Wednesday, January 18, 2006

tiruvannamalai

jan 17th

kalyani, since kartika deepam is coming up and you are a devotee of arunachala eswararn, tell us all about the circumambulation of the hill and the related stories, sthala puranam etc.

when is the kartika deepam anyway? i have done the girivalam once, and i met a very interesting monk at the ramana ashram.

i also saw the wheelchair-bound adam osborne then (he has since died). most interesting man, he wrote some time ago about how he was the one 'vellakkaran tamizhan' (white-guy tamil) around: he was born and brought up at the ramana ashram and remained quite indian all his life. he was famous for Osborne Computer, one of the early success stories in personal computers, way before the IBM PC became, as they say, the 'dominant design'.

isn't there another vellakkaran tamizhan around? ron whittaker of the snake park and crocodile farm in madras? half-indian?

1 comment:

nizhal yoddha said...

oops... got my months mixed up. i am told it was celebrated in kerala in december and in karnataka in november.

the sad thing is that hindu festivals are increasingly not celebrated. for instance deepavali is hardly an event in kerala any more.