PAARA (THE ROCK) Dear friends,
I wish all my friends a happy newyear 2021. Today my posting is about Paara-The rock. Let us be firm we canovercome covid 19 and Covid 20, if it spread in India. Sincerely, Gopala krishnan 1-1-2021. 1. Naranathu Brandhan When I start to write about rock,immediately what comes to my mind is Naranathu Brandhan, one of the children told in“Parayi petta Pandirukulam” story. It was a practice for Naranathu Brandhan toroll up a big rock to the top of a hill in the day time from morning puttingall efforts and after reaching top in the afternoon, he would roll it down witha big laugh. He wasexpressing a prapancha rahasyam- secret of the universe. 2. Rock appearance as frog. A few months back I had been toOoty and on the way to Muthumalai sanctuary our driver stopped the vehicle andshowed us a hill formed in the shape of a frog. With growing of bushes itappeared as a big green frog. What a natural making up! The hill is called frog hill. 3. Tunnels In the railway track tunnels aremade excavating the rock. The first tunnel I have seen was in the Shenkottairoute from Quilon- Better it is known as Aryankavu churangam. I am not sure of the distance,but for about a KM I could observe darkness and water oozing out here and therewhile crossing the tunnel. Near Kottayam also small tunnels are there in the railway line, butwith more oozing of water. 4. Rock cut temple at Pullayarpatti. Recently I had been toRameswaram, and on the way I had been to the rock cut temple at Pullayar Patti near karaikkudi.Actually the pullayar is carved in rock, and the temple was made of qualityrocks. Specifically to mention, it was one of the temples maintained with extreme neatness I have seen in the route. For Many chettiarsPullayarpatti pullayar is the kuladeivam. 5. Rameswaram temple. It is a biggest irony, which Icould not digest how the temple was built by the Sethupathi rajas of Ramnadbringing all the rocks, when even the railway bridge and road was not there!!! 6. Rock temples at Khajuraho I had been to Khajuraho templesabout 15 years back. Though the templesare on top of hill it was another wonder to me how so much rocks could bebrought there for so many temples in the period of Chandela Dynasty. All thetemples were once maintained and deities worshipped. Now worship is in a fewtemples. After seeing Brahadeeswar templerecently I am put to think on the olden days building temples was one of themain jobs done by men other than agriculture. 7. Seeing rock while digging open wells While digging open wells it is apractice to see the bottom rock from where water ooze without stopping. (Waterplates) It is closed with a plank of Amla tree. It is called Nellippalaka. No body used toremove nellippalaka while cleaning wells. There is a saying also in Malayalam” Nellippalaka Kanunnathu varae” (meaning-exhausting almost everything) 8. Oolen para While we plough lands foragriculture, here and there sometimes we come across rocks slightly yellowishor brownish in colour. They are not hard like normal rocks. They can be takenout also with some efforts. In Malayalam they are called Oolen para. In Kerala in almost all places they areremoved and cultivation done. In Tamilnadu they are left as it is. 9. Marble rocks I am recollecting the marblerocks at Jabalpur, since some marble rocks are somewhat similar to oolen para,but they are continuous on all sides. While travelling in the Badaghat area in Narmada Riverone can see cut marbles on either side. 10. Rock in daily use. >From Stone Age till today usingcut rocks has become part of human life. Rocky >areas are exploited to get moreand more rocks. But on earth’s surface a major >portion is rocky and there need be no fear of rocknon-availability in course >of time. But exploiting rocky surfaces of thehills may reduce the size of >hills and hence hill trees to a meagre percentage.I repeat a meagre percentage >comparing to vast area of rocks. All our transport roads are madeout first with jelly (rocks cut to very small pieces) and after black toppingwith bitumen or tar; rock powder is spread over it for strength. Jelly is an essential ingredientof RCC (concrete) and today all our buildings are made of concrete roof andpillars. The flooring is also first made with jelly before cementing or tilingor fitting marble or granite. Granite is cut rock finished to size. Forplatforms lengthy sizes are used as in kitchen platforms. Rock of medium hardness is usedfor these purposes. These rocks are sometimes also called rough granite type. Marble and granite slabs we useare cut from various quality rocks and given finishing. The smooth finishingdone earlier to sized rocks we can see in temple floorings and temple tanksetc. In fact till recently widely used mosaic toois chipped from a type of coloured rock. The kadappa slabs and slate slabs are cut from specialtype of rocks. Our wet grinders employ granitestones sized for grinding with mutual friction among them. In central and southern Keralarandom sized granite is used for making the foundation of buildings. A smallpercentage is used for making idols, pillars in the new temples constructed nowa days. Update – Now Pillar constructionis more common. So in between pillars for foundation bricks are used morecommonly. But roughly cut granitepieces also can be used My note- The Telecom training centre and quarters at Trivandrum arebuilt with mix of pillars, cut granite and bricks. 11. Use of rocks in yester years for telecom While I was working atKrishnagiri I could see uniform sized granite pillars with cutting for holdingtwo or three wires along Krishnagiri-Bangalore Highway. Later I could gather it was used to take thetelegraph line between Madras and Bangalore. One of such pillar available inthe Sipcot area of Hosur we made as monument later. 12. What is rock? It is the theory when planet earth was formed it wasa big burning mass first gaseous and later semi liquid form. When temperaturefurther cooled down in thousands of years, the outer surface got solidified androcks appeared as hills and mountains on the top. Rocks are available beneath the soil alsoafter a hardening area. The most used rocks are from the hills. The appearance of rocks in theriverbed is the best examples of underneath rocks. Addition- Not familiarized with sea rocks, seeing first time, the Vivekananda rockin Arabian see at Kanyakumari was a wonder to me. Thevolcanoes, formation of different strata of earth will be dealt in another posting. 13. Rocks reference Rocks are referred in our Iithihasams in manyinstances. One immediately coming to my memory is that Ahalaya was turned to a rock by curse of sageGouthama and by touch of Sreerama, regained her original form. Another is sage Agasthia, kept his Kamandalu on arock for performing sandhya and a crow tilted it and his wife (in formof liquid) started flowing as Kaveri. He also stopped Vindhya Mountains not growingfurther. 14. Vivekananda Rock The Vivekananda rock in the seaat Kanyakumari where Vivekananda used to swim and reach for dhyanam is worthmentioning. We can reach only by the boat/ship to the rock. 15. Sand Tiny particles coming out fromthe rocks through the course of river form the sand in the riverbed. From the sand silica is taken andsilica is used for making the IC used in our computer!!! 16. Papam cheyyathavanKalleriyattae. I will conclude this posting the above wordsfrom Bible meaning” The man who have not committed the sin stone Mariyam”. Stone is a small piece of granite or rock. Originally posted on 3-1-2011.Reposted on 1-1-2020 after editing andupdating. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1249427189.4924737.1609481340332%40mail.yahoo.com.
