Writings of Kerala Geek

As the Rishiraj singh and Ryan studio saga continues, Kerala film industry decides to boycott Ryan studio. No one yet knows whether Ryan studio did pirate any video cds. But why a boycott without even knowing the full facts?

What prompted me to write this post is comments made by Mammootty at the press meeting. He is saying that we should put people in jail without trial (remember TADA?) for pirating video cds!

Now, let me be clear on one point. I am against any kind of piracy, whether it is piracy of music cd, video cd or software cd. But what Mammootty said is absurd (I thought he was a lawyer before he started acting). Even terrorists who kill dozens of people in India are given due process of law! Mammootty considers people who pirate cds for money worst than terrorists and goondas? I am completely at loss as to the logic of this!

I wrote a post called “Tyranny of the organized - Watch Fee?” recently. A similar tendency is seen in entertainment industry of Kerala as well. If you want to work in film industry or serial industry, you have to join one of the unions (Macta, Amma etc.)! People who work in the entertainment industry are forced to join these organizations.

Thrissur is known as the cultural capital of Kerala. Cultural events are a way of life for people of Thrissur. Some of the interesting events include Thrissur pooram, temple festivals, etc. Thrissur also has the first mosque in India (cheraman mosque built around 600AD).

Last week I visited an interesting place called aanakkotta or aanathavalam(elephant’s den). This is where elephants belonging to all Guruvayoor temples are kept. Sounds simple? Well only catch is that it contains over 60 elephants!

Punnathur Kotta is located near Guruvayoor in Thrissur district of Kerala. The Elephant pound currently has about 60 elephants and is located over 10 acres of land. It is a popular local tourist destination. All the elephants came here as offerings by devotees of Lord Guruvayurappan. Gaja pooja (Worshipping of Elephants) and Anayoottu (Feeding of Elephants) are observed here.

We started from Thrissur which is about 25KM from punnathur kotta and it took about 1 hour to reach there. The aanathavalam (Elephant pound) is managed by Guruvayoor Devaswom (an organization which maintains temples). There is a parking fee of Rs.5 outside the entrance and an entry fee of Rs. 5. You cannot take the vehicle inside the pound. For still camera there is an additional fee of Rs.25 and for video camera fee is a whopping Rs.1000!

The moment you enter the pound, you are awestruck. Wherever you look you can see elephants and more elephants. The diversity is truly an experience. You can go around the place and catch some interesting elephant moments

Some tourists come here to get elephant tail strands. It is banned here, but many bribe and get it. We also had seen a group asking for the sand on which elephant was sleeping! Also there is no guide service at the pound (Guys may offer you services for money, but it is illegal)

Check out the photos I have taken at the pound.

Further Reading
Official site of Guruvayoor devaswom

The “champion eater” of Thrissur died at the age of 63 on 9th December. He was suffering from diabetic problems for a long time.

Rappai popularly known as “eater rappai” was a familiar figure in Thrissur and Kerala. Rappai was a non-stop eater who could easily finish 700 idlis in a single sitting! There was no limit to his appetite (probably due to a medical condition) and could eat unimaginable quantity of food every time!

Some of Rappai’s well known eating marathons

1. Ate 10Kgs of halwa in 10 minutes!
2. Finished 700 idlis in one sitting!
3. Ate 300 bananas in one sitting and wanted more!

Rappai has an entry in Limca book of records for his eating ability. He also had won many eating competitions in Kerala. There is substantial money in eating competitions. So sometimes people used to even spread nails in the food given to Rappai to make him loose!

Now you would be thinking how he will satisfy his hunger? In Thrissur he had a lot of fans and most of his eating expenses were met by them. He also had good friends in the police department (sometimes he needed protection from angry hotel owners!). He was also invited to many of the inauguration functions etc.

Rappai was a nightmare for hotels which offered “unlimited meals” coupon. On one occasion he had taken three bucketfuls of rice, one bucket of fish curry and 10 kgs of cooked meat. Eventually the restaurant ran out of food!

Too bad there is no eating competition in Olympics. If there was one, Rappai would have got a gold medal for India!…

In the following photo Rappai is standing with Hira Ratan Manek who is yet to eat anything for last 11 years or so.

Further Reading
Rappai on BBC

Technopark is Kerala’s silicon valley. Ok, that is a big statement but still you get idea, right? Technopark is spread over 300 arces and it hosts over 100 companies employing 14,000+ professionals.

Land near Technopark is developing at lightning speed. Land price appreciation in one year is over 1000%! All the associated evils with rapid development is also appearing in and around technopark.

Technopark conducts annual fun event called Tech-a-break. One of the competitions in the event is the “Funnies video competition”. Every participant allowed to present a funny video clipping of maximum eight minutes duration.

Check out the following video from the 2006 Tech-a-break event. It is a parody on the daily life of a Technopark professional. It is funny, more so if you have been to technopark or is working there.

Further Reading
Technopark official Website
Tech-a-break at technopark
Photos of Technopark

Thiruvambadi election results are out. George M Thomas of LDF won by a very narrow margin of 246 votes. In the last election Mathai Chacko had won by a margin of more than 5400 votes. The narrow lead takes more signicance due to the fact that his time DIC(K) party supported LDF. BJP it seems is loosing its existing voter base due internal fights in the party.

An interesting aspect of this election was the record voting levels. Almost 85% of the voters turned up at the polling booths.

Vote Tally
Total votes polled : 135537 (84%)
LDF : 64,112
UDF : 63,866
BJP : 4758

Fifty-year-old Mr. Thomas is the secretary of the CPI(M)’s Thiruvambadi area committee. He is also the joint secretary of the Karshaka Sangham in the district.

I have a BSNL prepaid mobile connection. For a long time I wanted to enable GPRS and MMS on it. But being a prepaid connection I was unable to get it working.

Then last week I got the following message on my mobile.

Now GPRS Internet service is available for prepaid users. To enable send GPRSPRE to 3733.

Great! I immediately sent GPRSPRE to 3733. I got the following automated response from 3733 in a few minutes.

Your request for activation of GPRS received, please wait for confirmation SMS.

After some time I got another message from 45619.

Your cellone MMS service is active. please visit http://mms-sz.cellone.in for help on MMS. Your login name: xxx and password: xxx.

Then after 10 minutes I got this.

Congrats, GPRS/MMS successfully activated. To download settings please sms make model ex, NOKIA 6600 to 8355 or visit www.cellone.in

My mobile is Sony Ericsson 750i. So I typed “Sony Ericsson 750i” and sent it to 8355. The response was,

Sorry the format is not correct. Please send …..

The sample mentioned Sony Ericsson T610 so I tried that. Immediately a message popped up,

Do you want to install?

I clicked yes. After this I tried to access internet. The only page working was the cellone-portal link which newly appeared in the internet services menu. No other Web page was accessible.

When I looked at Internet profiles there were 3 profiles (bsnl-wap, cellone-portal and bsnl-mms). The current one was cellone-portal. I changed it to bsnl-wap. Voila! I was able to access Google and rest of the Web. Later I realized that cellone-portal is for downloading ringtones and mp3 files from cellone site and bsnl-wap is for internet access.

Bsnl-mms profile is for enabling MMS. This allows you to send multimedia content to other mobiles. But unfortunately MMS was not working. Then I realized that the settings downloaded were wrong. I found the correct setting here. Finally, MMS was also up and running!

BSNL charges 1paisa/KB for post paid and 2paisa/KB for prepaid. A bit costly so I access most of the Web pages with images disabled.

For Gmail, Google offers a Java application which can be downloaded from mobile. This application is not working on my mobile probably due to some settings problem at the BSNL side. I wish it will work soon since it offered a nice and compact interface to Gmail..

It was more than 2000 years back that an intelligent fellow named Jesus said “those who live by the sword die by the sword”. I remember this almost daily when I read Kerala news papers.

Today (2nd Dec) all newspapers had this news on the front page – “30 year old political activist hacked to death in Trivandrum”. It is a disturbing news. This violence had been going on for some time in this area, started as a minor quarrel between two groups of people some time ago. Now it has got political & communal colors. The fight between the groups worsened to such an extent that a young man is now murdered. This fellow is survived by a wife and a son. The murdered man himself was accused of various crimes including attempted murder and other kinds of violence.

Another problem in the above incident is that no one is coming forward to broker peace (Police did some attempt but was unsuccessful). If this fight was resolved during its early stages, much bloodshed could have been avoided. The Goonda Raj in Kerala is on the increase. Unless something drastic is not done to curb the menace, it is going to be a big headache for everyone.

Some criminals think that if a crime is committed as a group chances of conviction is less. It is in some respects true also. We need to change the criminal system to increase penalty for gang violence including death penalty. Also rules regarding evidence must be relaxed in such cases since people are afraid to testify against gangs. India doesn’t have a witness protection scheme.

Kannur district was notorious for similar deaths & violence for a long time. People got tired and finally some peace is now restored between groups. I do hope that some common sense will prevail in Trivandrum also. Do we really need to prove Jesus again and again?

On December 1st, 2006 Kerala high court in its judgment said that all kinds of watch fee (“nokkku kooli”) are illegal. It also directed administration to take action against political & muscle power backed tyranny of head load workers. One can only hope that the rule of law prevails in the state.

What is watch fee (nokkui kooli)? Consider that you have some stuff to unload from a lorry. If you decide to do it yourself you need to pay the head load workers free money. They will just watch the proceedings and then collect money. Sounds unbelievable? Well, it has been like this in Kerala for some time.

I remember an incident that happened recently. It was about a week ago that I went to Trivandrum central station to receive a relative. He was coming by the Venadu Express train which reaches around 10PM. As I waited on platform 4, I noticed that it was nearly empty except for a few guys who were in red uniform. They are the official porters at the station. I had come pretty early and noticed that they were waiting for more than an hour.

They like me were waiting for the Venad. When the train came some of them started running from one end to the other of the platform. They were looking for work. But no one was calling them. People were struggling with luggage but still looked terrified when the porters offered help!

Interestingly that day they didn’t get even a single customer. I felt very sorry for them. I was waiting with these guys and I knew this is their livelihood. These guys are probably the sole support behind their families. I also felt sorry for the old woman who got down from the train. She was carrying two heavy bags which clearly was too heavy for her. She looked financially well off but still was not taking the help of porters!

This situation is unique in Kerala. The reason is simple. Head load workers and porters have a very bad reputation in Kerala. There are many among them who bully and fleece money from people. This group of workers have the made the life of others a living hell.

The previous Kerala government had passed a “head load workers act” to protect people from the tyranny of the workers. But so far the implementation of this had been poor. Rates for all kinds of loading and unloading work are fixed and are known to all. The willpower of the administration to implement these rates is lacking. So suffering for the people of Kerala is bound to continue…