colours...

As a little boy...

2011-12-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

Today while watching a movie, I happen to become bit nostalgic, in fact curiously nostalgic. The movie was about two kids of age eight. This movie made me think about my earliest childhood days, the days I don't exactly remember but I do recollect few things, in parts, in pieces, in a chaotic manner though. Conversation with mom and dad helped me recollect and also to an extent appreciate some events. This post is about those two years of my life, in a place called Gulbarga, which is located in the Northern side of Karnataka state.

I was six when we moved to Gulbarga. I had completed Lower Kindergarten in some small school in Bangalore. If you wish to know, Gulbarga is lot different compared to Bangalore. Its fairly under developed place - I dont think there was a single tarred road when I was there. People speak Kannada language with a different accent - its actually nice to hear them speak. Mondays were very auspicious, so auspicious that my school had holiday on Monday rather than on Sunday. Things like that. I don't think I experienced difference between Gulbarga and Bangalore much - as I was too much of a mama's boy back then.

I was admitted to this school called St. Mother Teresa school. It was a new school but had quite good strength. I had to cross a railway track ever day to go the school. Mom use to take me and bring me back from the school. She says that I didn't like school, not because it was far, but because I didn't like studying nor doing home work and stuff. A neighbor's daughter was my class mate and she (the lady) had become friends with my mom. I vaguely remember attending a party at her super big house which some how comes in my early morning dreams. I also remember a pigeon in their place. I some times wonder that I would meet them some day by total chance and perhaps end up talking to them for hours - just a feeling.

My sister was admitted to a different school which was considered as a really good girl's school, but it was far from home. Dad decided to rent a house on the other side of the railway track so that the distance to my sisters school and also my school would reduce. Indeed that was a very good move as I made more friends in that locality. Moms says that she was happy about shifting to a better house, she talks about that house and our then neighbors once in a while.

Among few things that I remember very well is about my first cycle, getting me that cycle was considered as the greatest victory of my mom over my dad, but recently she surpassed it - we got renovation done at our place, most importantly the kitchen. I don't remember exactly know how I felt after getting the cycle, must have felt damn good, must have been one of the best moments, but I do remember dying to go home from school as fast as I could so that I cycle on the fields. I remember deliberately skidding, doing stunts and ripping with that cycle- that was kind of liberating, probably the first time I experienced a sense of solitude.

Another thing I will never forget is the Holi celebration in Gulbarga. Our neighbors, taking complete liberty rather more of authority, just barged into our place in the early morning to apply colours on us. That was a real culture shock for us - as, such things used to happen only in Television programs. I remember nearly swimming in holi water for rest of the day. I remember to have had great time that day. I also vaguely remember telling my mom about the whole experience - Knowing her, I think she would have scolded me for being so crazily involved .

Like any parents, my parents were also very excited in capturing things that I did. We didn't have a camera then but we had a Tape-recorder to record voice. I remember reciting stories, rhymes and many more which were recorded with great enthusiasm by my mom and dad. They had great fun in listening to those recordings again and again. It seems I used to demand for new toys for every recording - bloody business minded boy I was back then itself.

I remember few things about the school. Fighting, I mean wrestling, was the only sport most of us indulged in. I remember quite well that we had series of clashes after having lunch. I remember we having sports day as well. That was perhaps my first experience in winning something. I had got a book and a small tiffin box for coming second in a race. One of the weirdest thing, that I still wonder, is about the picnic that we went from the school. Can you guess where they took us to? Zoo -No, a hill - No, a water fall - No! We went to Central Jail. I faintly remember roaming around the jail seeing the criminals. I also remember having packed food with my other school mates and teachers under a huge tree. I had few friends, perhaps one or two in my class, with whom I was during the trip. I remember one more thing, that was regarding the school annual day function. I was part of a group dance, I must have also practiced for it but on that day of function my costumes (dance uniform) were missing because of which I wasn't allowed to perform. I remember being very disheartened about it and hated the whole function, especially after seeing the dance in which I was suppose to perform.

Dad took us to many places in north Karnataka during our stay at Gulbarga. One place I remember in particular is Gol Gumbaz which is in Bijapur. Its a tomb by an Islamic ruler in which you can hear echos of any sound you make seven times. That was a very amusing thing to me back then. Dad use to take us out every Sunday evenings for movies or to places of interest, however I hardly remember any place in Gulbarga except a lake called Appan kere. I could recollect that lake immediately while seeing google maps today.

I perhaps remember little more than what I have written here but those would require little extra digging. In this fast moving times, where we are too indulged in our day to day activities and very much in our future, a bit of distraction, of remembering the past, especially those times we hardly think can be very joyfully interesting. I must say that I got strange satisfaction in digging about this part of my childhood, I have now developed some kind of an aspiration to visit Gulbarga, explore the place we lived in and see how it is currently.

GOA, here we come!

2011-06-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I came back to Bangalore from Goa. This was my fifth trip to Goa. This trip was different in many ways compared to my previous visits there. This article is about the trip to Goa and how I think it’s an epic trip of my life.

Few months back while chatting with a friend of mine from the mathematics department, IISc, I came to know that Jonathan Fernandes, an another friend of mine from the same department was planning to go to his home, which is located in a village in Goa, by cycle from here (Bangalore). I was deeply thrilled the moment I heard the idea. I met Jonathan in next couple of days to know more about his plan. He told me that he had once made a promise to himself that if he gets admit to a PhD program in the US universities then he would cycle or perhaps even walk all the way to Goa. Fortunately when I met him that day he had already got admits from two universities, which meant he was ON for the Goa expedition. I expressed my interest towards the expedition along with some insights on going about it. I also told him that I hadn’t cycled for years and mentioned that don’t possess a cycle. He was glad to know about my enthusiasm towards the expedition and expressed the same. In couple of weeks time he got a sports cycle called Shwinn sportera sports, a hybrid cycle, which costs eighteen thousand rupees, just to do the Goa expedition. Well, thanks to a close friend of mine who was ready to lend me his sports cycle (Trek 3700) whenever I wanted. With that, Jon and I did three to four expeditions from March to May ’11, which includes Bangalore – Savandurga- Bangalore (150kms), Bangalore – Chennai (350kms), Bangalore – Nandhi – Bangalore (120kms) and also not to forget the 10kms cyclathan, in which Jon had his first fall from the cycle. Another friend from Physics dept was with us in couple of these expeditions. Besides these expeditions, we did couple more separately with our other friends respectively. It was pretty good fun doing all those cycling trip, it exposed us from possible adversities that one could encounter while cycling long distance. The best thing about those expeditions was that it built great confidence in us to take up the idea which we conceived with little or no thinking, or rather what is perceived by many as madness.

After encountering many unavoidable interrupts to the Goa plan we could finally leave Bangalore on June 3rd. The next paragraphs of this write up is precisely the ride report of our epic Bangalore – Goa cycle journey (600plus kms), which lasted for five days.

At 3AM (on June 3rd 2011), I called Jon from Mekri circle, with one hand holding my cycle handle and the other holding my mobile phone, “Hello, Jon! Are you ready? I am 10 minutes away from the institute “. Jon replied” oh, is it? I will be ready in some time, just got up, come over to my room”. Well, after all the last minutes of preparation, which actually lasted for two hours, we started our journey from the mathematics department with a neat snap of us. Though we had earlier decided to have a good sleep before the journey, neither of us could manage to have even two hours of ordinary nap.

We started the journey with really great energy levels; in fact the first 20kms was covered in less than 40mins I guess. By the time we cycled 35- 40kms we felt drowsy, hungry and I felt like crapping. Thankfully we saw a neat restaurant called Kamat upahar which was just beside a big petrol pump. We had some good food there, but realized later that it was an overpriced restaurant. I guess having a neat lavatory facility made it a good choice for many travelers on that road (NH4). I did take a power nap to make myself fresh while Jon was reading the newspaper. At that point a thought of taking a nap for at least an hour had entered our mind. The time spent at the Kamat restaurant was not eventful as there was a dispute in the bill which led to a minor clash between the hotel staff and us. Though the dispute got resolved in our favor, it was kind of sad that I had to be part of the ugly debate. Anyway, leaving that thing apart, we crossed Tumkur by around eleven or so. The sky was cloudy, weather was very pleasant, must say that it was just good enough for cycling long distance. Jon and I indulged in a few discussions while cycling. It was good. When there was a great mismatch of speed we decided to cycle solo, during one of the occasion when I was lagging by a kilometer or so I met this middle aged or perhaps little older person by name Uday Shankar who was traveling towards a place called Gubbi by an old scoter. He started off by asking me about the expedition and later on with my personal details. I answered all his questions with fair accuracy as he sounded like good man and a man with appreciation for adventure. Not just that he was good, he turned out be a man with great generosity. He requested us to have lunch at a mess which he runs. Jon and I were very pleased with the offer and decided to have our first lunch of the trip at his mess, which was a very awesome south Indian meal. Incidentally we were offered tea just before reaching his mess. We were overwhelmed by the treatment we got in Gubbi.

Before we left Gubbi, Uday connected us to a friend of his in Tiptur who could provide us an accommodation for our night stay. Uday came from a much respected family which was/is involved in village welfare for many decades. We thanked Uday for all that he did to us and continued our journey with a filled belly. By around 3PM or so we were feeling very drowsy as I told you earlier that we couldn’t manage to have a good sleep before the start of the trip. We took our cycles into some unknown farm where there were many coconut trees just beside a paddy farm. We collected the fallen dry coconut tree branches to make a bed which was effective in supporting us an hour long nap. Jon, also managed to crap somewhere away from the farm to make himself better shaped for the rest of the journey.

We left that place hoping that we could reach Tiptur before sunset. We cycled at a rate of 20 -25kms/hr or so after taking rest at that farm. The road was flat and the weather was awesome, what else could have stopped us? Well, my cycle back tyre got punctured when we were 30kms from Tiptur. Jon had gone ahead of me and his cell was switched off. I was kind of apprehensive on going about it. I have been carrying a puncture kit in all my previous expeditions but never was in a situation to actually use it. This time I had to. I got good assistance from few villagers who were around. I requested a guy going on a motorbike to look out for a cyclist and inform about the situation when he meets him. Jon stopped and called me back after 20 minutes, that is just after he came to know about the situation, he wanted to come over to help me but I could nearly fix the puncture with help of the villagers by then. I thanked those villagers and had a chat with them for a while. I actually felt good to go through that experience, though I was little freaked out for a while when the puncture actually happened. After I met Jon I shared my experience with him up to a minute detail, with a bit of pride :)

We reached Tiptur by 8:15. Uday’s friend was waiting for us near his shop in Doddapete. He took us to Jaydeva student’s hostel (AKA Jayadeva Vidyarthi Nilaya) where we had our dinner and later crashed. The facility was decently good, with fan, bed sheets and provision to charge our mobile phones. We had rassam and sambar for our dinner which was again pretty good.

The second day started at about 5:30AM with a plan to cycle till Shimoga, which is about 140kms from Tiptur. We reached the first destination for the day Kadur which is about 70kms from Tiptur by 10:30AM. The route was pretty flat with a few climbs and descent. I must say that Arasikere, a small town which came on our way to Kadur, has a wonderful lake. We took good number of pictures near the lake. Sri Vinayak Café at Kadur turned out as the best place to have food in our entire trip. We had chow chow bath, dosas , idlies and coffees there. The server of the café was very good in invoking desire in us to have so many dishes. We couldn’t just stop until we were actually full.

The result of heavy breakfast was a unplanned nap. We identified a plantation, where they grew Mango and guava fruits, somewhere nearby Kadur to rest for nearly two hours. It was a good sleep below small trees which were just about our height and with fruits hanging. Jon didn’t have as much good sleep as I did as he was irritated by some bugs and flies. I become insensitive to the world once I catch up with a good sleep hence didn’t get affected much. The plantation people were gracious; they gave us some mangos and guava when they saw us up. We left that plantation by 2:30 or so and cycled towards Tarikere at a good pace. We had an Ice-cream each along with jack fruit at Tarikere. Reaching Shimoga (about 70 kms from Kadur) was pretty comfortable as the roads were very good and fairly even. I had talked to a cousin of mine, who had a vacant house in shimoga, to give us the access for the night’s stay while we were at Tiptur itself. At my cousin’s fairly sophisticated house we managed to wash our cloths with the help of a washing machine and also had hot water bath. After freshening up, we had our dinner somewhere near the city bus stand.

The plan for the third day was to reach Jog falls, which is about 100kms from Shimoga. We were pretty confident that we would make it by four or so. The day began with us leaving my cousin’s house at 6:30AM. It was kind of drizzling when we left. The sky was gloomy; there was a fair chance of heavy rain. We were never de-motivated because of rain, unlike a hot sunny weather. The route to sagara, which is about 70kms, was very uneven; we had both climbs as well as descent. Thanks to neat gear arrangements in these sports cycles, we could adjust the gear sets at our convenience so that we could apply power to peddle at our capacity. Of course, during steep climbs we had to totally exert all the energy that we could and during descent it was just a matter of showing directions to the wheels. Jon’s cycle’s back tyre got punctured when we were about 40kms from Sagara near a small village called Shivalli. Jon and I fixed the puncture near a mechanic shop, which had a compressor that we used to fill in air. The villagers were amazed looking at us; I mean we looked like people of a different country, with the helmet, our sports attire, cycling bags and stuff aiding to the perception. The kids of the village apparently had great fun watching us fix the puncture using our puncture kit. They even congratulated us when the puncture was fixed and wished us good luck just when we left. Besides fixing the puncture at that place we had our breakfast as well in a pretty decent restaurant. Jon had Dosas in nearly all the place we had breakfast during the trip, I did as well have couple of dosas at that place.

Just 6kms or so from that village where we fixed the puncture, Jons cycle got punctured again, this time it was his front tyre. I was cycling ahead of Jon hence an automobile traveler on that road had to inform me about the situation. Jon was waiting for me as I had the puncture kit. Jon was little unhappy about the fact that I had put on my head phones to listen to music when the puncture happened, he called loudly but I was thoroughly indulged in listening to music from my mobile phone. We were on a road which goes inside a forest region. We were just wondering on going about it, a young man stopped by us and enquired about the situation. While we were talking to him we got an idea to actually remove the front wheel from the cycle and take it to the compressor shop. Jon requested that young man to take him to the compressor shop; however the young man took Jon to one more place which was much nearby compared to the earlier one. Jon returned very quickly compared to what I expected. We thanked the young man for not just dropping Jon at that place where he could fix puncture and most importantly fill air but also bringing him back. At that point we realized the importance of carrying a bigger air pump. Though we were carrying a small pump, we found it too difficult to fill air up to the required levels. After that incident we kind of cycled with much care on bad terrains. We reached Sagara at round 3:00PM. The lunch at Sagara was pretty good. After taking more than one half break, we continued. We were totally drenched by the time we reached Jog. The last descent which was about 2kms was a kick ass ride, we would have probably ripped at about 50kms/hr or even more than that. That gave a really great feeling. The whole route to Jog from Shimoga was beautiful. We saw mountains, greenery, lakes, especially those lakes which had lotus plants were totally wonderful. Besides punctures, the other reason for our slow progress was because of our fetish for taking pictures. During the whole trip, we never missed an opportunity in taking pictures at nice places.

We reached Jog falls at around 6:30PM. The falls was not at its best. The water was much lesser than what I had seen during my earlier visits to Jog. What made us feel great was that we had completed more than half the distance of our trip. Yes, reaching Jog was a significant millstone of the journey.

We stayed at youth hostel, which is about half a kilometer from the falls. The accommodation at youth hostel was very good for the payment of hundred rupees we made. It’s highly recommended for those who are on a limited budget trip.

The fourth day began pretty late. We were very tired after cycling the previous day to Jog; hence we slept for more than eight hours. Though we had covered just about hundred kilometers, we felt that it was lot tougher than the other two days where we covered nearly 140kms each. We had our breakfast at Mayura restaurant, the same place we had our dinner previous night. At about 8:45 or so, after taking couple of pictures of the falls, we started the last stretch on NH206, which ends at Honavara. This stretch is one helluva route, it’s bloody awesome. We cycled across several hills. The whole route is Ghat section. So many climbs and so many descents, don’t remember how many we passed. In midst of all these, Jon’s back break got jammed. That was kind of depressing. We tried to fix it with whatever little tools we had. At a village called Gerusoppa, which is about 30kms from Jog, we request for oil and grease from a mechanic who had a shop there. The breaking system became little better because of the efforts we put at Gerusoppa. After that bit of repair, we continued cycling, even though it was raining heavily.

Jon and I had many discussions, debates and perhaps on a few occasion we indulged in a heated argument as well, on various things, not always on the trip issues, mostly on other general topics. One interesting discussion that we got into was while cycling from Gerusoppa to honnavara, regarding the statistically observed asymmetry of hair length between men and women, in relation to evolution theory. The discussion further lead to other observed asymmetries between men and women, like sense for direction, strength, beauty and also about the culinary skills. I remember during this stretch, we cycled just next to next, while it was raining heavily, and our argument progressing without any stoppages. I must tell Jon that I greatly enjoyed being engaged in all those discussions, during this trip as well as during our earlier trips too. Before we could logically conclude the discussion we reached Honavara, it was about three then.

We spent hardly half an hour or so at Honavara. We had idly vada and coffee at Kamath restaurant. The plan was to reach Gokarna, which is about 60kms from that place. We were on the legendary NH17, which goes on the coasts of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra. We reached Kumta, which is about 22kms from Honavara, in less than 45mins. We changed our plan after finding the route to be very flat. We decided to complete Karwar which is about 70kms from Kumta. We ripped hard, it was great fun to cycle at a deadly speed, making the automobile look slower, however that didn’t last for long. Soon we encountered hills that invariably reduced our speed to less than 12km/hr or so. We decided to settle to Ankola, which is 30kms before Karwar. Reaching Ankola wasn’t an easy thing either; we had to cycle in the night, while it was raining continuously, with a dim cycle light to help us maneuver on a road that was dominated by heavy duty trucks. That was little unsafe but we weren’t left with options. We reached Ankola by around nine, I guess. Thankfully the very first hotel we enquired gave us the accommodation at a reasonable price after the hotel person listened to our adventuresome story. The hotel room looked good in the first go; only later Jon realized the presence of bed bugs that kind of ruined his sleep. I had a good sleep though.

There was nothing much to plan for the fifth day. We were about 100kms from our final destination. Jon wanted to have lunch at his place, which looked little ambitious to me. We started our final day at 7:30AM from the hotel. The road continued to amaze us with variety of landscape through out the journey. The mountain on our way to Karwar is a really beautiful thing to witness. We got the first view of the sea when we were something like ten to fifteen kilometers from Karwar. The fact that we had cycled to Chennai from Bangalore before and now to Goa, gave us a sense of conquering the east coast and the west coast. The sea looked absolutely fantastic, especially near the Karwar beach. At around 10AM we made it to the Karwar city. We had a fairly heavy breakfast at a good restaurant called Savita. Before leaving the city we lubricated our cycle chains in a cycle shop. It was pretty hot when we left Karwar.

Jon’s cycle tyre got punctured yet again when we were just about 20kms from the Goa- Karnataka border; but for our luck this time there was a cycle shop in less than half a kilometer. The guy at the shop was very nice and knew Jon’s mother tongue that is Konkani. From then on Jon took care of the communication with the people we met, unlike before. After the puncture incident we pretty much knew that we wouldn’t be making it to the lunch at Jon’s place. Just before we reached the Karnataka – Goa border Jon expressed his interest in buying me a beer bottle at Canacona, the first Goan city on our way. I had never consumed alcohol more than 10ml in my entire life, and always refused to have when ever any of my friends asked, requested or even forced, however this time I responded to Jon with very positive YES with in a second or so. I knew that it was different this time. I wanted to make the event little larger thing by having it. I can’t really say whether it made any sense but for the next couple of days I had extra strong beer, white wine, red wine, triple x rum etc at Jon’s home. Well, it would require an altogether different article to write about the super great hospitality I got at Jon’s home, but for now I shall stick to the ride report.

Reaching the Karnataka – Goa border meant that our mission had nearly accomplished. I got good number of pictures of me crossing the border clicked by Jon. We reached Canacone by about 3PM or so. As I told you earlier we celebrated our feat by having a bottle of beer each. The beer tasted bitter for the first go, but was pretty good by the time I completed the bottle. It was kind of nice probably because I was fairly hungry and thirsty. We also had dosa in a south Indian restaurant and also an ice cream each before we left Canacone. Well, only after cycling few kilometers from Canacone we realized that we had not completed the toughest climb of the expedition. The stretch from Canacona to Margoa had very steep climbs which actually go on and on for long. Man that was really a test of patience. When we thought we have almost made it wasn’t actually done. Like-wise we also experienced great descent as well which in a way compensated. We took quite many pictures just before reaching Jon’s home as there was enough time for the sunset. We were pretty much celebrating by the time we reached Jon’s village. Jon took a video of us reaching his home. Jon’s parents, brother and his neighbors too were waiting with flowers and sweets when we reached his home. We got a pretty neat welcome from the whole group. Jon’s parents were very delighted to see us complete the dream expedition. We both actually looked like war heroes in all the snaps that were taken. We totally loved the attention, loved the fact that we did it. Well, that’s how our expedition ended. Would I like to say anything more? Yes, I do. Here it goes:

It all started with some kind of madness. Well, not all madness is a disease, some madness could be cure to a disease which you never knew you had or perhaps you never thought you could ever have, try catering to the madness in any case, believe me it’s a sexy awesome feeling when you actually indulge in it.

And yes, Cheers Jonathan! Man we made it!

Our Bangalore to Chennai cycling expedition...

2011-04-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2011

Bangalore

Dear friends,

This letter which I am writing now is about the Bangalore – Chennai cycling expedition that my friend, Jonathan and I completed a couple of days back. I am writing this while keeping in mind about those comments many of you posted in various social networking sites with respect to the expedition pictures and the tweet that I posted few days back.

Jonathan and I had planned for the cycling trip to Chennai nearly a month back. In order to do such a long distance cycling, we thought an expedition of smaller scale could help us prepare for the potential challenges. Hence we did the Savandurga cycling expedition (150kms) two weeks back, along with one more friend from our institute (IISc , Bangalore). The plan for the Chennai trip was to cycle during the night while to take rest during the day time so that we wouldn’t get charred by the super hot rays from the summer sun. Well, we stuck to our plan. We started our journey from my place in BTM layout at 11:30PM 5^th (Tuesday), though Jon would disagree for the fact that he started his journey from the Institute. Some of my close pals had come over to my place to wish us for the trip. It was damn nice to get a send off from your great friends when you are trying out something less normal.

The first stretch of cycling 100kms from Bangalore to Krishnagiri was fairly straight forward as we were all energetic, the roads were more of negative slope and well, we were super motivated. Every time we talked during this particular stretch, we were totally appreciating ourselves for taking up this expedition. We covered it with little difficulty. The best thing that happened during this stretch was that we found a MacDonald’s 24hour outlet. Instead of concentrating on the food we rather spent more time clicking pictures with my DSLR, which I must say turned out to be a worth it luggage to carry. After the sweet ride, the journey from Krishnagiri became incrementally painful with time. We could feel the ups and downs on the terrain. I guess it was also because we were fiddling with our body clock. I was feeling very drowsy. Jon was also fairly drowsy. By the time it turned six in the morning we were searching for a place to crash. We thought of even sleeping below a tree till the evening, as our next planned destination Vellore was about 100kms or less away. The only awesome thing during this stretch was listening to great music from my friend’s IPod to which he had ‘hand’ picked the songs to make a rocking playlist from his freaking entire collection, specifically for my cycle trip – what friend he is!

When we were about 80kms away from Vellore (8AM), Jon saw a sign board saying “Ramakrishna Mutt – 1 km” and told me about it. I felt a sense of relief listening to it as I always heard good things about that particular Mutt. We could trace the Mutt which was located inside this small town called Natrampalli. Immediately after entering the Mutt we met many students of the school, which is run by the Mutt. Though we didn’t know a common language still we were able communicate with them. The Mutts’ bhramacharis were very gracious. They allowed us to take bath at their facility, served us amazing breakfast, lunch & evening tea/snacks and also gave a neat place to take rest. It was a heavenly treatment. We slept for nearly six hours during our stay at the Mutt. Before leaving the Mutt , we amused the children’s of the Mutt, who are mostly orphans, by taking several pictures of them with our cycling stuff like helmet, torch light and stuff. They were very pleased to see their pictures on the LCD screen of the camera. Jon and I have promised ourselves to send the hard copy of few of those pictures to the Mutt.

We left the Mutt at about 6:30PM (6^th –Wednesday) after meeting the Mutt’s head who gave a very friendly advice about life and things we have to do in life, some things like that. Our plan for the night was to reach Vellore by 10:30 – 11, have a dinner at a neat restaurant and if possible reach Chennai by morning or at least lessen the distance by a good factor. Since the plan was fairly practical we could adhere to it to a good extent. The place we chose to have dinner wasn’t all that good as there were very few restaurants open at 11:30 at Vellore. We did our best to reach Chennai by morning but again the body refused to cycle after five. We took a short detour to Kanchipuram to take rest. This 150kms stretch from Natrampalli to Kanchipuram was super awesome as the route was mostly even and the roads were too smooth. The pleasure one gets by cycling on such tracks can only be felt by the cyclist himself. The feel for the machine we get while changing the gear arrangements is some thing impossible to articulate. My dear friends try cycling it gives a kick probably way to high than alcohol, well you might tell me the other way, perhaps I will try alcohol some time and hopefully reiterate the statement with more commitment. Besides the joy that we extracted by cycling, we met many delightful people while cycling on the high way. One person whom we could never forget is this shop keeper with whom Jon got into a conversation with while cycling. This person, while driving the two wheeler at the pace of cycle, asked Jon about our expedition. After hearing the story he was damn impressed and served us a bottle of Pepsi and other stuff at his shop which is located on the high way. Like wise, we met several other people who showered their wishes on us and also at times advised us in keep ourselves safe from the Heavy duty vehicles ripping on the high way.

Coming back to the main story, we took a lodge in Kanchipuram to take rest and also to kill time till the evening. Like in Ramakrishna mutt, we slept off for a long duration in the lodge. One thing that we could infer during the trip was that the people of Tamil Nadu are very generous and polite. When we were having coffee at a proper south Indian restaurant, Jon spilled his coffee on to the table by mistake. After seeing that, a maid immediately came over to our table to clean it. Having lost more than half the cup of his coffee to the table, Jon drank the remaining coffee and then we decided to leave. When we were about to leave the waiter came with a full cup coffee and insisted Jon to have. Though it’s a minor incident here, we could see a great sense of hospitality around us through out the trip.

We didn’t check into any temple in ‘the city of temples’ – Kanchipuram, however we roamed around the city taking pictures and videos till it turned dark on 7^th (Thursday). We left Kanchi at around 6:45PM and hit the down slope National High way to Chennai by Seven. The plan was to meet Jon’s Mathematics geek friends from Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc) before midnight. We had our dinner in a fairly overpriced restaurant called Indo – Muscat Bakery which was located on the high way. The food was alright but I was glad about the neat lavatory facility in the restaurant. Things went fairly according to the plan and we reached IMSc by around 12:30AM. Jon said couple of time that “how can you not meet Caesar when go to Rome?” when I showed disinterest in cycling to IMSc which is away from Chennai Central; Well, after meeting those friends of him I could actually appreciate the quote. In fact one of his friend happened to be my friend too, we had played cricket together on a few occasions when that guy was in the campus. And yes, now I fully agree with Jon, you got to meet at least some one you know when ever you travel to a different place. It’s a totally worth it idea!

It was a wonderful time roaming around Chennai city during the night as the roads were dead free from vehicles. We reached Chennai Central Railway station by 3AM (8^th – Friday), with that we completed our expedition of cycling 350kms (= 130 +150 + 70 kms) in 28Hrs (8 + 12 + 8). And yeah, I forgot to tell you that we had booked a train ticket for the return journey. The biggest set back of the trip happened when the luggage department at the Chennai station informed us that the train that we had booked, Shatabdhi express, wouldn’t carry any luggage as it didn’t come with the luggage carrier that day. We were apprehensive about our next move but the luggage handling guy advised us to send our cycles in a train which would arrive at the Bangalore station two hour after we reach. We had no other option but to go with that advice. We were fortunate as it didn’t turn out to become a real setback; we got our cycles in proper shape.

Well, that was the story of our Bangalore to Chennai cycling expedition. I have already said that it was awesome, kick ass, killer and all, what I haven’t emphasized much is being in the awesome company of Jonathan Fernandis. This guy from Goa, who spends most of his day solving problems in Algebraic number theory, is an absolute fun guy. In fact, when he told me that he would be leaving India to do his Doctoral studies at University of Maryland (college park), I told him that we have to make the rest of his stay here large and super kick ass. He got an imported sports cycle, which he prefers to call it as has machine, just before our Savandurga expedition. The best thing about this guy is he is logical, argumentative, straight forward and at the same time very considerate. I have had umpteen numbers of discussions with him during the trip, in all these discussion he sets his argument with a clear rational base –amazing. Before taking up this trip both of has had promised ourselves that we would complete our primary work in life to a significant extent so that we could have a neat adventure of cycling the mentioned distance, so did we do. The fact that we would always have difficulty in taking up such expedition because of the work that we do for our living is never debatable but what is debatable is that many a times we just don’t take up such expedition for the fact we have to focus on things that makes up our living. Anyway, I have made this letter fairly lengthy though I have missed several minute details, I wish to end this letter with few lines that I wrote in hindi some time back, which in some way fits the context here:-

“aare yaar woh dhin hey kya jab mazak na ho

woh pal hey kya jab dil may arraam na ho

chodo yeah sab kam dhandha kuch waqt ke liye

phir dheko yeah zindhagi kithne kubsurath hey aap key liye”

cheers,

Ganesh

Those bus rides... and those friends...

2011-03-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

It wasn't all romantic, at least when I just got into Engineering. Struggling fairly hard during 11th and 12th, preparing for IIT-JEE, perhaps failing badly and then joining RV College of Engineering (RVCE) was little disappointing. However, RVCE was (is?) the best Engineering college in Bangalore, getting in there was a big success according to my mom. It was like a good arranged marriage, with parents being the happiest.

RVCE was nearly 15 kms from my home. During my first year I commuted through college bus. Two good friends from my 11th and 12th class, Vin and San, had also joined RVCE and boarded the same college bus which I did. Vin and I, being the less diplomatic ones and bit innocent during those days, were some of the greatest victims of ragging in the bus, while San was fairly silent creature in the bus. We were ragged by almost all our seniors who had even little interest in interacting with us, though none of them harassed or violated. It wasn't comfortable at all at the beginning . Some times I used to board girls bus saying that I missed the guys bus, with real intentions of avoiding ragging, never the less used to get ragged there as well. Our seniors extracted major fun in asking questions related to girls, fantasizes, sexual intercourse, kamasutra etc. Being more of a timid guy then, I had no idea of any of those things, in fact when I was younger I used to refrain my self from talking to people who used to talk about such things. My seniors took great advantage of my naiveness during the bus journey. One incident I would always remember is when they asked me how would I test a condom. Though I had expressed my deep disinterest in answering that question but they wanted me to answer at any cost. After getting pressurized from all corners, I had answered that I would probably check for an ISI mark on the condom. The whole bus had laughed at the answer of mine and from then on started calling me ISI boy. My friend Vin, who saw me getting properly screwed by our seniors decided to educate me on all the things that were required for a man to know. I went to his house during some weekends when his parents were out, to read the magazine 'Woman's Era". Also picked up other stuff (you know what I mean) from other sources to get better understanding. That's how and when, I got my first lessons on Sex education, which I must say turned out be quite astonishing.

The college bus journey went on to become a great fun as time passed. Our interaction with the seniors became very friendly. They started sharing their experiences with us quite candidly by the end of first semester. They helped us in various ways like mentoring, lending reference books, advising on semester exams and stuff like that. Though it was fun to go in the college bus, it was also an expensive affair hence Vin and I decided to take up government bus to commute from the second year. Mean while both of us had become good friends with one more guy called Jay, who was also coming from our area to the college. Three of us were like bus buddies. San continued commuting in the college bus during the second year as well.

Our journey to college in the second year was a real pain, as we had to catch multiple buses, that too it went via places like city market and hence the bus used to get stuck in all possible traffic jams. Missing the first hour was a quite common thing. Bunking classes was some kind of great feeling as it gave a sense of college hood freedom while missing classes because of sluggish traffic or getting up late gave a very awful feeling. There was only one direct bus from the college to our area and unfortunately timings of that coincided with the time of the last college bell. It gave us supreme happiness when ever we caught that bus.

I guess some time during the end of second year or the start of third year of our engineering, state government introduced many buses on the outer ring road. Our area (locality) and RVCE was located on the outer ring road. That was a great relief. Traveling in those buses made our life very comfortable as it had many seats vacant when ever we got in and more over it took much lesser time to reach our destination. San also left the college bus and came with us in the government bus later. We , that is Vin, Jay, San and I, had great fun in the bus with many conversation regarding events of the day and stuff. Sixty percent of the time the subject of our discussion was about girls of our college in general and girls of our respective department in specific. Though none of us had a bit of courage to ask any damn girl out on this earth but we had fair idea of what- dress, who - wore, which - day. During my third year I was attracted to a cute north Indian chick from my department. I did put my efforts in checking her out at least once a week. It was nice to see her in quite modern outfits and also talking about her with these friends of mine in the bus. I was quite excited when I met her during some college fest and got a chance to work with her. However I neither had guts nor genuine interest to pursue on her at any levels. Our friends, Vin and Jay had also fallen for some girls in the college, where as San never talked about any girl in specific, he was more of a listener of our weird day to day stories. Vin had got attracted to a pretty looking south Indian girl while we were in the first year itself, in fact to be more accurate he got attracted to her during engineering seat selection day it self. He did everything to impress her. Days when she talked to him were like the best days according to him, then. He cherished those events by repeatedly talking about those for months with us in the bus. She knew that he had totally fallen for her while we knew that she had little or no interest in him. Instead of taking her out his mind we rather encouraged him in all the ventures to impress her, which eventually failed miserably. I had great fun in building up good hopes in him about that girl when ever he spoke about her. When it became quite obvious that she wasn't falling for him we did the needful, perhaps the right thing. Our hero, Jay, had got attracted to a girl whom the whole college used to leach at. She was like a super model, more of a reserved types and our guy had not even socially interacted with an extrovert girl, even in the department. According to him she was good and rest were okay, perhaps I must say our innocent boy had very high standards. Vin, San and I made very funny sarcastic comments on Jay when ever he gave his rating about any girl in the college. Well, we did lots of ratings, created nick names, passed sarcastic comments regarding the girls we had met, seen and heard during those bus ride conversations. Seriously it was damn interesting!

We had made some more friends from our college and neighboring colleges, who commuted in those ring road buses. Our discussion with them were mainly on sports, movies and other university related things. On few occasion we did ragg our juniors but it was never as intense as the one in our college bus. All in all those ring road buses gave us a neat platform for much required social interaction and tension relief from the ever increasing academic pressure and career shaping objectives.

After completing engineering, as expected, all of us went on different directions to chase for the things that we genuinely thought of during those four years. San and Jay left India few years back. Jay had come over here (India) a month back and San came couple of days back. Vin and I took him (San) to a neat coffee place yesterday evening near our place and talked about those days when we just talked about stuff that we neither got then nor now, but just spoke for hours together tirelessly.

Its like being in a relationship...

2011-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

During my school days I had a great passion for drawing and painting. My parents encouraged me in every possible way they could and never had any doubts on my spirit for it. I had great fun trying out various art mediums like, water colours, poster colours, oil pastels, crayons etc. Shopping for these art materials was like a periodic event, especially during my middle and high school days. My dad used to take me to Avenue road, the place where almost all stationary items are available at a whole sale price, to get the art materials. When ever I saw a new art material at a shop, I used to get super excited and after seeing my excitement, he never stopped me from buying those stuff. Coming from an ordinary middle class family never had issues when it came to persuasion of art, science or sports, all these were valued equally by my parents.

By the time I turned 18 my interest slowly shifted towards Engineering. I got attracted by the very idea of making stuff that could have influence on our day to day life. Fortunately, I was in a great place, doing my Bachelor of Engineering (BE) along with some great minds in my class. Though not all were keen about engineering but they were bunch of ambitious people.

A road perpendicular to Avenue road (where I got art materials) called S P Road became more interesting place after my inception to engineering. S P Road is a place where we get variety of electronic, perhaps engineering stuff , I mean components. We got all the components that were required to do our lab experiments prescribed in our syllabus in S P Road. Few of my friends used to buy some critical components from there to do experiments during our final lab exams, as many of us had the feeling that components provided by the college could be faulty because of which we may not get the right output in the exam. I used to buy components much much before the exams. My close pal during my BE days, Vinod, and I had an advantage of doing all our lab experiments at my dad's office. My Dad used to work in Industrial Training Institute where there was a facility to do electronics experiments. Vinod and I gained great confidence doing experiments in that small lab which we called it as our BELL LABS. Burning the components (by mistake - like wrong connection) during experimentation was quite common, with that visiting S P Road to buy components had also become frequent. That was when I started visiting SP Road.

I had many like minded friends during my engineering education. I had great fun in discussing electronics with them. Two friends who comes to my mind right away are Ashwin Mukundan and Srivatsa Aithal. Ashiwin was my class mate. I must have had discussed with him on nearly all the circuits that we did in our lab and many more that came in some electronics magazines. He was/is a down to earth person with immense interest towards electronic gadgets. While Srivatsa and I did our primary schooling together. Incidentally we both had taken same engineering course (but different colleges) hence we got connected once again after a long gap. Along with them, some more friends from college and near my house, I had made a group to attend a lab based training program/ workshop pertaining to electronics circuits, during our semester holidays. We leisurely did many electronics circuits from morning to evening as the lab in charge had left us with no rules or condition. I specifically remember one incident during those lab days: Once we found a FM Transmitter circuit in some electronics magazine. When we saw the circuit we thought we could try out but we did not have enough components. Ashwin and I decided to do the circuit after buying the required components from SP Road, while Srivatsa was adamant on doing the circuit with the available components in the lab. We , especially I, thought he was crazy. Srivatsa could actually make a working FM Transmitter with a very few components on the desk by evening that day. That's when we came to know the genius in him. Srivatsa had visited SP Road may be ten times more than the number of times I had visited but he had the engineering acumen probably hundred times than that of mine. He didn't just teach us some neat electronics design during that workshop but also shared the spirit for doing electronics engineering.

SP Road helped us bridged from our conceptual understanding to practical knowledge in engineering. Every visit to SP road incrementally influenced on our thinking for engineering. There were electronics components shops, computer shops, electrical hardware shops, mechanical workshop based shops, shops related to constructions and many other shops. We could get a tiny bolt to a dish antenna, from resistor to microprocessor, so on and so forth. Almost every body who did engineering in circuits branch (in Bangalore) would have visited or their project mates would have visited. Some would call it as the hell on this earth for its crowd and dirtiness while some of us found it as a god sent engineering 'gold mine'. Well, at least for me my engineering wouldn't have been real education without SP Road.

After completing my engineering I joined an engineering start-up which was into special purpose machine, robotics and automation. It had a dozen mechanical engineers and a few electronics engineer. My first assignment was to design various circuits that would interface computers with machines. I had done circuits in engineering with little applicability to stand Industry standards , most of them were for fun. When I got into a real design I found my self naive. I made visits to SP road almost every alternate day to buy components that suited my design but to my bad luck I wasn't getting many of the components that I wanted. My boss (who happen to be a Stanford grad) wasn't that result oriented one when I joined the setup. He was considerate person and supported me even when things didn't work. He loudly appreciated when I ever I was able to show even a little progress. He was happy to see me indulging my self into the work. He started teasing me by calling SP Road as my in-laws place. With time I realized that S P Road was not the one stop solution for every need. I decided to move on from there. I found sources that offered many more component, at a little lower price and that too at our door step. My respect for S P Road shop keepers died by the time I completed a year in the company.

I was lucky - I g0t a seat in Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to do my masters, hence I decided to leave that start up after working for little more than a year. Studying in IISc was my dream during my BE days, I was super happy to get in. My research work was primarily experimental in nature. It involved developing electronic systems to set up the experiment. Electronics design was very much part of my research work. I was working under a professor who is an electronics genius and little bit short tempered as well. I had to be care full with his moods swings. When I had to procure components, he insisted that he wants to come with me and also wanted to get it from S P Road. I didn't want to get any components from S P Road as I had made up my mind and also I had built other contacts. I had no choice but to go with my guide to S P Road. He had been in the US for more than eight years, yet he wanted to walk in that dirty road and didn't mind waiting for hours to get components. He enjoyed browsing through the shops looking at components as though he had not seen it before while the truth was that he had worked with all those, just that his excitement remained unchanged with time. We had many discussions on various electronics circuits during that visit to S P Road. The components that we didn't get were replaced by the nearly equivalent components that met the requirement though not the part number or complete specification. He had the knowledge and patience to identify those equivalent components which I totally lacked doing during my work in that start up. My dislike towards S P Road was partly to do with the attitude with which I had taken it. After that visit to S P Road, I went there many more times with him and again fell in love with the street as I did during my college days.

I had got a job in GE during my placements which I joined after spending two years in the campus. I had left the campus with out submitting my dissertation work as I had not completed few experiments. I left as I wanted a job desperately and my guide also let me join with few simple conditions. In a year or so I submitted my thesis and recently got my degree as well. During those two years in GE, I did get a chance to do neat electronics engineering for aviation systems and energy systems businesses but I was missing out on doing creative hobby electronics as there were no real good place in Hyderabad to buy electronic components. In fact during one occasion when I was in Bangalore, I visited S P road to buy some micro-controllers to do some fun project. I could do very few such projects as I wasn't motivated enough to buy components online or else where. I missed S P Road to a large extent during those days.

I quit GE after spending nearly two years. I decided to start a business of my own in Energy domain, to begin with solar energy solution. First thing I did when I wanted to do something in solar was that I got a solar panel and a battery from S P Road to try out the solar charging functionality. However, I spent some three months time in a solar company to get some exposure in solar technology, outside Bangalore. Now I am back to Bangalore.

Few days back one of my uncles told me his UPS isn't working and asked me if I could fix it. I readily agreed. Yesterday while troubleshooting, I could figure out that a component had blown and I also figured out that the component isn't a readily available component in a shop. I went to S P Road and after a brief discussion with the shop keeper I found a component that could satisfy the requirement. Today I was able to fix the UPS. When I was having a cup of coffee at a restaurant near S P Road, I could recollect all these days of my association with the street, which in a way made me an Engineer.

Little Things...

2011-01-19T05:08:00.001-08:00

I had been to Ahmadabad for a few days to attend a friend's wedding. When I reached there, I could see that the city dwellers were mostly indulged in kite flying. It was some kind of a festival there. My friend, who was getting married, who was also my colleague some time back, had done arrangements for our (my other ex-colleagues) stay in a neat hotel. After spending some good time with my friends in that hotel, I climbed up to the hotel roof to check out the kites. I could see children, their parents, newly married couples, old age couples, middle age couples perhaps people of all age group flying kits. I used to fly kits with my school friends when I was a teenager. I would have tried kite flying again, if I had not got my camera. I had bought a very sophisticated camera (D-SLR) few months back and after getting that I have been looking for good subjects for trying out decent photography. I thought kites were the ideal subjects for my amateur photography.

I met a school going kid on the roof of the hotel who had got few kites to fly. I introduced my self to him and started chatting with him. I feel glad that I learnt Hindi, I can now 'aaram se' communicate with more people in our country. I took pictures while talking to that kid and he did find it nice that I took many of his pictures, in fact he started flying kite according to my interest. With his coordination I could take some decent pictures and well, now I can call my self an amateur photographer. After taking good quantity pictures, I decided to explore that area of the city before it would turn dark.

I saw a teenage boy selling kites on the street. I wanted to take a picture of him with the kites, later I requested for the same. He was glad to do so. He came up with a stylish pose by himself holding kites in his hands and resting his back on some new car. I thanked him, kept my camera inside my bag and moved ahead for a walk. Less than ten meters from that kite boy I saw a road side tea/coffee seller. I took a cup of hot tea to feel more comfortable in that chill weather. A man who apparently saw me taking pictures of the kite selling boy asked me weather I could take a picture of him along with few other people standing there as well. I agreed immediately, as there was absolutely no reason to say no. I saw some more people approaching the tea/coffee shop to get photographed. I did take pictures of all those people. They were super happy for being photographed and looking at their pictures on the LCD screen made them even thrilled. I was also kind of thrilled seeing that smile on there faces. One person, who called him self as Arjun Pandith, asked me weather I was some kind of a journalist. I informed him that I am an ordinary person with no such background and added that I just love taking pictures. He wasn't ready to believe me as he was kind of convinced that my camera wasn't an ordinary one. He requested me to publish his pictures where ever possible. I didn't know what to tell him, I just smiled at him and moved ahead on the street.

That incident on the street created an impression on my mind. I kept thinking why were they so keen in getting photographed, what is that makes them so happy, what is that created that immediate bonding, what is that made me feel so nice, well, I still think about it...

( Do check the pictures of these people who made that evening a very special one....

http://picasaweb.google.com/isiganesh/PicsOfThePostLITTLETHINGS?authkey=Gv1sRgCLiAy6W-8eOuSQ# )

The Savanal Forest Trek...

2010-11-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-11-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-08-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

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

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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...

2010-04-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Lust...

2009-06-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

It all started in school... I wanted to dance, but was not given a genuine chance. They thought that I was not meant to dance... I disliked all those people who deprived me of doing things that I desperately want to do... And I hated the fact that some times people can have power in depriving me of doing some thing... that can be one of the reasons that I will never dislike or hate my parents...

Last month there was an online internal survey in our company. The survey was related to an annual event called family day function. One of the question was some thing like this

" would you like to take part in any of the cultural program, if yes then select the program(s)"

one of them was dance. I had gone for salsa classes while doing my masters. I had gone to those classes with secondary intention of learning dance. I did select dance (with some amount of doubt) from the list and submitted my application for the survey.

I got a mail next day with subject "meeting on dance". I did not go for the meeting, I was too shy to participate after getting that mail. However one of my friend , who was one of the important person in the organizing committee of the family day function came to my desk and took me to the meeting. After the meeting I was there in the dance group along with 5 other people.

Amit, my colleague and a good friend, had also given his name but didn't turn up in the meeting. I didn't know any one well in the group. I wanted Amit to join. And he did join after some persuasion. We both had an extreme desire to dance on the stage.

Three from the group dropped out, We were finally four , that's Amit and me along with us Shital and Rupali. After we started the practice, my dance team realized how much talented I was in dancing. Amit and Rupali had no control over their laughter when they saw me dancing but Shital was totally mad at me. Shital was not just mad at my dance performance but with the way we took the whole thing very lightly. She just wanted our show to be rocking. She decided to rule our lives daily from 6PM to 8PM till the show was over, that's when she was conferred the title RING MASTER.

When we started the practice we were not getting it properly , at least I was lost. We wanted a visual feed back of our dance, for which I had an idea. It was to dance in front of a large mirror, the real idea was to dance in our office toilet space. The best part was that Amit didn't think it was a craziest idea. Amit and I were little shy to practice in the toilet until we realized it was not a permanent solution. All of a sudden I thought of buying a camcorder and I did buy it with in an hour's time of getting the idea. At that point of time I was ready to do what ever it took to make our dance better.

Now I have nothing much to write, you should watch this video

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2984859/rockstars_ringmaster_and_robot/

To Aditya, With Love...

2009-04-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

None of us wanted to come to Hyderabad leaving Bangalore, but we had to. By us, I meant Arvind, Giri, Praveen, me and Aditya (that’s the order in which the city got us in).

It was October '08, when we all started staying together in this flat called F10. It’s a 2 BHK flat with little or no sophistication. Our work place was very near to our flat. Except Aditya, we worked for the same company. Aditya was my junior from college.

Our conversations at flat were in a polite fashion, when we just started staying together. However that was very short lived. Soon after we started dealing with sharing of resources and money, internal feud creped in. Some of the major issues were on cable TV, internet sharing, house hold shopping, house rent, need of house maid etc. Not just that leaving Bangalore was depressing living in that flat became pretty pathetic. Small talk became a basic essence of our conversation.

"World is in a mess" that was the statement from the CEO our company. Economic recession had pretty much started the same time when we all got our jobs or in that time duration. Aditya's company was in deep shit. Our mailbox started getting hit by forwards on lay offs and bankruptcy. These scary thoughts started becoming our primary discussion during dinner. There was hoax on Aditya not getting salary for 2 months. And yeah, we or rather Giri and Praveen prepared dinner. Arvind, Aditya and me were like ' kam chore' supporting staff.

Pulling each other’s leg became an ultimate source of entertainment after staying for few months. Praveen has this ability to sharply observe and imitate people. His skills started spreading amongst us. Best irritated dialogues came out when one of us was provoked like hell and the unstopping laughter from rest made it look like frying a chicken, with burning smell all over.

I derived extreme sadistic pleasure in sabotaging one's image in the friend’s circle. Let me give you an instance. Every morning after getting up I go to the bath room (which has an attached toilet). In many occasions, Aditya used to go for the bath during that time. I had to control my self, if you understand what I mean. I always thought he took more time than what is required to take bath, at least the state at which I was made me feel that way. After experiencing this for some days I started telling a story to my other room mates that Aditya was a noble person who hand cleans our toilet when ever he goes to bath, with best of my sarcastic abilities. Aditya was not even spared to defend any of his points since the story of him staying in bathroom for that reason was far far better than other stories that I could have created.

As months passed by we started indulging in many group activities, like for example playing cricket, going to movies, mid-night Ice-cream pursuits and dinner in some good restaurant. We shared our good, bad and ugly experiences of our office. Some of the most obviously interesting talks were about the girls in our respective work places. Pulling each other on some arbitrary girl was like an initiator for some of the most hilarious conversations. Giri was always in spotlight for some of the classified reasons. Arvind used get victimized by some of the nastiest verbal encounters with Praveen and me. Aditya came to his rescue whenever he was around. In that way Aditya and Arvind became close friends. During the course of time, F10 actually became our home.

Last month Aditya learnt that the business unit in which he was working was sold to some other company, in effect he would be moving in to a different organization. Two weeks back he learnt that he would be relocated to Bangalore. Yesterday was his treat. Today, he will be leaving. Tomorrow, we will be looking for a new flat mate.

Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Aditya agreed to treat us in one of the most sophisticated family restaurant in the city. When we went to office in the morning, luckily, giving a gift came into our mind. Arvind became very keen soon after I talked about it. All of a sudden maniac in me woke up, I got this idea of giving him a toilet utility (with all the history attached to it). HARPIC - the toilet cleaning lotion was the winner. When I told it to rest, they could not control their laughter. We also decided to give a leaflet with all our classic dialogues that were the basic contents of our sarcastic imitation. By evening we did that list and called "F10 classics" (typed in kannada script and printed it). Arvind and myself went to a departmental store and got a Harpic – the toilet cleaner, we also got a scrubber as free. We asked for the presentation cover to the same shopkeeper, he shyly said no, laughing on our idea. We finally found a gift shop that was ready to pack. The price was 20Rs; I told the shopkeeper that we would pay him 30Rs with a condition of making it shine like hell on a big box with all newspaper stuffed along with the toilet cleaning lotion and scrubber. So was it done, solidly wrapped with golden colour presentation cover and all. Arvind and me laughed like hell each and every second thinking about the whole idea.

At eight, we met in that over priced restaurant. The deal was any thing in the menu except ice cream. We consciously dint have much food during lunch to take the best advantage of the treat. We had so much food with so many snaps taken by Giri while batting. By the time we were done, Aditya knew that this treat would remain as one of the costliest affair for long time. We gave him the leaf let which had all our dialogues typed in Kannada. When he read each dialogue in the leaf let we laughed like hell. When we gave him the gold wrapped gift box, he was glad and told us that this was like the Vaseline to the entire cracks in a foot. We insisted him to open the gift before the waiter could get the bill. He did open it gracefully in the midst of many families sitting around us, who by the way were noticing our loud laughter.

Let me ask you one thing, do you want to be our new roommate?

17 -04 -09

( http://picasaweb.google.com/isiganesh/Aditya_harpic# )

Now, then...

2009-02-10T23:19:00.000-08:00

Few years back when I was doing my engineering, Rohit was my very close pal. He was also doing engineering but in some other college located in the same city. We used to meet regularly in the cricket ground. Cribbing about our respective college and imitating our lecturers were our usual time pass activity. The other most talked about topic was about this gal Priti, his classmate. Gossips, rumors were basic ingredients of our chitchat. It was crazy at times but never the less lots of fun. Rohit was a big time stingy guy and so was I. Our weekend plans of going to dinner at some local restaurant were mostly a flop for the same reason. Here goes our typical conversation over telephone in the week end.

Tring… tring… tring… tring
“Hello… Can I speak to Rohit?”
“Dude... this is him... tell me, what shall we do tomorrow?”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t you remember that cricket match against those VSS nagar boys?”
“Of course dude, I am aware about that match, how can I forget that? I am asking after that match”
“I am suppose to complete that Electromagnetics assignment… if I don’t, I will get properly belted by that nasty lecturer”
“Don’t tell me all these stories, you had promised that you are going to treat me in that new restaurant”
“No way, that’s never going to happen… I am not treating; I can manage to come for the dinner only if you are treating”
“I can’t believe this… you are stingier than what I thought”
“Look who is talking… when have you treated by the way?”
“Dude, I told you right I am saving money to take Priti for lunch in that restaurant in MG road on Feb 14th … and I am also thinking of gifting that teddy bear”
“Ah… Rohit, you taking Priti to lunch is nothing to do with me… By the way if my dad sees me talking over the telephone for long, he will throw me out of the house, tell me fast, are you going to treat me or not?”
“Okay dude I will treat you, if that’s what you want, but not in that new restaurant, will take you to that pani puri stall near our school”
“Don’t put all these senti and all… Okay, all right, we shall have pani puri near our school, it’s going to save my time for my assignment as well, but don’t forget to bring money, I have absolutely no money”
“Don’t worry dude, will get the cash… I will catch you at 4O’clock in the ground”
“Fine, bye”
“Bye”

In fact having pani puri near school was easily the best thing to do then going to that new restaurant. We talked about our school days during that time. We remembered all the stories that proved us as the stingiest creatures on this earth. The other stories that never missed out in our conversation were about Priti. Rohit could recollect each and every conversation with her; I had to listen to all of those from him as if it was like a TV re- telecast. I gave him tips that never worked out, but he still came back to me for more tips. I can say for sure that my advice was never valued more than ‘then’ by anyone ever.

After completing engineering we lost contact. Both of us went on with our own life, career and stuff. But thanks to the strides in information technology that he found me through Orkut. He called me the moment he got my number; the conversation went this way

Buzz…buzz… buzz
“Hello, who is this?”
“Dude, guess... from my voice... come on, dude”
“Rohit?”
“ Yes dude, this is him… its almost 3 years now since we spoke to each other… the moment I saw you in orkut, I could recollect all the fun we had “
“Oh my god, what has happened to your accent, you sound like an American”
“Oh yeh, I work for an American company and I go to the US now and then, that’s how I picked up the accent… forget all that stuff, tell me when are we meeting?”
“When ever, where ever… any restaurant in the city, You always complained that I don’t treat right? This time, have what ever you want …any where … I mean where ever you say”
“No dude, I am the one who has to treat… first let’s meet and then decide on the rest... how about MG road? No, I meant St Marks road? "
“Sure… hey what about that gal Priti?”
“Dude, we shall not talk about her… I just want to say it’s over long time back”
“Oh okay… “
“Let me tell you one good news, I am getting married”
“Wow Rohit… who is it, when? Where? “
“I will answer all your questions, first let’s meet…how about Sunday, 4O’clock near our ground where we used to play cricket”
“Okay, but you were saying Some St Marks road… any way our ground is a better place to meet, from there we shall go which ever hotel you decide”
“Okay then… bye”
“Bye”

We did meet that Sunday near the ground. We joined with some people who were already playing cricket there. After playing, we recollected our entire ‘then’ team members with whom we had lost contact. We talked almost for four hours. Rohit told me all about his marriage, about the girl, family, how it was arranged, his plans after marriage. I shared my thoughts, about my life. We ate pani puri, bajji, kulfi ice cream, samosa etc in all the places near that location. We did fight again on who is going to pay, only this time it was for the opposite reason.

2008-12-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we had our year end celebration in my company. It was a great piece of management by our HR, Drishti who was my secret Santa also. She gifted me a card reader. There were children from Mythri who were our special guest tonight. I was sitting and talking to my manager at the garden. I saw them and could not control a smile at the smallest girl with yellow TShirt and blue pant. She was holding a big balloon twice as big as her face. I could not see her face properly. I moved my head left and right but still the balloon was working at its best to hide her face. I suddenly stood and went towards her, moved the balloon and saw her face. She got scared and called for Mythiri, the executive of the organization Mythiri. She came towards me and did apologize me for the kid’s act. I was like “no no it’s ok”, before she told me that the girl is blind but recognizes voice and touch more than us. I moved back and left the garden place just to remember someone who had the same sense of recognition: Chotu, the younger brother of one of my childhood friend Sonu.
Me and Sonu were close friends from Kindergarden. We had our common “Aaya” who used to fetch us from home to school to home. Our houses were close enough. We used to play at each other home almost every day after school. Aaya used to forward the message that Sonu has come to my place after school. Our Mothers became good friends because of us. Sonu’s Father was a Doctor and my mother was his most regular patient. Sonu was little plumpy and I used to tease her “Moti Moti” whenever we had fight.
Time took me for a wonderful journey and I was enjoying my childhood at my best. I was totally unaware about other things in my life. Somewhere around class five or six, Sonu told me that she got a small brother. I wanted to see the baby so I rushed with Sonu and Aaya to my home so that I can tell her that I am going to play with the baby. Aaya came and directly went to the room where my Mother was sitting. She secretly told that the baby is born mentally handicapped and very little eye sight. My Mom felt sorry for that and asked me not to go right now because the baby is new and he needs rest. I didn’t argue.
I think I came to know about the baby’s state from my mother in two three days. I started telling my Mother that his father is a “big” doctor and if he can make other patients well including you, he will surely make his own son well. After 3 weeks I went with my Mother to see the baby. Sonu was playing with him and even I joined. The baby was able to see us, that’s what I noticed but the way he responded was bit different. I had enough experience playing with my cousin brothers and sisters that I could easily notice the difference. Aunty was telling that they are going to meet some “bigger” Doctor, who will make the baby well. Four months went like this only but “little” improvement.

Away from all this, Me, Sonu and My younger brother were having wonderful time playing with the baby; “Chotu”. The best thing was that he used to recognize us and smile back. We used to play all sorts of baby sitting game where Chotu was the alone victim of getting carried by one or the other little guardian. We had our full day after school at her home only. Aunty had to take care of two children now: I & Sonu and we were taking care of Chotu. I used to finish my homework there only so my mother was also free from my studies tension.

We were in class 7th I believe, when the land lord asked us to vacate the house. We had to look for other place. I wanted to stay nearby only so that I can continue my Guardianship. But my father found a bigger and cheaper house and that also very close to my school, so we had to shift. That was the oldest feeling of departure I remember. Me and Sonu creid like anything. I took the little Chotu in my arms and kissed him on his forehead convincing him that I will surely come to meet him. I always feel the warmth of kiss on forehead as the best expression that I am not going to leave you and that you mean a lot for me and that to expect him to call me when ever he need me. That was my first meet with departure.

Everyday, Sonu used to talk about Chotu that he is not responding like a very normal baby and he spills whatever is given to him to eat and he pisses here and there and that his face will always be full of water from his mouth. I could feel the not so happy feeling on her face. I no longer needed an Aaya because my home was very close to my school, so the main postmaster was retired from the mailing job. Whenever My Mother complained of any health issue, I used to ask her to go Doctor Uncle’s home so that I can play with the baby. Then slowly we got our own sets of friends. I had my own gang for hide and seek and Police police. She got busy in her girls gang. The feeling of being normal and being not-so-good friend got properly sinked in both of us. The most important reason for our conversation was Chotu now. It was such an attachment which I can realize now only. Chotu was not able to see properly now but he could recognize my voice instantaneously and used to roll his arms in air so that I can pick him up. The happiness he showed was just heart touching and soothing. After that the saliva on his face, his pissing on my shirt all looked very very small for me. Sonu was not happy with his brother. My Father built our own house, and I had to leave my school.

Everybody was happy including me because I was getting one separate room. We had our last exam when I and Sonu can copy answers. We had developed a great sense of understanding to how to copy when the teacher is around. We had our house warming ceremony one day before the last paper and so Sonu didn’t come.

I got busy in my new school and new home. It was a lovely place with farms all around. I and Father used to run in between the farms everyday and play hide and seek, while my Mother used to bargain for even the fresh and cheap vegetables just plucked from the farm. It was a small village well in between the city. My and my brothers got a big gang over there to roam and play about. I finished my tenth and took admission in a college for my plus two. I started preparing for my engineering exam parallel and so found myself somewhat busy at those times when I used to play around with my friends. I always remembered what my Grand Father always used to tell that time is the biggest investment and do that before it’s too late. I was blind with those thoughts and following it without much thinking. I gave my plus two and the engineering exam. I cleared my plus two and not the Engineering. But as it’s the usual trend of people whom I know to clear in second or third attempt, I took it as my trial attempt. My Father gave me the result and a marriage card. Sonu is getting married.

I was surprised as to she is so “small” to get married. Mother told her relatives in some village in other state feel that she should get married by now. I thought Wow, I will be attending her marriage and will meet chotu also. He must be big enough to run with me and play with me. I was thrilled. But then heard that marriage is there in her native place which is very very far from my state. We didn’t had the phone so I went to the booth to talk to her. She scolded me properly that I had forgotten her and that Chotu remembers me a lot. I started scolding her that I am busy with my studies and that instead of consoling for my not clearing my test, she is scolding me. I came back home and told my mother about the conversation. Mother told me that she is getting married and may be she settles in US with her Doctor husband and may not return back. I told it doesn’t matter for me because she didn’t speak to me properly. I went to my room tapping my feet in anger and started playing the video game I bought it from the road side vendor. I started remembering my childhood days and Sonu was there with me. I remember all my birthday celebrations since my childhood and Sonu was there. I remembered all my lunch time till my 5th standard and I remember me and Sonu sharing my lunch. I remember all my punishments my class teacher used to give and Sonu was there looking at me with a sad face. I saw the date and it was only one week for her stay in my city. And then I started counting years since I met Chotu. It was almost six years.

I went with my Mother to meet her, thinking that it will be my last meet with her. Subconscious plan was to play with Chotu. I planned at least Police Police and Hide and seek. I planned to run all through the house and enjoy like hell. I called from the booth next to my Auto stand that we are coming. I was able to hear the happiness in her voice. We went there taking some gifts. My Mother bought a Saree for Sonu and that was a joke to me for my childhood friend. We went inside and the servant asked us to wait at the front hall. The servant was new. Aunty came hurrying to meet us. She was very happy to see us and what I saw was wrinkles on her face. She looked quite old. She hugged me and kissed me on my cheek. She told me that her son(me) has become thin. I could see tears rolling down her cheeks and smile spilling from her lips. I aksed Aunty about Sonu. She pointed me on the first floor.I ran through the stairs to see her. She was sitting with a dozen of Aunties around her cladded in a yellow cotton saree and turmeric on her arms and face. I was surprised to see her so “big”.
Everybody was singing some traditional wedding song loudly. I called her with full of my energy ………Sonu!!!!!

She looked at me and instantaneously stood up. It was like an honour for me. She made her way thorough the ladies sitting around her towards me. Her Turmeric was still not over. We walked towards each other with the full wide smile. The walk took some ten seconds before we could hug each other tightly and the full fifteen years of friendship ran through those ten steps. We were still the closest friends and we smiled, we laughed, we wept, we complained, we apologized, we excused, we expressed our love, and we gave insurance for lifetime friendship: All that in one hug, just one hug, not a single word… We had lots of thing to talk. We were the biggest chatter boxes at childhood time. The things that had changed were the topics of talk. We used to talk about choclates, toys, Chotu, games, homeworks, pencil boxes, lunch boxes, new copying tricks: Now we were talking about marriage, children, job, parents, carrier, responsibilties, Chotu….”Hey where is Chotu ??“

Sonu took me to Chotu, in the corner room. I was excited to meet him. I told Sonu on the way that she can continue with her Turmeric and I will play with Chotu. We went inside the room. Chotu was sitting on the sofa with Aunty and my Mother. Chotu could not see anymore. My knowledge about mentally challenged was clearer with age. Chotu was completely different than me and Sonu. He was full busy in his own world gazing the ceiling. I was bit disappointed as my plans of games were destined to be inside only. Sonu called Chotu that “Bantu Bhaiya has come”. Chotu became full still once and started clapping his hands. He smiled and wanted to touch me. He still remembers me!!! I forgot everything and I ran towards him hugged him very tightly. He gave a tight reflection of love and warmth. I gave the same kiss on his forehead I had six years back. We played the games he wanted to like clapping, giggling , smiling, laughing. We had lunch together and this time he also fed me with his small hand. I loved the feed.

It was late evening and time for me and Mother to leave. I touched Aunty’s feet, she hugged me. Chotu was sleeping that time. I wanted to kiss his forehead but then thought not to disturb him. I bade bye to Sonu, hugged her with a smile. I could feel Sonu telling that wherever we are, we will do remember each other wishing the best for each other. I got the best gift any friend can ever give me.

Sonu got married at her native place and went to US. I cleared my Engineering and came to Bangalore and am here only since then. Whenever I used to go to my home town I made it a point to meet Chotu and play with him. He was one of the very very few people who looked forward with an urge to meet me. Since last two years, I have not been to my place so could not meet Chotu. I wish to go to my native place, go through the dirty narrow lanes which used to lead to my old rent house; I wish to run through those lanes in rain as I used to do with my friends while coming home after school in the rain. I wish to climb the guava trees near the milkman’s hut when I and my younger brother used to get milk every evening. I wish to talk to my Grandma late night as we used to do during every Dusshera holidays. I wish to plan new ideas to steal litchis from my Uncle’s kitchen which my Uncle purposely used to keep it at the lower shelf to get stolen by us. I wish to go with my GrandPa for buying Jalebiees which he used to buy for us everyday’s breakfast. I wish to play cards game with all my three brothers which we used to do everyday after lunch. I wish to swing on all the slides and merry go round that the Kindergarten court had. I wish to do lots of endless things in my life once I go to my hometown……

And I found myself tapping my feet on my companies’ center stage with complete Josh and Enthu with my new friends welcoming the new stage of my life with full grin!!!! My most favorite song “Yeh Lamha Filhaal Ji lene De”…..

Love, Mitsu
20-12-2008

That chemistry lab…

2008-11-29T22:46:00.000-08:00

I used to recollect some of my dreams. I used to get all sorts of weird dreams. I don’t know what it actually means.

In one of my dreams I found myself doing some chemistry experiment. To be more specific I think I was doing some volumetric analysis, because I remember pouring some solution to another and trying to observe some change in colour of the mixed solution. Forget that detail, that’s not important. What happened next was more interesting, at least then. I found only one person in that whole room. I had never met her before, but when ever she gazed at me I got a feeling that she some how knew me already.

She looked very tense, in fact the intensity at which she was doing that experiment I thought it was an exam. Indeed it was an exam, I realized that only when an old person suddenly barged into the room and announced “30 more minutes”. Few minutes later, I finished my experiment and moved towards the chair to do the calculations and other stuff. Her table was very near to my chair. Remaining work what ever I had to do was pretty straight forward, just to substitute the values into the formula and arrive at the result. I was very curious to see what she was doing. I dropped my erasers deliberately so that I could see her while picking it up. She was actually staring me when I saw her, at least at that instant. Suddenly she put her face down when that happened. I was dumb struck, I was clue less. I stopped doing my calculation. I just wanted to know why she was seeing me like that, was it because she was about to call me, was she trying to see what had I written in my paper, was she just looking at board and I felt that as if she was looking at me. Suddenly knowing that became the only intention of my life.

At first I thought of completing the calculation and then talk to her, but then my actual intention were different. I jumped out of my chair and saw if some one was around, when I found it safe I approached her
” hey, do you need some thing…?” I asked her very politely
“NO” that was her tak response
I was not convinced by her response even though she responded sharply. I made one more effort by saying
“I thought you were struggling, so I think I should probably help you in some way orrrr …” it looked like as if I needed some help from her…
“It’s none of your business, can you mind on one that is on your table” I was devastated when she said that. I said nothing and came back to my chair. I thought some one just murdered my ego. I felt like throwing away each and every object near me to Indian Ocean.

After reaching my chair, I had completely lost my mind. I was not able to recollect any formula, forget about formula, I was not even able to recollect the title of the experiment that I had done minutes back. My hatred to her multiplied millions of times. Minutes started moving like seconds, I was able to think absolutely nothing. In the middle of all these things that old person came back asking for answer scripts. She was some how able to finish the experiment but then left with calculations. The old person grabbed the paper ruthlessly even after she strongly pleaded for extra time. I dint even bother to ask for extra time, I just wanted to go out of that room.

I dint want to remember any thing that happened in that room, I knew that I would some how pass for doing the experiment, I also new that completing the calculation would have earned me 95%. I had started moving towards the canteen and I heard a voice saying “hello, excuse me” from back. I turned back and it was her. I dint want to talk to her anymore. I moved faster. She came running and asked me
“Where are you going?”
I quickly replied, rather yelled
“Its none of your business” without even looking at her pretty face.
Immediately, facing me” Oh no, you took it so much badly, is it? I am really, really sorry… I don’t want to go home guilty for two reasons… I was really tensed at that moment … I dint mean what ever I said” almost like begging.
Like any other Hero, I responded “ok, fine… but tell me one thing” and I continued “what’s the second reason to be guilty”
Her response was “to hurt a person”
“Arre, that I got it”
“Oh then you mean the first one?”
I smiled at her innocent answer and replied “oh yes, tell me the first one itself”
“The first one is to do badly in the exam” she gave a confused look…
“You are guilty for that? I can understand you feel bad and all... but seriously guilty?
“Ya, like my parents spend so much money for my education, so I should do my each and every exam well, don’t you think that’s a valid reason to be guilty”
I responded saying “ahh no, I don’t think that way… however, I respect your thought”

After talking with her for some more time we went to have coffee. She told me her school days stories, her stories from her home town, stores of how she got into the college, stories on how she enjoyed playing basket ball. She even paid for the coffee, telling me that’s going to make her feel less guilty. The conversation was just like some movie; the best part was that I was thr in that.

It was almost five in the evening when she decided to leave. I wanted to thank her for all the conversations, I wanted to tell her that she was very sweet, I wanted to say ba bye, but suddenly I heard my mom shouting “ get up, get up… its all ready 8 ‘O clock… do you want to miss your chemistry lab exam”

The pep...

2008-11-21T18:32:00.000-08:00

Snoring at 10'O clock was our habit, not getting breakfast in the mess was just one of the consequences. Either of us, who ever got up first jumped into other's room and banged the door, loud enough to wake up the other nocturnals in the hostel. Rakesh, at least had good reasons to be awake late in the night, with all the image processing algorithms and stuff. Next event in the morning was the phone call from Neeraj (my lab mate) asking " kothai" ( which means "where" in Bangla). You will get the Bangla connection in very less time.

Rakesh and myself strolled through the campus to reach the department in the shortest path. Sometimes , rather very occasionally, On our way I used to meet a gal near the library and he used to wait till I completed my conversation with her. After those conversations he used to pull my leg so much that I started ignoring her when ever he was around. We used to split in the department and went to our respective labs to do the so called research.

Our lab meetings never happened in the lab, but in coffee board, which was located diagonally opposite to our department. Madhurima Chattopadhyaya, my another lab mate, annoyed with our ill managed research schedule used to give a stern look after meeting us in coffee board. Neeraj, happens to come up with some or the other Bangla story to change her mood in seconds. The coffee tasted much stronger to Madhurima if we were having a Bangla glorified stories. The stories included names like Satyajith Ray, Sourav Ganguly, Amartya Sen, Mamatha Bannerji etc, and topics like West Bengal politics, Rabindro Sangeeth, Bangla literature, etc. But the evil in Neeraj and me tested her temper by bring up some dark sides of Bangla stories. In one occasion I pronounced West Bengal as Waste Bengal and that had infuriated her like anything. Neeraj and my self never missed a chance in pulling her leg in this front. Never the less, She retaliated with her facts and figures about Karnataka and Bihar, leaving us hiding our faces. Ganapathy Subramanyan, rather Gonapathy, our junior from lab, famous for stretching time limits, used to join the "social networking session" almost in the middle of our conversations or debates. With his entry, stories about Chennai were invariably comprehended into our discussions. Our morning lab meeting were like a forum to understand Unity in Diversity :).

After spending some quantity of time (not sure of the quality) in the lab we used to meet again in the coffee board. The evening coffee sessions were more fun since we had our friends from other labs and other department joining us. We had more leisure in the evening sessions. The discussions were mostly about the proceedings of the day, about some movie, TV show, past experiences or about some professor . On some evenings we had discussions about marriage, love and responsibilities. For instance, one day we were talking about love marriage vs arranged marriage, when I was asked which I prefer ,I had given a quick response as " which ever comes first" and the whole group had laughed at my answer for several minutes. We shared our opinion on various things , cribbed about various issues and on few occasions we discussed some technical stuff as well. The evening coffee sessions ended with Madhurima leaving to play home to pick her daughter up.

After we left IISc even the coffee board was also closed, with that it was like an end of an era for us. To keep a warm feeling, I came up with a new classification of human beings , those who got a chance to have coffee at coffee board and those who dint. I came to Hyderabad and so did Neeraj, on pursuit of corporate career. I happen to meet him today, we had our dinner in some good place and most importantly we went to a place to have coffee. Although we got tea instead of coffeee, we had those discussion which we did each and every day. Those stories in which we irritated Madhurima, those stories of individualism, those stories of girls, those stories of Goa -Gokarna, those stories of our friends... I was not sure when we were going to meeting again , but I always had the habit of telling him what time I was going to meet him next, this time I told him " I will meet you next time probably ... next time when we meet".

My first love...

2008-11-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

If u are reading this thinking that its about my love with a person then I must inform you that it's not. However, I can say that it's pretty much similar...

The day used to start with me reciting some Sanskrit prayers to three goddesses. After I got up, amma (my mom)'s time was almost at my disposal. I would have shouted "coffee" five times even before taking my mouth wash. My next query was weather all my dress, shoes and socks were washed, if the answer happen to be yes then no apparent appreciation, if not then it went on to become a loud fight. It was as if I was doing a big favor to my parents by going to school. I was then just about a teenager.

Saturday was my favorite day during those times. There were many reasons for it to become the favorite day for most of my class mates as well, like the school used to get over as early as 11:20, the TV show Shakthiman was aired at 12, very few home works to be submitted, one and half hrs in the ground for drill, etc. Even I considered those as very good reasons, but for me the best reason was that I could play cricket after school. Cricket in the after noon, cricket in the evening and also practicing bowling in my home during night. I waited for Saturday much much more than now.

I always aspired to be a leg spinner, I even got a book to learn that. I bowled both spin and medium pace, at times mix of both. I was part of two teams, one in the school and another near my home. The team near my home was formed mostly by my primary school friends. I was an established player in that circle where as in my school I was more of a struggling player, like those trying hard to make to the team types. Never the less my aim was to represent my school not just for my class. I dint care to study even if I had tests, I dint mind getting last rank in class but I couldn't have missed the Sunday evening game. I was pretty lucky that my parents never forced me on my education even when I did so badly then.

Painting was my other passion in life. Going to painting contests had almost become my Sunday morning routine, wining those contests regularly made me a known person in the school. I enjoyed that popularity. I had lost quite a lot before I started winning in many. Thats when I started really appreciating victories. Thats when I realized their is nothing like not doable. Thats when I started painting classes for kids. Those painting classes became handy in a very good way, I could buy cricketing gears like batting gloves, leg pads, thigh pads, balls etc. Freedom in my life extended to a next level. The impact of money on achieving happiness was felt. In this way ,Painting had become my best friend and cricket my love.

Road cricket was like our miniature version of actual cricket. We had made our own set of rules that suited the environment. To mention a few rules, if a batsman hits the ball directly to some house he was declared out, if ball goes in to the gutter then one run was declared no matter how many runs the batsman complete, the bowler cannot throw the ball more then certain speed to the batsman, like that etc. A metal chair from my house were the wickets. The bowler to batsman distance was nearly one fourth of the actual standards. The Road cricket was in many ways very crude, nevertheless very much fun. I used to run home soon after the final school bell and did all the arrangements for the road cricket. Going to each and every friend's house in the neighbor hood convincing them to play, the toughest part was in convincing their mom's in allowing their boy. The homework and tests used to be the spoil sport. My mom had given up on convincing me on doing academic stuff during those hours. On some nice evenings there used to be quite many neighbors joining the game. Some of them my age, some elderly, but the intensity in the game was the same amongst us. Their was only one thing and that was to win, thats it. Each day we had different combinations of players in teams. If one day a one person is my team mate other day he might be my rival. The craving for runs , wickets, catches had made the game very sensitive to fights. Some times the fights lead to a major resentment but by next day no one cared to remember. Ultimately everyone wanted to play.

After I made it to my school team, I started attending coaching sessions organized by the school. Waking up at five in the morning, which looked so impossible earlier, seemed very fine when I started attending those cricket practices. Bowling continuously for hours dint tire me. Not a single ball I delivered was to stop the batsman from hitting , it was sent only to get him out. The batsman can only be our enemy to get him out was everything. I had a pretty decent debut by taking 3 wickets for some nominal runs scored on me. I never considered my self as a batsman. I dint mind bowling all the overs and not get a chance to bat even a single ball. I went on to become a regular player in my school team. In a day I thought of cricket all 24 hours.

My 15th birthday and my first day of 10th standard happened to be the same day. That day or I think those few days were very strategic in my life, if I see it now. The consciousness of "10th standard" ==> "Board exam" had creped into each and every cells in my body. Slowly cricket coaching was replaced by tuitions for board exams and Sunday morning painting contests by NTSC tuitions. I played road cricket for few days , I dint have guts in asking my friends to join the game even for half an hour, since I myself was not sure weather I should play or not. It was neither my parents nor my sister nor any person for that matter told me to stop doing what I terrifically enjoyed; but I did stop.