Day 4 and 5

Day 4 was the Shimla-Manali journey. It wasn't great; we sat in the unfriendly bus all day, lunch at a dhaba was horrible. But we managed to find delicious apples and carrots, bought lots of them for the rest of the journey and found these two cute little puppies on the way:

Inee cute!!

We also got some audio casettes to keep us sane through the rest of the journey, and the only other thing worth remembering was a 3 k.m. long tunnel, where, we were told, the shooting of a bollywood movie called Dhoom 2 took place. We girls were bored enough to think aloud: "Hrithik Roshan was here..".
Anyhow, we did reach Manali, not in time, of course. After dinner, it was time to celebrate, as it was one of the boys' birthday. Chetan's classmates had arranged a surprise for him: a nice huge cake was waiting for 00:00, accompanied by some hungry and constipated people :P. "How sweet.." I thought, a moment too soon. I will never understand birthday bumps. Why do people have to get kicked on their special day. It's so Ouch, and heck, you cant sit anywhere without regretting not having worn pillows instead of pants.

Day 5.
We visited one Hadimba Temple, a little place surrounded by lots of tall trees. Pine trees, I guess. We goofed around there for a bit, climbed a really high and unclimbable-looking rock, got ushered out of the place because it was "getting late", only to wait for everyone to finish shopping for the silliest stuff. I must've spent about an hour screaming Boredom and getting reduced to watching people bungee jump, wait for some wood keychains to be done, throw a ball at a pile of rubbish, yeah ok, it was a game a really smart local made up, and he was doing good business. That's one big turn-off of travelling in groups. It made me want to go off alone and look at shawls and sweaters all by myself.
Finally when seemed like my kids would arrive on their honeymoon any moment, we headed back down to the town, had some lunch, and goofed up a good plan to go river rafting. I seem to be using too many finally's but that's how the day was. Then a Tibetan monastery and some shopping later, we headed back to the hotel.
Some photos:
The temple, with Shruti sitting on the steps:

These are us goofing around. Boy how I wish I had a camera of my own..


At the end of the day, I had a pack of dry figs, a wool dress for Vedant, a sweater for Dad and a cap for me, and a lighter purse. Shopping bites.

Day 3

I dont remember sleeping at all that night. At around 05:30, the bus stopped at a Gurudwara, so people could perform their basic morning ablutions. The morning was extremely cold, and I was sure my gums would freeze after I brushed my teeth! Obviously they didnt.
Anyway, we reached Shimla at 12:00; the 10 hour journey took 15 hours; we would soon get used to the way our driver did his math. The hotel was alright, but taking bath in the cold water was one experience I wont want to repeat, ever. After everyone was clean and fed, we moved on to visit Kufri, located about 20 k.m. away. This included a 2 k.m. ride on a pony! The ponies were very cute, and all of us first thought they were proper horses, till some of the 'proper horses' came gambolling towards us.
A pony ride can get uncomfortable, especially when you have to bend backwards while on a downward slope, and the pony almost jumps to cover most of the slope. My pony was called Toofan, and his master was Prem, a very friendly character who told us about movies that were shot there, how much they earned, the temperatures there, and the fact that it would snow in a couple of days. None of us had seen snow before and were cursing ourselves for our timing.
The pony ride ended midway to the top of the mountain. We got off, and roamed around. marvelling at whatever we saw. Bits of snow here and there, and the Himalayas far away. A setting sun and about 30 contented-looking ponies. Throw in a food stall that sold piping hot Maggi noodles and some shopping. And some typical touristy activity like getting photographed wearing the traditional Manali dress, on a yak wearing a cowboy hat, and spotting the India-China border through a telescope.
Some photos:
Siri, Shilpa, Shruti and me. Hoping we can strike the same pose on top of Mt.Everest some day, and me regretting not getting my jacket along:

Shilpa, Siri and Shruti in the traditional Manali outfit:


The India-China border should be lurking in here:



For me, the highlight of Kufri was the setting sun, which we caught on the pony ride back to the bus. It was breath-taking. Deep red and glowing orange among the pine trees and the faraway mountains. Pity I couldnt capture it on camera; I was too insecure with Toofan acting up and trying to get me to focus on the more boring features like the rocky slope and the awkward angles that your leg could bend to if your pony acted up.
Back at Shimla, we loitered around Mall road, didnt shop(Junaid warned us that it would all be too expensive, which it was not.), had pizzas and burgers for dinner at a Cafe for a change, and headed back to the hotel.
Slumber that night felt like heavenly tonic or amrut, since I hadnt slept for 3 nights in a row. And three cheers to clean teeth before hitting the sack. Yeah well, girls do have issues while travelling. :D

Day 2

Day 2 of the tour started for us at 03:45, when most of our party was awake and waiting to get off at Agra, which was the first destination on our itinerary. I had hardly slept, and could remember the pace of time, having listened to about 40 songs on my iPod, and a couple of kids doing their customary wailing. We got off at Agra at about 06:00, where we were greeted by two grumpy TT's who wanted to see everybody's ID cards, and the knowledge that our luggage was quite heavy indeed. There was some confusion as some students hadn't brought their ID's along, thanks to lack of proper communication. It was all managed well by Chaitanya, the student who managed most of the tour for us, and our tour guide Junaid, a young and tiny looking man with a squeaky voice like that of a meek lady. A fine of Rs.1000 was paid and we were soon aboard the bus, called Himala that would take us through most of our journey. As we went around Agra city, i looked around eagerly at the northernmost part of India i had traveled so far. The people spoke friendly hindi, and it was easy to communicate with them. We stopped in front of a gate labeled West gate, Taj Mahal. It was a bit of a shocker, since the gate looked no better than that of Indira Park back home in Hyderabad. Anyway, our bus stopped there and we were asked to carry our 'hand-baggage' with us and follow the guide. He took us through tiny, sewage-lined lanes which prompted some of the girls to start singing the song 'hum kis gali jaa rahe hain!' and we laughed off the initial shock. We stopped at a decrepit hotel and were asked to freshen up. There was no hot water and not enough time for four of us sharing a room to bathe. We managed somehow and in an hour were served breakfast which consisted of ten quarters of aloo parantha and makhkhan (butter). The looks on our faces told our guide that we weren't all that happy with the arrangements. But he assured us that the hotels at Shimla and Manali would be far better, and we weren't going to stay here anyway. So we were then asked to carry our essentials and leave the rest of the luggage there, which, we were promised, would be deposited in the bus. We then followed our guide to the Taj Mahal which was about a minute away from the hotel, and waited in line to set our eyes on India's contribution to the Seven Wonders of the World.
At first sight, the Taj Mahal promises you a sight that you will surely remember for a long time. You'll surely have seen nothing like it. To me it was like standing in front of a picture, perfectly drawn, and I got to photograph it exactly like all the photos I had seen of the beautiful monument. Here's the photo, notwithstanding my amateurish photographic skills:

In contrast to the cold morning, Agra's afternoon reminded us of summer back home. And it was in this heat that we walked out of the Taj and all the 2 km-long way to Agra Fort.
Tired as we were, it didnt stop us from admiring the beauty of the fort. This was the place where all those Mughal emperors, Akbar, Humayun, Babur, Shah Jehan and everyone else one would usually picture as staring out of one's 6th grade history text books, all lived and ruled over their kingdoms. It was where the stories we had learnt by heart as kids had actually unfolded to create what is called history today. Some realisation.
The four of us, Shruti, Shilpa, Siri and I explored the fort right through the populated entrances to the dark corridors. Surprisingly, no one stopped us, and we didnt get lost. We read the names of each of the structures with interest, but the only name i remember is the Pearl Mosque, which was Shah Jehan's private mosque. And of course, the Diwan-e-Khas which had this huge black marble seat, or it might have been a throne. No doubt each of those kings might have made their own mark on the Fort as the generations went by. Some photos:




After Agra Fort, at around 17:00, we were picked up by Himala ( our bus ) and taken to a dhaba for lunch. The food was pretty good, contrary to our beliefs. I guess that's one difference you wont fail to notice while travelling in north India. You dont get good food in dhabas while travelling in south India.
We were then off to Shimla after lunch. The rest of the day was spent in the bus, except for a stop at a dhaba at 23:30. Initially the night took a fast pace with games and happy talk floating around, but towards day 3, everyone was all cramped and groggy due to lack of sleep.

Industrial Tour

The first 9 days of vacations were F-U-N!!!
I went on an industrial tour with my batchmates from the IT branch. Ironically, there was nothing industrial about it, it was all tour, and thus we behaved like tourists to the T. Man it was FUN!

I simply have to talk about it in detail. I will do so in the course of the following week, and trust me to give full justice to every paisa spent, every sleepless night and every pain in all the places of the anatomy.

I'll start with Day 0, the day before we started on the tour. The date was 27th November, the day after the Mumbai terror attacks started. My family and friends were pensive about the tour and though I was upbeat about it that morning, after a couple of phone calls filled with murky warnings from well-wishers, i was left speculating whether it indeed was a good idea or not. but my friends, having got no such calls, and having planned for this trip for about a month, were sure that they would go. i reached home and started packing anyway, trying my best to ignore all the supposed danger, and managed quite well. my father helped by calling up people to verify whether it was safe to be holidaying at this time, and finally it was decided that i would go, if my best friend Siri was going. So i packed my stuff and left for her house at about 20:30, as i had to be at Secunderabad Railway Station for the train at 06:50 the next morning, and doing so was going to be difficult given that my home was a good half hour away from the place.
Once i arrived, i knew that Siri wasnt sure about the trip too. Her sister and brother-in-law were trying their best to talk her out of it. they finally succeeded, and we were busy informing everyone that we wouldn't be going. back then, i wasnt looking forward to the tour at all so wasn't all that disappointed. after the tedious exercise, we thought we should find out if we would get our money back. It turned out we wouldn't, and we went to bed with that costly prick on our minds.

Day 1
For Siri and me, the day started at 00:00. We were wide awake and talking stuff trying to reassure each other that the decision that had been made was the right one. I couldn't help but think in terms of the money that was involved. after a lot of dilly-dallying about the pros and cons of going and not going, we finally settled on a fresher decision. We wanted to go. So now we had to wait for 4:00 when we could wake Siri's mom to inform her that we really wanted to go, given the feeble chance of anything happening to us during the trip and the money that we would lose if we opted out of it. She gave in, and we were back to packing and plotting. We reached the station at 06:20. The girls in the IT 4/4 class are a fun bunch, I was a part of the fun party by noon, and we played games and shared silly ghost stories and found humor in the silliest of things. The joy was complemented by the fact that someone i had disappointed earlier that morning didn't think i was all that bad after all, so i retired with a mixed sense of relief and the kid of tiredness that too much mirth brings you.

...

Just found these scribblings today...

When it's raining outside, and you're reading your text
cos u have an examination, on the tuesday next,
the sounds and the smells are what your memory stores
and not the equations and proofs, all that which bores.
but what a pity, you can't write them down
cos they're not what mere words can really spawn
and your examiner would fail you again
cos he doesnt understand, that he's being a pain
but then you dont remember all that, do you.
as all u know are the beckons of the sky so deep blue
but what's this, the smell of soil and water,
that seeps into my senses, as did harry potter?
lo, it's not raining but the smell suggests otherwise!
is this another act of nature, a pleasant move to surprise?
brow furrowed, i peek out from the balcony over the parapet,
and see my neighbour watering his plants, just as i had bet.
his corpulence and shiny pate call me back to reality
what id dreamt and what transpired were in a contrariety.

I'm surprised i could write such stuff when i was preparing for a supplementary exam on one of my favourite subjects ( operating systems ). Now how it qualifies as "such stuff", and exactly what "such stuff" is, is entirely for you to decide!

Yet-another-review :)

Okay, sentimental posts are just not me. That's a given now!
Aside, I finally got to watch The Devil Wears Prada today, and Wow. Just Wow. Not having read the book(oh how I want to now!), I am totally in love with the director. And boy, Meryl Streep is a perfect piece of work. The way i had to strain my ears to catch her every word, it felt like sitting right there in Anne Hathaway's shoes(isn't that literally a treat!?, sure the feet would weep themselves to death..) .I didn't dare to gulp the rest of my lunch down for fear of missing something.
The way Anne transforms into a thorough-bred Perfect Assistant is so simple and natural, and totally appealing. The story is predictable and so it's actually smooth sailing for the first time viewer, and yet, my hunch is if you're watching it for the second time you might get a pleasant surprise, in that you don't want to, rather can't narrate the story to your friend who's watching for the first time.
Also, what might really strike a chord is how a human side to The Devil is portrayed. Sans make up and in her pajamas, with a perfectly balanced tear, Streep manages to carry it off flawlessly with the same tone that helps the Devil get to her, the sardonic comments are totally in place, and you'd still want to show some sympathy!
Watch it for her. And all the vogue. Who knows, you might just end up changing the way you walk!

Relief

What i wouldnt do to get some of it. This year has been chock full of ups and downs, and most of them have been downs. Fate clearly had plans to bury some part of me it didn't want me to have. Or i'm just blaming fate out of my own weakness, too cowardly to admit that it really is all my fault.
What hurts is that nothing that has happened is fair. Even the Up part of the year happened by pure chance. As i sit here brooding about it, something i had decided i wouldn't do once i'd got over the whole thing, one after the other, i realise that i've looked at each event in every different way possible. And though some of those ways have helped me get out of the neural mess, none of them sounded fair. Does that mean I should never expect anything to be fair at all? Do i just take whatever happens in my stride and live with it? Or do i shout out that it's all unfair, and get back at the people concerned? But that would make me a jerk, not being sportive and caring only about ego. So where does that put me? What category do i belong to? Now if you're thinking of telling me not to bother about what others think, this is all from my own head. I'd categorize myself. Now you think, two hoots! just dont think!? I'm raising an eyebrow: is that even possible. Frankly, wouldn't one bury oneself in introspection when one's had a bad day?
Maybe i really shouldnt think about anything, perhaps pack a rucksack and get out of the city for a while, which isn't possible without begging for permission and answering a million questions, which would anyway replace any loss of headache the end result might grant.

So what do i do to get some relief?
where do i go to fix my head?
if i could scream, and that's a big If.
i'd be shouting what i just said
And you'd be bored, the neighbours would crash door
and that would only help to wind me up some more.

Really sorry about that; if u'd care for the rhymes, thanks!

Race to the Exit!

Phew, what a life! It's been too too long since I've written. Cant say I missed it, though ;). Anyway, I watched this movie called Race today. It being my first movie in 2008, I had some expectations, which, I suppose, is the reason I was so disgusted with it.
Some hallmarks: A hell lot of twisted tomfoolery, involving a lot of Bipasha Basu's skin, throw in some of Saif Ali Khan's too (no complaints there!) and a hundred million bucks; what currency, I didnt notice, and a lot of neck (rather, lack thereof) belonging to Akshaye Khanna. Gosh, having so much flesh around the neck, of all places certainly doesnt help in making suave dance moves!
Okay so here's the deal. Saif and Akshaye are brothers, bada bhai Saif supposedly in love with his 'kid' brother, who's predictably a spoilt drunkard. The girls are Bipasha and Katrina. Don't ask for names, they'll spoil the fun. Ok so Katrina is Saif's secretary, and Bipasha's his girlfriend. Now one guy can't have all the girls, so chota bhai enters and happily flirts with Bipasha, and they fall in love and all that, to the innocent viewer, but you know, humans can get so greedy and all that, so all this was actually just 'natak' by chotu to kill off bhaiyya for his insurance, and these two get married, according to the plan, of course. Now how dyou kill your brother? Send your wife to sleep with him, accuse him of the same, threaten to jump off, but send him over the top, instead. Simple enough, eh. But then you cant trust your wife to keep her big mouth shut. So bhaiyya actually knows of the plan and lets dear chotu get on with it. So then we expect wifey to push bad hubby off the parapet, but who knew, 20 million bucks can cloud ones eyes and wifey ends up pushing bhaiyya. Bhaiyya dies, brother cries, inky pinky ponky!
Enter Anil Kapoor and his irritating assistant, Sameera Reddy. Bollywood in 2008 has introduced another attitude in its ladies.. acknowledge the guy's brains, all the while looking like a dodo in a mini skirt. So Inspector Anil pokes his abnormally large nose around town and digs up dirt on chotu, now rich, infamous and mourning. Re-enter secretary Katrina who claims to have married Saifu and was just about to inform everyone about the happy proceeding, when the unspeakable happens. So some more mourning and shouting and accusing. And smelling rodents all over by smart alec Anil.
Now chotu's in a fix, his brother'd got himself married before conking off so another innocent life stands opaque in front of his cash. But chote miya is smart, he's actually planned everything with secy and wifey was only being used, if I may be so candid. Yeah that's right. Change of names in team B: chotu and secy. Team A you ask? Saifu and wifey(Bipasha) of course. Just how did you expect Saif to actually be dead???? Shame on you!!
So, actually, Saif isn't dead. He saves Bipasha from being killed off by a rich Team B (they actually buy smart alec Anil, who does some dumb natak just to keep the viewer guessing at every darned thing, to get his 25 million), dramatically, as in the (g)oldies. Abhi, face off between Bhaiyya and chotu. Who wins? whoever wins a race, of course. Now some more wickedness from chotu earns him a nice fiery coffin, wo bhi he has to share it with his partner in crime. In case u were thinking that he'd kill her off too to keep all the cash to himself, you're getting in the groove, I must say.
Now everyone's curious, how did smart smart bhaiyya survive the fall from the parapet? Simple, buy the police, get some riggings done, and a fake dead body to stage your own death. So team A, plus 'beimaan' police wala and dumb assistant get rich and live happily ever after!
Writing this was really fun!! So should I watch another sad sad movie or not? ;)