INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [BLOG #6]

KONARK SUN TEMPLE

Konark is a medium town in the Puri district in the state of Odisha, India. It lies on the coast by the Bay of Bengal, 65 kilometres from the capital of the state, Bhubaneswar. It is the site of the 13th-century Sun Temple, also known as the Black Pagoda, built in black granite during the reign of Narasinghadeva-I. The temple is a World Heritage Site. The temple is now mostly in ruins, and a collection of its sculptures is housed in the Sun Temple Museum, which is run by the Archaeological Survey of India.


Konark is also home to an annual dance festival called Konark Dance Festival, devoted to classical Indian dance forms, including the traditional classical dance of Odisha, Odissi. In February 2019, the Konark Dance Festival (now called Konark Music and Dance Festival) will be hosting its 33rd edition. The state government is also organising annual Konark Festival and International Sand Art Festival at Chandrabhaga Beach of Konark.
On 16 February 1980, Konark lay directly on the path of a total solar eclipse.


The Sun Temple was built in the 13th century and designed as a gigantic chariot of the Sun God, Surya, with twelve pairs of ornamented wheels pulled by seven horses. Some of the wheels are 3 metres wide. Only six of the seven horse still stand today. The temple fell into disuse after an envoy of Jahangir,desecrated the temple in the early 17th century.


According to folklore, there was a diamond in the centre of the idol which reflected the sun rays that passed. In 1627, the then Raja of Khurda took the Sun idol from Konark to the Jagannath temple in Puri. The Sun temple belongs to the Kalingan school of Indian temple architecture. The alignment of the Sun Temple is along the east–west direction. The inner sanctum or vimana used to be surmounted by a tower or shikara but it was razed in the 19th century. The audience hall or jagamohana still stands and comprises majority of the ruins. The roof of the dance hall or natmandir has fallen off. It stands at the eastern end of the ruins on a raised platform.


In 1559, Mukunda Gajapati came to throne in Cuttack He aligned himself as an ally of Akbar and an enemy of the Sultan of Bengal, Sulaiman Khan Karrani After a few battles, Odisha finally fell. The fall was also aided by the internal turmoil of the state. In 1568, the Konark temple was damaged by the army of Kalapahad, a general of the Sultan. Kalapahad is also said to be responsible for damages to several other temples during the conquest.

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INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [BLOG #5]

BHORAMDEO TEMPLE

Bhoramdeo Temple is a complex of Hindu temples dedicated to the god Shiva in Bhoramdeo, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. It comprises a group of four temples of which the earliest is a brick-temple.


The main temple is the Bhoramdeo temple built in stone. The architectural features with erotic sculptures has given a distinct style akin to the Khajuraho temple and the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, and hence the Bhoramdeo complex is known by the sobriquet the “Khajuraho of Chhattisgarh”.


Another temple within a distance of about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from Bhoramdeo, which is mentioned along with the Bhoramdeo complex is the Madwa Mahal, meaning marriage hall in local dialect, also known as Dullhadeo. It was built in 1349 during the reign of Ramchandra Deo of the Naga dynasty of Kawardha and has a unique Shiva Linga erected over 16 pillars.

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INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [BLOG #4]

BRIHADISHVARA TEMPLE

Brihadishvara Temple, called Rajarajesvaram (lit. ’Lord of Rajaraja’) by its builder, and known locally as Thanjai Periya Kovil (lit. ’Thanjavur Big Temple’) and Peruvudaiyar Kovil, is a Shaivite Hindu temple built in a Chola architectural style located on the south bank of the Cauvery river in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the largest Hindu temples and an exemplar of Tamil architecture. It is also called Dakshina Meru (Meru of the South). Built by Chola emperor Rajaraja I between 1003 and 1010 CE, the temple is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the “Great Living Chola Temples”, along with the Chola-era Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple and Airavatesvara temple, which are about 70 kilometres (43 mi) and 40 kilometres (25 mi) to its northeast respectively.


The original monuments of this 11th-century temple were built around a moat. It included gopura, the main temple, its massive tower, inscriptions, frescoes, and sculptures predominantly related to Shaivism, but also of Vaishnavism and Shaktism. The temple was damaged in its history and some artwork is now missing. Additional mandapam and monuments were added in the centuries that followed. The temple now stands amidst fortified walls that were added after the 16th century.


Built using granite, the vimana tower above the shrine is one of the tallest in South India. The temple has a massive colonnaded prakara (corridor) and one of the largest Shiva lingas in India. It is also famed for the quality of its sculpture, as well as being the location that commissioned the brass Nataraja, Shiva as the lord of dance, in the 11th century. The complex includes shrines for Nandi, Parvati, Murugan, Ganesha, Sabhapati, Dakshinamurti, Chandeshvara, Varahi, Thiyagarajar of Thiruvarur, Siddhar Karuvoorar and others. The temple is one of the most visited tourist attractions in Tamil Nadu.

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INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [Blog #3]

KARPAKA VINAYAKA TEMPLE

Karpaka Vinayaka Temple or Pillaiyarpatti Pillaiyar Temple is a 7th-century CE rock-cut cave shrine, significantly expanded over the later centuries. It is located in Pillayarpatti village in Tiruppathur Taluk, Sivaganga district in Tamil Nadu, India.
The temple is dedicated to Karpaka Vinayakar (Ganesha). In the cave temple, there are rock cut images of Ganesha, Siva linga and another carving that has been variously identified as Ardhanarishwara or Harihara or the early king between them who built this temple. All these are notable for their unusual iconography. In late 19th-century, during restorative excavation and repair work, panchaloga statues were discovered. These are dated to the 11th-century.


The temple has several inscriptions within the rock-cut shrines, as well as on the walls and mandapam outside. One of them mentions “Desi vinayakar” and also helps date the core layer of this temple to the 7th-century Ganesha. Another notable inscription in the sanctum is more archaic, sharing paleographic features of Tamil Brahmi and early Vatteluttu. This has led to proposals that portions of this Ganesha temple are likely older by a few centuries. The temple walls and mandapams have additional stone inscriptions from the 11th to 13th-century.


The temple is one of the nine ancestral Hindu temples of the Chettiars, its importance established in their tradition in Kali year 3815 (714 CE). The temple has a large colorful gopuram, with large mandapams elaborately decorated with frescoes, many shrines inside, salas originally added for dance and hymns singing, temple kitchen, an architecture that follows the Agamic texts and Shilpa Sastras, and a large temple tank to its north. Most of these were added in later centuries to the core rock-cut cave shrine. The temple is active and attracts numerous pilgrims, particularly women, on the annual festivals and chariot processions such as on Vinayaka Chaturthi and the Brahmothsavam in the Tamil month of Vaikasi.

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INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [Blog #2]

MASRUR TEMPLE

The Masrur Temples, also referred to as Masroor Temples or Rock-cut Temples at Masrur, is an early 8th-century complex of rock-cut Hindu temples in the Kangra Valley of Beas River in Himachal Pradesh, India. The temples face northeast, towards the Dhauladhar range of the Himalayas. They are a version of North Indian Nagara architecture style, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Saura traditions of Hinduism, with its surviving iconography likely inspired by a henotheistic framework.
Though a major temples complex in the surviving form, the archaeological studies suggest that the artists and architects had a far more ambitious plan and the complex remains incomplete. Much of the Masrur’s temple’s sculpture and reliefs have been lost. They were also quite damaged, most likely from earthquakes.


The temples were carved out of monolithic rock with a shikhara, and provided with a sacred pool of water as recommended by Hindu texts on temple architecture. The temple has three entrances on its northeast, southeast and northwest side, two of which are incomplete. Evidence suggests that a fourth entrance was planned and started but left mostly incomplete, something acknowledged by the early 20th-century colonial era archaeology teams but ignored leading to misidentification and erroneous reports. The entire complex is symmetrically laid out on a square grid, where the main temple is surrounded by smaller temples in a mandala pattern. The main sanctum of the temples complex has a square plan, as do other shrines and the mandapa. The temples complex features reliefs of major Vedic and Puranic gods and goddesses, and its friezes narrate legends from the Hindu texts.


The temple complex was first reported by Henry Shuttleworth in 1913 bringing it to the attention of archaeologists. They were independently surveyed by Harold Hargreaves of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1915. According to Michael Meister, an art historian and a professor specializing in Indian temple architecture, the Masrur temples are a surviving example of a temple mountain-style Hindu architecture which embodies the earth and mountains around it.

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INCREDIBLE INDIA !! [BLOG #1]

ARASAVALLI SUN TEMPLE

Arasavalli Sun Temple is a temple for Lord Surya, the solar deity, at Arasavalli in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is located in Arasavalli Village 1 km east of Srikakulam. It is believed that the temple was built in 7th century CE by King Devendra Varma, a great ruler of Eastern Ganga Dynasty of Kalinga . The present structure is largely a result of 18th century renovations. The temple was built in Rekha deula style of Kalinga Architecture like Puri Jagannath temple of Odisha. This temple is considered one of the oldest sun temples in India.[citation needed] The temple is one of the two major (remaining out of three, as the third temple was destroyed by Sikandar Shah Miri) temples who worship Lord Surya in India. The other two are the Konark Sun Temple, Odisha and Martand Sun Temple, Jammu and Kashmir (union territory).

According to Padmapuranam, Sage Kasyapa installed the Idol of Surya at Arasavalli for the welfare of mankind. The Surya is of Kasyapasa Gotra. He is also termed a planetary King.

The walls are inscribed saying the creator of the temple was the ruler Devendra Varma, stating it was built in the time period known to them as the 7th century. The walls also state the temple was fixed and changed to help with some of the sun temple’s major flaws during the 18th and 19th century. Many of these changes were donated by the Dusi family.[citation needed] The temple fell into despair over the centuries and was reconstructed in 1778 CE by Elamanchili Pullaji Panthulu. Over the years the Sun temple was a landmark for many of the festivals celebrated in the town. Including festival Rathasaptami.

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What is the concept of Stress and how to manage it?

Stress has been called an invisible disease, which not only effects the individual but also the organisation. It should never be ignored.  Learn how to spot your stress warning signals. Do not be afraid at all to talk to the concerned person, the physical as well as emotional well being can be very poorly affected. Routinely working very late also an indication that you remain under stress. If you do not have c5rodial relations with people around, this is also an indication of stress.

Poor sleep or lack of sleep, when you cannot sleep also indicates that you are under stress. It is necessary to observe and note down all the above signals of stress.

What are the causes of stress?

Stress can be due to any one or more reasons:

  1. If you regularly maintain a heavy schedule of work, that will cause stress. You can never do more than one persons job.
  2. If you are under pressure regarding the job, regarding the boss or any other reason such pressure will also lead to some amount of stress.
  3. If you have financial difficulties and you are not able to reduce your expenses according ot your income that could be a cause of stress.

Following are the personality related problems that add to the stress.

  1. Indecision – indecision is the bane of life. There are many people who face this malady which adds to the stress.
  2. Laziness or procrastination may appear to be attractive but at a later time, you will find that they are the biggest creators of the invisible disease stress.
  3. Your futile efforts if they are not aligned with there goals, you tend ot realise there futility and later it becomes a cause of stress.
  4. It is said that you must act and never react. You reactions to a particular situation or a person, betrays the lack of emotions, which constitutes the root cause of stress.
  5. Bad temper or anger and all such negative emotions or thoughts make you very stressful.
  6. Further doubt, suspicion or jumping to the conclusion or being in doubt adds to the stressful life.
  7. Last but not the least, not getting along with the people around you, whether at home, in office or in society leads to stress. With every intertatcion with that person  you feel stressful.

How to deal with this disease – Stress?

You must take the following actions as a matter of habit if you want to lead a stress free life:

  1. Practice Assertiveness: Assertiveness means that you do not say yes, when you want to say no. You should  Discuss the problem, with your colleague, seniors, juniors and develop a consensus. This is very much applicable also for your people at home also.
  2. If you are working for a large organisation in a leader’s rol4e, you need to develop a support system .
  3. As a leader, increase your investment in your  own training in enhancing your skills and even more importantly enhance the skills of your staff.
  4. Always write down our to do list, fix priorities and look at your list, many times a day.
  5. Jot down your stress triggers and also note them down in your jounal, which must be written them daily.
  6. Try to take a break from work or form study after every hour or so.
  7. Do not ignore problem. Acknowledge them as they arise and try to resolve them.
  8. Be productive and do not delay desired action. At the same time do not get into any hasty decisions or actions.
  9. Do not dwell on any of your past mistake and be anxious on the bleak future, you must always perform your duty and focus on the present.
  10. Never lave anything incomplete. Incomplete projects always lead to stress.
  11. You should be active constructively.
  12. Always spend sometime with nature.
  13. Develop yogic breathing which will really help develop a very healthy life.

blog is written by Vikram Kakri.

The Role of Self Discipline in your Success and Happiness:

If one has to single out one particular aspect of personality which is most important for the success and the happiness is the concept of “SELF DISCIPLINE”.

What is self – discipline?

It Is your personal ability to control your impulses, your emotions, reactions and the behaviours. The impulses are the things what you like to do and the triggers and temptations of doing that. It is irrespective of what you are supposed to do at that particular moment. Self-discipline teaches you to actually control these impulses. Often you are led away by these particular emotions and also we sometimes get into a fit of anger as a reaction to a person or a situation.  Self-discipline enables you to overcome these negative and harmful tendencies. Thus the self-discipline actually encourages you to forgo the short term gratification in favour of the long term satisfaction and gains.

 Self-discipline also very much inspires you to stay very much focused on all your goals. We know that your goals when pursued properly brings results in the form of success. It also helps you to stay in control of yourself and your reactions in any situations whether they are good or bad.

Why are we not self-disciplined?

One of the major causes for the lack of the self-discipline is our inability to do something again and again. Doing something again and again sometimes becomes monotonous and therefore we `sometimes drift away to all our favourable things.

Another major cause of lack or self-discipline is lack of strong desire & purpose. So without any compelling purpose, it actually becomes very difficult to stay on track.

Lack of focus is another very important reason which leads to very poor self-discipline. When we cannot concentrate on something even when we know that it Is very important, we are in dire need of correcting our perspective and improving our focus.

The nest reason for the lack of self-discipline is too many interruptions. Due to whatever reasons when we have a lot of interruptions in whatever we are doing, we cannot actually maintain our focus. We also sometimes loose our interest in the task at hand, which sometimes leads to self indiscipline.

Last but not the least, the habit of being very lazy actually adds to the lack of self-discipline. Often there are times that laziness leads to procrastination, which is even worse.

The following steps must be consistently taken to make yourself self-disciplined:

  1. Develop a very strong desire of your work and also become proficient. The strong reason to pursue your duty will help you to find such reasons.
  2. Whatever you begin, practice to your best ability and continue practicising until you excel in the job you are doing. This should be applicable to anything and everything that you take up.
  3. Connect yourself with your best efforts and not with the results of your efforts. Sometimes the results come faster, sometimes they are delayed. Vow to yourself that you will never leave anything incomplete. Completion of the project that you take up must be your priority. You must hold yourself accountable for anything that is going wrong on this project.
  4. Rely on the principle of inside out and not outside in, meaning that you rely on yourself, more than anything else. If you do not know something, it is your duty to learn all the necessary things about the work at hand. If there is a necessary learning required from a consultant or a teacher, you must go ahead and learn from there.
  5. You should never play the victim card  or hold circumstances or people for your inabilities to do justice for your particular work. Develop and derive your mental strength. Also develop emotional intelligence to remain cool in all circumstances.
  6. You need to avoid people with negative attitudes or those who try to harm your interest. Keep them at bay at any cost.
  7. Believe in yourself and practice undergoing momentary hardships. It is often necessary to stretch yourself to meet deadlines. At the same time be compassionate with yourself.
  8. Lastly you must honestly review your each day and assess whether it was good, bad, ugly, mundane, or just mediocre.  The daily assessment will surely help you to keep on improving. 

What is reinforcement learning?

Reinforcement learning is a machine learning training method based on rewarding desired behaviors and/or punishing undesired ones. In general, a reinforcement learning agent is able to perceive and interpret its environment, take actions and learn through trial and error.

How does reinforcement learning work?

In reinforcement learning, developers devise a method of rewarding desired behaviors and punishing negative behaviors. This method assigns positive values to the desired actions to encourage the agent and negative values to undesired behaviors. This programs the agent to seek long-term and maximum overall reward to achieve an optimal solution.

These long-term goals help prevent the agent from stalling on lesser goals. With time, the agent learns to avoid the negative and seek the positive. This learning method has been adopted in artificial intelligence (AI) as a way of directing unsupervised machine learning through rewards and penalties.

Applications and examples of reinforcement learning

While reinforcement learning has been a topic of much interest in the field of AI, its widespread, real-world adoption and application remain limited. Noting this, however, research papers abound on theoretical applications, and there have been some successful use cases.

Current use cases include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • gaming
  • resource management
  • personalized recommendations
  • robotics

Gaming is likely the most common usage field for reinforcement learning. It is capable of achieving superhuman performance in numerous games. A common example involves the game Pac-Man.

A learning algorithm playing Pac-Man might have the ability to move in one of four possible directions, barring obstruction. From pixel data, an agent might be given a numeric reward for the result of a unit of travel: 0 for empty space, 1 for pellets, 2 for fruit, 3 for power pellets, 4 for ghost post-power pellets, 5 for collecting all pellets and completing a level, and a 5-point deduction for collision with a ghost. The agent starts from randomized play and moves to more sophisticated play, learning the goal of getting all pellets to complete the level. Given time, an agent might even learn tactics like conserving power pellets until needed for self-defense.

Reinforcement learning can operate in a situation as long as a clear reward can be applied. In enterprise resource management (ERM), reinforcement learning algorithms can allocate limited resources to different tasks as long as there is an overall goal it is trying to achieve. A goal in this circumstance would be to save time or conserve resources.

In robotics, reinforcement learning has found its way into limited tests. This type of machine learning can provide robots with the ability to learn tasks a human teacher cannot demonstrate, to adapt a learned skill to a new task or to achieve optimization despite a lack of analytic formulation available.

Reinforcement learning is also used in operations research, information theory, game theory, control theory, simulation-based optimization, multiagent systems, swarm intelligence, statistics and genetic algorithms.

Challenges of applying reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning, while high in potential, can be difficult to deploy and remains limited in its application. One of the barriers for deployment of this type of machine learning is its reliance on exploration of the environment.

For example, if you were to deploy a robot that was reliant on reinforcement learning to navigate a complex physical environment, it will seek new states and take different actions as it moves. It is difficult to consistently take the best actions in a real-world environment, however, because of how frequently the environment changes.

The time required to ensure the learning is done properly through this method can limit its usefulness and be intensive on computing resources. As the training environment grows more complex, so too do demands on time and compute resources.

Supervised learning can deliver faster, more efficient results than reinforcement learning to companies if the proper amount of data is available, as it can be employed with fewer resources.

Common reinforcement learning algorithms

Rather than referring to a specific algorithm, the field of reinforcement learning is made up of several algorithms that take somewhat different approaches. The differences are mainly due to their strategies for exploring their environments.

  • State-action-reward-state-action (SARSA). This reinforcement learning algorithm starts by giving the agent what’s known as a policy. The policy is essentially a probability that tells it the odds of certain actions resulting in rewards, or beneficial states.
  • Q-learning. This approach to reinforcement learning takes the opposite approach. The agent receives no policy, meaning its exploration of its environment is more self-directed.
  • Deep Q-Networks. These algorithms utilize neural networks in addition to reinforcement learning techniques. They utilize the self-directed environment exploration of reinforcement learning. Future actions are based on a random sample of past beneficial actions learned by the neural network.

How is reinforcement learning different from supervised and unsupervised learning?

Reinforcement learning is considered its own branch of machine learning, though it does have some similarities to other types of machine learning, which break down into the following four domains:

  1. Supervised learning. In supervised learning, algorithms train on a body of labeled data. Supervised learning algorithms can only learn attributes that are specified in the data set. Common applications of supervised learning are image recognition models. These models receive a set of labeled images and learn to distinguish common attributes of predefined forms.
  2. Unsupervised learning. In unsupervised learning, developers turn algorithms loose on fully unlabeled data. The algorithm learns by cataloging its own observations about data features without being told what to look for.
  3. Semisupervised learning. This method takes a middle-ground approach. Developers enter a relatively small set of labeled training data, as well as a larger corpus of unlabeled data. The algorithm is then instructed to extrapolate what it learns from the labeled data to the unlabeled data and draw conclusions from the set as a whole.
  4. Reinforcement learning. This takes a different approach altogether. It situates an agent in an environment with clear parameters defining beneficial activity and nonbeneficial activity and an overarching endgame to reach. It is similar in some ways to supervised learning in that developers must give algorithms clearly specified goals and define rewards and punishments. This means the level of explicit programming required is greater than in unsupervised learning. But, once these parameters are set, the algorithm operates on its own, making it much more self-directed than supervised learning algorithms. For this reason, people sometimes refer to reinforcement learning as a branch of semisupervised learning, but in truth, it is most often acknowledged as its own type of machine learning.

Blog is curated by Vikram Kakri.

Blog Link: https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/reinforcement-learning#:~:text=Reinforcement%20learning%20is%20a%20machine,learn%20through%20trial%20and%20error.

Planning

Definition: Planning is the fundamental management function, which involves deciding beforehand, what is to be done, when is it to be done, how it is to be done and who is going to do it. It is an intellectual process which lays down an organisation’s objectives and develops various courses of action, by which the organisation can achieve those objectives. It chalks out exactly, how to attain a specific goal.

Planning is nothing but thinking before the action takes place. It helps us to take a peep into the future and decide in advance the way to deal with the situations, which we are going to encounter in future. It involves logical thinking and rational decision making.

Characteristics of Planning

  1. Managerial function: Planning is a first and foremost managerial function provides the base for other functions of the management, i.e. organising, staffing, directing and controlling, as they are performed within the periphery of the plans made.
  2. Goal oriented: It focuses on defining the goals of the organisation, identifying alternative courses of action and deciding the appropriate action plan, which is to be undertaken for reaching the goals.
  3. Pervasive: It is pervasive in the sense that it is present in all the segments and is required at all the levels of the organisation. Although the scope of planning varies at different levels and departments.
  4. Continuous Process: Plans are made for a specific term, say for a month, quarter, year and so on. Once that period is over, new plans are drawn, considering the organisation’s present and future requirements and conditions. Therefore, it is an ongoing process, as the plans are framed, executed and followed by another plan.
  5. Intellectual Process: It is a mental exercise at it involves the application of mind, to think, forecast, imagine intelligently and innovate etc.
  6. Futuristic: In the process of planning we take a sneak peek of the future. It encompasses looking into the future, to analyse and predict it so that the organisation can face future challenges effectively.
  7. Decision making: Decisions are made regarding the choice of alternative courses of action that can be undertaken to reach the goal. The alternative chosen should be best among all, with the least number of the negative and highest number of positive outcomes.

Planning is concerned with setting objectives, targets, and formulating plan to accomplish them. The activity helps managers analyse the present condition to identify the ways of attaining the desired position in future. It is both, the need of the organisation and the responsibility of managers.

Importance of Planning

  • It helps managers to improve future performance, by establishing objectives and selecting a course of action, for the benefit of the organisation.
  • It minimises risk and uncertainty, by looking ahead into the future.
  • It facilitates the coordination of activities. Thus, reduces overlapping among activities and eliminates unproductive work.
  • It states in advance, what should be done in future, so it provides direction for action.
  • It uncovers and identifies future opportunities and threats.
  • It sets out standards for controlling. It compares actual performance with the standard performance and efforts are made to correct the same.

Planning is present in all types of organisations, households, sectors, economies, etc. We need to plan because the future is highly uncertain and no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, as the conditions can change anytime. Hence, planning is the basic requirement of any organization for the survival, growth and success.

Steps involved in Planning

Steps of Planning

By planning process, an organisation not only gets the insights of the future, but it also helps the organisation to shape its future. Effective planning involves simplicity of the plan, i.e. the plan should be clearly stated and easy to understand because if the plan is too much complicated it will create chaos among the members of the organisation. Further, the plan should fulfil all the requirements of the organisation.

blog is curated by Vikram.

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