Notes

Once the trek is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the trek is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the trek, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the trek is all about. Just a few days ago, I returned from an unforgettable journey. It was a trek on a frozen river near Ladakh, at a time when the temperature dips to -25 (or maybe, -30) degree C! My Picasa album of more than a hundred photos fairly tell my story of the Chadar trek; I’ll be more general in this blog post. ...

It is rather difficult to not fall in love with Rajasthan once you visit it. I happen to visit Rajasthan at least twice a year; and the colors, the culture and traditions, the wide variety of sweets and spicy foods and the environment, in general, never failed to mesmerize me. What has awed me the most, however, have been the deserts. Even as a child, I had formed a pretty beautiful sight of Jaisalmer in my mind. When I finally went there on New Year’s eve of 2010, I wasn’t disappointed. The place was crowded but it had preserved that aura of ancient times which only added to its splendour. The city is small but has a plethora of forts. “What’s new in that? We are talking about Rajasthan, right?”, you might rightly point out! Well, the number of forts per square kilometer area would be, I guess, much more in Jaisalmer as compared to, say, Jaipur or Bikaner! In the center of the city lies the main fort: it is so huge and prominent that it is the general point of reference for everything in the city. Every road leads to this fort: if you got drunk one night and fell on the streets, you can be sure that the road on which you wake up next day would take you to the main fort! ...

If you are visiting my city Delhi for the first time, the one place I would suggest you to visit would be Chandni Chowk. This is because it is the only place where you can feel the true pulse of Delhi. The first time you set foot in Chandni Chowk, you will be terrified by the heavily congested streets. The streets are so busy and overpacked that while maneuvering them, chances are high that you’ll be tightly clutching your money and passport inside your pocket, lest you get pickpocketed! But beneath the pandemonium lies another dimension of this place. ...

There are many ways you can entertain yourself. To kill a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon, you might rather watch the dim-witted American Pie series than rack your brains in Inception. Alternatively, you might prefer exploring the remarkable cinematography of The Diving Bells and the Butterfly to fantasizing how one day, you too would be one half of a couple as loving as one shown in P.S. I Love You. ...

India is in a sorry state of affairs, to say the least. The latest incident that rocked Delhi, and with it the entire country, is but one of the many instances that damned the country. But what makes matters worse is that we have gradually begun to take such blatant acts of crimes for granted. When we hear about a young girl getting raped by her inebriated father or about an another scam worth thousands of crores, we merely feel disgusted for a few moments; after that we simply move on. For example, there is outrage among the people against the incident I mentioned in the first paragraph as is obvious from a deluge of angry posts, tweets and comments in the social media. Moreover, a handful of people took the streets to protest against the criminals and to pledge their support to the victim girl. People speak passionately about how overwhelmed there are by what happened at rush hours in a bustling area like Munirka; but how long will they remember? ...

It is Sunday and the time now is one hour past midnight. Weekends are a welcome respite from long hectic hours for five weekdays in a row and at this late hour, I should ideally be watching a movie or some random video on YouTube rather than writing this post. The reason for the latter is that I want to write down something before the enthusiasm fades away tomorrow. In search of a new non-vegetarian taste, I and Maneet today landed in Changezi Chicken, a small restaurant in Darya Ganj. I went ecstatic the moment I first put a bite of their Afghani chicken in my mouth and for the remaining hour I was as happy as a kid who just received a bicycle on his birthday! The restaurant’s speciality was (obviously) Changezi chicken and the taste easily exceeded our expectations. The place wasn’t too hi-fi and looked more like a dhaba. Moreover, Darya Ganj is considered a part of Old Delhi, one that is not as glamorous as other places around and one where you would probably never go as a tourist. Who would then expect that a small food-joint produces a taste like few others’ in the city? ...

Shawshank Redemption needs no introduction. Everyone has seen it and they say that the story was pretty straightforward. Then, why this blasphemous looking post from me, you might wonder. Well, I have my reasons. To make a long story short, the film was highly recommended to me by a close friend because, I was told, it was ‘like Prison Break’ where the protagonist ‘breaks the jail in the end’! And so I sat there, in front of my laptop for three hours, patiently waiting for Andy to break free! I knew what was about to happen in the end and for this reason, I believe, I interpreted the film differently. ...

The grand festival of lights just passed us. After all the rush and enthusiasm, I now have the luxury to relax in the drawing room of my home in Ahmedabad. The time is almost 1am and I think I have the energy to pen down a few words before I fall asleep. I love Diwali the most, among the many festivals that we celebrate here. There was a time I liked Uttarayan (Makar Sankranti) more, a festival that is celebrated so grandiosely in Gujarat that it is difficult, that day, to spot the sky under a vast layer of kites. But the last time I was here for Uttarayan was when I was in class 11- I left home after that and it still remains a distant dream for me to be in town for Uttarayan. As far as Diwali is concerned, it is mandatory for me to be in Ahmedabad for at least a week and to help me keep this promise this year, my father booked my train ticket more than a couple of months ago and I, on my part, battled a (literally) huge storm of people at the Rajiv Chowk metro station and broke my right foot’s toenail in the process! ...

The name of the post makes the intent of this post pretty obvious. If you are actually interested in reading this, I’ll make this post a little less boring to you by just talking about things that happened differently from my previous experience! The best part of this year’s half-marathon was that the extra care I took to not repeat my last year’s blunders paid off and all my official timings were noted! Moreover, the precision of the net time (right till the seconds) and the fact that I finished ‘just’ (32 seconds) before the timeout gave a very international feel to the experience! ...

This Friday, I witnessed a discussion that happened on gravely self-centric grounds. It is true that the inebriated atmosphere didn’t look like an appropriate platform to begin a discussion of right and wrong, but I am compelled to do that today. I was with two close friends who talked passionately about the kind of pressure they are going through in their lives. One, call him X, earns a competitive package at one of the leading software firms in the world, owns a car and has an offer for Masters program from a top-ranked university in the States. X complained that a particular friend of his hadn’t given him a phone call even though the latter was in town. And although the two were supposedly close until recently. X didn’t care to find out if it was for some genuine reason the other didn’t call him. My other pal, Y, lived a miserable life in Chennai until sometime back. But he is now comfortably settled in Noida, is associated with a project in office at a time when (in his own words) the IT firm he works for is unabashedly firing people and has all the opportunities one requires to succeed in life. Y generalized that he is under tremendous pressure. It is true that he has some family issues and that his job pays less- but at an age of 25, I guess he is not the only one in such a situation. ...