A weekend in Udupi and Manipal

A few days ago Niranjan and I spent a weekend with our friends Lavanya and Madhav Shanbhag in Manipal. Both of them are ex- Indian Army and are at present, educationists. Lavanya is a Professor in the dept of Opthalmology in Manipal Medical College and Madhav is the Director of The Institute of Jewelery Design and Management. We spent an interesting two days with them in Manipal.

The nearest town to Manipal, six km away, is Udupi, which is the originating place for the numerous Udupi restaurants dotting the world map, famous for serving authentic South Indian food. Ironically, there is no Udupi restaurant in Udupi with a decent sitting area and ambience, where one can enjoy south Indian food at leisure. Most eating places of this town are barely functional. So we stuck to home food and enjoyed typical Mangalorean cousine on all our meals while we were there, cooked by a seemingly tireless Lavanya and served on banana leaves . Lavanya keeps a very busy schedule, but loves cooking and made sure that we sampled the best of dishes of that particular region.
The day we arrived in Manipal, Madhav and Lavanya took us around the old and famous temples of Udupi. Udupi is a well known temple town of south Karnataka, drawing a huge number of pilgrims from all over India. Its most famous temple, the Krishna temple has an interesting story attached to it. A couple of hundred years ago, a devotee , Kanaka Das, was denied entry in the temple on the ground of his low caste. He was very upset and disappointed at not being able to avail 'darshan' of Lord Krishna. He stood by the sidewall of temple and cried out to the Lord and made his distress on being denied entry in His house known to Him. As the folklore goes, a crack appeared in the side wall and a part of it fell off creating a window in it to enable Kanaka Das to see the Lord. And then the statue of the Lord Krishna moved and turned its face towards that window so that Kanakadas could see the front view of Lord's face. That position of the statue remains till date. The devotees who enter the temple from the main entrance get side view of Lord Krishna. For getting front view of the face, they have to go to the window on the side wall.

In Udipi temples, the 'Rath Yatra', in which the statue of the Lord is taken around in a Rath pulled by devotees to the accompaniment of drums and other musical instruments, is a frequent event and there are many Raths for the purpose. Besides the important festival days, the devotees can request for a Rath Yatra on their behalf by offering some money to the Lord. Depending upon the size of the offering, they are granted the privilege of a taking the God for a ride on a small (about 20 feet high), medium sized, big(about sixty feet high), silver or a golden Rath. The evening we went around the Udupi temples, we saw a Rath Yatra in progress. The well lighted and decorated Rath carrying the statue of the Lord was being pulled by men and women of all ages while some other people danced along its way, some were lighting up camphor on its path and some were beating the drums. It made a magnificent visual.

Manipal, though nearby, is away from the hustle and bustle of Udupi and is fairly self sufficient. It is an educational township with a University which constitutes twenty two educational institutes - most famous among them being the Kasturba Medical College and Hospital. Others are engineering college, law college, college of management, college of education, college of nursing, college of pharmacy, college of jewelery design etc. We spent an afternoon exploring Manipal institutes.

Manipal institutes are in modern, well maintained buildings and are excellently equipped with libraries and labs. The Medical college has a museum-something pretty unusual in any medical college of our country. It has a large collection of actual body parts, carved intricately so that one can see all the arteries, veins and nerves inside, preserved in formalin. One can look at the heart and see its auricles, ventricles, arteries, veins, valves etc. There were different sections devoted to different body parts- hands, feet, liver, brain, lungs, stomach etc. Seeing all these specimens made us wonder what a complex machine a human body is. A section was devoted to human fetuses of all ages, right from one week after conception to the time just before its birth. One week old fetus was about a quarter of an inch long lump. A five week old fetus was an inch long and had developed its limbs. Seeing step by step development of human life form was awe-inspiring.

Manipal has a beautiful beach- Malpe. We drove to it one evening to see the sunset. Walking on the wet sand along the wind swept beach was a pleasure indescribable in words. There were motor boats and sea-mobikes in the sea for the benefit of the tourists. Curiosity got better of us and we agreed to take a short ride on a sea-mobike there. Niranjan sat behind the driver clutching him and I sat behind Niranjan. As the sea mobike drove fast into the sea, it violently jumped over the waves every five seconds or so. I clutched Niranjan tight and concentrated on not falling off the contraption. It was fun nevertheless and got over too soon.

Next morning we left for Mangalore ,which is about sixty kilometers from Manipal by a bus. After seeing some city sights there we took a train to our present home town, Bangalore.