Remembering a Christmas!

A few years back a Christmas vacation was spent on a remote location in Coorg.
Coorg is approximately 260 Kms from Bangalore and is sometimes referred to as the Scotland of India, primarily because of its lush green forests, the beautiful coffee estates and the perfectly manicured tea plantations.
We stayed in a homestay which is inside a 36 acres coffee estate. The cottage was surrounded by misty mountains and dense forests where apart from our voices, all we could hear was the chirping of forest birds, the sound of the rocky river as it moved in crests and troughs, the symphony of crickets as the night darkened the evening sky.
We reached the homestay towards late afternoon and all our tiredness disappeared when we saw the estate manager approaching towards our cottage with freshly brewed coffee and fried snacks. Sitting on our verandah, sipping the hot coffee and enjoying the breathtaking surrounding are one of the best moments of my life. The time stood still for me. I closed my eyes to savour the forest sounds when I was jolted to my senses by a sudden laughter of my husband and our usual group of friends who accompanied us on the trip. They were in conversation about how mechanical life in Bangalore was and if given a choice, would anyone want to stay in an idyllic place like Coorg. There were mixed opinions about spending one's life there and leaving the comforts of the city. While a place like Coorg does give one all that nature can offer, the fresh air, natural springs, and the beautiful surroundings. It’s a place where people are content with what they have. The requirements are basic and they are happy with that. A city like Bangalore is well polluted, so much that sometimes one has difficulty in breathing, the eyes burn when the exhaust of the cars pump out more and more smoke to choke the life out of a living being but then again its my city, its us who have the power to change and bring back its old glory, turn back the time when Bangalore used to be tourist destination due to its lovely weather and the beautiful gardens. Remember, it is still known as the Garden City of India. Maybe I am too protective about this city although I have been staying here for just about four years, but somehow this feels like home to me. Maybe I will visit Coorg again in future and would enjoy and be a part of nature during my stay, but my heart will always lie in Bangalore. Like they say, home is where the heart is.
Sitting in the balcony of my apartment I sipped the piping hot coffee I bought from a local shop in Coorg. It reminded me of that beautiful cottage, the misty mountains, the dense forest and the lush green coffee plantations. I smiled and promised myself a visit again sometime soon...

Abhayaranyam

Again I am writing this one after a long long gap, maybe I have incorporated the habit of not writing enough...not a good sign
But here is something that touched my heart and compelled me to write. This year, sometime during the end of November we decided that its quite a while since we travelled somewhere so we decided to search...
Our search took us to check the forest guest houses in and around Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Our friend Nilanjan came up with an idea to visit Abhayaranyam which is a forest guest house in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The idea to stay in a tiger reserve was exciting so we searched all over the internet for more details about the guest house. To our despair there was nothing that could be called as 'detailed' description of the place, barely any pictures, no posts.. but we didnt lose hope, our intense search provided us with the contact numbers of the forest officer whom we could call to book the place.
So we made the booking for the cottage that they had there. Then started the endless wait for the day of our trip. We had planned everything, the places we would visit on our stay there, the food that we will carry etc.
Finally the day arrived. We had decided to leave early in the morning to reach the place as early as possible. We had checked with the concerned person there about the check-in time, fortunately there was no strictness around it! So we left at sharp 4 am, calculating the possibility of reaching that place at 9 am. The night drive was awesome, the road had a few cars zipping around. After a drive of about an hour and a half we decided to take a short break. In another 10 minutes we were back in top gear. After an hour or so, we could see the dawn breaking in front of our eyes, the sun peeking through the horizon...
We crossed Mysore at 6:45 am and our new GPS navigator guided us well through the city roads into the forest trail.
We reached Bandipur forest at about 8am and decided to make a small halt once twe crossed the forest zone. Mudumalai was not too far from there but reaching at 9 am sounded a bit embarrasing now. Anyways, we decided to drive at a very slow speed and reached the destination at 9:30 am.
The view was unlike anything we had ever seen. This bunglow can not be seen from the road, one has to climb a short uphill road to reach there. It is surounded by dense forest on all sides with a view of the Nilgiri hills on two sides.
Right in front of the bunglow there is an overgrowth of elephant grasses where we did see some elephant and bison dung. Oh, I forgot to mention the numerous herds of deer we saw while crossing the forest zone.
On reaching the bunglow , we were warmly greeted by the caretaker who confirmed our booking and requested us to wait for a while while the rooms were being cleaned up.
There were about 3-4 people who took care of the bunglow there and they stayed in a couple of cottages right behind ours, where they had a kitchen and their rooms.
The Abhayaranyam bunglow is quite a large one with two huge bedrooms, two bathrooms with western toilet, a balcony that connects the two bedrooms and a dining hall in between the bedrooms. the best part is, this has a watchtower with glass windows on all sides where you can spend the daytime birdwatching. (We were advised not to climb up to the watchtower at night)
Our day was spent taking rest, and catching glimpse of shy deer, watching a few peacocks on the grassy area, seeing some wild boar and mongoose and sighting a couple of malabar squirrels on the trees nearby. We also visited the elephant feeding camp in the evening and saw how forest elephants were getting their daily diet served by their mahouts.
The lunch and dinner at Abhayaranyam were prepared on request and the food was very much edible and quite beyond our expectation considering we were in the middle of the forest with the nearest village at least 5km away.
Honestly we weren't disappointed at all with our first day experience there. Towards late evening, the four of us started a quiet conversation sitting on the chairs and sofa on the balcony. We didnt have anything to do. Outside it was completely dark with lights from occassional cars passing through that road. Suddenly there was a power cut and we were in the midst of complete darkness. Then I realised it wasn't actually a power cut but a low voltage situation and only the filaments of the bulbs were illuminated. The caretaker gave us some candles though. We decided to finish dinner too and play a little boardgame of Ludo. After dinner, we took some chairs and sat outside the bunglow main door listening to the silence and occassionally talking.
After about 15 minutes we came inside and were playing a game of Ludo when we thought what we heard was an elephant's trumpet. But then we realised that since it was too quiet outside even the sound of a truck horn could sound like that so we continued playing. At about quarter to 11 we decided to call it a night and went to our rooms. We slept barely for 10 minutes when i heard someone brooming outside the cottage. The sound continued so Sudipto and I decided to knock Nilanjan's room and find out if they were hearing what we did. It was dark and scary when we went to their room. They had heard it too. Nilanjan quickly grabbed his torch and we came to our room and opened the window a little to find out the source of the sound.
What we saw outside startled us. It was a cloudy night, so in the bleak light of the moon we saw couple of wild elephants grazing at the grass in front of the cottage. We decided to check the balcony windows and at every window we saw there were 2-3 elephants. We realised that there were about 10 or 12 elephants surrounding the cottage, who came there from the forest for a midnight snack. Among them there were 3 tuskers will gigantic tusks. We were frozen in fear and were talking in whispers. Finally they left after an hour or so, but we couldnt sleep in fear.
But sleep did come eventually and the next morning we woke up with a fresh joy.
We decided to go to Gopalaswamy Betta which is a hill about 40 km from the guest house. This place gives a panaromic view of the forest below. We saw some elephants in the forest as we climbed the hill.
It had started raining on our way back and while crossing the forest area we saw an elephant on the side of the road, munching on leaves from a tree.
We decided to spend our night in the watchtower without telling the caretaker. He had warned us of leopards in the jungle too, well that was scary but we decided to give it a try anyways. As fate would have it, on the second night, the elephants came much earlier than expected and the caretaker and his crew were still awake so we couldnt risk going up and staying in the watch tower.
We saw a family of elephants and two tuskers who left early.
We decided to chat for a while before calling it a day. We were travelling back the next day.
Our stay at Abhayaranyam was short but has left a deep impact in our souls. Never ever have we come so close to nature and wildlife. It was a perfect blend of wild India at its best.

Mistake of distancing!

I have realised that people will talk to you when you listen to them, if you don't show you are in a hurry to wrap up the conversation, if you lend a sympathetic ear, if you are willing to keep the conversation going by adding your inputs. In the last few weeks I had been crazy busy with my new work, trying to learn new things, willing to innovate, but never did I realise that I was distancing myself from people with whom I would stay in touch constantly. I didn't talk to them, because I was too busy to listen to what they had to say.Why is it, that when you move to a new role, you tend to leave the past where it was. It was a shameful thing I did, how could I not stay in touch with people I have known all throughout just because I was loaded with an extra bit of work?Maybe this is where management skills come into play. How to balance your work and life?I have decided that I will work on a thing only till the time I think I can work on it. The more one tries to push beyond the limits, more errors crop up, adding up to the workload.I will take a break and speak with my friends and people I am close with, people who can make me forget the worries of worklife.

Big J.. Forever

I thought of posting this nearly a month ago, but somehow I still haven't been able to face the bitter reality of Jerry's death. It was on the wee hours of 9th February. Ma telephoned me and even before I pressed the call acceptance button on my mobile phone, I somehow knew the news I was going to hear. Its true that he was not keeping well for almost one week prior to his death. He was old. Rather too old...but how old is too old? Can we ever overcome the grief of losing someone close to our heart.Its a terrible feeling to know that the next time when I will go to meet my parents, he wouldn't be around. I wouldn't relish his crazy antics, now no one will ever get so furious enough to bite me.. This may sound a bit crazy but I have been bitten a lot many times by Jerry. My palms still have the marks, but then its natural for a dog to bite when provoked. I never hit him back when bitten. It was his natural self defense technique.I still remember the day he came to our life, just 27 days old, who would get tired after walking a few centimetres on the carpet, ma used to feed him a semisolid baby food, which he soon found distasteful and found delight in raw vegetables which he used to swiftly steal when vegetables for lunch were being chopped.He grew up fast. Each birthday of his that we celebrated, traumatised me. I knew he was a year closer to the inevitable. I last met him about a year and a half ago. He was getting old, did not like human presence much, was somewhat distracted, later ma told me that he had cataract and was going deaf. Honestly, I can never imagine my Jerry as anything else than the rough one, who would get angry at the slightest provocation, but at the same time would be the mischivieous of the lot, someone who was a brother to me, someone who I will miss forever. Yes, that's my Jerry..Forever!

A Big Blunder!

We all make blunders and I have an expertise in that. Yesterday at a meeting with a Senior Executive, I was asked if I did any creative writing ever and guess what my blog came into the picture. I, being a moron,completely, idiotically, forgot that my last post, written almost 2 years ago, was about the DDSS syndrome, which is definitely not a worth read, more importantly, not something you will like to show to a senior colleague of yours. A blunder. But I did it, the moment the page opened I realised it but it was too late. Now I am just crossing my fingers and hoping he didn't read it. Well, high hopes as we call it!

DDSS Syndrome!!

Sleepy, Bored , eyelids are heavy!!!

I am suffering from all these symptoms and We call it the DDSS symptom. Actually a friend, Neha, coined it. This is the Different Day Same Shit syndrome which I guess troubles every officegoer. I think suffer from it even when I am at home.

Sometimes I cant figure out what to do. Ok fine I have never been so clear about my next move anyways but I wasnt so uncertain too. I m just waiting to see where this level of Extreme Boredom takes me...' yawnnn' .... see Iam sleepy already...

Nothing is fizzy anymore...office has sucked me up so much now that I have become numb anyways...its like school days, the time when school bell rings , your teacher comes , you do your classwork , take a note of the homework and go home when the bell rings again. Come back the next day to follow the same routine. Yes thats exactly whats happened. I am following a routine... Worst part...I hate routines for a long time...that why I left school about 8 years back...okok..thats a bad joke, anyways I slogged for about 12 years before calling it quits and yes I had to finish my studies... :-(

You know when I look back in all these 26 years of existence...ok lets leave the 3-4 initial years of non existence coz I barely remember anything of those times, still that leaves me with like 22 years of existence... so out of these years about 16 years were spend in studies, one year in trying to figure out what I have done with myself and where I wanted to be. Another two years in pursuing a Masters and then seraching for a job, then continuing the job for more than 3 years now.

Ok, the whole point of the long boring thought was that I have basically slogged all through my life, chasing this and that and what the net result????

A DDSS... c'on I expect something better!!!

Lets Love!!!!

We all should cherish the love we have and cherish the life and the moments spent together sharing the joy, the fun, the pain and the sorrows and look forward towards a better tomorrow.We all spend a lot of time running after the shadow of life not realising that life never stops for anyone even long after they have gone. Every moment is a new beginning, a new hope, a new day. Lets celebrate the day and the moments coz even after we are gone, the moments would remain. Someone, someday would remember us for the moments...and at the end thats what counts...coz I can't see you cry.Your tears burn my soul.The acid hurts my heart, my eyes have dried but the pain remains.Lets love and share the spirit of love, the joy and fun of being oneself and being together.Lets light up the universe with all its true colors.

We chase the fleeting dreams!!

Sometimes I am irritated at myself, for instance right now I am and the reason being, its been exactly one year today since I posted my last blog. Amazing, isn't it? Thats what I ask myself. How could I not find time to write something, post a thought or just an imagination. What was I waiting for?We keep telling others we are busy. We donot have time..Thats bullshit!!!Nobody, not me, and absolutely no one is busy enough to stop thinking. Thats why we are supposed to have brains. Thats supposed to think.We all are pretenders, liars and hypocriates telling people of all our achievements and boasting about all the success which nobody would care about.In pursuit of success we all are losing out on happiness and mental peace. we are losing our ability to ponder inside our souls forgetting to say a 'hi' to it, never ever caring to ask what it wants....
And Iam sure even after all this blah blah talk even I and you and everyone would go about doing the same routine, but at least this article has made you and me think, even though for a moment and thats my satsfaction.

New Life!

The darkness is slowly fading away.It calls for the celebration of a new day.Waking up in the morning with sleep saying a goodbye.Its a day to cherish the moments and see the dreams weaving the most intricate design in front of your eyes.The most beautiful feeling is when someone is sharing the same aspirations as yours and giving you hope and support to fulfill that right from the core.I have found that someone in my life with whom I hope to share my dreams and I want to be a part of his dreams.

Its Two Months!!

Two months, two lives, and thereafter its one soul that needs to survive.
Two months, two lives, and later its one heart that beats.
Two months, too close, too swift..
Two months, too far, too slow..
Two months, too soon, too late..
Two months to live and die in the moments,
Two months to say a goodbye to these days,
Just two months and life would enter an entirely new phase.

How much???

How much pain is required to come out of the suffering?How much hurt is required to draw the feeling of numbness?How many blows do you require to let your soul die?How many egos you kill to make that word cry?How the hell does a person survive?Why does death not try?
Why do I write all this?What do I feel about all these?
I feel the same pain and the numbness and the death within me.Life is what Iam looking for.
Where are you? Please come and save my soul from dying.I regret, I repent, I hate, I love, I die, I survive, I kill, I create and yes, when I close my eyes and slowly enter the realms of darkness, I see you, I hear you, I breathe you, I feel you, You are like a bright star calling me to be a part of you.I stretch my hands to immerse myself in your soul and there it goes, the darkness is no more around me and the light of peace and love surrounds us.Thank you for saving my dying soul.

Peace is what we seek

When life is too much to take, do you take recluse in spirituality?My trip to Pondicherry was not just a long needed vacation but it was also an eye opener towards life, the way we seek, the way we need, the way we want to understand our living.People from all walks of life were there, working hard but still very much at peace with themselves.Why do we lack it here? Are we asking too much from life that slowly but surely we are losing touch with the reality, moving far from our inner peace?I am not much of a believer in God but I believe in the inner strength which keeps us alive and makes us overcome the tough times in life.In Pondicherry I saw the strength, in the weak and the old, in the rich and the poor, in the old and the young, everyone seemed to be so full of life, so much at ease. Pain is the word they are not aware of. Nobody out there needs anybody's help.Everyone is self sufficient with whatever they have. They lack nothing even when they donot own much material forms of living, but maybe it is the mental strength which has made them very rich and prosperous so much that we mortals, who constantly seek for wealth and luxuries of life, envy them.Peace and calmness is what we lack. The moments which allow us these elements move on perhaps too swiftly that by the time we want to grasp these fleeting moments they are long gone and all that remains is the hollowness of this pretentious world.

Things I Love (Mind it, this list doesnt include the people I Love!!)

# My Solitude
# My Home Theatre... I am crazy about it...so much that my friends would often say,'Why don't you get married to it?'.. I swear, we would have made such a musical couple...Cheers to that!!
# My job..though it sucks at times , but maybe thats another reason why I love it.
# My mobile, though its old now, but it helps me in staying in touch with my near and
dear ones and also because I bought it when I wasn't earning much and I thought it to
be a pretty expensive buy at that time.
# The moments spent with my friends I met throughout my life.
# My DVD collection, I am making one now and adding 3-4 movies to it every weekend.
# 'Echorer sobji' and 'Nutrela sobji' and anything with chicken/mutton cooked by Ma.
# Pork Sausages.
# The books I own (Both Fiction and Non Fiction) and also the ones I stole and read.
# The weather in Bangalore.
# The dawn and the dusk and the twilight.
# Being independent, at least financially.
# Old people, it breaks my heart to see them suffer.
# Laughter of Ma.
# Anger of Babai.
# The bark of Jerry.
# The voice of Bryan Adams.
# The adamance of Tony.
# The weirdness of Shontu.
# The calmness of night.
# The body of John Abraham.
# The movies of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
# The four piercings on my each ears.
# To have faith in Him (when I need it the most).
# Durga Pujo.
# Kolkata.
# The uncomfortable buses in Kolkata.
# My sarcasms (They automatically come hurling towards anyone).
# Annie's song (was it sung for me?).
# The walks from Lake Town to Kalindi.
# The street food of Kolkata.
# The trip to Kashmir, I still remember every bit of it.
# The trip to Vaishnodevi (though I swear with all my apologies that I may never go there again!!).
# The food at the Great Wall Restaurant.
# The huge mango tree and its fruits at our ancestral home in Patna.
# The holidays spent with my cousins in Patna.
# My childhood days in Patna, especially because I was good in studies then and used to be among the toppers in school.
# The college street market ( the bookshops), I have never been to the Coffee House though...but I went there once when my friend needed to pee badly and had no other decent place to go.
# The New Market trips.
# My Karate lessons (This should have been in the top 10)
# My Blog
# Appy and Fresh Grape juice
# Rich, dark, chocolate cake, blackforest cake and fruits and nuts chocolates.
# My funky silver jewellery.
# Deep, imploring eyes, mind it, its different from deep set eyes which I have and I hate them.

Just a thought!!

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be love loved in return.

Well! I didnot invent this quote, but kudos to the person who discovered this feeling for the mankind and the generation Z which ignores the magic of love and is busy searching for pleasures unknown to them.

Desire Be Thy Name!!!

Sometimes we unknowingly hurt others and do not realise the consequences of the disaster that we foolishly take upon ourselves.It is difficult to let go of certain feelings but as time moves, feelings change and so does the views.I think, love, hatred, anger, pain, joy,sadness are all superficial, people claim that they feel these but do they really feel it all the time?The only feeling that might be true is hunger and I am not just talking about the physical hunger, i.e, hunger for food..Hunger relates to so many things, like hunger for recognisation, hunger for power, money, knowledge, its more or less similar to thirst, thirst to quench the desires..so that makes 'desire' the most powerful feeling in the universe.Its all because of desire that we move ahead in life. The life of a man is not worth living if he doesnt have the desire to move to acquire and know.So that makes some of us The Desirables and some of us the hunters of The Desirables.aah..such a lovely term, DESIRE, so strong, so captivating, so murderous, so enchanting....Over the centuries, men and women have lived and died for a desire to survive, they have killed and loved with passion, all to satiate the desire, they have humiliated and cared, to nurture the desire, they have learnt and tought to respect the desire.The desire to see, the desire to hear, the desire to feel, the desire to smell and the desire to taste is all we care for but isnt there a desire above all these, the DESIRE TO SURVIVE ?

Lies........

Sometimes people try to hide others lies and mistakes and give excuses on their behalf.Since childhood I kept on hearing from people that hiding a mistake encourages more mistakes to be committed.Then why do people try to cover the flaws?Are they afraid that if they make others aware of the flaws they would go against them and love them less?If thats the case then could we call that true love?maybe love was never around the corner and they were seeking to catch a glimpse of a swift sensation...who knows???

Mornings

Mornings are always so beautiful,
its a pity that we donot see them often
The calmness around you and the gentle breeze like a lover embrace
The freshness in the eyes of school children
The dewdrops on the grass blades
The sparkle in the eyes of the old man who waits for each day to come and tell him,
"Hey you are still alive"
Morning is a feeling for me..
It tells me that everyday is a new beginning
It tells me that today is the day when you can face and accept your mistakes
It tells me that its never too late..
It tells me that life goes on even when you are reading this and thinking that the World is lost somewhere in the midst of this celestial space
So get up and get going cause today's morning isn't the same as yesterday's and tomorrow morning might come as a challenge difficult to accept

What do i write!!

Well....it seems to me that an era has passed since i last updated my blog.
Truly speaking, its been ages.... and im feeling bad about it.
its been more than a month since i have come to bangalore and things have moved so swiftly around me that i havent been able to catch my breath so this is the first time i have decided to deliberately put an update on the blog.
So many things happened over the last month...my new job, new house where for the first time in my life iam staying absolutely all alone, not even a roomie..haha, seems strange!! even i feel the same at times.
but atleast the weekdays are good...i come to the office at noon, learn the job structure in office, go home at night and cook my dinner and most of the days I read myself to sleep..
but the weekends are kind of dreary....its true that i have quite a good bunch of friends here, Himanshu, Amresh....even Shontu to hang around with during the weekends before moving to Singapore, but then at the end of the day it still is so monotonous...don't know why...
I don't know what else to write....it seems like i havent been thinking too much and hence i don't have much to write...and this certainly isn't a very good sign....
well, would try to update my blog with something more interesting later...

Expectation kills

life goes on as they say.
Is going on,all that's required in life?
what good would be a life which goes on without any specific mission?
what is the mission that we talk about?
to me mission is something related to growth and better living.
what is life without a good living?
but then how good a living does anybody want?
what are the expectations.
if we try to think of expectations, which is a very overloaded word in itself, in simple terms then, expectations is something that differs from an individual to another.my expectations out of life wouldn't be same as anybody's else and vice-versa.
sometimes i really ponder over this thing called expectations.
is it really necessary? i know i am talking about an ideal situation, maybe an ideal world where nothing ever goes wrong and hence there is no need to expect anything better or worse.
but the reason why i said about the neccessity of expecting something out of life is because i wonder how many of us give something to life without expecting from it.
i know it is difficult to give something without expecting something in return but at least that can be tried.
maybe, who knows that can lead to a source of contentment in life which most of us lack. we keep on cribbing about things we donot have and forget to cherish what we really have.
life is too short to take care and think about the grudges and the grumblings and if we can try cutting short on these and enjoy every moment of our survival, believe me,there would be a lot of peace around us.

Eternal Dilemma

Its still the same feeling, im still in a state of dilemma.
It is that sinking feeling you get when somebody punches you hard on your stomach and forces the air out of there.
even when evrything apparently is fine, i am cribbing, i don't know for what...
what does life hold for me, a bunch of painful cribbing phases???
do i ask too much out of life?
i know i can be happy with what i have with me at present.
i really don't need much.
my needs have never been too much or too great.
i accept everything that life gives me, be it shit or flowers.
yet and yet again i keep on thinking about what life used to be and what it is now.
and everytime i think about it, the past always shines better than the present.
which leaves it to the fact that the future would be worse, who knows??
the fact is that, even though im not too much emotional otherwise, i really cant let go off the past and each and every memory associated with it, good or bad, it doesn't matter much.
the past is something that holds me from moving forwards.
the present doesn't interest me much, cause tomorrow it will be past and the memory of this present would then linger in the past.
i guess the dilemma would be an eternal one cause people like me can rarely come out of it.