ADHVAGATI

On a  recent second visit to Awesome Odisha ,  gathered  treasures  missed the first time  , and fell   in love with the land all over again , with  cemented conviction.  The following  is neither a travel guide nor a history lesson , but a cocktail of  random thoughts and impressions that bubbled up  during the trip .  CHILDREN OF THE SOIL   From the begining of Time  were these people , called Adivasis locally ,who knew no boundaries,  living with and off  nature ,  needing no Gods other than Ancestor Spirits and Nature Spirits  to protect them, creating  what they needed with things they found around  . Life was hard , no doubt , but there was  much to celebrate  too . [ A nugget to nibble on here :  the Saoras of Gajapathi District are considered one of the oldest Tribes of Odisha . Sabari , a character in the Ramayana , and Jara , who shoots  the cursed arrow...

 The region has  this reputation of  enjoying four  unique seasons  -  hot, hotter, hottest and hellish . 'Merciless Sun' comes with the Visa. And this trip to Abu Dhabi was undertaken in precisely that part of the year when its  not a shade below 41*C at anytime... with a  sandstorm in active mode too.  Lost our marbles ? Perhaps . Great views from the Hotel room :  tall, spiky, glass & chrome skyscrapers  veiled in what could be construed as  lovely dawn fog , from the airconditioned comfort of the plush room . But, actually, its very fine sand, marring visibility and air-quality.  Still, no complaints . Everything but the beach is airconditioned in Sheik-land. We were  under direct sun  for hardly 3 minutes at a time - just the dash from Taxi Stand to the entrance of any site. That itself was a fry-pan experience,  without a doubt, but , wonder of wonders , no sweating , no thirst ! And the brief bak...

  The Mythic Society  has always been a familiar  name , since its quarterly journals were part of the home  library , subscribed since Grandfather's days . Though as young ones , we hardly perused the super scholarly  articles in it , we did feel properly proud when some  awed friends and visitors commented on their presence in our shelves . If they assumed that the whole family was given to erudition , we did not  actively try to disabuse them of that thought . All I know is that Father and Grandfather were sometimes seen with their noses in the Quarterly . And that ,  I had once picked up a random issue out of curiosity and  was quite tickled to read an article about a pre-medieval lady poet  who wrote .......some unexpectedly "frank"  poems in  chaste Sanskrit !  The Society , housed in a very handsome colonial building in Bengaluru , named Daly Memorial Hall ,  very close to where near relatives lived , remained ...

  Kanyakumari , being the proverbial southern tip of our peninsula, is often imagined to be at the exact endpoint of an inverted triangle , with the three oceans neatly converging at that locus. The  "ground reality",  so to speak , is not all that geometrically precise .  It did come as a surprise that the real  tip of  S. India is the estuary where River Pazhaiyaru enters the ocean. Kanyakumari stands a little way off  center.  At the real endpoint , there are no tourist mobs, no souvenir shops, no  overcrowded ferry to Vivekananda Rock  -  no  Rock or  looming Statue . Just a broad  dazzling river meandering from between the  purple and gray ranges of the Western Ghats  , slicing the town of Manakkudi into "Upper Town" and "Lower Town" on either bank and creating  a gorgeous estuary  at the sea , a wetland that teems with biodiverse life forms . The Virgin Goddess hailed by the hymning waves...