Akloli Kund

Wishing well at Akloli Kund.


Akloli Kund Hot Water Springs. Next to Vajreshwari 


Not too far from the city of Bhiwandi, the industrial city, north of Mumbai you will find a small village filled with sanatoriums. They are mostly run by and for Gujarati and Kutchi communities. That's because this village on a bend of the Tansa River that supplies water to Greater Mumbai and has bubbling hot springs. The water from the main spring is channeled into three large tiled ponds that you can see in these images. You can't jump into the bubbling spring but the it spills over into three ponds with different degrees of temperature. I could stand in the hottest one pretty comfortably and I must confess that my feet never felt better! But most people seemed to prefer the cooler ones. Here are some girls in hot water wearing India's national dress - the nightie.
 



Like all good geographical features that are occupied by people who cannot look behind worshiping some hidden power they imagine behind it, this place is dedicated to the down to earth Shiva and shared by the atheistic Jain Tirtankaras and the ashram of a Godman. They  do  a good job at keeping the place holy and therefore clean. Or we would have people washing their bums in hot water here after a good crap out in the open.

Here's the man who kept shooing away people who walked in with their muddy slippers. May Shiva bless him.






There are two shrines here. The older one shown above to the west of the spring and a more recent one to the North. On the Southern side is an ashram of this godman.


 



To the east is this wonderful old lamp post, tree and a road that went to the Tansa river front.


  Here's a useful list of Hot Springs in India (and around the world)

Sakhi Gopal, Orissa

Approaching Puri. 

The Puri Superfast I took some months back from Mumbai slows down to a passenger trains pace after Bhubaneshwar where most of the people on the train get off. Most of the remaining people on the train are pilgrims. This stretch also seems to be the stretch where people plan about where to stay in Puri. Touts go from coach to coach with leaflets and rates and there was this middle aged couple who was in the same compartment with me who were supposed to get off at Sambhalpur but stayed on to go all the way to Puri for a day's sightseeing who took the advice of the tout in the photo. They were going for a conference there and were colleagues. I'm calling them Sakhi and Gopal after the station I passed just before I took this photo.

While it is the big eyed Lord Jagganath that they all come to see, it also has a beach. And a hundred hotels to choose from.

Aratupuzha (Alapuzha)

A church in a fishing village. I was there on 19-5-2012.

Divine Nagar

Divine Nagar Station.

It's a funny name for a place - Divine Nagar. But then, this is Kerala, or India's God's Own Country. The Netravati Express from Mumbai to Trivandrum stops here because there are a lot of pilgrims who come to a healing retreat called Pota which is close by. 

National Waterway 3, Kayankulam

A film of oil on National Waterway No 3.

It runs parallel to Kerala coast, through a network of lakes (backwaters) and canals. Here, in the Kayankulam Kayal or lake, the water is pretty clean except for this long line of oil on the surface along the channel the fishing boats coming back from the sea take.

NH47, Kayankulam

KPAC and the Global Malayalis.

Long before Asianet, Kairali, or Surya. Even before Thomsun, Harmony and other Gulf VHS movies tapes, the Malayalis  who escaped Kerala and colonised the world's offices, hospitals, factories and restaurants connected live to the slow motion non-revolution back to home through the KPAC performances in their adopted homes.

The KPAC office is filled with these mementos from that era. 

NH 47, Kayankulam

Next to the KPAC office is a stage where they practice and have occasional shows. This is the reading of the KPAC's 2011 play: Sahanaparvam.

NH47. Kayankulam

KPAC: Full Story

NH47, Kayankulam

KPAC: Full Story

NH47, Kayankulam

KPAC - The Kerala People Arts Club. Part 1

It is not easy to run a drama troupe in India. Their days have come and most probably gone. In Kerala, the iconic KPAC still survives. It was started as an art club and they have stayed true to their name. Drama is what KPAC became synonymous with but along with drama, they continue to run art classes. They stand on their own two feet.

Standing in the KPAC office and watching the troupe practice their next play, you get a feeling of being in the past. The world seems to have moved on while this group of people hold on to the nostalgia, methods and style of an age that probably does not resonate with the taste of the present or future. The art classes on offer provide what seems to be the things the new generation will like but is it what they actually want?

The KPAC office stands like an island along the busy NH47 highway connecting two of Kerala's biggest cities. The cities where the entertainment and messages of the new Kerala is manufactured by a generation that looks outside the state for inspiration. It is hard to believe that 5 decades back, revolution could start and the freshest movements of the time could come from a minuscule town in the middle of the paddy fields and backwaters.

Over the next few posts, I will show you images from the KPAC office in Kayankulam, Kerala.