Some Introspections on this day of Independence

To start with, I got up at 10 a.m. today. Sounds wierd?? May be it would 'coz it was not "Just another Sunday"... Was supposed to attend the Independence Day celebrations at college at 7 a.m., which I didn't...

I didn't understand the significance of Independence Day till I started going to school. I remember there was a time when I used to get up early in the morning and rush to school, just to see the Flag being hoisted by Princi (short for our Principal Sirji)... The Scouts & the NCC Saluting it... Singing of the National Anthem... and some more patriotic songs, like Vande Mataram... Listening to a variety of patriotic speeches in either English or Hindi (or rather waiting for it to get over)... The drills and the march-past... The cultural activities where one can see a sudden burst of Saffron, White and Green, the Indian Tri-color... The distribution of sweets and snacks... Then rushing back home and catching on the last few minutes of the National celebration on DD1, though it was nothing compared to what we got to see on Republic Day...

Even if it was for those "Mithai ka Dabbas", the point is that we attended the celebrations... Once college started, it was up to us whether to attend or not, and the choice was pretty clear! This brings up few questions in my mind...

Does that mean Independence Day doesn't mean anything to us anymore just 'coz times have changed?

Has Independence Day degenerated into just another holiday?

Do we really understand the relevance of Independence Day today?

Is it just because we have not experienced life pre-independence, that we can't really understand the true value of it?

Or has there been a reduction in our cultural and ethical values?

I thought of writing this post 'coz someone said to me - "Pity that it's a Sunday and we did not even get a day off!!"

I would rather say pity that the 'holiday' part of this Day is what seems to be most important to most of us...

(Picture Courtesy : Google images)

Once upon a Time...

"Once upon a time..." is the popular line that every Fairytale story starts with... And I would have loved to start my story with that line too... But this is no Fairytale and I am no Princess...

My story ended even before it could begin.

The only sign is the bleeding heart, crushed to pieces.

May be someday there will be a story to tell...

A story of a lifetime, that would make the world fall in love once again...

A story that will begin with "Once upon a time..." and will end with

"... and they lived happily ever after...."

A Woman's Wish-List

Since the beginning of time, there have been a lot of discussions about what the 'fairer' sex wants. It might even remain a mystery till the end of time. The Venusians are an unpredictable species, and their wish-list can be pretty diverse. But I believe it's only a woman who can understand another woman's secret desires, and so here is my attempt to list out few of those things that most women want (hereby adding one more list to the age old research on understanding women).

1. The cinder girl always wishes to be Princess Cinderella!

From the moment we open our eyes each morning, we want to look like we've just stepped out of a Salon or a Spa. Beauty has no definitions, but certain characteristics that most woman desire is wide eyes, high cheekbones and full lips. Though none of these are requisites to being beautiful, they are revered by many. We want to look nothing less than a Disney Princess... Errr, in more Desi ishtyle, we want to look like the kind of Priyanka Chopra (Personal preference ;) )... Some might even want to look like Mallika Sherawat... God help them and the men they are associated with...

2. Cinderella's Glass Slippers

When we walk out of our home, we want to walk out on those 5-inch Prada heels, with poise; those heels that make us look as delicate footed as Cinderella. But high heels look sexy only if u know how to walk in them gracefully, rather than just wobbling around; which sometimes result in tripping on small sidewalk imperfections and getting hurt. Though very uncomfortable, the high heel can act as a weapon too - a weapon against the Road side Romeos :P

3. Kyu Paisa Paisa Karti hai??!!

We want to have all the money in the world... When I said money, I am talking in millions or preferably billions - the more, the better... It would be even better if all those moneys are inherited, rather than earned...

4. Bella's Fate, Our Fantasy

Women want to be ageless. We want to be frozen between the age of 22-25; beautiful and young forever.

5. Size matters and so does all those Yummy foods

Who doesn't want to gorge on those cheesy lasagnas or yummy chicken wings (Veggies plz ignore :P) or sizzling brownies or Choc' Amor of KFC (Yumm Yumm!!)... We want to eat all these delicious and irresistible foods and not gain any weight at all... (This is strictly NOT for the skinny girls!!!)

6. A Best Friend

A Best Friend to listen to us always. Someone who is there during both happy and sad times. Someone who gives us fashion advices and shopping tips and also gives us a shoulder to cry on when men hurt us.

7. Cinderella's Prince Charming

Romance and Passionate Love, is something every woman wants and yeah, we want it preferably in the same guy :P... Women like being wooed and it makes her feel one in a million... Though many of us have accepted that Prince Charming does not exist, we still keep waiting for that special someone...

8. Finally, the Equality Theorem

This theorem states that, from Miss. Plain Jane to Miss. Fashion Chic, all women want to be treated as EQUAL; though it doesn't imply that we want the door slamming on our faces...

(Picture Courtesy : Google images)

You be the Roses & I'll be the Grave...

You came... You made me feel... You changed my life forever...

Sometimes I get confused what to feel for you... To love you for those special moments you shared with me or for breaking me down into pieces with each passing day...

My brain urges me to push you away... Far far away from myself, where you can never hurt me again... Or I would rather say, where I would never end up hurting myself again.. & then again the bleeding heart says - "Give me a lil' more time... a lil' more time to be near you.. a lil' more time to feel your presence in my life... a lil' more time in this hope that this lil' more time lasts forever..." Yes, I do mean it... For Ever...

But then again, I think of a distant future... A future without You... A future where both of us will be busy building up a better Life... Somewhere round the world in that distant future, when I wake up in my bed every morning, will I still remember you? When I close my eyes and travel down those memory lanes, will I still be able to remember the color of your eyes, your charming smile or your voice?

Or will your memories fade away...

Fade away like Roses on a Grave....

Phew!!! Sigh of Relief!!

(Published on Sunday, August 29, 2010)

Well if you are thinking why I named the post so, let me tell you that I wanted to write this post quite a few months back when the last term results came out... But one thing led to another and the new post (with only the title) remained in my drafts. Now you will ask me why I was sighing... Well I scored pretty decent as compared to the previous two terms... As simple as that...

The reason I am writing this post now is because of an irony... I am sighing again... But this time not out of relief, rather out of stress... This term got over in the blink of an eye... In desi language "Palak jhapkte hi term guzar gaya" and infact I have my 4th term exams lined up from day after tomorrow...

Among some of the feats that we achieved in these last few months are... We managed to watch 1 movie in 3 months time (Cheers!!!) and we slogged hard for more than a month to find a free slot for a planned birthday party of two friends... not to mention that one of them celebrated his birthday in April and another celebrated hers in July... On personal fronts, it was not a good period either...

As of now, just keeping my fingers crossed that the term ending exams go well, so that I would be able to write "Phew!!! Sigh of Relief!! Part 2"

Ciao!!!

Nostalgia

I would not be doing justice to this blog of mine, if I don't write about the place so close to my heart, the place where I spent the first 18 years of my life, the place which gained the title "Island of Peace" from India's then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Silchar... As I close my eyes, I can see lots of memories flooding back, fresh as if it was just yesterday....

Home Sweet Home

The similar start of every morning... The battle between Maa and Me... Mission "Jaago Subha ho gayi"... I have beared all kinds of tortures from tickles to pinches to pokes to hard slaps on the face to a bucket full of water all over me, just to wake me up before she left for office... I never understood the logic she gave me though... She wanted to see me have my breakfast before she left...

The day Maa came back from the hospital cradling a Bundle of Joy in her arms... The way Duke, my dog tucked his tail between his legs and ran, the first time he heard her crying... I had my fair share of battles with her too over petty things, over the years as the Bundle of Joy (whom I eventually named as Puchki) grew up to be a 5'7" tall teenager.

Going to the Bazaar with Baba on Sunday mornings... Insisting him to get Jalebis from Paras Sweets... It was always him when it came to demands... Maa never actually entertained them and all credits of spoiling me goes to my "Babi"...

The smell of Shutki (dried fish) and Shidal Chutney, wafting from the kitchen... A smell not all Bengalis can appreciate, but a smell that holds a special place in my heart... A delicacy I insist on relishing, everytime I visit Silchar...

As I walk out of my home, to the Streets (which as a matter of fact are always broken beyond repair)... I can hear people conversing in the Sylheti dialect... "Kemon achish?" becomes "Kemon asos?", "Kobe eli?" becomes "Kobe aisos?" and "Ki kheli?" becomes "Kita khaisos?"... U can still see some of the oldest models of scooter on the roads and of course, the cycle rickshaws... Mostly its a two-seater, but sometimes a 3rd person also squeezes in... The long drives down till NIT Silchar or Silchar Medical college or Assam University has a charm of its own... 3-4 months old movie being played at Devdoot and Oriental Cinema hall, though once in a blue moon Devdoot does play new releases...

Oh!!! & the pristine meter gauge railway track... How can I forget that... The 'Ghatghat Ghatghat' sound as the train moves and the kind of feel as if you were sitting inside a pendulum... The untouched beauty of nature you can see as the train moves from Silchar to Lumding...

The sunset over the Barak river... One of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen... And as the majhi rows his boat back to the shore at the end of the day, my heart sings "Apna kinara nadiya ki dhara re..."

As I cross the Barak bridge, leaving the main town behind and reach udharbond, I can't help but stop at one place... Kachakanti Kali Bari... The one place I find peace... Then as I pass udharbond, there comes the vast expanse of greenery... The tea gardens has a different kind of an aura. One has to see to believe the sheer magic of this place... It is a rare treat of beauty, serenity and tranquility.

I finally reach the Airport at Kumbhirgram... almost 20 Km away from the main town... The airport is next to the Kumbhirgram Air Force Base... and supposed to be the second busiest airport of Assam...

As my flight takes off for Kolkata, I can see the Barak winding its way around the whole town... No doubt its called as the Barak Valley...I can see the Barak Bridge... I can see the District Sports Association Stadium... I can see miniature houses...

Then as the flight gains altitude and goes beyond the clouds, the view of my dear place is lost... But somewhere inside my subconscious mind I do remember every detail... every sound, every taste, every smell, every voice... May be this is called as Nostalgia... A feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain...

Ten Friends and a Trip to Yelagiri & Hogenakkal

I thought of writing this post seven months ago and finally here I am, writing about one of the best trips of my life... Saying so has two reasons; firstly because I believe I had the awesome company of ten awesome friends (though we were missing few more from our group) and secondly, because one of the places we visited was exotic...

It was a long weekend as Friday was Gandhi Jayanti; and so we decided to take a break and escape the chennai heat for a change. The decision was taken in a jiffy and six of us were instantly game for the trip - Pritha, Neeraj, Aman, Gaurav, Nancy and Me. Pritha's boyfriend Susmit had come down from Mumbai and that made us seven. But when I was picked up by the 10-seater van from my place at Besant Nagar on Friday morning, there were three more additions to our group - Akarshan, Abhinav and Pavithra. So that explains half the title of this travelogue... Ten Friends...

Around 250 Kms from Chennai, Yelagiri is a secluded hill station in the state of Tamil Nadu. It took us almost six hours to cover that distance, via Sriperumbudur. Breakfast done on the way, we were finally getting impatient of the long route and the Rangeela songs played by our Driver repeatedly, when the first sight of the Yelagiri hills came into view. My first reaction was "What the heck?!". It was nothing like we expected...

But the real fun began when we reached the foothills and started on our way up. The winding road that lead to the hilltop had 14 hairpin bends which were amazing and we suddenly felt the change in temparature. It was pretty chilly and we finally had to pull up whatever light winter wears we had got with us. The views of the surroundings from the bends were breathtaking.
The hilltop was not as cold as the hairpin bends. When we reached Yelagiri, we decided to first check into some resort or lodge and then go for the sight seeing. But it being a weekend, we could not get a vacancy anywhere. So after having cheap and yummy fish fries and bun omelettes at a roadside dhaba, we went to the Yelagiri lake for boating.

As the initial plan of halting that night at Yelagiri failed, we contemplated on leaving Yelagiri (as there was not much to see) and proceeding for Hogenakkal. We called up and booked a lodge there and once confirmed, we left the Yelagiri town. On the way down, we stopped for sometime at a bend and took some snaps of the panoramic view.




















Half of the journey towards Hogenakkal was quite unincidental. At around 9pm, we stopped at a hotel for dinner. The journey after that was just the opposite... quite incidental in a way, as around 10pm on a quiet dark road the headlights of our vehicle failed. One more reason for this trip to be so memorable... It felt quite spooky, as our driver slowly drove the vehicle on the pitch dark road and Gaurav told us the ghostly stories of Ajabgarh-Bhangarh of Rajasthan. We travelled without the headlights for almost 45 minutes and then all of a sudden, (Thank God!!!) the headlights started working again. We reached Hogenakkal at around 11pm and checked into our lodge. As we were all so exhausted, we retired for the day.

When I woke up the next morning the first thing I did was going to the balcony of my room and looking around. What I saw was a lush green jungle, right outside the lodge across the road, with lots of monkeys here and there; and it had an earthly beauty about it.

We had breakfast at another roadside dhaba kind of shop, down the road from our lodge and parked the van at the boatyard parking lot and started bargaining with the Coracle boat operators.

My advice to anyone who plans a trip to Hogenakkal - please book the boats from the Government boat yard, if you want the price to be reasonable, which we did not as we did not have any prior idea and ended up being cheated by one of those private boat operators.

This particular Coracle operator loaded all of us in a small truck and took us to a starting point at the Kaveri river, from where we were boarded onto the two coracles, five in each.












The ride down the river was thrilling beyond imagination. The experience of riding a coracle was new to all of us and we enjoyed it a lot. The coracles were around 2.5m in diameter and quite spacious. One of us had to sit in the middle of the boat to maintain the balance. The view of the hills bordering the Kaveri was breathtaking.

He took us downstream till the initial five falls. Most of the people had got down and were enjoying the view. We too got down there and took snaps of the smoking waterfalls. It was one of the most exotic places I have been to. Unfortunately, the boatmen refused to take us till the gorges and we had to return back from there.

We left Hogenakkal on Saturday afternoon and reached back Chennai by 9pm.

In all it was an awesome trip, with a tadka of spooky night-time adventure, yummy hot fish fries and bun omelettes (the type of which we hardly get in Chennai), a cheer-leader like Nancy, who insisted on stopping the van after every few Kms to take snaps, our finance-handler Neeraj, love birds "Pritha & Susmit" and "Akarshan & Abhinav" (Just kidding guys ;-) ), Gaurav who actually voiced out the idea of this trip, Aman - whom we lovingly named as Munna, Pavithra and of course myself, SANG, without whom any trip is incomplete!!!