pot-pourri

It is quite some time since I wrote anything. This heading gives me a liberty to jump randomly from topic to topic which I tend to do while talking.
Well I had been to India and thanks to Vasu could visit Mahabalipuram. It was sort of illogical that I , who has seen many places, like Great Wall of China, the Terracoata Warriors of China, the Angkor Wat in Cambodia to name a few, had not seen Mahabalipuram just an hour's drive from Chennai. I have been visiting Chennai for so many years for summer holidays as a little girl and later had the opportunity to live in the city for nearly 7 to 8 years, had not seen this place in spite of having a deep desire to see it. May be that is what happens to places near where we live and we tend to think we can do it tomorrow and the morrow never comes.
This was the first trip to Mahabalipuram for hubby also , who has seen much more places than me,
Well the structures really impressed me. I could very well understand why this place has been considered as a school of architecture rather than a place of worship. I could really hear the sounds of 'uli' the instrument which is used to make the 'shilpas' (stone icons) . I could understand what the great writer 'kalki' wrote in his famous novel 'Sivagamiyin Sabadham' where he describes this place as having many ' shilpis' working under a great master.
Though the place is quite well mainatained to our Indian standards, one thing which was very much lacking was the place for parking. Since now a days many Indians own cars, more and more people come to these places in their own vehicles. Organized big parking areas would help the visitors to go back from the place with the euphoric feeling rather than with a bad taste in the mouth having caught up in one of the worst traffic jam of one's life.
I did visit another place in Coimbatore which is called Isha dyana yoga centre. This is a place which is set up by 'jakki vasudev' whose writings in ' anandha vikatan' are really good. The writings have made me feel he is not just another guru who talks about God , but rather talks about the way of living. Here in this place there is a big dyana linga in a circular hall which has a big dome constructed just by bricks without any support and the hall itself is considered as a civil engineering marvel. Any body can go inside and sit there and do meditation. A strict silence is maintained there.
There is a mercury lingam which is submerged in water. They said it is about 625 kg weight and it is about 2 ft. height. We all know mercury is a liquid metal and I wondered how it could be stable in normal temperature even submerged under water. I did try to put some questions to the person sitting in the entrance who gave some explanation which was not credible. But when I discussed it with vinayak he said it can be some alloy with mercury which made it a stable structure in normal temperature. This is what I had also thought. I was mainly impressed with the green revolution they are brining about by planting lot of trees,
( lakhs of saplings and making arrangements to water them) there by trying to save the environment.
Well I did read two good books in my India trip. One was Tuesdays with Morris by Mitch Albom. It is about life and death and a teacher and a student. It reminded me about our hindu philosophy, though the book was not a philosophical book, the ideas I felt were very much in line with our ancient writings. The book takes only a few hours to finish and it is very readable.
The other one is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. Again thanks to Anandha vikatan which is publishing the translation, I wanted to read the original.
I understand the book was written about 20 years ago . I read the original and it is a book on management written like a novel. It is really good. All complicated problems indeed have simple solutions but to find out what these simple solutions are, is the key to management. (managing one's life is also included in this.)