Beethoven Symphonies from Karajan

Karajan is known to be the one of most listened conductor for Beethoven's symphonies [you can search the net for his biography]. Twelve years back I tried to buy the whole set of Karazan but didn't have enough money. But now you have youtube to make the music reach everyone! I compiled the most known ones here, hopefully some of them will bring smile to you, especially if you also are like me who cannot afford to buy them.

The beautiful and rich 9th Symphony of Beethoven
Part -1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AEaQJuKDY

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSEqQsAXbJw&feature=related

Beethoven's 7th Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8eigkwmMEo&feature=related

Beethoven's 5th Symphony

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2219310962212012112#

4th Symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk-sf1jOkdc&feature=related

3rd Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFltqVS8d9I&feature=related

2nd Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZTNoYugUWQ&feature=related

Travelling Madhyapradesh III: Pachmarhi

When I started writing about Madhaypradesh travel, I thought I would finish it in 3-4 consecutive posts but after the last post a strange [not to me though] lethargy possessed me. I am still possessed but trying with all my might to get out of it. Really, trust me, it needed lot of precious positive energy to come back to this blog!
So, we were in Saachi, right? As I said the road from Bhopal to Saachi is quite pleasant one. The taxi driver, on our way back stopped in the middle. I saw a tea stall on the left. When I looked at him,he showed me the right side of the road where there was a liquour store, type of a shanty to be precise. He said bottles are cheaper here and what is a sunday if one hasn't had a bottle! He offered me to buy few bottles of Rum. I politely declined since I was in no mood to carry bottles. Instead I offered him tea on the roadside joint and after he got his bottles, we had the tea together in that stall. In the morning, on the same day, Sujoy inquired about booking availability in Kanha and Bandhavgar and he got booking in Bandhavgar, one day in the government tourist lodge and the other day in some private resort. Resort? I wondered how far that would be from the Sanctuary but good news is that we have confirmed booking and that also without paying any advance.
So, here goes the plan for our next few days: From Bhopal we will take bus to reach Paachmari, the only hillstation in Madhyapradesh. We will spend few days in Paachmari and from there we will go to Bandhavgar. From Bandhavgar we will go to Jabalpur and start our return journey to Bangalore. We both were happy that we would cover so much of distance of MP with our almost non-existent planning. I told Sujoy, "Don't worry, everything works out for the sincere and courageous!" Thus, started our jouney in the heartland of MP.. we went to the City bus terminus in the early morning, The scheduled departure time is 6 AM. We reached at 5 AM [ we wanted good seats!] but learned that the ticket counter would not open till 6 AM. As we waited in the queue, 6 AM became 7 AM, however we were fed with regular updates on breaking news. Once we heard that Driver is not well because he drank too much last evening and that is the reason for delay. Then more inside information came: the driver started from the Depot 30 min. ago but nobody knows where he is now. Of course there were many variations but all were shared with a cheerful tone by folks; even the passengers, now waiting for more than 3 hours, are not at all angry, rather they are enjoying this lull time, utilizing the time to catch up on the missed spicy tidbits of their family and the City-life. Good people, I thought; they long back realized that time is merely an illusion!
The bus finally reached at 9:30 AM, the driver hurried up everyone, as if it is the passengers who were the folks to be blamed. But there were no mishaps in the long and winding terrain route to Paachmari, the bus finally reached there at the sunset. We hired a trekker to reach the MP tourist lodge that we booked. The lodge had a sprawling area with many trees and many small cottages, one of which we were given to stay.
Before we go further a little bit information of Paachmari would help. Paachmari or pachmarhi is a hill-station in the satpura range and has seen one of the oldest human inhabitation in the history of Indian subcontinent. There are caves that date back longer than formation of the Himalaya and in fact has paintings that are more than 10,000 years old. Today there is an army training camp [locally known as cantonment area] beside being one of the most popular tourist destination in this part of the world. MP tourism has a portal that provides tourism related details about this place, for those who want to visit and here goes the address: http://www.mptourism.com/dest/pachmarhi.html
Besides temples and falls, you have one must-visit place, called Pandava cave. It is told that Pandavas during their exile, stayed there for years, though it was not evident why Pandavas would take so much of hardship when there were so many other caves.
The lodge has a nice restaurant, [well if you do not have a car, this is the only choice you have] but more importantly the restaurant had a great service. As the night came upon, we experienced chilling cold [for the first time we felt cold during this entire visit]. The cottage did not have any heating device, all we had is a blanket for each person. I was waiting to get sleep, hoping that the body will adjust to the temperature. It was not a bad strategy however I needed to wait till the sunrise. In the morning, I discovered that Sujoy went under the mattress to beat the cold. His surviving skill appeared to be more advanced since he did sleep well!
Next night we asked for 3 blanket each.
In the morning we met our neighbour, a bengali couple with two daughters, the younger one is almost a toddler and we observed to our surprise that they actually carried quilt, pillow and blanket with themselves. Very enthusiastic guy, got friendly within no time and we agreed to do the 'sight-seeing' together. The elder girl was studying in eighth standard if I remember correctly. "She is a karate champion; last year she went on a championship tour to Australia", his father proudly announced. I asked her what she did in Australia and she dutifully went through all the details and I was pleased to see that she presented facts without any exaggeration.
I don't remember the name of the temple, but we had to walk in crouched position through a long tunnel before reaching a small cave where we saw a priest offering puja and I was told that this is the place Shiva hid when he was attacked by one of his Asura disciple. Fascinating stories and all of them narrate them as if they have seen them happening in front of them. the day's sightseeing ended with Pandav Cave which I talked about before. There were some engraving, inside those caves, which people claim, were done by Pandavas. I realized that Pandavas must have been prolific travellers since this place was at least 1500 kilometers from their so called birth place and they covered all these distance and many more [they went to Kailash and Tripura, remember?] on feet!
During dinner, our Bengali 'dada' told us his exotic travel stories. He told us how he picked the elusive Brahmakamal with the blessing and guidance of a mysterious Sadhuji. It is one of those once-in-a-lifetime-experience, he explained. Without divine intervention, it appeared that it is impossible to see this flower. It took another six years before I had the chance to have this experience of plucking this flower though I hardly can term it as anything divine.
Highlight of the next day was undoubtedly the cave paintings. These caves are almost unprotected and in an area that is covered inside dense jungle. The guide told us that many times bears or tigers are seen in these areas. These paintings are typically monochrome and has simple structure with many of them are kind of stick and head drawing. But these are sandstone and therefore subject to natural erosion. It is miracle that they survived for so many years. In very recent times, ASI has tried to put some boards, urging people not to touch these paintings but I was told that most of the damages are caused by the visiting foreigners who taking the advantage of non-existent security, have many times tried to chip away those paintings. It is misfortune that we, Indians do not treasure our own heritage and rather than creating awareness of this, we spend thousands of dollars to see stuff that are not even half as valuable as this. Any other country would have done remarkable things had they have found something like this in their countries.
Enough ranting! I added few photos that I took that time. It appeared to me that hunters stayed in these caves at different times and depending on the times, the complexity in painting increased.
With this let's conclude this post, will cover the Bandavgar and later experience in my next post, whenever that happens!

Incredible Madhyapradesh! - continued

I don't remember which train we picked for our onward journey;I think it was one of those that go to Delhi from Bangalore but the journey took around thirty-six hours. We reached to Bhopal after sunset. Yes, I remember it was dark. There wasn't much that happened in the train worth talking about. Well, may be not. We had a family as co-passenger, actually a lady with couple of kids. We bought the daily newspaper from the hawker in the morning. Apart from the update, we thought we could use it as the table-spread for dinner/lunch. The lady had different plan. When she saw us folding the paper after we read through it, she asked for that. 'This village lady can read in English? Education system here is so evolved?',I wondered. As soon as she took the paper, her kids snatched that from her, of course not for reading it. She managed to recover three-fourth of it after some time and she asked us if she could keep it. She reasoned, she wanted to read them undisturbed after reaching home. Being encouraged with her interest in reading, we enthusiastically said yes; not having a paper to clean the seat after lunch was less of an issue. But the surprise came when the lunch trays were delivered. She took the paper that she kept so nicely and spread it for her and her kids. We saw them dirtying the papers and then her cleaning the place with the left-out of the papers and then throwing them out of the window without a glint of remorse.
The newspaper served its most useful reason of its existence at that point.
Madhyapradesh was among the poorest of the states with large part of its ares covered under natural forest. Bhopal was a small town and one auto rickshaw came with helping hands , took our bags and delivered us to Hotel Mayura, the ITDC hotel in Bhopal, quite spacious but lacks the glitter of a good hotel. Mostly local politicians filled up the hotels, people coming from other parts of the state to visit the capital, the power centre of politics. People are laid-back but happy; very helpful, candid and unsuspecting. they ask you name and the place where you are coming from but as soon as they hear that you are from different state, their curiosity vanishes.
Saachi is 20 kilometers from Bhopal and you could hire taxi or take the MP tourism bus from the city centre. We thought we could afford the luxury of taxi for such a short journey. Sanchi, before excavation was some local landlord's property and many of the stone pieces were taken by people to their homes before the ASI took the charge of maintaining thhis heritage place. Sanchi was one of the Buddhist university during Mauryan era. It is told that it could take thousand resident scholars and students during its peak time. The magnificent Sanchi Stupa was built by the Emperor Ashoka during his early days. The architecture still amazes you with its symmetry, its awesome stone-engravings and sculptures on the walls. It is unarguably one of the must-visit and well-kept treasures of ancient India. This post contains some of my shots taken on this place. The last shot shows the expanse of the area and the layout of the main residence area. [the story will continue..]

Another Fresco in Time and Space

It is another December, this time. I was thinking of Rajasthan for some time and Sujoy too looked very interested. Sujoy definitely is more diligent than me. At least he was at that time. He did lot of research about possible travel routes and it looked not too difficult to plan a good route although the cost, which included airfare, was not something that could easily go down the throat. Remember that this was before the era of low-cost air-travel. One-way flight to Delhi would cost you ten grands. One way to make it work was to convert the air-trip to train-travel. Only problem was getting the booking in train, all daily trains were booked two months ahead. Sujoy found a travel agent who said that he did arrange this kind of trips but it could be bit costly considering that Rajasthan was hot in the tourists' agenda this year. We did have the courage to ask how costly it would actually be and answer almost knocked me off the chair. Sujoy thought we could take his help only to book the hotels and the travel agent was a very willing and customer-friendly person. He said he would get back to us in next couple of days. After four days when he did not call us, we called him and we were told that the person who spoke to us was out of town. We did get the answer finally after another two days and the answer was "all hotels were booked"!
"We could go home instead", Sujoy suggested. An option that still looked better than wasting the Christmas holidays in office.
"How about visiting Madhya Pradesh?"
"MP?", Sujoy's eyes had muliple exclamation marks. I said, "Look, you heard about Saachi Stupa
and you have not seen it. MP is also known to have largest habitat for tigers and we can stay in one of the tiger reserves for few days [excitement of seeing a tiger in his natural reserve was something that I was betting on]. More importantly since MP is not high on others' agenda this time, we may get booking too and it may not hurt our wallet a lot"
I thought I made a good argument but I was not sure. Sujoy called me after two days and asked about trains to book and I felt that one couldn't expect a faster result. We decided that we will travel by train till Bhopal. We will stay there for couple of days to go around Bhopal and visit Saachi. From there we would go south and visit Kanha and Bandavgarh tiger reserve forests. We would travel to either Kanha or BandahvGarh by road depending on where we get booking first. On the return leg we will go to Jabalpur and pick the train from there. We decided that we would keep the plan flexible except the part that involves train travel since train booking was not very easy to get in short notice. Other reason was that we really did not know much about MP and therefore were not sure how much one could stick to the plan even if one could make one.
Sujoy did all the train booking when we noticed that we would not be able to make both he national parks within the time-budget that we had and decided we will settle for Bandavgarh alone. As you guessed rightly, another [and very strong] reason was that we could not find a tourist lodge that had available rooms.
[..to be continued with photos]

Frescos in Time and Space

"Space , rolling and revolving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking. Space like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes it can even, in the twinkling of an eye make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.." from Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Every December, saving the last two years, I almost made a ritual to travel somewhere out of the town. Each year it had to be different place, if it was Nepal some year, it would be waynad other year. Usually we used to book the hotels/ resorts in advance, but as the fate would have, surprises always would wait for me and my fellow traveller(s). To be honest, most of the times, the place was a last-minute choice. Evidently that did not give us enough option to plan meticulously but as an after-thought I think it was kind of intentional. I think we liked it that way, keeping some chances to be surprised. This did pose the risk of facing some trying situations but I guess that added the sense of adventure. I will try to relive some of those moments, the incredulous moments that pushed us to wit's end.
Waynad is a small and relatively underdeveloped hill-station which one year became our holiday destination. Sujoy booked a hotel, which seemed to fit our bill, though we did not know what to expect but Sujoy assured that it is a good and hospitable lodge with three-star rating and quite close to the town's centre. Also it is not easy to get booking for three persons at the eleventh hour. Anyhow, the bus dropped us there quite early in the morning, I think it was 4 AM. Though it was X-mas eve, it did not have any effect on the place, which had a large Christian population. We could not find a single person awake to ask about the direction. Himadri was kind of cool, he suggested that we wait on the road till the road-side tea-staller wakes up since it was just a matter of 2 hours before it becomes 6 AM. I had a different priority, I have been sitting in the bus for almost 8 hours and I badly needed a bed. So Himadri's suggestion was dropped, instead we started walking. Luckily it did not take too long before we discovered the board of the lodge. We were pleasantly surprised that the gate was not locked. It was a 3-storied, quite plain-looking building which was supposedly our hotel for next few days. We found the lobby [if I may use that word] and the counter with two sleeping bodies. Himadri targeted one body and after his vigorous attempts the body started talking, but it was not intelligible to either of us. Well the poor fellow did not know any other language other than Malayalam. Sujoy's language skill, specially in Malayalam was better than two of us [for some reason which I cannot share] and we thought we would put it to better use. Sujoy actually spoke first in Hindi and then in English but finally got the print-out of the email from his bag. It worked. Printed words have much more effect than spoken words, especially if you do not share the accent. But of course there are exceptions [which we were not].
When we got the room finally, the sun was almost out. But it was nice, the room had a TV [with remote] and the bathroom had a working geyser. The tea-stall was just opposite to the hotel and hotel boy was more than happy to bring the morning-tea from the stall.
After few hours of rest, when I got out of the hotel, Himadri and Sujoy already found out the local tourism office as well as the map and places to see. 'Well done! Boys.", I thought they needed some back-patting. Himadri, on the threshold of getting to add "Dr." in front of his name, didn't find it encouraging to be addressed as "boys".
In the meantime Sujoy was negotiating with a taxi-driver and his beaming face told me that negotiation was on its last leg. Before finalizing, we discussed among ourselves and unanimously agreed that it was a good deal. The taxi will take us around for the full day and show us all the must-see spots. We were relieved; relieved definitely because the driver understands and can communicate in English. But more satisfying is that we got a guide without any extra expense and our entire day is planned including lunch-stop!
The first point that he was taking us to was a set of pre-historic caves. The part that he did not tell us earlier is, we needed to walk one and half a kilometer before reaching the cave because the car cannot reach there. Moreover it is uphill road for the entire stretch, not to mention the steep walk/climb one has to take for the last quarter kilometer. Himadri commented, "Sujoy, what will happen to this old man!, Will he be able to come back?"
Sujoy was subtle, "Don't worry, Soumenda trekked in Himalaya. Didn't you, Soumenda?"
I decided to remain dignified by not answering to them.
The caves were really beautiful. One gets the feeling that time is stuck here for thousands of years. I decided to spend some time inside the caves. Himadri and Sujoy felt without climbing to the top of the rocks, their journey won't complete. So they went on to climb further. After twenty minutes, I got out of the cave thinking that they must have come down by then. Not seeing either of them, I asked one kid sitting there, "Did you see those two who came with me?". Without flinching, he said, "your friends went down some time back". How could they? I was bewildered. But I was hungry and waiting is the last thing you would do when you are hungry. So I started walking back to the place where the car was parked. After another 15 minutes, I started feeling a bit iffy. Where exactly the car was parked? It can't be so far, downhill walking takes less time, typically. But as far as I could see, there is no sign of the car, neither the place where all the cars were parked, nor a hint of a human form and I must have walked one and half a kilometer. Well, I must have lost the way but how do I get back to car? May be if I could reach Sujoy over the cell, I would find a way. I was looking for a phone booth [I don't like carrying my cell when I am on vacation]. But in that 'land of God', phone booth is not a ubiquitous thing. I lost few more minutes walking; hunger and midday sun of Kerala was becoming unbearable. I badly needed to talk to someone. Luckily I found a hut [or something like that] and there were people inside. I tried to ask them which way to go to waynad but realized my language is alien to them. What about 'Phone'? They recognized the word 'phone' but didn't help much. There was no such thing nearby. I started walking again, trying to imagine worse thing that could happen at that moment, like I become so sick that I could not walk any more; like I lost my wallet and it was already dark! But I had my wallet and it had enough money to get me a cab, if there is such thing available and I am not sick at all, feeling a bit exhausted but that's not a problem.
Soon I started feeling better. I started noticing that the road is quite smooth and winding and both the sides had lots of trees. I also saw farm-houses and there were X-mas decorations at the gates. "Some house must have a phone", I thought. Walked to a house and and explained that I am lost and I need help to make a call. "No problem". The young man speaks English! He offered me water, took me inside the house and showed the phone.
Wow! I am getting back the control of the situation! But the exhilaration was short-lived. Sujoy's phone is unreachable! But I am indomitable, I started talking to the young man, about local economics, politics, social structure. Man, I felt as if I am talking after ages! Anyway, I thanked him and started walking back towards the cave, thinking if Sujoy and Himadri are searching for me , they probably would look for me near the cave. I was walking slowly, kind of preparing myself that the episode may not end so soon.
And then, I heard some familiar voice; it was Himadri's voice and he was inside the car. He casually asked if I liked my stroll, as the car stopped near me. I almost burst! How could they be so irresponsible to climb down without waiting for me?? "Climbing down?" Actually they came down from the top just a few minutes back and since they did not see me, they thought I would be waiting in the car but when they reached the car, they did not see me there. The driver suggested that he would go to the cave and bring me back but the driver could not find me there and came back.. Well, I lost it there, can't be sure if the boy was the culprit or my extra-sensitive comprehension skill that made me run all these time. I remembered that I was hungry and so were others.
The driver took us to a kerala meal's hotel and we finally had the lunch at 3:30 PM. Boy! the food was so tasty.

The place where Tipu was born: Devanahalli Fort

I just thought I will add the photos here, rather than writing a long account. This Saturday we travelled to Devanahalli Fort, a place very close to Bangalore City. Sujoy drove and Soma was the enthusiastic navigator.

For the background and history of this 500-years old fort, you can check http://www.tipusultan.org/even18.htm
Photo1: Stone tablet marking the place where Tipu was born. You should not miss new-generation proud army of Tipu.
Photo2: The fort at the entry

Photo3: The gate from inside the fort

Photo4: The ornamentation at the gate

Photo5: The fort wall from top

Photo6: The view from Canon-window. Unfortunately all the canons were missing

Photo7: The rifle-hole in the wall

Photo8: Probably the store-room, don't ask me what Sujoy was trying to do here
Photo9: Ornamentation on the pillar

Photo10: Multiple steps for soldiers to take position to create smooth supply chain
Photo11: Nothing to do with the fort but I simply liked the vibrancy of the colours here!

For all the photos, if you click on them, you will find the high-res versions.

Czeslaw Milosz, Poet in the era of Confused Minds

Czeslaw Milosz, born on 30 June 1911 in Lithuania, considered himself one among the last few 'Polish-speaking Lithuanians'. In his words, "We were something else, Lithuanians, but not in the accepted twentieth-century sense, which says that to be a Lithuanian you have to speak Lithuanian". In 1933 Milosz published his first volume of poetry, Poem in Frozen Time and got an award from the Union of Polish Writers in 1934. He spent most of his youth in western Europe. In 1960 he moved to University of California at Berkeley and in 1961 he became full professor there. He received the Nobel prize of Literature in 1980. In 1981 he moved to Poland after a break of 30 years. He died in August 14, 2004 in Poland.
Milosz's work demonstrates a constant effort to achieve a balance between the sensual life of man and his responsibility to examine philosophical questions of faith and morality. In A Year of the Hunter he writes, "Critics have sought an answer to the question: what is the source of all those contradictions in my poetry? In my prose, too, for that matter. I could enlighten them by referring to the several personalities who reside in me simultaneously, whom I have tried to suppress, generally without success. I didn't want to be so volatile, but what could I do? ..I was conscious of the incompatibility of my various personalities."
His writing reflects the confused nature of one's existence in the modern time where contradiction is the essential part of living, where there is no fixed definition of 'values', where 'right' and 'wrong' are separated by few equations of perspective-transformation, where one constantly struggles to find his identity in the fluidity of economic and cultural transfusions. His poems are tribute to the struggles of numerous confused minds of our time.

From A Poem for the End of the Century:

" When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

.................
o whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.


Disclaimer: Information used here are taken mostly from "Internet Poetry Archive"