A day and a half in Chennai

The last post on this trip is here...

Have to start becoming a live blogger to catch up on travels these days. New sights, new people.. 

So tend to forget things with a photo/video overload.

We landed in Chennai late on Thursday night and left Chennai Saturday afternoon. 

Within that time frame, we managed to spend a few hours with my parents, San's 95 year old grandma, visit three temples, eat out twice and meet a lot of relatives (leaving out the blog shy ones in the post)

The most special relative we met was the latest addition to the extended family. It has been a long time since I held a baby in my hands. We showed the picture to someone later in the trip and were asked why we decided to have a baby so late.

My father who is not his usual self saw us fall at his feet for blessings and wished us a boy child. We said something about our 25th wedding anniversary and maybe he heard things partly and automatically blessed. Somehow in his mind, us not having a boy is still a "lacking" thing, at least he used to keep telling me that according to my horoscope I am supposed to have female and male children. He would keep asking me how that horoscope could be wrong? We know the time and age he is from where male children are considered the representation of the gene pool. He always means well. 

My dad turned 85 that morning and he was not aware of his birthday. I seem to be the best at playing dumb charades with him and sadly am not close by. We both realized that, in the hour we communicated. He said bye to me as though he was losing his translator or least that was my perception. My only thought was "If by some karma, I end up in this same state with parkinson's, need to train San and some folks around me to play dumb charades regularly, starting now!"

If only Tantra shastra was spread to the masses, things would be different on this boy child business.. that is multiple topics all colliding in my head right now. So that discussion will be sidebared. When my dad finished his blessing in bits and pieces, we just thanked him for it. Told my mom that we are almost ready to have grandkids in a few years.. one topic led to another and we fished out the kids horoscope which my mom had saved all these years! 

Given the short time in Chennai, did I mention how my mom told me to go sit and do parayanam at the local Saradhambaal temple? She prioritized my praying for two out of the three hours! In any case, the goal was to make her happy, so I just went and met with all the familiar folks in the recitation group. They were all happy to see me. Many of them have seen me as a teenager. One thing I miss is this recitation group. Seriously thinking of starting one in Cupertino every Saturday morning. One of the folks even took a photo and sent it to my mom! The mama's are better insta bloggers than me.. and my mom was beaming with happiness that they had good things to say about me. Mamas happy, Mom happy, me happy..

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The nights food at Geetham was still backed up with Upma my mom made me in the morning and still had to eat at Kamakshi mess... India trips are an exercise in stretching your stomach muscles way past what you think you can. 

then there was the first train ride of the trip.. on Rameshwaram express.. brought back so many memories of long train journeys in India.

"Kamalahasanukku porai eri irukkum!" was the thought as we saw this while standing at the door

we were going to see Ramanadhaswamy.. One picture from my aunt's place that stayed with me.. loved this .. all the stores in Mylapore which did framing were still not open when we went to the area.. so could not find it. Maybe on the next trip, will get a print of this!

Will continue the write up of Rameshwaram in a day, the next chance I get..

A fall at a waterfall : Mt. Diablo

Last weekend saw us resume hiking on a serious note.. not the jujube local hikes but a solid long hike in Mt. Diablo to see the waterfalls.  We had already hiked to the top as part of covering the bay area hiking grandslam three years ago and this time we wanted to cover the waterfalls. 

It was all great till I decided to go to the center of the creek to get pictures of the falls.. and fell into the creek. My head missed hitting the rocks, thanks to the backpack. I am very lucky to be writing this post now. Did bruise my elbows and palms badly and there were a few blood clots that showed up within a few minutes. 

San and my friends cheered me up, told me all is well and thanks to adrenalin and waterproof shoes, made it through the rest of the hike. We did slow down a lot because of my fall but made it back in one piece.

Always, always go easy when trying to go over slippery rocks!  There was a discussion on how I am not the same young guy anymore who can deftly go over rocks like a mountain goat, and how I should be more careful etc.. Will be more careful, but hopefully will stay carefree. 

We did get great pictures.. and as San says, even some cheesy ones. 

There is a visitor center where the trail head starts. There is a 6$ parking fee. If you have the app, you can pay from your phone.

We started on the Mitchell canyon road trail head and decided to go counter clockwise to do the hard part of the hike first. 

This was the place where I fell into the creek.. 

After recovering, had to take a picture on the creek side.. 

There are a lot of small and large waterfalls on this trail. They were all beautiful

we covereted Bruce Lee road, Back creek Trail, Meridian point, Donner Trail and Muricho Road as part of the hike.

The sun made the falls light up!

We got to sit and have tea on a rock with a view of the falls.. 

The ladies did some dancing here (which I thought was as risky as me clambering on top of rocks to get a photo).. sadly there is no permission for that masterpiece to be shared in this blog!

the long expsoure mode in iPhone comes in handy, given I did not take the SLR with me on this trip. Usually I do when waterfalls are involved.. given I was taking 2 1/2 liters of water and change of clothes, decided to keep SLR at home. The change of clothes was there in case I sweat too much.. luckily it helped after falling into the creek! In case you are wondering "I don't see different clothes?"... I switched one Bikram Yoga shirt for another.. when your wardrobe is full of the same T-shirt.. changes will not be obvious!

we were talking about seeing god in nature and we saw this "black dog" on the mountain side

Zooming in, saw it was a shadow of a rock outcrop that looks just like a god.. sorry.. dog!

Guess it takes ~ 25 years of marriage before the wife decides some PDA is okay. This seems to be a trend among desi women I see in bay area.. either they turn 50 or have a 25th anniversary party and suddenly they decide enough is enough and start wearing tank tops for their jogs and bikinis to the beach and even start holding hands with their husbands in public! If the stats are any indication of what is to come.. I need to mentally prepare myself. You cannot suddenly ask a domesticated dog to go run wild in the forest.. 

This photo was Photoshopped with two versions of the same photo.. one with Long exposure for the falls and one regular to capture us..

all said and done I am a happy camper..

talking of seeing god everywhere.. there was a "govindaa goooovindaa" moment..

Pay before you start hiking.. or you get a ticket!

A video of all of us crossing the creek 20 times over the hike..

It would have been even better if I had not fallen... but it is what it is. Next time we will go when there is more water and I will be safer walking on rocks!

Happy thanksgiving! Time travel weekend...

This year, my birthday was a simple affair with both the kids making a flying visit for the long weekend. 

After the celeberations were done, jr. and me decided to have some fun. She saw an ad for a service that gets old tapes , negatives etc. and gets them digitized. We had a lot of audio cassettes and video cassettes to be digitized.. but after realizing that the service was ripping us off in shipping fees, decided against using it.

We did however find the old Cassette to MP3 converter and put it to good use. It took us some time to download Audacity app on the Mac and then set it up right so it could read the device! Once we figured it out, it was fun to check what was in those cassettes. 

Most of them were tapes I had accumulated to practice dancing.. one was full of Latin songs, one was all waltzes, one was a mix tape that simply said "To Miss. Smooth, with love, Part 1" and Jr.'s looks at me with raised eyebrows and asks "so I take it that it is a mix tape you made for your girlfriend?". Told her it was for a friend and she did take the part 2.

Then I found two cassettes from Sruthi, an organization in Philadelphia which had organized a Lalgudi concert with his kids in 1993. Remember setting up the mics for it and getting free admission to the concert. We also got to spend the evening with the artists at a professors house. In India, I could never think of being up close and personal with greatness like that! 

Brought back so many memories of how my association with music has always been touch and go.

There was a cassette with Tamil movie songs which my Chitti's had recorded and sent me as a gift. Even today my Chitti's (mom's younger sisters) are my biggest supporters when it comes to encouraging me to sing in Smule! I recognize my Lalli chitti's handwriting on that list.. she would write so beautifully and fast! 

30 years later have sang a lot of those songs.. the ones I missed, will definitely sing! Did not know this cassette was still around till today!

 

Used to get 20 cassettet tapes as a package at Sam's club (think Costco in the early 90's). Had the habit of recording radio stations while sitting alone in the lab doing experiments.. kind of a time capsuley thing.. 

Some of them were from 1993/94, then 96, 98.. It was wild listening to the commercials from those times (mostly beer  and car commercials!). Jr. was having so much fun Shazaming the songs and got a taste of what music daddy was listening to 30 years ago! There were multiple radio stations in PHiladelphia/ Wilmington Delaware, then Albany/Troy NY.. and some Latin tapes that were too rare for the Shazam app!

Then we found some old gold!  There was a copy of me singing Kandar shasthi kavasam at 4 years old. It was the first time my voice was recorded on the cassette player that my Ambi mama bought. The whole family was impressed with the ability to record and replay.. and my reciting slokas was used as the trial run!

My grandpa had saved that cassette and given it to me in 1995. It had made it through all the moving over the years and is now an MP3 .. better a Youtube video. 

Then we found my Naadi Josiyam tapes.. which was one of the reasons for starting this exercise. A long conversation with my friends mom yesterday on how things seem to be predetermined to a large extent in our lives and the best way to use this knowledge wisely to navigate through life.. even if it is all meant to be! 

A separate post on that later!

It has been a fun weekend so far, going back in time with my kid!