Offload!

• Chashme ke bina nahi dikh raha.
• "Familiarity breeds contempt."
• "In the long run we are all dead."
• I had forgotten your smell.
• They never need to see me or talk to me to know that I am happy. 
• Sooner or later loose ends do get tied up.
• Just when I was beginning to feel that excitement is a frivolous emotion that I no longer experience, I got an opportunity to realise why it is such a treasured emotion.
• I may be a cynic, but I know who is worth being put in that list of gods.
• Your wit is digging too strongly, it's making me funnily uncomfortable.
• Competition still scares me. 
• Some equations should not need effort and are not even worth the effort.
• Pehde bandeyan naal ladna wi aa gaya!
• This American English is not fun.
• Too soon to comment, too soon to feel, too soon to judge - control is an art that makes your life bloody boring. And yet I seem to be leaning that way. With offline moments, of course. 
• You always have options. It's just that sometimes they're so bad that you don't consider them as options. 
• I wonder why I like the icky feeling of perspiration trickling down my scalp.
• That list of gods, Vishal Bhardwaj has been on it for quite a while. Deservingly. 
• I perceived someone to be similar to Subhadip. I was wrong - this one's nowhere close.
• And now that the longest day of the year is behind me, I am awaiting winters! :D

More later!

The Winter Trip to Kumaon

Continuing from where I left, I was on a very tight seven-day road trip on the following route.

Delhi>Bilaspur>Rudrapur>Nainital>Sitla>Mukteshwar>Almora>Patal Devi>Kasar Devi>Chitai>Jageshwar>Almora>Kasar Devi>Kausani>Mohlidhar>Ranikhet>Kathgodam>Delhi

So while I was working, the little and the lot that I experienced and managed to absorb (cannot claim to explore at all) would be the following.

# Sitting in the front seat can help avoid a lot of winding-roads-motion-sickness.

# Sitting in the front can be very taxing for your otherwise overworked brain if the driver wants to talk non-stop in order to keep himself awake.

# I can love the smell of freshly sanitized hotel rooms. And then suddenly hate them.

# More cities growing the Rudrapur or Almora way will really ruin our country.

# I love the defence forces. I just do. And I love how they maintain the places they live in. Ranikhet being the case in point.

# Sitla is a cold place. Very very cold place.

# The 50 km aerial distance between Kausani and the Himalyan peaks does not feel good. The force wants you to be on the other side. But that is also a cold place. Very very cold place. Especially if you are doing sunrise/sunset photo shoots.

# I met at least 10 new people and covered the previous 11 months' deficit of that in my life.

# The new things I saw/did: eat methi ka laddoo, bhatt ke dubke, maduey ki roti, and bal mithai, have fresh cow's milk, stand in a smelly cold storage, live in a building built in 1880, get overwhelmed by the artificialness of floriculture, watch the process of flower tissue culture, trek an unbelievable amount with my half dysfunctional legs, visit the Sun Temple at Katarmal, the Golu Devta Temple at Chitai, get the stories of both, meet some people who are doing some absolutely brilliant work in the region, understand that the thousands of pine trees are just ruining the ecology of the region, that kiwis are now being grown indigenously, learn about the art called aipan, see-touch-step on-and-freeze thanks to frost, among many other things.

# Gods were nice enough to keep the weather sunny through our entire trip. But I still know now what a solar eclipse apparently feels like.

# I had a bold ice cream in Nainital. And I had a bolder ice cream in colder Ranikhet. :D

# I had more tea in those seven days than I had cumulatively had over the past 24 years. And the last one somehow knew that it was the last one. I could just not have taken any more of it.

# Like a cool dude I decided to not carry the extra weight of a hair brush. That made me realise that my hair isn't after all so short.

# After the first two days, my colleague and I had become completely oblivious of the way we looked. It felt less of an official trip and more of a backpacking tour across the region. The same shoes, socks, coat, cap, neck warmer, gloves, and the self... without any accessories, basic kajal, or any other form of formality, we just trudged along - town to town, hotel to hotel.

# I am not a heater/hot water bottle person. At all. I just need my multiple layers of blankets in place.

# The region offers very good food.

# Airtel acts very idiotic through most part of the region. I had to dial every number at least 4-5 times before connecting through.

# Most natives' looks were deceiving vis-a-vis their age. They all looked unbelievably younger than what they really were.

# I saw lemons that were 10 times the size of what we get in our cities.

# Got blessings I did not expect, got compliments I did not expect, and had a trip more awesome than I expected.

The Peepli Weekend

This was a long weekend. Mostly nice. On Thursday, I got the mind-numbingly expensive knee support that the latest doctor prescribed. It is my last hope to save the surgery. It helps me walk. Almost as much as I want to. So, on Friday afternoon I set out for a shopping bonanza to test it. Not only could I walk, I could walk fast (just the way I like to), and I was on my feet for close to two hours. This injury has been one of the many humbling experiences of the recent past.

I bought things that excite me most after silver jewellery. Bags!! Yes, plural. You can consider it a lottery. Moreover, the peace that doing such things alone gives evens out the madness. Therefore the word 'bonanza'. :D

The evening had a Teej-related dinner at someone's place. Highlight of the rather annoying gathering was the fact that an absolutely unrelated oldie located far, far away from here sent me personalised blessings. Felt good.

On Saturday morning I spotted a hot-looking guy at the hospital. Perks of an injury which takes you to places visited by fit people who play sports and get injured too. :P

I got home to learn that family had booked tickets for Peepli Live. What a movie! Beautifully made, edited with precision, awesome details, and a wonderful take on the horrible situation in the country. And of course, God bless Indian Ocean! Never thought Des Mera could also take such a filmi turn.

Saturday also saw my hair looking so killer(!) that I fell in love with it all over again.

On Sunday, Independence Day, I decided to hear what that prime minister had to say to us. It had been several years since I either watched the Red Fort programme or heard anyone give speeches the way it happened in school. It was so unfortunate to listen to the uninspiring Dr. Manmohan Singh use words that were literally used by Hindi teachers back in standard 5th. I say this because the nation is also in not too different a state since 1995 (on several levels). His speech was defensive for crying out loud! It was politics, not nation-building. Previous night's Peepli was flashing in my head as I heard him go on about one yojna after the other. Nonetheless, I still celebrated independence with extended family through rest of the day. Good food, long drive, bowling, camera flashes, and some smiles. :-)

I had followed the first three seasons of Indian Idol and always thought that a singer better than the winner got left out. But justice happened in Indian Idol 5. I am glad. :)

I expect the next one to be The Freedom Weekend. Hope to tell you why.

Randomised

In these days of bearing a dead mind, I recently spared a thought for the zillions thoughts I have expressed on this blog. How with each passing year they have probably matured. At least in my head they did. And how with each passing year, the devils started sticking closer to me and my mind.

I think it was the initial days of grad college when I pondered over the seven sins and thought to myself that I do not indulge in any of them. No, I was not arrogant back then. Today, what, 5-6 years down the line, I have experienced them all. To top it, I am cynical too. But what is troubling me tonight is the constant conflict that the mind has to fight because of the situations life throws at you. Here's a petty one for instance. Earlier I was more open about expressing myself here. Even the not-so-happy thoughts made it here. Some people say it isn't good to register unpleasant thoughts because not only does it invite unwanted sympathy, it also gives you the opportunity to go back to those thoughts on a later date when you don't need them. But my take on doing so in a public space is that while you do pen those thoughts, you word them carefully enough to even look at them positively on that later date that people are concerned about. My private blog is a good comparative study for me, personally. It is so dark that sometimes I dread re-reading any of the stuff there. At the same time, there are probably five times more depressing events/thoughts that I have written about here, and they are so much easier to handle today. Only because I have maintained enough caution to know that I am penning history publicly here. :)

However, from being a naive and trusting, silly girl, I have grown to be a cynical woman with twisted thoughts that I have no control over. These thoughts also let me be indifferent towards a lot of unbelievable crap that people often get me involved in. Involved in a way that they do not even care to realise. Or explain. And if not indifference, at least I do not let me lose my mind over people who should not matter. I used to say, 'it's all about people'. Maybe it is not. Told you, cynical.

These days I do not listen to music, I do not click pictures, I do not call friends, I don't really meet any of them either. Maybe it is because of employment blues. Or an overlap of those blues with a phase that begun the day I left Pune. I am yet to find out. Even whether that is a phase or a turn that goes one-way.

I feel I am more at peace today than I was in the past one year. Certainly doing better than the blunt knife of this past February. But I am worried this peace could be silence that is killing things inside me.

The knee! I saw a different doctor and the problem finally got diagnosed. Now the wait for it to heal begins. I don't know why they just don't put a cast instead of asking me to not use it 'much'. Pff!

Anyway. I need to go for physiotherapy tomorrow morning, so I shall wrap this here and go to sleep. I don't know if this post will make sense to me tomorrow, but what the heck, the point was to not refrain from writing this time. :-)

Good night.

Oh My God.. I've Become a Cat!

I mostly stay calm on the exterior now.

I love attention and being loved.

According to people I have bright-ish eyes.

I can choose to be totally mean.

I am temperamental.

I am no more the loyalist I used to be.

OH MY GOD!

Avan, my Catwoman just happened to call. She is happy to know about this discovery of mine, and insists that cats are the nicest 'people' around. I almost want to tip my preferences to the other side now.

Wow, I did not see this day coming.

Your Brand's Worth?

A funny conversation with a friend today led to the realisation that I have fought/argued with several companies/brands due to bad service delivered. I could recall ten of those, and here they are!

Airtel

Vodafone

HUL - Pureit

Spicejet

HSBC

Barista

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Pizza Hut

Adidas

Hair & Shanti/Madonna/Meghna - all are hair salons in Delhi

The first five were pretty severe wars.

The food/beverage places tend to mess it up a lot more anyway!

Adidas, well, once each shoe of a pair broke into two within a few months of purchase and they offered no help whatsoever!

And the rest for giving me bad haircuts on several occasions. :-|

On the other hand, some brands that have been great experiences in terms of quality of product as well as service are...

Dell

Converse

Costa Coffee

Samsung

Gati

Marks & Spencer

DTDC

Bata Power

Timex

And some doctors that I have been visiting for a long time now. :P

Tell me how often do you fight for the exorbitant service taxes and mad MRPs you pay?

Metamorphosis

This is about the last one year. The newness. The developments. The closures. The learning. The independence. The adaptations. A new me - with the old one.

I am a lot more independent today than I was a year ago. It may sound obvious, but I know of people who have not experienced this change.
I may not be as independent in thought yet, but surely am in action.

Whatever little independence in thought I have managed to attain is helping me be more objective about certain things too. I do remain highly opinionated, but managing to find a balance at some level and be objective when need to.

I have become a lot less expressive. I surprise myself with the kind of thoughts and emotions that I do not allow to surface any more, without any struggle. Yes, I still have issues – lots of them – and I do not claim to be in 100% control either. Yet, control over emotions – something that I have been struggling with all my life – seems to be coming by.

A corollary to the previous point is that some people find me too cold.

Although, I have completely lost control on my temper now.

I realised that you cannot derive any amount of strength from anywhere except from your family, and how important it is to know that things are right back home. There may be a lot of things that fuck your happiness, but nothing like the moments when you feel you should be with your folks. Similarly, when everything else seems to collapse, ONLY the family can lend the staff even from so far.

I can spot thin lines between me and myself, and between me and the world too. Therefore, I have begun to feel responsible for the ‘self’ in me. I can also clearly see how you can or cannot enter my zone irrespective of how much time you spend with me. And I know that now for somebody to see the inside of me, it will take a lot more because there really are that many more layers, and also because I am going to make it that much more difficult. It’s part natural and part effort.

Of course, I do lose sight of these things sometimes. Those are the moments of weakness. They end up lasting days at times, but I am good. Certainly better off at a relative level.

It is incredible how one person has managed to be a weakness ever since I have come to this campus! I have tried hard to change it, have given up at times, tried to accept it matter-of-factly, denied it, tried to maintain distance, and gone through a plethora of emotions about the same over time, but to no avail. I do not know why, but it does not change. Has always been complicated in my head. Obviously, I do not like it.

My conversations with god have reduced considerably. I almost feel something like guilt because of it, but it is not as if I am making an effort to change it. I think making the effort would completely defeat the purpose anyway, but still wish this had not happened.

Few discoveries about health were far from fun, but in general, I have been a lot healthier here (it’s a different matter that I have fever as I type this :P).

I started washing my clothes here. I often postpone the process, but I actually enjoy doing it. :-) Just as much as I hate doing dishes. I thought I hated cooking, but I hate doing dishes more. Which is why I now keep disposable plates in my room. Anything for staying away from the shitty work!

I started travelling! I write about that in great detail here, so shall not elaborate on this. I am just hoping that it continues in times to come.

A relationship I thought was perfect died in front of my eyes. I denied seeing it happen for long. I tried fixing it even when it was beyond repair. To my own surprise, my first emotion related to it was guilt. But to my further surprise, I was made to feel guilty too. I feel sad over the bitterness I developed. I seek closure even though I am no more in love.

I figured comfort zones make my life worthless. But I am in yet another comfort zone, it is again difficult to get out of it, and I am again beginning to feel sick about it all.

Resorting to mindless fun has become a very rare phenomenon now. I miss it. But I see no sense in it to actually do it - unless you're a Tarun or a Mansi because the foundation of my relationships with these people is mindlessness.

I developed a liking for The Financial Express. I think it's a darn good newspaper.

The B/C School stuff: We tend to believe that there isn't great learning here. But I think I do know more about marketing and management a lot more than I did last year. For that matter, I did not know jackshit about all this a year ago. Especially about my area of specialisation - public relations and corporate communication. The college surely leaves us yearning for more sense and knowledge, but I like to hope that common sense will give me the push that I will need in less than six months from now. I figure it works well in this industry.

I got to experience living in a village and a small city, both at the same time. It has been quite a change from my 21 years in a metro even though I do see a Fabindia and a Subway 20 kms from here. It still remains different. Especially the village. I must add here though that I never found it too irksome to not have immediate access to any of the facilities that I always took for granted. Here I need to take out two hours if I need to buy a pin, but somehow I made peace with that comfortably.
Clarification: What I mention on and off as pains are in that state of stubbornness where I hate settling for things that I do not like. It is not the time factor that I write about that time. :P

Ohh.. forgot to mention! I learned the art of sleeping in class here. I mean, it is incredible that I did not do it during my 'DU days', but do it here shamelessly. This is not the sleep where you are trying hard to stay awake or pretending to stay awake but dozing off. I am talking of the lectures where you close your notebook, take your glasses off, keep them on the side, and merrily sleep for 30-40 minutes in a 90-minute lecture. Please let me add that I do it a lot less than some of my friends here, but I do it nonetheless. :P

I have figured out a rough career plan for myself. With a plan B in place too. The details and nuances are not worked out, and I think I'd let that happen with time. Anyway time likes to fuck my plans and consequently my happiness all the time.
But if you must know, there's more of academics in future. :O


I think I can go on but I need to go back to a penalty assignment. A sadistic, senile man likes to torture my class. He says he is taking revenge on behalf of my favourite faculty from the previous two terms whom the rest of my batch gave a very tough time. Bunch of morons!

So, I shall take off now. Will be back soon. Tada! :-)

Secret Confessions

It was almost like a trip of a lifetime. Especially because I had not done anything remotely close to that ever before. And also because I am sure I will not be doing anything like that ever again. At least in the same circumstances.

Nothing about it was easy. Schedules, permissions, availabilities, time, money... nothing. With time I have come to realise that I am not just strong-willed, I am rigid. Once I decide that I want something, there are no two ways about it. So, since I had decided on that trip, I just had to make it. But don't get me wrong - it was not for my ego. It was only about the one thing that mattered to me at that point. The one person. The one relationship.

Friends on campus and friends from back home were a big support. The ones here on campus a tad bit more because I almost needed people to look me in the eye and tell me that I would be fine doing it. I needed to borrow the confidence to begin the first leg.

So I made a few bookings, Subhadip made some too, and I was ready to leave on a jet plane. Just that the plane was a couple of hundred kilometres away.

It was a Thursday evening when I was tossing between getting excited, being anxious, packing, and studying for a test. At 9:00 p.m. that night we received a mail saying that there won't be only one test the following morning. There would be two. That fucked my plans. It meant I needed to study a little more, take a cab a little late, hope to get a bus without any wait, and essentially keep running until I reached Mumbai airport.
I did study a little more. I wrote the tests like I had to catch a flight 'coz I literally had to catch a flight. Ended up overlooking a few questions in the process. Those were the easy questions from the economics section. Oh how I almost regretted that bit later!
My cab to the city was already waiting when I moved out of the academic block. So I ran (please note that every time I mention the words run/ran in this post, I imply their literal meaning.) to the hostel to pick my bag and get going.
It was around 1:05 p.m. when I reached Aundh to catch a bus to Mumbai. I was told to take a Borivali Shivneri which is the quickest bus to get to the airport. A Shivneri was expected at 1:15 p.m. My heart was pounding but I was happy to know that I will get the right bus in time. But that bus turned out to be heading towards Dadar. Wrong destination. So I waited more. And a little more. Some more. It was 2:25 p.m. My flight was at around 7 p.m. I was losing it. That's when a guy from Neeta Volvo approached me. It's this slow, popular, private bus service between Pune and Mumbai. Since I had no choice at that point, I bought a ticket and sat in his shuttle which would take me to the bus which would leave Pune at 2:50 p.m. At Wakad (on the outskirts of Pune), it was 3:00 p.m. already and there were no signs of the driver. I think I would have died of anxiety at that point. Right then the bus moved and I released a sigh of relief. But I did it too soon. A pit stop in just 25 minutes. Driver got off saying "15 minutes". 25 passed with no signs of the driver again. That's when a girl got off her seat, went to the driver's seat, and honked till the dead rose. The bus moved again. I could not rest again for the entire journey. I think I looked at my watch every 15 minutes. Even after entering Mumbai it was taking forever to reach the airport. Finally I was at Parla (Ville Parle) at 6:20 p.m. The girl who had honked earlier also got off with me. She turned out to be from a sister college. She was taking a flight to Ahmedabad at the same time as me. The airport was too close for an auto to agree to take us in, but it was the longest walk ever. So we both ran.
I did not have the time to look around and feel the place. My eyes were just searching for my flight on the information boards. It was delayed. I was not sure if that brought relief or further discomfort. But it certainly gave me time to grab my first bite of food for the day. I made a couple of relevant phone calls to update the respective people about my status. Then took out my laptop to get some work done since it was not a vacation I was going for. But I realised that all the running around had exhausted me more than I felt.
The flight was ready to take off. The crew demonstrated the customary safety module. It was the first time I heard about what to do if the plane crashed over water. I had been alone on planes before, but never at night, and never like that. 'Scared' would never describe how I felt. But since I was also tired, I slept for a while. Mumbai-Kolkata takes longer than Pune-Delhi, so I started feeling restless after the two hours that I was used to spending inside an aircraft.
We finally landed. Traffic in the city was bad, so Subhadip got a little stuck on the way. Anyway I am jinxed with the conveyor belts and luggage at airports. I always have to be the last one out. So I didn't have to wait for Subhadip too long.
The taxi ride was pretty long since the airport is kinda far from Howrah which is the area where he lives. I am forgetting the exact name of the locality. It was funny, but he showed me whatever little he could show me of Cal in the dark. That was followed by a comfortable home that I was given to rest for the night. It was already midnight by then. I had to leave his place by 5:20 a.m. the next morning for my train at 6:00 a.m. But I had to stay up a little longer to make sure I looked nicer for the person for whom I was doing all this. Could not have reached there looking like a mess. I had not found any time to do all that stuff earlier. So by the time I slept it was around 2 a.m.

Subhadip's mom was the sweetest person that morning to give me breakast WITH meetha at that unearthly hour. The taxi ride to the station was much shorter since we only had to cross the Howrah Bridge. THE bridge. I forgot to mention - it was awesome seeing all the movie stuff first hand. Everything from Mumbai taxis to the Howrah bridge. Everything! I now feel that I had a great time doing all that. But that time I was on a mission. So I was plain numb.
The train was on time. I had a window seat. Subhadip confirmed that I had decent people sitting next to me. I was fine. Atul, a friend of S's was also on the train. He was supposed to escort me to my final destination. A couple of SMSs and there he was with a big bouquet of red roses by my seat! It was the highest point of this trip. You have to be Subhadip or Atul or one of the strangers from that compartment of the train to know how wide a smile I had on my face. I really cannot express in words how happy it made me.
The train left the platform, and about 4.5-5 hours later, I was at Jamshedpur. My destination was a little too close from the station for me to be patient any longer. But I behaved myself, and sat in the auto that took us to XL.

I cannot be writing about the three days that I spent there. I don't think I want to. Yes, there is nothing of that I can share.

The train to Kolkata was also at 6:00 a.m. I again had a window seat. I watched him walk away.

I slept on the train, I slept in the taxi, I slept in the lounge at the airport, I slept on the delayed plane, and I slept in a friend's family's home. The next morning I slept on the Volvo from Mumbai. And then I slept through the seminar in college that day. The return journey was just as eventful (or uneventful) as the one while going to Jamshedpur. It didn't go as planned. I was on the streets of Mumbai at night not knowing what I should be doing next. I was on a bus which broke down in the middle of nowhere. I was unsure of things. I was exhaused like hell. And I was running even from the hostel gates to my bathroom to get the much needed bath and be in the auditorium for yet another mandatory seminar.
That week was the most eventful week of my life. Rivers, mountains, the sea, colour, emotions, questions, feelings, the movies, the nights, people, and me. It was overwhelming.

Yesterday I finally paid off the debt I was in for this trip that I made. It's a big relief. Especially because of the funny situation I am in now.

But I am so glad I made this trip. Like some wise people said... sometimes it's more about the journey than the destination. I feel sad that this is the case, because this is not what it was meant to be, but I can only count the things that are mine. Only mine.

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.

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

Another Round of Bullets

Here we go again!!

# Wrote more entrance exams, got more rejections too.

# Underwent physiotherapy for the back; crazy electronic stuff – MRI scans as well as the shock-like stuff that I was subjected to.

# Travelled by air for the first time.

# Interviewed and got selected at Businessworld. I did not join, but just the fact that they accepted me made me super happy because they’d rejected me after the written test during college placements.

# Went to the IIML, NOIDA campus with Shady for his interview there. Nothing achievement-like for me, but somehow it’s just a memorable day.

# I read a lot of fiction during my superbly lazy and useless days at home in the first half of the year.

# I also made my calendar which I keep mentioning all the time anyway. Received such a lot of appreciation that I am thinking of making another one for next year. But where is the time?

# I HAD to begin my PG this year itself, and so took up whatever was available.

# To kill time, I also did some freelance editing work. Earned a fairly decent amount of money too.

# Got my laptop and camera - Dell rocks, and so does Canon!

# Did a very very scary thing before leaving Delhi. Was just glad that Avan was with me in it.

# The biggest step of the year – moving away from home!

# Experienced (and still doing) the hostel way of life. It’s got its ups and downs, but I settled in pretty quickly.

# The same Businessworld also published a write-up of mine in its online version. Thanks, Jayant. :-)

# At the freshers’, I drank a little alcohol. Still bearing its consequences!

# I also went trekking on campus. No big deal for the residents of the place, but it’s got its due on the blog earlier.

# One of the major defects of the year – mouth ulcers! They drove me nuts for two entire weeks as I had to live on flavoured milk, idli and sugar.

# Something that made me super-duper happy was buying a plant. It was a very significant step because it gave me a sense of independence that is hard to explain.

# This year’s birthday was, well, insane! The video that friends made for me and the crazy time we had at McD’s was quite an unforgettable experience.

# I tried to play TT, hoped I’d learn, but gave up ‘coz I could not stop playing badminton with those rackets.

# Got madly addicted to Grey’s Anatomy and now dying to watch the rest of the seasons.

# Art of Living is another something that somebody tried to teach me. I should have figured that if it was so simple, I would have learnt it by now anyway. The way I live life is an art in itself.
But the sudarshan kriya (system cleansing exercise) was an extremely strange and unsettling exercise. I still don’t know whether I liked it or not.

# Went to Moradabad for a week and lived a completely different life there. It was a very pleasant and heartening trip.

# Helped organise the herculean Footprints (figure the sad typo). Still entangled in post-event work. :-/

# I voted. Sheila aunty won as well. :-)

# Completed a year of commitment, no crushes and no flirting. :P

# I recently mentioned the latest late-night party.

# Gray has defined a completely new way of life.

# I have the capacity to absorb a lot more than I could last year. I still bother about the tiniest of things, but on a relative level, I find it easier to let go.

# Unfortunately, have lost control on my temper. I lose it more frequently, and I react too wildly.

# I slept through such a lot of movie screenings that even when I paid for a movie at a theatre I was falling asleep.

# The new places that I visited with my camera - Humayun’s Tomb, Jantar Mantar, Old Fort.

# Made lots of new friends.

# Have been mean to some old friends, not on purpose, but I realise I did it.

Most of December is still to go. But I thought of writing this today, so am posting it as well. It's been a bloody long post, but it was an equally eventful year as well.
As always, it's been a mixed bag of lots of happiness and lots of pain. But as long as I am smiling at the end of it, I'd like to believe I'm perfectly fine. :-)

Moradabad, UP

I spent the past week in a land I find hard to describe in words. I don't know if I am the one living a detached life or if it is the majority of our country that is. The fumes that gave me an asthma attack in 5 minutes are what small kids inhale everyday when they work in brass workshops. And I could not digest how a family of 10 lives on Rs 1000 a month and a single rupee still holds value. I don't want to sound dramatic but it was embarrassing to be carrying a bag worth 2K and wearing a pair of glasses worth another 1.5K in such a place. And I am not even beginning to talk about other things.
At the same time, to see such splendid efforts being made by NGOs like the one I am working with was a totally heartening experience. For two complete days, all I felt was that I am incompetent. There is nothing I know better than those people except this one language. And it does not matter. At all! The kids who are creative are creative beyond imagination. The teaching system functions so well that it can compete with any of our public schools here. I couldn't see how my school was different from the one I visited. And to think that they have limited resources... it's plain sad.

There was an element which was quite pissing off too. The govt takes responsibility of maintenance of the city and even areas like Civil Lines were full of garbage on the streets and open over-flowing sewers. So you can imagine what the rest of the place is like.
Also, the place has heavy traffic but the first traffic signal was put up only last year. Beat it. Kids studying in good schools come home and ask what a zebra crossing looks like. It's pathetic.

Ended up being introduced to an RSS man in the hope we could get some sponsorship from him. Of course, nobody knew of this piece of information. Oh man, it was funny talking to a person from the 'Sangh'! :)

Aaaand you have to live there to see the kind of Hindi that is spoken by the locals. I could not even manage it while writing essays in school. If you and I say, ' आप इस बारे में क्या सोचते हैं', they would ask, "आप के इस विषय पे क्या विचार हैं ?" :O It was tough matching up to their standards.

We live on hopes.

P.S. - I travelled alone. :D :D

Did ya just turn over?

What follows is something that I wrote yesterday but could not post it.

+++

Semester I ended at 8:00 pm on October 11, 2008 after having conducted three exams in one day. That was also a new way of living academia that I experienced. From the average of 5 days that we used to get before every exam, and the 45 days before exam season for 'advance' study, here it was an average of 8 hours for two exams each day. A rather strange week for sure.

Stranger still - we used to get 2.5 months before the beginning of the next session. Here it was not even 24 hours. Semester II from 8 (oops, that was 9) am on October 12. Professional courses, I tell you! :P

But you have to be part of such a system to understand the good and bad things about it too. Also, the jokes.

So frustration levels were running VERY high last night. I wanted food. Good food. Or maybe ANY food other than what this 'mess' offers. Was kinda tired too, I had sneezed enough to lose 20K+ calories through the day, but a walk down the hill to a small dhaba for FOOD (yea, you knew that, didn't you?) was reason enough to gather strength. Food was the standard sweet and spicy mix, but I was all right. Got Dairy Milk and Slice too. :D

There is going to be Art of Living workshops through the week for the burnt out junior batch. Apparently there are five things we have to abstain from - alcohol, cigarettes, tea, coffee and non vegetarian food. Ha! I do not need the word abstinence for these. Let's see how this turns out to be.

++++

I am through with two sessions of art of living. Guess I will write about it all together at the end of it.

Innaiku ennaku porandha naal

The schedule for the semester said that September 3^rd and 4^th will be holidays. Several weeks in advance I started talking about moving out of Pune for the two days. After much contemplation, we decided that it won’t be too good an idea to go because it is festive time here in Maharashtra and the streets are a little crazy with celebrations and frenzy.

So it was decided that 2^nd night will be a party. The only condition I laid down was that there has to be dance. The onus of deciding and planning everything else was on friends. Poor things brainstormed on minute details like mad for days. Surprises were also being planned, and I was being made to eat alone at the mess while the secret stuff was on.

What was also happening (of things I knew about) was a wardrobe makeover for yours truly. First she bought a fancy top for which she thought a Mr Chopra will be decent company in helping to decide. But turned out he didn’t know how to help women shop. So the coordinators of the event – Ridhima HI! Mehra and Swetha Bijli came to my rescue and we bought something pretty.

Then a couple of days later Ashraf and Nidhi helped me shop for a skirt which was ‘very-unlike-Richa’. But “cute” (as everything I will ever own or do in this lifetime) it was, and a 40% discount it had, so we merrily bought it.

Here comes the afternoon of 2^nd September and the notice board says that Aarbee along with three other party members were required to report in the office at 8:00 pm for an interview. So the cab will come later and we will have lesser time to funjoy. Nonetheless, finally after a LOT of continuous planning we left campus at 9:45 pm. Two cars loaded with 14 people headed to the city which was apparently choked due to rain and traffic. It took us about a very eventful one hour to reach an area called Kalyani Nagar and there we figured that things are going to be shut within minutes and we have no place to eat, drink or DANCE. Happy to me! Not even Comesum at the railway station was an option because there were drunken men all over the place anyway. And there were thullas too who would not have allowed 10 of us to be in one Tavera. Only one place had lights on at 11:30 - McDonald’s. We go and loot all that their kitchen had left in it. Not enough for all of us, but we make do. I started feeling better because I felt I was turning 13 or something, not 22. A yummm chocolate truffle cake arrived and also began a flood of phone calls. There went the routine followed by a wise decision of just coming back to campus because there was NO place to go to in this students’ city. :-/

You know who was torn between feelings of being happy that there are 14 other people trying to make her day exciting and of being sad because of the fact that one of the gods decided to steal her thunder.

So we just played blaring music in the car, sang out loud, stopped over at a dhaba to get some proper food, and were back on campus at 2:00 am. The dance HAD to be there and we were lucky to have Bappi da with us on Ranjan’s phone. So we walk-danced from the academic block to the hostels on the tunes of Yaar bina chein kahan re and so on. Akash, our techie cameraboy was playing Shashi Kapoor for the night and made sure we laughed like crazy.

After further madness and realisation that we did not have alcohol for the girls on one of the floors (automatic, natural dry day for MY floor), we just called it a day and five of us came to my room while the others went to their respective hostels and rooms. My birthday had just begun, so the surprise was waiting for me to change into pyjamas. It was a video full of wishes and love that all these guys had recorded and edited for me. Now that was something I had never been at the receiving end of. So I smiled through the 20 minutes of footage and as usual was left with no words at the end of it. And so I smiled further. =)

At 4:00 am we NEEDED sleep, so everyone went off. I don’t know when I got sleep because I started answering phones again at 7:00 am. The number of embarrassing calls was the highest this time because most people called on my Reliance phone and that phone has no numbers saved apart from those of the Pune people. So a friend calls and plays the guitar, and I am compelled to ask who it is because I had absolutely no clue about who I was talking to. Some sent some profanities free with the wishes, others just didn’t say anything.

For lunch I wanted pizza and my friends wanted embarrassment for me. So they told the Pizza Hut people that it is my happy to you and they made me stand in the centre (thankfully, not on a chair) and sang a strange happy budday song. The cutest thing there though was a small girl coming up to wish me and giving me her FiveStar. And she genuinely wanted me to have it because she barely took a bite of it when I offered it to her. Darn sweet!

Spent the entire day eating, walking and shopping in the city and came back by the 9:00 pm bus. Also, received and bought flowers. One of the bouquets that I received became a little extra special though. It had travelled a couple of kms less than 2,000 if I am not wrong. It was from a Bong in Calcutta. The one who took note of a mad request I had made on the blog last week. Super-duper happy!!!

By the time I reached my room I was too dead! Still sat and organized all the photographs that were clicked over the past 24 hours. And now writing this too.

But before ending I really need to thank the gang here without whom this day would not have been so special.

Please make way…

Aakash

Akshay

Amrah

Bijli

Booty

Debby

KD

Maria

Nidhi

Ranjan

Reitesh

Ridhima

Robin

Ruhi

Sahil

Shagun

Shahwan

Venky

Vrinda

- All sweethearts!! It doesn’t feel like I have known them for only two months. And they don’t behave as if they’ve known me for only two months. Love ‘em all!! =)

Thanking you. :P

All of us, with Priyam behind the camera

On the way back to campus.

On campus :)

During the day

Home was quiet and missed me. Even though I am having a lot of fun here, I hope to go back soon and spend more birthdays there. Love you, Ma, Pa and Bhaiya. Mmuaaah!!