Mounesh: 2009

Article Published in "Times of India" Banglore frontpage Today (27.11.2009, Friday )

Google search ends in Raichur (Karnataka, India,)

Sarakari Heriya Pratamika Shale Google (Govt High School Google)

You've reached my home page.

Long Jurney :- A milestone to Google

Village Probably Named After ‘Singing Rocks’
Rishikesh Bahadur Desai TNN

Raichur: You can’t google in Google. In what must surely the most delicious irony of modern times, the tiny village of Google, about 510 km north-east of Bangalore, doesn’t have internet connectivity.
This village on the banks of the river Krishna with 1,000 residents in Raichur district is far removed from the search engine company based in Mountain View, California. How you spell the name is left to you as there are no English boards anywhere. All the boards, including those of government offices, are in Kannada. And, on all of them, the name sounds exactly like how Google is pronounced.

When the government tried to put up English boards, activists stopped them. “We asked officials what was the purpose of putting up boards in English. Would anyone from Cambridge University come here to read these boards” asks teacher and Kannada activist K P Yallayyanayaka.
“My grand-daughter told me that two boys have named a website after our village. I feel happy and proud,” says octogenarian landlord Basavarajappa Gouda Police Patil.

HOW IT GOT THE NAME

Theory 1: Cave where 12th century saint poet Allama Prabhu lived when travelling from Basava Kalyan to Sreesailam described as Gavi Gallu (cave of stone).
Theory 2: Name comes from Kooguva Kallu (singing stone) — rocks which made a pleasant sound when river water strikes them. Experts feel this theory is closer to the truth.

Searching for Google in state

Raichur: Most residents of Google have not heard of their famous namesake in cyberspace. The few who who do are proud of their village’s claim to fame. “Who will not be happy to know the name of our village is so popular in the cyber world?” asks Bellary-based agriculture scientist Sharana Gouda who hails from the village. “However, this is just a pleasant coincidence. Americans will have totally different reasons for naming their company Google,” Gouda said.

HOW IT GOT THE NAME

There are two theories on how the village got its name. The first is a mythical story and springs from the legend that 12th century saint poet Allama Prabhu lived in this village when he was travelling from Basava Kalyan to Shreeshailam in Andhra Pradesh. The cave where he is believed to have lived has been described as Gavi Gallu (cave of stone). “Our village was hence called Gavi Gallu. Over the years, it became Googallu and now it’s Google,” Gouda said. There’s a temple atop the underground cave now. One has to crawl through a hole in the ground to enter the cave. Inside the cave is an idol of Allama Prabhu and a small well.
The second theory is about singing rocks. “The Helavas, who went around telling people about their ancestral history, say the village was named after rocks that seemed to sing,” said Raichur-based writer Chidananda Sali. According to them, the name comes from Kooguva Kallu (singing stone), a term used to describe rocks that made a pleasant sound when river water strikes them.
Experts feel the singing rock theory is closer to the truth. “However, the sound was not produced by river water but by people who wanted to communicate with people in far-off places,” said Indian Council of Historical Research assistant director S K Aruni.
“In ancient times, people in some inaccessible villagers would send signals by hitting rocks with small stones. This produced cup-like marks in the rocks. Such prehistoric rocks with cup marks are found in several villages in the Krishna river basin. I’ve seen such rocks in Watkal, Hunasagi, Hebbal Burj and other villages in Gulbarga and Raichur districts. So, it is possible that a village which had a rock that produced sounds was called Kooguva Kallu,” he added.

Google’s famous people

Kannada poet Su Sa Patil, known by his nom de plume ‘Kalananda’
Playwright Narayan Mandre from a nearby village wrote a hugely successful play on Lord Allama Prabhu and called it ‘Google Prabhulingeshwara Mahatme’
Tatvapadakara Parappaiah lived here and wrote great devotional poetry

The other Google

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin named their search engine Google, a play on googol, the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros
It’s now a verb, meaning to search the web for information, using the Google search engine

Getting there

Around 60 km from Raichur and 40 km from Shahapur
Go by road from Raichur or take a boat from Bende Gambali village in Shahapur (Gulbarga district)

(The above mention is the article published in Times of India )

Mounesh K N