Weekend in Hyderabad

On 2nd September, my classmates and I left to Hyderabad for a weekend break. Hyderabad is the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh. It took almost 12 hours journey by bus. It was the first time that I’ve travelled by for such long hours in a bus. It was also the first time that I went out of Pune ever since I came to India.

We stayed at the Church of St Francis de Sales. Our first trip was to visit the Catholic Missionary School runs by the Congregation of Missionary of St Francis de Sales (MSFS). Fr Joy, msfs, is the principal of the school and Fr Rayappa is the procurator. They took us around to the Nursery and Kindergarten classrooms.

The Catholic Missionary School

Celebrating Mass in Hyderabad

The Grotto of Our Lady


After that we proceeded to the Ramoji Film City – which has been certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest film studio complex.

The huge complex consists of 1,666 acres with 47 sound stages. Any normal tour in this film city will at least take a day but we left within 2 hours due to the hot sun.

All pictures below are within the studio location itself:

I was really fascinated with this complex and I had a better picture in my mind on how the film industries produce movies.

Then we left to the old city of Hyderabad to visit Charminar (Menara) which was built in the 1591 and the old university.

Osmania University Hyderabad


Hyderabad is well known with its Biryani. During my two days stay there I had the Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani twice. It was really spicy but I enjoyed it. It is entirely different than what I have eaten in the past especially in Malaysia.

The worse part of my trip was the 15-hour return journey to Pune in a non-air conditioned bus. It was a killer!

My Onum Experience

Cultural festivities is one of the significant celebrations for every ethnic group in many parts of the world. It was a joyful day for the people in Kerala, India as they celebrated their cultural harvest festival which is known as “ONUM” on Friday, 9th September. We, the post-graduate students celebrated it on Saturday, 10th September, due to our classes during the weekdays. Sixty percent of our post-graduate students are from Kerala.

We started our Onum festivity with the Eucharistic celebration celebrated by Fr Biju Joseph Karingalikattil. It was a Syro-Malabar rite Mass. I could only follow the readings and preaching which were in English and the rest of the Mass was in Malayalam. It was a pretty long Mass and I could not understand the significance of certain rites and rituals during the Mass which made me a little confused.

Fr Tommy, in his homily was preached about the legendary King Mahabali who kept his promises alive and fulfilled his name as the great martyr for the sake of Truth – Satya.

On Friday after dinner some of the students started to work on the decorations such as “pookalam” (with flowers) at our dining hall and also had a choir practice to bring more meaning to this cultural celebration.

On Saturday, after our breakfast many of the students were involved in the kitchen work such as cutting meat, vegetables, grinding flour, scrapping coconut, and cooking.

The students from Kerala themselves served the food for the distinguished guests and the rest of the students.

Before serving the food they sang Malayalam songs and had dance performances as well. Some of them came with their traditional clothing. Fr Saji greeted and thanked all the 30 students from Kerala and the others as well for working together to make the event a memorable one.

HAPPY ONUM – “MANUSHARELLARU MONNUPOLE”

Celebrating Eid Mubarak

We, the post-graduate students and staff of Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV) celebrated the “Spirit of Eid Mubarak” (Hari Raya Aidil Fitri) with our Kitchen staff on 31st August. Our kitchen staff consists of a Muslim family celebrating their “Eid Mubarak” for the second time ever since the Post-graduate block (PG Block) officially launched in 2010.

Anuar and Family

Despite the festivity, Mr and Mrs Anuar Babu Sheikh and his family opened the kitchen just for the sake of our meals. A month ago the JDV administration had extended their contract for the next 3 years. Today, being a festivity, they offered a special lunch us.

Before the meal, on behalf of all students, Fr Saji (caput- head of students) greeted the family of Anuar and the kitchen staff whereas Fr Dileep Kumar explained how this festivity came about in English and Hindi. Fr Francis Ezhakunnel, Moderate of PG block gave a token of appreciation to Anuar’s family. We all sang a song for the kitchen staff – “Rejoice, All Always and I Say Rejoice.”

They joyfully celebrated by serving us special dishes such as ghee rice, tandoori chicken, payassam, handkerchief tosai and ice-creams. Since it was also Malaysia's 54th Merdeka Day (Independence Day), many of them also remembered to wish me “Selamat Hari Merdeka.”

Priest and Philosopher

The late Professor Raimundo Panikkar

Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV) paid tribute to Professor Raimundo Panikkar on 29th August, 2011. He was born on 3rd November, 1918 in Barcelona. His father was an Indian of Hindu faith and his mother a Catalan Catholic. He was ordained as a priest in 1946 and in the same year he got his Ph.D. in philosophy and in 1958 in Science at the University of Madrid and in 1961 in Theology at the Lateran University in Rome. He has lived and in India, in Rome and in the USA. He passed away on 26 August 2010.

He had contributed to philosophical thinking and theological understanding through his writings particularly to the Church in India. In collaboration with Association of Christian Philosophers of India, the JDV College organised half a day of programmes for the students and professors at Papal Seminary Hall, Pune (JDV compound itself) from 8.40 am to 12.55 pm.

The Dean of Theology, Fr Thomas Kuriacose, SJ., gave an introduction about Prof. Panikkar as an opening address. There were 3 invited guest speakers who gave inputs on writings of Panikkar. Prof Francis X. D’Sa, SJ presented on “Sacred Secularity: Panikkar in a Pluralistic World” and followed by Prof Anand Amaladass, SJ spoke on “Panikkar’s Vision of Hindu-Christian theology and finally Prof Jacob Parapally, MSFS., presented on “Panikkar: From Christology to Christophany”. There was a 30-minute questions, clarification and interaction session given to the students before Fr Errol D’Lima, SJ furnished the highlight of the seminar. We ended the seminar with the JDV anthem.

Panikkar had coined many philosophical terms such as Ecosophy, cosmotheandric, theandropocosmic, etc which is the new wisdom of the earth. One of the great sayings of Panikkar is: “I started as a Christian; I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be a Christian”.

Remembering St John Don Bosco

Today, August 16th marks the 196th birthday of St John Don Bosco who was born in Turin, Italy in the year 1815.

On January 31st 2009, the relics began a journey throughout 130 countries in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Salesian Congregation. The pilgrimage of the relics was also in preparation for the saint’s 200th birthday in 2015.

On the 8th and 9th of August, the pilgrimage made its way to Pune, India. I was excited at the thought of being able to see the relics when it was brought to the Church of the Sacred Heart in Pune. I had heard so much about the relics and of how the bones and tissue on the saint’s right hand was not decomposed until now.

Unfortunately what was on display was not the relics but instead a wax display of the saint’s body lying in a glass coffin. I was disappointed at this false impression that had been given to the faithful. How could the Church make a mockery of such a thing. I am not sure if the relics were also enclosed within the wax image – personally I doubt it. My companions were equally puzzled and disappointed.

On our way back as we were walking along Yerwada Road, we came across a Tibetan restaurant and decided to console ourselves with some food. We ordered some Chinese noodles and chicken rolls. After being away from Malaysia these past few months, I was longing for some Chinese food.

Although it was delicious, it was not the same as our Malaysian Chinese noodles. Nevertheless I enjoyed my meal.