Remembering my school days

Have been thinking to write this for some time. A rare personal article on this blog. Since I left Trivandrum for Chennai in search of job, I had seldom visited the places where I grew up. During one of my recent visits to Trivandrum, I took time to visit the places I studied. Below are some pictures of places which shaped my early days.

Vishwabharati Nursery School, Karamana, Trivandrum

My early schooling started at Vishwabharati Nursery School opposite to where we used to stay in Karamana. I am surprised to see that it has not changed after so many years. It has been more than 30 years since I walked out of this school. I might have studied pre-KG and LKG here.

After my time here, I was moved to one of the best schools in Trivandrum at that time, Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Vazhuthacaud. It was one of the first schools started by Chinmaya Mission in 1969. Since the school was away from my home, there was a taxi which dropped us to school every day. During this time, I got to meet Swamy Chinmayananda who was a frequent visitor to the school. He used to spent good time with the students. I still remember him reaching us how to do magic with a coin. He is one of the early influences in my life to show how divinity would be using his calming presence. I studied here till my 6th standard. At that time this school was only having lower primary classes and hence I had to move out.

Govt. Girls High School, Karamana, Trivandrum

Govt. Boys High School, Karamana, Trivandrum

My next school was Government High School, Karamana. Walkable from my home, this school was on the banks for Karamana River, one of the major rivers flowing through Trivandrum. Both boys and girls high school were on the same campus and shared a common playground. Boys school had a good building and Girls school was having building only for class 10. Other classes were held in bamboo sheds with coconut leaf thatched roof.

Me having studied in English medium joined the Girls school since Boys school had only Malayalam medium. The school had one division for every class as co-ed with English as a medium. I studied here from 7th to 10th (SSLC). Most of my fond memories about school life are during this time. I was an average student who didn't hog any limelight during my school days.

Karamana River

During out past time, other than playing games of football, cricket, kabaddi etc, we used to go fishing in the river. There was only a wall separating the school from the river and whenever water rises in the river we used to get holiday.

We had a fairly big ground shared by Boys and Girls schools. The ground was in the same condition now as it was at that time. It was a fine example of gender harmony. I was in the Cricket, Football and Kabaddi team during this time. This is where I studied cycling using my friend's BSA SLR cycle. I used to rent cycle in the nearby shop and roam around here during weekends.

After finishing 10th, I studied Pre-degree course (10+2 at school was introduced later) at Mahatma Gandhi College, Trivandrum.  I will save that for another post.

Sankara Subbaiyer Lower Primary School, Karamana where my brothers had their primary education.

Gagan Chukki Falls, Sivanasamudram

Our trip to Mysore on last October long weekend was the first pleasure trip after we got our daughter. She has almost reached a year and is ready to join me. En-route to Mysore, we visited Sivanasamudram (also called Sivasamudram). I heard about the water falls from one of my colleague and decided to check it out.

River Cauvery flows through this place towards its journey to find sea and creates two waterfalls called Gagan Chukki Falls and Bara Chukki Falls. The best season to visit the falls is around July-August when Cauvery river is full. There was not too much water this time of the year, but it was good enough to enjoy.

Sivasamudram is located in Mandya district in Karnataka state where the Cauvery river splits to two and forms a small island and the two water falls called Gagan Chukki (90 meters) and Bara Chukki (69 meters). Both the falls are only km away from each other. We visited only Gagan Chukki falls since we had to reach Mysore by that night. From Bangalore, the falls is around 135 kms.

On way to Mysore on Bangalore-Mysore highway we have to take a left at Maddur. This road goes to Kollegal and Sivanasamudram is around 32 kms from the highway. The road from Maddur is good till Malavalli and after that it is terrible to say the least.

We started around 1pm and after some stops reached the falls by around 5:30pm. Once we reached Sivanasamudram, we had to take a left through a small road. There is an arch at the main road which is the entrance to the falls area. We asked the villagers for directions to reach the falls. After we cross the village, we enter the river basin which is maintained by Karnataka electricity board. There is a hydroelectric project on the river Cauvery here which is suppose to be the first hydro electric station in Asia for supplying power to Bangalore (1906) and Kolar Gold fields and Mysore.

At the entrance to the area, there is an electricity board outpost where you have to register yourself. The entrance is closed after 6pm. After the entrance you will see the hydro power station on the right. It seems the power station is built on a side stream of Cauvery and not the main one. We didn't see the full Cauvery river there. After crossing the stations, we had to cross the river stream to reach the watch tower.

Watch tower is built below the surface area to get a better view of the falls. We have to get down several steps from the road to reach here. We also saw many monkeys all over the place when we first reached here.

Monkeys on top of the watch tower.
There were many, small and big all over the place when reached there.

From the top, we could see the river coming down from the wild towards the fall. We could also see a Dargah nearby. We heard that it is a famous worship place frequently visited by many.

To get a good view of the wall, we went down the many steps to reach the watch tower. The falls from this place is magnificent to see and I could take good pictures here. This is my first planned shots of a water falls. They have come out well, but still has lots of scope for improvement :).

One of my first water fall shots

This one little zoomed out