Vamba keera palayam

Vamba(a) keera pa(a)layam, a small livelihood area just outside the famous oval ring road (boulevard) of Pondicherry town. It is situated at the south east end along the seashore, where a road from the ring splits out and is located between the old harbour and the new harbour light house.

Palayam can be referred to something like 'shire', a very common subname that denotes a locality. I have no idea why the place got the name 'Vambakeerapalayam' :-)

Vambakeerapalayam is a mix of both town and village. It has a panchayat within it and most people here are fishermen who worship sea as their god. The god of the land is 'Angaala Parameshwari' an avatar of Sakthi, the wife of god Shiva. They celebrate an annual festival every year and it will be wonderful to see the gods while in procession.

God Parameshwari in procession - taken at Vambakeerapalayam

The famous Indira Gandhi stadium which hosts Independence and Republic day parades, 150 years old Petit Seminaire school, Electricity & Agriculture departments of Pondicherry are all stone throw away from this place.

Inspite of all this, Vambakeerapalayam is notorious for fights within and outside with other sea villages, many times ending up with spilling of blood. A small boy who was born and brought up there knew a little about this but never understood why. He joined a school ran by a visionary and passed out with more than 90%. He then pursued engineering and cleared out with distinction, plus a job in hand. He then for the first time moved out of this place to Trivandrum, Hyderabad, Atlanta(US), Chennai, Sheffield(UK) and now in Peterborough (UK). For nearly six years, he is out of this place but made frequent visits to this.

This place, Vambakeerapalyam, is always so special for him and... his name is Karthigeyan.

Chakravyuha

I accidentally happened to revisit Mahabharata, which I watched as a television drama in my childhood days and was not much excited. But this time, reading the epic took me to those Mahabharata period, i.e. almost 5000 years back.

Perusing the Kurukshetra war, the soul of Mahabharata, is the best thing happened in my life in recent times :)

I read the concise and interesting version of the war here and, often cleared my doubts and matched the story with Kisari Mohan Ganguli's one-to-one english version here

One of the fascinating events happened in Kurukshetra war is the formation of an array called Chakravyuha on the thirteenth day of the battle. The vyuha which was aimed to captive 'Yudhisthira' turns out to reveal one of the most lovable hero of the war 'Abhimanyu', who at the end of the day attains heroic death.

I was so interested in knowing about the design, the formation size, the military science and ways of penetrating and breaking chakravyuha. I literally filtered the whole internet but not able to get much information about this.

As far as I know, there were two main theories for Chakravyuha
* It could be a 7 rings of circle with warriors rotating in liason
* It could be a 7-tier spiral formation with warriors spiralling in and out - as in this wiki page.

The book 'The Mahabharata - a modern rendering' has some good information on Chakra Vyuha and beautifully describes the prowess of Abhimanyu on that day.

But still... no concrete information could be found on Chakravyuha. I wonder if there is anyone who published an article on this? Maybe, I should do it :)

Useful References:
Mahabharata - by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
The Indian Labyrinth
The Warrior Monks
Arbit Articulations

enthiran after

all the hypes apart.

Enthiran is too good. A powerful sci-fi story told in a very simple and neat manner.

I never expected Rajini to be as good in action and acting. He simply blew me out.

Ash is also dashing, but not so natural as in Raavanan.

I missed the climax (the mother of all Indian cinema climax) due to unfortunate timing, will need to watch it again sooner :(

Here's Rajini's new oneliner:

Only Rajini can invite the entire Bollywood watch a film 'dubbed' in hindi.

enthiran before

Its good to see an Indian film that takes the whole bollywood, kollywood, tollywood... to hollywood level. We should welcome and encourage such efforts from indian directors and producers.... blah blah blah :-)

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thalaivaa....

Just 1 more day to watch your super film 'Robot', this time in Sheffield with my college friend.

Last time I watched 'Sivaji' in London 07, with nearly 10 friends from my college class. A very memorable experience. It was the first tamil film to watch outside india.

Enthiran - the robot, eagerly looking out to watch the so called 'Robotic Experience'

laka..laka..laka..laka