Visit to YadaGiriGutta

Yesterday(28th September 2008) we visited the "Yadagirigutta Lakshmi Narasimha" temple.
From IIIT we(me, lini and Rajesh a B.Tech student in Lini's lab) started around 6.15AM. Prashanth joined us from Lingumpally and we took a bus to Secunderabad. Satya, his mother, sister Soujanya and her husband Kalyan, Satya's cousin Priyanka and her mother joined us from Secunderabad, jubily hills busstand. We took bus from there. It is 2 hrs journey from Secunderabad. The temple is situated on a hilltop called yadagirigutta. The main idol in the temple is inside a cave.


See the following websites for more information about Yadagirigutta.
http://www.templenet.com/Andhra/yadagirigutta.html
http://www.yadagirigutta.com/

It was relatively less rush there. We managed to do "darshan" in less than one hour of waiting in the queue.

There is another temple near yadagirigutta. It is "Panchamukha Hanuman" temple. Infront of this temple, there is a big statue, one side of the statue is Hanuman, and the back side is made as "Shiva". There is a navagraha temple in this temple.

Onam 2008

This year Onam was a special one for us. its the first Onam after marriage. And we celebrated it well. we went for a 2 weeks holidays to home. I wonder how I got the courage to ask for such a long leave to sir, that too there was an OCR meeting to be happen on the Onam day(12th sept 2008). But anyways, I managed to ask !! :) ..

On Onam day we made a beautiful "Pookkalam" in front of the house. We have very nice neighbours at our place. Even though Onam is considered to be the "State Festival of Kerala", most of the places the places the major celebrations are done by Hindus. There might be exceptions though !!. Our neighbours are a muslim family, full of ladies ... :) The gals in that house took the major role in making the "Pookkalam" in-front of our house.

One of the major thing in the celebrations of Onam is the "Ona-Sadhya", the delicious food/lunch, with all tyoes of typical keral curry was missing for my this Onam !! .. It seems that in Kannur side they have non-vegetarian food in this special occasions also .. It was sad, but we enjoyed the biriyani, along with the "Payasam" which was prepared by mother. Sorry still i am not an expert in cooking.. Hope to learn it while I start cooking daily. :D...


We went to my house at Thrissur on the same day itself. Next day we went to "Guruvayoor temple". It was horribly rush. We did "Tulabharam" with "Kadali - banana". Here is some lines of one my favorite Guruvayoorappan song..
ഒരു നേരമെങ്കിലും കാണാതെ വയ്യെന്ടെ ഗുരുവായൂരപ്പാ നിന് ദിവ്യരൂപം.
ഒരു മാത്ര് യെങ്കിലും കേള്കാതെ വയ്യ നിന് മുരളി പൊഴിക്കുന്ന ഗാനാലാപം.

ഹരിനാമ കീര്ത്തനം ഉണരും പുലരിയില് തിരുവാഗചാര്ത്തു ഞാനോര്ത്തു പോകും.
ഒരു തിരിയെങ്ങാനും കാണുമ്പൊളവിടുത്തെ തിരുമുടി കണ്മുന്നില് മിന്നിമായും.

അകതാരിലാര്ക്കുവാന് എത്തിടുമോര്മകല് അവതരിപ്പിക്കുന്നു ക്റിഷ്ണനാട്ടം.
അടിയന്ടെ മുന്നിലുന്ടെപ്പൊഴും മായതെ അവതാര ക്രിഷ്ണാ നിന് കള്ള നോട്ടം.

In the evening we went to see some Onam programs arranged by a local club. It was a good experience... Here ends the Onam descriptions of this year.

Nowadays Onam is a nostalgic feeling of our childhood, home, village, friends etc. This time we could go home and spend time with our family, relatives.. Hope we will not miss any upcoming Onams .. It is so beautiful climate in the morning of Onam days ... The most memorable Onam we had in our college life. Even though we stayed in the hostel, for the pookalam competition, we used to wake up in the early morning and roam around the campus !! even outside the campus !!, and collect lots of flowers. This along with the flowers we buy, we make the pookkalam. "tumbapoo" and "kakkapoo" are very important flowers for Onam. "tumbapoo" are white in colour and "kakkapoo" violet in color. Both are very small flowers. To collect a handfull of those flowers will take considerable amount of time. But as a group we used to have musty and we used to collect lots of small flowers, which really makes our Pookkalam fantastic.