Monday, August 18, 2008

Tour de Chitradurga

"Kothi Raj" Ahh...!!!! After a long period of time, a warm gush of happiness surged up all over me, goose bumps all over my body, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and many such emotions aroused to their fullest extent. A feeling of accomplishment is the ultimate bliss and enlightenment is what I realised and experienced all through my tour de Fort Chitradurga.
Initially, a sum of questions aroused me when I visited the fort. Why are we lazy!!! why do we brood over past uncalled for experiences and self-inflicted pains!!! why we constantly plan for the better future, why are we in pursuit of happiness and peace!!! why are we not able to dream??? why do we postpone things for the next moment or next available appointment with slothfulness; why we hate; why we blame; why we look for the perfect companion; why we urge for emotional support and sharing; why men have desires for lust, greed and power.

You must be wondering as to why I am babbling about so many WHYs and what point I am trying to make at this point here. But, indeed, all these questions aroused me very recently, and they didn't stop at these, still many more such questions and many such thoughts constantly went through me and have been going on in my mind. To be more accurate, some of the actions performed by a person who is far more superior than our fellow brothers triggered all my senses and disturbed me very severely, that was when I accidentally met "Jothi Raj" a.k.a. "Kothi Raj."

Before I start saying anything about him, I want to make one thing very clear to my fellow
brothers, I am 100% sure that I can never ever completely express or portray in words that
what Mr Kothi Raj is all about. The only way to know him, I believe, is to meet this person in real life. But since I am not able to resist myself from expressing him through my insight and I think its better to convey as little as possible of someone like Kothi Raj and spread his Super Personality to the world, not to forget that many things have been already said, written and visualised about him. Once again instead of burying it within myself, I would like to share with you my personal experience about him when I first met him for a very short duration, though.

I was in Chitradurga for two days, I was there to attend somebody's marriage, which was honestly irrelevant for me. The two important reasons on which I decided to visit Chitradurga, which was, in fact, impossible in my busy work schedule. First and foremost, its because of my close friends Isla and Hari, with whom even if I had to go to hell, I would rather do it very happily and comfortably. But unfortunately, Isla could not make it because of sudden outburst of allergic reaction (flare up of red rashes throughout the body). Second reason was the place itself, "Chitradurga."

Coming back to Kothi Raj, whose name when translated to English means "Monkey King," sounds very funny to hear isn't it???, but Kothi Raj takes his name when asked by anyone with great sense of proudness. He is the actual hero of Chitradurga, though it has had many rulers and leaders before. He is the super human, a living combination of Superman, Spiderman, etc.
He is the rock climber by default. He says he has taken part in many rock climbing competitions and expeditions including World Championships and many International events. He says he is third in ranking in the world at present, but now he believes he can beat them without any effort. He says, "if they can climb the rock in an obverse way, I can do it the reversely," i.e., upside down which is something very arduous and unimaginable, but he did it in front of me, I witnessed it.

Me, Hari and Naga were climbing a small rocky hill, which was very steepy. As soon as we got down, we were very much self-praising of our courageousness and confidence about climbing such a difficult rocky hill, and that's when Kothi Raj arrived like a thunderbolt. In a blink of eye, he was on top of the hill, did some acrobatic manoeuvres and at the same pace got down, we were all dumbfounded. I think we took somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes going up and coming down the hill. He did it just in 5 to 10 minutes, literally. Later on, he went on to perform many such acts like climbing the "Uyyale Kamba" which I believe is one of the toughest because it had very minimal grip to hold on to which is like a drawback for a climber and the true climber will always find something out of nothing and he did it quite easily. I was very happy when I took his autograph and also his phone number. As the time passed, I was like literally chasing him, following, cheering him and grabbing his attention as to generate a conversation between us, since I had many questions to ask him, but unfortunately none would come out at the right time. He actually spoke very less, I was like any other tourist to him, but somewhere he felt I showed too much interest in him and so finally he noticed me and began a conversation, getting noticed by him was itself a great pride for me and his gratefulness. Initially, when asked about his inspiration and teacher, he says without second thought "Monkeys." Its very interesting to note that he had no formal education regarding rock climbing. Later on, he asked me to write something about my experience watching him in a small book which he carries with him all the time, then we spoke about his experiences in International meets, and at the end I invited him to Mysore. He very humbly accepted my invitation and took my phone number saying he'll be visiting Mysore during "Mysore Dasara" and would try his best to meet me. Since myself being a sports man (not anymore, though I follow sports with great enthusiasm) and a theater buff, I
am sure he'll enjoy my company if he ends up coming to Mysore.

That day was one of the best days of my life, I met a real hero, who is very soft spoken and less too, masculine - definitely male, and very humble. I very much got inspired, motivated, and learnt the real meaning of simplicity by just watching him.

With all the hesitations, skipping loads of work at office, missing some of my friends, the person who invited me was very less close to me and I embarrassed myself by accepting his invitation which caused me lot of frustration. After all these obstacles, I took the decision of travelling to Chitradurga at very very last moment, and now I am happy that I did it..!!! Now when I look back, I feel it was really worth going to Chitradurga.

I think sometimes its better you don't plan and think too much about your destination when you have decided to explore the world, most of the time it brings you surprises and excites you to the fullest.

9 comments:

Vishwas Krishna said...

Nice insights about Kothi Raj. I hope he visits Mysore. Can you publish few photos of your tour?

hari said...

dude nice article on chitradurga hmmm... i remember we have spoken about those whys while we coming back to mys... but in your blog those whys are very irrelevant to the actual article... i think it needs an explanation or else it will really create a confusion in the reader's mind. coming back to the article it has given a brief description about kothi raj and his heroic adventures... hmmmm... if someone reads your article will definitely think of meeting kothi raj. good one dude... keep writing

enjoy...
hariOM.

hari said...

dude nice article on chitradurga hmmm... i remember we have spoken about those whys while we coming back to mys... but in your blog those whys are very irrelevant to the actual article... i think it needs an explanation or else it will really create a confusion in the reader's mind. coming back to the article it has given a brief description about kothi raj and his heroic adventures... hmmmm... if someone reads your article will definitely think of meeting kothi raj. good one dude... keep writing

enjoy...
hariOM.

Vishwas Krishna said...

"After a long period of time, a warm gush of happiness surged up all over me, goose bumps all over my body, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and many such emotions aroused to their fullest extent"
Superb selection words, liked it very much.

"The only way to know him, I believe, is to meet this person in real life"
Hopefully he comes down to Mysore.

where are the photos dude?

all in all, a very good article on Kothiraj with few unwanted things

ಹೆಸರು ರಾಜೇಶ್, said...

i am compleatly agree with vishwas openion, you could have taken his photographs. it is really good if he visits mysore & we are all greatful to you, if we cam get an oppertunity to meet him. thanks for the good article yar.
regards
rajesh

Anonymous said...

Hi Vinay. Thanks for your really interesting post about Kothi Raj. I work for a documentary production company in the UK, and we're really keen to get in touch with Kothi Raj about featuring him in a series we're making about people with extraordinary abilities. I was wondering if you might be able to help us to contact him, as you obviously agree that he is an amazing man. Please reply to this post if you would be happy to help us, and I will send you my email address. Hope to hear from you soon. Many thanks, Evie.

Vinay said...

Thank you Mr Evie. Please send your email ID, will try my best to support you.

Unknown said...

Waw its really a great job which you have done, and you are too lucky to visit chithradurga such a wonderful place, really I was not knowing about that great fabulous person "Kothi Raj", and now I came to know,,, ""For a person in the world nothing is impossible if the person tries to do all is possible"" this is the best article which you have given, be writing like this and let it come to know for me also,,, al the best,,,

enjoy..

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