Musings of an Idiot

Temple!!!

Ever since I've been here, mum has been trying to convince me to visit a temple and I've been resisting it. For some reason I just don't feel like visiting temples this time around and I was trying to stay true to my stand where I refused an opportunity to go to a temple as recent as yesterday . But she has been very persistent in her requests so I finally gave in and the plan was to visit a local temple this morning. It was an interesting experience again as the temple we went to was small and not as big {and thus not as commercial} as Kankadurga Temple - the main temple in Vijayawada. Climbing the stairs to the temple was a journey through various kinds of smells ranging from the pungent to the aromatic and everything in between. The best part of the trip was the top down view of Vijayawada and I got some cool shots. If you compare the cityscape of Hong Kong and Vijayawada you can see that Vijayawada's cityscape reflects the chaos within the order while it is the exact opposite for HK.


I might be wrong but there seems to be an increased obsession with religion in India now. It was there to some extent even when I was here till 2003 but it seems to have accelerated so much more in the last couple of years. I don't know the reasons for it but it is pretty weird seeing how deep the influence of religion has become across all social classes. Another random observation is that people in Andhra {it might apply to India as a whole but I can't generalize as most of this trip has been in Andhra Pradesh} don't listen properly. You'll say something, they'll nod their head in agreement and they'll go ahead and do something completely different. When you tell them that's not what was asked for or said, they'll finally come around to doing what you originally wanted after you repeat your instructions a couple more times. And I am saying this not from one incident but from multiple incidents - big and small. It's like people choose to do what they think you want them to do without even listening to what you just said. No wonder getting any kind of work done here is a major hassle.

Trying to watch a Hindi movie on tele is like running a marathon. I was flicking across the channels and found a movie that I had heard good things about and decided to watch it but it was an exhausting experience. As it is Bollywood movies run between 2.5-3 hours and when you have 15 minute commercial breaks after every 20 minutes of the movie, you soon loose track of the story and subsequently the interest in watching the movie dies. I left the movie when it still had another hour or so to go as I was tired from the effort. DVD's or watching it in a cinema theater is the way to go for any Indian movies. The broadcasters here need to learn that the advertisers won't be getting value for their money if the target audience is lost because of too much advertising in a broadcasters eternal quest to maximize their advertising revenues.

The 4.45 AM wake up call because of the temple visit combined with the last couple of nights where I couldn't sleep properly as the mosquitoes were enamored with me, is killing me and I think I'll go and have my late morning nap now.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Travel, Vijayawada

posted by Amit @ 11:25 AM