God's trilogy - Part-I

This might be most controversial blog till now. But let me go ahead with it. Its all personal feelings so please forgive me :).
There are so many factors that contributes to your belief in God. The very first being childhood. A child is told by his parents and elders that, there is a supernatural power called as God, that saves human beings from everything , he is the king of goodness, peace and simplicity. Every child tend to believe or follow what our parents and elders are following as a tradition since thousands of year. No child questions the existence of god and he continues to grow old with belief in God. And the same child imposes the same thing to his children and so on. So its a blind belief that's propagating through years and years.
Second most important reason is the social environment. Its like group of people celebrating certain festival and naturally you want to be a part of it. For becoming part of social society belief in God is necessary else people will question you. That's a weird thought but in India everything is possible.
I think more than believing in God people should try and believe in themselves. There have been instances where people pray to God before writing any exam. I don't understand the point, its you who has to write the exam and not God, then why unnecessarily go and pray God that "please help me. My exam should go well". I had a colleague in office who used to pray God before starting his work for the day and again a prayer before leaving. That was most bullshit thing i ever saw someone doing. God wont come and code for you.
I am not asking you to believe in God but don't drag God into some small things like this. It makes you more stupid.
This is Part-I of the God's trilogy. I will resume Part-II soon.

Taking Risks and Career

Everyone around me wants to be a better human being and wants plenty of success in life. I believe both the terms are relative. The relativity of being successful is directly proportional to the amount of risk a person takes. There are so many examples in history which tells you how a child born in a small village, in a poor family became successful in life. The best example i could give here is of Abraham Lincoln,who he is my ideal. I have so many ideals and hero's but there is so much to learn from Lincoln's life. While working on a boat which used to carry goods to other parts of the country, he came to know of slavery. He decided to fight against it and one day became president of United States. Sometimes I think Why can't I become the president of India? But as rightly said, success doesn't come easily. We need to take risks to achieve the thing that we always wanted to do. We need to work hard and and work in right direction. But how will one know that he/she is working in right direction? Maybe it comes with intuition or from retrospecting yourself. I am not a philosopher of some sort but that's the only way. Everyone will tell you what to do but they wouldn't tell you how to do it. You have to take risk, introspect yourself and execute your plan.
Last few days i have been thinking too much about my future and came to conclusion that life is one complex maze and its difficult to find an answer about future. I sometimes think why don't i start a grocery shop or something, than doing this job? A change is always welcome in life. But doing better in current job is more challenging. We need to take more risks to earn a happy life ahead.

Independece day

In most of the newspapers, today's headline is"India turned 60". I was shocked to read the headline itself. Though i respect India's freedom from the British rule, but still we Indians haven't learnt the lesson,which we should have learnt. I don't want to go back to history and find out what caused India to fall for East India company and then let them rule by Britishers for more than 150 years. We talk about our culture, our heritage which is few thousands years old and still we say India turned 60 ?
Now some jokes time. One of my friends asked me yesterday about what i am going to do for ID. I was really surprised by the sudden question. Frankly i wanted to tell her that I would watch RDB and then get drunk and kill few politicians. I guess that's not a bad way of celebrating ID than going to some flag hosting and listen to the same old stories about all those freedom fighters. Don't get me wrong but I have full respect for freedom fighters. I am sure if i would have born 100 years back, I would have been a front running freedom fighter. But not certainly the Gandhi's way, I would have joined BhagatSingh and co. Maybe you and your children would have been reading my name in history books.
I don't want to repeat the same old story about corruption, politicians and blah blah....
I just want everyone to be selfless and be at the their very best in their profession, with full honesty and loyalty. If each individual try to inch towards a better human being, our country might do wonders. I salute to all the people who sacrificed their life for our country. Please don't let them down. Let us wish to make our country proud by making ourselves better.

"bund bund milne se banta ek dariyan hai,
bund bund sagar hai, warna yeh sagar kya hai,
samzo is paheli ko, bund ho akeli toh, ek bund jaise kuch bhi nahi,
hum auron ko chhodde toh, muh sabse hi modde toh,
tanha rahna jaye dekho hum kahi,
kyon na bane milke hum dhara..... "

Love you INDIA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trust or Love....

What is more difficult, trusting someone or loving someone ?
What is more easier, trusting someone or loving someone ?
I am sure you will be having a different opinion than me. I believe more in trust than in love. I feel trust is difficult to establish and maintain, than love is. And hence trust is more valuable than love. Love involves so much other parameters like physical attraction, infactuation, loneliness and ones need to have someone close to share ones feelings. While trust stands on entirely different platform. Trust doesnt need all the above parameters, trust can't be established in one day or two. Trust is bonding between two people who understand each other. Trust is believing in someone else more than yoursef. It takes years to trust someone and to earn someone's trust. Maybe love can be seen as a subset of trust. If you trust someone, implicitely means you love that person. All of us trust our parents and its implicit that we love them as well.
Trust is something which makes you feel safe while love makes you feel insecure. Trust is harder to earn while love isn't. Trust is way of living while love is way of enjoying life.
Maybe you don't agree with my thoughts at all. :)

Light and Shadow

I got a SMS yesterday which read something like this:
"Career is light and Love is like a shadow, if you try to catch the shadow you will miss the light.
If you ignore the shadow and walk towards the light, the shadow will follow you. So follow the light."
I don't know how true is the above statement. At the first glance i didn't pay much attention to this. But when I re-read the SMS, i felt this statement fits me 100% or maybe more.
I never gave so much serious thought about love or finding anyone for myself as i always concentrated on my career. And when someone asked me about my feelings towards her, i made the biggest mistake by giving a negative answer.
And when i think back about the old days, i feel i lost something very important. I dont know what difference it would have made, excpet for soaring cell phone bills, trips to outstation atleats once a month and keeping my orkut status as commited. Though at some stage you feel like you really require someone to share your feelings but then to be frank, no one can help you when you are in real trouble. Its your inner will and strength that makes you feel better and overcome the difficulties. Girlfriend is still a alien word for me. Hopefully things will change with time. :)

I wish my shadow is still follwing me. :)

future prediction ??

Future is such a mysterious but yet an important word for all of us. I always find myself in a maze when i try to think about my future.
Some of the possibilities where i can land in next 20 years:
1) This is the most likely and honest answer, i will be working for a software company provided the software market still remains with india. But i doubt so.
2) Maybe, if i execute my plans successfully, i will be with some major giant company and doing good in all areas.
3) If i listen to what my heart says, I might be teaching in some school. Maybe 25 years down the line, good teachers will have more value that a engineer.
4)Finally, the truth, i dont wanna say but let me put it in front of the whole world. I am really interested in doing social work. Probably i will end up helping the poor people. Thats my dream.

Where you want to see yourself after 20 years?

My Dream Girl

I hope she (the girl in my dreams) visits this blog some day.
Though computer came with so much of virtual stuff, but my virtual world is entirely different.
The girl, who is constantly nagging me at the moment, is probably the most beautiful girl around.
More close i go more prettier she looks. I didn't measure the distance between us last time sat next to her. But it was really close, probably not in meters but definitely in centimeters.
Her curly hairs reminds me of the noodles i eat on the day when my cook doesn't come to work, but i like those curls. I always loved and admired people with curly hairs and she ain't no exception.
She has the best smile, her one smile makes my day. Though i had been unsuccessful in making her laugh with my witty humor, instead she grinned at me, maybe thinking what a stupid guy ! But whatever, I know, she would love me some day or the other.
You know what I like most about her is the way she dresses up. Sometimes she looks like a pigeon, sometimes tomato, sometimes flag of Italy and i can go on. She has variety in what she wears and what suits her. Probably she might take up fashion designing if she doesn't go up the ladder in her current job.
Finally she has the perfect lips. I don't want to write anything here as i haven't experienced them yet. Even if I write you wouldn't believe I actually kissed her.
The dream girl should better remain dream girl or else i will be beaten till someone make India's map with my face.

Have fun guys. Go and do some better things than reading this bullshit.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

Finally Hallows came and as expected set yet another world record for selling maximum number of copies in a day. Potter mania is all around and even i plunged into the flowing river to wash my hands off the much awaited 7th book.
This blog is mainly about my views about the book so no offense made :) . I was little late to grab the book. Instead of many fans getting it at 6am in morning i got it at 8pm but the same day.
When i finished the book on Monday eve I was kind of satisfied but there wasn't the thing, which i had expected, would have occurred after finishing the book. Everything went as predicted and only thing i felt sorry was for Fred's death.
To be frank, overall, I didn't like the book much. The main reason for that was the description of Voldemort and other death eaters. It was such a one sided battle. Harry gets almost everything correct whereas Voldermort sucks at everything. I felt voldemorts description were really pathetic. After being described the same man in 6th book with such high regards and with such a precision, somehow i felt the same thing lacking in book 7.
Voldemort never felt anything when his horcruxes were destroyed by people. The horcruxes were more of stupid things which can be destroyed with some funky stuff. voldemort never felt the pain when horcruxes suppose to be attached to his soul because his strength depends upon the horcruxes. Malfoy and other death eaters seemed to be dumber than voldemort. It was so unfair for a writer like JKR to come up with something like this.
I maybe little harsh here, but after reading Harry Potter you really feel the closeness with the characters. I liked the ending but it could have been better, it was like some bollywood movie for me, where Hero doesn't even get a single bullet out of 1000 fired at him. And villain keeps on doing same mistake all again.
Hallows was just ok for me. Wish it could have been better.

The Black Hole....

It was 3am and i got up...
It was dark, pitch dark. I couldn't open my eyes and when I opened I was scared.
For the moment I thought I am in wrong place. I could see few familiar things around but when i wanted to touch them they went hazy. I got scared, really scared. I didn't know what to do, whom to call. I tried calling few names, but they just kept smiling towards me from distance. I went pale, I wanted to scream, I wanted to jump out of it. I don't know whether it was my mind visualizing a dream or an actual dream.
I felt water drops on my cheeks. Later found out that they were my own tear drops.
I didn't know why i was crying, I didn't know why it was so much dark,I couldn't figure out why my friends couldn't took me out of that shit.
I am still trying to find the answer.
It still 3am here....

The Train Journey

I like travelling a lot and specially by train.
Last time i had a memorable train journey. I was travelling to Nagpur from Bangalore in sleeper coach.
An elderly couple was sitting next to me in my compartment. I was surprsied to be see overly enthu old couple.
First thing in the morning they did was, got 2 cups of tea and criticized it coz they thought it was tea.
The elderly couple were cursing the guy who served tea to them and they warned us not to take anything from that guy.
Next it was turn of a soup vendor. This was too good. as the guy came near our compartment the elderly couple staretd shouting "kyon jaan le rahe ho logo ki,
bathrrom ke pani se soup bana kar pila rahe ho". The guy went cold and coudnt speak any word as everyone was looking at him. He didn't even stop at our compartment
and went to next.Couple told us not to have lunch from train coz they use low quality material to make food and etables.
After lunch another guy came with buttermilk, this time couple thought of having buttermilk as they thought it will cool them in the heat outside.
Graany started telling that it wasnt buttermilk at all, it was like water and these guys are looting people by selling water as buttermilk. Again the complaining continued, saying people
are selling water in the name of buttermilk and the whole railways food is a pathetic.
I dont know what the couple tried to convey but somehow the catering system should be looked into. Especially in the long distance train wherein number
of stops are less poeple doesnt have any other choice but to take food from pantry. Atleats 70% poeple take eatables from pantry. Probably food should be
of better quality and customers should be satisfied with what is being served.
The old couple were irritating coz i hate people who crib a lot but they had a point. I somehow saw a valid point in their cribbing.
Hopefully their shouts will fall on the concern ears.

The Indian Traffic...

I was having a conversation with one of my friend the other day and he asked me to meet near MG Road. I said I will take 45 minutes. He was surprised and asked how far is my home from MG, i told its around 7 kms. He then realized that I calculated the approx time coz of the wild traffic here in Bangalore. So as a good citizen i told him the approx time and reached MG in 40 mins.That was an achievement in itself as on Saturday eve it takes relatively more time that 40 mins to reach MG.
Anyways success doesn't come as it is and hard work is followed by success. And my achievement too had a kind of success. I should say success in terms of reaching my destination well before time (trust me 5 min is a lot of time).
The hard work i did was making my way through the pool of other vehicles. Thats an altogether skill in itself. You have too keep your eye on moving vehicles from the opposite side, from your right and left side to see someone isn't overtaking you and the vehicle ahead of you. You are concentrating on 4 different directions at a given time. Good that we don't have vehicles flying above you, otherwise people would have hired specialist like me to drive them to office.Thats a tough job. Human mind have to be sharp enough to guess all the possible reflexes that he can perform in next few milliseconds. You never know which vehicle is going to take a sudden left or right turn, or there might be a vehicle coming from front and wants to take a U turn.
So that was it, what i call it as a skill driving and which has its own pros and cons. But as far as the traffic goes i believe its the responsibility of both government and the citizens to make it a smooth ride back home. I think most of the city roads were built some 50 years back without considering the expansion. Take Bangalore for example, in last ten years the population increased by huge amount but the roads were the same. People are using more personal vehicles than public transport. First of all the public transport sucks except for metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.
Even if the road is 4 lane but still we face a huge traffic because of poor traffic management.
Even if the infrastructure in place people like me who want to reach office in half an hour, with their creative mind, try all possible routes. I overtake from left, in case of heavy traffic i go to pavement of road, i drove footpath as well. I might be reach ten minutes earlier but what i don't see is the civic sense. Sometimes people really get uneasy and try something different things to reach destination in minimum possible time. I bet most of the bike accidents happen coz of left overtaking.
The effect is cumulative. We all say traffic is poorly managed and infrastructure sucks and on the other hand we are the ones who break all the traffic rules and make our own. The message is loud and clear "if u don't change then we too wont change". But as all the movies come to an end. Probably there will be a day when i see all the vehicles driving in a lane and following all the traffic rule. Its an individual's initiative and difficult to implement.
I salute all the guys who drive on these Indian roads.

M'lore Day 3

It was noon when we got up and getting up late was obivious. We got up ready and straightaway went for lunch at Punjabi Dhabba. It wasnt the old Punjabi Dhabba but more specious this time and wasnt there at its old place. Though the place was new but the food was equally pathetic. Rest of the afternoon we spent in college. College was closed coz of vacation and it had deserted look.
We started revisiting different joints, starting from the tennis court and DC(short form for down cops). SAC (student activity center) was in the most pathetic condition. It was still having the old look and we got the feeling as if no one came here since long. The movie screen was torn at places. This was the most adoring places for me but at looking its condition i got real senti. We carried on to basketball court, swimming pool, CCC (central computer center... called as tripC), Auditorium,dispensary, mech block and then ATB.
We went to the classroom in ATB where we spent a whole year in section B. The classroom is the same but the long benches are nowhere, instead replaced by nice chairs and tables for more comfort. The most important for me was to go into college library but unfortunately it was closed. so i had to make myself happy by just clicking a snap outside it. We spent some time on the lawn and then on the red bench. Red bench was a famous bench where only couples used to sit. I walked on the lawn of the main bulding, i got reminded of my old college days when me and sandi used to walk on the lawn just to get a break from studies. The college main building has been painted with light shed of green. I quite liked it coz it seemed like college got submerged with the greenary around it. We all roamed there around the main building and then went to DC for a juice. We came back to hostels and saw a peacock near the final year block. We went inside the final block and with out doubt this is the only hostel block everyone admires.
After finishing our trip we came back to hotel and packed our stuff. We had to go to M'lore to catch the bus to B'lore. Again i was uncontious by having avomin tablet and slept as soon as the bus started. We reached B'lore at 5 am next day.
This was more of an emotional blog rather than usual travelogue but i can't help it. I put here what i thought and saw. Old places really brings back emotions and this was one of the best examples of it.

M'lore - Day 2

It was 6:30am when i got up. I didnt wake up others as they were in sound sleep so i decided to go to beach alone. S'kal beach is just 10 mins walk from hotel. It was a great feeling as i was visiting beach after a long time, probably after i left chennai. There was a fishermen crew busy in their daily activities. They already spread the fishing net inside the sea and were praying to get as many fishes as possible. I went there and clicked some snaps. Sat there for almost half an hour staring into the infinite sea and thinking about good old college days. I was almost jumping with joy after seeing the light house of our college beach. But localites there have spoilt beach, all waste was on the beach making it dirty. Anyways i paid less attention to the surrounding and was busy in looking at the sea, am not crazy, but i feel like sitting there on the beach staring into sea for long long hours. Just cant express myself how happy i was to come back to the nicest place i ever been to.
I was back to hotel by 8 or so and we all were ready to visit st Mary's island. I have been to this palce probably 4 times before, believe its one of the glorious places to visit. We started at around 10 am from s'kal and reached Malpe beach around 12. Luckily we got a boat waiting for us which takes us to the island. The island is about 3km inside the sea and it takes 20 mins by the boat to reach there. This island is made up of lovely hexagonal rocks and came into existence after a volcanic erruption in the Arabian sea few centuries back. We roamed around the beach and clicked as many snaps as possible. Me and balli tried to swim but had to come back as the water wasnt that great. We spent time gossiping and playing around and it was real fun. Compared to last time, i found water level little bit reduced, dont know reasons. We came back to Malpe after spending nice 2-3 hours on the island. The island is secluded kinds and people are not allowed to stay there overnight.
We came back to college bach by 5:30pm and straight away visited the temple on the beach. I prayed to god and got prasadam, very much unlike me. We all sat down at the rocks behind the mandir and happiness was at it peak. I cant really express myslef to pen down feelings at this place. It was like "i am in heaven". We all sat there, talking to close friends, telling the importance of the moment. I just not able to pen it down, really. We clicked so many snaps of our dear college beach and praised it like anything. I looked at the ads rocks (this name is given by vikram, to the favourite rocks of mine, where i used to sit for hours) and was so glad. All old memories were running through my mind.
We all said good bye to emotions and went out for hunting , to see some spot close by where we all can spend our new years night. We all made arrangement for liquors and other eating stuff and came back to beach at 9:30pm. A bonfire was made and we all sat around it. This was the best new years celebrations i ever had, on a beach, with bonfire, with friends, with old memories, with vodka. We all enjoyed the clock striking 12 and congratulated each other. It was ultimate fun and we were having the best times of our life. Suddenly, out of the blue, few cops came in and ordered us to vacate the place. Me and balli were still on the beach while the others left us. It was heavenly feeling, sitting on the beach in the middle of the night. Though we had made few campfires during our college days but this was simply the best among all. Could have been better if other guys wudn't have left. As the night was progressing the cold breeze was getting more colder. It was night before the full moon's night. And the moon's reflection on the sea water was absolute beauty, stars were tickling at their own pace, everything aorund seemed to be perfect and beautiful. Around 4:30 we ccouldn't bear the cold and came back to hotel.
This was without doubt, the best ever new years celebrations for me.

M'lore - Day 1

As our new year celebration plan at Goa failed, we quickly realised that we can visit Managalore and Surathkal. I have soft corner for these places coz i had spent a lot of time in here during my college days. The tour was of 3 days which included me,balli,bude,rohan,ruchin and pangty.
We started from b'lore on 29th Dec '06 at night 10pm or so. First time we were travelling in sleeper coach buses so the experience was great (ideally it was great for people who had got the front seats). The road was too bad and bumpy altogther. I had an avomin tablet before sleeping so as to avoid any vommiting in bus. The best thing abt the tablet is u get a good nights sleep. I was almost uncontious once i hit bed and got up just before s'kal (from now on s'kal means Surathkal... i like calling it that way... seems stylish.. :)) ).
We had booked rooms in hotel Maharaja at S'kal and being in s'kal was like we are in our loverly home. After refreshing ourselves we went to Sads (dont get it wrong.. it restaurant Sadanand.. in KREC slang its Sads..) for the holy breakfast. Though the food wasn't much so special but feeling of eating at Sads is entirely different... ask KRECians ... ooopss.. NITKians now... !!! We took a short nap before leaving for Mangalore to spend the entire day.
Hao-ming is one of the most respected and famous Cihenese cuisine restaurant in M'lore. And it was an obivious choice for us to eat there. Mayank and Arun pillali who were in town as the same time joined us at hoa-ming and it was like a small get together. Food was as usual extremely good, we had probably all special items there, cant remember coz they were too many. After having a stomach full lunch we went to Iceberg. Dont get me wrong, its just a ice cream shop. Another famous spot where u get all kinda ice-creams. Probably i should say M'lore is famous for its food, ice-creams and Aishwarya Rai. I had something called Honeymoon which had a slab of pista and vanilla. On top of each slab there was a cone placed. One cone was decorated as a bride and another as a groom. I had to put a lot of efforts to finish it off.
Empire mall was our next target which is located near the Mallya's newly build conventional center. On a saturday afternoon it was almost deserted unlike malls here in b'lore, maybe few shops were yet to come up. We had been to arcade ally and played few games. Adlabs has opened its multiplex in Bharath mall situated next to Saibeen (the old mall where we used to roam during college days). This mall was comparatively better and bigger than the Empire mall. We had a sip of coffee at CCD and went for movie, Museum ke andar phas gaya Sikandar, a Ben Stiller movie, a hindi traslation. It was kinda crap movie but just for experiencing the theatre we had to see something. Theatre was definitely better than B'lore's i-nox. Though i should not compare the 2 cities but its just normal when u travel across cities u tend to compare them.
It was around 8 when the movie got over. We had planned few drinks at liquid laungue but had to give up the idea as we were already late and last bus to s'kal was at 10. We didnt risk going to liquid laungue and instead came back to Sads for dinner and booz. I dont remember how much i drank,probably 3 large vodka. I rarely used to drink when i was in college and i guess it only once i came to have drinks in Sads before this. We were back to Hotel aorund 11 in night and we all slept like mad dogs.
The next day will continue in next blog. :)

Kudremukh Trip

Kudremukh Trip:

Participants: Advay(myself), Shrirang(Balli), Kapil, Vijay (Jhako),Nilesh (Gattu), Amit (bajaj), Shilpa….
Date : 9th and 10th Dec, Kalasa and Kudremukh.

Thanks to the initiative taken by Amit to arrange such a trip but it was the presence of all of the other members to make it a memorable trip to Kudremukh and kalasa. The story from horse'e mouth goes like this.... Well Kudremukh means Horse's Mouth .. :)

We all started from the garden city on friday night by KSRTC bus. The bus was not so comfortable kinds. The driver was crazy and he drove like a madman. I guess he knew the exact map of the road while driving. Its rare to see right-hand-driving in night but this guy made it so easily. Few of the hairpins and u-turns were dealt with perfection. Me and balli slept like dogs while others were gossiping all the way. Finally when they caught some sleep early morning, we were almost near to the Silent Valley resort.
It was 6:30 am and I was relieved when i got off the bus. The air was chill and filled with mist all over. It was foggy and we were so excited to see all that. Kapil said he got reminded of pilani. We were given a nice big room to get afresh. We took bed tea and got ready for the breakfast which was normal south indian including bread and butter. We were told to go to the nearby place called "Hanging Bridge" by walk. The place was around a km from the resort. The place was a silent beauty. Such a small but wonderful place. The bridge was made to cross the river. It was man made. The bridge was 100m in length and had only 2 parallel metal wires as the support while walking. The pathway of the bridge was so natural. It was like 3 parallel metal wires and few small sticks placed perpendicular to those 3 wires. And at some places there was alomst a foots gap which made it difficult to walk. Also at a given time only 3 or 4 could walk on the bridge. Jhako when crossed started to shake the bridge to scare us. It was real fun on the bridge. After crossing the bridge we went to riverside to spend some time. It was nice, cool and pleasant place. Rather the most romantic place of the whole trip.
We came back to the resort and had our lunch. Lunch was not so good. We had given a jeep and we started towards Kalasa to see some temples and riverside places. The 1st spot was really pathetic. Its called as Kallubhavi, small quantity of water is surrounded by few stones. A small pipe is the only source of water and the water level is always constant. We didnt explore the place much. Everyone ran off from the place as quickly as possible. The next place was Amba Tirtha, it was again the riverside place with high water current. We walked down to the river bank and jumped into the river.... it was a nice place and we all enjoyed a lot. We saw few temples after that and they were build with the same interior... though temples bore me to earth but those places were really quiet and calm. We went to one more picnic spot... again a riverside place with a very nice view of hills all aorund. Just before the sunset we went to Duggappana Katte, a hill top from where whole Kalasa is seen. We all were had a nice chat on top of the mountain. The sun set in no time and we couldnt take many pics.. :(. All the way on our way we played small games in our jeep and they were all fun.
After visiting the places we were back to resort by 7pm. We again had bath with warm water. Just before the dinner we sat around the bon-fire and had vodka. We danced a little bit and then headed for dinner. We all had light dinner and were ready for the most exciting part of the whole trip, "Night trek". We were so enthusiastic about it and we started off with a nice snap. We were provided 2 guides to make our journey easier. The trek was 3km long and we had to climb a steep hill. The night was dark and to add spice to the sitiation i started off with the ghost stories. Jhako and shilpa were scared like hell and everyone else were participating in the discussion. After a kms trek everyone was down to their knees and said they cant go any further. One of the guide told us to continue and asked us to go further. Kapil was so irritated and he kept on shouting all the way to uphill. One of his dialog i am quoting here.. " Saloon, kyon uski baat sun rahe ho, woh tumko jahar pine ko dega to tum log pi loge kya ??" After reaching the peak all of us were almost on the verge of fainting. But once we all reached on top we could feel the triumphant emotion. We all were so relieved, speacially kapil who forgot everything when he got the airtel signal on top the hill. He was so happy that he made few phone calls as well. We all sat there for around looking at the sky. We saw few dying stars we well and i did wish in my heart when i saw the dying star... (can't quote is here... let me see whether its true or not). We all started downhill after taking rest. Unfortunately the torch battery was weak and we were short of light. Still we kept on walking downhill just with the help of moonlight. Finally we reached resort at 1am and we were too tired to do anything. This was one of the memorable treks i ever did. And at the end of the trek everyone said "sala G*** phat gayi". Still hats off to Shilpa who didnt crib much in the whole trek. Me and balli jumped into one of the tents and slept like kumbhakarna. In the night i woke, to wear my sweater and jacket coz it was ice cold outside.
Next day while people were still sleeping me and Amit went for a small walk. We tried to explore some good area nearby but ended up in finding a stable.. :). But the morning walk was nice and i still felt the pain in my leg coz of nights trek. Others woke up till the time we came back and started getting ready for the next adventure. After having our breakfast we started for towards the Kudremukh side. In jeep we all played Concentration - a syncronization game told by Shilpa. We made total fun of it. We all loved it like anything. We reached Hanumangundi waterfalls after an hour. As usual being the most enthusiastic amongst all, me and balli jumped into the ice cold water. We went straight below the waterfall and could feel someone literally smashing our back. We enjoyed a lot in water and took some cool snaps. We spent around an hour in there and then headed backwards. On our way to the next spot we spotted a bison on the way. It was medium size bison whom we didnt disturb much. Took some snaps and he vanished into the bushes. We reached the Lakya Dam where the photography was prohibited, probably just to make sure that people dont take pictures of a dam which doesnt contain any water. Yeah, it was shameful, dam without water. I dont know why they build a dam just for the heck of it. But still we kept our talks, bakar, tripping to make sure we dont get bored at any moment.
We saw another waterfall on the way but we didnt really got down the jeep. No one was so enthu to see this place. We headed for Kudremukh park where we sat down and played Mafia for about an hour and half. It was fun playing the game and we all enjoyed it a lot. Took some snap at this place. But just sitting there and playing refreshed us. We came back to resort at 4pm and we had our lunch. After lunch it was almost 5pm. Me kapil and shilpa decided to go to the bridge again. We had nice walk and we talked for a long time near the river bank. The place was so pleasant and so calm. I am just in love with that place. We spent some time there and came back walking to the resort by 6:30pm.
After having tea we went to our room and started discussing on general issues which were quite interesting. Finally we started packing our stuff and had light dinner. We caught a drop van from the resort to the main bus stop. Got into the bus by 10:30pm and back to bangalore by 6am the next day.

The trip was overall good and could have been better if were allowed to go to Kudremukh peak, which was closed for tourist due to some construction work on the way. But still we all enjoyed time to fullest. Thanks to timely jokes by kapil and jhako which made our trip more colorful.
To sum up in the end i will say, the night trek was hell of an experience and we literally enjoyed it a lot. Good that we didnt end up with a bison or so. It was a peaceful trip in the end !!!

DVA

DVA.....
We all had heard and read about DVC... everyone knows what havoc DVC created as a novel and as a movie. Now whats DVA.... ??
Well DVA, its not a novel or a movie, but the new law which has shown the country that we need to come out of old thought and face the reality.
Domestice Violence Act, DVA, has created sensation till now and i feel its a start of changing india.
When i was a kid i used to take lessons in the school about our culture and heritage. And we were told that, we indians are pround of one thing and thats our culture. I agreeed to it for certain period, but when i used to read the newspaper i used to get psyched by seeing the number of crimes against women in india. I wondered how people can beat up their wives, burn them to death just for money, rape them to full fill their lust, throw acid on them for childish reasons. And i bet there are thousands of other incidents which go un-noticed.
DVA is among the various steps to achieve gender equality in india and rightly so at the right place. Women can feel a lot secure with the law at their side. But lets keep our fingers crossed to how many of them actually make use of this benefit for which women were starving since ages.
I read an article today in TOI, which right said that, an woman who gets beaten by the husband, doesnt even think of leaving him for various reasons. Financial condition tops the chart, childs future, social image etc are certain reasons coz of which women dont go to the extend of filing an office law against the husband or the accused.
I heartly welcome this law and hoping that this a revolutionary step towards the modern india.

Bartimaeus

Bartimaeus !!!

I finished reading Bartimaeus Trilogy. It’s a series of 3 books which has got everything. Its an ideal fantacy series.
The plot mainly involves Nathaniel (John Mandrake) - a magician boy, Bartimaeus - a 4th level djinni and Kitty Jones - a commoner. Without doubt Bartimaeus steals the show with his witty humor and timely cracked jokes.
This is my view about the characters :

1) Bartimaeus - He is a 4th level djinni and the best character in the book (according to me). He is roughly 5,000 year old djinni. He thinks as fast as a super computer and his knowledge about the mgicians and their histroy is marvellous. He fought most of the great wars and did service to some great magicians. Here he is slave to Nathaniel, the magician boy. The conversation between Nathaniel and Bartimaeus is the most humorous one.

2) Nathaniel (John Mandrake) - Nathaniel is the birth name of magician. And every magician keep their birth name secret so as to remain safe from some kind of summoning (I quiet like this funda, wish I could have had a secret name too :)). Nathaniel is known as John Madrake in the magician's community.The story starts with a 11 year old Nathaniel. I don’t know why authors are obsessed with kids so much, the main character is always a kid in his teens, take Harry Potter, take Eragon and now Nathaniel. I found Nat's character a challenging one, as per the book. He is eager to gain more power and wants to be good in everyones eyes. He is thorne for most of the ministers and they try to overcome him and here the story gets interesting.

3) Kitty Jones - I feel this character has played significant role in the book. Though she is a commoner (like muggles in harry potter), she proves that commoners can also perfom magic. She is a strong character and has a high will power. She want to show the true face of magicians to the world. She fights against the magicians, against Mandrake. But still she saves Mandrakes life.

Do read Bartimaeus if u like reading humor, if u like reading nice strong plot.

Though I like Harry Potter better than any other books Bartimaeus has its own charm, and simply the best fantacy books I can say.

I will write Bartimaeus Vs. Harry Potter (comparison between the two novels shortly, I will need ur reviews for that so please read them all).

Advay

Football

Football.....
Football is my recent craze. Dont feel that its all due to the coming world cup. But my craze to football started almost 8 months back when the english premier league started. I never used to follow football so closely as now. I support ManUnited at premier league. And am glad to find my club standing 2nd at the end of the season. They cud have done better but Chelsea were amazing throughout the season. I like the style of English football, its played with lot of short passes and smart touches rather than Brazilian or Argentine football where long range shots and individual performance counts. Still my most favourite player is Ronaldhino of Brazil, at this moment no one can beat him. He is simply the best footballer currently in the world. My some other favourite players are Wayne Rooney, Christiano Ronaldo, Frank Lampard, Bellamy, Owen and the list goes on.
I guess India also should promote football. They concentrate just too much over the cricket and i strongly believe there are other major sports that are not properly looked after. Football is one among them. Maybe the sports minister should take some responsible measure towards developing a good soccer in india. I dont think its difficult to get atleast 100 players in the population of 100 crores. Hopefully some general awreness should be brought among indian people for promotion if football in india.

KERALA trip

This is my travelogue to Gods Own Country….KERALA… !!!

I had been to Kerala for 3 days with 6 of my other friends. We started on 28th April (Friday night) and came back on 1st May (Monday night).

The night was perfect for 7 of us to have a go at Gods Own Country. We all started off with a bang around 8:30 pm from Bangalore towards Munnar.
We had booked a 4 wheeler with an execellent driver who touched the max speed of 125km/hr on many occasion on a straight road.
Night journey was a bit painful but somehow we managed to get some sleep.
Morning around 6am we all got up, we were still in TamilNadu, some village in Madurai District. At this very morning we could see enough number of people to crowd the roads. I guess people of this part of country have severe hearing impairments as they couldn’t even move out of our speeding vehicle. Our driver had tough time managing them. We came to a place called Theni where we did a grave mistake of coninuing on same road and not going to Munnar which was on our right.
There was difference of opinion among us as few of us were voting for Thekaddy, which was 30km from Theni and others were in favour of Munnar, which was 60km from Theni. Actually Thekkady was also on our hit list but later we ditched it coz of lack of time. We continued on the same road and in mid way we decided that we will leave Thekaddy and continue for Munnar. But it was too late to take a U-turn and hence we continued on the same road. After reaching Thekaady at around 8am, we started for Munnar, now 108km from here with a hilly road and thick jungle around. We couldn’t see any animals except for the usual monkeys.
Thekaddy is in Kerala, the road was beautiful with thick forest. On the way to Munnar we passed between the thick clouds as well. We couldn’t even see who is coming from the front and it was a great experience. We all were so excited at the chill outside. All words would fail for the lovely description of the place. We managed to get out of the clouds soon and now we got caught by another beauty, the never ending greenary of tea bagans. It was one of the best sites, early morning sun rays falling on lush green hills,making it more lovely. We all could feel it, it was heaven, Kerala rocks !!!
Finally we reached Munnar by 12 pm (we were late by 4 hours) and had our lunch at a place called Patel, a perfect gujju food u can have. It was a great lunch and we started off with our site seeing. We had been to few tea gardens and view points. But the road way made our day. One would definitely like to see such a peace and calm atmosphere after coming from polluted city like Bangalore. We finally went to a place called Top Point, a place surrounded by hills on all sides and supposed to be the highest point of Munnar. It was certainly the most eye catching spot. Beauty of this place certainly can not be explained in words !!!
We were back around 7:30 to Munnar city. We booked the houseboat in Kumargam (near Allepy) in Munnar itself and went to have nice sleep.
Next day (Sunday), I was the first one to get up at 6am and got ready for our next venture for Kumargam. As others were yet to get up, I had nice walk in the hills. I was alone walking through the hilly roads of Munnar with the chilled air all around, it was the walk of my life.
We started for Kumaragam, and stopped in between near few scenic spots. Kumaragom came at around 12pm and we boarded our houseboat after half an hour. The weather in this part of country is a bit humid and the temperature was around 36 degrees celcius. It was a bit contrasting to Munnar but it has its own beauty. We wooed as we started our houseboat. Houseboat is a perfect house with all the facilities, name any u will get there. They had proper kitchen, 2 bed rooms,the hall contained TV, dining table, and small siting area.It had a great finishing and certainly eye-catching. The name of our boat was AQUA JUMBO(don’t laugh).It was the only boat which made hell lot of noise.I had seen backwaters several time before but this was the very first time when I was really experiencing it. The backwater is everywhere, like we have roads in city, they have small channels of water where boats can pass. After passing through busy streets(ooopppsss) channels of water, we reached to lake kinda place, where u can see water all over the place, it was like another sea in itself which has taken place inside the land. We were served lunch, I had fish and chicken and the nutritious Kerala rice with north indian fulka's. Lunch was too good, we all ate like dogs, really. We played some songs on DVD player they had, and talked for a long time. The boat finally halted near a place around 5:30pm. We had a nice time swimming in the water. Though there was current in water, we swam for 45 mins. We went out to get some Toddy (A typical Kerala wine made from a fruit called Tady, something like coconut).In between we were served with evening snack which was made of sweet banana, I forgot the name but it was good. I couldn’t eat much as I was already full with heavy lunch.
All the times we used to pull each others leg and did all sort of masti on the boat. It was definitely the most hilarious day on our trip. We all had drinks just before the dinner. I had vodka and the Toddy. I liked Toddy and all the other didn’t even touch it after taking a sip. We bought 1 litre of Toddy and I could manage to drink only 750ml :)…I was a bit high than others, we had good food, I guess there was some chicken and fulkas and Kerala rice. After dinner we again had some funny talks and we went to sleep around 11:30pm. Houseboat really made our day, it was a different experience and with friends around it makes things perfect. It was the night when we slept tight.
Next day again we got up around 7am and the morning wheather on the backwater was just a perfect morning one would imagine. It was a cloudy morning and a nice breeze added the finishing touches to the awesome weather. Certainly one of the best mornings I ever had. We got our breakfast served soon after the boat started. It had idly and idiappam (a noodle kinda thing made with the same base as of idly) and pineapple to make it more attractive breakfast. Like us there were many tourist on other boats. We used to wave hands when someones boat used to pass so did they. We clicked lots of good looking cheeks from other boats with our great zoom camera which came out to be very helpful:)….) (All those things u can do when u are a bachelor and when u are with right friends….). We came to our original place at 9:30 in morning. And we straightaway started for Banaglore. We were told that it would take 14-15 hours from Kumaragom to reach Bangalore but our driver did the hard work to reach Bangalore around 11 hours.

This was certainly one of my best tours ever !!!

And yeah I have decided to go to Allepy or Kumaragam for my Honeymoon… :))

I had to cut down certain hilarious things here coz this is already lengthy and it was specific to us.


Between following were the guys who were in this trip.
1) Advay - Myself
2) Shrirang Ballal (Balli) - My roomie and college mate
3) Sidharth Vishwanathan(we used to call him "mota" but now "James") - My roomie and college mate
4) Umesh Bude (bude) - college mate
5) Hariharan Iyer (hari bond) - college mate
6) Prayush (pratyush) - James's colleague - ultimate jolly guy..
7) … Gattani (gattu) - James's friend from BITS Pilani.

Driver : Sanish - Touched max speed of 125km/hr on certain occasion, really made our journey comfortable.

Regards,
Advay.

Are We Conservative ?

This blog is about how conservative is the indian culture and is it good or bad ?
Since my office is around 15km from my place i prefer to go in company bus because of
2 reasons... first being heavy traffic and second being its free of cost...
I generally give preference to the front seats, so i sit somewhere in front 4 or 5 rows.
Since last few days i have been sitting near a girl and we havent spoken a single word.
She is like an average girl with specs and rarely fahions as the other girls here do !!!
I happened to be thinking this morning that i have been sitting near this girl since a long time
but never tried to speak with her and vice versa. Whats the reason ??
She takes the window seat and i am next to her, sometimes i try to look outside, I get the impression that she feels i am staring her. She also keep looking outside till i look outside. But no one made any positive effort on how to start a conversation.
I guess most of the indian youth need to develop this skil as it is considered to be one of the PR related activity.
Do u really think its our conservative society to blamed for this ??
i think i should go and talk with her first but then i think what the girl wud say of i suddenly start talking with her...
Wierd kinda blog.... but suggestions are welcome.... !!!