Vinayak Hegde

One of the few things that I remember from my childhood when we first got a television home (in time for the ‘87 World Cup) was a Kathakali performance. The other things I remember (other than cricket) were the Megaserials – Ramayan and Mahabharat. Ever since I saw that Kathakali performance as a child on TV, I always wondered how the elaborate makeup was done.

Kathakali is the classical dance form of Kerala which originated in the first half of 17th Century. Kathakali is derived from the Malayalam words for Story (“Katha”) and Performance (“Kali”). Kathakali stories are drawn from the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Bhagvatha Purana. Kathakali is generally performed in temples during festivals. The performance starts around 9pm in the night and continues all through the night till early morning.

While at Thekkady, I booked tickets to see a Kathakali performance. I reached 2 1/2 hours earlier than the scheduled performance to see the makeup being done. All the colours used in the Kathakali makeup are made of various kinds of rocks found in the region. Oil and rice flours are used a binders to hold the natural colours together. The rice flour (along with a bit of lime) is also used as glue to hold together the “chutti” – a series of white ridges (made of matte paper) on the cheeks on both sides of the face. The “Chutti” are a distinctive mark of Kathakali along with the elaborate head-dress. The different colours of the makeup depict different attributes of the characters. Green depicts righteousness / godliness, red depicts regality and black depicts evil.

The first part of the make-up is done by another artist who paints the artists face. In the second stage, the artist does the fine makeup around the eyes, forehead and the neck. After the facial makeup is done – the artist has to put crumpled starched garments with lots of frills around the waist tightly. This holds the lower part of the costume. The final stage is when the artist dons the costume and the headgear. Another trivia is that there is often a scarf like accompaniment to the costume. It has mirrors at the end of the scarf which hangs around the neck. The mirrors are used stealthily during the performance by the artist to check if he is makeup is alright and not running due to the sweat.

The story that was performed and shown in the pictures is as follows:

Narakasuravadham or The Murder of Narakasura

Nakrathundi, slave (maid servant) of the powerful demon King Narakasura, leaves for the heaven to kidnap the heavenly beauties, as ordered by Narakasura. On reaching heaven, Nakrathundi finds handsome Jayantha, son of Lord Indra. Nakrathundi, filled with lust on the sign of Jayantha disguises herself as Lalitha (a beautiful woman) and approaches with beautiful dance movements.

Lalitha (Nakrathundi) tells that she is rejoiced at his sight and by the grace of god, she will be getting a handsome husband like Jayantha. Jayantha in turn, asks Lalitha to reveal her identity and why she has approached him. Lalitha introduces herse;lf as the heavenly beauty and invites Jayantha for a sexual relationship. Jayantha humbly replies that he will not marry anyone without his father’s (Lord Indra’s) permission. Lalitha tells that she is unable to leave Jayantha and tries to embrace him with her lustful desires.

Jayantha becomes furious and orders Lalitha to leave the place immediately. Lalitha informs him that she came to kidnap him and shows her original form of Nakrathundi and tries to catch hold of Jayantha. At last, Jayantha becomes angry and cuts Nakrathundi’s ears, nose and breasts. Nakrathundi, roaring with acute pain, returns to Narakasura and Jayantha leaves the place to meet his father to inform him of the incident.

Recently I went to Kerala – a trip I had planned at the beginning of this year but could not do as I broke my arm during a trek to Thadiyandamol . I travelled to Kochi, Thekkady, Alleppey, Athirampally falls, Calicut and the Wayanad region during this 12-day trip. I travelled further along the coast to the towns of Udupi, Honnavar, Idagunji and Murudeshwar in Karnataka.

Some random trivia / observations from Kerala:

• The buses are open air with canvas drapes – the poor man’s idea of air cooled buses.
• Keralites love films. Every 500m you will find a big hoarding proclaiming the presence of a mohanlal fan club.
• Southern Kerala is thickly populated – so much so it is difficult sometimes to ascertain whether you have left the city.
• Everywhere you will see signs of influence of expats from the gulf – from majestic houses to the shops selling the latest goods (and flaunting arabic scripts). This is even more true in northern Kerala as compared to Southern Kerala.
• Because of the backwaters, using boats is pretty much a standard form of public transport – especially in the towns on the shores of the Vembanad lake.
• Everywhere around Kerala, you can see the traces of it’s trading past (and present) – from well developed ports to several large trading outpost handed down generations.

Kochi

I reached Kochi early morning by overnight bus from Bangalore and my parents reached Kochi by an evening flight from Mumbai. We were lucky to get accommodation in a home-stay that was by the waterfront near Bolgatty palace. The best part was however that the property had a licensed Chinese fishing net. It was a great experience to see the Chinese fishing nets in action. There is a hanging stretched net attached to a long poles. The net itself is attached to an intricate cantilever system with a variety of weights (attached with ropes of varying sizes). At the center of the net is a generally a light bulb which is meant to attract shrimps, crabs and other fish. The net is lowered and then hauled back up again after 15-20 minutes. The catch is collected from the larger net using a smaller handheld net and the net is lowered back. There is also a small hit attached to the Chinese net platform which is used for waiting when the net is lowered. Kochi is sea-food lovers paradise and there is a wide variety of fresh water fish available. The other attractions in Kochi are the Marine drive (an evening cruise there is recommended), the Jewish Synagogue and the St Francis church (the oldest European Church in India).

Thekkady

From Kochi we proceeded to Thekkady. The ferry on a Periyar wildlife sanctuary was closed as an overloaded ferry had capsized killing 45 people. All the hotels were deserted due to this when we reached there. We visited a spice garden nearby where we were able to see and listen about how various spices are cultivated and harvested. The downside to the spice boom has been that the natural vegetation in the area is being cut to make way for tea gardens (in Wayanad especially) or spice gardens. We also saw Kalaripattayu and Kathakali performance on consecutive evenings. I will cover that in another blog post though.

Alleppey

From the high hills and forests of Thekkady, we came back to Alleppey on the shores of the Vembanad Lake to stay on a houseboat. We boarded the houseboat at the same place where the annual Nehru boat race is held. Later on the cruise, I was able to see long snake boat used in the race. The houseboat stay was the best part of the trip – just listening to music and just hanging around the deck looking at the endless water and leaning coconut trees. The food was excellent as well with rice and fish being staple diet in Kerala. My idea of perfect idyllic holiday

Athirampally Waterfalls

The Athirampally waterfalls are located in the middle of pristine forest about 80 kms from Kochi. They are often called the Niagara falls of India. They are wide and have a fall of about 80 feet. The view from the foot of the falls is majestic. There was a lot of water gushing from the falls as we had visited just after the rains.

I shall cover the Northern part of the trip in the next blog post.

Once in a while, you read a book that is filled with ‘aha’ moments. If you have written complex software for a while or want to become a good programmer then ‘Coders at work’ is a must read. This fantastic book interviews 15 master programmers. Some of the people interviewed in the book are well-known names such as Don Knuth, Ken Thompson, Jamie Zawinski and Peter Norvig.

Some comments on the content of the book:
Programming languages
Many of programmers interviewed started with BASIC and considered it an okay language. What is probably more surprising is the universal hatred of C++ in this group. In fact several people such as Peter Norvig and Ken Thompson (who goes on a tirade against C++) consider it a downright ugly and cumbersome language to work with.

Jamie Zawinski – C++ is just an abomination
Brad Fitzpatrick – The syntax is terrible and totally inconsistent and the error messages, at least from GCC, are ridiculous.
Ken Thompson – - By and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee.

On Programming and Curiosity
Almost everyone interviewed still programs (some do occasionally) and enjoys hacking and taking things apart. Many were misfits and took unusual career paths to get to where they are today. There is a rebel and hacker streak in all of the them. Most of them stumbled into programming and discovered that they were good at that at some point. Everyone emphasized the practice of writing good code readable code. Everyone laments that you cannot understand a system from the bottom upwards as systems have become more and more complex and layers of abstraction have multiplied manifold.

On categorizing programming and building software
The opinion is pretty much evenly split on whether programming is a science, art, craftsmanship or engineering with a slight bias towards craftsmanship.

On Recommended Books
Among the books recommended, “The Art of computer programming” by Don Knuth topped the list for obvious reasons. Another books which was recommended by several people was the “Psychology of computer programming” by Gerald Weinberg.

On the state of computer science
The mood on the state of developments in computer science was fairly pessimistic and most people pointed to the fact that many of the breakthrough ideas for computer science were conceived in the ’70s (with the notable exception of the internet and web programming)

The only downside here is the interview of Fran Allen. It should not have made the book. I got the distinct feeling that much of the work that she claimed credit for is implemented by others and she was the manager of those projects (probably a good one but that is hardly the same as being a good programmer).

I have added some notes (for further reading) and quotes from the book on the wiki