chakravyuha

I visited Ahmedabad to attend a couple of conferences. Namely, the National Conference On Information And Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Access India Convention
This time, I decided to travel by train since the air fair was too expensive. There were a lot of us going to Ahmedabad but most people were going to the convention rather than the CSI conference. I teamed up with Manish and Aman for the journey.

My first challenge was booking the ticket. Manish did the actual leg work. I wanted to avail of the discount for persons with disabilities so I had to get a medical certificate. That in itself is matter for a separate blog post. The certificate did not work so I had to pay the full price. That was not too much though.

Day 1

The journey to Ahmedabad was an “experience” thanks to our fellow passenger who is a marketing executive with a large Japanese firm. He was a fat man who had his own assumptions about the world. For instance:
A. IT professionals do no work, have no pressure and are well paid.
B. Everyone likes answering his questions and is his best friend.
C. He is superb at making relationships.
D. A man’s worth is measured by the number of phone calls he recieves on his mobile phone.

Needless to say, he was a frustrated man and had apparantly never been tought to keep quiet. I wonder how he managed in school.

Thanks to our fellow passenger, we went to bed at 20:00 after an excellent dinner. I managed to finish a novel since it was on my mp3 player.

Day 2

We reached on time and our hostess sent a friend’s son to recieve us. He was an example of the typical Indian yuth who is trying to find his feet. In due course, we reached our destination.

The Ritz

Our hostess had more than laid out the welcome mat. No red carpet but the wooden floor was unique and we could not ask for anything more. Towels, soaps etc., were plentyful so was privacy and anything else we wanted. Breakfast that day was of south Indian food. Ouch! However, it was well made so I did not have a problem.

The conference was good though the first half could have been better spent having some more sessions instead of multiple inogeration events. Aman had carried food / snaks so we were able to cope effectively with some of the yon inducing sessions. The evening was action packed consisting of a visit to Gujarat university where we had excellent coco and a “maska bun” and then dinner with a friend. Along the way, Aman tried shopping for clothes in a streat market with Manish and me in toe. That attempt, for no fault of ours failed.

Day 3

The second day of the conference was fascinating with presentations from the National Institute of Design, the Centre For Developing of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Manish and yours truely. There were several other presenters of course. We left the conference early and eventually landed up at a place that served Saurashtran cuisine. It was not sweet for one though I can’t quite remember anything distinctive about the taste. The setting though was interesting since we were in a open air restaurant with bamboo structures. We had to assent a cross between a staircase and a ladder to get to the top of the structure. We were seated on rugs around a stone table. Ug, anyone remember the second book in the Narnia series?

Day 4

The Access India convention was enogurated with a fanfair of access technology. My favorite session was the one with Tina, the image consultant. The agenda was varied but the majority of the sessions were very useful. I had my own demonstration of J-Say in the afternoon from where, I was promptly kidnapped by my uncle and his charming daughter.

Day 5

We packed at night and we were all ready much before time. Shanti Raghavan of href=”http://www.enable-india.org/”>Enable India was undoubtly the star of the morning.

Day 6

The trip back was uneventful except for a fellow deligate being left behind at Alwar. There were a lot of us in the coach and there was a lot of stimulating conversation.

Conclusion

I would repeat this experience anytime. Manish and Aman are excellent friends and traveling companions. The speakers at the CSI conference were varied so one’s interest did not have much of a chance to flag. The Access India conventtion was one of those rare conferences where one is glad that there is no choice of what session to attend. A few points though;
1. The Access India convention must have been the only conference where deligates had to be asked to keep quiet. If the Indian blind cannot behave in a conference, then the corporate world is indeed far away for them.

2. The local organization could have been better and from what I hear, could have provided better residential facilities.

3. We should have made better recording arrangements.

We set out this morning for immersing my grandmother’s ashes in the Ganges. We had to get to the river which was about a 2 hour drive. Before that though, we had to visit the crematorium to collect the ashes. Mind you, those are not ashes in the technical sense of the term. They are actually bones and, in my grandmother’s case, they were very recognizable. By recognizable, I mean that the remnants of the cremation were recognizable as bones. I do not know enough anatomy to decipher which part of the body they belonged to. The drive was uneventful and we got the car to the riverbank without incident. The only thing worthy of note was the amount of told boots we had to cross. The last one charged us 7 1/2 rupees for a dirt track. To be more precise, the road was not really a dirt track. Idle construction machinery was everywhere. My uncle and my father and uncle, who accompanied me, are seasoned civil engineers and project managers. They spent a happy 10 minutes speculating on what could have happened and, reached the same conclusion; namely, that some kind of dispute had risen and the contractor had walked away.

Once we were out of the car, we were besieged by priests and other hangers on. We had to buy some cans to take holy water in and of course try to haggle for the cost of the boat. This was not successful. The rowboat was quite large and, no ores were being used. The boatman was using a long bamboo pole to propel the boat. The priest who came on board performed a small ceremony where, we had to throw flowers into the Ganges and repeat some words he said. He of course try to find out how influential weaver, our connections and in turn, he listed his own connections. My dad had the most physically demanding task of actually scooping my grandmother’s remains out of the earthenware pitcher they were in and pitching them into the river. He had to do a thorough job and, it is difficult to do given the weight of the remains, the picture and the awkward angle at which one has to lean to over the gunwale of the boat. I cannot tell if there was an emotional component to the whole exercise.

Once we were back at the bank, we will once more besieged by crowds asking for money. Apparently, you need to feed people at the bank so; one had to shell out more cash. Just when we reached the car, the local sweepers asked us for money. We finally got away.

The drive back was smooth and, we felt it took less time than the drive to the river. This particular place, he situated in the sugar belt of India. We passed a number of sugarcane fields and sugar mills with several bullock carts standing outside their gates.

So I guess that’s that… My grandmother’s room is almost empty so, by virtue of echolocation, I am able to feel the emptiness. That however is something I will get used to in time. The healing process may have already begun.

I made my first visit to a crematorium. No funeral dirge, no waling women since, in our community, they are not allowed to come for the cremation. We had elected to go with the electric crematorium.
The crematorium is in a small tree lined complex. There is the traditional wood burning one and the electric one. As I disembarked from the car, I could smell the faint odor of holy offerings. The priests are efficient and the paper work so far, has not taken much time. We had to wait for a bit, but the machine was free so, the ceremonies began. They were not very elaborate. The priest said something then my father had to go around a tree and sprinkle holy water.
I had read in Q and A by Vikram Swarup about the skull needing to be cracked to provide easy passage to the soul. My father did not even hesitate. It was a clean blow, no fuss nothing. We then went inside.
The inside of the crematorium was a large hall with the furnace towards one end. The hall was tangibly hotter than the outside. A series of wall fans relieved the heat but made conversation difficult unless you were standing close to the person you were conversing with. There was a small depression near the furnace for placing offerings and carrying out other prayers. This was done and then I heard the crash of the handles as the body was lifted from the bier. One of the handles was then turned anti-clock wise and the body was lowered into the furnace. When the furnace was opened, and though I was about 4 feet away, I could feel a blast of heat. I do not know what the inside temperature was. Another crash, and then the lid were slammed shut and that was that. We could have collected the ashes after 2 hours but we have chosen to do so in the morning on our way to immerse them in the river.
Note:
Given the inside temperature, I could not understand why it would take 2 hours to convert the body to ashes. It turns out that the conversion takes place in about 15 minutes but then the ashes need to be cooled before removal, hence the time taken.
We all trooped out. The priest brought us to a halt and then announced the time of the prayer meeting which is on Monday afternoon at 16:00 to 17:00.

So, people have begun streaming in. They are all sitting in the lobby talking in hushed tones. The phones have wrung almost every 12 minutes. Some callers are very persistant. How does one handle them nicely? I can smell a lot of incense so I guess things are ready for the next phase. The certificate of death needs to be stamped and photocopied. Someone should make a manual for all this. I wonder which ancient text of ours has all this documented.

My grandmother died this morning around 07:45. It was not sudden and everyone knew that this could happen. What is to be done now? Everyone is calm and mom is busy in arranging the body etc. Is there a point to all this? Perhaps the point is to be busy doing something so that the sharp edge is taken off one’s grief. Yet, I don’t know.
I feel adrift like a bark tossed on a medium lighter than air. Do I work, do I study, and do I read? What do I wear? As it happens I am wearing jeans and a shirt. I always thought one wore black clothes on such occasions.
I have also become the local “telephone operator” which is ok. Note: find out when the prayer meeting is. Some people want to know.
I seem to have gone into a self analysis mode. It is if everything has become tasteless or toned down. I can still laugh but my laughter lasts a few seconds longer. I feel solemn and at rest in a void.

One of my relations is under going Laser lithotripsy as I write this post. The family is in a state of controlled panick even though this procedure is quite safe and is considered minimally invasive. As usual, it is only yours truely who has done some research on the whole thing. I should have done this some time ago since I could have asked the doctors some “interesting” questions on why such a procedure was necessary. My main question would have been why could the stone not be shattered by using shock waves as described on the below links?

Some links with information on Laser lithotripsy follow.

http://www.cornellurology.com/stones/treatments/surgical.shtml

http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/kidneystones/KS_treatment.html