On cars, SUVs and electrification

 I have been a car buff ever since I move to the US in the early 90s and have been closely following the market in the US. After moving back to India in the 2000s, I follow both the Indian market and to a lesser extent, the US market. My interest lies primarily in the mainstream sedans, sporty coupes and roadsters that lie in the fun-to-drive and more affordable range of the market. 

Like many car and driving enthusiasts, I have bemoaned the decline of the conventional 3-box sedans and sports coupes whose low center of gravity is an essential part of the handling and fun-to-drive quotient. The first wave of SUVs hit American roads more than 20 years ago; it is continuing and has  hit the Indian market as well. We have seen automakers reducing the number of sedan models. Ford has stopped making sedans period; GM has very few left.  

I do see the utility of the higher ground clearance form factors - SUVs and minivans - in terms of their size and capacity to haul more people and cargo. However I remain unconvinced of the value proposition of the compact and subcompact SUVs that have flooded the Indian market. While I am not a fan, most people in India don't seem to agree with my take on this. 

Many of these smaller SUVs (e.g. the hot selling Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos, and umpteen Maruti compact SUV models) actually have smaller cargo capacity than sedans with a full trunk. At the time of writing, there are only three mid-size* non-luxury~ sedans with full trunks that are currently on offer in India - Honda City, Volkswagen Virtus and Skoda Slavia. If you look at the cargo capacity and shoulder- and leg-rooms of these cars, you will see that the sedans have higher cargo capacity, almost the same shoulder room and same or better leg room. I believe folks in India also picks SUVs for their road presence. Looks are subjective, but a very important one for most people, understandably so.  

So the case for the small SUV appears to primarily stem from the height factor - higher ground clearance, ease of getting in and out, the higher view it affords the driver along with more head room and the corresponding (perceived or otherwise) road presence advantage. The sedans outperform the small SUVs in fuel efficiency, handling and ease of driving. Those are the trade-offs. The Indian consumers have weighed the benefits from the height factor so heavily, that the sedans may very well become extinct in Indian roads in a couple of decades. 

The move to SUVs started in the US and is continuing, although, the compact SUV*s are non-existent since Americans put a much higher premium on space. 

If you look at the power/size-of-engine ratio, auto makers have been making steady improvements over the last 4 years. They are squeezing out more Horsepower/Torque from smaller engines due to improvements in the ICE engine itself along with  technologies like turbo-charging which are much more common in all cars today. However I do wish car-makers would apportion more of that efficiency to actually improving gas mileage as opposed to increasing horsepower. They seem to do more of the latter. 200HP was plenty in the cars of the 80s and 90s, now it is common to see 300-400HP vehicles. 

Of course, the move to electric vehicles is the big trend in cars.  I like to believe I was an environmentalist before I had even heard of global warming. Having said that, electrification and electric cars as a way to protect the planet is a highly debatable question. Electric cars do not pollute the localities where they are driven in; this is indeed a factor to consider, especially in the big metros, where air quality has been a big issue. 

But if you look at the net carbon footprint during their production and during their use, it gets a lot more complicated. Various sources cite that electric cars have a bigger carbon footprint during production compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars. As for when they are driven, we need to note that 75% of electricity in India is generated by coal-fired plants, one of the biggest sources of green-house gases contributing to climate change. 

As a techno-phile, I also find myself considering some of the technical aspects of cars, partly for their effect on overall efficiency but also for the sheer coolness factor. As an example, consider regenerative braking. I find regenerative breaking making a case for both hybrids and fully electric cars, since it captures the energy (required to stop the car anyway) lost otherwise as heat energy on the brake pads into electrical energy which is then used to drive the car. It is important to note that renerative braking gives you efficiencies only in city driving where you brake a lot. In the highway, you don't get much from it, so the claimed/predicted range of electrics and the efficiency of hybrids is reduced in highway driving.

On the technology front, full electrics have the benefit of providing a lot of torque across a broad RPM range, because of which they do not need multiple gears. That means, they don't need a transmission, i.e. they have literally fewer moving parts to build and maintain. Given the much higher cost of the battery, the torque benefit requiring no transmission has not resulted in overall cost savings (for purchase). It should still show up as reduced maintenance cost in the long run - although I have not seen actual studies. The absence of a transmission also translates to space savings; this is one of the reasons, why many fully-electric cars are equipped with frunks (front-trunk) for additional storage up front. 

So, all of that said, the more I think about it and the more I read, I have been and continue to be a big proponent of hybrids. Because they have much smaller batteries than full-electrics and hence less dependent on those rare earth minerals. They don't need >40 minute stops for refueling and don't have the so-called range-anxiety of full electrics, especially considering the small (though growing as we speak) number of charging stations in India. Hybrids simply offer much better gas mileage by using electrical energy generated by regenerative braking for propulsion.

I wish the Indian government would reduce the GST for Hybrid cars at least to some extent; as of writing, fully electric cars get a much lower 5% GST, but you pay the full 18% for hybrids, the same as ICEs. 

*************************************

I wrote a draft of this post almost a year ago, and somehow resisted posting it right away. 

I come back and read it today and find it still largely relevant; in the last year, I have gone and purchased an ICE Honda City - one of the three sedans mentioned above. Honda City does have a hybrid version; but it has a Rs. 4 lakh premium compared to the ICE version and a reduced trunk capacity to accommodate the battery. This led me to not consider the hybrid, going against my own recommendation above. I look forward to more hybrid options which don't compromise on cargo capacity in the future. Electric is still an option if the charging network improves in India and I can assuage my environmental qualms.

Compelling electric sedans are unfortunately not available in the affordable end of the market. BYD - considered by some as the maker of the most advanced electric batteries for cars - has a nice sedan for close to Rs. 50 lakhs. Tata and Mahindra have introduced some exciting vehicles - SUVs, but still - where they seem to have really innovated in syling: the new coupe style SUVs as they call it, as seen in the truly elegant Tata Curvv.ev and more radical (less to my taste) Mahindra XEV9e and BE 6.  

R. Balaji

* - I am using the Indian nomenclature when refering to the sizes. Note that what are called compact car in the US would be called mid-size in India - so essentially you have to shift the size names (sub-compact, compact, mid-size, full-size) one notch when you are talking about the same car in both the markets.  

~ - I am not considering cars in the >Rs. 40 lakh range, where there are quite a few luxury sedans available. 

Returning to Mamallapuram - the panels at Mahishasura Mardhini Cave Temple

 In the early days of this blog, I had written about Mamallapuram - popularly known as Mahabalipuram -  after a visit guided by a good friend of mine. This friend was then a budding Heritage expert, now a full-blown one. Fourteen years later, I had the occasion to visit Mamallapuram as part of a College Reunion. 

Another friend and I are currently on a pursuit to build a Heritage Tourism App with Mamallapuram as our first covered site. Over the last few months, the friend who is a Heritage Expert has been providing me with in-depth information about the various monuments at Mamallapuram to be included in this app. 

Armed with this knowledge, I took my college-mates on a guided tour of Arjuna's Penance (or Descent of Ganges depending on which interpretation of the sculpture you go by), the Varaha Cave Temple and the Shore Temple. The gang lapped it up; it was truly gratifying to be able to share the information and see their eyes light up. 

On that day, unfortunately we could not go to the Mahishasura Mardhini Cave Temple and see the famous relief panel there featuring a pivotal scene in the battle between Goddess Durga and the asura Mahisha. I have been recording some videos describing the sculptures and monuments of Mamallapuram and this post in an elaborate introduction to these two videos I just posted on Youtube:

• Anantasayana Vishnu video describing the Anantasayana Vishnu that is on the left side wall and 
• Durga-Mahisha battle video describing the Mahishasura Mardhini Sculptural panel on the opposite side. 

My friend revealed recently, the reason as to why these two seemingly unrelated stories, the first one, an episode on two asuras trying to attack Vishnu at his very abode in Vaikunta and the other about Goddess Durga and Mahisha in the same cave temple. It turns out that the ancient text Devi Mahatmyam, which describes the story of Durga vanquishing Mahisha also includes the story of Vishnu's encounter with Madhu and Kaitabha, the two asuras who came out of his ears and attacked him. It is uncanny - these connections - to note that the Pallava sculptors read the same texts that we now know about. 

R. Balaji    

P.S. Stay tuned for information on the Heritage App, coming to a Play/App Store near you. 

Another day in the office with AI

<Technical post, probably belongs in linkedin. Posting here regardless> 

It's a new world of coding with AI. I have been pair-programming with ChatGPT (and to a lesser extent Google Gemini) for a while now. My emotions run the full gamut and it is quite a roller-coaster :-). One minute I am full of awe and the next minute I am like "I can't believe you're that stupid". I will describe my experience with a couple of projects one big and one small. If you want to TLDR the project descriptions, move to the bottom to the Morals of the Story section.

Mobile App with Backend

I am starting on a project this year which is the first one where we are coding from scratch after the recent AI revolution. I wanted to provide the team that I am leading with some starter code for the backend (Python and the mobile app frontend (Flutter/Dart code).

• Backend data model: I had written a document describing the entities and their fields and their relationship with other entities. I fed this document to ChatGPT and asked it to generate the model class definitions for a model-first Object-Relational-Mapping approach using Flask/SQLAlchemy ORM. This saved a lot time writing code for the classes. ChatGPT did 90% of the work and I could make adjustments to get it to 100%.
• Backend data generation APIs: I gave detailed prompts asking ChatGPT to write code for a REST API to generate the data walking the object model to package all the nested objects in the object hierarchy and return the data as JSON. ChatGPT's code worked quite well here and again the 90%-10% split above worked out.
• Client App code - I had mixed results here with LLMs:
• I asked ChatGPT to write the Flutter/Dart code for the App to consume the JSON sent by the server API. I needed to persist the objects on the client on Hive local storage for offline availability. ChatGPT's first effort only persisted the top-level objects and not the objects embedded within it. When I pointed this out, ChatGPT added the additional code to persist embedded objects. But the code had one mistake that I was able to debug easily and fix. But I still ran into issues with Hive that I could not fix with additional prompts to ChatGPT. I ran into my session limit and ChatGPT asked me to come back after a few hours to continue.
• I then moved to Gemini which did slightly better in some respects but worse than ChatGPT in others. It had some silly mistakes like a missed dependency in the project dependencies YAML file, which wasted some of my time. Gemini's advice to fix the issue was not useful, I ended giving up the advice to Gemini, which it graciously seemed to accept and promised not to make the mistake After these were fixed, somehow the Hive issue tht happened with Hive did not happen and I was able to finish the work. The generated code will essentially will serve as the Proof-of-concept of how our design would work with the backend date model, APIs for generating data in JSON, and client code to consume and persist in local cache.

Text-to-Speech

I was trying to integrate Google's text-to-speech converter to get to speak Indian/Sanskrit words and had to do some coding on top to get it to work. I needed to provide custom pronunciations for the Indian words that the text-to-speech would by default mispronounce. There was some gnarly handling required when the words with custom pronunciations are in possessive form with an aphostrope (say "Durga's") and Google TTS wasn't up to the task without additional coding. And I enlisted ChatGPT's help. V1 of the code didn't quite work. I had to do some debugging on my end and I realized what might be happening and gave ChatGPT a hint; it duly used the hint and tried to fix it with V2. Still didn't work. I now just said, nope, try again. Now it seemed to figure out itself what the problem might be and produced V3. That didn't work either. I gave up on this particular thread after V5 or so.

While I could not get that last thing (handling apostrophes gracefully) working, thanks to AI, I was still able to try out 3 different Text-to-speech solutions (AWS, Google, Elevenlabs) and came up with potentially a reasonable V1 approach figured out.

Morals of the story

1. At the time of writing, LLMs like ChatGPT are good enough to generate a lot of the boiler plate code that needs to be written. This can save a lot of time.
2. Often the 80-20 rule applies; you get 80% of the lines of code from the LLM and you finish the last 20; it is 90-10 if you are lucky. And if you are really lucky, the code would be bug-free. That gets us to the next point.
3. A big caveat is that the code generated is very likely to have bugs and sometime serious gaffes and you need to be able to understand the logic completely so that you can fix the bugs to get it to work; at times, you can keep iterating (telling the AI that it is not working, try again) but you are better off finding the bugs, or at least do some partial troubleshooting so that you can frame your incremental prompts with helpful information to the AI. If you run into a situation where you are not able to figure out the fix, you may start losing the time-saving advantage of getting the boiler-plate code; but then again if you had written the code from scratch, your code may have the same (or higher) number of bugs.
4. It is super important to invest in good English documentation (for e.g. the data model) of your high level design so that you can give detailed requirements in English in your prompts. That can server your entire project to generate both server and client code. This might finally be the forcing function to get your developers to write good documents. This is a bit worrisome because in my experience often developers (especially in India) hate to or are not good at (or both) documenting their designs, requirements and algorithms. But this is going to become more important in the new world.

R. Balaji

Comic relief in Climate conversations (or more generally all left vs. right conversations)?

 We attended the Hyderabad Literary Fest which had a track on Climate Conversations and one of the best sessions was the one titled with this blog's title (not the part in parantheses). It was funny and thought provoking. 

The standup comic Raghava Mandava who specializes in bringing humor to the highly charged conversations of Climate Change talked about how he was a"nature lover" and not an "environmentalist". Because "environmentalist" has become associated with radical lefties whose cries of outrage (according to him) have only served to alienate the people who they want to convince. Or how imperfect sustainability solutions drive people away. Case in point, the turtle-killing plastic straw and its lame recent substitute, the paper straw which seems to dissolve in the drink you are sipping before you are half way done. I can relate to this personally. One of his lines was something like how a normal person who has nothing against turtles tries to drink using the paper straw and is driven to outrage ('**** the turtles'). 

The larger point is how climate change warriors perhaps should rethink how they communicate, how not come across as scolds etc. I do think the right suffers from a bit of persecution complex (e.g. the whole anti-woke thing); after all they are supposed to be the tough guys, are their feelings so delicate that they are hurt by bleeding heart liberals? Or do they have a point, has the radical left gone too far?

Another sentiment I heard in the session was how a single experience with nature can be more effective than 100 exhorting messages and lectures on how we should be reducing the carbon footprint. 

While the above was in the context of just one topic that is close to the heart of those on the left, the same arguments can be made for all hot-button cultural/political issues. After all, "the condescencion of  liberal elites" is a standard refrain you hear that mobilizes and even energizes the opposite side. 

Considing how the left got its collective backsides kicked in November (it was Inauguration week and the left is indeed licking its wounds, including yours truly), I am going to say, perhaps it is the latter. So time for some collective soul searching and how the messaging can be improved. Because while I continue to believe the left's heart is often in the right place, how they frame the conversation and the messaging is clearly due for some serious improvement.

R. Balaji

Chola Temples of Darasuram/Kumbakonam

We recently visited the Airavatesvarar Temple at Darasuram (near Kumbakonam); it is one of the three Great Living Chola Temples (as anointed by UNESCO in its World Heritage citation), along with the Brihadisvara Temples at Thanjavur and Gangai Konda Cholapuram. The Airavatesvarar temple is not as big as the other two. While it lacks in size and majesty, it more than makes up for this in the quality and richness of its sculptures and mandapas/pillars with ornate carvings. 

Raja Raja Chola and Rajendra Chola are perhaps the greatest father/son duos to ever rule anywhere in India. They took the Chola kingdom to the peak of its 400 year rule in the south both in terms of territory expansion and cultural and architectural pursuits. They built the great Shiva temples at Thanjavur and Gangai Konda Cholapuram respectively. Rajendra Chola in a reverential nod to his father, made his vimanam (the tower on top of the sanctum santorum - garba griha) a bit shorter than his father's architectural magnum opus. It was during the reign of Raja Raja II who ruled almost 150 years later, that the Airavatesvarar temple was built. The vimanam is similar in style to the bigger Chola temples, but even shorter than the one in Gangai Konda Cholapuram.

The decline of the Chola empire is said to have started in Raja Raja II's  period. Nevertheless, he has added another jewel to the extensive list of Shaivite temples of the Chola era. Airavatam refers to Indra's mount, the white elephant that lost its complexion thanks to a curse from sage Durvasa. Airavatam is said to have sought redemption from Lord Shiva in this temple who duly got Airavatam back to its pearl-white splendour. 

The Mukhamandapa also known as the Rajagambhiran Mandapam  features ornate pillars and ceilings with a truly spectacular horse-ridden chariot motif featured on either side of the steps that go up to the great hall. 

The large wheel is reminiscent of the stone chariot in Hampi's Vitthala temple. While the chariot in Hampi is monolithic, what is remarkable about the horse and the wheel here is that they are pieced together like jigsaw puzzles by carving the  rectangular stones that make up the mandapa's plinth structure behind the wheel and the horse; i.e. the horse and the wheel are not separate from the super-structure of the temple, which in its ingenuity epitomizes the creativity and skill of the Chola artisans. 

The pillars on the mandapam all feature a gaja yaali at the bottom which is a hybrid of at least 5 animals, the eyes and mane of a lion, an elephant's trunk, goat's horns, a boar's ears and a bull's tail which you can see on the back side of the pillar. The way the tail curves on itself differs in each pillar. The yaalis' trunk is curved to point in the direction of the inner sanctum leading some people to speculate that it serves as a sign-post. 

The pillars on the mandapam have carvings of scenes from Shiva Purana and Skandha Purana. As a sample, the following shows the birth of Lord Muruga or Karthikeya as 6 babies before they get fused to a single 6-faced baby god by Parvathi. You can see Lord Shiva holding 3 of the babies, while Parvathi is nursing another child. Shiva and Parvathi are surrounded by the Krittikas who helped raise the baby Karthikeya. 

On one of the other balustrades, a running elephant is depicted, with great anatomic accuracy,  capturing the legs in running stride and a swinging bell indicating the motion. The jewelry and decorations on the elephant and the afore-mentioned horse are exquisitely carved. 

On the outer walls of the inner sanctum, you can see key moments from the lives of the 63 Shaivite Nayanmars carved as miniatures. You would really need a heritage expert or a very good guide to interpret each one of these. One of the panels shows Kannappar, a hunter  known for his innocent devotion to Lord Shiva. Like every one of his ardent devotees, Shiva tests Kannappar by showing a bleeding eye on the linga. Kannappa first removes one of his eyes and puts it on the lord; and then the other eye on the linga starts bleeding. Without hesitation, Kannappar offers his second eye, this time making sure to mark the spot of the lord's eye with his foot as he is scooping out his eye (!). 

And then there is the bull and the elephant panel called the rishabha gunjara, a double entendre in stone, if you will. The head in the middle can be either that of an elephant (body on the right) or of a bull (body on the left).  

We also visited Nageswaraswamy Temple at Kumbakonam, which is considered one of the earliest Chola temples. Early Chola temples are much smaller in size and grandeur than later day temples. However they have a sculptural innovation of their own, in the form of miniature relief panels depicting scenes from the Ramayana. These panels narrate the entire story in about 50 panels. I will talk about just one sample here where a bhootha is coming out of a yagna pyre bearing the amirtha (or payasam) which Dasaratha takes and distributes to his three wives which leads to the birth of Lord Rama and his brothers. The panel is half the size of  an A4 page and still the artist packs so much detail. Prof. Sivaramakrishnan's excellent talk (part of a series on Chola Art and Architecture organized by Tamil Heritage Trust) describes this panel in great detail wih all the intricacies; it is staggering to see the level of artistic thought, such as framing of the characters, where they are looking at (Dasaratha and his wives are all looking at the urn, while the 2 rishis are looking at each other with satisfaction after the success of the yagna), the curvature of the yagna flame in the middle and how Vashista's body is aligned with this curve. You have to listen to to the talk to know more, I can barely do justice.  

Each of these temples have so much to see and a short article like this can only be a teaser at best; the best way to experience them is in person with a well-informed guide. 

- R. Balaji

Keezhadi Museum

 Around 2015, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) made an exciting new archaeological discovery south-east of Madurai in the Keezhadi village. What looked like urban settlements with houses built of standardized bricks and tiled roofs were found at a depth of about 2.5m. More significantly, they were dated between the 6th and 3rd century BCE! Pottery, beads, iron tools and weapons, teracotta tools and toys have been found. To put this in context, the only other urban settlement in India that is older than this is the Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilization which dates back to the 3rd millennium BCE. 

Some of the pottery found in the site had inscriptions that seem to be Tamil Brahmi providing tantalizing circumstantial evidence that links this settlement with the Sangam poetry corpus. That is, if you are willing to take a leap of faith. Until now, the Tamil Sangam poetry itself has been dated to a much later period: 1st and 2nd century CE. In my humble opinion, the fact that there is Tamil Brahmi writing suggests the Keezhadi people were potentially Tamil speakers, but does not by itself mean their language was evolved enough to produce the poetry of the richness and sophistication of Sangam Tamil. On the other hand, I have always felt the current dating of Sangam poetry also highly suspect.  Compressing that vast corpus to 200 years seems like a rather tight fit. In any case, I am hoping findings like Keezhadi make historians revisit the dating of Sangam poetry.

There is also some controversy around the age of the pottery with inscriptions (as to which end of the 6th century BCE - 2nd century BCE time frame they belong to). The controversy is that, if they turn out to be older than the 3rd century BCE, then that pre-dates Ashokan Brahmi, the script that was used in Ashokan edicts found throughout India. However Tamil Brahmi has until now been considered an evolution of (Ashokan or Mauryan) Brahmi and not the other way around.

We cannot access the archeological sites themselves, where excavations are still going on. However an excellent museum has been put together that houses many of the artifacts and some model recreations from the Keezhadi site. We visited this museum recently and this post is inspired by that visit. 

As you enter the museum there is a small auditorium where they show a 15 minute video providing the historical context and background which is best seen before seeing the museum itself. 

Let me just give a brief background on stages of growth of a particular human culture or civilization before we see where Keezhadi fits in; human populations go though various stages in their development as a culture starting from hunter gatherers and three peiods of Stone Age, namely Paleolithic (Old), Mesolithic (Middle) and Neolithic (New) Stone Ages. In the Paleolithic period, large stone tools with  sharpened edges are usually found. In latter ages, smaller, more specialized tools and more polished stone tools are used. Some of these human cultures discover iron and/or copper and gold go through the Iron Age developing metallic tools, coins and weapons. 

As they go through these stages, humans move from a nomadic hunter gatherer life style to settled societies, with farming and agrictulture, producing food that can be saved across seasons. They start producing pots for storage. As the society becomes more sophisticated, it produces goods for leisure such as jewels and ornaments using beads and metals and toys and games. Coins from other remote civilizations can be found suggesting trade links to those societies. If they develop writing, they start making inscriptions or other signages on rocks, caves and pots. 

The Keezhadi settlement is clearly an Iron Age settlement which shows all the stages of development listed above:

• Walls made of standard sized bricks, tiles, ringed wells
• Terracotta pipes and brick-made channels for water
• Black and red pottery including Black Polished ware 
• Seals, Roman coins and arretine pottery shards suggest trades to remote civilizations
• Tamil Brahmi script in pot shards
• Many iron tools such as ladles, sickles and knives
• Beads of different kinds and small gold ornaments
• Toys like cube and cuboid dice made of ivory and terracotta

The museum includes references to Sangam Literature (especially Natrinai, Purananuru and Agananuru) that indirectly refer to some of the artifacts. The juxtaposition of Sangam poetry references next to artifacts might suggest a direct link but I found these connections quite tenuous.  For instance, next to an antimony rod that was evidently used for decorating a woman's eyelash, there is a citation of a line from a Natrinai poem that talks about a women's hazel eys with decorated eyelashes. 

On less controversial matters, I found the museum very well organized. Local design elements such as Athankudi tiles and wood work that is reminiscent of Chettinadu have been used tastefully in the multiple buildings that make up the museum. The sheer number and variety of artifacts on display for a settlement that was discovered only 10 years ago is quite remarkable. We went on a week day and the crowds were sparse; I hope the museum gets added to everyone's must-see list for Madurai. 

R. Balaji

On the New Test Cricket - part 1

 It is difficult to believe I haven't written more on cricket - the avid fan that I am, especially of the Test format. This is likely to be the first of a series of posts, so bear with me while I ramble and rant a bit on T-20 and then the pleasures of Test cricket. 

Test cricket remains the purest and most balanced battle of bat vs. ball. I realize I might antagonize T-20 fans, but I have always believed T-20 tilts the balance heavily in favor of bat over ball. When there is no fear of getting all out in a 20 over span, batsmen hit with impunity and scamper home in 20 overs with 5-6 wickets lost. So yes, lots of 4's and 6's to go wild over; but there is rampant run inflation (i.e. the value of a run, a 4 or a 6 has come down).  I wonder what will happen if they tweak T-20 to say 5 wickets down and you are all out, with 5 players who only bat and 5 who only bowl. 

The 50 overs ODI is a reasonable middle ground where the threat of getting all out remains. So I believe predictions of the demise of the ODI format are premature, but I could very well be proven wrong on this one, given the huge success of IPL (I recently learnt it is one of the top 10 leagues in the world across all sports -  measured in terms of the money in it). It remains to be seen whether 3 formats can survive, given the demands it puts on players and the cricketing nations to squeeze in local T-20 leagues, along with international competition.

So anyways, as a Test cricket fan, I never miss out on Indian test cricket and also watch the Ashes with great interest . There is something magical about the sheer visual image - players sporting pure whites on the lush green fields of England. The ball swings like crazy and 250 is a par score for a Test inning. Tennis fans can perhaps relate to this visual delight when they tune into the first week of Wimbledon every year; players in pure whites on pristine verdant turf.

When HD coverage started happening, for the first time, you could see the ball's movement in the air even before it pitched - yes there is movement before it hits the pitch and then movement after it pitches. And in slow motion, if the bowler has perfect seam position you can see which side of the ball is shiny. Which in turn determines the swing direction - towards the rough side in traditional swing and the other way when the ball gets older and starts 'reversing'. We could have an entire post on the art and physics of swing bowling.

If you grew up watching test cricket in the 80s and 90s, India always had great batsmen (Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Vengsarkar and Azharuddin), but we were never a fast bowling powerhouse, with Kapil Dev standing out as the only great seam bowler (and he only bowled medium pace) from that era. Overall we were a middling team. We would lose most test series against the dominant teams of that time, viz. West Indies, Australia and England. 

In the 2000s, the batting stayed strong, if not stronger with a formidable batting unit that consisted of Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dravid and VVS Laxman; not to mention Ganguly and a strong batting wicketkeeper in MS Dhoni. We continued to be strong in spin bowling with great spinning duos such as Kumble/Harbhajan Singh and more recently Ashwin/Jadeja. All of this resulted in some really solid performances at home where we could pulverize the opposition in spin-friendly pitches, but our record abroad was still mediocre, especially against Australia, England and Sout Africa. Zaheer Khan was a great swing bowler for a while, but fast bowling remained an area of weakness. 

Into the 2010s, we finally started producing genuine fast bowlers who could move the ball both ways.  This brings us to who we have now - Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and to a lesser extent Mohammed Siraj. These guys bowl regularly in the high 130s kph, and Bumrah can bowl in the low 140s kph with great accuracy. Bumrah is currently ranked the no. 1 bowler in ICC Test Rankings, a first for an Indian pacer. More on Bumrah later.

The batting dominance continued after the aforementioned unit retired. Kohli came in and has become arguably the greatest multi-format player of all time. As a Test batsman, his form has declined a bit in recent years, but still ranks easily among the top 10 around the world. Pujara took over "Wall" duties from Dravid and others like KL Rahul and Rahane have chimed in. May be there aren't as many now that will end up in the all-time-great list (Kohli being the only one). But at any given point in time, we have enough in-form batsmen to field two world-class batting sides. Youngsters like Shubman Gill and Yashaswi Jaiswal show great promise.

Thanks to a stronger and more balanced bowling unit (as in both pace and spin), India has beome a cricketing powerhouse in the last 15 years or so. Nowadays we almost always win series at home against anyone and have started winning abroad as well, with back to back series wins in Australia being the highlight. South Africa is the only place where we are yet to win a series. India is often ranked no. 1 or 2 in the World Test rankings. In the new World Test Championship format (which is a 2 year cycle), India is the only team that reached the finals in both instances of so far. True, we lost both the finals to NZ and Australia respectively, but reaching both finals is a testament to the team's consistency over this period.

I wrote all of the above without looking at any numbers, I then looked it up and thankfully the numbers as produced by Google Gemini confirmed my impressions*; India has steadily gotten better as a Test cricket team over the last 4 decades. The following table is reproduced verbatim from Gemini's answer to my question "India's Win loss draw record in Test cricket matches in the last 50 years by decade". 

Decade	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn	Win%	Note
2020s (2020-2023)	54	30	13	11	55.56	Current period
2010s (2010-2019)	82	41	24	17	50.00	Kohli Era
2000s (2000-2009)	81	34	28	19	42.53	Tendulkar, Sehwag & Dravid era
1990s (1990-1999)	80	27	34	19	33.75	Azharuddin & Tendulkar era
1980s (1980-1989)	81	20	31	30	24.69	Gavaskar & Kapil Dev era

So overall, it is an exciting time to be a cricket fan in India. And then Test cricket itself is evolving. We have a new breed of young cricketers (aforementioned Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and the swashbuckling Rishabh Pant) who defy conventional wisdom and bat with supreme confidence and aggression. There is this thing called Bazball that England has been playing in the last few years which has brought a new fearless (or reckless?) and aggressive approach to Test batting. Their record over this period is not bad at all (14-6). But is it because of Bazball? Would they perhaps have an even better record if they did not play Bazball? 

More on Bazball and other recent trends in Test cricket in the next post.

Balaji 

* I checked ChatGPT as well and it returned different numbers which puts both the ChatGPT and Gemini numbers in question; however both sets of numbers confirm the same trend - that India's win percentage in Tests has been improving every decade since the 90s, till midway through the 2020s. 

 

  

   

Cultural and religious connections between South India and South East Asia

Recently we traveled to Bali which piqued my interest in this topic and has been reinforced by a recent lecture I attended. As we learned while preparing for the Bali trip, while Indonesia is predominantly Islamic, the population of Bali is mostly Hindu, Balinese Hindu to be specific. 

We grew up learning about Rajendra Chola's military expedition to South East Asia. As per K. A. Nilakanta Sastri's treatise on South Indian History, Rajendra's naval expedition resulted in victory over the Sri Vijaya kingdom, forcing the Sri Vijayan king, Sangrama Vijayatungavarman to accept Chola suzerainty. The Sri Vijaya kingdom at the time, spanned the Malayan peninsula and Sumatra (the largest Indonesian island).  It is well known that Rajendra Chola earned the title Kadaram Kondan after this expedition. Kadaram is the Tamil name of modern day Kedah, a port in modern-day northern Malaysia. 

It might be tempting to say that the connection to South East Asia was initiated by this expedition. That would be inaccurate and simplistic to assume that cultural connections happen solely through or as a result of warfare. The connections between India - especially South India -  and South East Asia had clearly started 100s of years earlier. After all, the rulers of the Sri Vijayan dynasty (modern day Indonesia/Malaysia) and the Khmer Dynasty (modern day Cambodia) bore Hindu/Sanskrit names*. Nilakanta Sastri states that diplomatic relations existed between the Chola and Sri Vijaya kingdoms since at least Rajaraja Chola's (Rajendra Chola's father) time. 

The more immediate impetus for this post is from a very interesting and insightful lecture  I had the privilege to attend, by  Prof. Vasudha Narayanan, (Dept. of Religion, University of Florida) on Vishnu Temples and Iconography in Cambodia. Dr. Vasudha covered multiple examples of how deities and stories from Hindu mythology have been interpreted and represented sculpturally by Cambodian sculptors including at the world-famous Angkor Wat temple. Following are some excerpts and my take-aways from this talk.  

The story of the churning of the Ocean of Milk (பாற்கடல்) by the Asuras and Devas has for some reason attained a lot of significance in Cambodia and is a common motif across the country. It is a fascinating story of how Lord Vishnu takes multiple forms - first the Koorma (tortoise) Avataram that supports the Mandara Mountain which is used to churn the ocean to extract the amirtam (the nectar of immortality) and later takes on the form of Mohini to oversee the distribution of the amirtam to the devas and asuras.  Dr. Vasudha talked about the massive 49-metre bas relief panel on the eastern gallery of the outer wall of Angkor Wat that depicts the churning scene **.  

There is a curious character near one end of Vasuki the snake's tail (the snake is used as the rope to churn) on the panel. It is a robust looking monkey figure bigger than the churners next to it. This character has been previously identified as either Hanuman or Sugriva by scholars. 

Photo courtesy of Bahnfrend licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

However, Dr. Vasudha has made a compelling case that this is none other than Vali. Perhaps the most compelling evidence she cites is from Kambaramayanam, where Vali's participation in the churning effort is mentioned. It should be noted that in Valmiki's Ramayana there is no mention of Vali's involvement. Kamban however mentions this in multiple instances including one where Vali is mollifying his wife Tara saying he - whose strength helped the Devas themselves in churning the ocean - can handle his brother Sugriva in battle. There is also a 13th century Telugu text called Ranganatha Ramayana that mention's Vali's involvement in the churning of the ocean. Dr. Vasudha also showed a relief panel of the churning scene in the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakkal in which a monkey figure is shown (which happens to be an amazing heritage site in its own right as a Badami Chalukya temple from the 8th century). 

Dr. Vasudha also showed instances where the Cambodian representation of stories from Hindu texts is different from how they are typically seen in India. 

• There are sculptures representing the story of Vishnu protecting his devotee Gajendra the elephant from the crocodile. In Cambodia, the crocodile is above Lord Vishnu which is very different from how it is portrayed in India. 
• The reclined posture of Lord Vishnu on Adhiseshan the multi-headed serpent is usually depicted with Vishnu's head on the left. However in Cambodia, it is more commonly depicted with his head on the right. There are rare instances of this in India as well which Dr. Vasudha has identified; she has come up with a correlation of the direction the scultpture is facing to which side the head is positioned.

It is as if Cambodian sculptors had access to the same texts, but perhaps not the Indian iconography and came up with their own. Or as Dr. Vasudha stresses, there is the possibility that they did not necessarily have access to the texts, but had knowledge of the same stories that are narrated in those texts. 

R. Balaji

P.S.

* It is also interesting to note the an suffix of the male rulers' names which bears similarity to Tamil (and Malayalam?) names - as opposed to other Indian languages which do not have the an suffix; e.g. Bheeman in Tamil vs. Bheema in Telugu/Kannada or Bheem in Hindi).

** See this WSJ article for a nice description of the panel at Angkor Wat. 

An objective measure of how majestic a mountain is

Ever since our days in Seattle, I have been endlessly fascinated with mountains like Rainier and Denali - mountains that stand much taller than their neighbouring mountains thereby offering dramatic and spectacular views, often from long distances. It turns out there is an objective measure that measures this quality: topographical prominence (thanks to a Windows screen saver photo of Mt. Kilimanjaro which led me to this Wikipedia page). Some really high peaks (like K2) don't have as much topological prominence as they are surrounded by mountain masses that are also very high.

By Muhammad Mahdi Karim - Own work, GFDL 1.2, Link

The definition of topographic prominence is a bit tricky but makes intuitive sense if you think about it. Wikipedia defines it as " the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it". Basically:

1. Find the maximal land area surrounding the peak which contains no higher peak. 
2. Find the lowest point in that area. 
3. Topographic prominence is the height of the peak from that point. 

Now, which mountain do you think is #1 in terms of topological prominence? As per another helpful Wikipedia page on the Ranking of Mountains by Topological prominence, it is indeed Mt. Everest. Well, no surprise there, you might say. But I was actually surprised. I knew that you need to get to a very high altitude before you even see Everest. The base camp for a mountaineer making an attempt at Mt. Everest is at a whopping 17000 ft. So I would have thought Mt. Everest's topological prominence would be around 12000 ft, not that high. I thought even Mt. Rainier might beat it, Denali for sure. You can see Denali from 100 miles. 

But then if you go back and read the definition again, Mt. Everest gets the top nod based on a technicality. You see, as per step 1, you need to find the maximal area surrounding the peak which contains no higher peak. Since there is no higher peak than Everest, the maximal area is the Earth's entire landmass (or at least Eurasia if you want to be very precise). And the lowest point in that area (step 2) is sea level. Hence the topological prominence of Everest is its entire height from sea level, all 29000ft of it. So the measure actually doesn't really work that well for the tallest mountain in the world because it is no. 1 by definition, but it works well for others. So none of the high peaks in the Himalayas other than Mt. Everest  come up in the top 10, because they are surrounded by really high contiguous landmasses that includes higher peaks  and they don't stand out as much. 

Not surprisingly, Mt. Aconcagua and Mt. Denali the tallest mountains in South and North America respectively are 2nd and 3rd in the list. And Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa is fourth.  And my favourite neighbourhood Mt. Rainier comes in at a respectable 21st  in the list. 

- Balaji

BSVI, diesel cars and air quality

Overdrive magazine has been serving the needs of my inner car-buff, replacing Car and Driver from earlier days. Recently they have been publishing some good primers on automobile technology including one on electric cars. In the latest issue they have a good in-depth article on the new BSVI (BS-6) emission standards (http://overdrive.in/…/everything-you-need-to-know-about-bs…/) that is going to come into effect from April 1, 2020. What this means is that all new vehicles (big and small, 2-3-4 wheelers) sold after this date have to comply with BSVI emission requirements which are much more stringent than BSIV (BS-4) which was adopted in 2017. BSVI is based on the European standard Euro 6.

BSVI impacts diesel cars more because diesel engines pollute more and car-makers will have to equip diesel cars with cleaner running engines and more importantly install post-emission devices like DPF (diesel particulate filters) to meet the standards. This means that diesel cars will get more expensive. Also, in order to meet BSVI, diesel cars also need to use BSVI diesel. Indian gas refineries have been working on producing the cleaner burning diesel which should become available throughout the country by April 1st. Cars sold before the date of course can continue to run and they can use the BSVI diesel and will emit a bit less. BSVI implies significant reduction in nitrous oxides, sulphur content and particulate matter (80-90% reduction) all of which have been linked with respiratory and other illnesses. It will perhaps take years to see any noticeable improvement in air quality as more BSVI vehicles replace older cars. But it looks like a good thing.

In a nutshell, cleaner diesel, less emissions from new diesel vehicles, more expensive diesel cars.

Spreading positivity - kudos to Indigo Airlines

So, for a while now, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I get depressed because almost everything being reported is negative. This happens to some extent in social media as well. I recently participated in a Mindfulness workshop where people echoed this concern. So I have made a resolution to do my small bit and spread positivity around.

The first one I want to do is to appreciate Indigo Airlines for their on-time performance and how seriously they take it. I have been taking some late evening flights recently; while it is par for the course for most airlines to accumulate delays over the day, I was impressed how Indigo was on-time even in these evening flights. They seem to obsess about it to the point which causes some inconvenience to passengers (like they put you in the bus and go wait in the tarmac while the arriving passengers from the plane you're about to board are still disembarking; this helps parallelize and shorten the deboarding/boarding process); but I will take this minor inconvenience any day over waiting in the airport for a flight that got delayed by 2 hours. They also do smart things like adding some buffer to their flying time. This surely implies that they are not jamming in as many flights as they possibly could in a day at the cost of on-time performance. 

And there are some signs that this may be infectious. In the last GoAir flight I took, they started asking the passengers to help in getting the cabin ready for the next flight to shorten the time they are on the ground (something Indigo has been doing for many years). 

- Balaji

A Tale of Two Lakes

It is the monsoon season and we seem to be enjoying a normal monsoon here in Hyderabad. With the water crisis in Chennai being in the news, can't help but feel thankful to be in a city that hasn't reached that crisis point.   We see quite a few lakes within the city of Hyderabad still filled with water especially during the business end of the monsoon season and this year I look at them with a bit more appreciation.

My wife recently told me about the Aminpur Lake which is less than 5km from our house. She thought it could be a nice picnic spot. The lake is reachable from Miyapur by hanging a left off of the Bolaram Road. To reach the lake you have to continue as the street becomes a dirt road perhaps better navigated on a vehicle with high clearance. You have to walk across an expanse of brush to reach the lake. Along the way there is enough flat ground for kids nearby to have appropriated as a cricket field. Past the makeshift cricket field, as you approach the lake, if you're lucky, you will see - what do you know? - a flock of flamingos, pink ones!  As we walked closer for a better look, we must have breached their safety zone and the entire flock took to flight and settled themselves further inside in the lake.  Clearly the lake is not very deep even in the middle.

The entire flock assuming their flight pose of outstretched legs and long necks was a sight to behold. I was too stunned, that I missed the moment to capture it on camera. Apparently flamingos have been transiting through this lake every year as a stop in their migratory route. Word has it that in recent years, they - confused allegedly by climate change - have settled here in the lake for good.

The other lake that we have come across recently is the Shaikpet Kotha (New) Cheruvu (Lake). Multiple NGOs are attempting a cleanup of this lake (see recent Indian Express news article). This lake is right in the middle of town with settlements all around. The lake has clearly seen better days and looks anything but new. At some point the city saw fit to build a wall around the lake with what looks like a walkway that goes around the lake inside the wall. However, the whole setup is in a sad state of disrepair. The walkway is overrun with vegetation. The wall has been breached on one end close to the main road and GHMC seems to be using it as a garbage dump area. Sewage is being dumped on the other side. Plastic and construction waste is everywhere. Places that are clean enough are taken up by vendor stalls and vehicles many of them old and abandoned.

The lake itself is brimming with water and could be a great place to hang out for the neighbourhood if it can be cleaned up and the already existing walkway around the lake is made usable. Right now, it looks like a herculean task but there are some tenacious folks from Ananda Foundation and Krithi Foundation who are on this, so here is hoping for the best.

- Balaji

சு. வெங்கடேசனின் வேள்பாரி

தமிழில் எழுதும் முயற்சி, வெகு நாட்களுக்கு பிறகு.

வீரநாயகன் வேள்பாரி ஆனந்த விகடனில் தொடராக வந்த மிகவும் பரபரப்பாக பேசப் பட்ட நாவல். சமீபத்தில் புத்தக வடிவில் வெளியிடப்பட்டுள்ளது. நான்கு பாகங்கள் இரண்டு புத்தகங்களாக வந்துள்ளன.

இதற்கு முன்பு சு. வெங்கடேசனின் காவல் கோட்டம் நாவல் பாதி வரைக்கும் படித்தேன். அப்புத்தகத்தின்  ஆழத்தையும்  பரப்பையும் அனுபவிப்பதற்கு  மிகுந்த பொறுமை வேண்டும். அது அந்த சமயத்தில் என்னிடம் இல்லை. வேள்பாரி படித்த பிறகு காவல் கோட்டம் மீது மற்றொரு முயற்சி எடுப்பேன் என்று நம்புகிறேன்.

பாரி நாம் பள்ளியில் படித்த முல்லைக்கு கொடியாக தனது தேரைக்  கொடை கொடுத்த அதே வள்ளல் தான். கதை எழுதப்பட்ட காலத்தில் காடு, மலை நிலங்களில் வாழும் வேளிர் குலங்களின் வாழ்க்கை முறை மூவேந்த்தர் நாட்டு மக்களின் வாழ்க்கை முறைக்கு முற்றிலும் வேறாக சித்தரிக்கப் பட்டுள்ளது. அவ்வேளிர் குலங்களுக்குள் பறம்பு நாட்டுக்குலத்தின் தலைவன்  பாரி. வேளிர் மக்களின் வாழ்க்கை இயற்கையோடு ஒன்றி இருக்கிறது. அவர்கள் விவசாயம், வணிகம் ஆகியவற்றில் ஈடுபடடுவதில்லை. வன விலங்கு மாமிசம், பழ கிழங்கு வகைகளே அவர்களுக்கு  உணவாகும். 

கதையின் முதல் பாதி மிகவும் மெதுவாகவே நகர்கிறது. சங்கப் புலவர் கபிலர், பாரியின் பெருமைகைளைப் பற்றிக் கேள்விப்பட்டு அவற்றை நேரில் காண பறம்பு நாட்டுக்குச்  செல்கிறார். அவருடைய கண்களின் மூலம் பறம்பு நாட்டின் வாழ்க்கை முறையைக் காண்கிறோம்.  பாரியைத் தவிர, குல ஆசான் தேக்கன்,  மாவீரன் நீலன் போன்ற கதாபாத்திரங்களும் நமக்கு அறிமுகம் செய்யப்படுகின்றனர். பாண்டிய நாட்டில் இளவரசன் பொதிய வெற்பனுக்கும், பெருவணிகர் குலத்து மங்கை  பொற்சுவைக்கும் திருமண ஏற்பாடுகள் மதுரையில் நடக்கின்றன. தற்செயலாக தேவாங்கு எனும் பறம்பு நாட்டு விலங்கு ஒன்றின் விசித்திரமான குணம் ஒன்று பாண்டிய நாட்டுத்  தலைவர்களுக்குத்  தெரிய வருகிறது. கப்பல் பயணம் மற்றும் வணிகத்துக்கு  அக்குணத்தின் முக்கியத்துவம் பறம்பு நாட்டின் மேல் தாக்குதல் செய்ய சாக்காக அமைகிறது. 

காதல், காமம் முதற்கொண்டு வானியல், அரசியல், போர் என்று எல்லாவற்றிலும் வெங்கடேசனின்  தனிப்பட்ட நடை, ஆழம், யதார்த்தத்தோடு மிளிர்கின்றது.  

கதையில் வரும் எண்ணற்ற கதா பாத்திரங்களில் என்னைக் கவர்ந்த இரண்டு பேர் -  பாண்டிய நாட்டு ஆஸ்தான வானியல் நிபுணர் (கணியர்) திசை வேழரும், மேலே குறிப்பிட்ட பொற்சுவையும் தான். இரண்டாம் பாதியில் நடைபெறும் பெரும் போரில் பாண்டியர் தரப்பில் நடுவராக (கோள்சொல்லி என்று அழைக்கப்படும்) திசை வேழர் தயக்கத்துடன் ஆற்றும் பணி இக்கதையின் மிகவும் அருமையான ஒரு உபகதையாகஅமைந்துள்ளது. பொற்சுவையோ வெகு சில பக்கங்களே வந்தாலும்  தனது அறிவு, கலை ரசனை, தியாகம் மற்றும் மகத்தான செயல்களால் படிப்பவர் உள்ளத்தில் இடம் பிடிக்கின்றாள்.  

வெங்கடேசனின் போர்ச் சித்தரிப்பு இரண்டாம் பாதியின் தலையம்சம். மிகவும் சிறிய படையுடன் பறம்பு நாட்டுப் படையினரின்  போர்த் தந்திரங்களும், இயற்கையைத் தங்களுக்கு அனுகூலமாக எப்படி பயன்படுத்துகின்றனர் என்பதும் குறிப்பிடத்தக்கன. போரில் பயன்படுத்தும் ஒவ்வொரு ஆயுதத்திலும் பறம்பு நாட்டினரின்  (வாட்களை கூறு செய்யும் சிறப்புக் கல் முதல் முயல் இரத்தத்தில் தோய்த்த வில்லின்  நாண்  வரை) மேலாண்மை தெரிகிறது. ஆனால் சில இடங்களில் இது கொஞ்சம் அதிகம் என்றே  தோன்ற வைக்கின்றது. 

பாரியின் சிறப்புகளை அவனது செய்கைகளைவிட அவனது தளபதிகள், வீரர்கள், கபிலர் ஆகியோர் அவன் மீது காட்டும் மதிப்பு, விசுவாசம் மூலமாக சித்தரிப்பது ரசிக்கக் கூடிய அம்சம்.  

ஒரு சின்ன நெருடல் - நாம் பெருமையுடன் நோக்கும் தமிழ் மூவேந்தர்களும் வில்லர்களாக வருகின்றனர். அவர்களில் ஒருவரை மையமாக வைத்து கூடிய சீக்கிரத்தில் இன்னொரு நாவலை வெங்கடேசன் நமக்குப் படைப்பார் என்று நம்புகிறேன். 

இரா. பாலாஜி 

Trip to Kanchipuram - Vaikunta Perumal Temple

As mentioned in my previous entry about the trip to the Kailasanathar Temple, Kanchipuram warrants multiple trips given the number of Pallava and Chola era temples that should be in anyone's itinerary. In this trip, I visited the Vaikunta Perumal temple and the Ekambareswarar temple along with a couple of smaller temples. In this post, I will cover the Vaikunta Perumal temple. One thing to note about the Kanchi Pallava temples is that they are made of sandstone unlike Mamallapuram where the Pallavas used granite. Sandstone being a much softer stone, the sculptures and temple structures from the Pallava period really show their age.

The Vaikunta Perumal temple is from the 8th century built during the reign of the Pallava king Nandivarman II. Nandivarman is from a parallel line of the ruling Pallavas, a descendant of Bhimavarman, who was the brother of Pallava king Simhavishnu. After Paramesvaravarman II's death in 729, there was a succession conflict since Paramesvaran did not have a heir who could ascend the throne. As per inscriptions in the Vaikunta Perumal temple, the Pallava nobles traveled to a distant land crossing mountains and water bodies to appeal to Hiranyavarman. Hiranyavarman declined to take on the Pallava throne and instead asked his sons. Interestingly enough, the elder sons also declined and the youngest son Paramesvara agreed to become king and ascended the throne at Kanchi at the age of 12 and ruled under the name Nandivarman (II) for more than 60 years.

A noteworthy feature of the temple is the three-tiered sanctum with Vishnu in a seated pose in the ground level, reclined on Adiseshan in the middle level and in a standing posture on the top tier. The middle level is accessible through a staircase, but there is no access left to the top tier. At the ground level, the shrine is surrounded by cloisters on the inner side of which is a colonnade adorned with seated lions, a typical Pallava feature. The cloister walls have a sequence of relief sculptures depicting the history of the Pallava dynasty as per the interpretation of Dr. C. Minakshi who has written a book on the temple; the following iconography is as per Dr. Chithra Madhavan's lecture where she cites this book as her primary source. In the space below the panels, inscriptions can be found below some of them describing the scene, while many others do not have inscriptions or the inscriptions have faded and we need to rely on scholar's educated guesses.

The first set of panels show the supposedly divine lineage of the Pallavas starting from Brahma, followed by Angiras, Brihaspathi, Bharadvaja, Drona and Ashvatthama. The panel showing Drona has a pot near his feet which is a clue to the identity as Drona is said to have been gestated in a pot. Asvatthama is shown in penance (see photo above) and there is a rather crude sculpture of what appears to be an over-sized baby to his right, who is supposedly the first Pallava king. These panels are followed by panels depicting the actual Pallava kings themselves. A typical panel shows the king on the left frame of the panel. In some cases, the coronation of the king is shown as can be seen by priests pouring sacred water on his head. The right side of the panel shows battle scenes or other events during that monarch's reign. The panel that shows Simhavishnu curiously shows another coronation on the top right side (see picture below). C. Minakshi's interpretation is that this must be Simhavishnu's brother Bhimavarman who was crowned elsewhere to head a parallel dynasty. Bhimavarman is the ancestor of Nandivarman II, as was mentioned above.

There is one mysterious spot, right after the panel showing Vishnugopa's coronation, where the space is left empty. This purportedly - again highly speculative - shows the invasion and defeat of the Pallava kingdom by Samudragupta from the North. Samudragupta's inscriptions in the Allahabad pillar do mention his victory over Vishnugopa of Kanchi. The panels of Mahendravarman and Narasimhavarman show the battles with Pulakesin II of the Vatapi Chalukyas. Finally, we have the panels that show the search and the finding of a successor after Paramesvaravarman II's early death described earlier.
The panels in the ground tier are thus of interest from a historic perspective and less from an artistic perspective. The patchwork done by Architecture Survey of India (ASI) is at times rather crude. For artistic merit, perhaps the sculpture on the outer wall of the shrine in the middle tier are better examples. They mostly depict the avatars of Vishnu, notably Narasimha, Krishna and Vamana. These include a damaged but very rarely depicted scene of Vishnu as Mohini distributing nectar to the devas. The sculpture might be in ruins, but you still can't help but notice the beautifully delicate stance of Mohini.

- Balaji