Vizag Snippets 4

On the morning of Saturday, the 27 th, we ..(husband, Hyma and Bavagaru)....drove to Devipuram......Nearly 30 to 35 Km from Vizag, on the Anakapalli route....After going through some of the unending suburban localities, the road finally cut away from the main route and ofcource all along the country side was utterly delightful, ....Soon after 15 to 20 minutes of driving on a narrow, dusty, deserted road brought us to a sign- Board which announced DEVIPURAM.....You have to turn right and go through a very thick, silent cashew-nut grove before stopping at the temple..(ashram?) gates.....

A clearing has been made in the middle of a dense cashew-nut grove that was hemmed in by lush green hills, and a neat,lotus shaped, three storied temple stood there....The top most stairs houses the goddess SAHASRAKSHI,--the main deity---and was fashioned like a MERU .....To the onlookers from a distance, it would look like the crowned head of a DEVI....At the ground level, there is another sanctum and an image of the deity directly under the main sanctum upstairs and also receives poojas .... The temple is surrounded by three virtual circles, adorned at specific points by the images of !108 goddesses of the KHDGAMALA STHOTHRAM......Sadly i do not know much about the sthothram......I think the idea is that 108 goddesses surround and stand guard over the Ammavaru....or ...Sri chakram... or may be MANIDWEEPAM...the supposed abode of the DEVI......The names of all the goddesses are written on placards before every one of them, giving us an idea of who they are.....SMRITHYAKARSHINI,...SABDAAKARSHINI<... GANDHAKARSHINI...etc.....
As far as i know.....SRICHAKRAM is an euphemism for our body and the above goddesses are the powers,...or capabilities,...or ...the life forces it possesses....



As the names themselves suggest....Gandhakarshini------attractor of scents

sabdakarshini------attractor of sounds


There are many others and ofcource, as said before i was handicapped by my ignorance of the sthothram to sufficiently understand the intricacies of the temple science....I realized the fact there it self and rued the lack of time we had, even to make to an attempt at it...

The temple has been built by the efforts of one Sri.Dr. Nishtala Prahlada Sasthry garu,---previously a scientist with BA RC, it seems he took a voluntary retirement from it---, who kept having the visions of Devi.....It has been stated that she appeared before him, conversed, and ran after him like a young girl....calling him NANNAGARUUU...-dad-...All the 108 images of the goddesses were stated to have been sculpted just as he had seen them in his vision....



Interestingly, what makes this temple unique is the reported statement of Sasthry garu, that the place is a KAMAKHYA PEETHAM....He insists that the Devi her self informed him of the fact....That meant that,here at Devipuram, the goddess is not just a mother figure nor the queen of creation,but also is in her most feminine form of a fertile, young wife of the Eeswar....Nubile, erotic, and eager, here, she is determined to continue her infinite union with her lord and teaches us to notice and respect the fact....In fact all the images are that of a scantily clad young woman, ,....but notably with appropriate MUDRAS....And...the big board at the precincts of the temple advises the visitors to appreciate the fact that this universe has been created out of the grand union of Siva- Parvathi, and one should not be ashamed or feel prudish about it but must learn to view it as unenbarassedly as we worship a siva-lingam.....Sceptics might take this otherwise....Certainly it would be embarrassing for an Indian woman to watch the images in company of strange men....(On second thoughts...it might be quite easy if you can watch our movies).....Psychiatrists might have their own theories about it....Moralists might take their own line....Whatever might be, i guess there wont be a dispute on the basic principle of the theory....

Not many people know about Devipuram and it is getting into the news just lately.....That might have been one reason we found it almost devoid of visitors....Few resident young girls,a priest or two and a gentleman..(looked like a volunteer, and a bit too determined to collect some sort of donations from us )...)... were seen occupied with the routine temple management chores.....We took a tour of the whole place and later a priest conducted a small pooja for us....

It may sound flippant but i seriously think that faith ...like love ...can take you at once and unawares....May be it is all in the mind.....I don't know....You are there, beating around, and something, somewhere, attracts you and you are convinced that it is It...The Truth....Might not be very reasonable to others but makes perfect sense to you....May be that is why it is called FAITH....To Hyma it happened as she stood looking at the image of one of the Khadgamala deities....It was of a young mother nursing her baby....Hyma says she inexplicably smelt a sudden pervading scents of milk wafting around....That, and few more experiences convinced her of the presence of Devi to her........I myself had a pleasant experience of offering 108 kaluvapoolu to the deity, which had been a long cherished dream of mine, which never seemed to materialize before ...........

GOD is omni-present....ofcource....Only you tend to get reminded of it at very few places....Devipuram did that to us, though before going there i Was rather sceptical...Frankly i was not too enthusiastic about the Kamakhya concept...Even now i can not say i understand it....For, however liberal and educative it may sound, it Is a double-edged sword and in the hands of unscrupulous could degenerate into some thing sickening, as we all know too well what happened with the tantrik practices of yore....But i could feel a certain TRUTH there that convinced me.....Do not know if others could feel the same too....An instance of this......When i presented the kaluvapoolu, the priest , who was in a hurry said that he would offer them to the deity upstairs as he was going there anyway...I agreed and we returned to Vizag and from there to Hyderabad itself....but all along there was lingering doubt in my mind on whether they reached the Mother.....Just as i entered our gates at Hyderabad and going in, a magazine from Jillellamudi welcomed us from the letter-box and it was like this......



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On the evening of the same day we boarded our bus to Hyderabad.....Yes...I know we have sinned....Sinned abominably by not visiting Araku and Ananthagiri...But sadly we had no time for it, and before that Bavagaru drove us around Vizag....Just like that....to get the feel of the city, i suppose....And it was delightful....

One surprising thing about the city was the great influx of visitors from Orissa and Bengal....This is quite common, Hyma told me....Every year, in October and December, Bengalees and Oriyans visit here in large numbers....Seems they have durga pooja holidays during this time and Vizag is teeming with them in all places.....Kailasagiri , beaches, the C.M.R halls.....Specially the C.M.R halls...as Bengal is a communist state and mall culture still has not stepped in,it seems , they go bonkers over the Chandana and Bommana complexes....The hotels are full, the cabs are full, the shops are full...The funniest point was when a coconut vendor at rushikonda beach welcomed us in Bengali to buy his wares....

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Rushikonda beach was a delight.....Lying on the Bheemlee road,far from the madding crowds,it is shallower and therefore safer than others and waters are purer...Beautiful cottages have been built on the hill slopes and i daresay the view from them would be enchanting....A slow drive along the road ,flanked on one side by the sea and belts of casuarina would be just lovely....

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This is a slightly different coastal city as i have observed.....The weather is drier, less humid than others, though that would be a hasty judgement to make after a visit in winter ...Again there is"'nt too much sand sticking to your feet....perhaps that was because of it being a rocky terrain...almost in the valley of eastern ghats, so to speak....

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The Sea And Hyma 2

This time round Hyma has got a flat right on the R.K beach road...(During their previous sojourn,they used to stay at MVP colony, which had no sea view).. .A two-bed affair with a big window and a sit-out over looking the sea,..which i must say is a rare kind of gift that only very few people get to have....and even those who get it rarely have the time or mood to enjoy it....Now, she has found her most pleasurable passtime....Baywatch......Dont go by the title and drool over the prospect....Fortunately or unfortunately bikini-clad beauties still have"nt yet taken to haunting Vizag beaches....Not yet...

I got a call from her one afternoon ...They had just them moved to Vizag and the new flat...

"hey,..what do you think i am doing?"...She gleefully enquired...." standing in my balcony and watching the sea..."

"oh...Is that so,near?"...I was pleased...

"Yeeeaaaah..."...She chuckled..."i can see the sea from three of my balconies, and ships are moving like autos do on a road.".....You can bet i went green with envy...

Thus began her love affair with sea....(Ofcource it is not as if she is watching the sea for the first time...Even previously they were regularly visiting it on sundays..But not by as close quarters.)...Everyday after Bavagaru goes out to his work, Hyma settles down in her balcony, with a pair of binoculars too...(a gift from Bavagaru..encouraging her to pursue this interest).. and mounts on to her self-appointed duty....Bay watch....She laughingly says that there is every danger of her being appointed a coast guard one of these days....


...And ..she has a lovely view of it.........From the sit-out you have a broad side view of the beach road and uninterrupted sea.. Early morning sun comes and turns the waters into sparkling liquid gold....The mid-day would be languorously sultry,..as the sun shimmers down and waters seem to send a glare across,... while in the evening the moon comes and,passing her wand across, cools them into rustling silver foil... Ships can be seen standing afar,.. ...From her kitchen balcony you can watch great, smoky, lumbering ships slowly disappearing behind the Dolphin"s nose as they ease in to the harbour....During nights the sight is more enchanting .... Some of the ships pass on distantly,, as though brilliantly lit cities are gliding along.. ..While others stand silently, gently swaying ...,and sometime in the mid-night you wake up ,look at the reassuring lights and peacefully go back to sleep....

At about three in the early mornings, scores of little fishing boats with brave white sails lit up by feeble lamps, can be seen bobbing away on to the high seas from Rushikonda..... And it looks as though the sea is a big lake and has thrown up innumerable white single petalled kaluvapoolu.......Generally these boats return around three "o" clock in the evening,,...while their women gather at the shores with bowls of food, and wait for the men to get back safely.....Hyma says it is heart-wringing to watch them tie themselves to knots as the boats negotiate the crucial final lap.......Since all the catch the men bring home, hunting through out the night might just go under the sea with just one unfortunate encounter with rocks or strong currents......When they are finally ashore, it is the women now who would take charge....First the men have to be fed...as they could be ravenously hungry since usually they do not eat much while on the hunt.....Then they would sort out the catch and start in autos to different destinations...and ..Markets...


So, ...Hyma sits in her balcony ,watches the waves and marks the changes.....The sea too shrinks and waxes according to seasons...She says...In summer it recedes almost to the small out crop of rocks that were right in front of her window as crow flies.....While sometimes in rainy season it comes almost up to the beach road...literally washing the edges....When the crop of rocks do not show up over the waves, it meant the tide is full...while most dark fortnights could find them showing up ....


No doubt she is on her way to become a sort of an authority on the vizag beach.....She could tell you quite a few things about it....."Dont ever wade into the R.K beach waters", she advised me....Not only they are treacherous,--- being very deep,and are also constantly kept dredged---....but the area around, it seems, houses an incredible 500 plus hospitals and nursing homes, which keep emptying their sewerage into the bay....Industrial waste is something nasty by itself but hospital waste?....Hyma says she sometimes feels sorry for the kids who play around with the waters...


She could tell you few sea-side stories too...One was about the problems the port had to face....Back in the fifties when the Vizag port was being developed, the constant huge waves and tides proved troublesome,and hampered their work..... ...That was when Sir .C.V. Raman suggested a simple solution..." Drench a ship there",,he was said to have told them..."that would fix it"...Indeed they had sunk a huge old ship and the problem has been fixed...

"Take a look around among the visitors and did you notice any thing?", she nudged me and whispered conspiratorially...I was a bit startled and with my over imaginative brain looked around the beach, expecting some cloak and dagger stuff..."idiot",...she pointed to a man in black track suit ..."He is a guard...There are many more like him...These people just mingle with the crowds and move around...At the first instance of a mishap occurring ....they would dive in faster than those in Baywatch "...

These days, she even slowly started reading the moods of the sea,she says.....If it gives out that peculiar fishy smell....----neechu vaasana---it meant a storm might be brewing up in it"s bowels.....Then the rains come....The sea seems to merge with the skies and becomes a blur......the waters would become muddy....sometimes red too...And scores of ships are stranded, jostling for space and waiting to unload........The other day, after a particularly severe bout of rains,Hyma, who just then returned to Vizag after few days at Hyderabad agitatedly gave me a call...

"what do you think would happen?...Are......THIRTY..THIRTY ships are waiting here and i don't know when could they complete the work".....It took them nearly one month before all of them have finished unloading and done with.....and gave Hyma a great deal of work and worry, i should say...:)...She daily supervised the proceedings critically and had her reservations on the efficiency of the whole system...

"A ship has to switch off all it"s engines as it arrives till a certain point ",..she educated me on the protocol of it....."Then four tugs would come whizzing ,as busy as bees,surround the ship on four sides and royally and respectfully would help it in to the harbour"....

The most amusing incident for Hyma was when a ship accidentally strayed up to the rocks before her flat and got stuck in the sand....."I was just getting up from bed one morning", she told me between laughs...."And ran out to the sit-out as i heard a hideous screeching sound....as if a pig got stuck in snare...A large ship was there around the rocks,bellowing the siren as sailors ran around the decks in confusion..."....... Those rocks are pretty near the land and the ship should not have strayed this far....Hauling it inside proved to be a long-drawn effort...Scores of tugs came in daily and vainly tried to ....till a ship was called from Australia to the rescual..Meanwhile, Hyma, ofcource, as usual stood guard,and worried over the possible punishment the captain of the ship might have had to face...

Her biggest disappointment, sadly was on seeing I.N.S.Virat....Touted as the India"s premier battle ship, when it was announced it would be going this way,Hyma was all expectation and patriotism as she waited to see it pass on....Instead all she saw was an old vessel lumbering on like an old dowager princess, spluttering and coughing up a great deal of smoke, followed by a retinue of tugs,lot of gun-salutes and fanfare....You can say Hyma was disgusted..."and she fouled up my skies all along with the smoke", she groused....

Ofcource it is needless to say when Hyma"s big day falls on....The Annual Navy Day Show.....On that day, Hyma hastens Bavagaru to his office ,packs off her lunch,picks up her Bi"culars,,an umbrella,and.........goes up to their roof-top...---.It is no time for civilities, she tells me--- grabs the best possible seat and as happy as a child, waits in pleasurable anticipation for the show to begin........ The air-crafts zoom in, executing perfect 10 aerobatics,...mock-fights go on along the shore,...sub-marines glide under,......and later in the day, the spectacular fire-works at night ....as she and Bavagaru, watch sitting in their balcony.....

May The original couple on Kailasagiri and Hyma and Bavagaru in their sit-out continue to enjoy the seas for a long time....

The Sea And Hyma 1

Hyma is my cousin..a year older to me and the forerunner of our batch, all of us, the second generation kids........It was stated that none of the babies before Hyma in our family survived.....So,Hyma started and all of us followed....Sometimes the fact that we all survived was attributed to her VENNU CHALAVA....Means that she is covering the fire for us all.....May be she does....For doctors have testified that her x-ray reports show an extra rib....

She is also the proud carrier of that much used up name.....Our family seems to harbour a mistaken belief that they are a blasted royal lineage and keep giving us the same names so much that now there are no less than five Hymas, three Ratnas,two pairs of Anasuyas and Kameswaris and ofcource we are all rather tired of the whole thing....


So, Hyma the first ,is not only a leader of the batch but also a rare beauty,.( rare also in the fact that she is genuinely unconscious of her looks) a fact that all of us girls have to regretfully concede.....Ofcource the crown has been presented to her only after a very stiff fight ,mind you....(We have our our self-respect..Don"t we?)..Delicate, curly haired and with unblemished complexion, , Hyma used to resemble a JAAJIPOOVU in our childhood .....Still looks like a jajipoovu these days......but like one that has slightly gone to fat....Exsoose me, for being catty...You do"nt know what it is to live under the shadow of one such great looker...as me and Janaki.(nearer her age) have discovered to our chagrin......

Looks like Hyma has got a lot of her MENAMAMA----my father---in her than his own kids....Surely she has inherited the same zest for life...easy attitude,a capacity to savour the simple pleasures and joys that life brings...,and same whole-hearted enthusiasm for her interests.... Launches herself headlong into every thing that catches her attention..and tries to the best of her ability to live life to the full....

By nature, a warm person, her interests are varied....That included great cooking (we can all vouch for it) ,classical vocal music, (passable, i daresay..though she might kill me for that)....,playing veena and sitar (she has a delicate touch), and to top it all.........talking...(That is an A grade too).. As Rajnikanth says in some film ,Hyma is a perfect Indian and would drop dead if she has to stop talking.....We remember how once as a kid Hyma engaged a 70 plus friend of grandpa, who dropped in when the elders were not at home....She sat talking to him nearly a full one and half hour non-stop till aunt came home...while we yawned and waited in the background.....

Gardening also used to be her passion once,...when they used to stay at an independent house, --Alas, they had a transfer and had to move out perforce---.....During that time she literally filled up her garden with a great variety of croutons, cacti, and others....There were so many that an exasperated Bavagaru had to put his foot firmly down on further expansion....Ofcource, like all good wives she never paid heed and kept bringing in some and shoving them out of sight under the portico....

They stayed at Vizag for a decade---till...94 or 5 i think---moved to Hyderabad for few years and shifted again to Vizag two years back and this time they got a flat on the beach road, and Hyma, with her two sons having settled down, found that she has acquired other hobbies too....A renewed interest in vocal music....She has joined a group and started taking annamachrya music lessons.......She insists her group is in great demand to do kutcheries for ganesh pandals so much that she recently informed Bavagaru that she is fast running out of stock for jari sarees and must refurnish her wardrobe ....

Then there are yoga classes.. ..These days she could do BHASTRI, she gleefully informed me....and meditations in the nearby Ramakrishna mutt.....( the other day during her meditation she gave a shhhhhh when irked by a noisy group of visitors, closed her eyes and when she opened them after few minutes,...to her horror,.....found all of them around , reverently prostrating before her..)...Between bouts of laughter she told me she is being more careful these days....

ANNADAANAm....That is yet another work she takes up nowadays....A friend,..few like minded people and Hyma get together, contribute to the kitty and very frequently on festival days, organize free food distributions to the poorer and needy people in the locality....She has a Thataki of a maid with her,who arranges to fetch food from a mess...A curry , dal, sambar, curd, rice .....Ten Rs per head...Sometimes the women cook up few kilos of extra rice, and dal... somebody contributes a sweet or fruit and nearly seventy five hungry people could have lunch, for a 700, or 800Rs .. ..She explained the economics of it to me.......and I must say i am impressed...


But what i am going to write on is about her recently acquired, most favourite pastime..........More on it later....

Vizag Snippets 3

As all andhras do, i too have, heard of Simhachalam for long.....That actually the hill is said to be a volcano,..(dont know if geologists have confirmed this)..-----Quite a significant fact,that some of our most revered shrines are said to be on top of volcanoes.... Arunachalam, which is considered to be the agnilingam,...while,Mangalagiri, and simhachalam house Ugra Narasimha Swami----...

Till few years back, Hyma assured me, Simhachalam used to be a beautiful hill,full of varieties of trees---Jack fruit ,and pine apple,common for Vizag, were in abundance---,with a lovely weather, air replete with scents of woody flowers..(sampangi is prominent among them). and natural water springs ..the rocks used to be damp with moisture....It still looks beautiful ,as i could notice...but may be the residents know better...


Usually the moorthi of Varaha Narasimha swami---that is how the Lord is called there...though the pet name, popular among masses is Appanna,--- is covered in layers of chandanam,ie'sandalwoodpaste.....Only once in a year, on the akshaya triteeya day, all the layers except one are peeled off...and devotees can have the Lord"s nijaroopa darsanam...Hyma says that somehow--nobody knows why----the city heats up on that one day...Ofcource it falls in summer but not withstanding fact, on that particular day, there is an inexplicable hotting up.....She did not believe it her self at first....But later, did notice the changes...

According to historians, long back in old times,Simhachalam used to be the the main city, and Visakha was just a nearby fishing village...Today visakha is the city and simhachalam is it"s suburb.....I could believe it...We are seeing some of those changes our selves, happening in front of our eyes....Golkonda was the main city till just a century back....Now Hyderabad is considered the new one and Golkonda is disparagingly called as the old city....In few more years i could visualise the Hy-tech city emerging as a still newer city.....

Wikepedia says that after Thirupathi...Simhachalam temple is the second highest income grosser in Andhrapradesh....That came as a surprise to me...All along i was thinking it might be Sri sailam...Kalahasthy,or Bhadrachalam...May be that is why the temple always tends to figure in the news with something or other...it"s lands are regularly being encroached upon,....some scam about the deity "s ornaments being tampered with... ......




And then there was this dacoity.... I vaguely remember it, since the details of it were all over the state.. ...Few years back (may be thirty..), a group of dacoits broke into the temple and made off with some jewellery and may be some hundi collections too...Somebody called Martin, a man with Stuartpuram connections and supposed to be of naxal leanings, led the robbery....They finished their raid and were hurrying down the hill as Martin, flushed with his success was said to be shouting something like ..".So, where is the God? and why can"t he save his own house?"....(Just like Hiranyakasyap?)....A crude bomb he was carrying accidentally slipped down and in the ensuing blast Martin lost his leg......He survived,...i could remember that, and carried on with his mutilated limbs.....People drew as many conclusions over this as they liked...Some said that it proved the existence of the lord....Some said it was just a co-incidence....Somebody else thought the punishment was not enough....May be the Lord thought that Martins are better looters than some who go under the garb of his devotees....On the flip side,could it be that the lord was forced to spare Martin,since he would have to be accorded salvation if death came in the Lord"s hands.?....

A rummy thing....This, concept called justice...As a child from a family of advocates and judicial officers, i well remember arguments regularly breaking over some of the issues pertaining to it...Babai thought that dad was too much of an acquittal judge and used to fiercely advocate for rigorous penalties....His argument was that if found guilty, serve the criminal with the maximum punishment....Dad, would differentiate with a clause...."Severity where it is needed."..Well...One was being an advocate and the other was being a judge, i should say...

Anyway...Simhachalam seems to one place where the query ..."where is God?...gets answered... since it is said to be the spot where the Lord caught up Prahlada in his arms as the little one got thrown off the cliff, by his notorious father...

There was considerable rush of pilgrims on that 26th, mid-noon, when we alighted there on our way down,from the Arasavilli trip...That very popular song..."simhachalamu..maha punyakshetramu" was playing in the in the air.....A lovely, typical sindhu bhairavi...As a child, i used to be very fond of the song and bellowed it at the top of my voice till requests came in asking me to put a stop to the racket........I was pleased to note that i still remembered the lyrics...


We purchased few special darshan tickets and had the good fortune to have Lord" s darshan for few minutes....


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Camera can never be a substitute for the eye nor is a photo for the real thing....

That was exactly how i felt as we stood on the vantage point...(you"ll be taken in a lift there)...at Kailasagiri, and looked over the above scene.....The marriage party had gone back to Hyderabad, while we elected to spend a day more with Hyma and Bavagaru...

Nearly every movie shot in Vizag these days shows this shot at least once...and every mention of Vizag in visual media carries this mandatory clip....Even just as a snap, it is a beautiful image...But none of them prepared me for the sheer shocking impact, the real breathtaking beauty of it...A heady mix of hillside and sea...is a rare combination....You do not see it often and that alone makes Kailasagiri, a tourist spot of international standards....

Kailasagiri stands at one end of Vizag,...the third hill of a three fold hill range, on the nearest side to the sea......Most of the visakhapatnam city is spread across and in between these hills and ofcource spills over on all sides too...... It used to be just another one of the innumerable hills there till some twenty years ago, when the municipal authorities woke up to it"s potential as a scenic spot and started developing it....Today it has beautiful gardens, a small museum,a garden of some rock sculptures, and a toy train doing rounds of the hill....where from you can catch sight of the beautiful scenes of valleys, hills, sea and a city....



The crown of it all is a giant statue of Siva and Parvathi....She, the daughter of Himalayas,is beautiful and he is looking slightly austere.... .seated on a pedestal and looking over the sea, , it looks as though the original couple are eternally chit-chatting,and relaxing ....and the scenery before them.....lovely bluish bay with mists rising out, is divine...A sight for the gods...