Gandhi - A divine man or a devil?

After watching Lage raho munnabhai, I was very excited. And as I have a great respect for Gandhi, It was a delight for me to watch a movie superbly made using Gandhi's ideology in today's sense.

Ok, but today in my office, I had a real discussion about Gandhi and his ideology and that person was arguing that because of Gandhi freedom was delayed for atleast 10-15 years and the only good thing that Gandhi did for the country, was partition !!!!.

Ok and then I visited some community on orkut and there again I find people bashing Gandhi and his ideology. So this again makes me disheartened.

I have found after discussing Gandhi and his ideology with many people that nowadays it has become a fashion in indian youth specially, to blame Gandhi and his ideology. May be this is the "In -thing" for them.

I really want to know what common Indian really think about Gandhi.

• Was Gandhi to be blamed (or given credit as one of my friend was giving!!) for partition?
• Was because of Gandhi our independence got delayed?
• Is Gandhi responsible for Subhash chandra Bose not getting his dues, as a freedom fighter for India (That's what many Bengalis believe, no offense here to Bengali people but this is what I have seen )?
• Was Gandhi to be blamed for not requesting english government to not to give death sentence to Bhagat singh and company?

I have greatest regards for Gandhi and his ideology. I will really like to put some of his ideology in the practice in my real life, I don't know how much I will succeed in that but surely want to try.

A Trip To Hampi


I was planning to write something since long but somehow not getting in to it. Well finally I am starting with about one of my trip outside bangalore. The Hampi-A historical place.

Chirag & I are always planning for some outing on every weekends however it doesn't materialize most of the time as short of friends and grp as always.

Ok so here there was a long weekend on independence day, many times I feel what's the special about 15th August. It has now just become another holiday for most of us. Shouldn't we all be doing something special to be proud of our freedom? May be some small gathering in all the office and a small flag hosting ceremony will also do. But nowadays since many of us work in MNCs, for many of us, 4th of July is more important then 15th of Aug. I heard Many BPOs declare holiday on 4th of Jul and not on 15th of Aug in India. However no reliable source....

Okay coming back to the topic, we were planning so many things on this weekend. Going to Goa, no tickets available from Bangalore, no flight, no bus, no train. Man!! People plan really early now a days and anyways we didn't have any group so may be Goa some other time! So finally after considering many places we came to one place, Hampi, weather was good, not so hot and bit of cloudy so good time to visit. Finally, we couldn't gather many friends so we two only decided to go. We planned minimum 3 days trip and visit hampi, near by places like badami, bijapur etc etc.

Well, again we didn't have tickets and Chirag some how made me ready to travel by local bus. After a long time, it was a long journey for me in the local bus. Well but to tell you the truth, journey was much much better than my anticipation. Since from Bangalore, it is full national highway till our destination Hospet. and it was quiet a smooth journey, However I wished seats were better!! but overall ok journey. It took less than six hours form Bangalore to reach to Hospet.

After reaching Hospet, first thing we did was of course looking for hotel. There are 3-4 hotels near by bus stand. But the first answer that they give is no room available. Well it was a surprise for us. But in the second hotel after making some request he gave us a room. We slept there for couple of hours and then got ready to go to Hampi.

Hampi is 13 kms from Hospet and it takes around 20-25 mins to reach there. After every 5 mins there is a local bus so it was not an issue at all. Once you reach Hampi, you realized that, this is much much better place then your imagination. I mean we expected it to quiet a dull and a dry place as it is just historical one. But to our surprise, it is well maintained by government, with very good roads, and also greenery all around. May be the season for us was just perfect. We visited the temple, first as it is near to bus-stop. Quiet a huge temple and kind of a typical one too. I think it was called Gopuram. It was a good place to visit. There are many small shops and some restaurant to feed our stomach out side the temple. We stayed there for around 2 hours.

After that there was some personal problem and we have to come to conclusion that we will have to finish the hampi in one day and the next day we'll have to leave the place. Well now what's the option? Our own Indian auto rickshaw-wala is there for our help. He told us for a nominal fees of 200 bucks, he will take us to all the places, mentioned in the map (we got a map after getting down at hampi bus -stand) . Again, not a bad choice, as we can move around all the places in 4 hours or so.

So here our trip started. Rickshaw wala took us to most of the places. Many places are not in proper shape because of wear and tear of time and weather but many are well maintained. We visited couple of places like Lotus mahal, Sun Temple, The world famous stone Rath( only 4 places around the world has it), Elephant stable, and some more, which I am not able to recall rite now. And over all it was a good experience to be there.



So in the end, I can conclude, Hampi is a good place to go for 2-3 days trip. I think a good weekend gate away also. There are some places that you can visit by walking, or you can even hire a bicycle, roads are pretty good and it should be fun ride and visit places. For one day you can even go for a trek with the complete stretch of a river. If you are in a big group you will enjoy more, but yes the best season to go there will be from Aug-Jan when it is not so hot!

So, I will surely like to visit this once more, with more time to spend there.

To check out some of the photos, please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickyguy/. And also put some comments. Someone, will surely love that :)