Rajasthan-a visit to the soul of India

Being an avid travel freak, Jaipur was once of the few places I wanted to go since quite some time for all the grandeur, the culture, the forts, the traditions and so. Finally my dreams did take its shape and after spending 3 days in that beautiful place, it indeed does feel good.

Even after repeated news reports on all trains in northern India having badly hit by dense fog, I decided to take the risk and hopped into the train sincerely expecting the train to reach Jaipur by 2 in the morning or an hour or 2 late for the worst case. But the fog indeed showed me what it had been famous for all these days by making my train run late for 12hrs. So I did reach Jaipur by 2, the slight difference being that of the am replaced by pm. After freshening up at NIT Jaipur, immediately ran off to ajmeri gate for some rajasthani shopping. And what a splendid sight it was….colorful shops lined all the way both the sides selling all kinds of exquisite rajasthani stuffs which indeed would be any collector’s envy and ideal for gifts ranging from bags, shoes, bangles, fancy decoration items, clothes and so on. Bought all kinds of stuffs as per the demanded by mom and sis. Coming back, visited the Birla temple which was serene and peaceful.

The 2^nd day was dedicated to all the forts of Jaipur. With arvind, an old friend of mine since schooldays as my guide, we started off with nahargarh fort, the very fort where aamir khan and others danced to paathsaala in rang de basanti and kailash kher walked around singing saiyyan….. The fort provided some unbelievable views of the city atop.

The next stop was jaigarh fort which housed the world’s largest cannon which was really huge. Again the very place where the song jashn e bahara was picturised in Jodha akbar.

We also got a chance to see a traditional puppet show which was great. Jaigarh fort and the subsequent visit to amer fort gave a true glimpse of the grandeur the kings lived during their lifetime and the enormous wealth and power they had under their control. After a traditional Marwari lunch, we headed off to the famous hawa mahal, jantar mantar and places near by which accounted for the later part of the day.

After a lot of thinking, decided to spend the 3^rd day with a visit to the Dargah Sharif at Ajmer and Pushkar which was truly worth it. Truly can’t explain in words the aura and the sanctity the dargah had. It was such a beautiful experience seeing people from all religions flocking in crowds and fighting with each other to get a glimpse of the holy shrine.

Pushkar too had a beauty in itself. All through the roads lined up from the bus stand till the Pushkar Lake were these tiny colorful shops selling all kinds of traditional rajasthani items. Filled with foreigners, was not actually surprised watching the local shopkeepers speaking in fluent English and Spanish to attract the tourists.

Nevertheless visited the famous Brahma temple, said to be the only one in the world and the Pushkar Lake, which is considered to be as serene as the Mansarovar Lake.

Could never even realize how quickly three days had passed roaming around places with old friends..but then the moments spent there and the sights seen were truly worth remembering all lifetime. Places like jaiselmer, jodhpur and Udaipur have been booked for the next trip….

my batchmates of school-miss u guys

guys...dis was a poem written by two of my sweet frens komal n sonia describing all my batchmates durin class 12 . It must b sheer co-incidence dat i came thru this poem after more than 3 yrs of leaving my school. So guys...all dedicated to the great batch 2005-06 of holy cross....enjoy it

“OUR CLASS”

Welcome to our class..

Full of wonderful lads n lass !!!

All of whom likes to reside in huge noise and bass,

But each one of them are ajobazzz..!!!

My class is Xii, yes !

And all the students are the best

They can make teachers run

Creating problems in tones..!!

CLASS! CLASS! CLASS!

Lets enter carrying ‘the risk pass’…..

In this class each type of students are there,

In which SAMAPRIYA seems to be topper her.e

ARVIND & QUARRATUL wants silence in class,

But SANDHYA makes noise by breaking the glass.

BIJAYATA & PRAMILA loves roaming in corridor,

Whereas most of them are asleep by getting bored!!

TSHEWANG likes to give all answers,

While SHARMILA is class dancer.

LEM is ever smiling, jumping and laughing,

While if teacher comes AVINASH starts coughing.

CHEMI & of course BIKKI are as naughty as can be ..

But very innocent to see!!

SANDUP is very talkative,

BISHAL is always progressing,

& TRIPTI sitting next is very creative!!

BIDISHA always listens to teacher,

While SUPERNA always thinks about future!!

If PANKHURI wants to save Bihar,

Anyone with aloo in lunch is SITOSHNA’S agla shikar!!

Everyone’s crazy for MANISHA’S walk,

& we don’t remember when RENUKA had her last talk!!

Aka ROSHAN is the class rapper

SREEMOY sitting ahead just gets taller n taller!!

Here comes TSHERING, The school kaptaan,

Carrying the school flag with shaan.

NEHA is the crazy one,

DIXYA too is match for none,

While ravi gets a big well done!!

SUSAN, PRANAY & DIVYA are forward in every field,

Whether its naughtiness or studies!!

Here comes the people ending with alphabet ‘O’

VIVEK, the Picasso,

RAKSHA, the DidO,

BRAJESH, the RonaldO,

Not the least ROMA, the MomO!!

If NAMESH loves to collect all things weird,

Therez DEBAYAN & ANURAG forget cutting their beard!!

Here comes UDITH, the Vivek Oberoi,

We all wonder when he will see his Aishwarya Rai!!

SANAT loves to give lavish treats, yummy,

But tragically he forgets paying bills, mommy!!

MAHARISHI is intelligent in all,

But unfortunately he doesn’t study at all..

RIGZING can never stop dreaming,

& SUBHA is ever smiling!!

SAMBEDH can never sit still in place,

VAIBHAV in the class is very quiet,

Speaks only when the occasion is right.

Here’s ANUSHA, as crispy as lays,

VAGISHA’s rewarded with effort she pays!!

There’s NIMA who is seldom confused,

Letting off always SONIA’s fuse!!

All students are very smart,

Weather its quiz or martial arts.

This is our class- the perfect,

Taking everything in our way with respect!!

Heads high and posture erect. . .

Sometimes clever while sometimes confused n full of chaos…

But each and every jewel worth an applause…!!

The weekend that was….

Guys,

hola!!!!!i know its been a long time I posted something, so thought better late than never!!! This post is in tribute to the great weekend I had while travelling from New Delhi to Gangtok where my great luck made it sure that it would be one of the most memorable journeys I would ever have.

It all started when I booked my tickets in a summer special train to NJP from Delhi inspite of the repeated warnings given by my parents, bahni n his parents too. Nevertheless, bahni came to drop me to the railway station at around 10pm when the train was supposed to leave at around 11pm. The first shock was when we found that the name of the train was no where visible in the display board. Enquiring at the counter made us know that the departure had been delayed by 6 hrs. Perplexed, we had no other option than to come back silently to home. Reaching the railway station again at 4.30 in the morning the next day, it was not a happy sight to see the departure being delayed by 4 hours further. It was around 9am by the time the train started, already 10hrs behind schedule. If that seemed bad, by the time it reached NJP, the train was 26 hrs late which included a 6hr stop in the middle of a forest without any food or water to drink, nor in the bathrooms, no electricity in the train and so on.

After reaching NJP late at midnight, as I entered the waiting room, the lights went off. Darn! my great luck. Had to spend sweaty 4 hrs in the dark waiting room with my luggage before finally got a vehicle for gangtok at 4am. Reaching home and meeting my family almost made me forget all my troubles and pain I had endured in the past two days but the worst was yet to come. As I was so excited to show the pics of my training to my parents and opened my laptop, the inevitable happened……………..my laptop crashed!!!!!!!all whatever I had collected in the past 3 yrs had gone off in a whisker of a second. It really took me some time before I could ever forget this weekend!!

MY FIRST DAY AT TRAINING...

Being a student of civil engineering, one is expected to undergo a summer training in any public sector or a organization giving the students a feel of what they are to do for the rest of their lives in advance.Keeping that in mind, me and my friend bahniman somehow managed to get ourselves in B.H.E.L,a so called well established PSU considered as a dream job by many for our training during the summers at delhi.This story is about the first two days of our great training program.
Call it our great luck or something, we ended up reaching more than 70 kms away from our training site searching for it in the first day. We are searching all over noida for the BHEL office just to realize it later that the place we were supposed to go was at a place called bawana in haryana, just opposite in direction to where we were. And this all was happening at a time when we were constantly being guided by our mentor at the site who was going on giving instructions on phone, which through sheer coincidence matched exactly the same in noida which he was exactly describing in bawana. After realizing our foolishness, we were too tired to go that far and decided to call it off for that day.
The next day,it exactly took us 3 hours and 6 different modes of transportation to reach to our site. Starts with the ride to the nearest metro station in bahni's car, den we take the metro to the last station of the metro network taking about an hour or so, den a rickshaw ride to the bus stand from where we have no other option than to travel an hour in a rickety bus which is better if the spoken the least about it,leaving us stranded at a bridge which was half constructed. After coming to know that we stil had around 5kms to cover on foot, both of us could do nothing else but to laugh on ourselves, or our fate, or better ,blame it on our 'karma' as framed by bahni. Just then a power tiller lightened our burdens to a certain extent by giving a lift to half the distance. The operator was indeed a blessed soul. And after persuading our senior who was arranging our training,he finally sent us a car to pick us up.
Reaching the site, i was mentally preparing myself to some kind of a shock. A huge open dusty area with cranes, power drillers, heavy trucks n machinery working all over, huge foundations being prepared, the hot dry sun blazing at his best at us, the day indeed was made memorable standing in the heat of delhi for the rest of the day. Coming back home at around 8 on the evening, i have lost contact with half of the organs n muscles of my body. And mind you people, this was the first day of my training.
So people, a sincere request from me and bahniman to pray for our survival for the next 3 weeks so that we could spread the message of love and happiness all around the world...peace....

walking down the memory lane.......

ok...this post comes at a time when i have just completed 3

years of my college life (that actually can be confirmed after

my results!!!), but even now it just feels like yesterday i

walked off through the school gates for the very last time and

joined this college. Infact each and every incident related to

my school is so much imprinted in my mind that even now i

consider myself a part and parcel of that very school that has

shaped me to what i am. And now here i stand, three years gone

into this college, from which i have collected some tales to say and stories to

laugh and joke about with my kids after 10 years or so....dats

after considering the optimistic case.
Anyways i dont know the reason why but the only things that

were going on in my mind all while preparing for the

examinations was the glorious time i spent in my school, and

not the three years i have spent in this college. Even when i

tried recollecting some of the funny events that had happened

here, every time my mind would just shift by to the golden

school days(p.s- i guess you all must have understood by now

how well i was preparing for the exams!!).
That everyday uphill trek to the school campus at 8 in the

morning, those morning assemblies at the school ground with

those hymns and songs which sounded so lame initially but then

end up humming all the time later on, that first hour of

physics classes everyday, the lucky ali renditions at the

breaks, the sand group nautanki, regular fights at the lunch

break ransacking each others boxes, stupid chats n laughs at

the library where u end up being kicked out of the library at

last, passing of chits to each other at the maths class and

what not.......the list just goes on and on.....whats my story

must have been the same for each and every one of us in their

respective school lives.
All these thoughts infact have made me so nostalgic that the

first thing I've decided to do after going to gangtok this

summer after a month would be to visit my alma mater, meet

everyone and finally if possible, give a small talk at the

school assembly on how beautiful and important it is to

cherish your school life.....

MY FIRST LOVE!!!!!!

who can forget one's very first love of his or her life....something that is etched into memory all through the lifetime...and whatever be the consequences of that relationship, you always remember it for the happy moments you shared and for everything related to it surely bringing a smile at your face whenever you think about it.....
feels to have gone back in time at that very moment with that very person who was the most important thing in your life when no other thing kept equal importance as much as her in your thought factory, those regular fights with your parents for pocket money and phone balance n what not..those endless conversations in the phone for hours where you would suddenly realize that its late midnight of what you had started talking some 4-5 hours ago...all those regular meetings in the market bunking tutions, lying friends just so that you could spend quality time all alone with her.....dose stupid exchanges of chits in the classes and glancing at her every other second involuntarily.....chats which had no meaning whatsoever but just the happiness of talking to her and spending time with her superseding all your thoughts.....not forgetting the jealousy and anger seeing her talking with someone else....the fights with her and your whole hearted efforts just to win her back....
those euphoric moments of joy and happiness beyond all limits thinking of the day the first time she talked to you, the first time you went out with her, the first time she held your hand, the first time she spoke out words of love for you, the moment when you could feel from her actions and words that nothing mattered more to her than yourself, the feeling of being the king of the world and that happiness was just indescribable.
experiencing each and every feeling some years ago which i have written , indeed those days were the happiest ones of my life....although the end result was something i never wished to happen, it was these feelings and these thoughts itself that gave me a reason to smile whenever i was sad or down....something that bought in a sense of happiness whenever i would think about it.....
so guys, fall in love..it indeed is the most beautiful thing god has bestowed us....

EGO!!!????

the biggest evil inside a human soul is this small three letter word..."EGO"...and it is coz of this ego itself that makes people do the worst of things n say the worst to people close to them... No feeling is more worse than finding someone whom u thought to be your close fren leaves you all alone in the middle just because of this small three lettered problem...
long lasting friendships being broken in a instant just coz of small misunderstandings n none of them interested to patch up again because of nothing else but 'ego'..... fights within a family over smallest of things, rifts in a joint family all because of ego.....the ego of a rich person preventing him to talk wit people lower in class than him,...... ego of a leader of a nation leadin to worldwide destruction all over,...... the ego of a person of a higher caste stopping himself even to interact with someone from the lower caste and then in the end the ego of a person not even allowin him to live a life he always wanted to live....
how good it would be if everyone forgets this small word from their individual lives for a moment and checks out for themselves the difference it would bring in their lives and in the society as a whole-no difference in caste, creed, money,in fact everything binding everyone in a single thread of love and unity...
but alas...seems we have moved too ahead in life to even think of something happening like this...but then,isn't it worth giving a try...call someone immediately whom u had a fight with solve things, patch up with your old friend with whom you got separated just coz of a stupid misunderstanding...the joy you get after the conversation is something beyond described by any words....just try it

WHERE IS THE LOVE??

We all were getting ready to give our first exam of our second internal examinations.Everyone was seated in their respected positions and were really tensed waiting to get the question paper. Suddenly from nowhere we hear shouting from all corners.Something was not going right. The inquisitors go outside to inspect the commotion going on. Within a span a 5 minutes or so, we could see everyone happily coming out of the classrooms jumping with joy and ecstasy. Well,for some reason the examinations got canceled.....the reason???
Someone from m tech was found dead in his room early in the morning. I was taken aback. Obviously this was the last thing to expect among all the reasons for the exams to be canceled. i just turned around and looked at the class. Barring few concerned faces, no one even bothered to think, leave aside to inquire about that poor guy.It was the time to celebrate. The joy of exams getting postponed was far far above than losing someone from the fraternity. Some people was busy fuming thinking that it was the wrong day for him to die.Well,he could have waited for one more day.leastwise i wouldn't have had to give that tough exam of tomorrow.
Well, today we live in such a world where people no more care about each other. Gone were the days when people talked about "vasudhaiva kutumbakam" when the whole world was considered as a single family. Today no one cares even for someone in his own vicinity.. Reminds me of the song by black eyed peas-"where is the love,the love, the love???"

MY SISTER'S WEDDING

Nothing could be more important and exciting for a family to get the daughter of the house married off happily. I literally witnessed the tension and sleepless nights faced by my parents for months searching a suitable groom for my sister. And then at last after months of planning and preparation, the d-day finally arrived-15th of february- just a day after the valentine's day itself. Couldnt do it on the 14th or else my sister wouldnt hav been able to celebrate her marriage anniversary, thanks to the sri ram sena and the vhp.
Anyways i was busy doing what a brother of a bride is supposed to do-running around getting works done, welcome the guests, make sure everyone has had their lunch and most importantly arrange everything for the ceremony. In a way, I was enjoying doing all these. No one was more satisfied than me seeing that the ceremony went off smoothly and was a grand success. Everyone was happy with the arrangements and blessed the newly wed couple.
It was late midnight by the time i got free from all the works. My sister got a emotional sendoff, a typical hindi movie style when i was busy on the other side arranging the house.I was complementing myself to have controlled my emotions since the past three days or so. But as i came back to my room, some things started hovering around my mind. And it was then i realised that i wont be able to see my sister anymore at home as soon as i would come back from my college from vacations and from now would have to go as a visitor to her in-laws to meet her. All those regular shopping hops on the bike, those evening visits to the beach, none of them would be possible that often in the future. All this started haunting me to such a extent that i couldnt bear staying in that room even for a second more-the very room which i had shared with my sis since years.
Someone has said it very correctly - you realize the value of a person only when he/she goes away from you. I did realize it......

ITS JOURNEY TIME FOLKS!!!

Train journeys are something that have always enthralled and mystified me since childhood. And after traveling more than 8000kms in 18 days thanks to tata jagriti yatra, my love for the railways has just multiplied manifold. I got a chance of witnessing different shades of India all in a single journey at the same time staying, sleeping, eating, singing all those 18 days with people i never knew before developing such a close bond which i may never never forget all my life...
I think this is what a train journey is all about. Over a span of few hours of a journey, you meet so many kinds of people-some who just glance by, some have a small talk with you, some engage themselves in a interesting conversation and some people leave a everlasting impression in your life.
What better time to write this entry sitting in a train itself with so people from various spheres and kinds all around me having their own share of thought processing and mindsets during the journey- the joy and excitement clearly written in the faces of a group of some workers sitting behind me who are going home to meet their families after a span of 5 years with their bags filled with gifts and sweets, the contempt and satisfaction of a elderly couple going back home after a month long pilgrimage all around the country, the sadness and depression evident in the face of the girl leaving her parents for another session of college, d excitement in an elderly couple who i think were traveling in a train for the very first time who used to jump with joy as soon as a goods train would pass from the other side(god knows why!!!), a group of ncc cadets listening to their mentor with utmost interest who is sharing about his experiences in the war front at the same time inspiring them and many others, and the list goes on......
Where else can you see such a blend all in a span of hardly of 20m in a compartment. In short, hats off the railways. If you found this interesting, just try interacting with your co-passengers the next time you board the train.I bet your experiences will be more interesting than mine!!!!!!!