A day at work

A day back, I was visiting Sondekoppa, a small town on the outskirts of Bangalore. As I went through the small bylanes in one of the villages, I felt like moving away from the big city that Bangalore was and coming to live in one of these small, quaint places. It is another matter that Sondekoppa natives must be dying to come and live in the comforts of Bangalore! The villages had neat lanes and small but comfortable houses. This just reminded me; in Chitradurga, the houses had a kind of foyer at its entry where fresh grain was stored; then only you entered into the living room.

I went to the high school in Sondekoppa. Unlike Bangalore schools, it had a huge play ground . Near the gate, I was taken aback to see bicycles parked, around 60-70 of them, that too the big ones. I was surprised because of late, I have seen students coming to school on the big cycles only in movies. I am not sure you can see it in Kerala, certainly not the big cycles. There everyone have moved on to Atlas cycles and BSAs and other geared ones.

Then I saw the primary school. We reached there just as the school was closing for the day. The tiny tots were rushing out in their dark blue-light blue shirts, trousers and pinafores. There was this BMTC bus waiting in front of the school gate. Once all the teachers and some of the students got in, it got going to Bangalore. Minutes later when I turned to look, the school gate was closed and locked and there was a stillness as if no one had ever been there at all.

For the first time in my life, I saw a live IEC talk for the community. The public health nurses could easily assemble 20-30 women from the villages they went to. I dint know it could be so easily done. In one place, there was this small community hall. Initially there were just around 10 women. Later the numbers started swelling and there were 50-60 women in a matter of minutes. It felt great to see the eagerness with which they were listening to the health talks by the nurses; the vigorous shaking of their heads, their shy smiles and knowing laughs, the screamings of their little kids who got bored with the proceedings. A green salad of bean sprouts with salt was passed around to all and the kids where happily munching on it along with the arrowroot biscuits. Much to my dismay, I found that my new mobile did not have a camera and I sorely missed recording all the fun for posterity.

Chitradurga fort

As part of our evaluation programme, our team was in Chitradurga. I was truly amazed at the roads which took us to Durga; such smooth wide corridors free of vehicles that vehicles can practically fly on the roads. The toll charges too are as impressive as the roads! Close to the city, we saw giant wind mills in all the surrounding hill tops and they seemed to form a ring around the city, like huge watch towers.The barren plains suddenly burst into greenery and people once we entered the town. The avenues were lined by trees like back in Bangalore. The urban dweller that I am, I felt re-assured once I saw a couple of shops of Lee, Wrangler etc.

On a free day, we visited the Chitradurga Fort. I thanked all the stars the moment my taxi stopped in front of the fort gates. A moment more and I would have thrown up from motion sickness. I couldn't enjoy it as much as I would have wanted because of the stupid Chemoreceptor trigger zone in my medulla doing things to my GI tract. Once that cleared up, the rain started and I was watching my feet so as not to slip up on the smooth slate stones lining the walkway.

 Now coming back to the Fort, the name of the fort was actually Chitra-kal-durga which roughly translates as "Picture-Stone-Fort". This came about because some of the boulders around the fort apparently resemble a rabbit or a human face or a prostrate elephant if you look at them. What most impressed me about the fort is its architecture. It has seven turns and seven gates and so it is also known as  ' Yelu suttina kote' or seven-circles-fort. The winding nature of the fort walls and its 7 curves makes it an impregnable fort, impossible to capture. There are many temples and water tanks inside it.The living quarters where made in mud and has disappeared in the monsoon rains over the centuries. Another interesting thing was the way cuts where made into huge boulders in the fort by masons. Apparently they would create small wedges with chisels. The rain water would seep in and the hard granite rock would easily be chiselled away in sheets along the cuts made previously. Truly 'Cutting edge technology'.




That's one of the turns of the fort.





A step well inside the fort

CVs, resumes,...

In the process of writing a new covering letter and updating my CV all over again, suddenly I was struck by the weariness of it all. Initially it was interesting to keep count of how many jobs I had applied to....it kept on growing 1,2,3,.....6,7,... At last count it was around 15 to 16. And I don't even remember when it was! Now I have lost count and have wearied of it all, probably its around 20- 25.

That's the advantage when you have a government job, don't have to search for a new one every few months or years. But won't it get boring after a few years? Monotony will set in but you can't afford to lose the job for the sake of your family.


Earlier I had read, one should enjoy the job, love your job, do what you love so that it is not 'work'. But finally when I found a job that I love, suddenly I find that I enjoy the holidays, I savour the double weekends. So I guess a job is a job after all, not something you want to do in your chill out time. May be even music composers who love to make music might be doing something else in their chill out time!!