Surpriseee...

A couple of days ago, few of my college friends came to my house for a surprise visit. I was quite overjoyed seeing them and felt very nice. Overjoyed because it has been really a while someone came by without a reason, or without wanting something from me. It wasn’t my birthday too! That’s when I realized how good it feels when you call someone or visit someone without actually wanting something from them. I’m thankful to have such great friends.

This friendship day, I had no real plans. It was kinda getting boring going through dull GRE wordlists. To my surprise Anand came to my home around the evening after a day full of Linux course in college. It’s so nice to meet a friend than to send stupid forwarded messages to everyone. It’s the element of surprise that doubled the fun.

We had a crazy Idea. Anand said ‘Let’s go around and surprise more people.’ We had no plan as to who all we’ll surprise and how many places to cover, but hoped to cover maximum people. We hit the road on the bike at 6.30 pm towards Malad. With the crystal maze that Malad roads form, we had difficulty in finding our friend’s place. Finally at one point, I gave up hunting for the building and called him. He said, “Turn around, I’m right behind you”. Wish we could’ve looked around before calling. Still it was something that he didn’t expect to have happened. He offered a Cadbury as friendship day sharing which we shared till our last friend’s house. We had to cover many places so decided that nowhere we will have any food. We’ll come for that some other day.

Next halt, kandivali friend. Here we couldn’t resist eating delicious pakodas and Basundi. This time too, he caught us when we were entering his building. No surprise again, but he was really happy seeing us come. Here on, we got the map to our next friend’s house. The Mr. Gre was busy studying with last pack of flash cards and was literally shocked seeing us come. Finally, we had surprised someone completely. After a cup of tea and Lonavala chikki, we left his house. It was getting darker and we decided this would be our last destination.

On the way back, we thought we’d change plan a bit. Visit one more friend and surprise him. We had lots of options to think upon and would’ve liked to go visit many more people, but time just didn’t permit us to do that. Just then our friend from Powai called in to say he had prepared cookies and cake to bring to college the next day. That’s when we decided, ‘let’s go surprise him’. Kandivli to Powai was hell of a journey. All possible things that can happen on a bike happened. We were almost hit by a rick, almost caught by a cop, lost our way at Saki Naka and went all the way till Ghatkopar. After more than an hour of roaming around, finally reached the republic of Powai.

Now there was some more element of fun. We didn’t have his address or any details of where he lived. Just recollected random facts about what he’d told us about his apartment during college time. With some help from the locals and a lot of common sense, we finally reached a building which we figured out he might be staying at. The watchman asked us the room number where he stayed and here too, luckily we dialed the right number and reached his place. A day full of surprises as it was! Happy that we could surprise one more friend and shared the last bite of Cadbury.

It was such a nice day. Would’ve liked to visit many more friends. Hopefully, that’ll happen sometime soon. I’ll remember this friendship day for long. Something different than the regular...

Blog-O-Sphere

Just a few days ago, a fellow blogger was talking to me. He said ‘I don’t think our Blogs are going to survive after we complete our BE’. I had no reply, to some extend he was true! But I never really wanted him to be true. Blogging has been such a great fun all this while.

Now as for the Blogs going dead thing, I feel if someone has started a blog for love of writing, it’ll never die. If you’ve started on the grounds that nowadays everyone has a blog, so it’s kinda cool to have my own blog, then sooner someday the writing passion will vanish. Amitabh has one, Aamir has one, Shobha De has one, so it’ll be cool for me to have one. Naah, doesn’t work for too long. There’s a wave of seasoned bloggers who have joined Blogger for the fame of it, sooner someday they'll cease to write.

Blogosphere has given me great posts to read. Got to know people and their views better. Hear what they want to talk about. Wonderful and healthy (Should I use this..) debates between people, so many great stories, some wonderful poems and much more. More importantly it has been an effective medium to express what I want to say, or in general what I feel about things.

Sometimes I've wandered across some unknown blogs which had some pretty good writings too. A few regular bloggers having about 500+ followers and update daily to some bloggers who have total of 3 posts in a complete year. I find famous blogs mostly boring. If you’re updating your blog too often, you can’t maintain quality throughout. Often people who update once a month sometimes come up with such great blogs that they seem totally worth the wait.

Some more kind of bloggers. Commercial bloggers, with loads of advertisements, tons of pop-ups and very large loading time, I never read those blogs until absolutely essential. When a hobby becomes a business, it loses its charm. Never will I even think of putting advertisements on blog which give me a penny for every visitor to the site. One more trend has started, publicity of institutes through blogs. Mainly coaching classes or the people who help with students completing their projects and stuff. Why pay for a website when you can do the same thing for free through a blog.

Finally, the last type of bloggers, the underground bloggers. There are few people I know who do not wish to publicize their blogs, so do not wish to be listed on the blogroll. These are the ones mostly writing controversial, unbiased, confidential stuff. I like reading them because they are so close to reality. No faking, no fancy language, just pure feelings about what they feel. I’m thankful to those bloggers too for wonderful posts.

Just the one things I noticed about many blogs which I’ve read. People crib a lot about anything and everything below the sun. Many posts are about complains and what’s wrong with the world rather than what’s good. Maybe that should change a bit. Few years down the line, maybe we'll be busy, maybe we won't have time reading each other's post, the comments may reduce….but we'll continue to blog.

Schengen Staaten

Warning – Long post….

Actually I wanted to shorten this one so that readers are not bored. But then I realized that I am writing more for myself rather than the reader, more so to cherish every moment I enjoyed. Still I am very much indebted to the few people left on earth reading this blog to actually take the pains reading this. So screw it, this one’s big.

The view from the window presented a magnificent sight. As the fading orange ball sets lower in the sky, the clouds turn glorious shades of pink and purple. Then an amber colour line formed on the horizon. A glance at the watch showed 11.30 pm. Wonderful sight of Helsinki city beneath and Orange and Amber colour light spread on it. Beautiful Scandinavian country with the Baltic sea. Thank you very much Lufthansa, you made a wonderful sight on my dreamlist come right in front of my eyes, in a very beautiful way.

Coming up next were 6 different countries with 6 different languages and 5 different currencies and with no plan or Hotel booking either. The route of Helsinki - Tallinn – Riga – Jurmala – Vilnius – Warszawa – Berlin – Frankfurt. It may not have the fame that western Europe has but still I liked it better than the west. We travelled by almost all modes of transport in Europe. Be it the cruise, ship, plane, bus, tram, train, trolley bus, metro, taxi, car, bicycle everything.

Cruise in Europe is a terrific experience. Helsinki to Tallinn by superfast 2 hour cruise is an amazing journey. I always wanted to experience it once and this time got the chance. Watching 20 to 30 Seagull’s on the ship deck is a splendid sight. A wonderful bird, but so many of them were in Sight that we almost lost interest in clicking photos after a while. Bird watching is like that you see, rarity has value!!

I’ve heard about Gothic, Teutonic, Byzantine Architecture from the game Age of Empires. It was very nice to actually see them. The Teutonic Knights whom the British called the best cavalry in the world made a graceful sight. Especially Vilnius city is very classic. Half the city has Old Gothic architecture and the other half has Renaissance, Baroque style buildings. This difference presented a pretty view.

The Geographical centre of Europe is located at 19 kms from Vilnius. It is a beautiful park called as Europa Parka with over 200 great works of art from over 100 International Artists. A must see place.

Festival time shows you a very vibrant side of any city. We were very lucky to be in Tallinn for the National Song festival. A parade with 26000 music performers went around the Tallinn city main street singing local songs and moving towards their National Stadium in a very organized manner, parading. Such a wonderful sight, I can never forget rest of my life. More than a lakh people gathered around the National stadium to see them perform. All over the city, big screens and television were telecasting it. Amazing is the only word that describes it.

People had warned us not to visit these Baltic countries terming them unsafe. I do not regret not listening to them at all. Like us, they have had to fight for their independence too. Infact some of these countries have gained Independence not just once but twice. The Baltic nations, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, took part in a memorable protest against Soviet rule on August 23, 1989, which helped pave the way toward their renewed independence.

The “Baltic Way” was one of the longest human chains in history, organized by leaders in each of the countries as an act of protest. Roughly two million people from the Baltic countries formed a massive human chain that spanned 430 miles through all three nations. They held hands and carried signs during the peaceful protest. Going through the same route by bus, it took me six hours and also a small tear in the corner of my eyes. How proud each one of these two million people feel knowing they were the ones who had given their country Independence.

Interaction with locals was another good experience that came with the tour. Two Swiss couples who were on their vacation met me in a Polish train. They were college buddies and meeting up after 10 years of college, all doctors, but very down to earth. One guitarist and one vocalist and I joined them. Singing Bryan Adams, Green Day, Linkin Park, Bon Jovi, Backstreet Boys, Oasis and other great song in a European train that too out loud was great. They also sung some famous German songs and made me sing some famous Hindi songs in my pathetic voice. It just felt like friends from my college and me were going together in a train. They asked me a lot of things about India and told a lot about their European and African experiences. Got to know many things in Polish language from a Polish student over there enroute to Berlin. Her experience in a winter which was fierce as the temperature went upto -40 degrees were thrilling and fearful.

Sight of Indian Peacock in Warszawa was great. Here around five peacocks move around freely in the garden nearby the famous Palace on water. I’ve never seen such a free peacock anywhere in India. So many people looking around when it was showing it’s beautiful feathers in the gentle rain. What a pretty sight. I was actually very lucky to click an Image of the Peacock fly. A very rare sight and a beautiful photo!

Riding a bike (or the bicycle as we call it) was also a Great adventure. Riding a bike once in Europe is what I feel a must do thing. There are special lanes for bikes and no cars can ply on it without paying a hefty fine. Even the bicycles follow lane discipline. There are different signals for trams, cars, pedestrians and bikes. 25 kilometer journey from city centre to Berlin wall and back with a Mercedes Bike was cool. On my way, standing on the signal with a map, I saw some Korean students also with same map headed in the same direction. I spoke to them a few Korean words that I recollected from my previous journey back there and they were so happy hearing that. We all rode together to the wall.

Berlin wall was all I knew about Berlin. Actually a very small portion of this wall remains which was brought down in 1989. The eastern side is covered in graffiti that did not exist while the Wall was guarded by the armed soldiers of East Germany. Nearby are remains of Nazi Concentration Camps. A place were Hitler tortured the Jews. There actually they have set up a live demo show in the dark basements of these camps using men dressed in skeleton structures coming from all around threatening us. They also show a movie with special effects like vibration under your legs and other spine chilling effects to showing how the Jews were tortured. Very painful to even see it, what must have it been to experience it? Many people walked out after seeing half the movie.

I’ll end this post on a very positive note I thought. There can’t be anything more positive than the sight I saw at the Berlin main square. Preparations for the Paralympics games was going on there and in a very different way. Disabled people who were to participate in the Paralympics were made to play against people from the crowd that had gathered to see them. There was blind football where blind people were playing against blindfolded people. Them the basketball match where people from audience were playing on wheelchairs against their Paralympics team. Then there were other games such as Table Tennis, Running , Judo etc. Such a nice way to prepare them I felt. Maybe India should introduce such a thing and people will participate for such a good cause. I played 10 minutes of blinded football there. Felt so nice after that. Maybe I’ve contributed in whatever small way I could to help them. Amen.

Up and close with Village life......

Since quite a long time, I had this wish of staying in a remote village in India. To observe the village life, be a part of it for some time and enjoy the gift of nature around. This time around I had my chance and trust me it has been a wonderful experience. Somewhat different than I thought it would be, but overall fantastic.

Interacting with the local villagers and getting to know their opinions about things was the thing I was very much looking forward to. What really amazes me is that you can strike a conversation with anyone and they’ll talk with you. There’s no turning back and avoiding or ‘who-the-hell-are-you and why you talking to me looks’. It’s the friendly atmosphere that just builds up God knows how. On the whole, people are very helpful.

When it comes to village life, we say it lacks pace. There’s no 8.47 local to catch, neither a stressful job where the boss and the company both get the hell outta you. But what we fail to see is their share of problems. Life there is not as simple as it seems. Walking for 2 kilometers daily for pulling out drinking water from the well, working in the farm, mulching cows and buffaloes, running around nearby markets for getting good price for your crops is not simple. More than 10 hours of load shedding is a regular thing. We never have to worry about feeding the cattle 3 times food and 3 times water, do we? As for the stress part, ask a farmer what he’s going through with rains being late by a week. I don’t want to say village life is tougher than city or vica versa, just that comparisons should be done amongst equals and not two different things.

During the visit I had to appreciate how beautiful simplicity is. Simple food which consisted of only 3 things Dal, Bhakri and Rice tasted so good. A simple photograph made an ageing lady so happy that it made her day. Children would come running from the fields and houses to get a single peppermint toffee from us. The natural alarm of the Murga in the morning, clean view of the sky and stars in the night. Such a nice feeling just looking at the stars and thinking about life.

It was painful hearing their problems and encouraging hearing the solutions. There’s no pay for the teachers of the local school for last 2 years, yet the teachers are selflessly teaching. Trying to bring in more and more students to school, especially raising awareness of the need for educating more girls. This year the school where we went to has students giving the SSC exam for the first time. Something which makes their village proud. In remote villages there is acute shortage of water. They get only around 15 liters of water daily. Despite this, the villagers cheerfully fill our 1.5 liter bottle to the brim. Almost bringing a tear to my eyes.

Now, as far as interacting with the locals is concerned, that was great too! People there are very excited about Mumbai. For them it a dream place where people mint money. A place where the Shahrukh, Amir, Salman and the other Khans live with beautiful heroines. A wonderland. They love to boast about their village too. About how cheap the things are and how cool the air is. There’s a lot of gossip the villagers do amongst themselves. This includes bitching about the person who’s not present at the time of talk.

I got the opportunity to be there around when a marriage was about to take place. For some reason it got delayed and people staying there for the only reason of ‘food after marriage’ had interesting stories to tell. They started making guesses as to what the dowry amount would be, how much the bride has studied and all. One eye was always on what is cooking and when it will be served. Neighbors were talking about the foodgrains they had to give to the marriage home for the wedding lunch. Chaos all around. Different experience again. This was also the time I heard stories of ghosts and haunted places in the village. Trees and farms where village people are scared to go because of scary happenings. I dunno how many of those are true but they were interesting for sure.

Lastly I want to end up with this. Village people have the general belief that kids in the city are not strong enough. They’ll not survive the harsh climate and the toil of the villages and can work around only in AC cabins. They will not be able to adjust to simple rural food. Not always true must say. At the same time we city people sometimes think kids from villages are backward. They have poor mannerisms and etiquettes. This too is very wrong. They’ve had a different life than us. It’s the lack of opportunities for village students that makes the difference here. For a person who had food with bare hands all his childhood, how can you expect him to be eating noodles with chopsticks. Not that they are backward enough not to buy a Burger, but never had the chance to have one their life to like one. This discussion can go on for a while. Best thing is not to compare and take the best of the two worlds, city life and village life.

Local Food

This is one aspect of travelling I like the most. Local food, prepared the way locals like it!

I strongly feel that you should try and order local specialties wherever you go. Not a great fan of ordering ‘Chole Bature’ in Chennai where you have wonderful Idli and Uppam at the local dhaba. I also hate when Indian travel companies say they have Indian Food(Ghar ka Khana) on foreign tour. As a veggie I have little choice. Still, here are some local dishes I liked very much. Grab them if you pass any of these cities.

• Falafel--- (Originally a Arabic dish…but I saw it first in Amsterdam). It was just like eating Pakoda in Amsterdam.Falafel is a sandwich in pita bread. It is filled with vegetables, and falafel balls made from chickpeas. A vegetarian classic, falafel is delicious and filling.

• Momo---DarjeelingIt is something like the maharashtrian dish ‘karanji’ but not that sweeter. Very delicious when eaten with special sauce and chatni.

• Cadby ---- (Some famous shop next to Pizza Hut , Kothrud, Pune)It is a wonderful Cadbury Ice-cream. Tastes same like Cadbury 5-star and very thick shake. It’s very famous in the whole town and this place, although small is crowded with college going people all the time.

• Black Dates or Khajur – (Saudi Arabia)Normally you would say dates are so common, why would I mention them. But trust me, dates from Saudi Arabia are nothing like Dates in India. They are so soft and delicious, they’ll melt in your mouth instantaneously. Faster than even a chocolate would melt in your mouth. I still distinctly remember the taste even if it has been over ten years since my Dad brought them from Saudi. Awesome.

• Croissants---(France)This crecent shaped bread comes in variety of types with lot of stuff added in it. The ones with different cheese varieties or vegetables or simply butter taste excellent. Must have!

• Patbingsu---(Korea)It is a traditional Korean dessert often topped with ice cream or frozen yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, fruit syrups, various fruits such as strawberries, kiwifruit, and bananas, small pieces of tteok(rice cake), chewy jelly bits, and cereal flakes.

One more year...

A few days ago, we gave a farewell party to our senior batch. One thing was going through my mind back then. Next year it will be us going through this. Actually during the farewell, there was one more thing going through my mind. This is not how our farewell would be. It was one of the most boring farewell parties to be.

Three years into college, I felt like I was seeing almost half the faces present there for the first time. It was not just me, most of my batch mates were seeing them for the first time that day. It’s strange for us because we are the ones who stay back late in college almost everyday and do many more things other than attending lectures.

In the Conference room where the party was there, all I could see was clusters of people talking within themselves. Group-ism was very evident. There were just three speeches in the entire class, none of them very efficient, none with an impact. There was no feeling of nostalgia at all. It was more like a formal function.

Worse still, it lasted only for one and half hour, out of that we played music for them for like half hour and had designed a fun filled award ceremony for half an hour. Party was over at 4 pm and everyone was outta college by 4.30 pm. Come on people, have a life!! Reasons for leaving early, ‘Padhna hai bhai, Viva hai’. Four years in college, this is what they come up with !!!

I just feel that with us next year, it would be an entirely different story. Even the shyest student of the class will come up to the podium and speak about the experiences in college he/she had. Things they thought engineering would be and what it turned out to be. Speak about how different their lives would be waking up tomorrow and realizing that they don’t have to head toward college anymore. No more Cutting chai and Misal Pav in canteen.

I think we might stay up in college that night. If not all, atleast a few of us as we did during college festivals. Playing TT or Rounders(This is our class’s National Game, credit to Pratap) in the middle of the night. Have intense debates and discussions on the silliest topics on earth and loads of other crap. But it’s far isn’t it? One long year to go, let’s see what happens then. Only time will tell………..

Just When I Think I Am Done

A lot of things in our life are almost done, well almost! Life would have been great if they were actually complete. But life’s great other way too, why complain?

It’s like when we study for exams, coming early to college on the exam day, trying to revise stuff from start to end. It’s when you start reaching pages of the end chapters; you feel that you’ve forgotten the earlier chapters. When you take a glance back to do the first ones again, there’s the feeling that something at the end part is not done properly. This happens with me no matter how many times I flip back and forth. Never really think I can say that I’m done.

Then the same thing applies to Projects. They are always in the state of ‘Almost done’. Small thing here and there remaining, that’s it. When you go about completing that thing, you discover that another small task is remaining. Then when this task is complete, just when you feel like dancing around the room, something previously working stops to work. The big smile on your face vanishes. Somehow you get things right. Show it to your professor. He adds something more that he wants out of your circuit, and you’re back to work again.

I don’t ever like to use ‘almost done’ with submissions. At what stage you can be screwed can really not be determined. Almost done submissions for me are submissions not done. They can find mistakes in a perfectly errorfree file. Other way round, files with some experiments missing also sometimes go submitted with a A+. Face value, what else to say. Everybody of us have had so many wonderful submission tales all these years, no description is really needed.

Here’s another different avatar of this ‘almost done’ tag. Sleep..... God really thank the person who added ‘snooze’ to your mobile alarm. You say I’ll wake up in 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes, still sleeping, one more ‘snooze’. You think you are almost done with sleep, suddenly, another temptation and bang! Another ‘snooze’. You have taken a break from studies. 10 minutes you watch IPL, then say one more over and I’ll be back. Another over later, same story. Eventually finally end up watching entire match.

Phone conversation is on, debate on one of the topics has been heated up. Mom meanwhile calls you for dinner. Now the phone discussion is equally important for you. You can’t just cut it for now. You say to mom, ‘a minute please, I’m almost done’. And you’re stuck on the Phone right until everyone else has finished their Dinner.

Almost done reminds me of last year’s formula one. Felipe Massa, the Ferrari guys and trillions of fans all around the world thought they had won it, including the commentators. But some Timo Glock had slowed down and ruined the ‘Almost done’ party to ‘not quite done’ tune. How agonisingly close he was to the title. They say it right when they say; the game is not over until the whistle blows.

This topic is so much close to me. On every occasion when Liverpool is losing, my hand is set on the send button to send message to all my dear Liverpool fans. But some crap happens after 90 minutes, someone scores and I’m left with the message still in the draft mode. Just when I thought Job Done……