Road to Nowhere...

Redirecting to wordpress

2008-10-12T19:01:00.001-04:00

Surprise surprise...I didn't know someone actually read this space....much less follow it. But the latest comment proved me wrong. I have moved to wordpress due to reasons mentioned in detail on the new blog. So the endangered species, that my readership is, please do redirect to:

http://www.thirdrockfromthesun.wordpress.com

See you there.

WTF?

2008-06-30T09:48:00.003-04:00

Why is this news...that too in the Times of India.

And while we are at it, I read a few days back that the Maratha Tiger clan of the Thackeray's are themselves outsiders. Immense joy.

State of the Nation

2008-05-01T09:31:00.001-04:00

So this is what it has finally come down to. All signboards in Marathi and 80% jobs to locals in Maharashtra. And this is coming not from the ill-famed Raj and the other Thackerey's but from the Finance Minister of the erstwhile state.

Its headlines like these that make the idea of economic prosperity and social progress in India look like a joke. On my visits to Chennai and Bangaloroo I was irritated when I saw signboards entirely in the regional languages of Tamil and Kannada respectively and thanked Mumbai's powers to be for not following suite. But it seems that's gonna change pretty soon. I hope sanity prevails and they still keep the Hindi/English sign boards as a back up.

I would like to see the reaction from the various business houses in response to the second headline though. In a hypothetical situation if I had been one of the influential industrialists , I would have initiated a drive to stop any further expansion plans in the state of Maharashtra and start working on a blueprint to phase out the existing installations as well. The problem with this diabolical plan is that it would end up hurting the general populace of Maharashtra who effectively had no say in such arcane plans of the government. That's pure politics for you. The current crop of politicians is no better than the British. Its still "divide and rule".

Stumble(d) Upon!

2008-04-23T09:45:00.003-04:00

I happened to stumble upon this via the aptly named service "stumbleupon". The idea and further the execution is amazing.

For any one with time to kill and a growling hunger for the weird and funny, there is no other place like the internet. And further the stumbleupon service itself is highly recommended.

Keeping in lines with the randomness of this post. Here's an original Chuck Norris fact (as far as I know) : Red Bull gives you wings. Chuck Norris immediately takes them away with a roundhouse kick to the face.

The context of this supposed arbit blabber can be understood by the cult following of Chuck Norris: here and here.

Ramblings of a Ubuntu Novice - Part Uno

2008-04-21T11:27:00.002-04:00

The front banner makes it obvious that I am a recent convert to the upper echelons of the open source community courtesy my recent move from windows xp to Ubuntu Linux 7.10 code name Gutsy Gibbon. That's the charm of open source. The ultra cool code names and the aura of geekiness that it imparts to its beholder. Hardcore open sourcer's though might contest that Ubuntu is a mere sell out and falls short on the spirit part, by providing a GUI that's easy to use (what a shame!) but I couldn't care less about them. For me Ubuntu is the magical passageway to the dimly lit, flickering black and green realm of the famed unix/linux console and the amazing feats that can be achieved using it.

My prior experience with the console is limited to starting the C compiler from Unix way back during my schooling. I didn't realise the coolness of it all back then because I was more intent on getting my hands on that shiny new windows 95 machine my neighbour in the computer lab was using. You see windows 95 was all the rage when I was in school with its media players, games, screen savers and other hoopla and the fact that it was only available to a select few at least in my circle of friends. Windows might be losing its mojo nowadays getting its ass kicked in public thanks to the very bulky Vista, but I still think Microsoft started it all. Before windows a handful of people even knew what an operating system meant atleast in my part of the world. And suddenly people were talking of word and PowerPoint and excel and what not that windows had to offer. And that's what brings me to actual intent of this post. Today when I start my laptop to boot the earth coloured login screen for Ubuntu or when I use the task bar to quickly launch the pidgin instant messenger or when I open the open office word processor for writing a document I see the efficient implementations of these community projects but in the back of my mind I am still relating to the blue splash of the windows login screen, the oft crowded grey task bar on the bottom right corner and the ubiquitous Win Word. Windows brought all these ideas to the masses. And now Ubuntu and other such community projects are taking the same to the next level. They are developing the same idea to a different level of cool. This is like my personal RIP to windows. I will still use it in my office and for other assorted tasks at home but whenever I wanna feel cool (which is like 150% of the time) I will be heading for my Ubuntu powered lappie to respond back to me with enlightenment.

PS: I am in the office right now, so my dear XP don mind my foolishness! I love you.

Doctors and Developers

2008-04-20T12:52:00.002-04:00

It took a mildly bad case of cold and accompanying strange headache for me to figure this one out. Considering the not so optimum incubating environment the analysis and corresponding conclusions might not stand a good test. But they sound alright to me right now.

So lets ask this question. What is common between a Doctor and a Developer?
Answer : They both end up clearing someone else's bloody mess and buggy code.

And now let me go ahead and explain that. The smart ones may skip the following part. Developers in 90 % of the case end up supporting an existing application or worse an application "designed and developed" by themselves. Doctors similarly 99% of the time end up fixing natures bloody mess. The remaining 1% is attributed to the seldom heard cases of "doctor left a glove in the patients belly during operation" or "mis-diagnosed heart patient gets his kidney removed"and suchlike.

Again lets talk of percentage. 90% of the time a developer tries to fix an exception by restarting a server or the application. Similarly a doctor prescribes a bunch of antibiotics and other generic drugs irrespective of the symptoms. The last bit on the Doctors is based on the common belief that medicine is still an experimental science. And it works in both the cases. The restarting of the server/application cleans up all the logs and caches and the application starts running smoothly. Similarly in case of the Doctor one of the generic drug hits its target and the patient is cured.

Moving forward further 9% of the time, the developer finds a documented exception , a known symptom in case of the doctor and uses the prescribed solution to fix it.

The remaining 1% are the undetected and untraceable bugs in an application for which the underlying coding language isn't developed enough. And for the doctors these are the HIV's and Hepatitis B-C's and suchlike incurable diseases.

Now both doctors and developers might take exception at this post blaming me of gross assumption. But I have nothing but immense respect for both the professions, I being a developer myself. They both do a really tough job of fixing stuff and they inadvertently get blamed for someone else's faulty design.

Day 5 - 1st anniversary time

2008-02-22T13:07:00.002-05:00

Day 5 was special. In fact it wouldn't be entirely incorrect if I say that day 5 or rather the date that day 5 occurred on was the sole reason for this Hawaii trip. You see last year on this very date I was participating in the royal ceremony of tying the wedlock with the iconic missez of mine. I then went on and committed the horrible sin of ditching the honeymoon and flying back to this firang land that too alone. The agonizing 1 month that followed has been well documented in this very blog in the past. So you see this trip was sort of like my redemption. I was taking the missez on the mother of all honeymoons - a no holds barred week long trip to Hawaii, albeit a year too late. And I had a bagful of phrases to emphasize this very idea which I used althrough the trip and will continue to use whenever I am fighting a losing battle with the missez. Just the phrase, "....but I took you to Hawaii on our 1st anniversary, didn't I??" and all will be well in my stormy world. I hope it keeps working till eternity. Amen!!

But I digress, so day 5 had been very carefully planned to make it that extra bit magical in the words of a romantic. The morning was gonna be stress free, without any prior reservations we were free to roam around. And roam we surely did, spending a good deal of time at the beach and then in the long eluding hotel pool where I took a dip and the missez bathed in the sun. At the stroke of noon we were right in front of a surfing center. Yes...we were going surfing today. Now disclaimer here. The following part of the blog will be part fiction, because I sucked at this surfing thing. Yes sucked is the perfect word to describe my antics on the waves. And the parts where I describe myself surfing like a dude can be safely attributed to the missez. Because she had yet again taken to surfing like fish to water.In fact I sometime wonder if she was born fish in any of her prior incarnations and thus still has those fishy instincts. But thats just my jealousy showing its bright green color.

So we embarked upon the surfing adventure. We were an assorted group of 6 adventure seekers. Two young ones, a dad, a 40 something spinster from Seattle, the missez and yours truly. I was secretly judging them on their ability to grasp this tricky sport of surfing. I quickly choose my closest competitor and thus adversary.The spinster.Everyone else had way too much unfair advantage. The young ones, obviously. They are not afraid of anything, darn age. Missez too, obviously.The fish thing remember. The dad was now looking kinda shaky so he could also fall in my draw. So there was no pressure. I was surfing against a old lady and a shaky dad. Piece of cake man. Where's the dude trophy?

This one too , like snorkeling, began with a not so short course on surfing and this too as before was utter bullshit. On the beach ,I was still fumbling around with the instructions being thrown at me when it was already time to efficiently execute the very same at sea without someone actually throwing them at you. Pompously I assumed that I was a pro now and the 2 ft waves were looking like a mild disturbance on a calm lake surface. Bring on the good stuff, where are the 10 footers. Thankfully the natural forces that determine the details of the height of the waves were taking a coffee break and cared less about my lame provocations. My brain was running on overdrive and I let everyone else pass ahead of me. You see I was just trying to access what I was competing against so I could lower my ability and effort accordingly and still supersede them comfortably. Ohh such shrewdness,pat on the back dude. When ultimately my turn arrived, I paddled towards the instructor, swiftly ignored his last instructions and lo and behold I was one with my old pal, gallons of salt water. And with every turn of mine, we extended our friendship to higher levels. Over the 2 hours or so of this activity, my cumulative standing time on the surfboard was an impressive 5 and half seconds, counting the half second for the time while I was struggling on my knees to stand up. In hindsight I would officially like to blame this catastrophe on my body's center of gravity which failed to lift itself to surfing standards. Case closed.

As expected missez was doing superbly on her own and I was content watching her appreciatively while flapping my hands in the sea lying horizontally on the board.Soon enough it was over and we were back on the beach. It seems there was some dude who was taking our snaps during all these acrobatics in full 1280 HD glory. To his credit he had captured the entire 5 and half seconds of my verticalness on the board in 15 different snaps. And there was the graphic proof of my amazing surfing abilities.

Content, we were back in the hotel to chill out till the sunset cruise, icing on our anniversary cake. We had booked the priority tickets in the hope that we will finally get the flower garland welcome on the cruise ship. But all we got was priority seating which ended up being public after all. Initial disappointment withstanding we secured a cozy little corner for ourself. From then on till the dark of the night it was all about the sea, the sun and the sky. The 3 elements intermingling in innumerable formations of unimaginable beauty. The high point was when a mother and calf humpback whales decided to pay a visit to personally greet us on our anniversary. They were literally in touching distance of the boat. I captured umpteen fit-for-wallpaper snaps. The fading light brought with it some unwanted rain. Luckily we found an aptly shaded seating right on the deck while everyone else bar the captain ran for cover in the belly of the boat. So the scene was - lashing rain, fading light of the sun, the sea and the two of us. Magical.

Other passengers finally decided to brave the now thinning rain and ascended to the deck. Many interesting conversations followed including one with the captain of the boat herself. We also discovered a bunch of ghost boats, supposedly floating in the middle of the ocean with their lights turned off.

By the time we stepped back on land it was totally dark and it was curtains on a very special day. Lights out day 5. Snap count 550 something.

Day 4 - Scaling Halekala

2008-02-20T15:04:00.002-05:00

Following the pattern over the last few days...day 4 began a good 4 hours before the crack of dawn. But today there was a noble reason for this insanity of getting up that early, the break of dawn itself, or as the lazy people like to call it, sunrise. Over the years this phenomenon of sunrise along with its evening buddy sunset have climbed the stairs to mythical proportions in my psyche. I have ended up making many a beelines to witness the aforementioned spectacles of sun's interaction with the earth. Today was no different. I was gonna drive in pitch dark on a curvy mountain road right to the summit of Haleakala - a not so dormant volcano.Add to that some freezing rain and it turns into madness, most definitely.

So that was the plan for today. The instinct reaction when we stepped out of the room to leave was to turn back and hunker down in the bed for eternity. It was raining and the sky was full of cumulonimbus clouds for as far as the eye could see. Turning back would have been a logical reaction. But ever the defiant of logic, and the fire of enthusiasm burning through the missez, we braved our way to the waiting Mustang. We had been warned about the freezing cold at the summit, so we were armed with nothing less than bulky towels because that was the best we could do in terms of gathering winter clothing in this tropical state.

The initial drive until the right turn on the Road to Hana was uneventful and kinda cozy. From then on it was a gradual-initially-steep-later on ascent to the top. Nothing much was visible on our way up , thanks to the pitch black of the night aided by the blinding rain. We literally crawled to the top, averaging around 15 miles an hour. The chances of actually witnessing anything remotely close to a sunrise were fading thick and fast in the gathering storm clouds. The elevation markers kept coming in and out of the focus of my headlights, indicating every 1000 ft of our accent. The observation center is situated at approximately 10,000 ft on the mountain. But when we parked at what we thought was the parking lot, there was no sign of anything apart from clouds. I bravely opened the door to access the weather situation outside and the left side of my body had turned comfortably numb within the few seconds that I took to correct my folly. Wrapped with towels around my head , I finally stepped out to find the observation center and more importantly to relieve my ailing bladder. Surprisingly there was a loo even at that crazy altitude and my dream of "public urination" in the US 0f A got postponed for yet another day.

The sun in the meantime was fighting a loosing battle with the dense clouds at this elevation. The sunrise time quickly passed and the crowd gathered to view the spectacle started thinning quickly ,utterly disappointed. I on the other hand was determined to sit out this minor setback and wait for that wee bit of clearing in the clouds. But my patience was being genuinely tested here. So we decided to drive a little further up all the way to the summit. Another 300ft or so up, just to let the sun and the clouds sort out their issues in private. Missez was frozen and flatly refused to entertain any requests of stepping out of the Mustang. So I wrapped my towel and headed out and to my utter disbelief the view that I saw first up was mind-blowing. I was standing at the summit of the tallest mountain on the island with a blanket of clouds all around and below me. The below part was particularly amazing. There were varying layers of clouds each moving at its own velocity and therefore creating a clearing every now and then enabling me lots and lots of glimpses of the breathtaking view below my line of vision. I recorded a 360 degree view of the panorama for the wife's benefit. And then just lingered on. It was so peacefully beautiful up there that I just couldn't make myself leave. My reverie was finally broken by the yelling missez who had to step out of her thawing state to find me. After a little cajoling she finally joined me in the panorama admiration society that I had set up in promptu. Absorbing as much beauty as I possibly could we drove back to the observation center keeping our fingers crossed. The skirmish seemed to have been resolved in favor of the sun for now at least. I made the most of it and click - clicked the camera to my hearts content.

On our way down the snaking road the rain was slowly giving way to sunshine. Every turn of the curving road opened to ever changing panoramas, each one more beautiful than the last one. We even saw a full rainbow and the faint hint of a double. It was simply breathtaking driving down that road. Almost all the way down the mountain we stopped at a roadside inn for breakfast. The eggs Benedict and hash browns were yummy and just perfect. With nothing specific planned for the rest of the day, we were taking it easy and stopping at all possible spots. Spotted at least 4 hump backs right from the shore on one such stop and explored another part of the island which we hadn't previously planned.The top was down on the Mustang and it was an amazingly beautiful day. Tummies full with the yummy stuff and hearts full of all the beauty we were off for an afternoon siesta.

Act 2 of the day was short and sweet and began late in the afternoon at around 4. We headed straight to a beach. Weren't too enthusiastic to take a dip so after a few minutes of wading we were off to the Front Street. Front street here is like the mall road of our Indian hill stations. Full of shops and eating places. We decided to stick to the chains and opted for the Hard Rock Cafe. Also caught a glimpse of a beautiful sunset over the pacific.

Thats was curtains on day 4. Snap count 400 and add to that at least 6 video recordings for the day.

Day 3 - Snorkelling and the Luau

2008-02-15T14:22:00.002-05:00

Day 3 dawned upon us in all its pristine glory with an organized calm. The entire day was planned way - way in advance, so there were no options for me supposedly twisting the proceedings with my mammoth lethargy. Truth be told I was pretty excited myself. First order of day, checking in at the Pacific whale Foundation for a 6 hr snorkeling cruise, a continental breakfast and a la - carte lunch to follow. As it turns out the elements were pissed with my aforementioned state of excitement and had retorted to hitting the harbor (on which I was standing waiting for a catamaran to haul me to sea) with gale force winds. But this wrath of nature was a mere breeze as compared to the hell I was paying for supposedly forgetting our camera battery. Missez is nothing less than a hurricane when she is pissed and from plenty of first hand experiences I have learned not to retort to any sort of cheap defense in such circumstances. So I gave up my futile argument and scurried along the nearby touristy shops to look for the non-existent battery.

Finally my karma argument - which basically boils down to - past is over lets not linger on to it,lets live in the moment forgetting all my past faux pas, payed off, with a mighty boost from the launch of the catamaran with us as passengers. We headed out into the choppy seas, with the winds showing no signs of giving up at this point of time. Breakfast was quickly gobbled with the customary sea safety speech being announced in the background. Soon enough we were slowing down literally in the middle of the ocean to everyones surprise and the captain of the boat chimed in that a mighty humpback whale had been sighted in our vicinity. The captain was speaking in his sea lingo with port , starboard and various clock positions of 3 O'clock, 6 O'clock peppered in just for fun. I was flabbergasted. I had no idea which side to look, or was I instead supposed to look at the watch, that I was (not) wearing. Missez slid in with a piece of her mind and then on I followed her lead in the directions of vision. A little info flash here. Winter is humpback whale season in Hawaii and the surrounding sea. They, the whales, apparently swim the distance of nearly 3500 miles from their feeding grounds in Alaska to Hawaii, and specifically to Maui, for its warm and shallow sea. Back to the story, initially it was a little hard for us to locate them in the vast blue, but the signature whale breath fountain made it easier. And from then on I was a self proclaimed pro at spotting these majestic creatures. We slowed down and stopped many a times for these whale watching jaunts before we reached the island of Lanaii and to a cozy little creek where we were supposed to snorkel.For the ignorant Snorkel is a fancy name for swimming at or just below the surface of water while breathing with the help of a tube sticking out for air and apparently enjoying the underwater natural beauty. After a crash course in snorkeling on the boat deck, we were all suited up. The suit basically consists of a face mask and humongus set of fins for the feet. The clothing in between these two is apparently optional. But to my disappointment there were no exceptions.

The first touch of water was cold. Missez had already taken appropriate precaution by opting for a wet suit and was nimbly swimming like a fish in water. Me, thats a different story altogether, when I finally let go of the boat straightaway ducked under water quick and fast gulping copious amount of salt water. Apparently the snorkel crash course had been utter bullshit because it didn't include any directions on how to put on this god forsaken snorkel mask. A wobbling and thoroughly salted me emerged, thanks to the gallons of salt that I had absorbed from the water. The missez was thoroughly scared of my misadventures and was promptly by my side to inform me that I couldn't possibly sink because I had a floating apparatus around my body. Nervous calmed, I finally started enjoying the snorkeling experience. On later intelligent analysis I discovered that this show of shame and embarrassment on my part was partly the fault of my inability to breath with my mouth rather than my nose and mostly the fault of everybody else in general. But I digress. In fact I started to enjoy it so much that, much to the dismay of a shivering missez, I went back a second time after lunch and this time consistently kept my nose underwater admiring the beautiful corals and rainbow colored fishes in the process. Mucho fun indeed.

The return leg of the cruise was sombre with me admiring the sun kissed deep blue expanse and acting all zen-like while a school of dolphins performed their much adored skimming jump out of the water for us.I was given another slap on my head for forgetting the camera battery which prevented us from capturing the breathtaking beauty all around us for eternity. Further rounds of stops and slow downs for the whales followed before we were back on terra firma.

The next 45 minutes are a blur, at the end of which I was magically standing in a line for the entry into the Luau. The only thing that I faintly remember from the blur is the part where the missez transformed from a homeless on the street to a Greek goddess in under 10 minutes. That must be some sort of a world record or something. Info flash time again. Luau is a typically Hawaiian custom of partying like their is no tomorrow. Highlights being the unveiling of the ceremonial Kalua Pig which is later hogged down and various Hula's or dance performances. This I assume is the commercial form of the Luau. I have no idea how a non-commercial one pans out. So the Luau started with a typically Hawaiian welcome custom of tropical garlands (which for us non privileged ones were made of small sea shells) and a local drink called Mai Tai. While we were settling down the aforementioned Kalua Pig was unveiled from its cooking place which is under ground and taken for a round around the house. I have pictures to prove that it was totally gross. Ewwww....I just want to eat it...I don't want to look at it while its being cooked. I promptly washed down this ghastly vision with the remaining Mai Tai and ordered another one. But before we could get any comfy, the dinner was served and I attacked the food with a renewed vigour. Little shreds of Kalua Pig, local fish Mahi Mahi, local fried rice, a purple bread and delicious slices of pineapples were consumed in huge quantities. And just as I was settling down with an overflowing dish of dessert(s), the actual show per se started. What followed was a sequence of dances from all the Polynesian communities of the pacific starting with New Zealand, Tonga, Haiti and ending with Hawaii. The dances were performed by scantily clad hunks and babes and were a real treat for both the visual and aural senses. This was one of the be-their-to-experience kind of thing. The fire dance in the dying moments of the performance deserves a special mention, drawing ooohs and aaahs from the crowd and yours faithfully.

To be true, I was a little skeptical about this Luau thing to start with, but the Missez prevailed and we booked. Now in the light of experience it looks like a fine decision and really an experience to cherish. I redemmed myself by grabbing the aformentioned camera batteries during the blur and have loads of pictures to show from this colourful evening feast.

It was lights out Day 3. The photo count, although massively depleted courtesy the prior screw up, still stood at 310.

Day 2 - Road to Hana

2008-02-11T12:27:00.000-05:00

Day 2 on the lines of day 1, also began early in the night. Somewhere between 3 to 6.30 AM. This would be the pattern of mornings through the vacation. I am talking of a good 3 and half hours in terms of range, that’s because we had originally decided to get up at 3 and head to a mountain top for the sunrise. But I chickened out...and so we decided to linger on to the bed...all the way till 6.30. I will come back to the ride to the mountain top later. The itinerary for today was, take the top down on the mustang and drive around the island like there is no tomorrow. Oops...that was what I was silently thinking. WUBI moment noted. Missez on the other hand had dug through the dearth of literature collected overnight and found a mile by mile "attractions guide" for the "Road to Hana". The erstwhile road is a zig-zag pathway through the rocky east coastline of the island. This would be quiet an understatement of the beauty of the road if I left the description at that and I will diligently correct my folly immediately.

As the name suggests, "Road to Hana" is basically a motorway from the center of the island, that is roughly the Kahului airport, to a town called Hana located on the easternmost point of Maui and beyond. I would love to have a map of the island right about now so that I can simply point out the spots. But then the picture that I am about to paint will be lost. Now lets follow the LIFO (in layman terms Last-In-First-Out) approach here. Starting with the beyond part, which basically consists of one spot as per the guide. And here I might be making the name up but bear with me. The seven sacred pools or Ohe'a Gulch. It’s supposed to be a series of waterfalls and pools. And I am speculating here because we didn't visit the spot...as it was way beyond and my adventurous spirit was taking a break in our hotel pool at that very instant in time. At one point of time one could circumnavigate the island going way way beyond from here...but a recent earthquake had rendered that part of the road useless. Continuing on our journey backwards...Hana is a beautiful little coastal town. It reminded me quiet a lot of Goa. The same colonial style houses, laid back atmosphere and pristine beaches. But the town per se is just the means to an end. Because if you just blindly run though the erstwhile road you would miss 99% of all the famed beauty and will end up massively disappointed with the 1% that you actually find at Hana. The last line is a gist of the story of a journo that the missez narrated to me during our drive. Her rationale behind the story was to make me stop at all possible touristy attractions peppered throughout the road. And she was partially right in that because I was driving literally like a hypnotized zombie, hypnotized by the sheer zigzags of the road and zombified by the top down mustang. The distance from the airport to Hana is roughly arnd 60 miles. An hours drive on a freeway, 40-45 minutes for a loony. But it took us nearly 5 hours to reach Hana courtesy the umpteen stops. We waded for some time on the black sand beach at Hana after I had stuffed my face with chips, grilled cheese sandwich and some local chicken delicacy. Right before Hana we took a left turn into some local park. Another missez discovery. Another black sand beach. There was also a very interesting lava cave right on that beach. We actually went inside it and it ended right into the sea. The rest of the coastline was pretty rocky, with picturesque stone arches formed as a result of the never-ending battle between land and sea. There was also a curious little hole in this rocky landscape, another cave evidentially with one end opening to the skies and the other end into the sea. It was aptly named Devils' hole credited to the ghastly noises of the sea breaking on the rocks underneath. Not to mention the chance of sucking in a hapless bystander.

Also along the way were umpteen shacks selling everything from barbecued kalua pig - a local delicacy to banana bread - another local special. Missez finally made me stop at one of them literally by pulling the handbrake. I promptly claimed that this precise shack was the one that I had been looking for all along and this was the best amongst all the rest, meekly pointing to the board that proudly said "Best Banana bread in the world".

There was another detour, before this whole banana incident. This one led to a spell binding rocky coastline. The waves were almost 6 to 8 ft high, thundering on to the rock face and we were standing right beside them to catch the spray of that clear blue and white froth of salty water. Its amazing how the same terrifying water on the rock feels so soothing on ones skin. I also must note the clarity of the sea water here. It was a uniform light blue and transparent allowing us to peep right into the belly of the mighty pacific. Also on our way was the "Garden of Eden". A small drive through of sorts amongst countless species of Birds and Bushes. At the U-turn point was a small cabin with a view of an amazing waterfall on one side and a beautiful valley opening into the deep blue ocean on the other. This waterfall is supposed to be the opening sequence of the first Jurassic park movie if you remember. I can't really confirm this fact but I would like to believe it. Incidentally a good part of the movie was shot in and around these islands. Also on the way was a supposed hidden waterfall, which remained hidden despite our valiant attempts at discovering it. I actually hiked 2 different trails to find even a hint of a waterfall, even a small puddle of water would have done in the end but failed. I promptly had my revenge by gulping down a full half liter bottle of water down my throat.

Also, before figuratively hitting the road, we had stocked ourselves with a 24 pack of water bottles, a sunscreen lotion, a beach mat and other assorted stuff. I generously helped myself with the sunscreen, but my original skin tan finally broke through soon enough. Part credit also goes to the top less mustang. The top was down throughout the TO journey and up and down in intervals on the FROM journey. There was a heavy downpour on our way back, but I still managed to open up the top on every few minutes of the clearing in the heavens above. Any description of the road would be incomplete without a comment on the actual road. It really is an engineering marvel. The road has been cut out literally from the rock face, and is right by the sea for the good part of it. Due to the terrain, it keeps dropping and rising in elevation every now and then leading to countless hairpin and blind turns through lush green forests. The ample bubbling brooks lead to countless bridges, with traffic on one side halting every now and then to let the oncoming traffic pass on the single lane path. The average speed is around 15 miles for an hour and should be a good 5 miles/hour less to appreciate the beauty surrounding you. The countlessness of the bridges and hairpins though is a writers privilege. There are 56 bridges and 600 curves on this enchanting motorway.

We stopped at a surfing beach on our way back, but a heavy downpour and 2 fragile bladders cut short the stay. It was already dark when we reached back to the hotel. So with relieved bladders, the taste of a frozen pizza in the mouth and the dream of a dip in the hotel pool, it was lights out for day 2.

PS : Needless to say, we clicked a lot of snaps. The count at the end of day was some 150 odd.

Hawa hawaii....day 1 and other BS

2008-02-07T11:21:00.000-05:00

I have been postponing this for almost a week now...so in the words of "Rage Against the Machine"...it had to come out someday, it had to come out somehow...what better place then here, what better time then now...

True to the spirit of the blog, this ones a travelogue to a land far far away, in the middle of nowhere holding the promise of an enchanted world. The aformentioned land being the isle-land of Hawaii...or rather the islands of Hawaii. The trip promises a flurry of places with unpronouncable names, cliches upon cliches on the wonder that is nature...and loads of self promotion. I would not like to give away the entire plot right at the beginning...but you get the drift. So take your pick and think hard, very hard if you really wanna go through this long drawn out literary torture. I for one would just go ahead and keep writing assuming someone out there is praising my absolute grasp of the plot and language......

Another STOP sign, effectively the last escape route....and if you are still reading this....welcome to my world. You are doomed. Okiiiiieee...now that we have fulfilled the customary requirements of basic BS..lets get on with the story. The idea to visit Hawaii was essentially a "Eureka!!" moment. In a fit to please the missez...my brain got wired in some solemn way to pop this "Bulb" called hawaii over my head. So from then on till the day we left, started the continious squabbling over where to stay, which flight to take, which car to rent, what activities to book, what shorts to buy for swimming, what not for snorkelling, what swimsuit for sunbathing on the beach, which skirt for wading in the sea, which tops to wear at all the various occasions we were not going to attend and so on and so forth. The ususal stuff. And on the very last day before leaving...darn we do not have a "nice" camera. Nice being the operative word here. So Sony was made 350 $'s richer and I brought home a mat finish Sony DSC H3. All the banalities out of the way...we were packed and ready to embark on a week long vacation, which always seemed too short to begin with, and the missez had hammered that home time and again. I too secretly thought that it would be too short, but how could I ever agree with her without a fight. That would be like breaking atleast 7 different rules of "The Manual of Marriage" and another 20 different ones of "The 1st Anniversary Bible". So now that sufficient water has flown under the bridge, I can make this knowledge "of agreeing with the missez" public. There would be quiet a few "sufficient water under the bridge and I can make knowledge public" moments throughout this post. So from now on I would simply refer to it as a "WUBI" moment.

Day 1: Thursday Jan 24th' 08

We had to get up very early in the night that day, and this does sound like a contradiction but thats what it is. 3 AM to be precise. I slept around 4 hrs. Missez claims to have slept for like an hour becasue I didn't help her in packing...although I know that all the excitement had got to her. The first flight was at 6.05 from Newark. I had booked a limo, the prior night to avoid all the negative excitment in the morning but as usual the limo was late ,the driver was kinda lost. I took it in my stride and lo and behold we were chatting with a jovial sardarji on our way to Newark. I stumbled in my stride during the security check at the airport...there were too many things to manage...and the missez was overwhelmed by the moment. But we got through without being the subject of public humiliation. 3 something hours later we had landed at DFW airport in Dallas, TX. I must mention the size of that airport. It claims to be as big areawise as the island of Manhattan. And it really is big. One flight down, one to go. I spent the next 9 odd hours tossing and turning in an airplane seat, trying to find that mythical sweet spot of comfort. The missez on the other hand was all comfy in her petite frame and spent most of those hours sprawled on a couple of middle row seats. By the time we were over the islands, all the passengers were wide awake and the excitment was palpable....breaking into loud cheers on the first sight of land and sea through the pigeon hole windows of the airplane.

We had no checked in baggage and were out of the arrival area in a snap to catch the first glimpse of the magnificient view. A blue Mustang convertible was acquired as the vehicle of choice and the very first thing that I did was to take the top down. Missez loaded up on all the possible touristy material ever printed on Hawaii and off we went to our hotel. Hawaii as I mentioned before is an archipelago of islands. We had landed on one of them called Maui and would continue to stay on it for most part. Let me bore you with some history and geography or as I like to call it the "lay of the land". Maui as an island is a result of the convergence of the lava flows of 2 dormant and not so dormant volcanoes one each on its east and west side. Thereby providing a classic combination of pristine beaches and lofty mountain peaks all within a stretch of a few tens of miles. We were staying on the touristy side of the island, the west side, with all its resorts and shopping areas and miles of pristine beaches lapping at the foot of these resorts. Our hotel too was right on the beach...and our love affair with multistorried buildings continued as we were put up in a room on the top floor of a 12 floor building, with a view of the magnificient ocean right from the balcony or as it is locally known the lanai. The sliding glass door to the lanai would remain open thorughout our stay whenever we were in our room bringing in the sound of crashing waves and the beautiful view of the spotted blue and white of the ocean and the sky.These were pretty much the last things we heard and saw to end that very long day. Our bodies were still operating in Eastern Time and the tossing and turning had taken its due toll as well. So it was lights out for day 1 at 7.30 PM Maui Time.

Testing

2008-01-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

This is a new one again...... I just keep updating my tech and so this
ones from the iPhone

Booky World

2008-01-15T16:23:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" for the 3rd time and it still remains a momentous piece of literature. I was falsely assuming that my world views had changed over the years....that I wouldn't be able to associate myself with the extreme circumstances described in the novel, that I had wizened (?) from the last time I had read it. I heartily admit that allz status quo. In fact I can actually find patches of the extreme social behavior described in it in my own world. But I will refrain from delving into the details because I really find it all too depressing and furthermore I am not qualified enough to actually post a commentary on this great book and its social relevance to today. So I will leave the heavy lifting to the experts which I understand are far and wide.....Though I can't stop myself from quoting a line which I find particularly fantastic :

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction,check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I'll leave the bakar on this particular book at that but keeping to the topic of books. I finally managed to join the local public library last weekend and I am now free to plunder its wealth "at the walk of a few steps" rather than the more popular cousin of this phrase "at the click of a button". The problem though is that, hence empowered, I have no idea of what to do with that power. And its precisely here that I would like to take a Jab at our political system and at the world in general...The people in power more often than not don't know how to use that power constructively. And thus as a living proof of that, I wandered the great halls filled with books from all walks of life unable to decide on what I should be looking for. Finally the cobwebs in my head cleared, and I settled for a piece of Science Fiction by Arthur C. Clarke. Also picked up "The Google Story". I am already halfway through the prior and intend on hitting the library again this weekend to replenish my stock. Current favorite : science fiction.

Criticism!!

2007-12-31T17:07:00.000-05:00

I have posted quiet a few videos on youtube, 5 to be precise and every now and then I keep getting comments on some of them. I got a comment on one of them half an hour back.....and wasn't a really favorable one...in short it said ...I sucked. I diligently blocked the user and removed the comment from my page. Was I right or wrong in doing so...or am I a sore loser who can't take criticism?
Now that I think of it...I really would have liked to go on the profile of that commenter and check out any videos that he/she might have posted and then judge him/her.
Or I am taking all this a tad too seriously....

hell...I am no Superman!!

Colourblind-ed

2007-11-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

Accidentally got hold of a website. It belongs to one of the members, Siddharth Acherakar, of a band named Colourblind. They published their one and only self-titled album back in 1997. I caught hold of the cassette in my early college days from a friend. Played it on and on in the retarded blue and red cassette player which was sort of a hostel whore, it being owned universally by the hostel. The tape was much abused too and I finally lost it somewhere in between times. I am no music critique but I can make out good from bad and these guys were genuinely great. Don know what went wrong but they might have made it big someday. The other guy in fact has. Ram Sampath is a music director of sorts.

Such long lost things cloud the mind with nostalgia as I see myself cruising in my dad's zen, windows open, stereo turned way up, blaring "colourblind". I am contemplating on writing a mail to this guy. His site has a contact address. Just as an appreciation for their effort at doing something great. I have got hold of all the songs again and theirs a video as well on the ubiquitous youtube. The video's abstract and pretty well made I think. Take a look here.

Next up is the effort to play the song . I will be trying to decipher the tabs myself as nothing seems to be available on the net. Much grief and frustration to follow.

Guitar Heaven!!

2007-09-28T10:15:00.000-04:00

The kit is complete. And its high time for the Iron Maidens and Metallicas of this world to stand in awe at the total destruction of their concentrated efforts at greatness. And right about now is when you chip in and say, no dude, why would you say that you'll destroy there music, you play darn well. And I'll give a sheepish grin and say, Well If you say so, because I really don't think I am much of a player. And we live happily ever after with you immune to my playing and I blissful in my ignorance.

Alas, If everything would be that simple,ow beautiful the world would be. But it is not, because NO you are not immune from my playing and YES I am still blissful in my ignorance. I will keep nibbling at your psyche with my attempts on Youtube one song at a time. And if you end up banishing the internet completely, I will hunt you down to the ends of this earth and solar system, my guitar and amps and all in tug, and make you sit and listen to it. And just when you though it was over, I would break that final frontier and make you head bang to it. All this pessimism is the result of my efforts with the kit yesterday night. If just one session could conjure up such reactions, imagine a whole weekend at that. I myself shudder even at the thought. Let us not be self loathsome now and head straight into narcissism. Over the duration of last couple of weeks I have amassed an Epiphone Les Paul Special II electric guitar, a 15 W Epiphone Amp, a couple dozen picks of varied thickness, a Digitech RP150 processor, a headphone so I could listen myself deaf to the combined madness of the aforementioned gear and a good couple of miles of instrument cable so I can trip and re-trip on them everytime I try to move in my apartment. My wife has completely denied from being in the same room as me with the gear and every now and then just throws in the dinner and other assorted food items to my face from the tiny opening in the door. Food , Guitar and me, in no specific order. Bliss!

PS: babe, can you throw-in that bag of chips and some chunky salsa!!

Placid in Pics!

2007-09-06T19:55:00.000-04:00

	Heading into the bubble beater!!
Thats the wing of our yellow plane....while landing back.
	The enchanting mist on the Lake!

Placid Redemption

2007-09-06T13:45:00.000-04:00

I now have a photograph to go with the title of my blog "Road to nowhere...". The photograph is not actually of a road and it does go somewhere, but life's not so straightforward and I have found the hidden meaning of that snap. Whatever that meaning might be. I will be updating my profile with it soon. Or at least post it with this one.

Moving on to the trip that led me to the aforementioned monumental event. I have always been a fan of travelling. And this blog initiated as more of a travelogue than anything else. The photograph seems to have brought me back to my basics. So be it. The preparations for this trip had started way back in the beginning of time when the earth had crawled out as a tiny piece of rock from the primordial soup and my beloved wife was smart enough to figure out then that it would lead to this damn fine trip. The name of the destination is true to its ancient origins. Lake Placid. Funny though we ended up nowhere close to it. We stayed on The Mirror Lake . Whitewater Rafted on The Indian lake. Had breakfast on Saranac Lake. Clicked the 1 millionth snap of the trip on Cascade Lake. Run over some ducks on Tupper Lake. Drove right into the-lake-that-had-no-name. Okie so the last couple of things are obviously not true. And no we didn't click just 1 million snaps, the number was actually close to a billion gazillion. But you get the drift. There's no lake placid in the entire story.

And I just realised that I have killed my entire blog in a genius stroke of sentence construction. I'll play dumb though and pretend I never wrote that ,continuing with my story in chronological order. It was a labor day weekend and it was our holiday, we being bonded labors my wife and myself. So we just thought of going crazy. Started on Saturday morning drove through minor traffic jams while leaving Jersey and entering NY state and listening to all sorts of non-sensible and at times fine music we reached the destination in good time. The last 30 miles were particularly scenic with lakes and mountains and gorgeous valleys and trees with just a hint of yellow to keep us company. First on the agenda was this 20 minute flight in one of those single propeller planes. Our camera died on us so I don't have a snap to show the entire plane. But I have caught a few glimpses of the wings and the views from the plane as proof. It was a bright yellow colored cute little thing, swaying and holding its own in the brisk winds of Adirondack valley. We had a birds eye view of the North and South Lake Placid, the tear drop shaped origin of the Hudson river and the two highest mountains of the region among the other things. Here's the website for anyone interested.

Scenic flight....check.

Found a decent Italian place right across our hotel. I am maintaining my distance with fowl, so I opted for the pasta with shrimp. The next few minutes were just slurps and burps with both my wife and myself forgetting existence of the other and just hogging. It was the only meal of our day. Tanks full, we took a leisurely stroll on the banks of the Mirror Lake. It was a little chilly and we had caught the glimpse of the indoor heated pool and jacuzzi in the Hotel while checking in. Ever the Desis to utilise the facilities offered to the fullest we quickly headed to the artificially heated pool. Nature be damned its payback time for the hotel for charging us exorbitant amounts of money.

Swimming Pool and Jacuzzi...check.

Sunday started early and was worth all the effort. The views from the hotel patio were breathtaking. Fog hanging over the picturesque Mirror lake and the baby orange of the sun's first rays illuminating it was fascinating. Drove almost 2 hours to reach Indian Lake. The drive is meant to be done on a motorcycle with its curving roads of highs and lows. I so missed my ThunderBird. In fact there was a Harley Convention scheduled for Monday in Lake Placid so there were bikes a-plenty of all sizes , shapes and color with their ever the dude riders. We crossed so many different lakes on our way with view after view of serene beauty that there was no point keeping track of the names. Next up was a hunt for the White water Rafting gig. I being ever the lazy bum had skipped the reservations hoping that we being the erstwhile Queen and King of the Kingdom of Lazistan would be treated to a royal welcome and club class seats to the raft. Welcome it surely was with No Vacancy signs hanging all around. I quickly tapped into my reserve of good luck and evil mixed together and stole the berths of not 2 but 3 unsuspecting desis whose only crime was to follow IST(Indian Standard Time) and arriving an hour late. My wife allayed my fears of eternal damnation by rightly pointing that we have already sinned enough to be dispatched to hell and back 3 times over and this act of pure evil would only prove to be a confirmation of our tickets to the same. Speaking of hell, my wife again raised an interesting point. The all mighty sentries at the gates must sure have changed their requirements to enter the cozier part of after life namely heaven because if not with the exponential rise of sins committed these days, heaven must be a really empty place. Damn Sure it must be. And now I would like to officially put a disclaimer on the views expressed on the existence of heaven, hell , afterlife so an so forth as views expressed solely by my wife and the blog and author thereof holding no responsibility for the same. So we made the cut and were on board a rattling bus to this launching point for rafts armed with life jackets and big blue and yellow pedals. There was quiet a bee line of rafts to enter the water before us.

The White Water Rafting part was quiet a roller coaster ride. Scary and apprehensive to begin with, exhilarating and immense fun there on and dragging in the end. I was donning the lead position in the raft and it was like an (Inter)National Integration convention in the boat. A couple from Canada, a family of 4 originally from Romania settled in Maryland , the instructor and navigator a local and my wife and myself the desis temporarily settled in Jersey. All of us were just settling in the raft when to every ones surprise the Romanian girl decided to take a dip in the water and made a lunge for it. No she wasn't suicidal. Life saved 1, scared like hell - priceless. Quiet a lot of good rapids followed and thankfully there were no more lunges in the water from anyone else. Also swam in the slower parts of the river and jumped into the water from the top of a rock good 15ft above water. They called it the bubble beater, everyone else called it the whirlpool of drowning. It was one monster of a rapid just pulling everyone under and pounding them hard. We did a good 4-5 rotations under the swirling water before escaping unharmed with the loss of just a pedal. The water gradually died down and we were almost stagnant for a good part of a couple of hours. This was the dragging part of the whole thing. To top it off were the lifeless jokes of our navigator. But better sense prevailed, everyone jumped in to share their own sense of humor and we finished the expedition on a very happy note and great bonding. The navigator was very good at what she was supposed to do but a tad sad with the sense of humor part. No ones perfect after all.

White Water Rafting.....Sore bum and aching body but check definitely.

Came back, opted for yet another pasta, more slurping, lesser talking, only meal of the day again. Slept like there was no tomorrow. There were no specific plans for Monday and we had to check out by 11 in the morning. Did some lazy walks around the Winter Olympic Centre of Lake Placid, clicked a few more snaps, did some long-sought-after-faded-black-jeans shopping from the gap Outlet in the vicinity and headed for Sarnac Lake for our breakfast. It was on the way back from Sarnac Lake that the monumental photograph was clicked on a rarely used railway line heading into nowhere and coming from nowhere.

Fought through crazy traffic on our way back into Jersey to finish of what we had started. And finally my dearest wife candidly said that she kinda had fun this time around. Thanku thanku dear lady, finally you liked something that I planned.

Fine trip ....check , check and check!!

PS : A few snaps to follow. I just couldn't resist the urge to post at least a couple of the gazillion ones that I have been talking about all along.

Withered in Chicago..

2007-08-30T10:42:00.000-04:00

Back from Chicago. I am now officially looking for a big city that's land locked and is not located on the shores of an ocean. And yes, I count lake Michigan as an ocean because its just plain stupid to name a water body as large as that , a lake. I have visited San Fransisco , Boston , NY City , now Chicago, Orlando. Okie so the last one doesn't count, but I have to show the numbers to make my point, so I'll keep it there. Apart from the ocean view, there are very many things that are common to these cities and especially the downtown areas. Each has a couple of really really HIGH rises, which invariably have an observatory on the 86th, 91st ,106th floors, take your pick, with a breathtaking view of the surroundings for nocturnal and general viewing pleasures. Each has a huge public open space, NYC has central park, Chicago has Grant Park which the respective locals claim to be the best ever in the history of mankind. Each has a boat cruise that goes around the city inducing ohhhs and ahhhs from the unsuspecting commuters for the absolutely amazing skyline that the city has to offer. And all of them claim to be the hubs of culture and trade, every last one of them people. The unseen, namely the LA's and San Diego's and Seattle's might be no different either. But I guess its the subtle differences in this similarity that attract the hoards of tourists to throng to these cities. NYC has its times square. San Fransisco has its Golden Gate Bridge. Chicago has its Navy Pier.
I just can't stop myself from making this comparison now. Even if this just stems from my inner vice in proving that why India is better. Indian cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangaloroo or whatever its name is ,are poles apart from each other in all respects. Though each of them is a cosmopolitan with people of all backgrounds calling it their home every one of them has its own distinct localized influence. May it be with the dialect, the food, the commute or the people themselves. Mumbai has its bhel puri, bambiyaa slangs ,and the infamous locals. Delhi has its chole bhature, its clean hindi obscenities, and the deadly blue line buses. Kolkata has its macher jhol, nomoshkaar, and the trams. So on and so forth. They are all so different and so rich in their own distinct cultures.

Coming back to Chicago though. It indeed is a beautiful place and I liked it a lot. The current visit was an official trip but it also was a reconnaissance mission on behalf of my strategic command post in jersey city, read my wife. The foot soldier had gone to scout for locations to plunder in Chicago and the foot part was proved right to the T. I am literally half an inch shorter than my original height due to all the walking that I have done in that one afternoon and evening. I stand now at 5' 11 and a half ''. Yes I am not a 6 footer now.

PS: Neha dearest ignore the strategic command post line, you are no tyrannical general. I don't know who wrote that part. I love you!!

Aftereffects...

2007-08-15T15:33:00.000-04:00

The concert proved thoroughly entertaining, so thorough in fact that I couldn't pen down the experience for a week. Now that the week has passed and the stars have aligned in their pristine glory for an auspicious date and time, I forge ahead with typing down all of it.

I have already forgotten quiet a few details , so I might make up stuff, just to add to the excitement.

It was a late Saturday afternoon on a quiet sunny NJ day, when I began the road trip down to lets call it Bryandale NJ because I don't seem to recall the exact name of the place and I don't have the inclination to actually look it up. Because there in an obvious chance that I might lift off on a tangential journey from there on and never come back to edit this post again. So the show was supposed to begin at 6.30 in the evening, but the utter enthusiast (read over zealous and stupid) that I am managed to reach the place a good hour and a half before. Now my fellow concert goers had informed me that I should expect bunch of people camping in the parking lot besides enormous SUV's of this country blaring Bryan's songs on there stereos. To my utter surprise it was all true with just a minor glitch , they were playing songs of some thorogood guy rather than Bryan who happens to be a big rock N roll star from the yesteryear's. WTF, I thought, we are at the wrong place and its good that we were smart enough to come early. Now we can still reach the right place without being late. It turns out we were at the right place and Bryan was supposed to play AFTER this thorogood guy. So in the spirit of the concert I tried to wade through my minds library for any songs that might resonate with the name thorogood. None. Deep breaths, breathe in, breathe out, don't panic. You might still be able to salvage this. I tried to listen in to the songs that were being played across the parking lot, and after a few agonizing minutes I could make out the sounds of a couple of songs, most notably, Bad to the bone with flash of a leather bound Arnold Schwa$@*#&& , whatever his surname is, stepping out of a dilapidated bar in T2 and Moving on Over with no such flashes. Hi Fives and punches in the air. I won't be sitting like a jackass in the concert. There were serpentine queues on the entry gates, me being the head of one of the serpents thanks to the lead time. We were at the concert arena well before Bryan had ever thought of singing in the first place in his native Canada. Lawn chairs secured, sleeping bags rolled in front, umbrellas over our head, did I mention Mr Sun himself had come down half a distance just to scorch people that day, we were all set. Bring on Mr Thorogood. It took a good part of an hour for any live action to start on the stage but around me there was no dearth of action. Plenty of kids crying, guys getting drunk already and women who should never have worn anything less than a circus tent parading in skimpy clothes. Ohh the horror. But the actual action turned out to be pleasantly melodious with guitars riffs flying through the air and pounding drums getting the beat going raising my rock crazy spirit. A fitting opening act, I must say, to the amazing music that was to follow. It cemented my belief that a live act far supersedes anything recorded and even if you are listening to it for the first time in your life. Enough said.

Finally Bryan arrived on stage with There ll never be another tonight and the crowd erupted. The set list went something like this:

Can't stop this thing we started
I need somebody
Kids wanna rock
Life is an open road
18 till I die
Let's make a night to remember
Back to you
Summer of 69
Everything I do
Cuts like a knife
Baby when you re gone (with the person from the crowd)
Its only love
Heaven
Only thing that looks good on me
Run to you
Straight from the heart
All for love

In fact this is the precise set list because I was typing it down on my blackberry during the concert. The gifts of technology I tell you. I was singing along throughout minus the time I spent typing that is. Bryan did his customary "call-a-person-from-the-crowd-and-make-her-sing" routine, which has been duly noted in the set list. Damn I am good!
In all a divine experience which I would definitely like to repeat with other monks of the business namely, St. Metallica, Guru Iron Maiden and others in the upper echelons of Rock divinity. The setting would have been complete if I would have come back and played a couple of the above mentioned songs on my guitar, but alas the sleeping monster in me awoke and St Bryan had to migrate to my dreams.

PS : The thorogood guy actually has a name. He goes by George Thorogood and is accompanied by the Destroyers. And he is thoroughly good.

Bard and Bryan.

2007-08-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

In my perennial hunt for the weird on the net and the world in general, I came across this. Its added on my personalized google page as a daily dose of Shakespearean Insults. I sincerely do not understand 99% of them , but then an insult is not meant to be understood in the first place rather its meant to be thrown at you in disgust and its supposed to hurt you. I quote the Bard :

"Thou caluminous dismal-dreaming flirt-gill!"

Now it doesn't sound that bad does it, nothing that could make your blood boil and seep out of your ears in the form of molten lava. Thats the beauty of language. Whats one linguists heaven could be the others hell ,so on and so forth.

Speaking of another kind of language, the language of music. I am off to a Bryan Adams concert tomorrow night. As it happens to be the case ,my first post on this blog was inspired by a Bryan Adams number. So all the madness on this blog over the last 2 something years could simply be blamed on him. Looking forward to having a good time.

Bored

2007-08-02T15:10:00.000-04:00

What does bored to death mean? Let's see what it could possibly imply :

1) That you are bored and you wanna die. Okie now here I have justed picked up the keywords of the question, put them in a mixer added a few other words like that,and etc. and just let the motor of the mixer do the sentence formation. So this is obviously as correct an explanation as the answer to one of the essay type questions in your civics paper.

2) That you were killed by a hole drilled in your body. Now that sure is quiet a possible meaning in a horror flick. But lets not get into imaginary perverts and their drilling machines. Its too gory a picture.

3) Another one from the mixer. The person sitting next to you in a train is a chatter box and he has been going on and on ,like all chatter boxes have the legal right to do, about how his job sucks and his wife is cheating on him and the neighbors dog shits in his lawn and so an so forth and the only ray of hope, as you see it, to survive from this excruciating mental torture is to die and go to heaven. Okie hell for you. Yes we are getting close.

But lets not get too close to the actual meaning lest we offend the phrase and it in turn accepts one of the above mentioned explanations and in the process dies.

PS : I am bored to death, whatever that means. You happy now Mr. Phrase?

Observe

2007-08-01T13:21:00.001-04:00

After reading umpteen blogs, I have finally come to a conclusion and thus the reason for the infrequency of my blogs. I don't observe enough. I just don't notice things happening around me.That and a copious amount of laziness. yupp, thats about it.I degress though, people on the other hand have mastered the art of observing and taken it many a nothches higher by adding the garnish of their imaginations on it and keybording it down into some darn funny blogs. I have always considered myself a "funny guy" per se and it really hurts my ego to know that my capability of tormenting people with my raunchy humour is being laid to waste just by the virtue of my being non observent. shame on me. So off I go about denouncing myself and dusting out those non - observent eye glasses of mine.

I observe so I blog :

1) That I can time how late I am for work by observing the clock. No that would have been a horrible PJ. Actually I can time it by observing the position(you pervert!!), ok distance of a fine young lady from the PATH station. Of I catch her at the entrance I am spot on time, if on the outside steps then I will be missing that 3rd bagel from the street vendor, if while crossing the road then there goes my 7th position in the line for the office coffee machine...so on and so forth. And okay, I am obsessed with food.

2) That just today I saw a guy tearing out a small piece of paper from the road side flyer for writing a number. Buddy haven't you stolen enough post-its and spiral notebooks from the office stationary room to start a dollar store of your own. Its a piece of marketing dammit , don't treat it as your personal stationary.

3) That the steel rimmed shades that I have been much proudly donning lately are favoured more by the opposite sex. I have spotted atleast 7 different ladies sporting them. I stopped counting thereafter just out of shame.

4) That more often than not, I end up having a walkathon with my fellow un-suspecting commuters who are merely crawling to and from their way home. And I treat it as a personal challenge if a person walks past and ahead of me, promptly overtaking him even if I have to make a dash for it, thereby re-establishing my supremacy on all people walking.

5) And now to epitomize by observing qualities, it has come to my notice that lack of a keen eye on my part is solely attributed to the blackberry that dangles from my belt, which more often than not is in my hands with my eyes fixated on it reading the antics of one Mr Jason Bourne in Honk Kong and thereby vanchiting (pardon the parallel slaughter of 2 great languages here) me from the amazing experiences of the NY subway.

PS : All the people who don't use the NY subway have real dull lives.

Coasting Along...

2007-07-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

I am in an existential phase these days. Living for the moment kind of stuff. As if I was ever the visionary. Infact I have never thought beyond a couple of weeks bar a few momentus occasions in my life. I am more the "take life as it comes" kind of a guy. But its always good to start a blog emphatically, it gives the reader that sense of greatness. All Bull!

So to the existensial things that crave for my attention these days, in no cronological or any specific kind of order for that matter of fact.

Shares : Good portion of my work day. And minor portion of the remaining is spent on various sites in further varying degrees of information on the latest in stocks. In one of those bar occasions that I think of the future, I see myself chucking this I(dio)T job and retiring to this crazy market governed life. I keep reminding my biwi on my ideas of retiring early and she keeps shrugging them off like Federer lobbing his opponents ball for clean winners. My dear wife, I just might prove to be your Nadal on clay off course!!

Guitar : The quinessential pass time, major source of bouts with my biwi and a source of eternal happiness for me. Trying to play out a few Indian Classical Ragas on it these days. With help from my dad sending in mp3's from India to listen and learn from and a few youtube videos here and there. Quiet a mix. The conflict arising from the fact that the guitar equally competes for my attention with neha. Well, so many fans so little time!! But she rules eventually, because she has the power of emotions you know.

My beloved wife Neha : This ones a shade too existential, infact my existense depends on her. Literally. Perennial source of pleasure and pain. I am a non efficient, lazy bum in her eyes and she consistently tries to straighten me out, but me ever the survivor, prevail with my lazy ways. The battle rages on !!

Add to that a few blogs that I follow, occasional movies, card playing sessions with neha, and regular "against my wish" visits to the Mall, that about sums it all.

Not bad at all, huh ??

Another techno

2007-05-30T18:07:00.000-04:00

This ones coming from my new blackberry. Although there isn't anything terribly interesting to write home about , writing on a blackberry and posting via email in itself is a worthy topic. So let me keep it short and sweet this time around. But there would be bigger and badder ones following this one.

Cheers..

buy, buy, buy!!

2007-05-10T13:51:00.000-04:00

The Indian Stock Market is at its dizzying highs and investors across the board are holding their breath in anticipation for the pitfall with the bears or a rally with the bulls. This last statement of mine is a mixed bag of cliches and jargons, which a few years back would have meant zilch to a good percentage of population in India. But thanks to the ever mushrooming 24X7 news channels and other unsolicitated and un-sought after sources, its fast becoimg a part of everyday lingo. Atleast in the tiny little subset of people I interact with on a regular basis. Money , as usual, is the source of all the limelight. Infact make it obscene amounts of money which has attracted people from all walks of life into this dangerous business of share trading. I have been brought up in a conservative family, wherein all business is evil and share trading in particular is the absolute sin. The notority reinforced by the likes of Mr. Harshad Mehta who were making the spectacular headlines when I was growing up.

Things have changed since then, I myself have been trading for the past couple of years, with a non-noticable change in bank balance and a few un-realized gains in my portfolio to boast of. As in most of my recent adventures the partner of crime in this one too is one Mr Rathore. He introduced me to the game. I have been changing gears lately, first I went solo and now I have a new partner, my beloved wife. Though Mr. Rathore has taken a forced sabbatical for a few days, hes just lurking around to re-enter.

Now my beloved, she-who-dreams-of-an-MBA-someday is someone who approaches this with quiet a bit of enthusiasm. I pretend to be the cool , sauve guy with all the gyaan. I personally never started trading as a means of making money. It was more of a thrill , the rush that it gave with every antics of the stocks that you owned. And it was mostly governed by the hot tips from anonymous analysts and friends that trggered the buying and selling of a particular stock. Although the hot tips are still quiet sought after today too, there is an analysis (although very basic) which gets added post the hot tip. And I have a relatively stable portfolio to show that off.

All said and done, this business of trading equities looks to be a permanent fixture of my life in the near future and a source of many a heated discussions adding another colour to my already rainbow(ish) married life.

God save the markets!!

Blues inspired generation analysis

2007-04-27T11:02:00.000-04:00

It was a fine Monday morning, sunny and warm. Summer seemed to had finally arrived, but the following days have greatly diminished any thoughts of summer whatsoever. Slowly the elements have bailed out, Tuesday it was the sun, Wednesday it was the warmth...so on and so forth and finally today that is Friday, its raining cats and dogs. An absolute nightmare of a day, especially if you are to get up at 7.30 in the morning to get ready for a glum day at your desk in the office. Days like this are meant to be spent in the warmth of the bed or the cuddle of your couch, watching the downpour from your windows, sipping on a cup of hot tea, munching on assorted pakoras and basically being a lazy bum. Its at times like these that I hate my job. Although this is just one of the other countless reasons for hating it. Rather an addition to the already long list. Duely noted.

Life has yet again settled into its monotonous best. I can, in fact now spend my entire day with my eyes closed. Although I might trip and fall a couple of times , but you get the drift. I wake up every day at the same time, get ready, wear the same clothes (as in the same set of clothes in a cycle and no I don stink cause I use a deo stick!!), eat the same breakfast cereal, take the same route to the office, do the same (no) work, start for home at approximately the same time, basically the whole cycle. Not that I don like it or something ,but its just that at times its just plain sad. I seem to lack a certain degree of passion in life. I look at my father and at his age he is still so full of energy. Not that he is too old. But I figured that as you get older you might start losing interest. Not him. And me, I am still officially in the prime of my youth and all I can think about is sleeping and lazing. I look around and find that I am not too different from most of the folks my age. I guess we have degernated with the passing generations.

So I am not be blamed for my utter love for lethargy , its the damn generation gap!!

Chalta hai....

2007-03-23T10:07:00.000-04:00

On my way to work today, the subway was a tad too crowded for comfort. No comparisions to the records set by the crowds in the mumbai locals, but by NY standards it was obnoxious. We could still accomodate a few here and there, but the reactions of people onboard got me thinking. There is a basic difference between these people and us indians. There might be a hundred other and I might have witnessed another hundred , but right now I am talking about this specific one. tolerance and accomodation. 2 words, but with essentially the same meaning. I was just trying to emphasize the difference here.

I understand personal space and all that bull crap of words these guys come up with, but what harm does the nudge of a tiny little bag of a lady do to you, who like you is just trying to reach her office on time. We could have picked up a lot more people from the platforms had this been a churchgate bound local. The difference I guess is situational. We have so many people in India that we don have the liberty of personal space, or for that matter any space. We are inadvertently invading spaces all the time in India. Its our "chalta hai" attitude towards life that just presses us to go that extra mile when it comes to accomodation.Someone steps on your well polished shoes, "chalta hai", because you know you had done the very same thing to atleast 10 different people on your way. Someones parked in your parking space in the society "chalta hai", you will park in someone else's space. Big deal. It really isn't big enough a matter to spend your precious energies on.

And thats what so cool about desh....everthing goes...."sab chalta hai!!"

PS : I love empty spaces and un-crowded places though. Infact, who doesn't.

Settling Expenses!

2007-03-22T10:32:00.001-04:00

Have been settling down in life for the last couple of weeks...and should be almost complete by this saturday when the futon, tables and bar stools are delievered and assembled in my apartment.Almost ,because as any other money consuming activity its ongoing and never seems to end. So now the settling down expense stands roughly at 1000+ $'s including the TV, the other futon and the above mentioned 3 items. Now I could have got away with all that expense, the entire thing, if I had just opted for the demeaning option. Now the demeaning part is a figmnet of my beloved wife and my buddy Rathore's imaginations. I call it a grant.In the US they have this concept of dumping most if not all of your belongings minus the clothes, when you are moving to a newer place. Its sound logic because the moving expenses are far greater than buying the whole stuff afresh, not to mention the hard physical labor associated with. Mind you the hired help here is astronomically costly. So they dump it in and around the dust bins and every now and then the dustbins become virtual megastores of all you can pick without the hassel of paying for it.Now whats wrong with it. You wan't it , they don't. Perfectly simple equation. Apparently not because there's some stupid thing called human pride that comes into the picture. Damn the philosophers for inventing these stupid concepts.
But I extract my revenge by keeping the TV on for the entire humanly possible time and once the TV shuts off, I am on the futon sleeping my way to glory. Take that for pride!!

PS: Well I do secretly love to use all the new stuff. But thats only when I have the temporal amnesia and I can't remember that they all cost me.

Changing Lives..

2007-03-06T22:39:00.000-05:00

This really is a reaction to what rathore has written today.....its literally an echo of what I was a few sundays back. A lonely bored guy with a light at the end of the tunnel or a silver lining in the otherwise grey cover of clouds to look forward to as rathore puts it ....But I am no more that guy, I have reached the light at the end of my tunnel and its not a freight train coming my way....but its the sun shining happily on me.
And today I can sit and reflect back on a conversation which rathore and myself had a few days back......about certain things in life that we love so much. This post was suppose to happen at least those many days back...but better late than never...at the least for this one thing. It started off with rathore posting me something like this....

"We were still 2 kms away from entering mahabaleshwar when a guy caught us near a checkpoint. He was a hotel owner (Actually, owner of 4 cottages). Although it was a little outside from the main town, we still decided to give it a chance as he was promising everything on earth for a paltry sum of 200 bucks!! The cottage was not bad at all. Everything except a TV was there and we were not bothered by its absence. After all who the hell was there to watch Kyonki saas bhi..!! By this time our asses were crying for mercy. We planned a short nap of 1 hr and fell on the bed in more or less same condition in which we entered the room."

...which I instantly recognized as the lines from one of his blogs about our journeys. And then another bit of an excerpt. And suddenly we were all nostalgic, reiterating the fondest of our trip memories in chronological , or not so chronological order . One thing led to another and for the umpteenth time we were talking about chucking up everything to become traveling journos for 'Travel and Living' and working as camera technicians for the Discovery channel. We have somehow stuffed the adventurer in us in a closet and every now and then we try and take the sneakiest of peaks at what is the best in us.....and bask in its glory. Who knows we someday might actually end up doing it or may be not. But whenever we are down and out...we can look back at those wonderful driving blogs, read them aloud and remember our days in the sun, out of the dingy light of this laptop.
Cheers to us rathore!!

Maximum Dreams!!

2007-02-11T10:06:00.000-05:00

Another week has gone by and my married status now stands at 2 weeks. I could be celebrating all the stupid kinds of anniversaries at this point which newly wed or madly in love couples tend to celebrate so much, the weekly , the fortnightly, the monthly , the quarterly, lest not forgetting the actual annual flavor. These people can celebrate every day sighting some sort of an obtuse relation with the D-day. But its 2 to tango, a couple and I am alone here....I have no time to celebrate such trivialities, I am single mindedly concentrating on getting her on board before we take off on our journey into the vast ,unknown and turbulent seas of gruhasth ashram.

With that part of my life taken care of, theres' just another .0001% left to my life right now. And that I am using to write this blog. Have been doing a lot of reading lately. At one point of time I was simultaneously reading 3 books, but sanity prevailed and I opted for the linear rather than the simultaneous approach to book reading. So then I am finished with Maximum City and have turned towards Losing my Virginity. Both I must say are thoroughly engaging. The former more so because I could actual relate to a lot of it. Not in the first person but as a bystander being witness to the great chaos called Mumbai. The author has churned up engaging portraits , to such an extent that my dreams at one point had taken the style of a narrative of Suketu Mehta describing one of his many sub plots. It tells a hell lot of stories but in the end the book still makes you think and thats why I liked it so much. The latter is what I have currently at hand and on my reading table (lap).

My life lately has been rather dreamy , the month long leave, my wedding, amazing times with my love before it. And the present is not happening enough to pull me out of my dream land of the past. So here I am sitting back in a bean bag of my dreams...kicking back and relaxing.

trans..

2007-02-04T05:14:00.000-05:00

Its 5 O' clock in the morning and I am wide awake, typing away at the keyboard , chatting with a long time friend of mine,have already called up my bibi and am now in transit ,waiting for her to appear online.She was spot on time and an hour and a half later I am back to writing what I had started. My life has been monumentally changed in the last month or so that I was in India. But more than that I have come back with a host of amazing new experiences which I plan to gradually pen down and immortalize.
First things first though, this one is purely about the jet lagged , dead tired from traveling, dazed and confused , sad me.
Jet lagged as I have landed in Ammrica just last evening and my body 's is still working according to the indian clock which means its in the sunday evening mode...far far away from sleep.
Dead tired of travelling cause I have been travelling for the last 36 hrs straight, in various means of transportations. the train ride from bhopal to mumbai which started at an human 4.30 in the morning on friday, with luggage sufficient enough for a small european country to migrate. Traveling the entire day thankfully in a 2nd AC with intermittent bouts of drugged sleep. Then the unearthly cab drive from dadar station to borivali, which lasted nearly the same duration as the train journey minus the AC and plus the screeching noise and total chaos around, and even costing almost the same amount as the train journey.
Dazed and confused/Sad as I am back in this firangi land with zilch of an idea of what i am gonna do here. Its almost like a trance state for now. The month long vacation seems to have just vanished into thin air, with no effect what so ever on my life. Its just like a dream that I had today. And the worst part I am still talking on the darn fone with my heroin who is now my wife with whom I should have been honeymooning right now....

Nail biting beginning...

2007-01-02T00:30:00.000-05:00

Every now and then I wonder what my blog is about. I mean I have read various blogs across the spectrum talking passionately about an event which is publicly huge, politics , sports...getting the drift, but when I come back and read my posts, they all seem to lack a purpose to them, in the sense that my posts always revolve around myself, my misadventures , my likes , dislikes. But then again if its my blog, its got to be about me...anyways...so much for the random ramblings of an edgy mind.

Am in the middle of a stupidly extended long weekend here...even tomorrows a leave for me. Its Jan 1st today, beginning of yet another year...yet another set of 365 days of joys, disastors, victories, defeats and things we might never have seen before...ever.Time is a real funny thing, in the sense that it isn't something tangible, yet its omnipresent...twisting and moulding each and every life. For some its too fast, for some its too slow , for some its too bad, others too good, and there s no escape from it.None what so ever. This new year for me signifies a mammoth change, the end of an era so to say (the last line is courtesy FRIENDS). And it seems the enormity of the change has started to dawn upon me gradually, primary reason I guess for my edginess.

PS : I am wrapping up my nomadic belongings in jersey for a month...India here I come.

(N)Ice Fall...

2006-12-20T19:33:00.000-05:00

Another weekend has set upon me, and with it a couple more days have vanished from my so called "countdown to extinction". I ended up visiting Boston though.

Since the late night thanksgiving excursion to NYC, watching people skate their heart out in the ice skating rink at Bryant Park, I was itching for my own first bout with ice and my wish was to be fulfilled this time. I reached the "Frog Pond" after a rather loooong walk in the Boston downtown. I have no idea why the skating rinks are called ponds here, and further clueless about the frog part in this one. Whatever the case , may the frogs rest in their frozen graves in the pond!! Well there I was ,about to enter the skating area, with a zilch of an idea about ice skating in particular and any other forms of skating in general. Though as a by stander it didn't look like some rocket science.In fact it looked fairly easy, and pretttty cool, people doing all sorts of antics to top it all. But the moment I stepped on the ice, it was pretty clear to me that I may not be able to do this ....ever. Hanging to my dear life which in this case was the fence surrounding the pond, I succeeded in making a complete ass out of myself to start with. But then as I started getting the laps under my belt , it dawned upon me that may be at some point in time even I might be able to do it. The dead frogs must surely have had a laugh riot in their graves watching my antics over their heads for those 3 hours. But in the end when I finally got out of my skating boots all blue and black, I was really thrilled by the experience, it was like learning to walk all over again. Although I am really not sure of my own reactions when I first learned to walk ages ago, alas I was too young to remember.

My tryst with snow and ice is gonna continue this weekend too when I hit the real thing. I am going skiing for the Christmas break. Wish me so that I may return victorious , conquering the Pocono Mountains.

Escape...Again!!

2006-12-10T18:43:00.000-05:00

Twice in a day is something…but I have my reasons and they are compelling enough for me to write this one too and post it today itself. And yes, I am going to write about the so called compelling reasons here.
At the time of posting the last one, when I went to my page to cross check if everything was alright, there staring right into my face was the date today December 10th. And then it struck me, that it is kinda special today. Well apart from my best pal Sunit’s birth day, someone else has got older today. My ThunderBird. My beloved bike. It’s completing its 2 years in my ownership, albeit on paper for most of the time. But we have had our fair share of moments together and we do have that chemistry thing going, Sufficient enough that I refer it as a companion. I remember writing a post for the same reasons last year, in fact right after I put this one up, I will go and read it.
It is kinda strange though how an inane object can become so special for someone. And I am not being weird here when I call my bike a companion or something, most if not all of us have certain non – living things they feel very close too. I will stick to my gender here, because the fairer sex I truly fail to understand, they almost seem to operate in a parallel universe which although has the same physical and psychological appearance but still has an entirely different set of laws governing it, definitely not Newtonian. Most of the guys are very touchy about there motorbikes, me obviously being one of them, some have their computers/laptops and so on and so forth. And it’s not just the sense of ownership that I am talking about here. It’s the feeling of being one with the thing. Almost love.
And so now that I have entirely digressed from the topic that I had originally had in mind, I will put in my closing remarks. And in that I would like to quote myself….
”And the world was my play ground so to say….and from that day on it has become my escape…”

PS : Although my fingers are aching now, its Fade to Black on the guitar right now!!

Four Leaf Clover...

2006-12-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Listening to No Leaf Clover, original composition by Metallica, re-recorded on acoustic by none other than yours faithfully. The daring feat was performed on a late Friday night a couple of days ago. Since the time I have started to learn this amazing instrument known as the guitar, I have always wanted to play these insane riffs, and now to be able to pluck at least a few of them is quiet a high for me. And I am such a self obsessed guy, and a proud one at that, that although I have shared one of these recordings with a few of my friends, I would prefer to keep all the others as a private collection. Its quiet a kick when someone praises you, but then its kinda silly, if you need someone else’s praise to recognize you. So although I may not practice the above statement to the core, it’s still the thoughts that matter, don’t they??

On other fronts, finished watching Doogie Howser, M.D., kinda old TV show, one of my favorites from my Star TV crazy days, when it used to be purely in English. For the ignorant it’s a story about a teenage prodigy, a genius, so to say doctor and his brushes with childhood, adolescence and maturity. I liked it a lot back then and I still stand by my choice.

I am heading towards a big milestone in life, and everything seems to bending towards it right now, it’s a countdown to extinction as I like to state it. It sounds sort of cool, primarily and secondly its partially true, my single status is an endangered species right now and there are no chances of preserving it, the damage has been done and there s no saving it. I might sound that I am fretting about it but I am actually not. It would be a new beginning, a clean slate and 2 sets of hands to write on it.

PS: Trying to play Seek & Destroy, another Metallica classic.

blues and blacks and whites and greys...

2006-10-08T22:18:00.000-04:00

On board a San Francisco bound flight. It’s an official trip so to say but for me it’s off for a week from the usual office grind. Was having a long long talk with my sweetie after check in and before boarding. She is majorly blue these days and I really don blame her for it. Neither can I blame myself, well at least partially. It’s more situational rather than consequential I guess. I gave her all sorts of pieces of my mind, which I seem to have in abundance. That’s purely my perception though. But I guess whatever I say would ultimately mean zilch because it’s her life and she knows best. But I know she looks up to me with those dreamy eyes of her for support and all she can see is a dumb pic of mine or even worse the cell phone in her hand. And it’s been like that for more than a year now. I may have the magic wand in my hand in the sense that I can just make all her blues vanish in a puff of dust, but then life’s not a fairytale.

Holiday!

2006-09-28T10:19:00.000-04:00

It’s a Thursday and I am sitting at home in the peak office hours. Reason, I am not well you know. This weird NY weather has caught up with me. One fine day it would be chilling winter winds the other bright and sunny and on cusp of breaking a sweat. The ailment per se that I have caught is called “garam – sard” in poetic Hindi. Literally translated “hot - cold”. Sounds fluke, but don’t blame me for the naming conventions. The standards have already been patented by the likes of Munshi Premchand and Mahashweta Devi. Okay that’s all crap! Bottom-line, I am cozily perched up on my sofa typing away on word and my guitar lying right next to me. Bliss!

Holidays are luxury commodities for IT professionals like me. Because although we might just be breaking office chairs while searching weird terms on google during our usual so called busy work day. It’s the number of hours of this chair breaking work that the client pays us for. And so our managers insist that in the spirit of the company we should spend the maximum of our lives in the office, in sickness or health, till death do us part types. I won’t go into the dynamics of how our companies make money and why the client pays us for this high-end work, because that’s way beyond my comprehension.

Back on track, what’s the POA for today? For the ignorant POA stands for Plan of Action. First and foremost lots of rest, lest I forget I am on a sick leave. Then there’s this guitar tutorial that I have bought, couple of chapters to be covered in that. Write a blog.Well I am already writing one so that’s taken care of. Cook a nice lunch, afternoon tea, a nap may be. Basically chill.

And that’s an FYI. Go figure that out for yourselves.

Slam Dunkin

2006-09-17T22:34:00.000-04:00

Was sitting in a Dunkin Donuts this evening, sipping on a tall rather very tall plastic cup of Iced Latte, which seemed to be missing sugar in it and there were these flyers of back to school hanging around over the head here and there from the ceiling. FYI…it’s the beginning of the school season here in the US after the long summer breaks. Back to the flyers, they read quiet a lot of stuff including welcome backs and animated books of math and the works thrown in for the spice. One thought led to another and soon I was thinking when I last studied those subjects and for the matter of fact any subject. I was trying hard to remember myself studying anything…any darn thing; I just couldn’t picture myself at all. Has it really been that long? As in it’s hardly a couple of years, okay, 3 to be precise. But then it’s not entirely a time thing you see. I really haven’t studied much in my life. In school I used to be on my bicycle perennially, partially because my best buddies used to live miles away from my place and secondly because I just loved it. School was a breeze, with the assemblies and the long sunny corridors, where I used to run around chasing or being chased, the chemistry labs, the falling pens in the bio labs to sneak under the tables and just like that I was in college. Away from home for the first time, alone per se, though I never got to be alone actually. There were freaking 200 other guys like me in the hostel. And another 200 in the other hostel next to ours and at least 100 girls, who used to put up in some hostels a little too far for our liking. Bull…I wasn’t writing about girls.
It’s about the studying part, and its funny I remember one of the tougher of the subjects of all Control Systems. Khiljee saab, the purveyor of the now famous phrase maut ka kua, was the prof .I just saw myself solving those positive and negative feed back loop problems from all those books written by authors with weird names and always russian sounding. Used to love solving them and it was a matter of prestige as to who would get to the farthest problem number on the back of every chapter. It’s really amazing how fast and how far once thoughts can go in a matter of split seconds. I hadn’t even finished my latte yet, and I was already at least 4 years back in time and many thousands miles away in a not so clean hostel room. Although as a foot note, the latte was really humongous.

drizzling rains!

2006-08-27T17:53:00.000-04:00

It’s drizzling outside since morning…and it’s almost night now. One wouldn’t be too lively if that was to happen on a Sunday, getting confined to once home with nothing to do. But albeit this common reaction, I am unusually high spirited. I love the rains when I am not in the path of their fury, and when I have nothing important to do or when I have nowhere to head to. Basically when I am idle and have no compulsion to go out and face it. It’s actually pretty beautiful when it rains. The first rains have their unique charm as that of a first kiss. But the prolonged and repetitive ones have their own unique shade of beauty. It’s like being in love for a long time, when everything is all green and lush in all directions that your eye can see. At least I can relate to this simile.

P.S.: I love this committed status of mine. I might not be with her as of now. But she still raises my spirits.

@&^@^&##@^*&@^

2006-08-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

Picture a father, two daughters and two sons. Three of them married with kids. The fourth one on the verge of holy matrimony. This new development is the centre of his attention for now. And once done he’ll be relieved of all his responsibilities so to say. The stage is set for him to fade away gracefully into his grand old age.

Come into this world as a squiggly wiggly ball of skin. Kid your way to adolescence and puberty. Enjoy the prime in the wild and whacky youth. Work your ass off for a decent life for your so called family in your maturity and then ultimately wash your hands off all this mess that you have made over the years and start the count down for “THE END”.

Is this what it’s all about?

P.S: No Stimuli this time…this one is spontaneous!!

Sinking in the Indian Ocean!

2006-08-19T19:19:00.000-04:00

Another stimuli another post. That’s the trend of my blogs these days.
And this ones not just ‘any’ stimuli, it’s the mother of them all or at least the aunty, to downplay things a little.

Venue: Stamford, Connecticut
Date: 18th August, 06
Time: 8ish in the night.

I enter this dingy looking school complex. No signs of any concert definitely, my 20 bucks have gone down the drain alas! People, going somewhere with purpose. All z not lost after all. Enter this school auditorium and there’s the equipment and the band finally. Indian Ocean. I won’t call myself a hardcore fan at this point, in the sense that I have not heard every single song that they have composed, but I know the famous ones, just enough to appreciate the creativity and come all the way to Connecticut to listen to them. But that is about to change big time.

Start with a sober and serene number, missed the title, and straightaway I am mesmerized. The guitar is amazing and so is the melody. Second one ‘kya maloom’, as Rahul Ram introduces it as the tandaav of a reluctant shiv ji in the midst of the chaotic Kargil War. This one followed by ‘hille le’ and ‘Melancholic ecstasy’. The last one being a pure instrumental and pure gold at it. Reluctantly went for a break, which as Rahul Ram very candidly put as a necessity for the sponsors to make some money and letting them play more. Rushed through the chicken biryani which was surprisingly tasty.
The opener after the break ‘bande’ a haunting number from black Friday followed by ’bhor’ which had one of the best pieces of guitaring I have heard for some time. Time just seemed to fly as we were already down to the last three. ‘Boll weevil’ followed by top 2 songs in that order ‘maa rewa’ and ‘kandisa’ wrapping up the proceedings. The last two were particulary good with amazing improvisations and ingenuity from the band members and couple of jugalbandiis between the base and the drums, the lead and the drums and a unique instrument whose name I don seem to find anywhere and the base was particulary awesome. In all a breathtaking experience so much so that I was standing and clapping all through the second act and ended up, me with mohit and gurudev, to buy the entire collection on sale outside.

I was particularly impressed with the lead guitarist Sushmit Sen, and the bassist and vocalist Rahul Ram, the percussionist Asheem and Amit’s drums. Well what the heck, the entire band. Oozing with talent and still down to earth. I had heard that watching a band live is an altogether different experience and so it is , no doubts about that. Sadly the entire thing was not recorded. I wud have been the first one to buy it.

P.S.: Major kick to my inspiration in mastering the guitar. I already can play Maa Rewa now!!

Book Worm Syndrome

2006-07-15T02:18:00.000-04:00

The feeling of boredom just echoes s with any and everyone I talk to. Another weekend has arrived…and will pass by as in consequentially as it had started. The days pass really quickly here. It’s already more than 4 months since I have been in the US and can’t really believe that it’s already that long.

Have been spending my days working a little lately, and reading novels and stuff before that. Read almost 4 of them in the recent times. Oldies, almost all of them, Michael Crichton. I seem to like his writing a lot. It’s something to do with the technicality of the underlying subject I guess. His penmanship is almost at the edge of sci-fi, if not actually it. Like the one I am reading currently, Timeline has Quantum Physics as the basis of its plot and it talks about real technology that exists and is further under research in the form of Quantum Internet and the likes. Then there s this another one, The Terminal Man, which talks about the immediate dangers of mind control. The Rising Sun, a corporate thriller from the same author. Interesting reading, all of them.

Coincidentally caught hold of a promotional copy of a book called The Anonymous Lawyer. It’s a unique kind of writing. It’s a combination of web logs and mails of a supposedly hi flying lawyer. And it’s full of corporate bull shit and sadistic humor and off course I liked it too.
That’s a lot of reading and more is to follow, because I have a very big stock of material and further time to gobble it up.

PS: Would like to read more of non fiction, but can’t seem to catch hold of anything.

the missing one...

2006-07-11T21:31:00.000-04:00

Sitting yet again at an airport terminal...and heading into yet another country....so now the list after including this one will stand at , lets see...Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, US of A and UK...thats 4 and if you count in the aircraft parking at Paris ,then 5,not bad huh?? This time arnd its a spl trip for a very spl person and for an even special(er)(...if that’s a word) reasons.
Past few weeks have been at times eventful, boring, routine...and somewhere in between. Had a nice little trip to the Niagara falls a couple of weeks back in the august company of goyal family and frnds.Clicked innumerable snaps...infact so many of them...that we eventually got bored of seeing the fall....and at one point in time in the night...were even trying to avoid a glimpse of it. But in all its an exhilarating place....Food for thought....why aren't there any such places in India...well infact there are...and might even be a shade better than this one....but the state of management is so poor that they have degraded into obscurity. Sighs!!! We almost went under the fall here courtesy a trip called the "cave of winds" originally called so b'cause it actually took you behind the falls at one point of time...now it takes u under. In all a refreshing experience...although missed out on my maiden helicopter ride....but Niagara s not so far...Had a unique experience today, when my train stalled due to a power breakdown spannig 3 states including NY and Philli...you don come to expect such things from a place like US where a power cut is nothing short of a hurricane katrina of intensity 3. And i guess thats why they r a shade unprepared for this kinda stuff....and very shabby at that...it took them all of 3 and a half hours to get a diesel engine to pull a stalled electric train. Running out of battery now on my laptop...will add to this later on.....to be continued..

Still some life in the battery...and further more time to kill...what better way then to punch it out on the lappie.Had a meaningful discussion with Rathore the other day regarding the hot issues in India these days....the astronomical fall of the stock market and even further fall in the morality of one Mr. Arjun Singh, a facade of our rotten system of governance. Don want to delve into the netigrities of the actuals, enough has been written and read and yelled about them already. But the both of us were discussing of what we could be doing for these...vented out anger which ultimately gave way to helplessness, utter hopelessness and a sense of infidelity. Has irreparable damage already been done to our great country...or is there still some ray of hope...a light at the end of the tunnel...believers in both sides of the coin...we diverted to what we could do abt it....and we could only come up with the following brilliant idea "where could we get a gun"...RDB sure has given us some ideas to ponder upon. But it’s all to hypothetical I guess. But you can't stop brilliant minds. Cheers Rathore!!!

Eternal Jim Carrey

2006-07-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

Just finished watching this really screwed up movie, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet and a host of other guys. Now from Jim Carrey one does come to expect whacko stuff…and I like him for that. But this one tops all that has come from him till date. Well although he himself is in no way involved in the actual story writing but the character that he portrays is almost inherently what you expect from him. The film takes its name from the lines of Alexander Pope:

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot;
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

This information is courtesy Wikipedia; it also finds a brief mention in the movie itself.

The story’s got something to do with erasing ones bad memories from once brain and getting a chance to start afresh. A very titillating concept to start with, imagine all your bad memories just gone whoosh…and you have a clean slate to work with. But flip over the coin and you lose all the life s lessons that you gained from all those bad experiences and you might end up going through the entire rough patches again.

Who thinks of stuff like this, how do they come up with such concepts?

here I go again...

2006-06-07T22:01:00.000-04:00

I have finally got everything working on my lappie or so it seems. It had been troubling me for quiet some days now and a complete transfusion in the form of a XP reinstall did the trick here. There is supposedly another blog in between this and the last one, but as of now its trapped one alleged machine somewhere in the vicinity of the Heathrow airport in London at a place called Hounslow. I hope it breaks out of its trappings soon and gets published here.

Continuing from where I had left before, was listening to this song on my ipod today, its called “here I go again” by whitesnake. And although I have heard it lot many times before , the lyrics caught my attention just today…may be it was situational , a state of my mind, but they were kinda reflective of my state of mind at that point of time…they go something like this…

I don't know where I'm goin
but I sure know where I've been
hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time
but here I go again, here I go again.

Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for.
Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on
'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.

Here I go again on my own
goin' down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time.

Life s really confusing, at times you just fail to find a purpose and it all seems so futile and at others, its so cluttered and so full of purpose that you crave for a breather and some futility. Either way, Its just a struggle at any given point of time!!

Ironed Out!

2006-05-07T21:25:00.000-04:00

Its Monday tomorrow, though in some parts of the world it already might be, and infact in some other parts of the world it might already have started ending. But I will stick to my own time zone for now – EST. Now one of the drawbacks, I would say, of being part of the corporate way of life is the need to wear formal attire at once workplace.

I say drawback because I simply hate it. I am more of the casual cool dude genre, and the more Jeans and t-shirts kinda guy. And for the last 2 and a half years, I have been waking up every work day a little late on some a little early on others to get into one of those white/blue/gray collars and creased double pleated trousers. Now these creases that I mentioned just now are a cause of quiet a lot of angst for me lately. Let’s confess I am horrible at ironing clothes in the first place and to take the misery that extra mile I have to make those formals to look all crisp and creased. What a shame!!!

But this land of opportunity has thrown this challenge at me and I sure will crawl my way through it, god bless the spectators of this art form…and me ultimately.

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

2006-05-04T21:00:00.000-04:00

Life is back in its routine best and the mention of the word back is very critical in the whole context. It has been one hell of a last month. I was almost on the verge of insanity. Exaggeration definitely, now that I look back, but it was a real site at that point of time. And I must say I weathered the storm pretty nicely and am basking in the glory of the lull after it.
Quick recap. Landed back in India on the 16th of March to the horror of my luggage being misplaced during the transit flight. Strolled out almost empty handed to the standing ovation of my dear rathore. But I had saved the best part, my lappie and my digicam. Initial shock withstanding, we were back to our killer best together, me and rathore.
I had landed on Thursday…and the following Saturday morning, there I was at Mumbai Central waiting for Sunit , we had a trio re-union. Headed to lonavala to meet up with Shash…and drank ourselves silly that night. And next morning were on our way to Pune, me finally united with my Thunderbird. Finally watched RDB, and I must say was thoroughly impressed. About that later. Had an amazing highway side dinner on our way back. And now the crazy part. This dude Sunit was to leave back for Delhi by an early morning flight from Mumbai. So we started at 12 in the night from lonavala for Mumbai. Our rears already soar from the pune adventure…and my eyes closing intermittently we finally made it back one piece to Mumbai. Finished some paperwork at office during the next couple of days and was off to Bhopal, to meet my folks. The stay at home was real good, with I showing off all my stuff, thankfully the lost baggage was recovered the very next day much to my pleasure. My parents were supposed to leave for Trivandrum…and so I headed to Indore in my dad’s zen to meet my sisters. Was supposed to be meeting my new born niece for the first time there and she was in my arms almost through out my stay. I wish I could have just kidnapped her and took her with myself. She s one damn cute thing.
But now it was time for my acid test , I was supposed to meet my to be in laws for the first time in my life…and for that I was supposed to travel to Nagpur. But by a pure stroke of fate I was called back from my office, the acid test has to wait.
Within a week of returning back to Mumbai I was packed and off to this place called US of A. to be specific New York.
So this whirlwind stay in India lasted a mere 21 days to be exact. About my landing in Us and the stay then on later…

Transit...

2006-03-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

Well call it the luxuries of cutting edge technology, but here I am sitting in bahrain airport, trying to connect to the internet via a Wi-Fi network. My success will be evident from the timing of this post.

Now the story so far, I finally got a green signal from my client for the application I was developing, and so began the preparations for returning to my beloved bharat desh. A week full of anticipitation interspersed with boredom crawled by. I think its a universal phenomenon , that the time just goes into an extra slow motion mode once you are heading towards your certain eagerly awaited events. I have seen it happen to me when my trains just keep stopping before reaching bhopal. And yet again the very same fact was proven without doubt. But being a student of science I know that this isn't the case, and its all in once mind. So be it.

I am taking a longer route to mumbai so to say, which is quiet an understatement looking at the time I am gonna spend in travelling from Dammam to Mumbai which if travelled in a straight line is hardly 2.5 hrs of flying time. I will be taking a whopping 12-13 hrs to do the same. The itinery is something like this ... Dammam to Bahrain via bus , Bahrain to Doha via flight(thankfully) and finally Doha to mumbai via flight(obviously). I am taking this torture in a real good spirit for the prime reason that i am returning back...and sub reason because i'll get to see bahrain. Atleast I can claim that I saw bahrain.And whatever little i saw of it is impressive. Its painted in Grand Prix fever for now...Bahrain being a recent addition on the F1 circuit. And its a shocking contrast to its next door neighbor Saudi Arabia. The first thing that I noticed on the roads were the vehicles being driven by the fairer sex. and the visual was a real treat. You can imagine me as a guy being in the desert for 8 mnths and coming to this haven of a place with all the worldly delites.

So of I go to do you know what....

cheers...

Looking back

2006-02-24T07:21:00.000-05:00

Just finished watching “Top Gun” for the umpteenth time and it still gives me the kick. Not that I have any regrets but there definitely are some things I miss doing in my life.

To start with , I always wanted to learn martial arts, I even joined some amateurish classes while I was in my 5th std at school, but somehow couldn’t pursue it long enough cause my instructor ran away. And I was left adoring the other kids going ga ga with their katas . I dedicated myself to the god of kung-fu Bruce Lee just as homage, by making sure I watched every single one of his movies and not just once but many times over.

Getting over with that, I developed this urge to join the defense services, the IAF in particular. I even remember myself playing that stupid ghost game to ask if I would get through. I just grew up with this ambition, so much so that I had even decided against sitting for my pre engineering test. My parents somehow convinced me to sit for it and even take some coaching classes just as a back up plan in case I didn’t make it. Something went wrong somewhere and I ended up doing what I am doing now. But the very best of my friends are in the Indian Navy and they owe their careers to me, because it was me who pushed them into it. And when ever I feel the need for speed so to say, I head for their dens.

I sometimes just wonder how different it would have been.

Well leaving these behind me, I actually have done or am in the process of doing a few things I always wanted to. Owning and riding an Enfield to unknown places, learning to play the guitar, owning a racing cycle in my teens, and the likes.

Stuff will keep adding to this list…

Happy Birthday!!!

2006-01-19T11:45:00.000-05:00

Another day gone, infact a whole of 365 days have gone since my last birth day. Trust me on this, because I have seen all 23 prior ones, and this day today has by far been the most forgettable one of them all. Infact this would be the only birth day I would like to forget. For now I am living it.

As always there is a disastrous built up to the whole scene. If all had gone well I would have been sitting in Mumbai as of now, and for that not just sitting but partying big time. I still digested the hick up of my cancelled trip back home and of being away from all my family and friends and decided to go through the motions just like any other day. But however hard I tried, the umpteen wishes from various mediums of communication just wouldn’t let me forget it. So it was that I entered my birthday IST talking to my sweetheart and my best pals, Still talking to my sweetheart when Saudi clocks truck midnight January 18th and woke up to a special phone call when the Big Ben struck midnight in UK. Now this is not what would make this day forgettable…but it’s the carnage that is to follow that will.

Attended a further few phone calls while still in my sleep, till the one from my dad which literally threw me off the bed. A credit card personnel had called up at my home looking for my whereabouts for payment of some outstanding on my credit card. It’s rightly said that you reap what you sow…and what perfect time to reap my past mistakes. So, I spent the early hours of my birth day fire fighting. What a start and I already had a bad head ache. Reached office just to discover that it was gonna be a long long day…and not a easy one by any chance. It was almost like a chain reaction of sorts…I don wanna go into the details of it, but I still have the mental burden from my office when I write this. If it would have been any other day, I wouldn’t be making such a fuss about it…but on your birthday you wanna feel happy and relaxed and special. And I was miles away from this state of bliss.

All said and done, I can see some positives too. A lot of people still wished me and that’s a real good feeling in itself. There also were some lessons learned. And the best part of this birthday, I have someone very special to share the rest of my life with.
At the end of it all, I would really like to quote myself”
” Its been a real cool life...with all its twists and turns...and I have enjoyed every moment of it till date.I don know how many more such days I am destined to see...but I sure hope that as many are there...I am always able to feel the very same way as today....Alive...and Rocking!!!!Cheers...to me!!!”

Experience Saudi..

2005-12-15T02:33:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning, it being a weekend for me today, didn’t get up in my usual way…was just lazing in the bed for quiet a while. I have taken to a bit of exercising lately…it has finally dawned upon me that I need to do at least a little bit of physical exercise to keep me going…and just as a foot note…I have to get rid of my pouch…beer belly so to say, without the beer. Anyhow, went about my morning chores followed by the push ups and I don know what exercises.

Then stepped out of my room for a cup of tea, and to my surprise it was all foggy outside…at 9 AM in the morning in Saudi Arabia. Now how strange is that? One imagines Saudi Arabia as a hot sizzling barren desert land with Sheikhs ruling the wilderness in their own barbaric ways. At least that’s what my picture of Saudi Arabia was until I landed here. I was right and wrong in that. It still is a desert land but with an infrastructure comparable or even a shade better than that of a US of A or a UK. But the ways here can definitely be termed barbaric. It’s a very orthodox Muslim country. And this too is an understatement. The locals are very arrogant and it gets a shade uncomfortable at times. There is basically nothing much to do apart from shopping off course, with the flurry of humongous malls and shopping arcades mushrooming up every nook and corner . There are no movie halls, no tourist attractions in the real sense so to say. I have even heard that one cannot even click snaps at public places. So it’s pretty much of an indoor kind of a place. Gloomy place for even a guy like me who s not much of a party animal.

But there are positives too, very few though, one of them being the monetary part. The employer provide for your food and shelter. A compulsory saving because you run out of options to spend. So in a way its good, but ultimately this is not some place you would want to stay for too long and no wonder I am dying to return back to India.

Its has been quiet a learning experience professionally and personally , but there still are a couple of months to go before I return. And I might be up for many a new experiences till then.

Escape...

2005-12-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

Someone special has become a year old….and alas we are not together to celebrate. My thunderbird completed a year today in my possession. On this very day an year back I drove it out of its mothers womb so to say, the Royal Enfield show room in Bandra…and all the way till my office in Borivali. And that very first ride I knew that I was a proud owner of a very very special and priced possession, My Bird.

Since that 10th day of December last year…I have shared many a great memories with it, and will hopefully continue to do so for many a winters. The whole process of buying my bird was a rollercoaster ride in itself. After quiet a lot of serious thought, rethought and no thought, I finally decided upon a silver Royal Enfield ,escape as they put it. Obviously I didn’t have the money to buy it on my own…and neither of the well known financial institutions were in any mood to loan me that big a credit. So I was back to the world’s best and simplest bank…my mom. And after some simple cajoling, she agreed to loan me almost the entire amount at 0%, and infinite term of return…

The test drive itself was mind blowing…and I could hardly wait to own of those might beasts myself. But the wait was gonna be a little long than I had hoped for. In the midst of all this excitement…another dream of mine was calling me…I had got a call for an AFSB interview…for the ignorant; it’s the Air Force Selection Board interview. And lo and behold I found myself on a Delhi bound Rajdhani at a couple of hours notice. Spent one of the best set of 5 days in Dehradun. Although my dream wasn’t to be fulfilled, I had made some very beautiful memories for life..and a bunch of not so beautiful but amazing friends. Within a couple of returning back from Dehradun , I had in my hands the keys of my very own Silver Bird.

And the world was my play ground so to say….and from that day on it has become my escape….

Stuff of dreams..

2005-12-06T13:08:00.000-05:00

Lately one of the prime things that excite me in life is to think and plan about a bike ride. Now the obvious question here is that how the hell am a planning a bike trip when I myself am sitting in this foreign land while my beloved Bird is literally across a sea, back home in India. But then it’s a plan….and people plan for years in advance, am merely planning a couple of months prior, and look how excited I am about the whole thing already.

Okay so let’s get to the actual thing now. I came across this article on rediff a couple of days back. It actually was one of those informative slideshows about this place called Pushkar back home in India. It’s a small town so to say some 15 kms from Ajmer, Rajasthan. It’s famous for this annual festival that is held there. Its actually in full swing as of now….and it’s all colorful and beautiful. Now where does this thing fit into the aforementioned bike trip scenario that I have been so ardently talking about?? Simple, Pushkar happens to be the supposed destination of my fantasy trip.

The travelers remain basically the same, my bird, myself and YES…Rathore. We have had a preliminary round of mail exchanges between us and he too is basically raring to go with a minor issue raised regarding leaves from office, which I am sure will be taken care of.
The trip, as when it happens, will be the longest ever for us as it would come to some 2200 kms to and fro. The maximum we have done till date is some 800+ kms on our ride to GpPule. I have been wanting to visit Rajasthan for quiet some time now…and what better way to do it than on my Bird and my buddy Rathore to keep company.

So that’s all to it as of now. I am trying to make it thorough this time….I hope am able to plan my plan to perfection.

Cheers…

CosmoLogical reloaded...

2005-10-28T07:17:00.000-04:00

This is a new experiment that am up to…I am actually typing this on word as of now…and thanks to Google’s plug-in ,I can publish this stuff directly to blogspot. Obviously I will have to be logged on to internet. And these are wonders of the so called cutting edge technology.

Now back to the actual stuff, I am reading this compilation these days. It’s called Juggling Act and the author obviously is Jug Suraiya, TOI fame. I had picked it up from Pune crossword before I left for Saudi. And believe me; I had to search extensively to find a copy. Not sure if it’s the popularity of the book or the mock demand that the publishers have created. But I sure hope it’s the prior of the reasons. Because I find it an amazing read. I have only gone through some 20 odd pages as of now…but I am sure to finish it up soon enough. Actually I am deliberately slowing down my reading pace in a hope that I will have it for me till my stay here.

Okay now the article in the aforementioned book that’s the inspiration for this post. It is titled Cosmo Logical and contrary to the title is not about the cosmos, but about the Indian version of the internationally acclaimed women’s magazine Cosmopolitan. The female fraternity in India seems to be an avid fan of the subscription. I keep wondering what‘s so enticing about it and Mr. Suraiya enlightens me with just the same. I am afraid can’t quote the whole article here, but some excerpts which really tickled me…..I quote ….
“Cosmopolitan – or Cosmo as it is popularly known – is dedicated to the proposition that all men are born free – and it’s up to women to change this undesirable state of affairs.” Another one …
“A post-feminist guide to cohabitational consumerism, Cosmo features educative articles on how to get your man, how to hold him (half-nelson, arm-lock, etc.) and how to trade in your old model for a newer , top-of-the-line version with minimum of fuss ” and another one…
“A unique feature of Cosmo is its quizzes which help you rate yourself in the cosmic battle of the sexes”.

Then he goes a step forward and devices a cosmo style quiz of his own with a series of questions, which I think my female friends will be fully aware of. Not that I endorse the writers view but then he does have a point. The whole article is a beautiful satire on the “Liberated Urban Female - LUF” as the writer puts it, psyche of the contemporary fairer sex. I am sure I haven’t made any great friends (as if I have any before) out of the opposite sex by highlighting this article, but I hope the pun is understood in its right spirit.

my harley davidson....

2005-10-26T16:16:00.000-04:00

Was just listening to this song by AC/DC , called Harley Davidson . It starts with the whorrring sound of a Harley engine...and that sound just tore through my heart and mind...I miss my Bird, yes my ThunderBird. Instantly I was into a time warp back to my days in India when I was rolling on my very own. I could just feel the enormous power of the monster of a machine under my command waiting to be unleashed.
Those long drives to Kaashid and Murud and Lonavala and Mahabaleshwar and GP pule are still fresh as yesterday in my mind.Not that it has been years since I have done them but it almost seems that way. How myself and rathore used to plan about them for weeks in advance , not the actual preparation for the trips but Just the excitement of making one. We invariably ended up with unplanned trips which ultimately used to turn up all gooddy good for us. The excitement of touching 100KPH on the bird ...and then breaking my own record of speed again and again. the
velvet smooth road down from Mahabaleshwar till Pune , the seaside drive from Alibagh till Murud, The curling roads to the fort at Ganpatipule...and the untouched beach that we discovered on the way back from the fort. They all seem like random flashes of an amazing experience.
A little too dramatic I guess, but then out here in this place, imagination is all that i have at my disposable. With nothing much to do apart from breaking my head against my workstation almost intermittently all day, these sparks are my rare moments of excitement.
Yes, I am getting bored here!!

let there be Rock...

2005-10-25T14:59:00.000-04:00

Music is my life, now how cliche is this line. Hundreds of people keep repeating this line over and over again, at various forums small and large. But then music is something which touches every single person in various different ways.

The whole connection perhaps ,between music and the being ,lies in the inherent rhythm of the universe. So much for philosophy and science. For me music is something that gives me immense pleasure. And then i am not just an amateur listener so to say, who would listen to any and everything that comes across once ears. I have some very specific and almost weird (as most of the people say) tastes in music. I am a major Rock and Metal freak and I equally appreciate the indian classical music.how weird is that??

I think the weirdness in my music tastes is got something to do with my parental roots. My dad is a very good classical singer and in addition posses an immense knowledge of the art. I have been brought up listening to Kumar Gandharv's and Pandit Ravishankar's, marathi natya sangeet and the likes. Rock n roll stands out as an obvious abbretion in this otherwise sublime picture. But then like any adoloscent I am not supposed to like what my parents like, so it was that I took to Rock. I still very clearly remember the day I brought my first cassette of rock music, On a day Like today -- Bryan Adams.Today I can almost laugh at the thought of calling Bryan Adams as Rock music. But that s where I started and to this day Bryan Adams remains one of my favorite singers. From Bryan Adams to Mettalica to Rage Against the Machine to Iron Maiden and what not, I have come quiet a long way. Life catches up, and the music of my childhood has lately started to attract me. So much so that I actually sit and ask my dad about it.And to see the happines in his eyes when he tells me about his greatest passion is a real joy.
I was not supposed to write all this, I had started writing this piece to introduce my newest passion in music AC/DC, yes the 70's and 80's big time Rock n Roll band.I have never heard them before, but on the sake of reputation I picked up a DVD of close to 40 videos songs candidly named the home videos. And yes they are too good. So in the words of AC/DC "let there be Rock...."

salaam walekum....!!

2005-10-22T14:29:00.000-04:00

Ages literally since my last post, but its better late than never.Well there was one prime reason behind the long absence..and will be writing about that at length here. As i had mentioned somewhere in my prior posts, that I was supposed to be heading for an overseas assignment, so it happened...and am sitting here in Dammam , somewhere in Saudi Arabia. I am still trying to locate this place on the map of Saudi. I hope am able to mark my bearings before I leave, though it seems an unlikely possibility. Its over a couple of months now since I have been here. There are hell lot of things to write, but then by some strange stroke of luck, blogspot isn't accessible from my clients network. So I never could log on until now. I finally purchased my priced possession a lappie....which i had been craving for so long.Although had bought it almost a month back, managed the internet connection at home just a week back. And today was just going through my own and rathore s blogs , and i just felt the itch to post something. Well I just hope that the itch just stays there...and i keep punching things. It s possibly the only creative thing that i wud be doing here in my stay at Saudi Arabia. About that and more....later.

To Kaashid...

2005-06-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

Most of the times in our lives...we travel to reach a goal, and in the process we loose site of what the road has to offer to us.but I have learned my lessons rite that its the path and not the goal that matters....atleast when you are riding your way to it.And so it was for this ride.The original idea was to reach Kashid...meet up with Abhay who was already there on some team building tour of his. But as soon as I mounted my bird...i knew..that the destination was immaterial now and i could just head on in any direction from here...and it would be pure magic all the way and any way.

So we started on an overcast morning this Sunday at arnd 6.30...with the faintest of idea of what the rain gods had in store for us. But whatever it was..we were strapped and ready for it(I guess???)There was enough fuel in the birds tank to take us out of mumbai...so we skipped the fueling part to start with. Just rejuvineted our pockets with some money and we were off. Hardly a couple of kms on the palm Beach road...and it started to pour down like therewas no tomorrow. And by the time we could actually get a clue of what was happening....it was already back to just overcast again, with one subtle difference....we were drenched.Atleaset i was.But I was prepared for it...this was meant to be a ride in the rains. But it so turned out that this was the lone shower in our so called rain trip for the first leg. Nonetheless it was fun to start with.

The weather was perfect for driving from here on...with wet and dry patches of road to run on, making me vary my speed.I usually am pretty quick on the roads...but the collage of wet and dry slowed me down to a good extent. and it was well worth it....bacause it allowed me to look around what I usually miss while driving.The sky was a darkish gray...one of my favourite colors.And the rain clouds just mounting on....sometimes i just wonder if i could fly away on top of the clouds and lay in the fluffy cottony material for hours together...never to return back.

Back on the road...in apparently no time we were at Pen....and rathore was torturing me to stop for a mast chai.The chai flowed in with a little bit of debris in the form of a couple of vada pavs and bhajiya.Moving on....there is this phenomenon on this specifc patch started some where before Pen almost till the left turn of Wadhkal naka....they call it the rumbling strips.They are basically are a set of 6-10 closely spaced speed breakers....they definitely serve there purpose perfectly...but they also go far beyond it and as rathore rightly puts them...are a real pain in the ass!!!We always wonder....and its better expressed in hindi ...."ki jis bechare ne inhe banaya hoga use har passer by kitni gaaliyan deta hoga".

Further on...we quickly crossed Alibag and took the left turn that headed for Murud. Last time around on our first riding adventure of Alibag- Murud we had traversed thi route. We were trying to make out the exact same spots and offroad advetures we had undertook the last time. Clicked some wild snaps....on the road(literally on the road...rathore sitiing on it and me actually lying down on it). The surroundings were greener and majestic that we had visited the last time. Turned a curve and there it was a spread of white sand....kissing the sea. Our eyes literally twinkled at the site. but we had a task at hand before we could hit the beach....we were supposed to meet Abhay...who was in some resort starting from P or S...because that was all rathore could remember of the the name that Abhay had told him....

So began the hunt....

time to ride...

2005-06-24T08:16:00.000-04:00

yes...its ride time yet again.
It has been close to 3 months now since we last made a journey to our wild sides....on my bird.But the drought is getting over this weekend...when we hit the road again with a splash this time. Its pouring cats and dogs in and around mumbai....and what better time to roam the roads rather than this.
The destination yet again is immaterial. Its the fun of riding again ...that has kept me and rathore on the edge of our seats all this week.
This ride holds a special significance for further reasons as well...as this ride could turn out to be the last one for this year...as i am scheduled for an overseas assignment on behalf of my employers for the next 6 months.
It comes between a hectic schedule for me....there are a lot of important things happening in my life as of now...and I have been shuttling between various destinations over the last couple of weekends. All said and done.....
Kashid here we come............

Chennai Monologue...

2005-06-12T04:01:00.000-04:00

Its been a long time since me doing any activity on this big and bad blogworld. Work pressure ...or my lethargy whatever you call it, can be held in court for it.

but now that I am actually writing somethin....lets get back to the why's of it.
Firstly, as the title suggests...its something to do with Chennai....infact the root cause and the sole reason for this blog is Chennai. Now this blog is being written from a huge office building sparsely occupied by people as of now...me being one of the fateful occupants.

Secondly....the word monolgue doesn't mean that Chennai is speaking something to you....because that is what is the literal meaning of a monologue (don argue...cause i looked it up in a dictionary)...but it is there because the combination rhymes with the famed theatre act....Vagina Monologues which sounds really sleezy...and since its my blog...I deciede what it is called.

So it must be obvious by now that I am in a twilight zone.
There is a long story in the hindsite......and let it remain one.
Chennai.....land of THE LADY.State capital of Tamil Nadu. This being my first visit to the place...i have tried not to come with any assumptions and apprehensions. But these comments its damn hot, its sticky , you can't communicate there....are still ringing in my ears. And all the 3 comments have proved to be true. And have further strengthened my unwillingness to visit south indian destinations.
Temperatures ranging in mid 40s and humidity that could make Mumbai look like a hill station.
The best part I am alien to the people here....They don understand what I speak and neither do I understand their language. Got the first glimpse of it the moment I stepped out of the airport. and later on when I tried to board a rickshaw to reach my office. and will keep having these experiences till the time I am here. Its really frustrating and even funny at times.
I will be staying here till Wednesday morning....and I hope to see a couple of places...at the least the famed Marina Beach. I also seem to have found some mumbaite company at my place of stay. Looking forward for a evening out with them today.

Its now time for me to go back to my twilight zone......in the dilapidated world of software.
So long.....

GP pule...Concluding!!

2005-04-04T02:31:00.000-04:00

That sleep was life giving...after the tiring day through the sun.
Yet again missed the sunset...I think will go to Ganpatipule once more just to check it out.Now there were some plans of a campfire on the beach later in the nite.Me and Rathore got up and ready, and headed for the beach for the n th time for the day.The troppers were to follow us there.Or I guess they were ahead of us.
We finally did go to the famed Ganapatipule Temple.And I even managed to make some kind of a donation for 25 bucks..on the name of my dad obviously.Another walk on the beach with one of the fairer breed and sadly rathore too was a different experience.Had our dinner again at MTDC and were off for the beack party.It basically wasn't a weather meant for campfire...so I kept my distance from the fire. We had also arranged for Rathore 's guitar on the beach...but I guess both rathore's and my prowess with the guitar was rather disappointing for the audience..so they continued with there dumb C. took some long lazy walks in the knee deep sea on the beach...and soaked myself with the millions of stars in the sky. This is one experience I 'll remember forever.
At around 12.30 in the nite after some persuasive and heated discussions rathore and myself decieded against going to Ratnagiri the next day,Because we still had to cross the 350 odd kms to mumbai in one piece.
I was hell bent on leaving as early as possible, the initial plan being 5. But Rathore was a little cross with me for this and so he made sure that we left only by 6 .Turned out to be a wise decision.
Let me digress a little here to mention a little more about Mr. Rathore as a pillion specifically. Over the last 4 trips that I have had with this buddy of mine, he has turned out be an amazing and excellent companion sitting behind me. First and foremost I being an avid driving lover, hate to share the driving load with anyone.and Rathore too I guess loves being a pillion and has never shown any interest to actually drive. Secondly he trusts my driving a lot...and doesn't make much noise abt the same apart from some stray incidents where it was actually required.Thirdly he like me loves speeds...testimony to this is the fact that we top sped to 107 KMPH on the return leg. Infact on the clearer stretches of the road, if i happen to take it a little cool...he urges me to touch that 100 Kph once more, Or take over that Santro..and stuff like that. He has his own shortcomings too...he has not all that good as a navigator , because he isn't that keen an observer of the road as myself.In all a real dude to ride with...cheers to us Rathore.

Okay so let me get back on track...Started off at 6 on the meandering roads through the plains..we reached the junction of NH-17 and turned left for Mumbai. There was this early morning nip in the air...and also the Stars fuel tank was craving for fuel. Stopped and refuelled we opting for the non - inflammatory chai. that was close to 7.From here till the next stop at chiplun..we had a little dual with a pulsar, I must say the driver was skilled enough to match the 180cc pulsar of his to my 350cc giant.Hats off to him.Stole a hopeless burger at Chiplun. The roads were a little crowded now. but we still managed to blaze thorugh most of the towns en route. Infact I can easily say ..that this was the fastest leg over all my rides. Another stop in the midst of the ghat where we had to stop in our first leg because of our dozing off. Had some kanda bhaji and chai here.

Rode on...and it was getting hotter by the minute. Took a break for some cola s at arnd 11.We were some 100 odd kms from mumbai. Were forced into another break at Wai. Had a couple of life giving nimbu pani's with some local coolant put in them.
It was scorching by now, but our spirit of adventure was still at large...we turned left inplace of the usual right while entering Panvel in anticipation that we'll reach Palm beach road from there. Gross misjudgement because although the road was very good...it happened to be going in the wrong directions. After a couple of set of directions...we took a kuttcha road to finally reach the palm beach road albeit from the opposite side. This cost us 10 extra kms ...and a lot of energy due to the burning hot sun. But a lesson neverthless...and a new route definitely.Bought a bottle of chilled mineral water and coke enroute to Rathore's place.
This will be the last drive before the summers...and we have decieded to take a break now.Although a quick trip to Pune is still on the cards.

Dozed off finally with my burnt feet in a bucket of water and a glass of chilled cola in my
hand.

GP pule ...continued..

2005-03-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

But as all questions have there answers...so did these ones.
We found a very good place called Morya Lodge(if i remember it correctly) and it offered pretty decent accomodations with luxuries like balcony as well.Once the place was all set, it was time to take that much fought for sleep...which had shown its true colors throught the drive.
Both myself and rathore simply migrated from this world of mortals for the next few hours.I being an ardent sunset fan wanted to grasp a view at GP pule too...but my body had some other plans.It was wandering in the void of my dreams when our dear sun was throwing its last lite.

Sunset gone..we finally woke up somewhere close to 7 or 7.30 in the evening.And pretty obviously the first thing that we thought off was food.and so it was time to hunt for the same. Started off rather candidly with some local chivda and moongfali...then on the beach we had some nariyal Pani(coconut water)...but there was no sign off , as rathore puts it,tan ko lagne wala khana. Battle weiry we decieded to take a break from the hunt...and found ourselfs some decent rocks by the sea for contemplating our future course of actions.

Here let me describe you the whole scene,its a full moon ,in front of us is the vast and endless expanse of the sea...we ourselves are on a stretch of a white sand beach...audience to the this great jugalbandi of nature. There is nothing more that I can express in words.It was mesmerising.
Not a place where anything could trouble you rite....wrong...we and rathore in particular has this magical ability of creating trouble out of thin air.His wallet probably wanted some fresh air too and Mr. Rathore the good human that he is...just let his wallet out in the fresh air and put it on the rocks, where we were sitting. Eventually our stomachs got the better of the surroundings and we decieded to continue with our hunt..also we needed to make a couple of fone calls. Now when it was time to pay for the same...dear Rathore thankfully discovered that he had let the wallet have a little too much air...and had forgot it on the rocks. Now here was a man with his a** on fire...and theres no other option left in such a position then to run and so he did...and later confirmed that those were the fastest few hundred meters of his life.Thankfully we weren't entirely out of luck..and found the wallet safe and sound...and can joke abt it now.

(Mis)Adventure done...we were looking for a place to eat..walked across the whole town and finally decieded to eat at the MTDC restaurant after a short break at our abode.Had a sumptuous whole hearted dinner...and it was time to go back to the beach. After a little wading(as rathore chose to name our walk on the beach) we found ourselves some more rocks to lie upon. Finally returned back to our abode at arnd 1 in the nite. the other tourists were supposed to join us sometime in the nite..till then we were just finalising onm our plans for the next day.We had found of a place called jaigarh fort in the vicinity..and although rathore and myself being such ardent critics of Shivaji Maharaj's forts..planned to have a look at this one too.
Early to rise was the motto...but yet again it was foiled when we woke up at almost 8 and came to know that our other tourists had some other plans.They wanted us to join them in their holi celebrations on the beach...rathore and me just looked at each other and smiled...Left our fellow troopers(thats what I am goin to call them from now on) to get ready and we headed straite for the beach.Went to our pet rock..and loused.Our troopers joined us there and we had some nasty fun in the sea.Definitely a unique way to celebrate our holi.Clicked some Dil Chahte hai style snaps...with me posing to eat the Stars keys in place of the fish that aamir khan disguised to eat and the likes.Had a quick break fast again at MTDC...and went back to our abode to change as we had got skin wet.and also to pick up some stuff.Till then the troopers too were back from the beach.
We parted ways with them and headed for Jaigarh.Jaigrah is some 33kms from Ganpatipule...the fort itself is not all too scenic from inside...but the view from its out posts is amazing....some branch of the sea makes its way to bottom of the port and adds to its beauty.Another incident..as rathore has mentioned somewhere in his prior posts in relation to the camera itself...I quote "the severity of the itch will be maximum at the part where it is difficult for your hand to reach"..and this time the place was impossible to reach by hand. Our camera role got over and there was nothing remotely similar to a camera role that could be bought in the vicinty. So we finally mourned on it by sitting on the entrance of the fort listening to some Kishore Kumar classics(thanks to my sony walkman).We have had a few glimpses of the sea enrout to the fort...and on our return we decieded to explore one such trail to the sea...and it turned out to be a treasure of sorts. In the backside of a small habitation almost sitting there like a kitchengarden was an untouched beach...just lied down in the sparkling clear waters of the sea with our backs to the sun. Thankfully we were short of camera roles...otherwise the censor board wud have come hard on us for this one.Reached back at our abode and to our surpsirse our troppers were taking a hike somewhere.Went and had our unch at MTDC...and were forced for a real looooooooooooong walk on the beach in the overhead sun.Another experience of sorts.Our troopers were finally back and with some confused plans for the evening we retreated to a deep slumber..

final part to follow...

GP pule....Part 1

2005-03-29T01:04:00.000-05:00

This may seem like a devilish ploy but its one way to bring the proceedings to an end...Deep Purple @ the end of a wild concert.

And so is this travelogue...a devilish ploy.This adventure as all other prior ones had its own share of madness and magic.
So here I go...

I kicked off with a routine day to office on thursday...and was already packed to go to rathore 's place at Vashi directly from office. Picked up Rathore from his office somehwere between 8.30 and 9 dropped my bag at his place,and set off yet again for a little pre trip shopping. But it turned out a lot more than mere pre trip stuff that I shopped...imagine...I bought a cell phone...JLT.

Now the plan was to start as early as possible, because we were anticipating some 7 hrs of driving...to cross over the 350 kms to ganpatipule. Now what qualifies as early for any sane character...5...4.30...4....no,not for us mad characters. We dozed off late at arnd 1.30...but I can say for myself I effectively slept for just 1 hr...Thanks to those flying blood suckers...and part to the excitement of the trip..I was already up by 3..and to my surprise even rathore was awake. Now I was raring to go...but Rathore induced some sanity...and we finally were ready by 4.30 after a mast chai.

Kickstarted the Star to life...and just let it warm up.The trip meter was set to 0..and we were all set.That was 15 minutes to 5.After almost an hour of riding through the darknes and early morning(lateeee nite) chill...both of us were craving for the sunrise.Rathore more so..because he didn't have the warmth of the biker jacket that I was wearing. Topped up the Star at some 81 kms after start from a Reliance filling station.The sun was just rising in the east and the Stars headlites were still shining when we ripped through Magathane at almost 80 Kmph..Must definitely have woken up a few sleepy residents there.

The clean tarmac was helping my cause quiet a bit...as I quiet often touched 100kmph..and even managed to remain at that pace for some time.First stop was a little prior to Mahad after 157 kms of continious driving. topped up our stomachs this time with some Idli ,dosa's and the likes...and yeah...definitely some mast chai.Me opting for a coffee though. Started again after chilling out there for close to 45 minutes.

Now we had hardly gone 30 or so kms when we had to stop yet again on the middle of the ghat.Reasons are as starnge as they come....I dozed off ...while driving...not once but twice.And at the second one I actually spotted a chai wala when my eyes opened.Rathore too had dozed off more than a couple of times..so this was a welcome respite.
In the process we had already crossed over the left turn to m'baleshwar that we had taken the last time.And we were on uncharted territory now. There on it was ghats and more ghats...atleast 4 as per my count.But the road was a beauty....with its smooth twists and turns...and fading green and yellow trees all arnd. i never needed to slow down.
Next stop was 50 odd kms prior to Ganapatipule at a place before or after Sangameshwar.And the customary Bhurji Pav followed. Also there hadn't been any foto sessions...and the photographer in Rathore spotted a perfect spot behind the eating place to inagurate the foto shoot. Click click click click...the shutter snapped and the three of us were captured on film forever.
Rode on , it was somewhere close to 11 or 11.30 in the morning.Looking for rite turn to ganpatipule ,crossed another small ghat...and when the turn finally was there...we missed it..and went ahead...but not too...far because I soon realised...and a little inquiry confirmed my doubts.Turned back...and took a left turn instead of the actual right.
The surroundings changed drastically here....till now we had been through roads which had lots and lots of vegetation arnd...but this one ,SH106 was almost like in the middle of nowhere.Small hillocks and vast plain on both sides of the road...with the distinct red/orange konkan soil keeping company.
Reached finally at 1, but only after another round of poses infront of a milestone. Rathore later explained to me that, he had something going with these milestones...so he always made us pose infront of atleast one.
Now before we could drop of to sleep we first needed a place to do that.Also we needed to book room's for another grp of tourists...rathores roommates...and some frnds of frnds,who were supposed to join us there sometime in the night I guess.Now its already tuff to find a place to stay for just the 2 of us on a long weekend , imagine finding a place for all of 14 ppl.The prospect of a couple of nites on the beach were looming large on us yet again.We even checked out a tent on the Beach..offered by MTDC..by far the most lucrative option...was hopelessly available just for a day.
Question marks all around.... to be continued...

here we go again....!!

2005-03-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

Thump Thump Thump....Such a sweet sound....blend it with some black tarmac beside the sea...and give it a couple of crazy but adventurous free spirits..
A perfectly heady cocktail...
So thats how its gonna be this weekend...this cocktail is gonna flow on the beaches of Ganpatipule and the likes...over a duration of 2 and 1/2 riding + static days.
Ganapatipule as the name rightly suggests is more a holy spot rather than being a party lovers paradise.But the free spirit requires peace and calm...and there is no better place in the vicinity(or atleast I think so...:-)
And at some 350 Kms from the bustling mumbai...it just could turn out to be a bikers paradise.

Cheers...to The Star, rathore and myself...and may we return with many a wild stories to tell!!

So,Here we go....Thump Thump Thump...!!!

Vela vows...

2005-03-10T04:33:00.000-05:00

Its another vela day at office...with no work what so ever. I just wonder a little too frequently these days, that how does my company afford to carry me as an extra baggage for free.
Although the bagage doesn't care until it gets its salary credited on every 28th..but still...heres a hazard of a thinking baggage.

Anyways...there are so many things beyond (no) work in life....like having fun. And I sure know how to extract that to the fullest. Will flash back a little.
Weekend was totally inactive, with the exception of a cool movie in the evening on Saturday with Neha..and a time killing ,window shopping expedition with my cousin on Sunday. but there wasn't any exception in atleast one thing...the amount of money spent in the weekend was almost equal if not more to the amount of money I happen to spend on a happening riding weekend of mine. And it is all the more painful since I didn't do anything...sad ,real sad!!

Come monday....I was a little apprehensive on my work front with my new project not yet decieded....and me still waiting to get a confirmation on certain things that were pending. Uneventful . Tuesday was no better either to start with....but I didn't want to give it the very same sad ending as my other previous days. So called up Rathore. He wasn't feeling all that well that day...but I insisted , he said YES as usual and I was on my way to Vashi. Rathore still hadn't shifted gears to the wake up mode when I reached Vashi half an hour later...so I too decieded to laze a bit...started watching 'What women want'...real nice movie...and I definitely wud like to have Mel Gibson' s power to know what women are thinking...imagine...too good!!

Finally Mr. Khumbhakaran Rathore decieded to break his slumber and woke up to this world with a hungry stomach as always. As usual decieded to go to McD's..but not the easy way...we decieded to go all the way to Panvel..some 20 odd kms from there to put off our hungry stomachs. This is what is the definition of fun....thump arnd on the Star just for the heck of it.
Had a real refreshing drive...and the star left us craving for more... ended the day with a cool flick...'socha na tha'..I find the leading lady of this movie...Ayesha Takia kinda sweet. I had liked her in 'Dil maange More' as well.

Come Wednesday and after a non happening day at office...I was back to Vashi. And there we accidentally discovered a cool shopping place called Megamart...it has all the brands at a reduced price....and both of us just plundered the place...me buying a gab ,a biker jacket(Yes..finally!) and a couple of T- shirts. Rathore too dug in with a couple more T- shirts.
Yet again ate at the McD's albeit at the vashi one today after a visit to planet M.
Ended the day with looking for the highlights of Sehwag's heroics in todays session of the match and finally watching Lakshya and reading....

PS: Rathore's guitar is sounding perfect now...miraculously.

Lite at the end of the tunnel...

2005-03-07T04:43:00.000-05:00

The title says it all...
After a brief stint of disgust...life seems to be throwing some sunshine for me.
Will like to cut paste something that a friend of mine sent me....pretty relevant I think...
here goes....I quote...

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they
were meant to be there...to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson or help figure out who you are or who you want to become. You neverknow who these people may be but you lock eyes with them, you know that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way. And sometimes things happen to you at the time that may seem horrible,
painful and unfair, but in reflection you realize that withoutovercoming those obstacles you would never realize your potential, strength, will power or heart. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance or by meansof luck. Illness, love, lost moments of true greatness and sheer stupidity all occur to test limits of your soul. Without these small tests, life would be like a smoothly paved,straight, flat road to nowhere safe and comfortable but dull and utterlypointless. The people you meet affect your life. The successes and downfalls thatyou experience can create whom you are, and the bad experiences can belearned from. In fact they are probably the most poignant and important ones.If someone hurts you, betrays you or breaks your heart, forgive thembecause they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to whom you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but also because they are teaching you to love and open your heart and eyes to little things. Make every day count. Appreciate everything that you possibly can, for you may never experience it again. Talk to people whom you have ever talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, break free and set your sights high. Holdyou head up because you have every right to. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will believe in you. Create your own life and then go out and live it.

"If you take your eyes off your goals, all you see is obstacles."

...the end.

Life definitely has its small lessons and they are spread everywhere...and at most points in our life we are so engrossed in the winning and losing part of it that we miss out on these subtlities.

This may sound like a loser s excuse to non competence, but its all about reading between the lines. For now I just hope to defy Metallica's famous lines "and it seems to be a soothing lite at the end of your tunnel...is just a freight train coming your way"
To hell with Optimism!!!

Cheers...

Rude Awakening

2005-03-03T04:17:00.000-05:00

Its actually just a minor glitch in the otherwise peaceful and smooth life of mine, if you look at it from the higher plain. But deep down its something that has shaken me.
Yesterday I undertook a Client Interview...as in the client was trying to judge me if I was good enough to work on his project..and it so happened that he found me unfit for the same.
Simple ...rite? But I know what that actually means. He asked me certain basic questions about what I happen to boast off on my CV. I was visibly confused abt them ...and un convincing to myself while answering them. And I was still secretly hoping till yesterday that...I just mite clear the interview on my Luck. And it was really good of my lady luck to desert me on this....because it showed me my real standing as far as my professional credentials are concerned.
I am not a really ambitious person...and I am fairly happy when I am a little busy with some decent work. But I do believe and want my self to follow is that...whatever I do i do it the very best way that it can be done...and I guess i have failed myself on that.
Bottomline....study man study!!!

Drive On....Final Part

2005-02-25T04:35:00.000-05:00

Next morning...that was the second day of the trip ,we had planned to get up and start at 9.But as usual there were further seen and unseen circumstances to handle...
Seen....that both me and Rathore feature in the creme de la creme when it comes to sleeping late. And Unforseen....that our attendant wanted to make a little dough out of feeding us a couple of precious plates of POHA(imagine a plate for 15 bucks)

Finally surpassing these...and after a cup of 'mast chai'...I warmed up The Star...for a long drive ahead. We had decieded to take a roundtrip to mumbai this time...as in...we reached Mahabaleshwar via the Mumbai-Goa NH-17...and were returning back to Mumbai on a different route which was via Pune, Lonavala...So the high level plan was simple ,to leave Panchgani by 12..and finally reach Mumbai(Vashi at Rathore's place) before Sundown.
We started off a little off time...but not too late....passed the scenic Vienna lake yet again on route to Panchgani.The road was a visual treat...with not so high mountains on one side and not so deep valleys on the other...we made a couple of stops ..one to click some snaps..and the other one to pick up some stuff like jams, gulkand..and certain others...but we skipped the supposed speciality of Mahabaleshwar/Panchgani..the strawberries.

Our target in Panchgani was the famed table top mountain..and as the namely rightly suggests its the top of a mountain but its flat.There were a lot of horse rides available....but we were on a horse of our own....so just took a slow drive through the dusty plateau...posed for a couple of stone Background snaps and headed back. I guess my dear frnd Rathore has some heart break story attached to some caves...so yet again he almost jumped from the Star on seeing the left turn to Rajapuri Caves. I obliged my frnd by turning left...but the obligation soon turned out to be headache....because the Caves were no where to be seen even after a good 5-6 kms of ride.And the road also wasn't all that good.Finally after crossing a couple of villages and a few wrong turns...we finally reached the end of the road in the village of Rajapuri...and the caves were a small trek from there.The caves turned out to be the holy abode of 'Bhagwaan Kartikeyan' the first son of Lord Shiv..and not some ancestor of our F1 man Narain K.
The ride back till Panchgani was all uphill...and the Star showed its raw power as we eased our way up.At the end of this offroad(almost) adventure...we three were under a blanket of dust....and our stomachs too were craving for some good food.So decieded to take care of both the things in one stop.After a small difference in opinion I exercised my rite as I was driving and dived into a good looking place called the Ravine.Rathore later agreed on my decision after seeing the place.freshened up and had a nice lunch there of Dal Tadka , Veg Pulav..and Omlette.
Finally left Panchgani at 2.Pune was some 100 odd kms from here.Decieded that we won't be making any further stops till Pune...and the road turned out to be a dream....first it was downhill from Panchgani...and then on it was a wide 4 lane road with sparse traffic....almost till Pune.I just let the Star rip...and touched the magical 100kph...many more times. We averaged close to 80 on that stretch...and within a little over an hour and a half...we were reckoning at the gates of Pune. But the fast drive did take its toll on our already mellowed rears.And we were visibly uncomfartable by the time we entered Pune.Had a life giving apple Milk shake on MG road ,Pune and headed straight for Lonavala...where my friend Shash was waiting for us.Had amazing cold coffee there...rathore opting to have a hot flavour of the same. Started from Lonavala at arnd 5..and entered vashi at 7 after a minor traffic jam.Headed straight for the foto developers shop and from there to McD's.By the time we reached rathore's place...we had done 550Kms of magical driving over the last couple of days.

The ride will be etched in our memories for the amazing roads that it offered us...throughout, the adventurous detours that we took, the spell bounding ghats that we overtook and offcourse the great time that the 3 of us had together.

With plans of our next trip already doing rounds in our hearts and mind..we closed this journey.

Cheers...

Drive On..Part 2

2005-02-24T02:12:00.000-05:00

Yawwnnnnnnnn.....I had secretly changed the alarm to 3.25 without Rathores knowledge.
But there were too many natural alarms to wake me up long before that....There was this murga....which had gone bersek I guess....kept going with his morning cry.."murge ki baang"...in the middle of a hot afternoon...imagine that....it just keeps goin kudckooooooooooo..every now and then...It was damn irritating.
Then there was this guy who was the attendant at the cottage...he came asking if we wanted to eat something....and the prospect of a garma garam dal - chawaal was all too to tempting to resist.
After all these adventures....we still managed to start for our M'baleshwar Darshan...by 4PM...and that too after a decent rest.

The next thing on the agenda was a "mast" chai as my dear rathore states it.He has this strange idea of it...some specific additives that he always needs...I don even know of them.We were basically lost in the middle of a market..and we had no idea where we wanted to head to...so gulped a couple of 'cuttings' before starting of in one of the directions...where there supposedly were 12 site seeing points..the prominent one that I could make out was the Arthurs Seat.There were also mentions of a few temples when we were leaving from Mumbai....but both of being such devotees..decieded to ditch the holy places competely..and let the God s rest.
We finally reached this Arthur seat after a long but scenic drive....but there was quiet a lot of traffic both ways. And pretty obviously there was a big crowd too.
Here again there something abt the crowds that rathore and myself both do not like...and we weren't actually enjoying this one too. And the spot also was alet down of sorts..as in all the 12 supposed view points were meant to view a single panorama albeit from different angles and altitudes. So we decieded to flee away from this place as fast as possible....and after a couple of detours ..we finally came to Kates (or Cats as rathore named it) Point....supposedly a sunset point. The approach road was a beauty ...as in it was a single lane road and a wall of greenery on both sides....a very very pretty site. We didn't wait there till sunset...because there was a good half an hour for that and as rathore put it..."Bahut sunset dekhe hai yaar Mumbai mai.."..we headed for Lake Vienaa..of which we had some glimpses from the various points.

After another set of directions we reached the Lake...and it was a pretty site....we decieded to go for a round of boating...That was one of the best parts of the trip....there was a slight chill in the air...and once on the lake it was very peaceful...The twilight sky , the blue waters of the lake...perfect for a romantic boat ride.....but alas...I was snapped back to reality when I turned my head to see this creature named Rathore siting beside me...what a shame...and all the romaticism went whoooshhh!

We headed to a decent eating place from there...had a couple of 'mast chais' followed by a round of Dum Aloo and Tandoori rotis....it was getting chilly by now...and we were also feeling a little dirty(??). So we were just dreaming if we could get a heavenly hot bath and a Bonfire to top it.And our dreams turned to reality as we prepared ourselves for the bonfire...with 'Yeah jo des hai tera' in the background....thanks to my walkman which had an inbuilt speaker too.

Had a little chat with our attendant Mahendra over the bonfire ...of his where abouts ...and what he does..and how much he has studied and all that. He was surprised to know that we were teetotellers(ahmmm...well am not one actually..but my buddy definitely is...). and a further round of snaps....

Finally our batteries went low at arnd 12...and we dozed to Shankar Jaykishan's eternal music...

The last and final part to follow...with the return ride!!!
Cheers...

Drive On...Part 1

2005-02-21T03:12:00.000-05:00

Time : 0600 hrs.
Place : Vashi ,Somewhere in Sector 17
Date : 19th Feb

I am making it all sound like a mission...because we really were on the verge of undertaking one.
This is the voyage of three crusaders...Rathore my Pillion, my Bird...The HighwayStar...and Me...en route to a hell of a time. A mission because we were starting off with a plan to cover close to 600Kms in a couple of days...with some infamous ghats to surmount. But we the trio were showing no nerves at all....infact the excitement had got the better of us.

I'll flash back a little n then restart from here. Friday I had been to office , left early to meet Anshu..one of a real old and close frnd of mine. So cud reach vashi only by 10.30 in the nite.Had already done close to 100kms on Friday itself and this was even before the trip had started.Then were roaming arnd in Vashi with Rathore and his frnds..till almost 12 in the nite. We were initally planning to leave by arnd 5 in the morning the next day...but that was history ...and the starting time had been posponed to 6.

And we finally started just 15 mins late...06:15AM. Fuelled up initially , only enough to reach the outskirts of Mumbai...because the petrol is cheaper outside mumbai. It was still dark and I was just warming up with moderate speeds of 60-70 Kph. Reached the Panvel McD in 20 mnts. Took a right turn from there towards Pen on NH-17. Tanked up at arnd 7:30...the odometer read...45..or something. The sun was rising in the East...and it was all misty and beautiful.Our stomachs were craving for food by now...So finally stopped at 8.30 at a roadside dhaba.....and a sumptuos and customary Bhurji Pav(S) and Chai(S) were to follow...I have put the S in brackets just because the actual number wud prove to be an embarrasment. Also had an interesting chat with a couple of Truck Drivers there...they were inquiring of our whereabouts and we theres...and it turned out they were driving all the way from Punjab. These guys narrated a few ride stories of theres...and cautioned us for avoiding nite riding.....we just nodded our heads in approval to them....and looked at each other and smiled...
During this time I had already made a couple of failed attempts to touch the magical 100Kph...But I was eyeing it badly....we also had our first round of snaps...all poses and all..

Rode on...and rathore kept yelling all the time at all different places to stop....and when finally I used to slow down...we used to deciede against it...
Ultimately we did stop....and this time it was me who was yelling to show Rathore the roadside caves. It was heating up by now....and the caves were a little hike upwards. Another round of poses and a cool bottle of water later...we were back on track. We had just crossed Mahad at that time. Here I must make a mention of the roads...and there is just one word for them...mesmerising.They were smooth as silk...it was almost like a Black Carpet rolled on and on into the wilderness...for me to cruise on...and i finally kissed 100Kph with a careful High fives with Rathore. We took one more stop before finally leaving NH-17 to turn left for Mahabaleshwar.Then on it was all uphill...with all its twisting and turning roads....I put my head down...and just drove on....
Here we were looking out for a diversion to the famed Pratapgarh Fort..and we did find it some 18kms before M'baleshwar. Beautiful drive upto the fort...with trees lined close to the road on both the sides...and an odd vehicle crossing.We were already decieded on one thing...that if comes down to any kind of climbing on foot for the fort...we 'll ditch the whole idea.And incidentally there was some climbing to be done.We were just contemplating on this when I got a call from my mom...and she was startled to hear that I was almost reaching M'baleshwar. There was also an official matter to be sorted out for rathore.

This is strictly a personnel view...and is not intended to heart anyone and Rathore seconds me here...but the Marathas..and especially Shivaji Maharaj have made really blant forts. As in you do all that hard work to climb...and theres nothing to look at once you reach....apart from the walls and stones. This was another reason for us decieding against climbing the last few steps.

Here my dear Rathore was back to his careless best...this time he left his specs somewhere.And the horrible south Indian food that we had there was a death blow to the already sullen mood.
From then on till M'baleshwar..it was a quiet drive...with both of us in our own zones...and the Star in its own.
Reached M'baleshwar at 2...and straightway were carried away by a local to his cottages...this was to be our abode for the nite...By now we were feeling the drive on our rears...and we decieded on a quick nap....with promises of getting up by 3.30................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Curtain Raiser!

2005-02-18T02:42:00.000-05:00

As the name ritefully suggests...this really is a sneek peek at what is up and coming in my life.
Pretty predictable actually...its another Road Trip shaping up...
Infact allz planned..and am all packed and strapped for it.

This time around we are leaving the winding coastal roads of Konkan behind...and heading deep into the Sahyadri highs. Its actually a plain deep into the mountains...
okay...I'll give you the name...Mahabaleshwar. The travel team remains the same Trio of Rathore , myself and my newly named HighwayStar...my Bird.Well the Bird was supposed to be Serviced today...but a miscalculationon my part led to the postponement of the same. A blessing in disguise I guess....As i will be able to service it after the trip...

The usual stuffs been packed up....and the engineers that we are ...rathore and myself have come up with a checklist sort of a thing ...Thanks to Mr. Excel!!!
I seem to have worked according to it...but theres always a chance of the odd error...Alas...I am a mere mortal you know.
So all packing mishaps on my part will be taken care of by Mr Rathore....reading this na??

So all cheers for us....The Travelogue will follow....

Fast Track!!!

2005-01-28T05:03:00.000-05:00

Made a quick trip to Lonavala on the Republic Day...
And it was so sudden that even I did nt know till the last minute.
It all started to brew up on the eve of the Republic Day....when I came home early from my supposed place of work(where I have no work these days) ...and was rattling my brain empty with the thought that the next day is an off. Watched 'When Harry Met Sally' for the n th time...(I happen to own its VCD...and a player to play it as well) , just to spoil my mood further...with all that romanticism.

Got up early the next day...early...if 8:30 qualifies as that.I don know if there is something wrong with me here...but it always happens that whenever I have the luxury to sleep late....I cannot ...just cannot.I was gearing up for a long and boring day ahead...started off rather candidly with a decent tennis match between Sharapova and Williams...which later Sharapova happened to lose...got bored of that...by this time I was already starting to feel like riding...so I called up my buddy rathore...but this bloody chap did nt pick up the fone....so with grt despair i decieded to put all my riding plans to rest..and started to read.....but by 10.30...enough was enough..I called this chap again....and finally he picked up...
I just casually asked him....ki dost lonavala chale....and the dude that he is....straightaway said CHALO...without even giving it a second thought.

And lo and behold.....I was racing away to Vashi...on my Bird of course Reached the gates of DAKC at 11.30.Picked up rathore from there after a little wait.
Also, there was some other stuff that I needed to pick up...bought a walkman which could record...for a recording that me and my frnd Kritik are gonna come up with...well abt that later....

So finally left vashi at 12.30 after a quick bite at McD's
Last time arnd...I was still in my running in period with the bird...so i had a speed limit of 60.
But this time arnd ...with almost 1500kms under my belt....I was ready for some high speed driving...and I did that for sure....with almost at 80 throught the drive. But i am sure I can go faster than this...pretty easily....
Reached Lonavala by 2....75+ kms in some 90 odd minutes..pretty decent uhhh??

One of closest frnds Shash is posted at Lonavala...hes serving as a officer in the Indian Navy ...and is doing his graduation from Lonavala. Its hard work for him...but damn cool for me....
I had informed him before hand of my arrival ...so we met him at a local chinese joint...had our lunch there.....will specifically remember the horrible tomato soup that we had there.
Then we were off to the Naval Base...and to Shash's abode....TPed there for a couple of hours....were listening to Rabbi....'bulla ki jaana'....lovely song...and a lovely album altogether.
Well discovered a couple of Rabbi tunes on my guitar as well...;-))
Stole the CD from shash...and headed towards the sunset point...

Its a real serene place....and as the name suggests is supposed to be a point for viewing the setting sun....i specifically like sunsets more than sunrises....may be something to do with my character traits. The place is amazing.....and if you actually keep shut you can hear...or rather feel ( as Rathore corrected me ) the silence...

It was time to go back now...with Sun already set...I was up for some nite riding.
Stole a hot Coffee at Lonavala before starting back....we had decieded that we'll take it easy with the speed...because it was dark....
But as soon I touched my birds accelerator...all the decisions were part of the exhaust....
Drove back touching 80 almost all the time... and we sure had a few scares in the ghat....with 0 visibilty and that kind of speed.

But we definitely made it back...and were in Vashi center One at the stroke of 9.
This time arnd it was more the thrill of the ride than anything else that we enjoyed.

Ended the day with a B'day treat from me offcourse...to Rathore at Smokin Joes ...and slept to the tunes of Rabbi......Bulla ki Jaana mai kaun???????

marriage...and heaven!!!

2005-01-25T08:21:00.000-05:00

I am just back from a close friends marriage...and it was quiet an experience.
Had loads of fun.....especially at the place where I spent my 4 golden and not so golden years of engineering...visiting all those Beans, CCH's, Spice & Ices ' i was getting all nostalgic...(note the names of the places...all of them are meant for eating...rather hoggin)...
Then meeting up with lots of college buddies...and reliving our moments together....enigmatic...truely.

It also occured to me.....that the friend, who just got married....missed all of it....and mite happen to miss all further ...(mis) adventures of ours. And that too just because he is married.

While I was witnessing this holy bonding....it further dawned upon me that I probabaly wud never be able to psyche myself enough to get married....forget the life after...even the whole process of going through the process...is a ceremonious torture...uffffffff!!!!

No....not my cup of tea definitely......

Any takers???

"The Day"

2005-01-19T04:03:00.000-05:00

After so long....and it wud have been longer if not for today.
Now the obvious question wud be ..whats so special about today.
Well it so happens ..that on this very same day a few(????) years back...i decieded to land upon this earth and make it mine for some time.
I am sure that I haven't been succesful as yet in the"making mine" mission on earth....
But I sure discovered one thing over the last 14 hrs or so of my B'day ...that i sure have 'made mine' a lot of people...
With all the forget fullness that I have shown over the years of missing almost everyones b'day some or the other time....its sure feels good that they all called me to wish me on mine.

But in retrospect , that I look back now....Its been a real cool life...with all its twists and turns...and I have enjoyed every moment of it till date.
I don know how many more such days I am destined to see...but I sure hope that as many are there...I am always able to feel the very same way as today....

Alive...and Rocking!!!!

Cheers...to me!!!
;-)

Yippieeeee -2!!!!!

2004-12-28T04:42:00.000-05:00

I'll continue from where I left...the problem was...As it happened to be 25th of December, all the respectable and the not so respectable lodges and hotels were all packed to the brim....and as we explored further...it started to dawn upon us that we mite actually end up sleeping in a Hanuman Temple verandah...or even worse(or better) the beach itself!!
But then by a pure piece of good fortune...and my ability to read Marathi...we ended up staying in a very sweet lady's drawing room. Once finding the place for the nite...we headed back again to the beach...
The sea always gives me an intimidating experience...its vastness and the awesome power that it beholds. There we were..with our backs on the beach...sea in front...and the clear star studded sky above us.....pure magic!!!!
I reiterated the promise to myself that someday I 'll buy a telescope and be an amateur astronomer.
We had our so called dinner at a beachside chinese stall...with dogs surrounding us....grrrrrrrrrrrr!!! And the count of Colas moved on to 4 for the day with 2 more added here on the beach.
Returned back to our abode for the nite...clicked a couple of snaps...and chat ed our way to sleep.
Morning 6 and we were up and ready to rock again.Over the last evening we had gathered enough information regarding Murud..so we were just raring to go now. Had a parting snap with our sweet aunty...exchanged some telephone nos...and with promises of coming back we were off again to the beach in hunt of "ek cutting chai ". The addict that my frnd is....I almost feel...and its a joke amongst us frnds that he has more chai in his veins than blood.
The road from Alibag to Murud via Kashid...was as expexted....very very beautiful. And the early morning mist was like an icing on the already enticing scenary. We took a couple of offroad trails and undoubtebly they were the best parts of the drive.
We halted at a beautiful white sand beach for a second cup of chai...and a small break. As we were sipping our teas..we discovered that this was none other than the famous Kashid beach.
We made it our own by clicking a couple of snaps again.
Next stop was ....our supposed final destination Murud Janzira...we skipped the Murud beach on the way...and parked my Bird on the Jetty from where we caught a boat to the fort which is a kilometer or so inside the sea. It was supposedly the last frontier for the famous maratha warrior Shivaji Maharaj , which unlike ,India for aussies, he was never able to conquer.
It was getting hot now...and we just incremented our Cola count by 1.We ditched the idea of a beach party at Murud.Instead we headed straite back to Kashid beach again. Chilled out there for almost 3 quarters of an hour. Had our stomachs filled with some Bhurji Pav...and finally some water!!!! That was 2 PM Sunday.We were planning to reach back Vashi by 5.
So from here on it was a steady bike read through Alibag ,Pen...and almost till Panvel.
Had the last cola of our trip somewhere close to Panvel at 4. That finally brings our cola tally to 6.Pepsi, Coke , Thums Up...any body listening...do sponsor this trip of ours guys.
Bang at the stroke of 5 we entered Vashi...and that was the end of this journey...but the adventures were still far from over for us guys....

This and more may be later...but that brings me to "THE END" for Yippieeee!!

Yippieeee!!!!!!

2004-12-27T05:25:00.000-05:00

The title says it all......i am all too excited...
It doesn't require any supernatural powers for guessing the reason....
Am back from a simply superb and amazing ride....on my glittering BIRD.
This is the 1st part of a lsit of a couple more.

Travelers : 3 in number...My frnd...Thakur, myself..and my sweetheart...My Silver Thunder Bird!

Destination : Just for the Sake of it...Murud Janzira...Some 160 odd Kms south of Mumbai on the captivatingly scenic Konkan belt. But finally justifying the tiltle of my Blogs..."Road to Nowhere"...it was the route and not the final stop that was the destination.

The Road Trip : It all started taking shape when my Indore trip got cancelled due to non availability of tickets in any form of Transport...Trains and Buses. ( I don count Airways as a mere means of transport..Its still a luxury for me). That was late Wednesday evening...and early Saturday afternoon I was already on my way to Vashi to pick up my pillion and the 3rd of the Travellers..Rathore.As usual....we got late...or atleast we thought that we did...
Because there was too much stuff missing from our travel kit..(if you can call it a KIT ..that is).
To name a few...I didn't have a helmet...and we did not like the back pack that Rathore had arranged for carrying our stuff.We had a pair of shades to buy...and finally Lunch!
We finished the top three and finally left Vashi railway station at 4 0'clock with some 1900rs ..odd in Cash, a smart back pack...,an old sachtel(my stuff), first of the 500Mls of Thumbs Up,A couple of helmets... cool shades inside them...and hungry Stomachs.

That was 4 in the afternoon..and we were on NH -17 speeding towards Panvel...where we planned to have our Lunch...or snacks(whatever...Basic idea...stuff our stomachs with something).
4.30 we dived into the drive in of the McD's at Panvel...we did a circus stunt there..of just driving thorugh ..and finally decieded to halt there and sit and eat inside. gr888 idea...after a couple of burgers, finger chips...and second round of Colas(mark the second...and keep counting)....we were ready to hit the road again...
So we were off again...after a few directions from the roadside dhaba walas...we set our sites on Pen..the next destination. Suddenly, out of nowhere this Rathore guy starts yelling...that we have not even clicked a foto graph..and we need to stop and all.....I ,after calming myself from the shock that he gave me, stopped in the middle of nowhere for our first Snap.
Reached Pen within time...after another set of directions from the locals...we were en route to Alibag. We originally had decieded that we will be staying in Murud for the nite, but that thought was already vanishing with the fading lite of a cold(????) December evening.
On the way ...we saw one of the wonders of the World, Don know which wonder list it fits into....but it definitely forced me and my buddy to wonder over our combined general knowledge. It basically was a Ispat(Steel) plant, but it proudly endorsed the title of being one of the wonders.Amazing!!!
Reached Alibag at some 15 minutes to 7.headed straite for the Beach...Big mistake.There was a lot of anguish waiting for us...that and more in the next part of the series.

Swades....

2004-12-22T04:55:00.000-05:00

Posting after quite a while.....and that too not a genuine one...
But this ones as good as an original....becuase its from my frnd and roommate Sambit.

So I quote ..."
Have u ever quizzed yourself why we like watching movies so much even though v are aware its just a make belief........more movies.....more stories.....more action...........a romantic movie to enliven our romantic dreams , an action packed flick to catch up on the latest styles and some real cool looking and dressed actors and offcourse a "Hot item number" in between the movie......an art movie as they call it to act as a food for thought of different perspectives to relationships and the problems..a family aka Govinda entertainer to completely freak out......an all out emotional, hypersensitive , over exaggerated drama to go in remember our loved ones , miss them for sometime.......and dats it.....
We come out of the theatre..and life moves on right...ya it does....Just a couple of days i saw Swades and being a literate engineer and a sound one at that....i still couldnt bracket it against any of those categories i mentioned above.......Since time immorial we have been talking about the Politicians not doing too good a job......Sachin not firing , Ganguly not doing too bad....and Dravid doing always good......but wat does Swades talk about......Hymm difficult to put it in words but i wil still try without giving away the story to all of those who wud read this article and yet havent seen the movie......Swades talks about GrassRoot India , a subject realized by every Indian but taken up by None. It talks about poor farmers who face the challenge of leaving there house in the morning and returning home with atleast a bread to feed there children in the face of unimaginable adversities and atrocities..It talks about those rich Sarpanches who are considerate to there subjects , but yet highly discriminate them with the caste eye. It talks about those still so existent morals of finding happiness in doing other's good even though everything around you is falling apart..... It talks about Poverty and Swades as the movie's caption rightly goes is about "We - The People of India".
Mohan Bhargava played by Shah Rukh Khan is a Project Manager working for the Global Precipitation Project in NASA.(Marks the foray of Bollywood movies into NASA). Mohan in the midst of all his successes and his heightened career , starts realizing that he is missing something in his life......Finally he decides to go back to India to find wat he has been desperately missing...and just then his life changes....takes a right turn where he finds Honesty..then takes a left turn where he finds Integrity...and then a U Turn where he finds his Love, Happiness and His Life back.
Look out for that scene which gives the aerial view of India from the inside of the Plane with Shah Rukh looking down from the window !!! The cinematography which starts building from that casting scene just keeps getting classier throughout the movie till the ending parts of the movie showing Shahrukh in NASA with Rehman's score which has been stunningly picturised !!! Gayatri last seen in some ads and serials makes an astounding debut as an idealistic, unmateristic woman who is shown thoroughly dedicated to the cause she believes in. Soft-spoken but yet quarrelsome she just excels in the movie...and the scenes which have her are undoubtedly the more beautiful ones owing to her stunning Indian Looks!!!! I still am having problems getting her out of my mind !!!Gosh !!!
Ashutosh Gowariker after making a Lagaan to come back with a movie of this stature is far more then commendable.........It just goes to show that when you believe in something you do completely....even a mundane story with a bunch of people playing cricket can be presented as a spirit of unity and fight......and so is the case with Swades....the Only similarity being that both of his movies are based on Grassroot India....Hats off to him to venture into a line where none of the top of the line directors of todays age dare to venture...
The supporting actors are all brilliant in the movie.
And Finally Shah Rukh Khan...wat do i say about this man.....I loved his movie Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa....its stil in my all time fav list....as a matter of fact its his favourite movie as well.......He was this cute lovable guy in Raju Ban gaya Gentleman..Then came DDLJ..in the middle..in most of his films he used to ham so much..that i used to cringe seeing him act.....but since the last 2 or 3 years..he has metamorphosed into a more mature and controlled style of acting....In Swades i have to say he is flawless ..i mean being a more a critical viewer that i am...i just found him reaching dizzy heights of acting in the film..watch the scene where he is sitting in the train..and a kid would come and request him to buy water from him at 25p per cup..
Watch the movie for Shahrukh's acting , one of A.R. rehman's finest works ( the range of sounds he has given in the background scores starting from the more rustic and rural ones to the more sophesticated urban ones are awesome leaving apart the classy songs of the movie ), Gowariker's brilliance , Gayatri Joshi , breath taking cinematography and lastly for such a genuine , heart touching story .
Sambit.

".....The end!!!

Calvin & Blogs...

2004-11-01T05:47:00.001-05:00

It has come down to this now.Its a Monday and am frantically fighting to keep myself awake.Be it reading a Java Networking book(Yawn.....) ,a Pals blogs on this very site or some Calvin & Hobbes genius.
I haven't been slogging at my work lately, but this is hites. I am actually searcing my old mails to find some pending work that I might have forgot ...and alas whatever little work that I find from them....the monday blues prevent me from undertaking that too.What a mess!!!
And all this lethargy is getting to my nerves...am really pissed off as of now.I am just knocking my brains empty when this idea of writing this blog finally trickles down from some (still)sane corner of my mind.
I guess it actually some time helps if you write things out.The basic idea is to get things out of your system.Now writing it out gives a double advantage.Firstly, and most importantly, you don need an audience to actually sit and listen to whatever crap you are dishing out and Secondly,It clears out your mind to a good extent and you are left with an admirable(????) piece of literature.Which you can later flaunt off.
Atleast, it seems to work for me.
So my purpose is solved.
Back to work hunting!!!!

I am a liar!!!

2004-09-22T04:09:00.000-04:00

I had written this a couple of months back when I was listening to the ditto titled Bryan Adams number.....
Not sure if I can reproduce my orginal writing word to word....but here goes nothing!!

Contradiction Contradiction Contradiction!!!
This lines a total contradiction...an ideal for an example of contradiction.
Lets see how...
Going by the premise ....that Its true. It means that the first person is a liar...but if thats the case...well...well...well...hers' your first contradiction.
Now taking the second premise that ...its false.That means the first person is speaking the truth, which is not possible because of what hes saying...contradiction again!!!

So...from a famous novel ...which says...if there is a contradiction...check your premises....
The following wud be the only answer...EAT this!!!