The Savanal Forest Trek...

Friends, many of you might all ready know that I have shifted from Hyderabad to a place called Ujire (some 350kms from Bangalore) and I am working in a Laboratory that does engineering R&D, focusing on rural needs, which is partially linked to solar technologies (If interested, please read my previous posts to know more on my career shift). This post is about the forest exploration that I did along with some of my colleagues as part of my work.

Based on the recent census, the total world tiger population is around 3,500 and half of them are in India. If you look at the statistics provided by the census people, i.e. the rate at which the tiger population is reducing, I guess we may not have tigers at all in other 10 years. Incidentally, a forest that is around 15- 20 Kms from where I presently work has more than 50 tigers.

Our Lab has great interest pertaining to human-wild animals based projects for quite some time; some projects involve repelling the wild animals away from the agricultural lands, while some involve protecting them from the humans. With respect to projects related to tiger protection, our Lab has interest in providing the technology solution. Precisely, the idea is to set up a web cam that is powered by solar panels in the forest in some location which continuously captures the video and sends it to the internet (live video streaming and stuff). An alternate plan is to set up an intelligent still camera that could capture pictures at some instances and send it over to the web. I am open to discuss about the technical aspects about the project, but for now let me tell you more about our today's mini expedition.

Our expedition started at around 9:30 from some where near Ujire bus stand. By 'our', I mean Ravi (the project lead) , Akshata (engineering student - intern in the lab) and me. We had hired a jeep, which has a four wheel drive that could go on tough terrains comfortably. The jeep driver was a very friendly person by the name Venkatesh. The agenda of the expedition was to do an initial study of the forest and identify some places where the camera could possibly be placed. Before entering the forest, we filled some forms to get permission from the forest officer in Belthangady (5kms from Ujire) to visit the forest. To our advantage, Akshata's dad had once served the Savanal forest (btw that's where the tigers reside) as the forest officer, hence all the formalities concerning the entry to the forest went fairly smooth.

Savanal forest is around 10kms from Belthangady. It is part of Kudhremukh wild life sanctuary. The forest is filled with greenery and water flowing paths all the way. Considering the fact that it is a heavy rain-fall area, we were very lucky that the sky was clear and it didn't rain at all the whole day. I must say that I had a great day for learning photography. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Akshata's dad's close friend from Belthangady, Mr. Vasanth along with the forest guide, Mr. Krishnappa joined us to help us explore the forest. While talking to them we could feel that they would have roamed around the forest thousands of times. They took us to many places in the forest where the animals generally hang out, like one spot in specific is called as SirigaLa Gundi which is an amazing water falls surrounded by rocks. The height of the water falls is some thing like that of a three story building and the pond (perhaps a water basin) formed by the water falls tempts any water lovers to get in and swim, however we hadn't got extra dress hence we didn't get in. We spent more than an hour near SirigaLa gundi as the view of the water fall was totally breathtaking. Besides SirigaLa gundi we came across many other water falls as well. The water from these falls tastes so good that I feel like the water I drink daily is utterly tasteless. While exploring the forest, we could see foot prints of many animal, in few places tiger's as well which gave us good indication of their hang out places. We identified few locations where we could set up our cameras to start with. As this was planned as a day visit we didn't venture further deep into the forest, where the possibility of finding the tigers is very much high. One more encouraging thing is that some of us had mobile network in the forest as well which is a good news for us to set up communication link, though we have to set up a private wireless line of sight network till a point where there is decent internet connectivity.

The only irritating part of our trip were leeches, they just got on to our legs and sucked hell of a blood from us. Apart from that we had a fantastic trip to the forest, which ended with all six of us having a proper heavy south Indian meal at a vegetarian hotel in Belthengady.

The new job...

This post is actually a mail I sent to some of my friends few days after I shifted to Ujire (28th September 2010), I am posting it in this site to have some sort of continuity...

Hello friends, its quite some time I have updated some of you on things I have been doing and trying to do. Here is a small write up on the same.

After quitting GE, I relocated to Banglore to pursue my dreams of starting a company in solar energy domain. Before I go more on that, I must say GE was very kind to me from the day I joined - they took me even when I didn’t turn up on my joining date - didn’t ask me my degree certificates after I joined - paid me two months salary for which I wasn't required to work - its an awesome company. Anyway, I am trying to get over GE and focus on renewable energies.

After coming to Bangalore I had great fun in hanging out with my friends in IISc, friends near my home, catching up with my relatives in some family functions and also had super awesome fun in Malaysia. I was at absolute leisure , spending my typical day in watching TV, following mail chains, social networking via facebook, orkut and twitter, reading some arbit novel and various other time pass activities. While enjoying my paid holidays, I indulged myself in a small project that involved illuminating a garden by LEDs, which had to be powered through solar energy and yeah, I also visited the India’s largest solar PV (PhotoVoltaics) based electricity generation plant. Well, I did try to educate my self on solar energy technologies by reading books, talking to people and of course through Internet.

I realized that starting a business in solar PV would require hands on experience, that is to have field experience. For this purpose, I applied for a field engineer job in a few companies. I was lucky to get connected to an IISc professor through a close friend of mine. That professor hooked me up with some people in this company called Selco, which is doing great work in rural electrification through solar. Fortunately things worked out and they hired me to do both R&D and Field work in their incubation centre (Lab), which is located in Ujire (350kms from Bangalore).

I was quite excited to work in a small town, which happens to be a starting point for millions of trekking spots in Western Ghats. Kudremukh, Jamalabad fort, Bandaje falls, Anadka falls, Arabi falls etc are some trekking spots actually viewable from the incubation centre itself. Ujire is located in a very strategic point. Its 7kms from Dharmasthala, which is the most visited pilgrimage centre in Karnataka; hence there are umpteen number of buses from Bangalore and various other places.

I joined the company yesterday (27th Sept ‘10). I work in a lab, which is in the 4th floor of an engineering college called SDMIT. This college building stands out in terms of its Architecture, just like an European in an Indian gathering. The buildings in this town mostly has tailed roof adorned with 19th century architectural style, while this college building is totally of 21st century make, with glass all around and stuff. As per accommodation is concerned, I am right now staying in a lodge, will soon be shifting to SDMIT faculty quarters.

The company operates for six days a week, and gives 10 days holidays for various festivals. The lab has three full time employees including me. Dr. Anand and Sandeep are the other two. Anand is my boss, who is also the head of this lab. He seems like a very cool person. He has done some quite adventures stuff in his life. Like this one, after doing his BTech from IIT Madras (1992) he got a 10 acre land in this place and started farming. He was assistant professor in IISc ASTRA for some time. Anyway there is so much to tell about him, will tell you some other time. Sandeep is my ‘go-to’ person here. He completed his masters in Social Work (MSW) few months back and joined SELCO. He interacts with the villagers to find out their problems and tries to provide the technological solution offered from the company end. If there isn’t any solution available, he communicates the same to the lab, and the lab works on it. The solution developed by the lab is given to the villagers free of cost and the same will be monitored for its reliability and usability. If the solution is found to be reliable and robust then it will enter the product line of the company, which will be manufactured in bulk and later sold at affordable price. Here comes my role, I will be part of the team which develops the solution and do the first time installation at villager’s house. Well, you might be wondering who else is in the team here? This lab has always been blessed with some really smart interns from various universities, which includes MIT, Cambridge, Stanford and also over own VTU. Right now with us is Sam, He is doing his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Cambridge university, UK (remember Newton of Newton’s law of motion - he is alumni of the same University). The lab also gets few inters from the college, who are selected based on their performance in the tests and interviews conducted by Anand. I am yet to meet this gang.

This lab is a junk yard. There are so many things here but nothing is in any specific place, probably I have to apply some of the lessons I learnt in GE to make this place more convenient to work. However, the best part of the lab is the view from the windows. I could see greenery all around. I can see places I have trekked and the places I aspire to trek. There are Hills, water falls and what not. In fact, I bought a DSLR camera before leaving Bangalore so that I could capture all these stuff. I have pasted the link of some snaps that I took yesterday and today below, do check it some time.

so guys, here I am all alone, chasing for the unknown, with a mind of my own:)

http://picasaweb.google.com/isiganesh/UjireMyNewHome?authkey=Gv1sRgCMGQwd2a5bnUfA#

Great Experience!

General Electric is a 100+ years old multi-national company, where I worked as an Engineer for 23 months of my youth life. This article is like a quick (or short) highlights of my stay in GE.

Aviation systems was a newly formed team in Hyderabad Technology Center (HTC) that had five electronics engineers and I was one amongst them. Our team was fairly isolated from rest of 400 and odd employees in the facility as they were working for Energy Engineering business. In order to mingle with them, it had to be through non technical activities. I was very keen in becoming friends with them. After we finished developing our first avionics card, I wasn't loaded with much work; hence my manager let me take up some responsibilities for the "HTC FAMILY DAY '09". Well, Family day is similar to annual day celebration that we had in schools days.

Being a Family Day volunteer gave me license to jump into all those folks who were directly or indirectly connected to organizing team. The organizing team was sub-divided into various functions. I choose to work for the communication function. The communication function involved spreading news, information and awareness pertaining to family day. In this way I got more opportunities to connect with people of other functions like transport, cultural's, event management etc. It was amazing fun to making posters, videos and also working on anchoring script. In those 3 weeks, I become friends with at least one member from each team in our office. Apart from taking up communication related responsibility, I had this crazy thing in my mind. And that was to perform in a group dance.

If you do follow my blog, then you would have read about how I went about trying dance (if you haven't do read my article called 'Lust'). Performing in that group dance turned out to be the greatest fun thing I ever did in my entire life and most importantly I made great friendship with my three other group members. Post Family Day, every day seemed less boring and more vibrant because of these three friends. Jumping into each others desk, leg pulling and chit chat became convenient ways of killing time. Every alternate weekend we came up with some or the other plan for outing. Although at start we four weren't keen in having our other friends part of our fun but it wasn't too late we realized that it was little lame to be exclusive.

I started loving the company after the family day. The Family Day opened up avenues for doing more creative activities. GE Day, which is a national level exhibition and conference of GE India products, was going to happen in Hyderabad. I was very excited to be part of the volunteering team for GE Day. This volunteering team was addressed as GE Scribe team AKA internal journalists for GE Day. By then I had become the in-house specialist in audio mixing and video making. To take my newly developed hobby to next level, I made quite many promotional videos for GE Day involving my colleagues from office. Some video were interviewing a GE leader while some were about employee taking about the event. I must say that a lady from GE Capital, who was heading the social media project for GE Day, gave me great support in doing all those videos. We broadcasted those promotional videos in YouTube to create vibe amongst general public and also to create virtual presence. Besides these promotional videos, I was given an opportunity to make a video on GE Women's Network for GE Day exhibition. The video was to show case various women network activities carried out that particular year. In doing this video I interacted with almost all the top women leaders of this 12,000 employee organization (GE India) while seeking for their inputs. Well, GE Day gave me a new identity in GE.

GE Day was one helluva an experience but I was missing out on engineering. My manager always wanted to engage me in a neat engineering assignment to do justice for my educational qualification. So he let me go on a rotation for a different business in GE. To be precise the rotation was was to work as an electronics engineer for Hardware team of Energy Transmission and Distribution (T&D) group for few months. At that time T&D was developing their first Energy meter completely on their own (in Hyderabad) and I was a novice in that field. I had to put extra hours to gain competency in that domain. My working rate increased from 10 to 16 hrs/day. The work involved various things in product development like designing, simulating, testing, troubleshooting, validating etc. I guess during those 5 months I gained some amazing engineering skills. For this rotation I was reporting to a comparatively young manager. After working with him I feel young managers tend to give more freedom in trying out new ideas.

While doing some performance testing of the Energy meters, I came up with an idea to make the whole testing quick. The idea was making a Mechanical jig instead of doing manual board interconnects check. If I start talking about the jig it would be violation of terms and condition with the company and also will bore you. It was a jig that could save the testing time by a factor of 6. It wasn't easy to make the jig either considering the time constraint as a critical parameter for project execution. However this young manger let go ahead with a condition that work pertaining to the jig had to be done in my time. I was super happy to do it during the weekends and nights. It involved lots of mechanical engineering efforts like developing drawings, cutting, drilling, screwing, mounting connectors and also lots of soldering. I enjoyed doing all but ultimately when I did the testing with the meters it didn't work. I hadn't slept for 3 consecutive nights as I was troubleshooting for the flaw in connections. The time was running out and I was forced to do the testing in the conventional way but this young manager didn't want me to give up. He let me go back and so did I. I could finally crack the thing up and made it functioning. I must say that was one moment of great satisfaction, which I cherished for long.

While working with T&D Hardware team, I made some really good friends and also interacted with many people from various other teams like software, validation, quality control etc. When I returned back to Aviation systems, I felt like a winner.

The Aviation systems group wasn't doing well. The team size hadn't grown rather it had shrunk. It was depressing as we were expecting it to expand rapidly. I was put in a design project where I was a team member of a group sitting in Cheltenham, UK. The project was suppose to be executed by a Digital design engineer where as I was hired as an analog design engineer. I had an option of going back to T&D or work with this project. I decided to work with Aviation systems as I wanted some exposure working with people from other cultural background. I also had the desire to go to UK, though that never happened. Unlike T&D, the work in Aviation systems involved hell lot of documentation. I use to hate documentation but then I got attracted looking at some documents sent by those UK people. I figured out that doing a neat document can help people work with out dependency and project execution happens in a more organized way. Developing concept design and detailed design documents gave me great clarity of project execution. Participating in those reviews gave nice confidence in taking up more complex projects. Who ever said that “if it’s not fun then you are not doing right" is so right!

After going back to Aviation, I re-connected to one of my close friend in that (aviation) team. He had this fetish for physics. I remember discussing hours together with him on classical mechanics, electromagnetic and relativity. I was mostly in the receiving end though. Inspired by those discussion I wanted to have a quiz section called "Back to Basic" in our office News letter. I was an active contributor for two newsletters in GE, one in our site and other for Aviation systems, Grand Rapids, Michigan. A lady, who was the communication leader of our site also the editor of the newsletter, gave complete support in launching the quiz section. I had great fun in setting those quiz questions, which involved physics, engineering and mathematics; but was painful to select the winner as differentiation from the winner to the rest was very difficult. Many times I handed over the responsibility to other members of the newsletters whom I thought could do better judgment. After being part of it for 3 editions, I transferred my responsibility to a smart IITKgp guy. This guy had become a great friend after family day; I must have had some umpteen numbers of discussions with him on various topics. At this point of time I had the feeling that I wouldn't leave GE for long, long time.

Apart from work and other activities, my close friends with whom I had lunch daily had become some of the most lovely people on this earth. The lunch discussions were never calm as it had some controversies, disputes (I created in most cases), leg pulling or cribbing about something or the other. All in all it was fun while few times scary. The walk that we went after having lunch was nothing different from lunch discussions. Some of these friends became closer after attending one of our very close friend's wedding in Indore (check previous post). That trip to Indore is easily one of the high point of my life.

Things were steady until I got a call from this lady with whom I worked for GE Day as part of social media project. She thought I was capable of getting into a very ambitious role in GE corporate though I lacked prerequisite in all dimensions. I must say I had almost forgotten to dream big until that call. I decided to go for it as I was fairly convinced about my candidature. I prepared supporting documents and mailed those to concerned people. I took one of my best friends help to make my profile look super cool. Well, after doing every thing at my disposal, I wasn't considered as a candidate for the selection process. That was like a wake up call midst of my comfortable life in corporate world. After that event, I could figure that if I had to graduate up in life it had to be on my own. Numerous discussions with this best friend of my mine, who helped me prepare those supporting documents, made my thinking clearly towards taking up entrepreneurship. Starting my own business was my college days dream for all four years. However, I decided to wait for some more time until I discussed the same with few of my mentors and advisors.

As the decision of leaving the company became more and more concrete I spent great deal of my time with these close friends in the office. Another significant activity I was indulged in the office hours was playing table tennis. Every day after 6pm my time was mostly dedicated to TT. Around the same time frame the HTC Family Day '10 was also scheduled. This time I wanted to be involved mainly as a participant not as an organizer. The whole 2 weeks of family day preparation and the final event was absolutely amazing. We took part in various competitions like Antakshari, mad-ads, best proposal etc. We even had this contest of wearing particular colour of dress on specific day. During this family day I took up anchoring and also fashion show, which gave me a chance to face the crowd once again. The axiom is Family day will always be fantastic fun.

I informed my friends about leaving the company just after the Family Day. From their expressions I assumed that they were little shocked. I did inform my manager few days after the family day and also filed my resignation. The last week in my office I could meet as many people as possible but yet missed some. My friends arranged an awesome fair-well near Husain sagar lake, which I would never forget. After spending nearly two years in the company I could realize that the most valuable asset, which I gained are well wishers. Here is my thanks to them in a humble way, my last official mail

Hello people,

Today is my last day at work. Like anyone else, I did learn all those things we could possibly learn being in a world-class organization. I wouldn’t want to mention those quite obvious professional skills that I gained but would like to say,”I worked here because of which I could make my living but most importantly didn’t miss out on having fun at any point”. It was fun partially because people with whom I worked always wanted me to do well. With that sense always in their mind, I was always encouraged to do things that I was very keen in doing. These are the people who made big difference in gaining my confidence. Thank you very much for all the support, I respect you just like my teachers. The other factor that ensured I didn’t miss out on having fun was because of these people who became my friends. Some days in office were tough, some days were just boring while other days were quite balanced but during any of these days I always wanted talk to someone or the other, express my thoughts or even get pampered. These are the people who enabled me to be relaxed, happy and energetic all through out my stay here. My dearest friends, today I thank you for being there, you guys rock!

Have a smile on your face, always!

Best wishes,

Ganesh

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please send me your mobile numbers, personal email ids or any other information to my email id: isiganesh@gmail.com , thanks.

Indore ki yadhen... wo hassen pal...

Prashath AKA Guptaji made all the essential arrangements for a gang of nine in our office to attend our azziz dosth ki shadi. Shadhi ko dhek ne ke liye aat log tho dafthar se nikal tho chuke, lekin sirf saath log pohunche Indore thak, aur chey log shadhi ke waqt per hazir they. Dont get confused about all the chaotic details, let me tell the whole story clearly with a spice of my newly learnt language.

Amit is our close friend and also our colleague. His wedding news brought great delight to all his friends and little bit of apprehension to all the Jain gals who had some faint feelings for him. Arguably the most enthralled about the news were we nine, namely Shital, Prashanth( Gupta), Prasanth (Sivaprasad), Vishal, Radhika, Abdur, Nitika, Rupali and me. We were all set to go but unfortunately Abdur sab ko melaa stay order from his Home Department. The enthusiasm was so jumped up that we left the office before the start of peak hours to catch the evening train. I must agree for the fact that we left without much of usual lame delays caused by gals, which was an indicator that the trip was going to be all right.

But it was not all that "All Right". Rupali’s family members had other plans. She got down at Nagpur Railway station, which is near to her home, to spend time with her dear and loved ones. That was little depressing for us, however she was glad to be part of the Anthakshari, card game (called unohttp://www.uno-game.com/) and other point less discussions before she left us. We also talked about marriage and related stuff for which Gupta gave his thoughts.

We reached Bhopal nearly on time. The TC asked our tickets in the station with some kind of suspicion, later directed us to the station exit with humility. Climatic conditions wise, Bhopal was no different from Hyderabad but food wise it was. After getting out of the station, we could pretty quickly trace our cab (Innova) sent by Amit in that freakin hot air. We had our first breakfast in a small food outlet, which sold 'Poha'. I have no idea of the equivalent name in English but I will recommend you guyz to just have it whenever offered. Having that delicious food we left to Indore. In no time we had our second breakfast in a fast food restaurant which was located beside the Bhopal - Indore high way. During this time, I don't remember how much and what food we had, but one thing I know for sure is that we took millions of pictures. Yeah, this trip was too much of a camera affair. I love pictures, especially when I am in it doing some yo-yo actions or if some chick (sundarsi ladki) in it.

Gadi mey chalthi huve ghana sunkar arr kabi kabi hamara awaz behi melakar, safar ka maza loote ham sab ne. Indore shehar ki gali gali mey mahavir bagh dond they dond they akir me saphal ho gaye. hamra dosth Amit ko dhek ne ke bad sakuun aar chain mela hum logon ko. Amit aar unke kas rishthe dhar hame swagath kar ne ke liye bahar intizar kar rahey they. Unn logon ko mil kar hum bohuth prassan huve. Kaas kar ke Amit ke bhai Ankit ko mil ke.

Ankit is this guy filled with amazing sense of hospitality and enthusiasm. Later we figured that he dances as good as his brother. The moment he met us, he mentioned about the dance that we (Amit, Shital, Rupali and me) did for the family day. Shital was pretty up set when Ankit could only recognize me from that video which Amit had sent him. Moral of the story is quite evident for those who read my previous post. Besides, good arrangements were done for our stay in the chowltry with all the air cooler and stuff. Gals and boys were given separate rooms with very well separated distance for all the conservative based reasons.

One of the high points of the trip, which is still having an effect, was that we got a terrific Mehendhi on our hands, that too on both the sides. The Mehandhi on our hands were not much inferior to the one put to brides and bridegroom's hand. It's all together different matter that I had to sacrifice my first day's lunch but it’s far worth it than the state of these gals who didn't get Mehandi put on for the complete day. The first day of the wedding constituted the 'Sangeeth' to entertain the wedding invites (A tradition to sing, dance by the relatives and friends of bride and bride groom as part of the celebration).

Abb me app logon ko 'Sangeeth' ke bare me kuch bathana cha ha tha hun. Sangeeth samaramb rath ko shuru huva. Uss se pehele ham kafi tayari avam intizar ki. Jab samramb shuru huva mud ne ka name kabi bhi nahi leya. Kahi reshthy dharone nrithya pesh ki. Chote bade aar buude, sab ne unka uthsah se sabko manoranjit kiya. Bad me patha chala ki bohoth tayari ke thi ke tha ke achh se ache pesh kash ke jaye. Amit ne bhi Neha bhabi ke sath dhuva dhar pesh ki, aar sab ka dil jeeth liya. Baad me Amit ne Nehaji ke leye Ghana pesh ki orr Nehaji ne Amit ke liye. Bohoti badya tha. Khana be laga tha bhil kul sameep me. khana ka kya kahuun, ethn achha tha, ethan accha tha ke me tho sab ke sab dho bar chataliya. Ethna purn sasyahari khana ap ko koyi shadhi me nahi mele ga. Ab agar me ek aar labz khane ke bare me bolu tho aap zarro eese nibandh ko padna mana karenge, eesi leye yahi khane ke bare me samapth karunga.

Second day was a very long day. The plan was to go to Ujjain and to visit Maha kaleshwar temple, whose idol is qualified as a one amongst the 12 Jyotirlings. We started the day again pretty much the planned time, as no one wanted to take chances with God. By the way we met Kiridh, who was Amit's roommate and also was in our company before. We took him along with us for the Ujjain trip. Kridh was pretty amused by my hindi. He started speaking like me, in fact every one started speaking to me exactly the way I spoke. I speak excellent Hindi ;-) We had terrific fun while going to Ujjain by that Innova. We played Antakshari, two things I specifically remember while playing, one is Prasanth (Sivaprasad), Vishal and me were in one team and we had this pact that we would sing only rocking songs(no slow, emotional or romantic types). The other thing is that Prasanth and me, both south Indians, stated singing Tamil versions of the Hindi songs (eg Mukaabla Mukaabla, Mustafa Mustafa etc). It was fun.

We finally touched the "Mahakaleshwar madir ka ling" and got blessed after standing in long queues. We did get a snap by a professional photographer near the temple as we were abandoned from carrying electronic goods into the temple. Going to the temple was surely a spiritual delight to some of us but it nearly cost us sunburn. It was too damn hot, nearly burnt our feet. This is the worst season of the year; you don't travel unless you really have to.

We reached the wedding hall well in time to have our lunch. I don’t want to bore you by again talking about the entire foodstuff we had. We did some time pass till the 'Baraath'.

Rang manch me nach na aar shehar ke gali me naach na alag bath hey, lekin mere liye nahi. Me tho kahi bhi nachu who nach na nahane ka kamre me nach ne ki thara hothi hey, yeh bath me nahi mere dosth log kehethy hey. Mere mana yaah ki me bikul behatharni narthak huun. chodiye yeh bath ko. Amit ke bharaath me tho kethne ghatya se ghatya nachne wala bhi sharm nahi mehasus ki, arr hass hass ke nach li. Hamare sabi dostho ne bhi uthsa avam kushi se badya nach kiya baraath me. Hamra Amit godi me baite kar hamra nachna dhek raha tha. usse dehk kar laaga ki hamara nachna usse bohot bohat kushya aar hassi dhilayi.

I owe Amit and Ankit a treat from a restaurant of their choice. Before leaving to Indore I was supposed to go for shopping to buy a good kurta. That didn't happen. When I went to Indore I thought I will buy one there. Well, I didn't find a shop that was open for that purpose of mine. After understanding my situation, Amit tells Ankit " mere dosth ke liye ek kaas sherwani jaldi se jaldi la ker usse dhe". Ankit, being so much hooked up with many tasks for weeding arrangement, goes and gets one Sherwani from one of his relative. Not only he gets one to make me happy but to make me look like a bridegroom. Yes, the Sharwani, the traditional outfit that he got me was nothing less than Shehazadhe Shahajahan’s official outfit. I was so much blushing when I was wearing it. I could not control my happiness in wearing that neatly stitched garment. If any of my friends would have worn that and I was wearing an ordinary kurta, I would have been so freakin jealous. I was kinda dumbstruck looking at the pics of me wearing that glittering Sherwani. In short I was looking like a mirror cracking material. Okay enough of self-praise, you should know how rocking the gals were looking in that Reception. My number is 09963258880, call me I will tell you ;-)

The reception function, which was followed by ‘Bharaath’, was very similar to most weddings. We had great food and all, but Nitika had some trouble after the dinner. As the food was so freakin delicious and varied, I guess she consumed more food then what her digestive system would support, so she had to back off for the final wedding ceremony, which stated at 2AM. However we did get a neat group photo with Amit and Neha bhabi before the reception was over (nearly at 12 noon).

I was puzzled witnessing the final wedding ceremony. Firstly, it was at such an odd time, that is at 2AM (Me being a hard core south Indian, have to say that) Second one is a more primary reason. Here it goes, when the wedding rituals were carried out with the help of a Pandit, many of Amit's close relatives were making fun of the Pandit. They started passing many sarcastic comments on him and which made every one witnessing the wedding laugh. More surprisingly no one objected about the act of violation, including the Pandit him self. The wedding got over at about 4 AM. Only after that, I learnt from Ankit that passing sarcastic comments on the Panditji was very strategic. The idea was to keep everyone awake by making such unintentional practical jokes on the Pandit like asking him to recite the verses multiple times and to explain them. Ideally, the Panditji is kind of sportive about the whole idea. However Ankit mentioned that the Pandit who officiated the wedding of Amit and Neha Bhabi did get little pissed off during few occasions.

The third day didn't go as planned, except for the fact we didn't miss our train to Hyderabad. All of us were tired due to the events that took place on previous day, so the effect was directly on our getting up time. More over the cab driver screwed it up even more by coming nearly 2 hrs late. To be honest I was not at all that pissed, I was in no mood to get out in that hot air to see any places of interest in Bhopal -Indore.

Driver ke aane ke baad, ham sab log Amit ke ghar chale. Waha tho sab ne hamra ethni aachi tharha se dhek bhal ke, hum tho kuch zadha he waqt tehare chuke. Waha Amit aar Ankit ke bachpan ke chitra dhur darshan (TV) ke bagal me raka tha. who bhohoti sunder tha, uuse dhek kar kushi aar hassey dhono saath hey saath hone laga. Hassi eesiliye kyu ki ek chitra me Ankit ko ladki ke kapdey pehanaya gayatha. Poha, phal aar meeta kha kar hamne kahi sare chithra (photo) bhi keechey. Amit ke sabhi ghar walon ko hasthe hasthe alvida keh kar hamne gadi se nikle. Ek baath tho spasht se dhik rahatha who hey ki ham ne Amit ke ghar walon ka dil jeet liya tha.

The drive from Amit's place to Bhopal railway station was pretty salient, at least I was mostly inert, either sleeping or listening to the music played in the cab. We did stop at the same restaurant, where we had our breakfast during our journey from Bhopal to Indore, to have coffee. We also took Amit's friend and ex-colleague, Dev, along with us to the station. He had to catch some train, which was leaving one hour before the departure of our Hyderabad train. He was with us during the wedding ceremony as well. Must say, he too became my fan, when it comes to Hindi speaking;-)

After having lunch in the station restaurant, we caught our train to Hyderabad. We made an interesting observation soon after we got into our train compartment. We were accompanied by an old couple, who started playing cards soon after they boarded the train. It looked as if the lady was ripping apart in the game and the husband was all surrendering to her. Inspired by the oldies, we started playing Uno, which is a modern day card game. Shital, Prashant (Sivaprasad), Nitika and me started the luck cum little bit of brain game. I derived sadistic pleasure in seeing them lose and passed sarcastic comments specially to Nitika and Shital. So did they do on me, when I was losing. Pulling each others leg in a shrewd way was very much fun. I addressed them with various names like ghayal sherni, Shadyanthrikari aurath and kutilathanthr aurath. Seeing our game the old lady somewhat showed her interest towards the game. We pulled her in but were unsuccessful to pull her husband in. That smart lady picked up the game in no time. My communication with those old couple was in hindi, which by the way got appreciated like anywhere else. Shital and Nitika were so much not ready to hear from that lady describing hindi as rocking. Any way we continued with the game Uno, which turned out to be an ultimate source of entrainment; especially, when Nitika screwed up her own chances by unknowingly helping that old lady and also when Prasanth accused me of keeping extra card, which I called as conspiracy based out of jalousie. After a while, I took a break from the game and sat near the train door when the train was ripping at 140kmph. It was damn awesome to see the night sky and feel the gusty wind surging at the door. Vishal as well joined after he found me sitting alone doing nothing (read: enjoying solitude). We started talking about the trip before the train police warned us for violating the rules. Well, after that incidence it was pretty much like any other train journey; but I have to say that this train journey was one of the memorable train journey ever.

This trip shall be remembered for so many reasons, for some it may be for trying out luck, for some it may for dancing shamelessly on the roads, for some getting down the train when the aspired destination hadn't yet come, for some trying out beautiful Saree, for some getting a kick-ass Mehandi, for some getting a chance to visit the sacred temple, for some inventing new Hindi words (eg bethadap), for some organizing everything single handedly, for some pulling each others leg, for some scripting meaning full poems, for some capturing beautiful pictures, for some singing some unheard old Hindi song and for some getting to know each other.