Cedar Rapids, creating the history for the future

    The historic Czech heritage museum building located next to Cedar River, few blocks from downtown in Czech village, was completely damaged during 2008 Cedar River flooding (hundred year flood). In addition to museum and gift shop, this beautiful building with great architecture sitting next to river provided the residents a great location to have some small gatherings and parties. I still remember attending my friend’s daughter's party in this hall in 1999. 

This historic building is now completely renovated from the flood damage and they just did not stop there. They are taking it further towards being a historic icon of Cedar Rapids. They scooped it up from the ground on to a moving platform. It will be moved few feet away from River {sad :(} and placing it on a 30 feet pre-built platform {nice :)}. 

Enjoy the pictures and on going plans to lift up the museum!

Building on the wheels

On the wheels

FAQs

pre-built platform

My inspiration, My Uncle – Pagadala Durga Prasad

I am not so lucky to be with you guys today and share this day with you, the day My Mama retiring from his exciting, unique and successful Government service. You guys have a privilege of publishing your congratulations to our role model your DAD. Since I cannot publish in the paper like you I decided to write a blog about my uncle Sri. Pagadala Durga Parasad and his achievements.

Ever since my childhood until today I have looked up to him at every stage. He is an energetic, motivating, inspiring, fun loving person. He is a leader who has talent, networks, dedication, and courage to get things done, and a big heart to help others. He was never satisfied and stayed back with what he had and achieved. He kept pushing his boundaries, venturing in to new areas and exploring new opportunities, utilized his abilities in various public service areas staring from Agro industries to public administration, with his innovative ideas for the benefit of the people. There are many examples to quote for these.

He deserved all the positions he held starting with his career as manager in factory in his hometown to managing a ministry at central government of his country. No wonder most successful leaders from CBN to YSR sought assistance from this great administrator.

During my childhood my mom always used tell us about many incidents from her experiences with her brothers, whenever she needs to inspire us. I still remember all those narrations about him. This is not done yet I am waiting to see many more great things he is going to do in his new retired life. I can never be done writing about him, for now I got to stop pick up the phone and congratulate him on completing his magnificent career as a leader in public service.

My first published article : India Hot & Cool

This was my first article published in Jhaankar, Voice of the community, the news letter from Friends of India Association, Cedar Rapids,IA,USA. I want to preserve this as my first blog post but cannot back date it to its published date Sept, 2007.
Anyway India is still Hot & Cool even now.


--------------------------India Hot & Cool-------------------------------------------

I returned from my trip to India couple off weeks back, since then I have been boring people in the break room with details of the trip , so editor Sagar suggested why don't we make it an article for Jhankar, which motivated me to become an author of article for first time, and here is how it goes.

As soon as I landed in India on Aug 13th (which is also as an important date for me) I felt really great, as I always did on my previous trips in addition to that one small difference, as soon as I stepped out of Begumpet Airport, the fresh smell of nature fills my nose, I took a deep breath, wow I think it was because of very good rainfall there after a decade I guess. It rained every single day I stayed there, it was so nice I just stayed in my home town I did not go to either Ooty or Kodai. I hope god will bless my city like that forever.

Like every other guys India trip details, mine too has stuff like, you know it, starting from how you booked tickets, how was the journey, how are things there like messy traffic, jobs, sky rocketing real estate, spending habits etc., have changed in India. But still there is lot of fun discussing about that right, so let me narrate few interesting ones.

Starting with first activity in the morning, I was returning from morning walk on the streets of Jubilee Hills, it was around 8 AM, I found lot more 2 & 4 wheels cruising on the road than during my last visit & felt like they may run over me, immediately I asked my father-in-law (who was coolly walking next to me without caring for traffic) 'this is supposed to be posh & quiet neighborhood right?' he replies ‘that's all because of Hi-tech city’ with smile on his face. Man! Hyderbadi’s don’t seem to care about these problems and are ready to deal (or live) with it enthusiastically just to keep their city’s spurting growth going. I heard a lot about hi-tech city from many sources, so after breakfast we went there, wow it reminds me of my trip to Bay Area during late 90’s almost every famous tech company has put up their huge office building there, in addition to office complexes huge residential townships, not only in looks even in term of real estate prices, apartment rents it is mirroring bay area, Rs 10K has become an easily affordable rent for apartment. And this hi-tech city has become a strong point in hyderbadi parent’s argument that their NRI sons/daughters should return home.

After lunch, even though I hated investing in gold, could not escape since there is marriage in the family, so withstanding the sleep from jet lag we started out to for shopping, It was taking for ever in that traffic and I started pestering our car driver like donkey in shrek2. He replied ‘aajkal traffic may cabinet minister ko be secretariat jane me ek ghanta lagtha saab’. My father-in-law reassures me saying it is better in some areas we have many new flyovers & they will finish outer & inner ring roads (like turnpikes here I guess) & it will provide some solution to this problem. At last after 90 minutes of jerky drive we ended up in jewelry shop. The couple hours I stayed there my god that guy did so much business from so many people, no wonder some one quoted in rediff.com that “Marriage Inc is doing good in India”. I got out of that shop after gobbling down the American style sweet corn & chai he offered me along with cut in my credit limit. Our shopping spree didn’t stop there we wanted buy some stuff to fill our new house in cedar rapids, even in those shops lot of locals & NRIs competing with each other to spend money. I spent more than what I spent here in Menards since I bought home, then I realized why Mr. Sams wanted to start walmartIndia.com. After all these we were home by 11:30 PM and I collapsed on dinner table itself.

Next day I started preparing for my dream trip, journey on a new direct broad gauge train from state capital to my hometown (chittoor), which we used to talk about during childhood, otherwise I had to change 2 trains to go to my hometown. Good this gauge conversion project gave me this convenience even though it took 25 years to complete. The trip was good except for I regretted traveling A/c sleeper coach bcos you will not have a real train journey experience in that. Even in chittoor I found many improvements looks like my home town is getting few fruits from Urban economic boom going on in India. After few days with my parents I went to Tirumala for Lord Venkestwara’s blessings, then I went temple in Kanipakam (4 KM from my hometown & 70 KM from Tirumala) an emerging pilgrim center with Lord Ganesha’s temple which quickly getting famous, I found many people coming to Tirumala visiting Ganesh temple here, TTD the governing body of tirumala temple took over this and planning to convert it to a mini Tirumala with their ‘master plan’. This was an ancient temple I visited this temple only twice before I came to US, now it has become a landmark for my town, people believe the Ganesh statue in that temple is growing out from the well.

From there I went to my grand father’s village, recollected all my summer vacation times I spent there during my school days, rural India looked same to me not much improvement, except for people there have become more aware (thanks to information revolution). Villages still struggling to survive on their own without any boost like the one urban areas got from MNCs & migrations from villages. My vacation was getting over, so started back to hyderabad this time in Bus, wow those highways have become lot better thanks to golden quadrilateral project, buses are able to go smooth & with good speed, I happily slept through out the journey.

After this trip I felt like I need to make frequent trips to India, Now India is HOT, it is COOOL & it will be lovely too.

JAI HIND
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Hope - The Tree Branch

Scene 1: People performing Homa with their spiritual leader Amma Karunamayi at Fairfield IA.

I was sitting next to this tree, chanting slokas with my mouth and contemplating what I could translate from those chants and Amma’s interpretations. With all these going on in my mind and my fat body not co-operating I couldn’t concentrate anymore and so I turned around to my two kids who were really concentrating on DSI-XL. And this tree struck my attention; I saw this tree intact 6 years ago, when I attended this Homa for the first time. That time my daughter (who was then a year old) and I played under that tree. But it is broken now, I felt so sad. But I noticed that tree branch didn’t look so sad. Looks like it had more effect from homa and preaching’s, it had hope, it had faith and did not give up. It stood up and gained the 2nd life from the other end and may be even supporting the tree. I got excited and it became my show and tell subject.

Scene 2: Pavan lying on bed watching lighting & thunder over the corn fields behind his house and trying to reflect on his day’s experience

Speaking about my participation in Amma Karunamayi’s spiritual retreat in Fairfield, IA, many people who know me may wonder what am I doing there. I always questioned myself why do I want to spend one vacation day to go participate in what I necessarily do not believe in. But I did it anyway in spring of 2004, I like taking a shot no matter what. Many of my friends (the birds of same color) were curious about what was my take away from that experience. How was Amma? is she a great speaker? do you think she is really powerful? Why do people come to her? etc., I had no good answers for them. But all I said was I would go again next year and I did so every year.

I am neither motivated to be in mere presence of Amma, I am not be influenced by her preaching or mesmerized by her powers, but definitely want to own part of her mission statement “selfless service to this world”, may be by different means I am yet to figure what that means is. Things I liked about Amma, her calmness, innocent truthfulness in some of her messages and a preacher in a regular person. To me a preacher like this is more candid than a highly educated trained eloquent one. One single day I dedicated in my whole year to spend with people on the other side of my mission, I decided to spend it with Amma and her followers at my beloved Iowa country side Fairfield IA (also the center of North American continent).

Lost Pavements

Most of us always want to live in a good neighborhood. One of the nice features of good neighborhood is being able to take a nice morning and evening walks and being able to say hi to neighbors.

When I was a child I always wondered why my street didn't have a nice pavement like the ones illustrated in the storybooks. They are there in main streets of my hometown, but I used to wonder would I ever be able to walk on them. So I grew up like that looking for my dream neighborhood.

In 1999 after my marriage I got introduced to the supposed to be most sought after neighborhoods in my home state, the so-called Jubilee Hills. When I decided to explore then I took a morning walk, I did notice there are pavements to walk but no people to look at. I think they are still snoozing in one of their 8 bedrooms waiting for bed coffee from their maidservants. Walk was fine but I was little disappointed for not being able to see the neighbors. For then I settled with looking at the people who work for them (my Americanized mindset wouldn't let me call them servants any more). At least quiet streets and nice buildings positioned it to be a good neighborhood.

Now I go back to the same neighborhood again after 10 years. Thanks to the green awareness of the neighbors and hard work of the people who work for them and thanks to good rainfall in the region in recent years, now I see huge trees and lot of greenery. But the problem is many of them were planted on my favorite pavements, it could be bad planning by municipality or selfishness on part of neighbors. Some neighbors even tried to help (worsen) the situation by fencing the trees or the whole damn stretch along their compound. And some went one step further and customized them as tiny parking lots for futuristic $1000 cars. Some of the trees from inside the private property sticking out their poky branches on the pavement, they even started scratching the head of my 6 year old walking with me who is not even 4 feet tall. Again it’s the bad planning of the city; they have put all dangerous electrical transformers and death holes (man holes) right in middle of them. I had to walk on the road but had to jump back on to those terrible pavements, because the traffic from main streets overflowing into our street honked at me. I was almost like a popping corn in the hot kettle. This was the first time I got mad at going green.

Looks like real pavements unlike the ones in storybooks have some real (redefined) purpose from small ones like providing shelf space to novel causes like going green. Now I kind of started liking my old street in my hometown, the one without pavements, at least it is serving as open ground for rainwater harvesting. Ok now I am done with my obsession for pavements and moving on to think about other issues and exciting things that can keep me busy for rest of my vacation.