Pune Potpourri III – National Film Archive of India

Pune is and will always remain special to me, I fall more in love with this city every time I visit it, and luckily every time I visit it, I discover a new facet of the city, sometimes known and sometimes unknown. This time I had the opportunity to visit National Film Archive of India and spend a couple of days there, thanks to a friend who goes there to do research for the film he is making.

National Film Archive of India (NFAI) was established in 1960s by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, to preserve the heritage that is being created in the form of cinema both national and international, to be a source for research on cinema and to disseminate film culture in India and to promote Indian cinema internationally. It is headquartered in Pune with regional centers in Bangalore (I never knew this was next door in Koramangala), Kolkata and Trivandrum. In Pune it is located on Law College Road road, a relatively serene area, in an old bungalow with an add-on building. It was initially a part of FTII (Film & Television Institute of India), but is now an independent organization by itself and is one of the leading film archives in the world.

NFAI is a repository of films of importance, award winning films, popular films from India and abroad. They are preserved in a basement facility, where the required temperature and humidity are maintained for the old films. A new facility is being planned for the new films as well. What is interesting is that all these films are regularly tested manually for any damage. There are 8 tables where 8 people can test 8 films in parallel. It is interesting to see how they do it, wish I could take a picture of it, but it is not allowed to take pictures inside.

There is a well stocked library with all possible books and periodicals on films. Most of the books are put of bound for the visitors, so I could not go through and feel the books. There are popular and more recent books that are in the outer shelves of the library which you can take from the librarian. You can refer to popular magazines in their earlier versions. I went through some of them published more than a decade before I was born and it was a pleasure to read them. They were focused on the stars and the popular cinema, but they still talked about the craft of cinema and the work done by the artist. They do talk about their personal lives, but in a very dignified way and within limits. There are in-depth articles about the changing times, and imagine in early sixties they had a series of articles talking about the deteriorating state of music in Indian cinema and there was a detailed analysis of each of the music directors and their work and how it has changed over last decade or so.

Apart from the preservation of material around films NFAI also does some other interesting activities like:

• Organize film appreciation courses regularly along with FTII and other educational institutes
• Run a film distribution library for members
• Provide a 26 seater preview theatre to pre-view the films
• Provide 350+ seater theatre for screening of films
• Be a venue for hosting the regular / theme based film festivals
• Run a film circle which has a screening of film every Saturday, for which membership is open to public
• Encourage study and research on films. They also offer fellowship for the same.
• Maintain censor records
• Provide basic search on Indian movies, though here I think they need to get savvy like IMDB.

NFAI invites everyone to contribute to the national archive. If you have any rare pictures, tapes, press clippings, song booklets, film posters or anything that should be preserved for the future generations, you can send them to NFAI and they would make a copy of it and make it a part of archive.

Thanks Sand for introducing me to this wonderful place.

Pune Potpourri – II Lohgad, Lonavala & Karla Caves

Lonavala along with Khandala have been a destination that I have been trying to visit since 1995, when I first came to Pune and lived here for sometime. After all these years and multiple visits to Pune, I have managed to fulfill half my wish by visiting Lonavala. I had always heard of these two cities so many times in Hindi movies that every time I visited either visited Pune or Mumbai, I thought of visiting these very approachable places, but I guess my time to meet these places had yet not come.

This Saturday, I along with two other friends we drove towards Lonavala, with no specific destination in mind, but with a bountiful of probable destinations in mind, most of which were forts and caves around Lonavala. After a beautiful 1 hour drive on the expressway, we reached the base of Karla caves near Lonavala. It was still a beautiful morning, and we started climbing the stairs that lead to the Buddhist caves and the Ekavira devi temple. It is a 20-30 minute climb to the caves, most of which are inaccessible. The caves are supposed to date back to 1^st century BC. The main hall is built in the Himayana style and is said to have Mahayana influence added later on. There are inscriptions on various walls which are apparently written in Brahmi and which are supposedly the names of the donors who contributed. There are about 16 caves, out of which the main hall is Cave no 8, and this is the only one open to public as of now. Interestingly this all stone structure has a wooden structured adorning the roofs, which is said to be a part of the original architecture and has survived 2300+ years. Looks like some time back, there may have been public access to caves on the upper floor which were primarily the viharas and the mandapas, but as of now the access is closed and you can see lot of water dripping in front of the caves. You can go around the rock and see a series of caves which to me looked like places where the monks stayed and main hall is probably where they studied or meditated.

The Ekavira devi temple just outside the gate of the main hall seems like a relatively recent structure. But today it seems most visitors visit this place for the temple rather than the caves. It is a usual Hindu temple, which is specially visited on Fridays as that day belongs to the devi and there is no entrance fees that is charged on that day. The orange of temple looks nice against the black stone background of the caves. Since the caves are on a high point, you get a good panoramic view of the surroundings, which has hillocks, greenery and water bodies.

A few kms away from Karla caves is a small village called Bhaja and the caves here are obviously called Bhaja caves, which from a distance look quite similar to Karla caves to a naïve eye. From Bhaja village you can trek on a mild gradient towards the base of the Lohgad and Visapur forts. If the heat of the sun and the tiredness of the long walk drains you, there are a lot of shops selling Lemon juice, Kokam sherbet, Guavas and Cucumbers. Very close to the base of Lohgad fort, there are a series of eating joints most of which offer local food along with water, soft drinks and juices to rejuvenate you. If you can find a shade below a tree or elsewhere, you would be amazed by the breeze that gently and at times forcefully passes through your skin and your hair and leaving a bundle of energy with you.

There are steep stairs to climb the fort, at various places the stairs are in various stages of existence. Somewhere they are quite good, somewhere half broken and at some places you only find traces of their existence. But one thing that is consistent throughout is the steepness of the stairs, which you realize more while getting down than when you are climbing them up. On the way to the first or the entrance gate of the fort, you would see the beginning of a huge lake and the view of which keeps getting wider as you keep climbing higher. The first gate, also called the Ganesh gate is the entrance to the fort and there are 2-3 more gates that you see till you reach the vast open space on the top. The fort twists and turns through these gates. There are huge stone walls that are the only remains that tell that there was a fort here sometime. The last gate is the only one which is somewhat preserved. There are caves that have water, and those that have Shivalingas. There are some groups who apparently camp in the fort sometimes, though I am not sure if this is allowed. There are lime water and cucumber seller, who operates from one of the rooms of the fort. Through the windows built in the fort walls you can see beautiful views of the surroundings and also feel the strategic location of those holes that are like the eye-holes in today’s homes. They can show you the slightest movement in the wide angle view from those small openings, without giving in much on what is happening inside the fort.

After the last gate you come to vast plain ground which has lot of man made water tanks in various sizes. Towards the end of this plain area, there is a narrow long strip of hill, not wider than few meters that takes you to the edge of the hill as well as the fort. As you look at this strip you go through the feeling of standing on top in a very narrow space, an inability to move too much but with a bird’s eye view of everything around you. Is that how you feel when you are at the top?

After a two hour walk back to the Bhaja village, we proceeded to Lonavala to satisfy our hunger pangs, and then quickly drove to the lion’s point to see the sunset. Little did I know this is going to be one of the best times of a day well spent? There is a hill in the middle of the valley, called the lion hill and this is how this place gets the name. But if you look closely to the top of the hill, you would be able to see faces carved in stone, one of which has a good resemblance to Shivaji. If you could go to other side of the hill and look at a different angle may be you can also see a third face. The sunset could have been more beautiful but for the clouds who decided to play hide and seek with sun. The place was very peaceful and yet enigmatic. Something that said, be here, do not go anywhere…

Highly recommend all these places to anyone who like history and nature, that too when the two are intermingling with each other.

Speed of Trust by Stephen M R Covey

Most of us have either read or at least heard of the Stephen Covey’s ‘7 habits of highly effective people’. Now the author of Speed of Trust is not the same person, but his son, who has the same name and apparently for at least 3 generations they have the same name carried forward.

Like most self help books, this book has potentially the content for few pages that has been blown up to make a full fledged book. There are a few key take aways from this book, which obviously emphasizes the need to build trusting relationships at all levels of your existence i.e. self, personal relationships, organizations, market place and society in general. It talks extensively about the acts and behaviors that build or break trust between people and entities.

The point that the book very clearly brings out objectively in the very beginning of the book itself is that fact that there is a cost attached with trust. Whenever you operate in a high trust environment, things happen fast and at a much lower cost vis-à-vis when you operate in low trust environment, where you have to incur additional costs to ensure trust and which adds processes that eventually slow you down at every stage.

I also found interesting the four elements of trust, as the most common connotation of trust is dependability, or the faith that I have in the person or entity when I say I trust you. He breaks down the trust into four components and all or most of which are important when we say we trust someone. These elements are integrity, intent, competence and results. And to be totally trustworthy you have to display or demonstrate all the four elements. It is possible that you can have less than all of them, but that breaks the trust to the same level. He breaks it up interestingly, when he says that I can have faith in your character but may be not in your capability or vice versa.

He talks about 13 behaviors that can help be worthy of trust and most of these are the elementary things that we were probably taught in primary school, but possibly we may have forgotten the lessons. It a quick read, you can probably finish it in couple of sittings. Most examples are repeated through the book and a lot of examples from the Covey family themselves.

Recommendation: Read if you think you have a problem with either you not trusting people or people not trusting you. Otherwise….read if you have lot of time on hand. Thanks Ramesh for giving me this book.

Explore Bangalore Series XXXI – Nandi Hills, Village & Around

For some reason I assume that everyone who has lived or visited Bangalore must have been to Nandi hills sometime or the other. But what I discovered to my surprise was the number of places that are around Nandi hills and Nandi village.

Couple of weeks back on a lazy Sunday morning, me and two of my friends decided to drive down to Nandi Hills for breakfast. We literally got up from the bed, brushed our teeth and drove to Nandi Hills. As the luck would have it, Nandi Hills had the perfect weather and clouds were kissing the hill on all sides. It was a pleasure to sit among the clouds and have piping hot noodles. Since the weather was too good, we decided to roam around a bit and we discovered a small well like structure, which is supposed to be the source or the starting point of river Arkavathy. You have to go around the hill and then go down a bit to reach this spot. The spot just has a walled tank, which presumably is very deep and is surrounded by absolute greenery. You can sit on the thick walls of the tank, in fact you can lie down, look at the sky and feel to be in a different world altogether. From this spot there are stairs that bring you back to the top of the hill.

As we got down the Nandi hills, we drove towards the Nandi village, this is the village that gives Nandi hills its name. There is an ancient temple called Bhoganandiswara temple in this village, apparently it has been around for 1200+ years or so. From the outside, the temple does not look very huge, but once you enter the premises, you would suddenly be hit by the hugeness of the temple and its compound. The outside compound is surrounded by the lined corridors. There is a platform in front of the actual entrance of the temple, which apparently was used for dances during festivals. There are some wheels that are surrounding the platform which may belong to some chariot that was used during some time. As you enter the temple you see a Shiva temple, with amazing carvings, and a person there explained us that the temple dates back to some time in 8-9th century and has influence of various dynasties that ruled the area. The corridor around the Garbhagriha that is used to make a Parikrama around the temple, is amazingly well adorned with carvings. Though he could not give us much about the history of the temple, but this is what my internet research yielded:

Boganandiswara temple in Nandi village constructed around 806 A.D. by Rathnavalli of Bana Dynasty is in Drawidan style. Temple is known for its anciental Architecture. Sri. Arunachaleswara temple, nearby Boganandiswara temple built out soap stone, is another example where one can find fine Ganga, Chola, Hoysala style of architecture

It is a beautiful temple and one of the few temples which is very clean and well maintained. There is a huge water tank on one side of the temple which is again covered on all four sides by pillared corridors, and doors on all four sides with ornate walls. Some of the structures will remind you of Hampi, especially the damaged ones. Surprisingly, there were hardly any people in the temple, so the temple provided the perfect serenity that it is supposed to provide its visitors. We were told that there is a huge rush on Shivaratri, but most of the other times, there are not many visitors. And the fact that the temple is so huge probably makes the number of people present seem less. I would strongly recommend visiting this temple to anyone who is in or around Bangalore.

As you drive a little ahead of the temple, you would reach Mudenahalli. You can also visit Sultanpet, which has another path leading to the top of Nandi hills, with around 3000 steps. There is supposedly an ancient temple in Sultanpet, but we could not locate that. But what we did get to see was the breeding of silk worms, right on the streets of the village, which was quite interesting.

And as you drive back towards Bangalore, you would see Tipu’s fort on your left hand side, which is more like Hawa Mahal, or just a façade. As you enter the fort, there is whole town of Devanahalli, bustling with people. My guess is that at some point in time, the fort must have been a walled city and people lived inside the city, which still continues but the town would have grown way beyond the original limits of fort walls. There are remnants of fort here and there that you see if you drive around the town. You can also drive to the Tipu’s birth place, which is a small structure, with four pillars and a roof. When you look at the structure, you would wonder if this is really the place where the great Tipu Sultan was born, as there is no other old structure around that place, but then I guess there is no other evidence to think otherwise too.

You can cover all these places in less than a day….so do explore them sometime…:-)

Stepping outside Bangalore - Topannahalli & Kalavanchi

I am happy some of my friends like me, like to drive around and go into wilderness and think this is a better way to spend quality time together than sitting in one of the cafes in the city under energy guzzling lights, expensive coffees and extremely limited space. Yesterday 4 of us, including a 5 year old, drove out of Bangalore towards Krishnagiri, through Sarjapur Road. As you drive past the inhabited limits of Bangalore, you would see whole lot of new properties coming up, lots of schools and institutes coming up and of course the planned IT parks.

I actually got to see the town called ‘Sarjapura’, which I was always curious about since it has been 3 years that I have been living on Sarjapur Road in Bangalore. Past Sarjapur town, there are hardly any villages and there is lot of green land around. There are rose plantations and huge facilities that export roses from Bangalore, making it one of the primary exports from the region, probably the biggest after much celebrated cousin IT. The road is good throughout with very few bad patches, and is surrounded by lush green trees and a good percentage of them are fruit trees. We actually stopped by few places and plucked custard apples to out heart’s content. Being totally inexperienced in doing so, I bruised myself at lot of places, but I guess it was worth it.

After we drove around 70 kms, we reached a village called Topannahalli, and we stopped by a place which had the board saying ‘Akshara International School’. The board was on top of a house and the house belonged to the relative of one of my friends. We stopped there to have fresh coconut water, and I surprised everyone by having water directly from the coconut without using any straw or glass, while everyone in the village thought of me as a city person who would not be able to handle coconut. Now did someone not say that there is real happiness and joy lies in doing things that people says you can not do? We got to see the sapling plantations of Tomatoes, Brinjals and Chilies, which are then sold to nurseries. There were tons of saplings that the villagers sell to government departments or to other plantation agencies.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a ‘Guinness world records’ certificate on the walls of the house. When I asked about it, even with the huge language barrier, the parents proudly explained the achievements of their young son, who is a master in miniature art, and has been awarded an entry in to Guinness world records and Limca book of records for creating an unbroken chain of 21 steps using a single toothpick. They also showed us the file containing all the articles that has been written around their son, photographs of his various creations that have been featured in his various places and his photographs with various dignitaries. In my every exploratory trip, I come across some surprises that make all the efforts put in doing the exploration worth it. This is usually not there in your planned trips where you know what you would get to see and feel. In fact most of the times media hype makes them turn out as a dampener.

After Topannahalli, we reached a small 100-120 family village called Kalavanchi. This is the village our friend came from and he took us around all the places in the village, the small school, the cow sheds, old houses, small basic shops and the small katcha lanes where all the village kids were playing, animals were roaming and people were talking to each other. We had some simple but most amazing dinner at this friend’s parent’s house before we were ready to drive back to Bangalore. Just when we thought of leaving, it started raining heavily. With greenery all around the rains looked beautiful, and I looked around and admired it for a while.

As the life demanded, I am back in Bangalore, writing this piece with a custard apple in my hand and some fresh air in my lungs…. Look forward to some more such trips.