Finally, a sunday to live

Life has been mundane and hectic here. There is so much to do that it takes all the time at your peril. However, just like a oasis in desert, this sunday brought a ray of hope. It was (albeit surprisingly) a refreshing different sunday... much different from my regular sundays which are more often than not a day to finish whole week's pending errands and to catch with as much sleep as I can get. And the reason?? The college had arranged for us to watch a play based on the famous novel - 'The Alchemist' written by Paulo Coelho. The play was to be performed at 'National Centre for the performing Arts' (NCPA), Nariman point, Mumbai. More than just the play itself, it was the whole idea of 'GOING to watch the play' which was really spurring me on.

Well, what is a sunday evening w'out your dearest frenz? So 6 of us decided to go together and njoy the occasion. We had to reach Churchgate 1st in order to reach Nariman point. And what better way to travel in Mumbai than a local train? Fast, cheap..but ahem..crowded. All of you must have seen mumbai locals in TV and you can very well understand what I mean. We reached Andheri station at 4:20PM and decided to catch the 4:30 fast local to Churchgate. For some of us, it was the 1st experience of travelling in Mumbai local...and I'm pretty sure, they won't forget it. To start it, the train was 15 mins late. Due to this, the platform was very crowded. Combine this with the already jam packed train and you know itz gonna be a 'Halla Bol' when the train arrives.

When the train chugged in to the platform, we braced ourselves for the charge and then...the train stopped. There were two sections of crowd- one who were ready to get into the train(despite the fact that there was no space left in the compartment) and the others who wanted to come out. Simple 'logical thinking' here will tell you that you should allow people to come out of the compartment before you try to barge in...but then this is Mumbai and here, people make a killing by completely relying on their 'non-logical thinking'. As soon as the train stopped, the two sections of crowds collided, hustled n jostled and yeah, pushed each other. Newton's 3rd law of motion states : "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" but here, clearly the law failed. Here, it was only one-way force. The ferocious outbound crowd(men and women alike) had their fists clenched firmly in front of them(just like the boxers do) and they mercilessly cast aside anybody who dared to venture into their path. The inbound crowd tried to enter the compartment initially but the force coming from other side was simply too overwhelming to respond to. Once the compartment was 'relatively' empty(compared to what it was earlier), we tried to force our way into the compartment and then suddenly in a flash of second, I found myself inside the compartment..I dint knew what really happened in that moment..but nonetheless, I was inside the compartment. I wasn't in a comfortable position as I was standing on my toes and half of my body weight was falling on one of my friends who was standing next to me...not that he really wanted to support my weight but then, he had no choice!!! After some time, I moved to the 'relatively' empty area of the compartment where I could stand on my feet..As stations passed by, lot of passengers got down from the train and it became nearly empty. It was a good opportunity and for the kind of photographer that I am, I clicked some photos of an empty train...well, you rarely find empty trains in Mumbai!!! All of us got seats and we happily chatted our way to Churchgate.

While all this transpired in the general compartment, an interesting story was developing in the ladies compartment. We had sent the gurlz in our group to the ladies compartment as it would be easier for them to travel over there. Apparently, one of them, got hyper-excited on seeing the Mumbai local and insisted that she will travel by just clinging onto the door of the ladies compartment. She anyhow watches far too many movies and I'm sure that she wanted to do a stunt like running over the moving train which she must have seen in countless movies..but thankfully, better sense prevailed among our other frendz and they stopped her from trying out this stunt by pulling her inside the compartment. Phew!!! Anyhow, on reaching Churchgate, all of us quickly headed towards NCPA.

From Churchgate station, NCPA is located at just 15 min walk along the Marine Drive. The sea looked stunning and serene from the Marine Drive. Lot of people were sitting at the seaside, enjoying the beautiful weather and the cool breeze. We also enjoyed the weather for sometime and then headed off to NCPA. The play was held at 'Tata Theatre'. Trust me, this theatre was beyond all my imaginations. I would recommend you to take a virtual tour of the theatre. The theatre had a seating capacity of 1010 people and it was filled to its capacity...and why shouldn't it be, afterall, it was the 1st adaptation of 'The Alchemist' in India. The scale was grand, the setting was huge and the audience were eager. After some time, the lights were dimmed in the theatre and the play started. The play was an absolute pleasure to watch. It was fabulously enacted by the actors...'Twas a musical delight and a visual treat indeed. It is always tough to enact such a philosophical play by means of music but the cast stood to the task...so much so that all the songs were sung LIVE on the stage by the cast. The duration of the play was 1:30 hrs and we were totally spellbound during whole of that time.

Once the play got over, we also interacted with the director, Mahesh Dattani and the other crew members. I spoke to Mahesh and told him that it was the 1st ever theatre show that I had watched and I loved the way it was presented. He seemed to be quite happy to know about this. During the conversation, Mahesh informed us that the whole concept of the play was being worked upon in past 6 months and the actual practice took 4 months. Well, I must say that the hardwork really paid off on the stage.

After this, we headed back towards Churchgate station.. We were quite hungry and hence had our dinner in a restaurant just opposite the station. Finally, we boarded local to Andheri and came back to campus just before 11PM. Fortunately, this train was not very crowded..so all of us could easily enter one compartment and do chitchat on the whole way back. All in all, it was an excellent Sunday..I won't forget it so easily. Thank you all for making it such a wonderful day!!!



Left->Right: Me(Mohit), Sumit, Pankaj, Supriya and Anuradha .




Kaps is missing in this picture and he threatened me that unless his picture is also added, this blog can't be published. He told that he has lot of supari contacts. Considering the khauf of Kaps that all of us live under, I decided to heed to his request and add this photograph of his:


Lagta hai naa poora ka poora Don :)

All for the sake of precious taste buds

Wednesdays are the new saturdays for me. Reason is not hard to guess...we have thursdays off here. So our 'weekend' starts on wednesday. Moreover, mess is off on wednesdays. For people like me, who live to eat, this is a double bonanza..c'mon, who doesn't like going out with frendz on 'Saturday' nights(and givin the taste buds some respite from the mess food). Well, yesterday was one such Saturday and for reasons known only to 'the chosen ones', we decided to give our regular dhaba a miss and try a new restaurant (not that I'm complaining). However, there was only couple of minuscule glitches in the 'plan':
1. Nobody knew where this new restaurant(hereafter referred to as dhaba) was
2. None among us had tried this place before.. So we had no idea about the hole it was going to burn in our pockets
3. And most importantly, none among us had any feedback about the food (Whoa ???)

They say, 'Fortune favour the brave'... and hell yeah, 'the chosen ones' were brave enough to call justdial, ask all the passers by and panwaris and dosa wallahs for directions to the dhaba. Needless to say, these leaders were sometimes so focussed in their strategy that they forgot that they had some followers also who were trying desperately to keep up with their swift 'thought process'. Anyhow, finally, the leaders tasted success (and we smelled food!!!Finally!!!) There it was, 'The Courtyard'.

We were lucky enough to get a prompt entry to the dhaba..for it was quite crowded. The place was definitely big with lot of seating capacity and judging by the number of people that were there, I thought that it looks to be a nice place and food should be good here. We were seated and promptly served water. Since we had undertook an arduous journey(2 traffic junctions..can U believe it???) en route to this place, we missed no time in placing our order, and then.... we waited. As usual, we started doing some TP and started pulling each other's leg..The dhaba wallahs were kind enough to give us some sort of namkeen to chew upon. Hungry as we were, we wasted no time in finish it up..all this time, waiting. Seconds became minutes and minutes started inching towards hour..and what were we doin??? chirping and ofcoz, waiting. And then, in a quick flash of brilliance, I imagined myself going out of this dhaba, crossing the road, eating a wada-pav/sandwich from a roadside seller and then returning back to this dhaba.. and I was quite sure, that our order wouldn't come even by that time... but then, I had a thought about the dhaba owner. If the crowd waiting outside saw me doing that, probably they'll all run away. So I curbed my 'natural instincts' and to avoid such dangerous thoughts from coming to my mind, I dozed off, right then, on the table.

Anyways, after a small wait of 45 mins(and after reminding the dhabawallah just thrice), our order was served. We jumped on it and well, I'll say that food was just okayyyy.. Going by the crowd over there and the prices on the menu(120-140 bucks for each sabzee), I had expected a much better deal. However, we were not complaining. We din't want to wait another 45 mins for the dhabawallahs to serve us more rotis. We quickly finished the food, paid up the money and then quickly came out.. Our taste buds were angry and agitated.. They were howling at their peak. They wanted a better deal.. Their demand was of supreme importance to us. And then, what do we do? We straightaway head off to the Amul ice-cream parlour which is right next to 'The Courtyard'. I must say that the Amul shop owner must be a good entrepreneur... he has indeed chosen a very good location for his shop.. right next to this dhaba. If just 50% of the people coming out of that dhaba eat an icecream at Amul's, this shop owner can make a big fortune. All of us chose our favourite utterly butterly delicious scoops/cones and headed back to campus.

Pigeon eggs in the balcony

2 days ago, my roomie (Kapil aka 'Kaps') observed something unusual in our balcony...there were two pigeon eggs lying in an old flowerpot. White coloured and small in size.
Needless to say, we were happy...Well, who doesn't get happy to see a new life; be it of a human, plant, bird or an animal. One pigeon(whitish in colour) was right there incubating the eggs...I guess it was the mom pigeon (though not too sure).. She initially got scared when we clicked some photographs of her but later on she got used to the camera and lights (It was like a new film star who gets used to paparazzi :) ). She sits there for the whole day while the male pigeon attends to the parenting tasks at the night.
The male pigeon got scared when I tried to click some photographs..so I didn't disturb him but rather clicked some shots from distance. Nowadays, we just sneak peek from a distance so as not to interfere in their parenting tasks!!!
P.S: I had earlier clicked this photograph when the lovebirds were dating in our balcony:


I had also uploaded the pics to my twitpic account for my twitter friends!!!


Note: Did some googling and found that female pigeon incubates at night while male pigeon attends to the eggs during daytime. Looks like I screwed up between mom and dad pigeons. :))

Getting a feel of Mumbai

After spending last 2.5 yrs in Hyderabad, last month I shifted to Mumbai. Reason: Study!!! There is a stark difference between two cities. Hyderabad is a very laid back city while Mumbai is always in a jiffy. It rains a lot more over here than it used to do in Hyderabad. So much so that it has been raining here everyday since June 25- the day when monsoon reached Mumbai. I love rains and so I'm quite happy.. I haven't seen such an awesome rainy season since my childhood. So, I'm enjoying my bit here. Needless to say, the 1st habit that this city has cultivated in me is to carry an umbrella whenever I venture out of
my hostel room...be it going to campus or to the nearest bazaar, an umbrella is a must.

I have been occupied with one or other thing in past one month..haven't got really any time to explore Mumbai and its surroundings. However, last week, I went to Lonavala along with my complete batch. The place was beautiful. It was raining for all 5 days...the mountains had a green carpet all over them, lot of rivets travelled down the hills forming water pools from which clouds used to form repeating the whole process again and again. It was fascinating experience..a sight to behold. I never knew western ghats were so beautiful!!!

And yeah, yesterday I saw 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' at PVR, Juhu. The movie sucked.. I dunno what David Yates had in his mind when he created this movie.. Probably, he should read the novel again and also watch all 1st five parts just to understand what a Harry Potter movie should be all about. My rating: 2 out of 5 for this movie.

Vacation in Vizag

I always wanted to go on a trek and when I came to know that some people are going for a 4 day trek in the forests near Vizag, I thought to join them. The plan was to start from Shivalingapuram and then trek for 4 days to reach Borra caves. The leader was an experienced trekker and he took care of all arrangements for complete journey(including all necessary permissions). However, just 2 hrs before startng from Hyderabad, we came to know that due to some reasons, forest dept has cancelled the permission of all treks in the area. We were left high and dry wondering what to do with our plans. We had already applied for day off in our office...train tickets had been booked...backpack was packed with clothes and other necessary stuff...and most importantly, all of us were in holiday mood. We decided not to let go of this opportunity and instead, go and see Vizag and its surroundings. Obviously something is better than nothing and hey, Vizag is actually a holiday destination.

The train was (surprisingly) on time. We reached Vizag on the morning of 25th December(Xmas day). We were thinking of catching another train (Kirandul Express) to go to Araku, which is a hill station. But when we saw that their is no place to even put a foot in train, we decided that we'll stay in Vizag for that day and visit Araku some other day. (Now you know that it was a totally unplanned journey.. we even had no idea in which city we will be going to). Anyways, we quickly found a dorm to put our luggage in and freshened up...had breakfast and then arranged a cab to go to a beach called 'Yarada Beach'.

Until now, I had seen Mumbai beaches and Marina beach(Chennai) and politely speaking, they are dirty. Especially in mumbai where the coastline is actually marked by polythene bags. But this beach(Yerada) was different.. it was clean and not much crowded. Actually, this beach is separated from the main city by a hill called Dolphin Hill (it looks like a dolphin when you see it from far) and this is the reason for a comparitively lesser crowd. We spent couple of good hours there..'twas fun. After this, we went to Kailashgiri. It is another hilltop near the Beach Road. There are big statues of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati at the hilltop. Also, this place has some viewpoints which give you a beautiful view of the sea, hills and city. The place was, albeit, crowded as lot of people had come due to holiday. There was a very long queue for ropeway and a traffic jam on the way to top of the hill. But anyways, the place is worth a visit.

Next day(26th Dec), we went to Borra caves and Araku by an APTDC package tour. Borra caves are naturally formed caves believed to be 150 million years old. The place was beyond my expectation. I was expecting a small cave but this place was big ..and extremely crowded. The rock formations were fascinating. Indeed a marvellous place for geologists and nature lovers alike..One wonders what nature can do!!! After this, we set out to Araku which is a village inhabited by tribal people. Nothing much to see over there. The bus driver took us to a garden and museum.. but I was still captivated by Borra caves :). We were quite late in reaching Araku and hence missed a tribal dance :(. Anyways, after "watching" the village, we headed back to Vizag...reached there at about 9PM, had food and dozed off.

Next morning(27th Dec), we woke up at 5.30AM and headed to RK beach to see sunrise. Seeing the sun rising from the horizon is a beautiful sight indeed. Its reflection in water is a sight to behold. We stayed there for sometime before going back to room. After that, we went to fishing harbour to do a boat ride into the sea. Later on, in the afternoon, we went to Simhachalam temple (Temple of lord NaraSimha Swami), which is about 1 hour journey from Vizag. We were back to city in the evening. We were already weighing our options of what to do next day. We were left with submarine museaum and couple of more beaches. Some people among us were planning to visit their relatives while I, along with couple of guys, had already decided to head back to Hyderabad. We boarded a volvo and reached Hyderabad next morning.. It felt kinda nice to be back among the busy streets and wayward traffic..kinda home.

Thats how this trip, which was never meant to happen, actually happened. Overall, considering the kind of fix we were in at the start of this trip, we did pretty well..and we were back in time also. All in all, a good vacation!!!

BBQ hungry

Sometime back, I went to Barbeque Nation for dinner. I had heard a lot about the place ..especially their grills and fine service...and thankfully, I was not disappointed. The starters were delicious, the food buffet was sumptuous and the desserts were simply from out of this world(especially Gulab Jamun :). Overall, a delightful experience!!!

After this, I was craving for another BBQ dinner and an opportunity came last week when I went to Chhattees for a team dinner. This place is quite close to office and hence we thought we could save some travel time and also, enjoy another BBQ dinner. But hell, the food was ridiculously bad(though Chhattees costs nearly the same as Barbeque Nation). Alas..it is tough to find good restaurants. This restaurant is certainly off my list now as far as BBQ is concerned.

Ganpati Celebrations...

At last, the festive season has started. I feel like I've been waiting since eternity for this. Janamashtmi and Ganesh Chaturthi are already over.. Ramazan is in progress, and then Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali will arrive to lighten up our spirits.

I simply love the way in which all these festivals are celebrated across the length and breadth of country. There is an air of joy around...streets and shops are decorated...there is a stride in everyone's steps and life looks much more colourful (and yesss, it is the "Sale season" in malls too. Great time for shopping indeed!!!)

In India, a number of festivals are region-centric. For example, Baisakhi in Punjab, Bihu in Assam, Chhat Pooja in Bihar and Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtara and AP. There are no grand scale celebrations for Ganesh Chaturthi in the part of country from where I come and frankly speaking, I didn't knew much about this festival. I've seen these celebrations in TV only. But being in Hyderabad nowadays, I can enjoy this festival too.

This year, Ganpati idols were brought to various pandals on Sep 3rd, Ganesh Chaturthi. I could see good number of people thronging the pandals ..particularly at the time of pooja. I was quite surprised to see the number of people who brought Ganpati idols into their premises for the festival. I thought that such large scale celebrations for Ganesh Pooja can happen only in Maharashtra but pleasantly, I was wrong. Infact, I came to know later on that Hyderabad has 2nd largest number of Ganpati idols after Mumbai . Later on, I also came to know that Hyderabad has the tallest Ganpati statue in the country. This statue was 47 feet tall. But unfortunately, I couldn't visit that particular pandal. 'twas in Khairatabad. Nevertheless, I'll get another opportunity next year :)

Lot of poojas happen at pandals during the celebrations. After the celebrations, the idols are immersed in water bodies. Hyderabad has lot of lakes viz Hussainsagar, Osmansagar, Durgam Chervu etc. Immersion starts after 5 days from Ganesh Chaturthi and all idols are immersed by end of 10th day.

There were couple of big Ganpati idols very close to my house. On the D-day, these idols were moved to large trucks so that they can be transported to lake for immersion. As expected, a large crowd moved alongside the deity. People were dancing and playing with gulal. Thats how we bade goodbye to the Ganpati, requesting HIM to come early next year.

Finally, it starts

Welcome All, to my very first blog entry. It is indeed a pleasure to have you here.

This post is titled as "Finally, it starts" and the best thing is that I didn't had to think even once before naming the post like this. As you must have guessed from the name, this blog took a painfully long time coming and I am certainly mighty relieved now that the first step is taken. I have been thinking about unleashing my thoughts on the world for ages now (C'mon, why should only I suffer? :) ), but as they say, just like good food, all good things take time!!!

Hmm... The next question that is staring me: What should I write about? I thought about envionmental issues, stock markets, bollywood movies, sports, restaurants etc etc etc? But considering the fact that I'm not one of those "experts" who come on TV to give their useless point of view, I think that the best option for me will be to make a khichdi of all these topics and write about things that I see, the way I see. This can be my way of contributing to the society. Who knows, the big idea of tomorrow might come from one of these posts (hehe, now you know that I've really very high regards for myself).

Gr8 then. We have a location(this blog) and an idea...So letz get started. I'll soon start posting about anything and everything of my life. So just stay tuned for more. And yes, a hearty thanks for reading all through this.

Cheers


P.S: To all those people, who are being "forced" to read this (just coz I'm standing next to them), you need to post a comment saying "Great Post Mohit"!!! :)