Puttur Mahalingeshwara Jaathra

It was a good show.. the Puttur Mahalingeshwara Jaathra last night..

Here r some pics we promised

Inertia

Just random thoughts. The amount of inertia in the Government of India is directly proportional to time one spends on his chair. My subdivisional office accommodation here in Puttur is about 50 yrs old, the first officer who occupied this chair was A R Nizamuddin way back in 1957 who during my school days went on to become the DGP of Karnataka. Since then this chair has produced about four DGP's and even the present Police Commissioner of Bangalore is a product of this Chamber. Every officer who has held charge here has commented on the unfitness of this place to house the subdivisional office but could not manage to get a new building constructed. Finally in 2005, with fund from the police modernization kitty we managed to get about Rs. 18 lakhs ( 1.8 million for those who've stopped counting in lakhs) and got a nice spacious building constructed on a scenic hillock overlooking the western ghats, cutting down part of an acacia plantation. Lot of work went on in levelling the top of the hillock, creating a road etc. Now finally when i m frantically trying to shift the office, before i myself get shifted out of this place.. i see myself up against my staff. they seem to be having a lot at stake here. Every time i talk to them abt the move .. all they have to say is " sir, r u sure we're going to shift". But come what may i've decided we're gonna do it on the 22nd of this month. We'll get the building inaugurated quietly by the IGP and push thro' the staff till they get used to the new place. Yesterday in a hurried move, we went selecting some good furniture for the office. Deepu has promised to help with the screens and the interiors, when shes back frm Hyderabad. If everything goes on well, i would have overcome an inertia of 50 yrs this weekend. About 30yrs later, i can come back here and say... we did it...

As i mentioned earlier Puttur has always been a place for posting fresh IPS entrants as ASP's for a variety of reasons. Communally a very sensitive place, in the pre-independence days.. the RSS and post-independence the Bharthiya Jan Sangh and now the BJP and its sister organizations have always been very active here. In addition the subdivision is huge, area wise for a beginner. Off late the Kudremukha National park area has been witnessing an upsurge in the Naxal movement. Every senior officer i met after taking charge here, has told me that i was sitting on a ticking time bomb. If i m lucky i would have got out of this place without a blast.

Badi mushkil hai...

badi mushkil se use waapas laaya thaa ! now deepu is back in hyderabad : ( .. these last days of puttur would get this lonely ... i never thought. Anyway with a lot of time at hand i m trying to do some proactive work before i leave this place. A wonderful place it has been and during the rains it is a different world all together. We would both be missing it this monsoon. I m now spending most of the time with memories of those wonderful days.

Summer is slowly catching up in puttur (the typical coastal weather) but the only solace being things getting much worse in many other parts of the country. This part of the year is also filled with festivities here... especially the "jaathraas" and all these conclude before the monsoon. The last one being the Puttur Mahalingeshwara Jaathra... beginning today and concluding on the 17th night... and the last night is a not-to-be-missed event. More than a lakh of people gather to pull the chariot amidst a spendid display of state-of art- fireworks. People in this part of the country are very orthodox, pride their culture, language(thulu), folk arts (yakshagaana) ... and hold their festivities in the same granduer that they were being held a few hundred years ago, in addition to being highly literate and economically very progressive. If i m still hanging around here for the jaathra... i'll bring u some pictures of that sea of humanity.