After the trip to Ballaleshwar and Varadavinayak, we went to the Chintamani Temple in Theur on 11 April 2026. We had gone to Chintamani earlier before we realised the importance of visiting these places in a particular order.
This temple had lovely woodwork and a Portuguese bell kept here after the Maratha conquest of the fort where it was initially hung. There were many sparrows in the temple courtyard. Some parts of the temple was undergoing renovation. I have found the temples managed by the Chinchwad Trust to be better maintained and cleaner than other temples.
This is relatively closer to Pune and hence, the drive to and from the temple was more leisurely for us. We drove without stops.
It had been a long time since we left our Ashtavinayak Pilgrimage. I have written here about our trips to Mayureshwar and Siddhivinayak temples. We had done these in January 2026.
Personal illness, kids exams, etc led to a delay in the next trip. We headed for Ballaleshwar on 28 March 2026. A day earlier we met Rakesh ettan and family the previous day during our weekly run to Kerala Stores. He suggested that both Ballaleshwar and Varadavinayak were close by and hence could be covered in the same trip. They had done the Ashtavinayak circuit in 3 days.
Ballaleshwar Temple, Pali
We left home around 7:30 am. We took the route through Nigdi out towards the Mumbai Pune Expressway. I was happy to see the conditions of the road had improved at Ravet. We made a pitstop at the Hindustan Petroleum bunker which hosted a German Bakery for a bathroom break for us and a refuel for our Logan.
We headed back onto the Expressway. We took the exit at Khopoli and went down to Pali to reach there around 11 am.
I parked the vehicle a bit farther than usual thanks to a Mandir security guard he wanted the vehicle in the free parking spot provided by the Temple Trust. This was farther and left our vehicle exposed to the harsh March Sun. It also robbed us of a shaded pay and park provided right outside the temple entrance.
We went directly into the Ballaleshwar temple right past the Dhundi Vinayaka shrine. We prayed at the Ballaleshwar Temple quite peacefully. We didn’t experience the usual pushing and shoving one has gotten used to in Hindu temples.
When we left the temple, we saw a sign that said that one usually prays at Dhundi Vinayaka before one prays at Ballaleshwar. So, we prayed at the Dhundi Vinayak shrine and then took a route from within that temple into the Ballaleshwar temple.
I loved the atmosphere in the Ballaleshwar temple. One could play a big drum placed on one side, ring the bell, and we sat for a while in a wooden outer sanctum for a while before we left the temple a second time.
Ballaleshwar temple’s legend was narrated by Sharath A Haridasan in his series on Ganesh Puran. My wife and I had heard it together. So, when I mentioned it to her she remembered it easily. This shrine is associated with children and we related it to our daughter as well. Our son was more interested in the animal figurine toys along the two sides of the path leading to the temple.
We had food at Hotel Sukh Sagar. When I searched for the Varadavinayak temple, I found out that it was only less than an hour away from Ballaleshwar. After a light meal we headed off to Varadavinayak temple.
Varadavinayak Temple, Mahad
Google Maps acted weird on the way here. We had to drive around a little to figure out the entrance to the temple. This place had parking with some tree cover but with the Sun directly above us, the trees offered little to no shade. My wife carried my son all the way up the hill.
The temple had a very unassuming modern structure unlike the other Ashtavinayak temples we had been to so far. It was on top of a hillock. We were allowed to do puja ourselves – which was an offering of coconuts, some hibiscus flowers, and some peda. Our son didn’t have the patience to offer the peda to the God and so took it away before we had the chance to offer it.
It was 3 pm by the time we left the temple and headed back home. Google Maps took us through the old Highway and I enjoyed driving up the big upward curves on the ghat roads before we entered the flattish Expressway.
We stopped at the McDonald’s after the Talegaon Toll Plaza for a bathroom break and some cold coffee for a respite from the heat.
We returned home happy to have completed half of the Ashtavinayak pilgrimage.
If you create a Wikipedia page, you’ll see many red links. Red links represent topics that should have pages but are not created yet. Nowadays, Wikipedia mainly links to existing pages, and there are not many red links.
This week’s Weekly Notes will have a lot of red links today but will get filled in as the week goes by.
We completed three Ashtavinayaks in the circuit after Siddhivinayak, that I had written about last here. These were Ballaleshwar, Varadavinayak, and Chintamani. We have now completed 5 out of the 8 temples that makeup the Ashtavinayak circuit.
Cover of the book, India and the Second Space Age. Courtesy: The Hindu
I contributed one chapter to an ebook that was put together by The Hindu, called India and the Second Space Age. If you are a digital subscriber to The Hindu, you get this and many such wonderful ebooks for free. You can also buy it from them here or from Amazon.
I donated a bunch of books to the public library in Pune. These were fiction and non-fiction books that were read by my family members including my son.
Major news from this week include NASA’s Artemis II mission around the Moon generated some interest and not a lot. People were definitely worried about the war in West Asia. ISRO also did the Integrated Air Drop Test. India achieved an important milestone with the criticality of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).
I asked, “How often can I write blog posts?” on social media. No one answered. So, I asked Gemini. Gemini said a post a week was professional and a post a day may make it look like you’re desperate for attention.
Most blogs I follow have a lumpy posting schedule. Many posts around the time when they travel or when things happen and then several days of silence.
As time has passed, I also notice this silence in their social media presence. I guess life happens during these periods of social media silence.
I hope to write about these in the upcoming week while also celebrating Vishu, our New Year’s.
Many, many drafts have been sent to thrash before this one got published. Many incomplete unsent drafts of Weekly Notes of previous weeks. I do hope this one gets published.
At work, I was completing a work project that turned out to be not so urgent. I kept the pace through this week so that my part of the work is complete.
My 3.5 y.o. son started going to school for Nursery in a school bus. Like anxious parents, we went behind the school bus in a two-wheeler. He cried when he got into the bus but settled down after a while. We went on the second day as well.
My daughter’s final exams are on. After this, she will move to the same school as my son.
I did consume a lot of media, but I’ve put all of those on my link blog at pradeep.space.
The week started at a low. I read this blog post by Arun which picked me up. This is the second in a four-part blog post about his family trip to Kanazawa in Japan. I would call it a photoblog. The descriptions below the image are not about the image but the camera sittings he used to take the picture.
I was trying to do a project at work but did not get around to doing it till the end of this week. I got a lot of work done, though.
Rest of the week was consumed by recovering from the cold and cough last week and the intrigues surrounding my daughter and her friends.
This was a really weird week. I had a really bad case of bronchitis which the first line of medicines did not work well against. It required a second round of medicines to bring the issue under control including nebulisation.
Cough medications made me really sleepy whereas the resultant cough did not let me sleep for a few nights this week.
In this weird state, I read and shared a lot on my link blog. I now have some place public to share but the question is why not share this here? I don’t know.
I have been sharing loads on Instagram stories and in WhatsApp status. This has seen more engagement than anything on my socials and on this blog.
So, all I remember from this week is – coughing and not being able to sleep.
There is only a short introduction today. After our son had a Sports Day, I slept off most of the day today after having cold syrups. This Weekly Notes is a quickly put-together production to make sure that I don’t miss two Weekly Notes on a trot.
My reading and watching has become slower and deeper. I am no longer trying to cover everything. I tried to go down many lists-inspired reading and ended up reading very little overall. I am now focussing and sharing stories with family.
Reading
Saints of Maharashtra by Savitribai Khanolkar (pg 51 of 179)
We’re well past half of January. We’re past Makar Sankranti. The days are getting warmer in Pune. Dhanya is loving her Neorah Accomplish Weekly Planner which I gave her in the start of the year.
I got a lot of work on the scooter done this week. It was difficult to find space to get it serviced. I got the scooter serviced, the annual maintenance contract renewed, and refuelled it. It’s a much more better driving experience now.
The week started with the disappointing news about the failure of the PSLV-C62 mission. I want to write about this but I want to be careful as the speculation around this mission has become crazy.
I did not write the space newsletter for the second consecutive week. I might drop the idea of writing a newsletter altogether and write here instead. I am still thinking about it.
Reading
On the banks of the Mayyazhi – M Mukundan (Transl. Gita Krishnankutty), I’ve just started with reading this.
The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron, I’m reading this but do not yet have much to say. I am reading this while writing the Morning Pages, an exercise that the book recommends. This is based on the recommendation of Tim Ferriss and the presence of an accountability WhatsApp group around this practice.
“In his 1974 book, Labor and Monopoly Capital, the influential Marxist political economist Harry Braverman argued that the expanding “science-technical revolution” was being exploited by companies to increasingly “deskill” workers; to leave them in “ignorance, incapacity, and thus in fitness for machine servitude.” The more employees outsource skilled activity to machines, the more controllable they become.”
“The only group that would unambiguously benefit from deskilling developers would be the technology companies themselves, which could minimize one of their biggest expenses: their employees.”
“Today, open YouTube and every single thumbnail looks the same. Shocked faces, specific color contrasts, carefully positioned text overlays. Same voice. Same cadence and energy level. And videos have roughly the same lengths. The algorithm rewards these patterns with distribution and punishes deviation with obscurity.”
“My carefully curated list of creators has devolved into sameness. Whether pen reviewers, photographers, music bloggers, history tellers, or science bloggers—it is clear they are praying at the feet of the gods of algorithms.”
Dan presents the theory on how to change your life and then presents practical way to do it by asking yourselves a few questions. A great insight into how asking good questions makes your life better even if does not change it.
The X algorithm now promotes more longer content that it calls Articles. I noticed more people that I follow posting longer form content.
Watching
This Malayalam video starts with how Nizar Iltutmish started his journey running away from his Class XII board exams for 108 days. Some of the things he witnesses shapes his interests. He has written 4 books and talks about 2 of them in this video. What he describes are two terrifying practices practiced till this day in Tamil Nadu. This is his talk given at the recently held Kerala Legislature International Book Festival 2026.
The game of your financial life is a lot like Monopoly. Alok Jain of Weekend Investing explains well drawing on the parallels between the board game and your financial life. I really liked this video and gave me a new framework to think about my financial life.
If you don’t watch the full video, watch the parts about his morning and evening routine. He discusses how his morning routine is personal and designed to maximize creativity.
Matt D’Avella convinces you with his cinematic video to ask you to take responsibility for things that are in your control.
Writing
I wrote one blog post about our visit to Katraj Zoo. I have to write about the PSLV-C62 mission failure and about our visit to the Siddhivinayak Temple at Siddhatek this Saturday.
My daughter was bugging me to go somewhere, anywhere. I told her that we would meet her brother and her relatives on Saturday (10 January 2026) after her Parent Teacher Meeting.
My son likes to play with animal toys and seem to enjoy watching birds.
We had driven through Katraj (via the ghat) when returning from Kerala in September and it got me curious what it was like inside.
These were three data points I used to decide that we should visit the zoo.
Collage of photos of my family and me at the zoo during one of our breaks. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas, Collage created with Collage on Google Photos.
For the drive to Katraj, Google Maps took us right past Shaniwar wada and Dagadhushet Ganapati Temple. It took us past Swargate and on the road to Katraj. There was public parking available outside the zoo. We parked there and walked to the zoo through the dilipated platform of the bus stand.
The road outside is full of hawkers selling fast food, finger foods, and fruits.
Once inside we took a ticket to enter the zoo and entered at half past twelve in the afternoon. My daughter was still expecting her relatives to join us. We went past a sea of school kids who were either having lunch or running to the bathrooms to go to the bathrooms ourselves.
After our bathroom break, we wanted to take the tour of the zoo in one of the four battery operated vehicles but after the fourth vehicle left their bay, we were informed that the vehicle that just left was the last one over the next hour. Instead of cooling our heals while waiting for the bus, we decided to walk it.
We went through the snake park with my daughter finding the turtles cute. Most animals were on their afternoon siesta here, a pattern that would repeat throughout the visit.
We then went on a long trek with boards pointing to animals but no signs of the animal themselves. My 3 year old son walked the distance. We walked past dears, antelopes, etc. but that did not seem to enthuse my son. A bear walking across its enclosure to probably eat food or drink water got my son’s attention. We were back to walking again.
We saw the elephants and then took a snack break. We used the opportunity to fill our water bottles as well. It was well-advised that we carry our own snacks. We carried makhana and broken-idli-pieces (this is specifically for our son).
I tried to tell my daughter that when we told her that we are going to visit her relatives, we meant the animals in the zoo. She did not believe me and still expected human relatives to meet us here. As we walked back and she realized that what I said was true, she expressed her anger and did not talk to me for a while.
The session after this was more interesting with a white tiger, tigers, cheetah, etc. Most animals were enjoying an afternoon siesta after their lunch (probably). Many of the visitors were joking that Indian animals would anyway be lazy like the rest of us.
We tried various methods to keep the children enthused on the return. We pushed and walked more than on the way back with fewer rests.
Much of the zoo was in various stages of repair. They are probably getting ready for their summer peak.
We ate pav bhaji and misal pav from one of the hawkers from the pavement outside. There was also a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with a softie machine.
The family all fell asleep on the way back. I drove in silence with only my playlist playing providing ambient music. The way back was through Camp and Bund Garden. Although, we have been in Pune for almost 7 years now, we haven’t explored many of the places around Pune.
I was happy that I had taken my daughter somewhere. But, she meant going to the mall and wasn’t happy that we wandered in the zoo under the afternoon Sun.
Things slowed down in the second week of 2026. I was tired after the trip to the Mayureshwar Temple and took it easy for the first few days of the week. This translated to missing the 68th edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter and things running slow till Thursday.
We moved our workplace at work and settling down took time. The good news is that the coffee machine is farther but so are the good bathrooms.
I completed the YearCompass last week where I was asked to pick a word to symbolise and define the year ahead. I picked Balance. This is the first year of this exercise for me.
I also picked three areas of focus – family, technical writing, and space. So, you will see more of these in my blog posts this coming year.
I completed listening to Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks on Audible. I did not read any of the other books I mentioned last week.
Parallel Spirals 