oh why is it so much fun to drive when you are drunk ??
Ohk…maybe not drunk but just slightly tipsy / happy high…when you feel happy for no particular rhyme or reason…when u know u maybe going a bit too fast but u just don’t seem care…when u just want to keep going on and on…
This issue has now been cleared by Dejul after interaction with senior police officers However, it has brought to light, a different aspect about the media.
While the earlier issue was over illegal water connections, with the police being used for intimidation by some of the tenants, the media refused to publicise the ‘illegal’ water connectins aspect.
They were more interested in reporting about the police atrocities…
Hmmmm…i guess ready gory stories about the police increases viewership rather than staid old water connections.
Anyway…thanks to all for their support
P.S: The original post has been taken down to avoid further confusion.
This is the second Diwali in a row that i havent been ‘home’. Last year it was Pondicherry, this year it was at a place called Wild Valley Farm.
With Cognizant declaring a holiday on Thursday for Diwali( instead of Friday) we decided to make the most of a ‘long’ weekend by going to Wild Valley farm.
Wild valley farm is actually a farm run by Daniel(the owner/manager) literally in the wild, 220 kms from Bangalore near the Sathyamangalam forests.
Spread over almost 80 acres of forest land in the middle of nowhere with No cellphone signals, no emails, no electricity (atleast in our tents), its a great place to detoxify…from work
And we had good fun doing absolutely nothing for 2 days( Am not so sure about Vijay and his car )
We left Bangalore on Friday morning at about 8:30…the orignal plan was to leave at 7:00 but…what is a vacation if your plans dont go out of schedule.
Traffic was bad as usual in Bangalore but it was smooth sailing once we hit the Mysore highway…Stopped at Cafe Coffee Day on the way for breakfast after 2 hours…
The road was good till Maddur but started deteorirating after that and the ride was quite bumpy till Kollegal…However, the green vistas along the way more than made up for the bad roads….
After Kollegal, we turned off the highway and thats when the fun began. The ‘Real’ india started off in earnest, and at times we only had gravel flattened with mud to call a road. In short, it was as typical as rural India can get with one notable exception.
The locals actually smiled. On more than one occassion when we stopped to ask for directions, the locals actually smiled in earnest before flagging us off in the right direction. Caroline was pleasantly surprised( what with having travelled almost all over india encountering all sorts of Indians)
Our first point of reference after getting off the highway was OderyaPalya. Its a tibetan settlement from where, Wild Valley farm was approximately 10 kms away. Its a beautiful place with mountains towering in the back ground and rolling fields of ragi in the valley. On spotting the monasteries, we were actually wondering how the hell did the Tibetans find this place to build a monastery.
After almost 5 hours in the car, we were starting to get restless when we reached the Karnataka border checkpost. The road significantly improved once we entered Tamil Nadu and surprisingly stayed that way till we reach WVF( It ofcourse triggerd a debate about how things are better in TN than in Karnataka)…
Anyways, after 6 long hours in the car,we were beginning to wonder if it was worth it coming this far to ‘Light a fire’ ( as one of friends put it when we told him about the bonfire that we built at WVF )
But it was totally worth it when we reached the farm The ducks ‘greeted’ us loudly when we parked the car, but apart from that, the serenity and greenery of the place was instantly calming…yes, we temporarily forgot our back aches.
After a quick wash, we finally had lunch at 3:00 pm. I somehow had the impression that since we were at a very remote farm, we would be eating organic food. However, the chicken wasnt reared on the farm and half the stuff wasnt even grown on the farm(save the tomatoes and carrots)..Also, its amazing to what corners of our country, pesticides have reached
Having had only 3 hours of sleep the previous night, Caro promptly went off to nap. I had also had only 3 hours of sleep but i wanted to catch the sunset (for some reason i thought the sunset here would also be special..haha ) so off the rest of us went to explore and find a Sunset point.
While we did not exactly find a sunset point, we did find a point on the farms boundary wall from where we could watch the sun set…it did seem like a fried egg but thats besides the point…
After that, it was a wait of another couple of hours before it got dark and we started the bonfire…The helpers on the farm used kerosene to kickstart the fire …Vijay took on after that to keep the fire burning steadly till late in the night…
Since it started to get slightly chilly, we got the beers and rum out…Daniel joined us for a while and told us jungle stories…we wanted to get scared but i guess Hollywood has done a good job of taking the sense of adventure away from our lives (
Last call for dinner was at 9:30 and we got another ‘tasty’ dose of inorganic fare…the best part was the fruit salad with pieces of dates thrown in…never tasted better…
After dinner, it was back to some more star gazing and pondering over questions like, “What is the purpose of your existence?”…also by this time, mist had fallen over the grass so it was nice and cool and the bonfire was nice and toasty…
Didnt feel like budging and heading to our ‘cold’ tents but exhaustion finally won and we all crashed by around 11:00…i woke up in the middle of the night thinking i had heard a tiger roar, but it was only somebody snoring in one of the tents…so much of adventure, though i did sleep most of the time like a baby….
Next morning, after a late breakfast and some minor explorations around the tree house, we headed off to Bangalore.
On the way back, we stopped at the monastery in Oderya palya. Compared to the ones i had seen in Bhutan, this one was very small and not very well maintained, so we decided to skip the others and head back home…
Surprisingly, the drive seemed shorter on the way back. I also realised the potential of internet on our mobile phones and how they are going to play a very significant part in the near future…However, i still could not check my mail…on my phone the GPRS wasnt working, on another the GPRS was working but the browser did not support Frames…and on the third phone, where the GPRS worked and the browser supported Frames, my company’s mail server was down…haha..so much for technology
Finally reached Bangalore at 7:30 pm, bone weary and dog tired, but mentally refreshed and ready to hit office on Monday…On hindsight, we realised that it was a good idea to come back on Saturday so we could ‘heal’ on Sunday…which is exactly what i did…
Overall, a very nice place to go for the weekend…trying going in a group of 4-6 good friends without any set agenda…and
yes, dont take any cards / games with you…Will be a nice change to discover the increasingly lost art of conversations with friends.
There’s a reason why people in most parts of the world wear protective clothing while riding bikes.
Although, it does make them look like zombie skinny spacemen, i guess it protects them when they skid on the roads.
That was the thought on my mind(and i could actually picture the courier delivery guys at Canary Wharf) when i skidded on a sandy road patch today morning.
My helmet saved me but my kneecaps, elbows and palm got skinned pretty bad
So all you indian riders, even if you dont wear biking suits, wear full sleeved shirts /sweatshirts while riding…who knows when it might save you from a septic injection
Not too many books have kept me up all night with an itch to finish them before i drop off… The Harry Potter series and 5 Point someone have been the recent ones that i can remeber
‘Joker in the Pack’ is the latest addition to the list. Written by Ritesh Sharma and Niraj Pahlajani, its supposed to be an irreverant view of life at the IIMs.
Well, i think its quite a candid and accurate representation representation of life at the IIMs…though not everybody wants to be a bean counter( Read Investment banker ) nor does everybody fly business class after graduating
The book takes us through the 22 year long journey of life of the protagonist Shekhar Verma, a normal ‘middle class’ indian kid with grand aspirations( and parents with even grander expectations) who starts off life in delhi obsessed with ‘gully’ cricket and watching television and his transformation into a ‘fighter’ who manages to clinch a ‘dream’ job at the end of his tenure at the IIM.
Ritesh is a batchmate of mine, so it was all the more fun reading the book as it brought back some happy and some not so happy memories of the 2 years i spent at IIML…And yes, it did have a lot of parts which i could relate to
If you are an alumnus, do grab a copy. Its sure to bring back nostalgic memories and call up some of your buddies from the b- school days.
If you are an aspiring IIM MBA candidate, it will indeed provide you with an insightful view into the life of an MBA.
Try ordering online here if you cant find it in your local bookstore. Its quite a painless procedure and i got it within 4 days
Just removed ‘twitter’ from my blog…reminded me of the fact that its been almost 64 days since i posted anything…alas…the spurt of enthu on watching a few oldies playing football in London has diminished quite a but…but there is still hope
Have finally joined Spanish language classes…been thinking about since last year but the workload was quite crazy and weekends were literally meant for catching up on sleep…
the workload hasnt lessened…just that more people have joined my team, so i have some time on my hands…hence salsa time
Trying to capture my lessons online on a day-by day basis…check it out here at spanishroom.blogspot.com
Well, here is the first post( second actually if you consider horse riding below ) on things that you can do apart from drinking beer ( though dont give up on quite yet)
Junta in Bangalore, if you guys have had your fill of ‘Sivaji’, Himesh Reshammiya ( as an actor) and Amitabh Bacchan in a ponytail ( and a very stupid hat)…then you might want to check out ‘Films of Desire’.
FOD is a film seminar that CREA organized recently at the Neemrana in Rajasthan. If you have time and willingness to see some really good films, pls pls pls go!( Atleast that’s what my friend who attended the seminar recommends )
A description of the films on offer is available here… Though they do have esoteric names such as ‘Beautiful Boxer’, ‘Locust’, ‘Cut’‘One wife to another’ and the like….
Go check them out on the 4th of August at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore.
Its a one day event from 2:30 pm to 9:30 pm, but luckily, its a saturday…
Enjoy madi !….
Nowthat i come to think of it, I quite miss Bangalore…the bloody place grows on and you dont realise it till you leave.
Its my 5th week in London and i havent really done much here apart from work. The excuse – ‘Summer aint summery enough’.Having done the usual touristy things on my previous two trips, i haven’t really been motivated to cruise down the Thames on a sunny saturday afternoon or listen to wackos in Hyde Park. Oxford Street seems way to crowded and the Tate’s modern art collection seems, well a bit to modern.
So for the last few weeks I have just been sleeping in on weekends, doing the laundry…and meeting friends for beer and british ‘Pub’ food. Now pub food is quite yummy but it seems to settle down around my waist rather than traverse through the gut.
It had been a 4 week long plan to go for a run in the park and get some exercise but somehow, just couldnt ‘find the time’…Either i was late in office or didnt want to delay dinner to get some exercise…
However, after a rather hearty lunch of Jacket Potatoes and rich ‘Passion’ cake, i was mentally prepared to go for a run in the park….Enough was enough…
By the time i got home, it was cloudy with a hint of rain but had decided that nothing was going to keep me from my run…
Running on fresh green grass has a joy which i hadnt experienced for a long long time…and it was exhilarating to just let loose…my back and ankles groaned in protest but mind eventually won over body….
Was wondering why i didnt run more often when i came across a corner of the park where a football match was in full swing…Each side had matching blue and orange jerseys along with full soccer gear ( they even had chin pads ). And, it was a bbunch of regular pot bellied guys( probably in their late 30s to mid 40s) dribbling away to glory…there were even a few oldies, if you know what i mean…
Here, i was panting along, resigned to a fate of ever increasing waistlines and these ‘oldies’ were playing football…
Struck a nerve somewhere within…
Guess there is more to life than just sitting in front of a computer all day long…Yes, there are people who still have jobs which dont involve using a computer. Who get home and setup a barbecue…who go and play football in the park wearing their favourite team’s jersey… And thats when it hit me !
Why not have a blog / website where people post about stuff which they enjoying doing in life…stuff which normal people like you and me can do too…during the week / on weekends / holidays, and bloody when ever we feel like it.
Am quite tired of going for a movie…swiggin beer and generally complaining that there is nothing much to do in life…
There is quite a lot to do if you look around…
Like going Horse riding on the weekend !
Yep, thats what i plan to do this saturday…The londonpaper.com has an excellent article about where all you can go horse riding…and at pretty affordable rates too
Now lets hope the adrenaline is up and the sun’s out
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