I didn't intend the impressionistic effects, it must have been the low light

Priya and I went to Chennai (for a marriage) and thence to Thiruvannamalai, with my parents. Thiruvannamalai has one of the gigantic temples typical of Tamil Nadu and also the ashram where Ramana Maharshi lived.

Something about him at : http://www.arunachala-ramana.org/ and the inimitable Saarlo's Guru rating service gives him three stars : http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/RatingsA.htm#ramana
I've read about him a little -- quite an interesting life.

There is a holy hill at this place, and its a practice to circumambulate the hill ('girivallam' in the local argot) for brownie points. Its a 14 km walk. Self, mom and spouse did it, starting at 4 in the morning and ending around 10. Its supposed to be done barefoot, but my mother and I didn't dare, Priya did and is much to be congratulated. My mom is also much to be congratulated for finishing the walk at her age.

There are plans for a scary midsummer trip to Shirdi Sai Baba's place in Maharashtra with my wife's sister's family. I'm hoping to either cop out, or branch off and go to Ellora and Ajanta instead.

Work n' stuff

Several things have been going on and haven't had much opportunity to write about them. There are lot of things that come to mind to write about, especially for the other blog, but just don't get around to doing it. I wish I could figure out podcasting.

Life at work has become sort of surreal blur of events. Work has become an infinte number of threads and its all blurring together (mostly in a nice way). Sharada Prasad, renaissance man and my colleague on the Water Portal is taking off for a 19000km 75 day bike ride across the country with the theme of water. I came up with a snappy title -- "In Search of Water" -- the allusion being to the long distances people (usually women) need to go to fetch water. Anyway, a lot of media has gotten all interested in the trip, the high point being a likely BBC radio interview for the program "The World Today". A lot of NGOs have also shown interest in hosting him on the trip and its been nice.

Check out http://www.indiawaterportal.org/k2k for more on the trip. If you're in India, you can be part of an interesting experiment we're trying, using SMS. You can sign up for SMS updates from him on what's going on, on the trip. I don't remember the instructions to sign up, will post them later.

The N man came in for one of his occasional reviews and feedback of Arghyam's work. As always an interesting experience. The last time I blogged about him he picked it up on his google alerts and I was quite mortified. Lets see if he catches this one.

Another interesting but more water-specific post on the Portal blog here:

http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2008/02/09/on-the-hidden-cost-of-free-water/

My trip report after a visit to Mutyalappa is here:
http://www.ashanet.org/projects-new/documents/854/5_6april08.doc