural fertilizers. We spent some time harvesting toor dal and pumping water. It was disturbing seeing how austerely they have chosen to live.

I've been doing short trips on consecutive weekends. Before Gubbi I was in Chennai to look at some land to purchase (!!!!!!), and during the week a day trip to Mysore for the wedding of a colleague.

PS: A hi to Siddharth who posted a comment recently. How's doing. I'm still up for a group lunch. Was at Juniper to catch up recently but couldn't find you.

A little more on Coorg: The cluster of tiled roof buildings photo below particularly struck me and it came out well. This was part of a fort. Its currently a prison.

Can you see two different animals in the sculpture (frieze?) above ?

The other picture is of our hosts at the homestay, Mr and Mrs Pran Ponappa, very friendly and pleasant.


We were at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Bylakuppe at the time when a large hall of monks were doing chanting. It was pretty cool. I got a video showing the monks, but without audio. The monastery had all these monks quite happy and well-fed looking, who spend their lives, from our limited half hour worth of understanding, chanting, studying the scriptures, meditating and so on. I don't think they earn a living, looked like they get their funds from outside. It doesn't seem quite right..not what the Buddha intended ? On the other hand if people paid you to spend your time understanding the true nature of reality, well that's a good thing. I s'pose.

Everything about Coorg is nice.
The people are very friendly -- we stayed at a homestay, with a very pleasant family who made us feel very much at home.
The weather is very bracing (though not during the rainy season apparently) and the main town of Madikere is small unspoilt, untouristy and un-trafficky.
The coorgis (actually called coorgs, or kodavas) are a people with lots of personality and character and its fun to read about them and see the artifacts of their existence.
There are plantations with peaceful quiet atmosphere and long walks, although we didn't get to do much of that on this trip.
There's a lot of interesting stuff around: beekeeping, the origin of the Cauvery, other Cauvery stuff, and a Tibetan monastery , to name a few.

Go to Coorg. I'm glad we did.
If you want to pool together and buy a holiday home there, add a comment.

Driving Shekhar Kapur

Shekhar Kapur visited our office today. He's concerned about water issues and wants to make a film on it called "Paani". Its a cool plot, set in a bleak future, at a time of horrific water scarcity. More about Paani at his interview on the Portal:
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/Network/interview/citizens/sk_eng.html
He also has a cool blog:
http://www.shekharkapur.com

We got a group photo with him, may post it later.
I dropped him off at his friends' place on my scooter after the meeting :-).

Priya and I are going to Madikere (Coorg) this weekend.