Lalita Iyer

  A WEEKEND TRIP have travelled to Guntur and further to a village called Kakumanu, for a ceremony. Travelling by road for me is like a chocolate to a small child and I remain in a constantly excited state till my return. I wanted to take the Nalgonda road to reach Guntur, but good old vahan chalak Raju, in all his wisdom did not trust my directions, nor Google Maps, so we ended up on the same boring Vijayawada road. Then he would not stop near a tea shop. Was miffed with him for sometime. The mighty Krishna has totally dried up and there is no whiff of rains. And the flyover from the start of Vijayawada to almost Benz Circle showed vast expanses of sand and the beautifully coloured temple entrance and the Gopuram of the Durgamma temple. Then once again vast expanses of sand as we took the road to Guntur. Our drinking water is from Krishna, I thought. And with no rains in Maharashtra this poor perennial river is dry. The Musi is dry. Farmers are in trouble. Prices will go up.... Sa...

  BLOWING CONCHES AND TWO LEAVES It rained and Chandigarh broke an all time record by experiencing 322mm rainfall in the span of 24 hours. The Tricity as Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula are called has never experienced such a spell. There was a lull in the afternoon yesterday, but it seems to have made up in the night. We all went decked up for the Bengali-Iyengar wedding and since the muhurtam time was 6.23 pm to 7.15, we landed well ahead of time. The pandits came much later and started making arrangements. This was good, for one of pandit arrived from Delhi and few flights had been cancelled. We changed seats often for a good view. All went for a toss soon. Rahul came looking handsome in a dhoti, kurta and angavastram. Not at all Iyengar. And then he sported the Bengali style topor. He still continued to look like a Sikh is another dress. No food or booze. They had been asked to serve only after shaadi was done. At about 8.45 pm the bride arrived and was made to sit on a small ...

  KHADA DUPATTA AT A GURUDWARA The Gurudwara Sahib Patshahi Dasvin, at Sector 8 C, Chandigarh is a stately and impressive Gurudwara and could be this side of being 100 years. Earlier this place was at a village called Kali Badd. The Sikh wedding between Rahul and Jasmine was to take place here. We all covered our heads and sat quiet. Rahul, the groom is a product of Iyengar and Bengali DNA. But with his turban, and sharp, majestic nose, he looked like an asli Sardar. Jasmine, the bride, as her name suggests was a wisp of a girl wearing a khada ghagra and odhni, with stunning jewellery. She needed help from two people and Rahul to stand up and sit down and then matha thekne ke liye. We of course waited to be served the khada prasad,  even as we all enjoyed the Shabad kirtans. It was pouring cats and dogs when we stepped out to come to the Ramada Plaza for a  reception from the girl's side. Timing is of no concern when it comes to such hybrid shaadis. They have a ceremony w...

  PATTU PODAVAIS AND RAINS IN A FORT I thought the Fort Ramgarh, Panchkula, Chandigarh would be a regular hotel, made to look like a fort. But it was a real fort and has a history. And because of internicine wars, the fort was split and the better part has gone to the Ramgarh Heritage hotel. This here is a 360 year-old property and was built by the Chandel Rajputs, who were descendants of Chandel Dynasty which ruled Central India from 800-1182 AD. This fort has been turned into a heritage hotel. A 37 feet high door welcomes you at the entrance and holds the 'Limca Book of World Records' for being the tallest wooden door in India. The original door was broken during the 1857 mutiny. Later a replica was built in 80s by Kanwar Mohan Singh.  Each panel weighs 21 quintals.  The hotel is a wonderful amalgamation of old-world charm, modern comforts, which means steep stairs of red oxide and well tiled lobbies. Since heavy rains started as of the 8th morning, rivulets of water fl...

  BADRINATH TEMPLE, BANDA MAILARAM, EXIT NO 6 The state's own Badrinath, a replica of the original temple popular as the Char Dham Yatra. Now, Telangana has its own Badrinath - one of the holy hill shrines of the Char Dham yatra. Badrivishal Dham, has come up in small village in Medchal district, Bandamailaram, 40 km from Hyderabad. On Thursday, it was finally thrown open to devotees with a special puja. Over 500 devotees of nearby hamlets thronged to the temple for a darshan of lord Badri Narayan. Built by Uttarakhand Kalyankari Sanstha, an NGO comprising close to 30,000 members, the temple is sprawled over 1,550 square yards. While the original Badrinath temple in Uttarakhand is open only for four months a year - May to June and September to October - this temple will be open round the year. "We started our search for an appropriate place in 2011. We searched all four corners of the city and finally, after three years, identified this land," said Vikram S...

  BREAKFAST WITH ROSE MILK They say breakfast should be eaten like a king. Then the Karpagambal Mess in Mylapore, opposite the Kapaleeshwaran Temple, is the place to be in for the most easy on the stomach and purse. And I speak with such confidence because I am vegetarian and I love my familiar breakfast in the radius of idli and dosai and all things made of rice and steamed. I can drool over an aaloo parantha or a hot buttered toast with equal passion, but consistent emotions are reserved for the essential South Indian breakfast. Mylapore is at the core of the Tamil Brahmin culture of Madras (don't mind if I call it by the old familiar name. That way I am quite sentimental). While it is also the oldest settlements, it can also be equally claustrophobic, with it's cheek by jowl buildings, with not much of natural lighting or any form of ventilation. Some new structures are coming up, even as streaks of modernity (read Western) juxtapose with the very, very traditional. While th...

  A THANKSGIVING TO THE LORDS Trupthi is a beautiful word, probably emerging in Sanskrit and now accepted in various other Indian languages. The easy meaning to it is 'satisfying and pleasing'. But it is slightly more than that. One would use this word only if one is deeply and completely satisfied. The soul should also be agreeable. This is when we can happily say God is in heaven and all is right with the world. My parents left me an apartment in Chennai, which after 18 years finally saw the skill of redevelopment and it got registered to my name. I went to thank the gods and send a thank you to my parents. They would have been happy to see the place. Meera, my sister in law and an extremely agreeable person and I went to the famous Triplicane Parthasarathy temple, dedicated to Vishnu. The name 'Parthasarathy' means 'charioteer of Arjuna'. And here Krishna sports a moustache. Tiruvelikenni, the area where the temple is situated is also known as the Brindavan o...

  EVENING WITH AN AUTHOR AND MALLAIKA ARORA Attended yet another programme organised by the CEO Clubs, Hyderabad chapter. This was after quite a gap because most of this crowd travels to cooler climes for two months or more. They are like those collective birds which migrate. Yes, they can afford it. Good for them. Some of them have returned and so there was quite a decent crowd at the Drawing Room of the Park Hyatt. There was a dialogue between prolific author Manu S Pillai and Resident Editor, Deccan Chronicle Sriram Karri. Sriram also is an author and an orator. The base topic was history with stories about valour, riches, intrigues from the kings of Deccan, Vijayanagara and Travancore Empires. Who does not like a little nugget on how the king slept with the queen. Well, apparently in separate rooms once their first mating was done under observation! We were gifted with two books by Pillai and one of them was 'The ivory throne, chronicles of the house of Travancore'. After h...

  GODA AMMA AND HER BANGLES It is a bit of a bother if you want to go some place where you get some peace with a sense of history. Something about these historical structures that let you take a ride into times of bygone years, of course with some imagination. The peace and dust just settles upon you, along with tall rooted trees, bird call and of course hordes of pigeons. They look good here, the pigeons, not on my window ledge or near my pots. I keep a separate dish for water for this ever hungry, ever thirsty and ever in hunt for a place to build a nest birds. But they will drink off of the pots and the plates below them. Must be like salad dressing for them. And they eat every bud, evry tender leaf struggling to start a new life. Now, I am looking for a pea shooter. But in an ancient structure, these birds seem comfortable, as are parakeets and several other birds, which create a huge racket before settling down. Ancient temples are famous for their overgrowth, for their old tr...

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AMAR What is it with reminiscing? A bunch of senior journalists get together and they begin to discuss about circa 1990. Probably because they were in their prime and those days they did a lot including making phone calls on a regular rotary dial phone. They must have had small black books and a phenomenal memory too. Those were exciting days, filled with travel, meeting people on the spot, discussing stuff face-to-face. And of course there was the Press Club. Then it was opposite the Nizam College, two floors above the Blue Diamond Hotel. That still remains one of my favorite Chinese joints. Is it still there? Is it still there? The bar used to be one floor below and we would walk up to the terrace and sit on the edge of it fearlessly. We would be parked below huge posters, even as we were served our drinks and snacks, while the sporty ones would play table tennis in the tiny room there. Exciting times. Once my boss called me to his room and told me to behave m...