Starry starry nights

From the days when I used to like clear night skies with nobody except the moon, and hate the clutter that the stars caused... today I've started liking the same stars. Maybe the difference is caused by the city vs hills surroundings, but they're quite a sight here. While looking up at the night sky I can almost feel a curve and a bend at the infinite corners. The star-less patches now seem empty. The stars can keep me engrossed and make me watch them for long. I wish I was poetic enough to talk about them in a nice way... but the shortcoming remains. And, it's also official that stars are coming closer to the moon in looking pretty. :)

The Handful

There are many people who claim to love, but not so many who come closer when you're pathetic and desperate. Have those around too.

An expressionless world?

I cannot remember the last time I felt so detached from everything around me. I'm fine with the people around, but there isn't really anything I feel like talking about. And when I do not want to talk about college, there is nothing else left to talk about.
Have been getting in touch with a few old friends but that is probably only for the sake of maintaining the relationships which have begun to get ignored due to paucity of time.

It's nice to have people care, but sometimes I wonder why equations become skewed with time. They mess things up.

What would an expressionless, to-the-point world be like? Where everybody minded their own business and there were no relationships, no friendships, no poetry, no music. Sounds like quite a disastrous thing. But I like the idea of it. Wish such experiments could be conducted without any trouble.

I don't want anyone around me.

People I know

On Subhadip's request, I'm uploading this tag that I'd done on Facebook here as well.

Here goes...

The good friend: Mansi is the chaddi buddy.

The slow one: Gopika is my roommate.

The pimp: Priyanka was a junior in school who is one of the crudest forms of female species I've ever come across.

The good little church one: Neha's the good one from college.

The shy one: Sumit's the significant other.

The one that always swears: Amrah is a to-be journalist who lives on the floor above mine in the hostel. The Bs and Gs of the world are her buddies.

The poker face: I tagged my cousin Amit bhaiya as the one with the poker face, and Subhadip tagged our fellow blogger Rohit because of reasons Subhadip might want to spell on his own. :)

The pervert: Vrinda lives in the neighbourhood and has the naughtiest pair of eyes.

The one that's up to no good: Aakash was on the Footprints team with me, and is smitten by his girlfriend as of now.

The jock: Ticku was our six pack man at Watson Wyatt.

The one with the bad memory: Varun is actually super-smart, but he always has so much going on in life that he tends to forget the smallest of things.

The geek: This blog has had enough proof and testimony of Tarun being a geek.

The innocent one: Samridhi is my kid sis and is truly one of the most innocent people I've ever known.

The dangerous one: Sumit tagged me as the dangerous one. :|

The lazy one: Amiya and I have been partners in laziness and procrastination for a few years now. She'll vouch for herself.

The gangster: Avantika uses the worst form of English slangs which sound kinda Australian but I'm sure do not belong to any country per se.

The frenchie stylish one: Parul's the propah lady from school.

The flirt: The Sidharth mentioned here is the Sidharth Trehan of DFC fame. Married by status, but flirting comes easy.

The tiny one: Debanjana is the little Somalia that hangs around with a group of guys who keep beating her up the whole time.

The tower: Sahil is 6'3" tall.

The one with all the gossip: All of Dipika's conversations begin with, "you know whaaat....".

The ladies' man: Turns out I know quite a few ladies' men. The ones mentioned here: Akash - now married. Prashant - across media and countries, and Subhadip will vouch because he managed to tag him too. And Ranjan is all women's favourite here on campus. Every conversation about him reveals that there is a certain fondness that women have for him which they are unable to define. :)

The one you can depend on :Subhadip has been mentioned here 20 times already. He hosted a yumm breakfast at 5:00 am recently and it had a gulab jamun. I can obviously depend on him.

The nagging one: Ridhima is the mother of all taunts. She is one of the two women alongwith whom I am considered a single entity.

The cutie pie: Saumya is cute thanks to her mere size and funny way of laughing and talking.

The funny guy: When Munish Kaushik laughs, the world turns and looks. Literally.

The one who's always hungry: I know I am the one who's always hungry now.

I really cannot put a 'the goodie two shoes' in place.

The last 20 days!

A bus to Mumbai.
A flight to Kolkata.
A train to Jamshedpur.
A cab to Ajanta.
Favourite pizza at Domino's.
Rum and coke.
Red roses.
CorelDRAW.
Country profiling.
Farooq Sheikh.
Innumerable ads.
Gaenda phool.
Dev D.
Bonding.
Fights.
Elections.
Being broke.
Moods.
Washing clothes.
And a lot more...

It has been an extremely exciting month so far, and with each incident/experience... there are so many emotions I've gone through that the sense of being is beyond definition right now.

Restored Sanity

It's incredible what 7 hours of sleep after many shitty nights can do to your mood.

I was happy. I was smiling. I didn't snap, I didn't sulk. I gave hugs, and I was happy to see most faces in the morning. I didn't doze off in class. I listened to happy music. I didn't participate in a class exercise which involved a cosmetics brand - helped me tick off one sector for the upcoming internship. Forced a friend to buy me a chocolate, immediately pocketed it, and saved it till end of day so that I could savour it alone. :P Had a good conversation with the boyfriend. Kicked about somebody's frustration who laughed at my frustrations of the past 3 days. Loved going through Tarun's notes on Facebook and leaving one too many comments on it. It helped relive some moments from college and I loved doing that too. Finally got credit for talking about potty the whole time. I now have a place to visit in Delhi the next time I go there - the Toilet Museum. Apparently it's a pretty cool place.
Still fresh, and working on an assignment coolly after quite a while.

The price? A deadline I didn't meet. I generally do not take deadlines easy, but sometimes sleep takes top priority.

My mommy bestest!!

I have not slept in really long, I have a little too much work to do, and I just spent the last hour socialising, so I shall make this real quick.
I've been missing Mamma since morning. Suddenly after the long break during which I didn't really feel like going home, now I want to see mom. But since that isn't going to happen as neither of us get offs so easily... I'm hoping this post will make do for now.

Apart from all 'mom' qualities, I adore for the fact that she is strong and independent. And of course, because she is my mom. :D

Muah!!


P.S.-She'd been giving me flowers for the past two Valentine's. This year I didn't get any. :(

This is what happened...

People I hang out with had all made separate plans for the holidays. I tried real hard to get any person I met on Sunday to come with me to a place other than Goa. I called Subhadip and did a lot of crying and cribbing. Sat with a long face at the dinner table, and tossed between making a boring trip to Mumbai and an adventure trip to some place nice alone. That's when Priyam came into the picture.

At 1o:00 pm, we had some 2o tabs open with Maharashtra all over them. And it was midnight by the time we decided that it was going to be Ajanta and Ellora. So we immediately booked a cab for 5:00 am from campus to be able to take the 6:00 am bus from Shivaji Nagar in the city to Aurangabad which is the closest station to both Ajanta and Ellora.
Cameras out, packing done, shoes on, and we were off campus by 5:10 am. We sped and as luck would have it... the first bus coming out of the depot was going to Aurangabad. We boarded it and managed to get only the last seat which did bust our asses during the five hour journey. It was 5:45 am when we started, the bus took one stop at Ahmednagar for 15 minutes, and dropped us at our destination at 10:30 am - bang on schedule. It was an MSRTC bus, the near-equivalent of the Haryana Roadways buses of the north, only with slightly more comfortable seats. The ticket was for Rs 195, and somehow I felt that was a little too much for a state bus. Anyway.

Ahmednagar bus depot

We made our first mistake at Aurangabad - taking a local bus to Ellora. The distance was less than 20 kms, and it took a little more than 1.5 hours to get there. It was certainly cheap at Rs 17 per person, but if you want to save yourself an incredibly slow and dusty journey, take a shared auto from outside the bus depot at Aurangabad. I'm not sure about how much that would cost, but I am sure it would save a lot of energy.

The local bus from Aurangabad to Ellora

At Ellora, there are a couple of dhabas and a small market outside the caves. We fed ourselves with some good, filling food there. Next decision that was to be made was for our stay. It's tricky business - Ajanta is 104 kms from Ellora, and almost the same distance from Aurangabad too. So we thought that the obvious and better decision is to spend the night at Ellora, and move further the next morning. But what most tourists do is go back to Aurangabad the same evening, spend the night there, and move to Ajanta from there. The reasons? There are more options to stay in Aurangabad, and you get direct buses to Ajanta from there. Yea, we did not know about the bus thing until we had checked into our hotel at Ellora. One either goes back to Aurangabad from Ellora to catch a bus to Ajanta, or changes buses at 3 different stops if they want to go directly.

Our hotel

Let's go to the caves first, and then I'll tell you what we finally did the next morning.


Entry ticket was the standard Rs 10 as at all other protected monuments. If you're the bottled water kind of person, carry your bottles with you because inside there are only two canteens where you will get it. It is 'only two' because it is a large area that the caves cover and canteens are not that close. But there are drinking water taps available outside almost every cave.

Underground water

Ellora has 34 Hindu, Buddhist and Jain caves. The first one that you see after entering is the largest Hindu cave called Kailasa. It is massive, and it is extremely beautiful. We spent about one hour inside. Well, that's largely because we were kinda tired after a night where we did not sleep & a journey which was kinda long, and the crrazy heat. Even so, the cave is worth spending all that time in. There is a small shivling where people offer prayers inside the cave. I thanked the caretaker there when he helped me with light for a photograph, and he replied with a 'gracias'. Way too many foreign tourists. :)

Kailasa

View from top (Kailasa)

The little shivling inside cave 16

We spent about five hours in there, but did not really go inside each of the 34 caves. We'd enter one cave, sit there for looong and chat and click, and then make the effort to climb up another cave. Yea, for people who do not have ANY stamina, and are already tired, it can be an uphill task. But, it is Ajanta where stamina really comes into play.




After about 2.5 hours of moving around, we needed to refuel ourselves. So we had lots of water and a yumm aloo parantha at the canteen. The main entrance divides the caves into two sides, with number 16 in the middle. So, our second round of walking was to the left of # 16. There are a lot of autos that will offer to show you around because I'm guessing there are many people who are not too fond of walking. So these autos help you move around, take you to the important caves, and bring you back to the exit in one piece. We got many such offers in the second half because the walk to that side is longer and is on steep roads. But the boots were meant for walking, and walking we did. When it looked like the sun was beginning to take it easy, a new found energy took over me and I wanted to climb to the top of the rocks to see the setting sun. So I pushed the other two as well, and we climbed & climbed to settle at a decent viewing point. It had been only five minutes that two shady men came up as well. They had some foreign friends either waiting for them or waiting to be discovered by them. It looked like extremely shady business and we almost thought we'd surely get stabbed or something if we even looked their way. This killed the little joy we could have derived from the sunset which was average when compared to the sunset at Lavale, and we were just relieved to move out of there. Those guys also walked back with us, offered us a ride in their car, and had a weird english with accent for men who we thought would not even be educated.

They will come back next morning...

At the canteen

Dinner at another dhaba in the market. They served parathas which reminded of home

The place had no computer and I had only 1 GB of memory, so I ended up deleting some pictures to make space for the next day. Our neighbours in the hotel were a single German lady, and two men from Switzerland. All of us had plans of going to Ajanta the next morning, so the manager suggested we share a cab instead of the looong bus drama I mentioned earlier. It sounded convenient, would have only saved us some money, so we all agreed.

The next morning, all dhabas outside were shut because Ellora caves are closed on Tuesdays. So we had to have the relatively more expensive breakfast inside the hotel. And while we were at it, we saw the same shady men (who had also offered us a ride to Ajanta when we walked out looking for breakfast) come into the hotel compound with their car. They were talking to the manager, and we knew that was the car that the manager had arranged for us. We died. The three of us really lost it. But we were a lucky bunch and we were six of us who could not have fit into his Ikon or whatever that car was. Our prayers worked, and he did not drive the replacement auto which we got. The manager made money out of offering a car and ultimately sending us in an auto, but we were only too glad.

It took two hours to get to Ajanta. There are shuttle buses from where outside vehicles drop you to the caves. Rs 7 for non AC, and we were on board an MTDC bus. With us was a bunch of school kids. They helped me expererience the most embarrassing public moment of my life. We'd bought hats outside the caves because the sun was killing us. I had my sunglasses on anyway. AND my camera was in my hands (unlike Priyam's who decided to keep it in until we reached the caves). So, I could not have looked more tourist-y, and the kids thought that I'd also come from some foreign land. They all thronged to see me, made jokes about me, tried asking me 'what is your name' in a way that they thought should be comprehendable for me, laughed their wits off when they heard me talk in Hindi, and kept staring at me and my camera with non-stop giggles. I would have loved to click them as well, but they were so many of them that I was afraid of being killed in the process.


We took a guide in the caves because otherwise there were only paintings and paintings on the walls and we had no clue what they meant. In a big group, it came to Rs100 per head for us. Guide uncle was too keen on making us hear every word that he uttered, and he almost scolded me once when I was too busy clicking. I gave him a dirty look which he conveniently ignored, but then I ignored him too. Hmph.

The Ajanta caves

Lord Buddha

Painting of a thousand Buddhas

Lord Buddha in his avatar as a white elephant - offering one of his 6 tusks for the queen's ornaments

After the guided tour, we'd just rested our feet when we got talking to Anders, a researcher and lecturer from Denmark. His area of interest? Travel and tourism. He does research on backpackers across the globe, and also on the business impact of guide books that they use. Very interesting to talk to, and quite a funny man... he was nice enough to pay for our lunch at the MTDC restaurant as well.

At around 4:00 pm, we left Ajanta for Aurangabad. We wanted to reach the city and find an internet cafe so that we could plan our next move. It was another 2-hour ride (this time we chose a private bus over a local one) to Aurangabad. There we did find an internet cafe, browsed for an hour, looked at several destinations and finally came down to Srivardhan, a virgin beach about 200 kms from Pune. But when we got to looking for a bus that would drive us through the night to Srivardhan, we got to know that the travel agents had not even heard of the place. We were offered a cab, and that was the nth time in the recent past that I realised how painful it can be to be a woman in this mean world. Again, it was unsafe for the three women who were "alone" together, and they had no option but to eat and head back home.

We missed the Daulatabad Fort which is en route Aurangabad to Ellora because we did that journey only once and if we'd stopped over, we'd have missed Ellora caves which are shut on Tuesdays. Also, it was tooo hot to bother after that. We also missed the Bibi ka Maqbara which is better known as the 'Unknown Taj Mahal' in Aurangabad. This, because we used Aurangabad only to switch buses. And we did not want to spend another night there only for the Maqbara. But I guess we were happy with whatever we did manage to see as well.
One more thing that we missed and should probably not have was the Grishneshwar Jyotir Linga which is one of the 12 shrines of lord Shiva in India. Mom believes in him, I should have gone. It was close to our hotel, but we never woke up in time to visit and leave with the rest of the people on time as well.

Took the 8:30 pm bus to Pune. It took a little longer than the first journey, and we landed here at 1:45 am. Again, a private cab back to campus. The driver told us that Srivardhan can be done in one day from Pune. Also told us the rates. So, that's where we're heading next -- that is whenever we have enough money again. :)

The above-mentioned was not the only embarrassing moment. I was so tired and sleepy during the bus journeys that my sleep was not inducing little jerks of the head but wayward movement of the head in both directions in an area of about one meter. People say I was quite a sight. And Anders was finding it funny too. Well, I can only laugh about it too. I banged my head against the front seat, the window glass, and so on in the process, did not even sleep in peace, and entertained people too. Can anyone ask for more?

A couple of points...

# Ajanta caves are shut on Mondays. So the plan was actually working out fine.

# The area has some unique blood red guavas. We never got to buying and tasting them because we only saw them while we were on the move.

# I never thanked the makers of any shoes before this, but this time I owe it to Adidas. 5 am to 10 pm on one day, and 7 am to 2 am the next... I lived in an extremely comfortable pair of shoes.

# I walk fast. And when with a purpose, I leave people behind.

# We resolved that from now on we won't judge any person on the streets digging his/her nose. You CAN reach a point where you can feel dust on and inside every part of your body.

# The trip cost us about Rs 1700 per head. And this includes around Rs 300 spent on private cabs we had to hire within Pune.

# Learning Marathi is an absolute must for me now. Sometimes things become very difficult without it.

The apparent origin of the Garbha dance form

Phew! I've saved some pictures for my Flickr page. See you there as well. :)
And now I shall hope for a comment from you. :P

First of its kind

Our director decided to give us five days off. Most people went home or to meet their boyfriends/girlfriends. I didn't choose either of these options, but I knew I could not stay on campus. After lots and lots and lots of thoughts about being away, on Sunday I finally decided that I should decide where I want to go. I almost went to Daman, but there were a little too many people to discourage me for that. I was superbly frustrated as well because it almost looked like I won't have company and it is "unsafe" to travel alone. But Priyam finally decided that she wants to be nice to me. After much deliberation and choosing hinterland over the beach (because we really were only two women), we knew we were going to Ajanta and Ellora caves.
It was going to be one backpack, and when her roommate, Ankita came to my room to help Priyam pack her stuff, we managed to convince her to come along as well.

It was a small, two-day trip. Following are LOTS of pictures of just the three of us. I shall talk all about the trip with pictures from the caves in the next post.

Better not judge me for putting up pictures of myself. I do not remember when was the last time somebody actually wanted to click me. Therefore, with much gratitude, I present to thee all the lovely pictures Priyam clicked. And the ones in which you see her are obviously clicked by me. I don't know why I said that last line.

Try and enjoy. We were three happy women.

At Aurangabad bus stop

Lunch at Ellora

Entry to the caves at Ellora

Ankita found a shady place to sit immediately after entering the caves

Self-mode can be a scary proposition when the terrain is rocky

Roommates, you see.

:D

We found her a cave as well

And well...

Towards the Jain caves post the second round of lunch that we had that afternoon

We reached a high enough point to see the setting sun, but will have to admit it was not even half as pretty as it is here on campus.

At our hotel in Ellora

And the next morning at Ajanta

We clicked so many pictures of ourselves on the first day that there were almost none on the second day. Also, at least I was too engrossed in capturing the Buddhist paintings and sculptures at Ajanta to click these two lesser mortals. All that with details in the next post. Right now I need to sleep.