I had stopped writing in this space because of some unpleasant reasons. Now, those unpleasant reasons are far more pushed back by the recent incidents in Mumbai.


Let me admit, I had never ever surfed the newspapers so comprehensively that I have done in the past 3 days. Seldom do I watch TV. But this weekend was a change. I got my back hurt while diving into the swimming pool, but do I really feel the pain in my back? Nah! I am not even thinking about it.


Things have been written, articles printed, discussions held, rage published. Everyone who gets his hands on any kind of communication media is expressing his anger, rage through his own means. Staying in the sister city to Mumbai (Pune), I can sense what is going on and what people are going through.


Events, persons that were outshone by this horrendous attack:


1) Cricket: India leading 5-0 in the series. Surely would have been the headlines with interviews of shining cricketers. England team has returned to its homeland. Hope to see them back in (now tentative) test series.


2) Economic Meltdown: All media was flooded, stocks dived, people lost their bank balances, lost their jobs and what not. But lives definitely are much more important than money.


3) VP Singh: The man who dethroned Rajiv Gandhi from the PM’s seat is no more. The news surely deserved to hit the headlines, but remained almost unsaid (tacit, I guess).


4) Raj Thackrey: Where are this guy and his “brave” sena by the way? Why did he not come up to save hundreds of Marathi Manoos killed at the railway stations? Why did he not stop the NSG commandos (most of them from UP and Bihar) from entering the city? Won't he want them to learn Marathi before saving our lives?


Now picture this: Few of our NSG commandos were killed by terrorists’ bullets hitting in their heads and chests, though they had the helmets and bullet-proof jackets ON. Can't you smell the corruption here?


Things are not going be so “rosy” from now on. Not for the politicians, not for our security forces, and not even for us – the citizens. Shouldn’t we be the world leaders in fighting against terrorism? Is there any other nation holding more experience than us in this field? We should be helping others to overcome this evil, but we ourselves are not equipped enough to fight against it. Why are we not learning from our past? We can't afford to be pigeons shutting our eyes looking at cats.


Indian Army says, “Forgiving terrorists is left to GOD. But fixing their appointment with GOD is our responsibility”. Amen!

As if the consistently crashing stock markets are not enough to irritate you and send a chill down your spine.

I usually don’t sleep while commuting in the bus. But yesterday was a one-of-its’s-kind day.

I boarded 6 PM bus from Infosys. At 6:45, we were hardly 1 km moved from the original position (Am talking about displacement (the vector), not distance). I usually sit on the first seat because you get space to spread your legs in front of you :P I looked back and found everyone “dead sleep”. So I too tried to sleep. Luckily, I succeeded somehow.

Why “Luckily”?
Because, that bus was so wrecked, the seats were not in good shape (no head rest) and the engine was roaring like anything. Traffic all round. I tilted myself against the glass window and slept. What I last remember before sleeping – we were at the entering foot of the "Wakad Bridge" (flyover). Slept for about half an hour when sudden brakes by the bus driver left me awake. When I woke up – we were still on the same flyover.

Now when I was awake, I put on the FM to my ears. Wow! All the radio stations (including our very own Vividh Bharti) were airing Himesh Reshamiya Songs. Did I have a choice, what frequency to tune?

At around 7:45, struggling through the rush, we caught an almost clear road. But… there are days when, whatever you do, however you do, you can’t escape the "so-called-luck" following you. We stopped at every Red Light on the way with a halt time of more than 60 seconds at each of them, all the way to AFMC.

The problem is – How to extricate from this? I am not able to find a personal solution for this problem. Should I change my route? Should I change my timings? Should I get a PMPML bus pass, and stop traveling by Infy buses. I will have a flexibility of route and timings in that case.

I just can’t imagine my plight when the most awaited “Commonwealth Youth Games” is round the corner. The traffic is going to go worse.

The only nice thing that I did yesterday was: Got my eyes registered for donation. Got to do more exercises now :P

Two bugs: [1] Traffic [2] Festival

I can’t believe I am saying this and I never thought that I’ll be saying this so early:

Whoa! Unbelievable! For the past two weeks, I am spending 2 hrs or more in Pune traffic from office to my home. And it never took me this long even on the worst days of traffic in Bangalore (I agree that I didn't live so far from Electronic City, but still).
Distance b/w Hinjewadi and AFMC ~ 25 km.
Time taken (at least) = 2 hrs.
By simple algebra, Average speed of my commute ~ 3.5 m/s
That is slower than a normal man's walking speed.

I ran out of Bangalore cribbing about the same thing, but the traffic seems to be following me. I actually felt a little comfort in my initial days in Pune but the situation worsened gradually and now I won’t hesitate in handing over the “Poorest traffic” trophy to Pune.

The jams seem to be a result of “Ganesh festival” going on and the situation is hoped to be improving from this Monday. Festival is OK, but people just don't have traffic sense.

We in India, have a many more seasons except the regular summer, winter etc. We have a season of weddings that goes from October to April in North India. Then we have a season of festivals. Two festivals, I have seen, seem to be very state specific. “Durga Pooja” in West Bengal and “Ganesh Chaturthi” in Maharashtra! These states seem to have a copyright on these two festivals. People collect funds to celebrate. The disciples of these Gods collect the funds from their respective societies in order to have huge celebrations on these festivals. On the contrary, I have seen people consuming alcohol on the money raised for these events (the very evening after Durga Pooja). Yesterday also, I saw some groups of people taking Ganesha idols for Visarjan, but the people were dancing drunk and they were smoking while carrying Ganesha. What is all this? Do people raise funds to celebrate or to feed upon it?

I don’t believe in God(s) but I am not even against those who have faith in them. But I appeal (to those who believe) to at least show some respect to the almighty, the one you fear the most. I had been much happier to see people collecting funds for “Bihar flood victims” and investing it there only. But “raising money for celebrating a festival and then spending it on uncompromising things” is just unacceptable. This is something “We Indians really need to learn”.

The world is mesmerized by these two guys. They have created history this time in Beijing – one on track and one in water.

Google is the most extensively used search engine. In July this year, we got a new search engine "cuil" (http://www.cuil.com/) – A rival search engine by three former google employees.

People already must have compared the search engines. Geeks pounce upon anything new that comes in the tech world and review it in and out. But I would like to quote a particular feature of CUIL: As and when you go on typing the search keys, a drop down (attached to the search bar) with 10 results keeps getting refreshed dynamically based on the current search key. The feature is actually Cool (cuil, for that matter).

Google being a gang of geniuses adopted this feature in no time and even took it to the next level. Google drop-down refreshes with more relevant results. Most sought after results at the top!

Justifying the post title -
I started searching for “Microsoft”. As I typed ‘Mic’ and got “Michael Phelps” as the topmost result.
You search for “USA” and get a Jamaican, “Usain Bolt” topping the results.

See what Olympics have done to the world:


But Cuil displays no such thing. The results there are not so relevant. CUIL already has a lot of issues, but being a new kid, things can be condoned for a while. Competing with Google really takes a heart. All the best CUIL!

One more update from Google: Picasa Web Albums have undergone a redesign. The new look! Change always appears good, let’s see how it comes along over time.

Please get the information from any of the following links and get going to do your bit:
[1] http://biharflood.wordpress.com/
[2] http://biharfloodrelief2008.blogspot.com/
[3] http://removing.blogspot.com/2008/08/bihar-floods-how-to-help.html
[4] List of Medicines required: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXkYURrkCSy7Cd6zB4VmMQg

Thanks in advance for your consideration!

आज कल राम गोपाल वर्मा की बॉलीवुड में काफ़ी हवा है - लोगों की फूँक निकाल कर रख दी है। ऐसी ऐसी फिल्में बना रहे हैं कि लोगों को सोचने का पूरा पूरा मौका मिल रहा है। फ़िल्म देखने से पहले लोग सोचते हैं - "देखें या नहीं?", फ़िल्म देखने के बाद लोग सोचते हैं - "ये मैंने क्या किया?"

आप सोच रहे होंगे की मेरी नज़र राम गोपाल वर्मा पर ही क्यों अटकी? दरअसल ये एक ही ऐसा महामानव है जो हर साल ढेरों फ़िल्म बनता है और फिल्मों का स्तर तो माशाल्लाह गिरता ही जा रहा है। मैं सोच रहा था कि जिस रफ़्तार से वर्मा जी लगे हुए हैं, और जिस जिस तरह की फिल्में वो बना रहे हैं, भविष्य क्या होगा? गौर करने की बात ये कि इनकी हर अगली फ़िल्म पिछली फ़िल्म से बुरी होती है।

आइये रामू जी की कुछ पुरानी, नई और आने वाली फिल्मों पर एक नज़र डालते हैं:

=> सरकार
===> सरकार राज
=====> सरकारी अनाज
('सरकार' बहुत ही बढ़िया फ़िल्म थी, 'सरकार राज' ठीक ठाक, अब इस कड़ी को यहाँ रोक देना चाहिए नहीं तो 'सरकारी अनाज', 'हमारा बजाज' या ... )

=> नाच
===> निशब्द
=====> नहीं हुई हद
(...शब्द ही नहीं हैं...)

=> डरना मना है
===> डरना ज़रूरी है
=====> डरना मजबूरी है
(जब डरना मना था, तब लोग डरे जब डरना ज़रूरी हुआ, तो लोग हँसे)

=> राम गोपाल वर्मा की आग
===> राम गोपाल वर्मा की फूँक
=====> राम गोपाल वर्मा की थूँक
(पहले आग लगाई, फिर फूँक से उसे बुझाने की कोशिश, नहीं बुझी तो अब थूँक ही बचता है जी)

राम राम! ये रामू जी किस प्रकार की फिल्मों की और बढ़ रहे हैं... कुछ समझ नहीं आ रहा है! रंगीला, सत्य, भूत, कंपनी जैसी उच्च कोटि की फिल्में बनाने वाले रामू कुछ मूड में नहीं लग रहे हैं ।

वैसे और भी कुछ अच्छी फिल्मों की मिट्टी पलीद होती नज़र आ रही है:

=> डॉन
===> डॉन टू
=====> कौन तू

=> मुग़ल-ऐ-आज़म
===> मान गए मुग़ल-ऐ-आज़म
=====> भाग लिए मुग़ल-ऐ-आज़म
(मधुबाला नहीं मना पाई मुग़ल-ऐ-आज़म को, मल्लिका शेरावत को बुलाना पड़ा, राखी सावंत आएँगी तो?)

=> कोई मिल गया
===> ककक्रिश
=====> कककककिशमिश
('क' की संख्या पर कोई लगाम लगाओ भाई ... )

'दौड़' बनी तो 'रेस' बनी, 'रन' बनी तो 'भागम-भाग' भी बनी, अब बारी है, 'जम्प' और 'उछल-कूद' की।

'टशन' आई, 'फैशन' आई, तो 'टेंशन' लाओ, 'पेंशन' लाओ - बूढे लोगों को भी देखने में मज़ा आए।

मैं यहीं ब्रेक लगता हूँ... ये लिस्ट तो बहुत लम्बी जा रही है।

डिस्क्लेमर (तथ्य): खाली बैठे व्यक्ति के दिमाग में कुछ भी आ सकता है, जैसे मेरे दिमाग में आया :)

Sorry for being a bit late in writing this.

This Saturday I made myself lucky to visit Lonavla – A place of waterfalls. Finally, I set myself out for my “first adventurous trip” after coming to Pune and it was simply amazing.

Protagonists (7): Jharna, Nandita, Trupti, Savita, Shambhu, Jigar, Praveen

We booked a Qualis and started at 7:30 in the morning, but spent around 2 hrs in Pune itself picking people from their respective places. Played UNO on the way, so could not concentrate much on the sceneries en route, which I felt later, we should have.
Reached Lonavla at around 10:30. When we got down from the cab after reaching the place, the weather was awesome with wind at full speed. We were busy clicking photographs and there it comes - RAIN. It started with little showers and turned into a heavy downpour in no time.

Initially being hesitant in getting wet, the feeling was completely washed away by the showers in the face as we leapt towards one of the waterfalls (out of many facing us) in the downpour itself. A miscalculation here: Except me and Jigar, everyone took their mobile phones along with them and Shambhu’s digicam too. For some it was intentional while others were just carried away by the excitement and forgot to leave them back in the cab.

Jharna’s handbag came to rescue the ruined gadgets but little did it help. The damage was already done. Though we were in full rain, completely soaked, we didn’t stop clicking photographs putting a shade of hands around the camera and mobiles. Little did we realize that the water had found a way into the gadgets?
So, the cost of the trip was Shambhu’s camera and all the Sony Ericsson phones (except mine, Jigar had Nokia) we had. Some of them are able to revive themselves while others are still to be brought back to life. So, the photographs are awaited till these gadgets start breathing again.

The Giant Waterfall: The scenario was like this. We are enjoying in a waterfall. Suddenly, we see another waterfall far away. A mutual decision to reach there. Hit that waterfall. Then the next and the next… Jharna evolved to be a falling girl (she didn’t miss any opportunity to slip, or fall), Nandita evolved to be a fish (she even lied down in one of the waterfalls), Trupti and Savita were quite cautious with their steps (thankfully!). In this scheme of things, we happened to hit a giant waterfall all set to mesh up anything that comes its way. The force was terrific and we could see the force increasing. Some of us sat at one of the slim legs of the waterfall but not for long. The water was hitting very hard at our backs. And it was so loud that we had to literally shout to make ourselves hear. There was a Vada-Pav, tea-coffee shop nearby this waterfall. It was so cold around that even a 50 Rs./tea cup won’t hurt you.

Serendipity: After enjoying this – one of the heaviest waterfalls around, we decided to come back to our cab. On the way, out of the excitement of exploring the place, we took a different route and kept moving until we discovered that we are lost. But the place where we were lost was such a beauty. Pristine it was! It was greener than the greenest and enclosed by a wire fence. The only disappointment was: Our camera had already been feasted upon by the cruel rains. So, couldn’t click the shots there :(

We did some calculations, listening to the voices of people shouting far away to figure out a way out of this scenic place. Somehow, we found our way back. I actually had my only fall of the trip on this way. Trying to be over smart, I thought of jumping over a small water stream while others followed a decent route. I jumped and landed on a rock which was not firm on the ground. The rock rolled over but the momentum took me forward (with a lost balance) only to make me fall in the mud. The ugly face of the fall: This was the only place till now, which didn’t have clear water. The group had a nice laugh on my fall. I would say I was lucky that we didn’t have the camera at that time, though Nandita managed to get some shots on her mobile while I was cleaning myself in the stream water.

Lost and Found: After conquering a series of waterfalls (one after the other) and Bushy Dam, we started towards the “Shooting Point”. We found “Amby Valley” and “Air Force Station” on the way but only Armed Forces personals are allowed to enter, so moved ahead. We got down at “Shooting Point” and left the cab on the road. We had moved just about 8-10 meters in the chilling wind without realizing what is following us. When we turned back, we found that our cab is lost, even the road was not visible. Such was the density of clouds. But again, the place with its ultimate beauty was just like a meadow. And we could realize its real beauty only when the clouds were carried away by the wind and there it spreads in front of us - the green expanse.

We climbed up, we climbed down, we shot, we slipped, we fell, we ran, we did all fun that we could in the beautiful space. Away from the project, away from the work, away form any kind of tension, it was a day.
We were completely drenched for 12 continuous hours. The funny thing, even if we (boys) had extra changing clothes with us, we didn’t feel like changing. We were in rains the whole time, so no point in changing clothes if you don’t have an umbrella. The girls in the group proved to be “the intelligent beings” (at least here) to get themselves changed and even had umbrellas.

The bad part: Such trips usually have some disappointing parts. But we didn't have any except that the driver of the Qualis was new to the routes and he didn’t have much knowledge about the places and the routes. Result – so many U-Turns. We had about 8-10 of them during the day. Time waste! U-turn is not just a U-turn; you also have to cover a section of route again. Result – Didn’t get enough time to visit Khandala.

On the way back, it was all Jharna and Nandita, the singing sensations of the group. These girls have the lyrics of each song by heart (along with the dance steps, of course), howsoever latest the song is. The talent is amazing.

We were back in Pune at around 10:30 PM. I still wet, entered my room at 11:30 PM. Had a bath, made myself banana shake, brushed my teeth and off to sleep at 12:10.

Special thanks to Shambhu that he was always ready with his money bank to buy the Vada-Pavs, tea-coffeee, pakodas, bhajjis or any other eatables, anytime, anywhere – on roads, inside the waterfalls, at the dam, the shooting point and all other places that I have missed. A twist here too: His wallet along with the money, the cards etc… was left with Jharna (in the protective bag) when she got down at her place and resultantly, Shambhu had to spend his Sunday sleeping and feeding on friend’s pockets :)

All in all, a memorable trip! My first from Pune and hence one of my best weekends here with a wonderful group of friends.

Highlights:
[1] Waterfalls – There are plenty
[2] Bushy Dam – Consisted of three waterfalls in itself.
[3] Shooting Point – Movies are shot here.
[4] Lions Point – Couldn’t see much because of very dense fog. Even the place was a little dirty because of a commercialization.
[5] Walvan Dam – The surrounding area is all gardens, though we couldn’t witness much because of the “Strictly Private…” notices.[6] The moment I took my feet off my shoes. What a moment man, really! My feet breathed like anything.

Points to remember (learning, as they say):
[1] Average expenditure per head if go by cab (from Pune): Rs 400
[2] Trekking shoes – Beware of the slippery rocks! You slip one, you slip all!
[3] Extra changing clothes plus towel
[4] Most Imp: Leave your mobile phones in the cab, if you really want to enjoy. If you are “I can’t live without my phone” types, have a water proof poly bag handy. The falls won’t show mercy to your costly gadgets and you know these electronic gadgets are too much water prone.

Thanks for dialing in. Stay tuned for the pics!