The 416ers (both born and naturalized) met at Dhatri on 11th/12th Oct, 2014. Dhatri is a quaint resort in an extremely rustic and rural setting. The owner/proprietor (Ravi) is a devout Madhwa unlike many of us there and more importantly, he's related to us from both Thatha's and Ajji's sides. Not sure about their front and back though. He lives there with 2 human beings (his wife ??? and son, Harsha) and apparently scores of wild (mosquitoes, mostly) and domesticated animals (dogs and cats by the dozen). I know it's been raining cats and dogs in Bangalore recently. Looks like most of them landed up in Dhatri.
Anyway, Vedu's plan called for all of us to meet at Dhatri around 4pm, but a few of us who will remain anonymous showed up a bit (or very) late. Guruprakash had very helpfully 'pin'ned the location in Google Maps and sent out a WhatsApp message which was very useful to those of us who had Android phones. People with iPhones, as usual, got lost!
On Saturday evening (11th Oct), the attendees were: Vedu, Pushpa, Shruthi, Sharath (Mr.Shruthi for those who were wondering), Vishakha, Prashant, Vani, Manas, Manya, Malathi Chikkamma, Papu, Shashi, Janhavi Aunty, Prasanna Chikkappa, Leela Chikkamma, Guruprakash, Nandini, Subodh, Uma, Sahana and moi. We were joined by Rangu Aunty on 12th Oct and unjoined by Chikkappa & family on 11th itself.
The festivities(?) were kicked off by our host (Ravi) with a prayer/chant/shloka welcoming us to Dhatri. He described the activities that were planned for our visit but since his Kannada was apparently from a different planet, I have no idea what he said. We were given tea and coffee and had a nice time exchanging PJs and memories while trying simultaneously to prevent ourselves from getting eaten by mosquitoes. We also had the first of many, many tons of food, so that we can easily call ourselves the 832 family for the foreseeable future. Our first meal which was supposedly a snack but could probably have fed a small village in Ethiopia consisted of Huggi with sour gojju and Hayagriva (yum yum double yum!). The gojju was a bit too sour for my liking but the others were all liking it, so who am I to complain?
Next up on the agenda was a game that Ravi hosted for us. We were all given folded sheets of paper on which we had to write our names (I wrote mine in Kannada...correctly!). Inside each sheet of paper were three columns. The last column of every row was left blank for us to fill in the answer. Each of the first two columns contained a Kannada word. The answer to each row consisted of a synonym for the word in the first column concatenated with the word in the second column. For example, if the first column contained 'ದೇಹ' and the second column contained 'ಸೂರು', the answer would be 'ಮೈಸೂರು' because a synonym for 'ದೇಹ' is 'ಮೈ'. There were 41 questions in all and people like Vishakha and me obviously struggled. People like Vedu and Sahana cheated because they're experts in Kannada. Anyway, more on the results later.
OK, I may be getting a bit confused about the sequence in which some of these things happened but we had a couple of other interesting performances. One was by Sharath who gave us an excellent rendition of a Kishore Kumar song and the other was a Veena performance by Harsha, Ravi's son. He has been learning the veena for about 5 years and goes by bicycle (I think) to Tumkur for his music lessons.
Next up was dinner. Remember that we'd already had tea/coffee plus a hefty snack and absolutely no activity since then. But, our hosts showed no mercy and lined us up for dinner. Fascinating part about this was that it was going to be kaithutthu or ಕೈ ತುತ್ತು. The menu was quite basic: ಹುಳಿ ಅನ್ನ, ಸಾರು ಅನ್ನ, ಮೊಸರನ್ನ along with uppinkaayi, chatnipudi and happala as accompaniments. Yes, I got bored of typing in Kannada there. The ಹುಳಿ ಅನ್ನ had no discernible vegetables, the ಸಾರು ಅನ್ನ was scalding hot (you can't eat it, you can't throw it away, you have to let it slowly melt through your hand). By the way, I must mention here that our hosts were very gracious in arranging for vrathadha adige for Papu & Janhavi aunty for all their main meals.
The last item for the day was arrangements for sleeping. Everybody was willing to sleep anywhere but everybody also needed to sleep somewhere so it took a long time to figure out who would sleep where. In the confusion, I managed to find a very comfortable bed for myself. Prashant, M&M and Vani were in one room, Sahana was in her own room by herself (result of more confusion), Malathi chikkamma was in one room, Papu/Shashi and Janhavi Aunty (I think) were in one large room(?) and all the rest (Uma, Subodh, Vedu, Pushpa, Shruti, Vishakha and Sharath) slept in the living room on a jamkhana (?). The dogs and cats had to sleep outside and they showed their displeasure by making a racket through the night. We have no idea whether our hosts actually slept that night and if so, where they slept.
I don't know when the others woke up but I woke up at around 7am, pretty refreshed. I had three coffees in the blink of an eye and with that caffeine sloshing around inside me, my eyes didn't blink for the next 2 hours. There were three bathrooms with ಹಂಡೆ ನೀರು which was really cool (or hot, depending on your point of view). Rangu Aunty joined the party soon afterwards which was another welcome addition.
The plan for the day was to go to temples in Gooluru, Kaidala and Shettihalli. Papu/Shashi/Subodh/Uma wanted to go to D'Durga too but not everybody was keen on that. So, the final decision was for Papu/Shashi/Subodh/Uma to go to D'Durga in Prashant's car while the rest of us would go to the other places. However, Ravi had planned a cruel trick on all of us. He had decided to serve us (cue spine-chilling music here) breakfast. It sounded like the menu for breakfast had a dozen items and all of them were incredibly tempting. They didn't disappoint us. It started with ಒತ್ತು ಶಾವಿಗೆ with an uppinkaayi, ಒತ್ತು ಶಾವಿಗೆ with kaayi-bella and ended with ಹುರಿಟ್ಟು. Actually, it started with a strange kashaya made from a hundred different types of herbs, plants, leaves and grass (yes, one type of grass called ನಾಯಿ ಹುಲ್ಲು). In between, there were many items like pathroday, etc that I can't remember right now. I had one more coffee to top off the breakfast. It was pure filter coffee with just the right amount of milk, sugar and chicory. Thankfully, I had forgotten to pack the belt that was needed to hold up my shorts so I ended up wearing a different pair of shorts which had an elastic waistband that could seemingly stretch to infinity. As you will realize, this came in very useful for the kind of day that was in store for us.
The weight of breakfast plus the fact that the people who had slept in the living room got little or no sleep through the night created a sudden and drastic change in plans. The interest in going to see the temples dropped off dramatically in the group. The exception was Subodh and Uma who were willing to accompany Papu and Shashi to D'Durga. After they left, Vedu, Pushpa and a few others retired for a siesta.
The rest of us (mostly Prashant & family and Swaroop & family) chatted for a bit and then started getting bored. We decided to head off on our own and do the rounds of the temples in the vicinity. Armed with two Google Maps and some directions from our host, we set off. Gooluru was our first stop which has a small Ganesha temple. Every year, they build a massive clay Ganesha idol from scratch, paint and decorate it, do pooja through Deepavali and then take it out for a ತೇರ್ on a ratha for immersion. We went behind the Ganesha idol to see the platform on which it is placed and how they rotate it so it will fit between the pillars and the doorway as it is taken out of the temple. The idol itself was very nice (about 7-8 ft tall?) and intricately made. It was still a work in progress as they were waiting for the clay/mud to harden and set before beginning the decoration/painting. The temple even has its own FB page (https://www.facebook.com/GULURGANESHA).
Next stop was Kaidala where Amarashilpi Jakanachari has built an idol of Chennakeshava with one hand (the sculptor had one hand, not the statue). It has an interesting story behind it which Vedu told us about on the previous evening. More details are at http://shobhakarandlaje.com/karnataka-temples/tumkur/kaidala-sri-channakeshava-temple-tumakur/. Again, all of us really liked the statue. It didn't look like the Archaeological Society of India has taken this under its jurisdiction although it was still reasonably well-maintained. The priest in the temple gave us a private guided tour of the statue, highlighting (with a lamp) the unique characteristics of the statue.
Last stop was a temple in Shettyhalli. We weren't entirely clear about the directions, so it took us a while to find it but it turned to be very near to Dhatri (about 2-3 km). The temple was closed, however, so we did a 'keyhole darshana' and sought the blessings of Lord Anjaneya remotely. Satisfied with a well-executed plan, we headed back to Dhatri.
By then, people had woken up or were in the process of waking up. We started playing Chouka-Baara (or Chowka Bhara, according to Wikipedia). Vishu, as usual, cheated and won in a landslide victory. We urged her to target Las Vegas next but Vedu did not approve. Suddenly, out of the blue, Ravi attacked us with....more food. This time, it was some delicious usli with all kinds of grains (ಕಾಳು) along with sweet avalakki. Absolutely delicious but how were we expected to get our stomachs ready for lunch? But, no, Ravi didn't care.
Around 3pm, we were called inside for lunch. The lunch menu was, as expected, a hundred items (plus or minus 90) long. Paayasa, Tambuli, ಹುಳಿ, ಸಾರು, sandigay, nucchina unday, genasu, supplemented with generous amounts of thuppa were served in multiple helpings. How we would have loved to have one of Sharath's hydraulic lifts pull us up off the floor when we had finished. I suspect that the floor of the living room had sunk a few inches by the time we had finished. There was adikay-yele outside in the ಅಂಗಳ which some (most) of us availed of. A few of the folks were ready for another siesta while others tried to walk off a few calories.
A problem with the clutch in Divya's car (which had brought Rangu Aunty) created a bit of a stir. Ravi and the driver were deployed along with me to try and find a workshop that could fix the problem. Being a Sunday, it was difficult to find a place that was even open but we found one in Tumkur. The person there said that he could help to fix the problem but we had to arrange to procure the replacement part ourselves. In his opinion, we would have to go to Bangalore to get it. That was not practical, so we decided to try a Hyundai showroom that I had seen near Shettyhalli during our earlier "temple rounds". That place was (obviously) closed too but there were a couple of people outside the building who said that there was no way we would be able to fix the problem on a Sunday.
So, we headed back to Dhatri to convey our findings and plan next steps. Vedu called Divya to inform her about what happened. She said that she would arrange to have a tow truck dispatched from Bangalore to haul the car back while Rangu Aunty and Rathna would go back in Vedu's car. The driver would accompany the tow truck driver. With that settled, we started to make preparations to pack and head back to Bangalore. Papu and Shashi had decided to return to Mysore directly from there, so Vedu dropped them at Tumkur Bus Stand.
There was one last item on the program and thankfully, it did not involve food. Of course, there was another round of coffee / tea but it was a breeze compared to what we had eaten in the last 24 hours. Anyway, the last item on the program was a small speech by Ravi (again in a version of Kannada that is probably spoken on Mars). No, actually, it was a nice speech explaining the desperate need for people of our generation (my generation) to leave a better, cleaner earth for our children and the coming generations; about the need to separate dry waste and wet waste and use wet waste to make compost; about the need to burn plastic in our homes and not throw them so that they end up in lakes/ponds, etc. Next, he announced the winners of published and unpublished events: Vedu/Sahana/Pushpa for winning the quiz, Sharath (Mr.Shining Plate)/Uma/Vani for the cleanest plates (ಎಲೆ), etc. The prizes were vegetables grown locally on their land (I think). We also got a bag of hasi groundnuts for each family(car).
Our hosts also sell various food-related items which are either grown on their farmland or are made by them. Items like hurittu, hurgaalu, seegay pudi, brown rice, menthyadha hittu, chatni pudi and several others were available for purchase. We bought a good-ish sample of them and I can vouch for the quality and taste of the hurittu. It takes me back to the days I spent in 416 when Ajji used to make it for us. Yum!
Finally, it was time to leave and escape further damage with the threat of dinnertime approaching. We saw the gleam in the eyes of our hosts, so we hastily packed up and left, thanking them and telling them that we would be back again and stay for 2 days next time. Yeah, right!
Anyway, Vedu's plan called for all of us to meet at Dhatri around 4pm, but a few of us who will remain anonymous showed up a bit (or very) late. Guruprakash had very helpfully 'pin'ned the location in Google Maps and sent out a WhatsApp message which was very useful to those of us who had Android phones. People with iPhones, as usual, got lost!
On Saturday evening (11th Oct), the attendees were: Vedu, Pushpa, Shruthi, Sharath (Mr.Shruthi for those who were wondering), Vishakha, Prashant, Vani, Manas, Manya, Malathi Chikkamma, Papu, Shashi, Janhavi Aunty, Prasanna Chikkappa, Leela Chikkamma, Guruprakash, Nandini, Subodh, Uma, Sahana and moi. We were joined by Rangu Aunty on 12th Oct and unjoined by Chikkappa & family on 11th itself.
The festivities(?) were kicked off by our host (Ravi) with a prayer/chant/shloka welcoming us to Dhatri. He described the activities that were planned for our visit but since his Kannada was apparently from a different planet, I have no idea what he said. We were given tea and coffee and had a nice time exchanging PJs and memories while trying simultaneously to prevent ourselves from getting eaten by mosquitoes. We also had the first of many, many tons of food, so that we can easily call ourselves the 832 family for the foreseeable future. Our first meal which was supposedly a snack but could probably have fed a small village in Ethiopia consisted of Huggi with sour gojju and Hayagriva (yum yum double yum!). The gojju was a bit too sour for my liking but the others were all liking it, so who am I to complain?
Next up on the agenda was a game that Ravi hosted for us. We were all given folded sheets of paper on which we had to write our names (I wrote mine in Kannada...correctly!). Inside each sheet of paper were three columns. The last column of every row was left blank for us to fill in the answer. Each of the first two columns contained a Kannada word. The answer to each row consisted of a synonym for the word in the first column concatenated with the word in the second column. For example, if the first column contained 'ದೇಹ' and the second column contained 'ಸೂರು', the answer would be 'ಮೈಸೂರು' because a synonym for 'ದೇಹ' is 'ಮೈ'. There were 41 questions in all and people like Vishakha and me obviously struggled. People like Vedu and Sahana cheated because they're experts in Kannada. Anyway, more on the results later.
OK, I may be getting a bit confused about the sequence in which some of these things happened but we had a couple of other interesting performances. One was by Sharath who gave us an excellent rendition of a Kishore Kumar song and the other was a Veena performance by Harsha, Ravi's son. He has been learning the veena for about 5 years and goes by bicycle (I think) to Tumkur for his music lessons.
Next up was dinner. Remember that we'd already had tea/coffee plus a hefty snack and absolutely no activity since then. But, our hosts showed no mercy and lined us up for dinner. Fascinating part about this was that it was going to be kaithutthu or ಕೈ ತುತ್ತು. The menu was quite basic: ಹುಳಿ ಅನ್ನ, ಸಾರು ಅನ್ನ, ಮೊಸರನ್ನ along with uppinkaayi, chatnipudi and happala as accompaniments. Yes, I got bored of typing in Kannada there. The ಹುಳಿ ಅನ್ನ had no discernible vegetables, the ಸಾರು ಅನ್ನ was scalding hot (you can't eat it, you can't throw it away, you have to let it slowly melt through your hand). By the way, I must mention here that our hosts were very gracious in arranging for vrathadha adige for Papu & Janhavi aunty for all their main meals.
The last item for the day was arrangements for sleeping. Everybody was willing to sleep anywhere but everybody also needed to sleep somewhere so it took a long time to figure out who would sleep where. In the confusion, I managed to find a very comfortable bed for myself. Prashant, M&M and Vani were in one room, Sahana was in her own room by herself (result of more confusion), Malathi chikkamma was in one room, Papu/Shashi and Janhavi Aunty (I think) were in one large room(?) and all the rest (Uma, Subodh, Vedu, Pushpa, Shruti, Vishakha and Sharath) slept in the living room on a jamkhana (?). The dogs and cats had to sleep outside and they showed their displeasure by making a racket through the night. We have no idea whether our hosts actually slept that night and if so, where they slept.
I don't know when the others woke up but I woke up at around 7am, pretty refreshed. I had three coffees in the blink of an eye and with that caffeine sloshing around inside me, my eyes didn't blink for the next 2 hours. There were three bathrooms with ಹಂಡೆ ನೀರು which was really cool (or hot, depending on your point of view). Rangu Aunty joined the party soon afterwards which was another welcome addition.
The plan for the day was to go to temples in Gooluru, Kaidala and Shettihalli. Papu/Shashi/Subodh/Uma wanted to go to D'Durga too but not everybody was keen on that. So, the final decision was for Papu/Shashi/Subodh/Uma to go to D'Durga in Prashant's car while the rest of us would go to the other places. However, Ravi had planned a cruel trick on all of us. He had decided to serve us (cue spine-chilling music here) breakfast. It sounded like the menu for breakfast had a dozen items and all of them were incredibly tempting. They didn't disappoint us. It started with ಒತ್ತು ಶಾವಿಗೆ with an uppinkaayi, ಒತ್ತು ಶಾವಿಗೆ with kaayi-bella and ended with ಹುರಿಟ್ಟು. Actually, it started with a strange kashaya made from a hundred different types of herbs, plants, leaves and grass (yes, one type of grass called ನಾಯಿ ಹುಲ್ಲು). In between, there were many items like pathroday, etc that I can't remember right now. I had one more coffee to top off the breakfast. It was pure filter coffee with just the right amount of milk, sugar and chicory. Thankfully, I had forgotten to pack the belt that was needed to hold up my shorts so I ended up wearing a different pair of shorts which had an elastic waistband that could seemingly stretch to infinity. As you will realize, this came in very useful for the kind of day that was in store for us.
The weight of breakfast plus the fact that the people who had slept in the living room got little or no sleep through the night created a sudden and drastic change in plans. The interest in going to see the temples dropped off dramatically in the group. The exception was Subodh and Uma who were willing to accompany Papu and Shashi to D'Durga. After they left, Vedu, Pushpa and a few others retired for a siesta.
The rest of us (mostly Prashant & family and Swaroop & family) chatted for a bit and then started getting bored. We decided to head off on our own and do the rounds of the temples in the vicinity. Armed with two Google Maps and some directions from our host, we set off. Gooluru was our first stop which has a small Ganesha temple. Every year, they build a massive clay Ganesha idol from scratch, paint and decorate it, do pooja through Deepavali and then take it out for a ತೇರ್ on a ratha for immersion. We went behind the Ganesha idol to see the platform on which it is placed and how they rotate it so it will fit between the pillars and the doorway as it is taken out of the temple. The idol itself was very nice (about 7-8 ft tall?) and intricately made. It was still a work in progress as they were waiting for the clay/mud to harden and set before beginning the decoration/painting. The temple even has its own FB page (https://www.facebook.com/GULURGANESHA).
Next stop was Kaidala where Amarashilpi Jakanachari has built an idol of Chennakeshava with one hand (the sculptor had one hand, not the statue). It has an interesting story behind it which Vedu told us about on the previous evening. More details are at http://shobhakarandlaje.com/karnataka-temples/tumkur/kaidala-sri-channakeshava-temple-tumakur/. Again, all of us really liked the statue. It didn't look like the Archaeological Society of India has taken this under its jurisdiction although it was still reasonably well-maintained. The priest in the temple gave us a private guided tour of the statue, highlighting (with a lamp) the unique characteristics of the statue.
Last stop was a temple in Shettyhalli. We weren't entirely clear about the directions, so it took us a while to find it but it turned to be very near to Dhatri (about 2-3 km). The temple was closed, however, so we did a 'keyhole darshana' and sought the blessings of Lord Anjaneya remotely. Satisfied with a well-executed plan, we headed back to Dhatri.
By then, people had woken up or were in the process of waking up. We started playing Chouka-Baara (or Chowka Bhara, according to Wikipedia). Vishu, as usual, cheated and won in a landslide victory. We urged her to target Las Vegas next but Vedu did not approve. Suddenly, out of the blue, Ravi attacked us with....more food. This time, it was some delicious usli with all kinds of grains (ಕಾಳು) along with sweet avalakki. Absolutely delicious but how were we expected to get our stomachs ready for lunch? But, no, Ravi didn't care.
Around 3pm, we were called inside for lunch. The lunch menu was, as expected, a hundred items (plus or minus 90) long. Paayasa, Tambuli, ಹುಳಿ, ಸಾರು, sandigay, nucchina unday, genasu, supplemented with generous amounts of thuppa were served in multiple helpings. How we would have loved to have one of Sharath's hydraulic lifts pull us up off the floor when we had finished. I suspect that the floor of the living room had sunk a few inches by the time we had finished. There was adikay-yele outside in the ಅಂಗಳ which some (most) of us availed of. A few of the folks were ready for another siesta while others tried to walk off a few calories.
A problem with the clutch in Divya's car (which had brought Rangu Aunty) created a bit of a stir. Ravi and the driver were deployed along with me to try and find a workshop that could fix the problem. Being a Sunday, it was difficult to find a place that was even open but we found one in Tumkur. The person there said that he could help to fix the problem but we had to arrange to procure the replacement part ourselves. In his opinion, we would have to go to Bangalore to get it. That was not practical, so we decided to try a Hyundai showroom that I had seen near Shettyhalli during our earlier "temple rounds". That place was (obviously) closed too but there were a couple of people outside the building who said that there was no way we would be able to fix the problem on a Sunday.
So, we headed back to Dhatri to convey our findings and plan next steps. Vedu called Divya to inform her about what happened. She said that she would arrange to have a tow truck dispatched from Bangalore to haul the car back while Rangu Aunty and Rathna would go back in Vedu's car. The driver would accompany the tow truck driver. With that settled, we started to make preparations to pack and head back to Bangalore. Papu and Shashi had decided to return to Mysore directly from there, so Vedu dropped them at Tumkur Bus Stand.
There was one last item on the program and thankfully, it did not involve food. Of course, there was another round of coffee / tea but it was a breeze compared to what we had eaten in the last 24 hours. Anyway, the last item on the program was a small speech by Ravi (again in a version of Kannada that is probably spoken on Mars). No, actually, it was a nice speech explaining the desperate need for people of our generation (my generation) to leave a better, cleaner earth for our children and the coming generations; about the need to separate dry waste and wet waste and use wet waste to make compost; about the need to burn plastic in our homes and not throw them so that they end up in lakes/ponds, etc. Next, he announced the winners of published and unpublished events: Vedu/Sahana/Pushpa for winning the quiz, Sharath (Mr.Shining Plate)/Uma/Vani for the cleanest plates (ಎಲೆ), etc. The prizes were vegetables grown locally on their land (I think). We also got a bag of hasi groundnuts for each family(car).
Our hosts also sell various food-related items which are either grown on their farmland or are made by them. Items like hurittu, hurgaalu, seegay pudi, brown rice, menthyadha hittu, chatni pudi and several others were available for purchase. We bought a good-ish sample of them and I can vouch for the quality and taste of the hurittu. It takes me back to the days I spent in 416 when Ajji used to make it for us. Yum!
Finally, it was time to leave and escape further damage with the threat of dinnertime approaching. We saw the gleam in the eyes of our hosts, so we hastily packed up and left, thanking them and telling them that we would be back again and stay for 2 days next time. Yeah, right!
