The World Famous Mysore Dassara….!

Mysore is 144 Kms from Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka. The word Mysore is a corrupted version of “mysooru”, which is derived from the word “Mahishasurana Ooru”, which means the town of Mythological Demon Mahishasura in Kannada. There is mention of Mysore in Sri Devi Bhagavatham. According to the story in the Sri Devi Bhagavatam, Mysore was ruled by the demon King Mahishasura was a buffalo-headed monster. In response to the prayer by the Gods and Goddesses to save them from the wicket demon, Goddess Parvathi, took the form of Chamundeshwari and killed the demon on top of the Chamundi hill near Mysore. After killing the demon the Goddess stayed on top of the hill, where she is worshipped with great devotion even to this day. Mysore Dasara is in honour of the Goddess Chamundeshwari and is celebrated as the victory of good over evil.

There is an inscription on Chamundi Hills that was done in 950AD during the reign of the Gangas of Talkad who ruled Mysore. The Cholas defetead the Gangas and ruled Mysore for over a century. Then Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra (Halebidu, Hassan) drove Cholas away from Mysore in the 10th century. After the Hoysalas came the Vijayanagara Kings and then Mysore was under Yadu dynasty who were feudatories of the Vijayanagara Kings. After the fall of Aliya Rama Raya of Vijayanagara, Mysore was ruled by Wodeyars.    

Dasara festival was started by Vijayanagara Kings but it was continued Raja Wodeyar I in the year 1610 at Srirangapatana which was their capital then. The festivities begin with the Wodeyar royal couple performing a special puja to Goddess Chamundeshwari in the Chamundi Hill. This would be followed by a special durbar (royal assembly)...

Further reading http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/seekers/faith-and-rituals/the-world-famous-mysore-dassara  

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Places to Visit Near Bangalore – Nature is Not Over!

A good friend of mine says,  ”Life in Bangalore city has gone totally mechanical, nature is totally destroyed, and it’s just over!”

I say, “Cities are always like that.”  They keep growing, spreading, pushing and consuming the villages, and people from the current generation cannot keep up with the speed of the cities’ growth.  We sit inside and curse  the government as we share black and white photos of the old city market over the social networks.  Today our street might have lots of trees along its edges, but tomorrow they could be gone.

Why?  Because we ask for it.  We cry for better facilities; we cry for metro trains, less traffic, and more convenience.  It all results in one thing: CHANGE.   Then we grow old and lose our hot-blooded passion.  We start complaining just like our fathers and grandfathers did.  The same friend asks me angrily, “What is your solution, then?”

I say, “Head out for just 15- 20 kms from Bangalore.  You will see beauty and happenings you would never even imagine!”

There are tons of places to visit near Bangalore. Let’s check out the west side of Bangalore, which is my favourite place to visit.  Hundreds of people visit Big Banyan Tree and the Manchanabele Reservoir, which offers a decent picnic spot for families and friends.  But many will not notice the clean, tree-lined roads passing through lovely little villages on the way.  Ramohalli Road on the way to Big Banyan Tree runs past two lakes which look like heaven during the early morning and... further reading http://shuttermonks.com/places-to-visit-near-bangalore/

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The area that’s now Shivajinagar

Blackpally, the name formerly given to the area that is now Shivajinagar, remains puzzling for researchers looking to unravel its origins. The most well-known stand on the matter comes from the historical records of St Mary’s Basilica, which refer to a village named “Bili akki palli” that had become a settlement for a group of Christians moving in from the panchayat town of Gingee in Villupuram (formerly, South Arcot district) in Tamil Nadu, in the late seventeenth century. As documents at the church have it, the settlers found the land to be fertile for a variety of white rice that was also grown in parts of Ulsoor, and different from other local kinds, such as the red “dodda bair nellu” variety found in the Kolar region. This lent the village its name, say the church’s records; “bili akki” literally translates to “white rice” in Kannada.

That these rice fields were home to flocks of wading birds, egrets and herons, lends the related theory of the area being named after the Kannada word “bellakki”, which is commonly used to describe cattle egret. SK Aruni, Director of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Southern Region, in an attempt to unravel the mystery of Blackpally (in his report entitled “Tracing the architect of the Cantonment”) supposes that the area might have been named after John Blakiston (1785-1867), a British military engineer and lieutenant of the Madras Engineers, who is known as the one assigned to drawing up plans for the Bangalore Cantonment area.

Old-timers in the area insist that the name Blackpally was nothing but a denotation of the dark-skinned natives that the British colonisers had come upon. Records at the Basilica also speak of a “black plague” that struck the area in the late nineteenth century, during when the church offered recourse to locals. Soon after the plague, the figure of Mother Mary was attributed with the name “Annai Arokiamarie” (literally, “Our Lady of Good Health”), say these records. The chapel had been founded by the French priest Abbe du Bois under a thatched roof in 1803, and referred to at the time as the Kaanike Mathe Devalaya (“Church of Our Lady of the Presentation”). Abbe du Bois arrived in Bangalore in 1799 – after the fall of Tipu Sultan’s Srirangapattana to the British – to preserve the Catholic practice in...

Further reading http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/bangalore-beat/features/many-origins-blackpally

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