The Chinese Fishing Nets

I have always heard about the Chinese fishing nets at Cochin and always wondered what is so special about those nets. During my visit to Cochin i got chance to see those net in operation along the seashore.

They are called as Chinese nets because they are believed to be first erected here by the Chinese people who came here for business...

In my opinion this must be the first practical application of the Bell Crank Lever. With a nice use of the principle of balance of Moments about a hinge...

At one end of the lever you have got the net and on the other end of the lever there are people who with ropes raise or lower the lever thus making the net go inside or come out of the water.
The moment exerted by the net and its structure at one end is balanced by hanging stones to the other end of the lever.

When the net is to be immersed in water, a person climbs over to the "net" lever thus tipping the balance to the "net" side. Slowly the net goes inside water. They wait for some time and after that they will pull the ropes tied to the "rope" lever. Thus applying moment that tips the balance to the "rope" side and thus the net is out of water.

The fishermen then go and collect whatever fishes are caught in the net.

These nets rise two opposite thoughts in my mind...

first is that how lazy the people must be who used these nets... because since these nets are fixed in one place you can not go into deep water for fishing and must be satisfied with whatever you get. may be they were initially intended for use in the small river or say backwaters in this case...

On the other hand they also represent an amazing application of a simple principle. That is too completely wooden. it is really fun to see the man going up the "net" lever and the net going slowly under water... and then the pulling out operation wherein the effort applied reduce gradually as the moment applied by the weight of the hanging stones increases gradually as the "rope" lever is pulled down...

the most amazing scene is when these net are used in conjunction with a lamp during night. The lamp is hanged to the frame such that it remains just above the water when the net is fully under water.

The fishes and crabs etc are attracted to the light and thus caught in the net...

A whole New World...

I have not seen Venice... whatever I know about that city and the canals there is from photo’s and movies like merchant of Venice.... But after last week visit to Cochin and Alapuzza, Now I can certainly say I have visited the rural version of Venice.

when I looked around while I was roaming around the Backwaters through villages and all, I had an impression like I m moving through a typical village scene and was expecting some typical things like electricity and drinking water shortage.... poor education... no connectivity...etc etc...

But what I saw was totally different. The concept of roads was not there in those villages....
The canals were their roads...
The ferry boat was the bus and just like a normal bus stop...
You could see People standing along the canals at what i will call as "Ferry stops" waiting to board ferries... (see the image of the "bus stop")
People were using small boats like we use cycles...
a whole new perspective where your Doodhwala comes in a small boat...
Children go to school in a ferry boat...

All the transport everything through water transports. Through the main canal small canals were leading to houses just like we have small roads...

Through conversation with people we found out some information about daily life of the village.

Contrary to our assumptions... they had 24 hours electricity supply.... full "drinking water" supply.... almost every home had telephone connection and of course cable connection.
The level of education is also good. The main reason I could see was the missionary schools that ensured the proper penetration of basic education.

We did not face a single incident of language barrier because most of the people knew English including 8-10 years old children….

Another aspect I observed was the "Gulf Readiness" of this region. On very first day when we were looking for return journey booking, we realized that the city had more airline agents than the domestic bus and railway booking agents. All Gulf airlines had offices in Ernakulum.
There are more international flights flying from Cochin than domestic flights.

At least one person from a family is either settled in Gulf of has come back after spending a lot of years in gulf.

The height of this Gulf-o-mania was that most of the schools were teaching Arabic as third language instead of Hindi.

But whatever it was... they had a nice world of their own...

In God's Own Country

Last weekend I spent in Cochin and around...
A classic example of 11th hour planning... Till Wednesday evening we had no plans.
Suddenly we decided that tomorrow we are going for a picnic somewhere...
Initial candidate was Goa. But no flights... no bus... no train....

So we zeroed on Kerala... after some consultation with people in office Cochin was finalized. Now we had to gather peoples for the picnic. Starting from two... we succeeded in adding only one more person and bus booking was done for Thursday evening for Ernakulam for 3 people... (Cochin is island... Ernakulam is nearest Mainland)

The main task after we reached there was to plan for 3 days... fortunately we had done enough research about Cochin. So it not a question of what but about when and how...

Weighing our options we immediately decided to leave for Alapuzza.. a small town famous for house boats in backwaters. It turned out to be a correct decision.
At Alapuzza we hired a small boat for three hours... to roam around the backwaters at our will. It was really great experience... we stopped at places... saw villages and all along the backwaters.... it exposed a whole new world hitherto unknown to us.

A new world without any roads...but canals...I shall write about that later...

The second day we spend on a organized tour of the canals and the villages... this was another good experience... all though this too was a trip through the canal just like first one there was a difference... earlier we went where we wanted... but not whare we should have gone. This time we got chance to see all the rare plants... villege life and all with information and all....

The third day we spent roaming around the Cochin City....
A real old city....with all those ancient houses and all... we saw the Famous Chinese fishing nets... the church where Vasco-Da-Gama was buried and the Jewish Synagogue.
It was really amazing to see those Chinese nets in operation. What disappointed me was the damn dirty beach…

Then came the real punishment for not planning...
We could not get reservation for return journey... no bus.. No flight... no train
so finally got into general bogie and departed for Bangalore...

Nemechi yeto mag 26 January

Aaj 26 January... Republic Day....
While i m writing this i don't even remember "Kitvaa Republic day" aahe te..
Google baba ki jay... and I know this is 57th republic day.

Why this is so?
Is this because everything has become so routine?
We do same things twice every year... Once on 26th Jan and then again on 15th Aug…
There is some parade in New Delhi and state capitols....
As usual flag hoisting functions take place...
At every function some gals will gather around a mike and sing same songs every year... Year after years....

All schools will call students to gather early morning... and again same story repeated... some guest will come and give same speech... year after years....
Venue may change...guests may change but speeches and songs and overall nature of the ceremony remains same...

From a few days early all shops start selling those paper flags...
no one cares even to maintain the size ratio for the flag dimensions...
Right from the republic day... all those flags start appearing scattered on the roads... dustbins... gutters and everywhere....

Why we have to show our respects on only these two days?
Why a Naveen Jindal has to fight for so many years just to get a right to hoist flag anytime during a year?

Yes... It is necessary to show to all those terrorists and all how we are proud of our nation and how we are united as a nation.... and certainly such functions send a clear message across.

But why does is limited to only those two days only?
Why we require be “asking” or sometimes “requesting" to stand up during national anthem?
or are we loosing the spirit and becoming a self centered society where we expect a lot from the nation....
we want the government to take care of us... give subsidies... reduce prices etc etc... but at the same time people don't want to pay taxes... we want the government to subsidize the education... but we don't want to stay back in our country and server it's economy but rather we are interested in settling abroad...

Too much…

I check some Pakistani news papers out of curiosity only to find them full with articles against India...
Even the Google news I see that out of 10 featured news... 8 are Pakistani news agencies... all spitting venom against India... giving more publicity to news against India... somehow projecting it as an enemy of people in Kashmir...

Somehow this day was no special for me... I m as usual in office...

But again...
when i am doing nothing...
Do I really have any moral right to write all this?

Looking Back to 31st Dec...

First post of the year 2006...
Well, no new resolutions... not many celebrations...
somehow this 31st was not as "celebrated" as past few years.
First of all we did not have any plans...
finally when plans came up... and we went roaming around...
we found all places too much crowded... because as such Bangalore has very few places where u can go roaming on such occasions.
So finally we got fed up very soon and decided to celebrate the "01-01-2006 000000" event at home..
And so we returned home at around 11 00 pm...

I have been spending every new yera eve in a different city for past few years.
31 Dec 2005.... Bangaore....
31 Dec 2004.... Virar...
31 Dec 2003.....Pune...
31 Dec 2002.....Mahabaleshwar...
31 Dec 2001.... not sure... may be Kopargaon...

when I look back... this tells a lot about how badly i have been roaming around... especially past two years...Mumbai...Pune...Bangalore....Kopargaon... Riyadh... Jeddah....
too many cities in too short period...

with every new year we always read about something called "new Year Resolutions"... I have always enjoyed reading all that stuff.
But when it comes to making my own resolutions, I am yet to succeed...
not in achieving those targets but in setting them up itself...
some how i never had any resolutions... many times i have decided that i will make some resolution... but that time never came up in last 25 years... :-)

But the most important plan for this year is to attend all the festivals i missed last year... ;-)