DROPZONE

Around the Annapurnas in ten days, part one

2011-12-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

The story of my most memorable trek yet.....

Saturday 12 November, 2011: New Delhi to Kathmandu
6 a.m.There are six of us flying from Delhi to Kathmandu this morning. We plan to spend the day exploring Kathmandu, and to leave for Besisahar by bus tomorrow, where the trek begins (or so we think). We meet at Terminal Three in New Delhi - Aditya and Nisha from Chennai, Abhilasha, I and Sekhar from Hyderabad and Asheesh from Delhi. Only four of us will complete the circuit, but let me not get ahead of the story.

9 p.m.The journey has begun badly for both Sekhar and me. The poor guy did not have a passport and could not board the flight. He is now travelling by road and will reach Kathmandu by tomorrow afternoon (it turns out that Indian citizens need either passport or voter's ID card when flying in to Nepal, but neither of the two if they drive in). My tragedy, thought far less tragic, is crippling. I'm down with severe diarrhea and have been pumping myself with medicines non stop.

Thamel is a typical touristy place, but unlike any I've seen before. It is bright and colorful, and sells everything that a traveler might desire or need at the beginning or end of his journey. I especially love the Sherpa and North Face stores, although they are a tad expensive. But there are good fakes too; and if you know how bargain well, you can get great deals. I paid 4000 NR for the fake down jacket that was to save my life at subzero temperatures, when the quoted price was 6500 NR. And I'm not so hot at the fine art of price negotiation.

Sunday, 13th November 2011:Thamel, Kathmandu
11 am. My diarrhea continues unabated. Sekhar has finally reached, after 29 hours of travel by flights, taxis, rickshaws and god knows what else. I find that one of the joys of travelling is how special commonplace things become. I tied a scarf around my neck just now, and remembered how Girish had taught me to wear the scarf in this style. And this made me miss Girish so much, like I had last seen him years instead of weeks ago! Or perhaps sickness and dehydration is making me sentimental.
9pm. God knows who said it before but its true we are slaves of our stomachs. Kathmandu looks ten times more charming this evening, now that my belly cramps are gone and my appetite's back. I went for a short walk, bought a Terry Pratchett, and read it over a hot dal-rice-aaloo subzi dinner. Life is good again.

Monday, 14 Nov 2011: Kathmandu to Syange

Me and the yummy thukpa, at Besisahar

We no longer plan to begin the trek at Besisahar - one, because we have lost one day, and two, because we learn that Besisahar to Syange is now a motorable track and hence no longer fun. We left KTM at a quarter past seven in what has to be the most rickety bus being driven on this planet. The bus ride costs NR 480 per head and reaches Besisahar in about six hours. Had a bowl of delicious thukpa at Mt Kailash restaurent. Great food, but 350 bucks for a bowl of soup is a trifle worrying. Should we have budgeted for more than a thousand rupees a day?

You could start the trek at Besisahar, but it's a good idea to take the jeeps wherever they ply, because its better to be inside the jeep than outside where you would inhale the kilos of dust on the path. The trek is best started where the road, or what passes for a road in these parts, ends. Which is why I feel sad that the trekking path is getting shorter as the road keeps encroaching on what used to belong only to yaks, goats, and trekkers.

Besisahar Bus Station (no kidding!)

The jeep stand at Besisahar is next to a lovely stream. The jeep from Besisahar to Syanje costs 600 NR and the jeep ride makes the KTM-Besisahar bus ride look positively luxurious!! It is a beautiful mud track; beautiful and treacherous, because we drove over boulders and streams - and some of the latter are not gentle or meandering by any standards. We reached The New Waterfall hotel by 6.30 pm and the collective sigh of relief from all jeep passengers was hilarious. It's a comfortable hotel, and charges you 100 NR for a bed and blanket - this price will remain constant throughout the circuit. The lodges make money on the food you eat, so it's expected that you will eat at the same place that you sleep at. Since the menu is exactly the same at every teahouse in every village, and the food is universally delicious, it does not matter where you eat. I had a very satisfying egg curry and rice for 300 NR.

Day one - Tuesday, 15 Nov 2011: Syange to Dharapani. (17 km, 7.5 hours)
The first day of the climb - an ascent of over 600 metres. One of the tougher days. But also one of the most beautiful.
Syange to Jagat. 4km. 1 hour.

Route from Syange to Jagat

We left Syange at 8 am (we had planned to leave at 7, but we lingered over the pancakes and the great views). Syange to Jagat is a gentle climb, almost a walk. I wish I could describe what it feels like to walk next to a river that sings non-stop and is so clean that you can and do drink from it. It has to be experienced. Let me just say that back at sea level, I miss the background hum that was part of my life for those ten days. And it never sounds the same, the river has a different song in every village. The road from Besisahar has come upto Chamje now, so you could begin the trek in Chamje as well.

Jagat (1300m) to Chamje (1385m), 4km, 1.5 hours.

Sekhar faces a decision

There are two options to to choose from when you leave the village of Jagat. You could continue on the straight and narrow path that jeeps use, or you could follow the signboard on your left that says -"Way to Beautiful Old Trekking Route to Chamchhe and Manang". Of course, since we're suckers for lines like that, that's the route we took, but I'm told that the other is beautiful too, with a trail that continues by the river, and goes through a forest of pine trees and rhododendrons. The old trekking route will show you various abandoned guesthouses, and a waterfall with a rainbow. We stopped for tea at the predictably named Rainbow Waterfall guesthouse. It is important to remember to hydrate yourself well on this route, since you may not often feel thirsty. Ginger tea is a popular choice and is rather refreshing.
Chamje to Tal (1700m), 5 km, 2.5 hours

Tal

Chamje to Tal is a steep ascent of nearly 400 metres. It has some difficult bits, some stretches where you would feel grateful for a walking stick if you had one (I recommend one for this circuit, by the way). And the village of Tal....I'm going to try and describe it. After about two hours of climbing through a densely forested trail, you see a gate on top of small hill that says 'Welcome to Tal'. You start climbing the hill, happy for the rest your weary feet will get for a while, because you have planned to have lunch at Tal, the village that you read has been built on a former lake bed. You reach that gate, notice that the village is downhill, and then stand speechless for a while because the village has taken your breath away. There is blue lake on your left, and next to it, a villlage that looks like it belongs in a fairy tale. No picture can capture what the village looked like that afternoon.

Tal

Its a fifteen minute walk downhill to the village, and it's reputation of good food is well deserved. We had corn bread with vegetables and the ubiquitous dal-bhat set at the Paradise Hotel, and it was rather good. It was a leisurely meal; we took two hours over it, and made friends with some very interesting fellow trekkers. For me, that has been one of the most exciting things about Annapurna - how you meet people who are so different, and yet so alike, how it is so effortless to strike up conversations and friendships because you share this common love for the mountains.
Tal to Karte (1870m), 4 km, 1.5 hours
This one seems easy after the Chamje-Tal stretch. Karte is a sleepy little village and rather pretty, but not too many people stop here, because the bigger, more popular Dharapani is just an hour's walk away.
Karte to Dharapani (1900m), 2km, 45 min.
This one is a comfortable walk. Dharapani is a good place to spend the night, because the view in the morning is something that you will remember for a long time. The village lies in a canyon with mountains rising so high on both sides that one feels overwhelmingly small. And to feel small is isn't such a bad thing - it's great at straightening one's perspective. (So what was I worried about again? Really?) It was rather cold in the night, so I unpacked and wore my thermals here. And slept like a baby.

Day two - Wednesday, 16 Nov 2011: Dharapani to Chame, 16 km, 6.5 hours
An 800 m ascent. One tough stretch, rest a breeze.
Dharapani (1900m) to Bagarchhap (2160 m), 2km, 1hour

Asheesh and Abhi, at Bagarchap

It continues to be a walk through pine forests - the bleak terrain of the likes of yak Kharka are still four days away. There's a very tempting detour between Dharapani and Bagarchhap, and I'd like to take it if I ever do this route again. They call it the Danfe trek - it goes to a villlage at 2300 metres height through some untouched and beautiful jungle trails. It would need about half a day's climb from Dharapani. All this I know from a yellow board that was right next to a narrow trail that seemed to disappear at the next bend.

Bagarchhap is surrounded by apple orchards. It has some great apple pie that they serve with warm custard. Yumm. Also, Bagarchap is where the Buddhist culture starts becoming noticeable. From here onwards, we will see prayer wheels in every village. Remember to always walk with the prayer wheels on your right.
Bagarchap to Damaq (2200m), 2 km, 1 hour
Another gentle stretch. It's becoming a little too easy, I think. Ha! It's good I know so little about what the rest of the day is about to bring.
Damaq to Thanchowk (2570 m), 6 km, 2.5 hours

Sekhar and Jeremie, on the way to Thanchowk

This one HAS to be the toughest stretch so far. It's practically a 45 degrees incline for the larger part of the way. Landslides have destroyed the older trail, which is something that Asheesh and Abhilasha discovered to their utter annoyance. They took the older trail, which turned out to have a river flowing through it. Abhilasha had to walk with completely drenched shoes for the rest of this day. The older trail meets up with the new one somewhere halfway. The route continues to be beautiful and woody, and you can see the Manaslu peak in the distance. We had lunch at Thankchowk at the at the Chooyouu restaurant. It was quite nice.

Thanchok to Chame (2710 m), 6km, 2 hours
Another easy stretch, with some great views, specially near Koto, which is a quiet little village just before Chame. Koto also has a Tibetan monastery which wikitravel recommends that you visit, but we were looking forward to getting to Chame and continued ahead. There's a checkpost and some tiny shops in Koto, where you can buy warm clothes, candies, etc.

To Chame...

After walking in so much quiet beauty for hours, the bustle in Chame comes as a shock. It is the adminstrative headquarters of Manang district, and has multiple shops that sell practically everything. They have a police headquarters here, and a doctor, and the biggest shocker - Internet!! Maybe I can go home and suggest to the Deloitte leadership that we set up an office here. I would never need vacation.

We stayed at the Maryasandi Mandala, which was a very comfortable hotel, and I confess I paid for two buckets of hot water and had a lovely bath. The next bath I have will be in Muktinath, just about a week from this day. Chame also has a large school, and a Stupa next to it. When we set up office here, we could volunteer to teach at the school on weekends. There's a miniscule hot water spring too, which can be reached by crossing a bridge at the end of the village. We had to ask around for the whereabouts of the spring, it's quite well hidden, and worth the trouble.

.....to be continued....

Day three - Thursday, 17 Nov 2011: Chame to Pisang (3250 m), 16 km, 5 hours.....

Around the Annapurnas in ten days, part two

2011-12-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Day three - Thursday, 17 Nov 2011: Chame (2710m) to Lower Pisang (3250m), 16 km, 5.5 hours

Lamjung peak, at 6:00 am in Chame

I woke up in Chame in with Asheesh banging on the door and shouting that we had to see the view outside if we wanted to die of happiness. You can see the Manaslu and the Lamjung covered in snow and sunshine from Chame, and though we did not die of happiness, I have to admit it was something.

We left Chame at 7.15 in the morning, and we seemed to be almost the first group to leave - something about Chame makes people comfortable enough to want to laze; but you need to shake the comfort off and leave the bustle of the village behind, because there's a lot of loveliness that lies in wait.
Chame to Bhratang (2850m), 7km, 2 hours

Bhratang to Dukhur Pokhari

This is a fairly level walk, with about 150 m of ascent over 7 km. This is the kind of path where people sing and talk as they walk. And take a lot of pictures. Bhratang is a quiet, sleepy little village, and we did not stop here at all.
Bhratang to Dukhur Pokhari (3240m), 6 km, 1.5 hours
The surroundings change constantly on this trek, but in some places the change is really stark. The path between Bhratang and Dukhur Pokhari continues by the river, but the pine forests are less dense here. Part of the trail is cut on the side of a cliff, so although the views are great, I would not recommend looking down and walking at the same time. The path climbs steeply in some places, especially after you cross the old bridge. The air is filled with the scent of pine cones, and I cannot help but think that very soon, the road will come here too, and it will bring with it fat Punjabis, and there will be candy wrappers here on this path, next to the pine needles.
But all that is in the future. Maybe they won't come. It was beautifully bright and sunny day, perfect for walking, and no one can think morbid thoughts for too long in such a lovely place. We had lunch in Dukhur Pokhari at a teahouse where things were really slow, but they usually are, in this part of the world. But we were making good time and did not mind so much.
Dukhur Pokhari to Lower Pisang (3250m), 6 km, 1.5 hours
This is a dusty path through tall pines and rhododendrons, and does not ascend at all. You walk for about an hour and a half in complete silence and wilderness, interrupted by the occasional herd of mules, cross a couple of streams, and find yourself in the busy village of Lower Pisang. There are many good teahouses here, and the one we stayed in, the Eco hotel, was very comfortable. They lit a wood fire for us in the dining area, around which we sat, talked and dried our clothes.

Urgen Chholing Monastery, Upper Pisang

Upper Pisang lies 60 metres higher and 30 minutes away from Lower Pisang, and can be reached by crossing a bridge near the prayer wheel. This is a village built on the sides of a forested hill, and has the remnants of very medieval Tibetan culture. The monastery in this village (the Urgen Chholing Monastery) is said to be one of the most beautiful in this region, and we went to visit it. It truly is a marvel; even though it was swarming with about fifty tourists, it was still peaceful. The monks were serving ginger lemon tea, and looked so happy that I wanted to sit there, talk to them and never leave.

A lot of trekkers prefer to sleep in Upper Pisang than Lower Pisang because they want to take the upper trail to Manang on the following day. That's a decision you will have to take. There are two trails from Pisang to Manang. The lower one is shorter, and goes through the most beautiful pine forests of this circuit (not to mention the last pine forests of this circuit, because Manang onwards, the route is stark and barren). The upper trail, which starts from Upper Pisang, takes an extra two hours, but has some great mountain views, and has the additional advantage of being higher and hence recommended for acclimatization. Abhilasha and Asheesh chose the upper trail, while the rest of us decided to take the lower one. Aditya was beginning to get a steadily worsening headache and was beginning to worry.

"Want to take it easy, or want to be tough?"

Day four - Friday, 18 Nov 2011: Pisang to Manang (3600m), 12 km, 5 hours
I woke up with my left shoulder hurting so bad that I spent 20 minutes convincing myself that it wasn't angina. I have large bruises on both my shoulders, and putting my face out of the sleeping bag into the bitter cold is agony. I decide to swallow my pride and give my sleeping bag to the porter. Aditya's headache has continued through the night and he hasn't been able to sleep at all. We have our first acute mountain sickness (AMS) casualty. He decides to descend and finds a porter to accompany him down. Abhilasha and Asheesh leave for the upper trail to Manang at 7.30 a.m., and Sekhar, Nisha and I start on the lower trail at eight a.m.

The upper trail goes through Ghyaru and Ngwal and has much to recommend it - it is sunny and offers great views of the Annapurna range. But it is also the tougher one, with steep ascents through the major part. Asheesh and Abhilasha raved about the delightful sights they had seen on the way, but it did tire them out.

The lower trail, on the other hand, turned out to be a dream. It ascends so gently that it seems not to ascend at all! It passes through Humde, where the Manang airport is being built and Bhraga, where you can get some great cakes and a really memorable yak steak. We had lunch at The New Yak restaurent where you can also buy and swap books. Bhraga to Manang is another gentle half hour walk.

Manang. Doesn't the word itself say how wonderfully romantic the place would be? I fell in love with the village at first sight. It's surrounded by views that are even more screensaver like than the rest of the trek. Half of the village is the tourist hub, with every convenience money can buy. Do not miss the Manang culture museum or the projection hall, the former for a feel of the 'manangi pride' and the latter for a once in a lifetime experience of watching a movie at 3600 metres above sea level. The moviehall has a fireplace, and they serve you ginger tea and popcorn as you watch the movie.

But keep walking, Manang is more than just these bells and whistles. Without warning, the street turns a corner and you find yourself transported back in time where Manangis live like they've lived for centuries. The architecture is unlike anything you have ever seen, the alleyways look like only black and white pictures should be taken of them.

I'd like to come and stay here for a month.

Day five - Acclimatization in Manang

Abhilasha with the Praken Gompa monk

We stayed in a hotel (it's too big to be called a teahouse) called Tilicho House, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. The food is great, the dining area is warm, the staff is friendly, and they have hot water. It is recommended that you stay an extra day in Manang because AMS is a reality that does not even spare the Sherpas. The air feels thinner from Manang onwards, and you find yourself taking deeper breaths often. It is also recommended that you attend the daily lectures that the Himalayan Rescue Association holds in Manang. There is a doctor who is extremely well informed. And he's rather good looking too, but that's not why you should attend his lecture. He gives some very useful tips on how to sail smoothly through the next three days to the Thorung La pass. The acclimatisation principle is to "climb high and sleep low". There are many day trips one can take from Manang to the 'climb high' part. A map of times, distances, and locations of the day trips has been placed next to the central stupa in the village. Abilasha chose the Praken Gompa. The other four of us chose the Ice Lake, and spent the day wishing we we had gone with Abhi's choice.

Acclimatisation trek to Ice lake

Ice Lake

Let me be honest. Ice lake is a damn hard climb. Now that that has been said, I don't need to dwell on how Dorota and I asked the Shyam the porter every twenty minutes - "Are we there yet?" It's four hours of straight climbing, a 1000 metre ascent, and it acclimatised us like nobody's business. It played hell with my knees because the three hour descent was as steep as the climb had been. But the view at the top was entirely worth it.

We watched "Seven years in Tibet" at the projection hall that night.
Day six - Sunday, 20 Nov 2011: Manang (3600m) Yak Kharka (4050m), 9km, 3.5 hours
.....to be continued.....

Around the Annapurnas in ten days, part three

2011-12-09T23:21:00.000-08:00

Day six - Sunday, 20 Nov 2011, Manang (3600m) to Yak Kharka(4050m), 9km, 3.5 hours

Asheesh, on the way to Yak Kharka

Another beautiful sunny morning at Manang, another sumptuous breakfast at the Tilicho - I promised myself I will come and stay here for a month someday and a write a book. Ganesh, the waiter at Tilicho who loved us because we were the first Indians he had seen in years, promised to get me the room with the best view, whenever I decided to come again.

Starting at Manang, you can either stop at Yak Kharaka, or at Letdar, which is an extra hour's trek from Yak Kharka. We were wary of AMS after the multiple urban legends of death and destruction floating around, so we decided to do the short stretch this day. Manang to Yak Kharka is a treeless, dusty path, and it is beautiful in morbid kind of way. You can see the Annapurnas II, III and IV peaks from Yak Kharka.

We stopped at the Gangapurna Teahouse, which we thought had the prettiest dining room in the circuit. How do they get so many lovely rugs and curtains so far up? All they have is yaks and mules, and they've managed to create so much impressive splendour! The teahouse also had a bookshelf where I exchanged my third book and picked up a fourth. We spent the day sitting around the fire, talking an reading. This kind

Gangapurna Lodge, Yak

of acclimatization is so much better than hauling yourself up to Ice Lake over seven hours!

Day seven - Monday, 21 Nov 2011, Yak Kharka to Thorang Phedi (4450m), via Letdar, 6 km, 3.5 hours

Another crucial decision awaits at this point. Should you sleep in Thorang Phedi (4450 m) or the High Camp (4850m)? The former offers the advantage of the lower altitude, so there's a good chance that you might sleep well. But you will have to start at 4 a.m., to miss the high winds which begin at 11a.m. at the top of the Thorung La. Staying at the High Camp, means less ascent in the morning. And it offers some great views of the surrounding mountains. We chose Thorang Phedi, and when we heard the horror stories the next day, of friends who did not sleep a wink at the High Camp, we were very glad we did.

We left Yak Kharka at 8.30 a.m. Its a bleak three and a half hour climb to Thorang Phedi. The climb is not terribly steep, except in some parts, but be prepared for some breathlessness and tiredness, now that the celebrated 4000 meter mark has been crossed. This day we walked even less than the previous, but it will be more than made up for, tomorrow. Tomorrow is the Day of The Pass.

The path to Thorang Phedi

Thorang Phedi is reached after three hours of walking among a landscape that begins to resemble the moon. Even the small bushes that we saw till yak Kharka have all but disappeared. The last 45 minutes of the trek is on the side of a cliff, which is well known for landslides and has multiple loose stones. The sight of the two lodges in Thorang Phedi is a welcome relief. People lie around dozing in the sun, reading and talking lazily till it becomes too cold to sit outside, which happens very early in these areas. Then you move into the dining hall, which has a fire and great food and coffee.

The Thorung La lodge in Thorang Phedi, is run by two brothers, both of whom look like Bob Marley. I feel terrible that I have forgotten their names now. They run a lovely place on top of cold, unfriendly mountain, make great apple pies and coffee, and play some great rock and roll music in the dining room. The contrast is interesting: biting winds and bleak rocks outside, warm light from orange lanterns, smell of freshly brewed coffee and sound of forty animated conversations inside. The most common question is - "What time do you plan to start tomorrow morning?".... We intend to start at 4 a.m. Tomorrow will be the hardest day so far - we will climb for 4 hours to the Thorung la pass at 5416 metres, and then downhill to Muktinath, another 4 hours trek. I had a little headache since the morning and the1000m ascent the next days was alarming.

Thorung La Lodge, Thorang Phedi

Day eight - Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011, Thorang Phedi to Muktinath
Sekhar was hyperexcited at 4 am: "Guys! This is the day we've been working towards! Literally the 'high point' (air quotes and giggle here) of our trek!". Breakfast at the Thoring La Lodge was a surprisingly cheery affair even at that hour, with one of the Bob Marley brothers playing something I did not recognize on his guitar. I confess I wore five layers of clothes that morning. With headlamps on, Abhilasha said we looked more like miners than trekkers.

Almost there...

Thorang Phedi (4450 m) to High Camp: 1 km, 1 hr: We climbed in silence and darkness, for an hour, till we reached High Camp at about half past five, where I gave voice to the truth - "This is hard!!!". They say I looked quite angry when I said this. I don't think I was angry, but it had been a surprisingly steep climb, and it was so cold that the water had frozen in my water bottle. We continued plodding over the zigzag pathways, through the loose rocks and screes. It almost feels like walking on the moon.

High Camp (4850 m) to Thorung La Pass: 5 km, 2.30 hr: The sun rose by about 7 am, things started looking almost beautiful at this point, and there came into view a blessed teahouse! I will not forget the taste of that coffee as long as I live, and the fact that I was barely able to hold the cup, my hand was shaking so much. I remembered reading that it's important to find your pace and stick to it. It's good advice. Abhilasha and I talked and bonded as we climbed, and we joked about how our next holiday would have to be at a warm place to get this cold out of our bones. Twice we got all worked up and excited because we thought we saw the pass, and it turned out to be yet another place to cross. But we were having fun walking in that barren beauty now, and were almost surprised when we reached the chorten where we saw two of our Isareli acquaintainces from the day before dancing. We had reached the Thorung La. The large chorten is photographed with a vengeance, by every one who has shed blood and sweat (and seen it turn to ice) in trying to make it here. A couple runs a tea shop here too.

It's a long way down.

Thorung Pass (5416 m) to Muktinath (3800m): 10 km, 4 hrs: The descent is rather steep. The path seems endlessly long, but has some great views of the Dhaulagiri, and some delightful photo opportunities. You can stop for lunch after about 3 hours of descent, at the place the locals call the Phedi, but the map calls Charabu. The descent continues after Charabu, less steeply, and vegetation starts to appear. Muktinath is known for its temples, and those are the first structures to appear. The lodges are about a half hour's descent beyond the temples, so you can visit them now, or the next day. We decided on the latter.
There are about 15 lodges in Muktinath, and we were too tired to care where we stayed, so we walked into almost the first pretty looking structure, and we picked a winner. The Bob Marley guest house boasts of a chef who has worked in Melbourne for over ten years, and man, the food was delicious. And the hot shower felt like a blessing from the heavens.

Day nine - Wednesday, 24 Nov 2011,Muktinath to Jomsom by jeep
We visited the Muktinath temple complex at six in the morning. It has buddhist gompas and hindu temples in a walled enclosure. One of the most interesting among these is the Vishnu Temple, a recent addition to this place, which is built just below a spring believed to be sacred. 108 water spouts surrouns the small temple, and devotees shower under all the spouts - it is believed to wash away the sins of all your past lives. My friends did braved the cold and take the holy shower. I'm told it's as cold as I imagined - there were icicles formed under the taps! I figure my sins are not too many, I can live with them.

Kagbeni

The path to Jomsom is no longer the trekker's path. We took a jeep - it costs 330 NR per head to Kagbeni, which is about halfway to Jomsom, and is strongly recommended for its castle and monastery.
Kagbeni: Kagbeni is a village on the border of Mustang, at the confluence of two holy rivers, and hence quite sacred. We met Dara, who works at the Yak Donald's (yes) teahouse and will take you for a guided tour of the village for 1000 NR. It was a very good deal. I will remember the place for its 600 year old monastery and the ruined palace where we met the grandson of the erstwhile king. He was repairing parts of the castle for his family to stay in and invited us to sit in the room where six monks were chanting prayers for the village. The village also has the border checkpost for the Mustang Circuit trek. The checkpost doubles up as a museum, and does everything in its power to convince you that Mustang should be the next trek you plan. We had lunch at the Yak Donald - Maxine tried the Yak burger, and she said it was good. But then she likes most things so her opinion is hard to credit. The local apple brandy was terrible and I do not recommend it at all. The jeep from Kagbeni to Jomsom cost us 660 NR each, because we had to book the entire jeep. One seat costs 330 NR, and the driver won't move until he has all seats full, so if you don't want to wait forever, you may have to buy multiple seats.

The dusty road to Marpha

The jeep ride from Kagbeni to Jomsom was packed with excitement, and not just because of the cute Belgian guy sitting next to me. The road exists only in the mind of the driver - he drives over boulders and rivers like he doesn't see them, all the while playing the cheesiest hindi songs at the upper decibel limit of human hearing. The high point of the ride has to be Sekhar explaining to Maxine, what the song "Chunari-chunari" was about. I'm laughing even now as I'm writing and remembering -

"So he's saying he wants to touch her shawl..."

"Why...?"

"Ummm..."

We reached Jomsom at six in the evening at stayed at the Trekker's Inn. Also recommended. Good food, good apple brandy, extremely friendly and talkative owners, and the ATM machine is across the road. It works intermittently.

Day ten - Thursday, 25 Nov 2011, Jomsom to Marpha and back
We walked to Marpha, the apple capital of Nepal the next day. I had insisted on this leg because I had read that the best food in the circuit was to be found in this village. It was certainly good. And we gave a lot of business to the local trinket sellers - the tibetan style knick knacks were irresistable.

Thakkali Thali

Friday, 26 Nov 2011: Jomsom to Pokhara by flight. Let me just say that the domestic flights in Nepal are one of the must have experiences, just like the jeep rides. And also, the Nepali thakkali cuisine is killer. Must try.

Saturday, 27 Nov 2011: Pokhara to Kathmandu by flight And all good things come to an end. But we did have one last night painting the town red, pub hopping and listening to the local bands belt out Pink Floyd and Bruno Mars in almost the same breath. And yes, I recommend the cookies made at Hot Breads in Thamel.

Sunday, 28 Nov 2011: Kathmandu to Delhi.
I'm back in the other world, the world of clean clothes and hot showers, and friends and family. But there's too much clutter. It's clutter that I love and need, but it's clutter still. Life was so much more fun, when all the decisions I needed to take were around how much weight I want to carry, how much I want to walk and what I want to eat. But it's ok, I'll go to that world again. Soon.

Next year: Mustang Circuit. Amen.

Annapurna, here we come....

2011-11-11T12:10:00.001-08:00

12 November 2011

2.00 am.

Three months of planning and dreaming, and six iterations of packing a rucksack are behind me. I will be in Kathmandu in a few hours, and starting the Annapurna trek tomorrow. I've been reading so much about the trek that I'm quoting lines without remembering where I read them...

"Leave the village with the Maryasandi river to your right....ten minutes later, you will come across a stream with a wooden bridge across it....." Yes I will!

The trek itinerary that Sekhar and I have created so diligently looks like a consulting assignment output. I'm filled with anticipation at the world I'm going to be seeing over the next two weeks, and the people I'm going to meet. In about 5 hours from now, I will meet four people at the airport that I've never met before, and at the end of two weeks I will either loathe them like I've never loathed anyone, or they will become my friends for life...but I will know them really well.

We will climb for as much as 10 hours on some days, we'll eat exotic things, we'll sleep in bags, we'll rent and ride cycles, and we'll meet lots of crazy people. Not the least of which is the guide Santaman who sent us a kilometer long email in reply to the one liner we sent him. It was a lovely mail, describing the beauties of Nepal, in the most lyrical prose, and it ended with:

You are welcome to spread over your footprint in our holy Himalayan Region.

"HIMALAYAS ARE HERE TO BRING TEARS IN YOUR EYES"

Let's go get the tears.

The exec summary of the itinerary

The pictures above are sourced from: 1. http://chrisupson.blogspot.com/2007/11/around-annapurna-in-10-days.html; 2. http://www.volunteers.org.np/Nepal_Maps/trekking_index.php?page=apt

The Emperor of All Maladies

2011-11-10T04:40:00.000-08:00

In a world where being a fan of fiction is looked down upon like few things are, I fiercely defend my love for novels and stories. "Escapist literature!" - my father used to get so annoyed at the P.G Wodehouses I was addicted to. "I never read stories, I read to improve my mind, not for entertainment" - said the guy I was trying to impress with my large bookshelf, his lip curling in disgust at my Terry Pratchetts and Ashok Bankers.

My affection for fiction comes unabated. I will stop reading novels when I no longer get the tingling feeling of anticipation when I hold an unread book in my hand, the anticipation, that in a few minutes some people will come alive in the here and now, whose destinies I will get involved in, whose troubles will make me cry and whose joys will make laugh. I share this passion for creative fiction with my little sister Leena, who is the only other person I know who can inhale 500 page novels in one afternoon. And Azar Nafisi agrees with me:

“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.”

Non fiction can do this too sometimes. I've just finished reading Siddharth Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, and if any book can make you hold your breath and keep you awake at night, this one can. I recieved two copies of the book on my birthday (thank you, Sekhar and Anal!), and its one of the best birthday presents ever! Before 12 pages were done, I knew I was going to love it as much as the most thrilling fiction I've read. Mukherjee calls it the 'biography of cancer'. The book is that, and so much more. It's a thrilling page turner of a book, where the science and the discoveries blend so effortlessly with the human joys and foibles. No courtroom drama, or detective with magnifying glass can keep you so riveted for 600 pages. The stories pour out one after another, of how disfiguring surgeries acquired near religious fervour then lost favour, of the decades of war between tobacco manufacturers and activists, of gene discoveries that were as much chance as years of passionate work...And then there are human stories of victory and defeat, like the Jimmy fund and the Herceptin trial, that make you well up.

The book won a Pulitzer this year. But that's not why I recommend it. Read it because never before has science been written about in a way that reminds of poetry and detective fiction.

Bol

2011-09-18T02:19:00.000-07:00

I wrote this formula about six months ago for how I choose movies to watch:

Alien movies, no. Animation, yes. Disaster movies, no. Romantic comedies, yes. Horror movies, never. Period movies definitely. Family tragedies rarely, fauji movies, not even on the pain of death. Fantasy genre, always.
And then I watched Bol last night. The movie is disturbing at multiple levels, not the least of which is this: the passionate appreciation I feel for this movie might mean that I have overcome my absolute aversion of morbid films, that I have finally grown up!

I watched the movie with Divya, who's one of the most enthusiastic people I know. She loves and watches movies with an unequalled avidity (no, maybe Anmol can equal, or even top that avidity. It'll be a close contest). We argued about the movie on the way back - Divya feels that the film could have achieved so much more than it did, that the power of the story was diluted because the filmmakers wanted to make it more watchable. I disagreed, I don't remember when I've been so moved by a story.
I came back and read about 60 reviews, and it turns out that most reviewers echo D's sentiments. Bol was created by Shoaib Mansoor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoaib_Mansoor), the same guy who made the Khuda ke Liye (note to self: must watch this one soon). The general opnion seems to be that the first film wins because it has one single theme (terrorism) underlying the drama, while Bol may have bitten off more than it could chew, with a story that weaves in multiple issues, each more tragic than the other.

The movie is already a blockbuster in Pakistan, and it's doing well in India, US and Dubai; it does not really need me to defend it. But then again, I need to say this: What.A.Movie. To say that Shoaib Mansoor may not have lived up to the expectations he created with his first film is to deny the ache that this movie is capable of creating in your heart. It's the story of a family that lives in Lahore in the present time - humongous shopping malls and rock concerts coexist in perfect believability with a world that does not permit girls to get educated. Its the story of a family that conspires to live with dignity in a world that is so harsh and unfriendly that it's terrifying. A family that protects the father who terrorises and hates them (and who they hate turn), because they do not know how to live without him. The movie moves from one heart breaking tragedy to another, with small bits of respite that are really small and really few. But they warm up your heart. The affection the sisters have for a brother that their father despises, the romance with the next door boy, the neighbours who secretly look after the family - I don't agree that these dilute the power of the movie. Because hope can be as powerful and as stark as the truth.
But heartbreakingly morbid as it is, Bol wins because it has actors that live the part. Even the loathsome father, Hakim (played by Manzar Sehbai), is someone that one can understand, and maybe even forgive a little. The female lead Humaima Malik, who plays the eldest daughter in the family, can be nothing but what she is in the movie - an unwanted child in an impoverished household, torn between fear and anger for the world she part of and cannot escape. That she is a 25 year old with a facebook fanpage is shocking, and a little unreal. The courtesan Meena (actress Iman Ali) who lives and breathes Umrao Jaan and Pakeeza, is awesome too. Contrast this with the Katrina Kaif and Imran Khan in Mere Brother ki Dulhan that I saw on Friday - they cannot be anything other than Katrina and Imran! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed MBKD too, for all sorts of different reasons, and I adore Ms Kaif for the joy she brings into our lives. But she's not unforgettable. Not yet.

I recommend Bol. It's a great movie. And hey, it has Atif Aslam too! I did not know what the guy looked like until yesterday, and I think like what I see.

Coorg

2011-08-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

Long weekends and adventurous friends

I love these, as I love this Scotland of the East
The mists are hazy, and the rafting is crazy

So thank you Coorg, for so many things

the roads through the jungle

the home-stay, and the taboo

the Namdroling monastery

Hunting high and low, for the elusive coorgi food
Struggling against forces that threaten to kill the mood

the silly jokes

and friends who let you be

The never ending curiosity - I wonder what lies behind THAT bend?
If this is madness, may the madness never end.

“So how do YOU know Natasha?” Part One

2011-08-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Or, MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING

Pre's fairy tale home

All weekends from now till the end of time, are going to try and compete with this one, and slink back ashamed. On the awesomeness scale of one to 100, last weekend just made a hundred and fifty. If it wasn’t for the insect bites I’m covered in (and can’t stop scratching), I may have found it hard to believe that I did not dream up the last couple of days. That and the fact that I’m humming as I write, the random song Prerna taught me as we were climbing Deer Hill -“One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow…..”

There are two reasons why I’m sitting up writing this even though my eyelids feel heavy with a wonderful cetirizine induced haze (for reason for cetirizine, refer to insect bites above). One, a memory as brilliant as this deserves to be saved, so that I can revisit it whenever things become drab. And two, like our grand old (and 23 years of age) cynic Prerna Nair said, this wedding has reaffirmed our faith in the sordid institution of marriage. Maybe the thing isn’t that sordid after all.

So here it is, the pensieve that I will create and keep, to visit often:

Saturday, 06 August, 2011, 7.00 a.m. I stumbled out, sleepy eyed, of the NSL Express and called Pre who instructed me to take an auto to ‘Bibi ka Makbara’ where she was waiting for me on her scooter. I sat on the scooter and felt two years melt away in the next instant. It was a ten minute drive to her house, and we did not even waste thirty seconds in small talk. That’s what best friends are like – it’s so easy to pick up threads of conversations that were started weeks and months ago.

The view from Hanuman Tekri

But one sight of Pre’s Aurangabad home can make you completely forget what you wanted to talk about. You know how, when you go trekking, you see those homes in hills that look like they belong in fairytales, and you wonder – wow, who gets to live in places like this? We know the answer now – it’s Pre’s parents. The house is right at the foothill of a hill called hanuman tekri – it’s a hill covered in every shade of green that you ever dreamt of, and some that you did not even dream of. And when mists roll over it and around it, you just know that the whole rest of your life is going to be just fine. I know this because I went for a walk, to the temple on top of the hill (women are not allowed to enter, but I no longer like to fight silly bigotry, so I said my hellos to the orange god from the door), sat where I could see for miles around and thought about a hundred things. And came back knowing that all was going to be well.

Pre’s parents are as warm and as full of life as you would expect them to be – where else would she get this awesomeness from? We had breakfast, resisted the temptation to climb the other hills around their house, and headed to the pair who had planned a wedding ceremony that was going to make all wedding ceremonies pale in comparison.
10.00 a.m. Sam’s home.

Sameer and Natasha

Natasha is one of the most beautiful women I have ever known, and she looked more radiant than she has ever looked. It warms up my heart to see the happiness and the calm that she seems filled with. No pre-wedding jitters for this girl. She knows she’s where she belongs and I feel so happy for her. And Sam looks like he’s sitting on top of the world, as he very likely is. And my happiness for Natasha grew tenfold as I met Sam’s parents – they were so enthused over the unique ceremony that their children had dreamt up. Not for them the regret of missing out the traditional wedding drama, the crowds of hundreds to show off to….this was going to be a celebration of love and the entire family seemed to just get it!

I met Lakshmi, after nearly two years. She hugged me and said, “Congratulations, I’m so proud of you and so happy for you, do you know that?...” It was the same magic with her, we were able to start conversations from the middle, leave them lying around like dismantled clockwork, to pick them up, take them apart and put them together as we went through the day. And what a day it was.

I met some of Natasha’s friends that first morning. And if you said the magic sentence -"So how do you know Natasha?" - the most exciting stories came tumbling out. From Andamans to Delhi, we all came, to attend to the wedding of this unique creature who has made friends wherever she has gone. And she just threw us together, knowing that we would find each other interesting and get along famously.

11.00 a.m. Bibi ka Makbara and Ellora caves

Lakshmi and I, at Bibi ka Makbara

I had my second breakfast of the day at Sam's home, and went with Lakshmi and Pre to Bibi ka Makbara, the Taj Mahal look alike that Aurungzeb’s son built for his mother. It’s quite beautiful, even though it’s touristy and I recommend a visit. For me it will be the place where I walked around with two women that I respect and love so much that surprises me. They’re so unlike each other, and yet so alike - strong, opinionated, capable and yet both filled with self-doubts that are amusing to their own rational selves. We had strict instructions to be back from Bibi ka Makbara in an hour and a half and that’s exactly what we did, somehow also squeezing in a visit to the passport office that Pre needed to make.

....to be continued....

Back in Hyderabad....

2011-04-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

26 April 2011

0000hrs

Luxor Residency, Hyderabad

This is all it needed to get my brain working again! 5 km of running on the ISB treadmill with a songlist beginning with “Just the way you are” and ending by “waka waka”. By the end of the 2^nd kilometer, i was smiling like I hadnt smiled in two weeks...I had missed this happy face I see in the mirror today!

At 9.30 pm today, as I was leaving the gym, happy and sweaty and dizzy, for a good 5 seconds, I lost track of time. I was walking and thinking....I will reach home, call up Neha, Shally, Maggu and Girish to ask them what their dinner plans are before I get into the shower....I looked up and saw a tall guy walking with a tiny slip of a girl and my mind said- “Haresh and Ipsita”!

I smiled and raised my hand to say Hi and THEN it hit me. Oh no, no, no.

But the good part is that this realisation did not make me as sad as it would have last week.....It’s over, and it’s ok. I’m happy we had what we had for as long as we had it, but it really could not have lasted forever. Now we will learn to manage long distance friendships, we will learn to let go, and we will make new friends. There’s so much to look forward to.

Had dinner at Goel, with Anmol, Aarthi, Vedha, Navneet and Sumit, and teased Anmol about the eleven cups of dahi on his plate....Thank God, somethings haven't changed.

My Crazy Goan Holiday

2011-03-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Susannah's home

Day One, Friday, 03 March, 2011: Bent but not broken from a 15 hour bus journey that’s best forgotten, we reached Susannah’s home at 8.30 a.m. Her sunny nature was almost a prophetic indicator of what the next three days were going to be like. She gave the bigger bedroom to me and Navneet; I love it that the female gender got priority over flesh and blood. But Anmol and Ram were perfectly happy with their room too, not that we were planning to spend any considerable amount of time indoors. We met and made friends with Peter, who is Susannah’s son and to our great fortune, at home on vacation from his oil rig. Two days of this vacation were ours – over the next two days, he drove us around and took us to some of his favourite places. Generosity apparently runs in the family.

My first Lobster

Super fluffy omelettes with Goan bread ala Susannah later, we left her home for Utorda. It’s a beach in South Goa and it has a restaurant which makes seafood the way it should be made. The sand is gold, the sea is blue green, and there are just so few people around to make this beach ideal if you want to soak Goa in. No litter, no tattoo guys, no salesmen toting random stuff – I recommend this beach to everyone who loves the sea. We frolicked in the water for about an hour, and then had lunch at Zeebop. I had my first lobster ever – it was cooked in the red sauce called Recheado(pronounced ray-shaad), and it was wonderful. The rest of the meal was Goan Fish curry, batter fried squid, and the ubiquitous rice. The restaurant perhaps knows the kind of food coma that will be induced post such a meal, so Zeebop has a large collection of deck chairs strewn about in various degrees of shade. Navneet and Anmol slept happily while Ram and I drifted between snoozing, reading and ordering lime sodas and pina coladas.

The lowlight of the day were the two disappointing dinners – we went to one to forget about the first – at Viva la Panjim and Horseshoe. Both are so enthusiastically recommended by Lonely Planet but both left me with nothing to write about. Except maybe this - Viva Panjim had rats running all over the place, which I confess I would not have minded had the food been good; and Horseshoe served us the most insipid Vindalho that was ever created.We ended the day with telling each other horror stories at the Miramar beach.The mosquitoes bothered me far more than the scary stories. Miramar is an ordinary sort of touristy beach in Panjim. I’m spoilt by the likes of Utorda, I know.

Day Two, Friday 04 March: Peter drove us to Tivim(pronounced thee-vee), a sleepy village in north Goa where Sarita (Anmol's wife to be) has a family home. We teased Anmol non stop on the way, about how he was completely under-dressed for a visit to the in-laws. It was an hour long drive, through lovely roads, and Anmol went crazy taking pictures of the beautiful houses we saw on the way. Sarita's house has a fairy tale look to it, with its symmetrical lines and slated roof. It sits in the middle of a large garden, giving the impression that it just grew out of the ground, as much as the trees did. It is two hundred years old, and although no one has lived in it for more than 50 years, it is easy to imagine the hundreds of interesting stories that must have been created here...Eyes may have met for the first time in this large living room, over a sleepy sunday lunch.....and it'd be so easy to fall in love here, with winds whispering through trees all day and all the general feeling that the rest of the world isn't really there, and all the people who really matter are right here around you in this house.

Sorry, got carried away, Anyway, it's an inspiring little house, and it's inspiring Sarita's father to abandon Delhi and sit in Goa trying to repair the place and make the house the living dream it deserves to be.

Life According to a Goan

2011-03-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

Friday, 04 March 2011

11.00 p.m.

Alex

Aulona- “Guess where Zoey delivered her pups? In my bedroom! She just walks in, calm as you please, at eleven in the night, lies down on the floor and proceeds to litter! They’re really quiet you know. By midnight she had had two of them and I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up at seven, Alex asked me; guess how many puppies we have? I said four, but it turned out seven! We had such a hard time sleeping over the next month, but it was a lot of fun!"

A mother of three, the eldest of whom is in her early twenties, Aulona looks and talks like a peppy 30 year old. She is Anmol’s aunt (it’s a complicated family tree, but I’m reasonably sure that I’ve got it right). She lives in Goa, in one of the most beautiful houses I’ve seen, with her three daughters and husband Alex who runs an advertising agency, plays in a band, has designed their jaw droppingly beautiful house, and can rustle up a meal that would make you want to write poetry. Seriously, the man was unreal.

Anmol has another aunt in Goa. Susannah Velho lives in a house in Panjim that overlooks a beautiful park. She opened up the house and her heart to the four bumbling friends that Anmol brought over from Hyderabad - keep the house keys, the kitchen’s yours, use the washer – dryer, use the extra towels....where does so much generosity of spirit come from?

I used to think that Anmol's penchant to pick up random strays, fall in love with them and nurse them to perfect health was an endearing eccentricity but it turns out that he's just following the call of his gene pool. This weekend taught me a few things about Goans –

1. They love no other place as much as they love Goa...no wanderlust for them. Hardly surprising. As Sreeram says, "Where would a Goan go to get away from it all? He's already away from it all...” And he knows this.

2. They all love dogs. Every one of them. Man, woman and child. Every family I met seemed to think that to take in, feed and heal every mangy ill treated dog in the neighbourhood is the most natural thing to do.

3. There are no vegetarians in Goa. If you hate sea food, please don't go to this paradise. You will feel like the lone guy in a gender diversity class.

I wish I was Goan. But to have one of them as one of your best buddies is good too.

46 weekends down, 5 to go....

2011-02-26T03:39:00.001-08:00

Friday, 23 February, 2011

7.00 p.m.- 8.30 p.m.: Ate like a pig at the Bengali food festival at Swagat de Royale.

9.30 p.m.-12.00 a.m.: Watched Tanu weds Manu at Miyapur Talkie Town, in Miyapur.
Yes, there is such a place. It reminded me of my med school days...the rickety chairs, the crowd that expresses its joy at every kick and every kiss...nostalgia!

Saturday, 24 February, 2011

1.00 a.m. to 3.00 a.m.: Played Cluedo and Carrom at Rec Centre Pyjama party.
Thank you Srishti and gang, for yet another memorable campus party.

3.00 a.m to 5.00 a.m.:Walked around the campus analysing Elephant and Ant jokes.
Girish - How did the elephant know that the ant was hiding in the temple?
Neha - Because he saw her slippers outside the temple!
Mehul - So basically ants are stupid.
Future world leaders, the ISB brochure calls us....
5.00 a.m. to 12.00 p.m.: Slept

12.30 p.m to 1.30 a.m.: Breakfast with Anmol. Finalized the Goa itinerary and talked about a billion random things.

2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.: Lunch with Mehul. Finalized the Tirupati itinerary and talked about a billion random things.

5.00 p.m - I'm off to Tirupati

ONE of these events per weekend would have earned the universe so much gratitude from me. ALL of it in one weekend....I'm speechless with wonder at how blessed I am. Thank you God.

Night Trek - Rachakonda Fort, Hyderabad

2011-02-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

0645 hrs, 20 Feb 2011
I heave myself up another steep boulder, look up and sigh when I see where I need to go next - it's a narrow climb, between two large rock faces and it's full of brambles. The team leader hears my sigh, looks at me and asks, "Manjot, do you want me to take your bag before you go up this one?"
I want to say, "No Shankar, you misunderstand my grumpiness. This isn't my first trek you know. I have learnt to pack sensibly over the years and my bag is comfortable. I'm not even tired. But I'm annoyed beyond words at the number of thorny bushes you're making me walk through. My arms are bleeding, these bushes have gotten through my pants and I have a hundred wounds on my legs. Couldn't you have found a less painful track? But thanks for asking about the bag." But I've known him for less than a day. So I don't say any of that. All I say is, "No Shankar, I'm good."

But maybe that's not the right way to begin writing about what was one of the most memorable treks of my life. Rachakonda fort, about 50 km from Hyderabad is a moderately tough climb and I recommend it to everyone. I went there yesterday with a bunch of people brought together by the well organised if slightly pretentiously named Great Hyderabad Adventure Club(GHAC). It's a good club and I plan to continue being a part of it.

About the trek -

19 Feb 2011-
7.00 pm : Mehul and I reached Koti where the group was supposed to assemble. Met and made friends with some very interesting people. The team leader, Shankar Reddy, who I had been speaking to all these days, turned out to be a fresh faced 22 year old! Got a bit delayed in starting from here, left the place with 25 people in 3 cars and 9 bikes at 8.30 pm.

9.00 pm: Dinner at Green Bawarchi at LB Nagar. The less I say about the food, the better.
10.00 pm - 12 pm: Drive from LB Nagar to Rachakonda Fort. The latter hour of the drive was so beautiful, and we kept stopping to make sure everyone could catch up and to take pictures.
12 pm - 4 am: Climbing at night is awesome! The moon was so bright that torches proved unnecessary.
20 Feb 2011:

4 am to 6 am: Well earned sleep in my new sleeping bag. Mehul says he was up all the time sitting next to the campfire listening to the old hands talk about their Himalayan treks, but I distinctly remember waking up once, surrounded by so many kinds of snores, one which I noted was his.
6 am to 10 am: Some more climbing, this time among the bramble land. Thank god the hill we climbed the night was not so generously bestowed with thorny plants. I don't want to count the number of scratches and bruises on me. I'd rather dwell on how wonderful the view was. Every five minutes of climbing and we'd be treated to a view that made all the pain worth it. And the people - nothing beats being among your own kind. I have six new friends on facebook today and I can't wait to go trekking with these guys again. One of the highlights of the trek will remain the making of friends with this exotic person called Amera Pasha. This is a a girl who got a degree in commerce followed by an MBA; then realised that an extensive knowledge of law would be useful and so decided to get a degree in law as well. Funny and tenacious, she turned out to be one hell of a trekking buddy.

10 am to 1 pm - Drive back home to ISB, where Shally and Navneet are waiting to take me out to lunch to Westin. What a return to civilization! What Sushi! I could write poetry about that Sushi...

ISB, I miss you already....

2011-02-19T02:54:00.000-08:00

I remember and smile now, that sometime in end-April last year, I googled 'due diligence' because I was too embarrassed to ask these people who spoke in such foreign and fascinating tongues. April 2010 to January 2011- nine months of gestation which have created this new me. A strange creature, less giddy, more aware and more thoughtful - I love this version. Manjot2.0.

It was nine months of struggling to understand exactly what it was that I wanted to do post MBA. From being half sure that hospital operations would be my end goal, to enthusiastically looking forward to a career in healthcare consulting, what a thrilling journey it has been. It was nine months of wrapping my mind around brand new concepts; it's hard to remember how I understood life before beta and batna were parts of it. Nine months of crazy friendships - with friends who would think nothing of spending hours explaining things to me, all the while making sure not one opportunity to make fun of me was lost, of course. I will never forget how Neha ploughed my brain and planted regression into it like it had never been done before. And was so proud when I scored one mark more than her in the Stats exam. Peer learning was just a phrase last year; it is now what has recreated my thought process and perhaps my life's direction.

Nine months that culminated at 1800 hrs14 Jan 2011, with these words -"Manjot, we really like you, and we would like to make you an offer." Awww. I know they say that to every one, and yet it sounds so wonderful.

Somewhere I belong..

2011-01-31T15:18:00.000-08:00

Insomnia strikes
Every once in a while.
I go take walks at 3 a.m.
and listen to that pink floyd and linkin park folder.
These are nights when the world feels like it belongs to me.
and every song makes perfect sense.

But I always wonder
if it's worth it.
Maybe
I'd rather not understand Comfortably Numb
Not feel one with the universe
Not see the big picture

Maybe
I'd prefer the sleep.

Poonam Muttreja

2010-11-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

I was 31 last month. Age has calmed me down; I no longer express loud contempt and anger at people who litter, buy crackers, or are nasty to domestic help. The feelings remain, I've just learnt to rein them in. And yet there remains a list of realities that can make me cry every time I'm faced with them.

The partition stories.

Holocaust stories.

Stories about armymen in Kargil.

It's a long list.

What this effectively means is that because I do not like getting upset, I avoid reading books about these stories and do not watch movies in which people wear olive green. I'm done with "Train to Pakistan","Is Paris Burning?" and "Anne Frank's Diary". Ostrich, did you say? Not really - I just like to keep a calm head and function efficiently.

Which is why http://www.carnage84.com/affidavits/nanavati/Vinay%20Nagar/poonam-shiva.htm hurt all the more - I just wasn't prepared for it! All I was doing was reading up about the Population Foundation of India as a potential future employer. The Executive Director is one Poonam Muttreja, and I figured I'll google her a bit before I do anything else. All logical and aboveboard. Just what a sincere MBA student ought to be doing in Term 5.

The first thing that popped up on google search was this affidavit. In 35 lines, it's the story of five days in a young woman's life in November 1984. No exaggerated emotional outpouring this - on a stark black background, in matter of fact legalese, it's a calm narration of what she saw and did these five days. And yet the painful drama of it manages to sneak through, as you read the whole thing with heart pounding and growing disbelief. I feel profoundly sad, proud and humbled at the same time. I'd like to work with this woman I think.

BVFS Class

2010-11-01T00:52:00.000-07:00

Sms to a friend in class - "Can't make it to the lecture. What chapter is the prof teaching today?"

Reply - "Your sms woke me up. I have no idea. The white-board is a unholy mess. I'm contemplating suicide."

I so love my friends.

An ordinary morning

2010-10-28T03:50:00.000-07:00

I had made some beginning of Term 5 resolutions - no more ODing on coffee, in bed by one a.m., alert in the 8.a.m. classes, no more Facebook...and so on.

It's quarter to 4 in the morning. I don't know how many cups of coffee I've been drinking, but it's been quite a productive night. I've read two chapters in International Finance (two chapters done, five to go, exam tomorrow), reviewed a friend's resume, written and submitted two extremely pretentious essays - "Are we Breeding Ourselves to Death?" was the title of one. I should sleep.I have a class six hours from now and an exam twenty nine hours from now.

I feel happy. I'm remembering my evening and smiling - about how I spent two hours sitting in the garden with two of my best buddies on campus, grumbling about a billion things, including how I just don't seem to have time! And I'm scrolling through the FB status updates of the four hundred ISBians on my buddy list, chatting with people about random stuff (there are sixteen of them online at this point in time), listening to some old 60s and 70s favorite songs....

..... and I don't feel sleepy at all.

Hall of Fame ? Not Really..

2010-10-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

So the first foray of the Sunday Brunch Club was not an unqualified success. The food was forgettable and the service simply awful. But did we enjoy ourselves? I think so. Is the president of the club, i.e. me, going to be impeached? I don't think so. Are we going to Taj Deccan's brunch next Sunday? I hope so. :)

Minutes of the first club meeting :
1. Anant, Mehul, Jaideep and Anmol tried really hard to push for my impeachment followed by a presidential election , but gave up when I convinced them that when an ex-officer becomes president, it is usually for life.
2. Neha made friends with her German exchange student Simon. We like him.
3. Anant had tacos that looked like masala papad and Anurag had a long island iced tea that looked like nothing on earth.
4. Mehul appointed himself the marketing coordinator for the club and Jaideep picked the post of Events Coordinator.
5. The post of Transport coordinator and Treasurer are still open. Our super CA Mehul did not inspire much confidence while splitting the bill..."We're 200 bucks short...who's not paid up?...No wait, we have 500 bucks extra...Who paid more.....?"
6. We had unanimous agreement on never EVER visiting the Hall of Fame again. Nor will we recommend it to anyone we like. But then again, as Neha said ...the place has huge screens and comfortable couches. Not bad for watching matches and drinking beer. Just don't order the tacos.

Next week (or the week after that): Taj Deccan (or someplace else).

The Sunday Brunch Club is born

2010-10-09T00:27:00.000-07:00

Dear everyone,

Welcome to the Sunday Brunch Club, created by me today. Idle mind and what not.

The first brunch will be at the Hall of Fame :

http://www.halloffame.co.in/index.html

Coming up in the weeks to come –

(As Rahul pointed out, we have only 20 Sundays left; let’s make the most of them J)

1. Fusion 9

2. Okra, Mariott

3. Little Italy

4. Angeethi

5. The Grand Wok

6. Zafran exotica

7. Ista

8. Taj Deccan

9. Novotel

10. Taj Krishna

(this is my tentative list based on blogs/reviews. Suggestions are welcome. But since I have created the club, the final decision will be, you-know-whose...)

Call whoever you like - forward the invite to all your foodie buddies.

Send me your confirmations by tomorrow so I can call up the place and book. Transport not provided by the SBC – only bookings, and entertaining and insightful company.

Whether it’s 4 people or fourteen...Let’s just go !!

Love,

Manjot

I got replies within the hour : Awesomme idea Manjot... I am so happy to hv made d cut. We foodies rock.Yash....
Awesome idea! I am in and so is Komal J....
Namita Pant....
Awesome work !!
Rahul...
Lol! J...
Anmol Joneja...
confirmed...
Regards,
Dr Sundeep Reddivari...
Oh jee, shukriya, vadda changa plan hainga!!! Hun to aana hi aana hai!!!
Gaurav Shukla...
hey great idea!
Ananya Ukil....
Brilliant Brilliant idea :)
...oh n also gr8 list..
Ipshita Sinha...
This is awesome!!! I'm floored.. Member already. Any core positions open? :P ....
Mehul..
Hum ko count kar lijiyega madamjee…
Regards,
Udayan....
Hey Manjot,
Put my name also in the list(if its not too late).
Thanks.
Deepshikha

I want to become a poet

2010-09-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

When it rains like this
I want to become a poet.
How wonderful must it be
to get all the confusion and conflict out of the head
- and see it become words that make people smile
Thoughts that chase each other in circle after annoying circle
to see each thought rhyme with another
and become a song.
How wonderful must that be.

So Happy...

2010-08-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

I ran in the rain again today. And remembered so many things.

Seems like such a long time ago...
the days of running in the rain,
the days when this love of running began,
when it was the running that made everything else bearable.

I remembered so many things today
all the demons that I've now made peace with
all the days when sweat, rain and tears mixed so well on my face
all the times when I never wanted to stop running.

But all that was then.

I'm so happy,
All's well with my world.
And I ran in the rain again today.

Sentiments run high after the Corporate Finance exam today...

2010-08-23T07:04:00.000-07:00

From: A V Hancock Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 4:37 PM
To: Section C
Subject: sentiment after corp fin exam
Mail to be sent to corp. Fin. Prof.
Dear Prof.,
Which of the following is most correct?
a) Everybody got screwed.
b) You derive sadistic pleasure out of it.
c) Due to oversubscription of finance courses it is one of the measures adopted by the school to dissuade people from taking up finance.
d) Cheat sheet could have been substituted with the front cover of playboy which would have provided higher utility value.
e) All of the above
Regards,
One of the silent sufferers of ‘financial distress’

From: Duvet Tintin
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 4:41 PM
To:Section C
Subject: RE: sentiment after corp fin exam
Now I wonder why he kept telling the indifference between fornication and adultery.
What a way to practice what you preach!

This image pretty much described what I went through…

Santana Paolo

MBA Candidate, Class of 2011

From: Ajit Shingara
Sent: 23 August 2010 19:03
To: Section C
Subject: RE: sentiment after corp fin exam

Read few questions, and I just went back to check on the front page, if the exam was CorpFin. I thought they must have given us the Adv Copr Fin by mistake, but… and rest is history… 

Someone just sent me this photo which was put outside the Exam Hall today…

I am sure prof himself wrote this…. He knew he was going to F@#& us….

A man Mysteria

From: Dots N Dash
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 5:48 PM
To: Section C
Subject: RE: sentiment after corp fin exam

Its like :
“ When you take Investment Analysis Course pack for Term 4 and find that the Prof. is Durga Madhab........Stunned??
I will turn up at class, take 20 min to scold late comers, give all sort of nice articulated gyaan, people don’t know whether I am talking abt Pluto or Preity Zinta, ........ and when it comes to setting paper, I take out toughest books, research journals and what not and set a mind-ripping paper....
This way even I can teach Finance from now on...and even Strategy, Marketing or for that matter nething.....

From: U S Soho
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 6:44 PM
To: Section C
Subject: RE: sentiment after corp fin exam
This has even surpassed the previous records set by managerial economics end term papers….!! At least there we knew the stuffs to be written …but today the paper was just strewn with “ ?????????? !!!!!!!!!!!! ………..

In my humble opinion, Only GOD’S Grace can save us know………
He took it seriously…
Regards
S S
Student, Class of 2011

G Shakira
Friends
Watch the video above and just relax. they cannot take OUR life in THEIR hands. Exams will come and go, sadist professors will became faded memory, badly worded questions won't matter - what will matter is how we stood our ground.
Vikram - I should have taken your clue and gulped several litres of Maaza to reduce the impact of this catastrophe ;-)
Finally - good luck with OPM; expect nothing better than the 2 bolts that have already hit us today! I can see clearly why they keeps their end-term exams on Mondays.... :-)

2010-06-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

I've been here for more than two months - ten weeks and two days precisely. I'm at the school that Financial Times ranked no. #$ in the list of the world's best B-schools, surrounded by 579 brilliant (I'm not being entirely sarcastic) minds, being tutored by a jaw droppingly impressive faculty, I can now make sense of a Solver report....but I don't want to write about all that. I will, but not tonight.

One memory stands out in this 10 weeks of organised madness. Finishing lunch after the morning's classes, as I picked up my bag to leave, Amit Dhingra, who was eating at the same table as mine, asked - "Going back to village? I'll come with you."

I said - "I live in SV-1, you too?" He rolled his eyes - "Manjot, you've asked me that four times in the last five weeks! Yes, we live in the same village. Sometimes we also walk back together. You should pay attention sometimes, you know."

So we were walking back, Amit and I, doing the usual thing that all ISBians do - cribbing about the long hours, the assignments, have you done that one, I haven't even started that one, etc. Now Amit Dhingra isn't really one of my best buddies or anything. I mean he's a great guy and all, but we just hang out with different crowds generally. He is one of the seriously academically inclined ones, and I, of course, am not. Which is why what happened next is really memorable.

As we neared the village, he said, "Let's go down that slope - it's shorter"
I said - "It's not shorter at all, it's absolutely the same. "
Amit - "Believe me, it's shorter."
I - "It's not. But whatever, we'll go your way, if you promise to race through the sprinkler on the slope."
He did not hesitate, did not laugh. Ok, let's run, he said and sprinted through the sprinkler.
"Hey, that was fun, let's do it again!"
I'm not sure which one of us came up with that, but the other said Fine, let's.
And we raced up and down that little slope about four times in all. It was awesome.

2010-06-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

My Macroeconmics book says about chain weighting -

Chain weighting. The US and many other countries, too now uses a method that's somewhere between fixed weight and xed-basket methods: chain-weighting. It mitigates some of the problems of applying the same prices over long periods of time (when relative prices often change dramatically), but doesn't eliminate them. If we told you exactly what it is, your eyes would glaze over. But trust us, it's an improvement.

I read this and laughed out loud, and continued laughing, for five minutes. Something terrible has happened to my sense of humour.

JIVI'S WEDDING - IV

2010-03-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

12 FEB 2010
Getting a brother married is not easy - the day began with a cold shower at five in the morning for both Param and me because I had forgotten to switch the geyser on at night. And Jivtesh got dressed up and dressed at 5 a.m. for what may be the first and last time in his life. It could’ve been love, happiness, the previous night’s batna – or maybe all three- but what a glow there was on his face.
Until last month I used to have this paranoid protectiveness about Jitu (he got married to Rubal and I got cured). The hour long drive to Nawan Sheher (where Rubal’s parents live) was rather nice at 7 a.m., but I kept on fretting over whether if he’d be able to take the pheras with a gurudwara full of people watching him. He didn’t help matters by turning back every few minutes and asking with a horribly convincing innocence – “How will I know when to get up and start walking?”…”What happens if I trip and fall?”

I needn’t have worried. The wedding was beautiful. Rubal looked radiant, and kept her poise even as Jitu kept on trying to talk to her; he shut up only when mummy went up to him and asked him if his conversation could wait until after the ceremony. The rest was as clichéd as it gets – pheras, lunch, doli – and the fact that I cried almost as much as the bride.

The reception in the night for Mom and Dad’s friends is memorable only for four reasons – my parents happiness, the three layered cake from Monica’s, the fact that I received the sms from ISB saying I had been selected to the class of 2011, and the fact that the groom stopped talking to the bride only for the short, few occasions when he was dragged to be introduced to people. I’m joking, of course. Like I said, I no longer worry about my little brother’s social skills, or the lack thereof. He and Rubal made a very handsome pair and I was as proud as a mother at the gracious attentiveness they both showed to the guests. Although I bet neither of them remembers the name of even one person they were introduced to that night.

.....to be continued.....

13 FEB 2010 – Shoghi, here we come ...

Best Wedding - III

2010-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 07 Feb 2010. We celebrated the fact that the wedding was exactly four and a half days away by waiting for a table at Mainland China for 50 minutes. It was a very constructive 50 minutes; Leena, Rubal and I made lists and crossed items off them (always such a thrilling exercise for me). I’ve known Rubal for some three years now and I had never seen her as happy as she was that night.
Monday, 08 - 11 Feb 2010.
The next three days are a blur of shopping. I’d never even noticed the men’s departments in stores before this. Imagine two girls going through hours of shopping in Woodland, Esprit, Van Heusen, French Connection, Calvin Klein, Benetton and Wills DURING THE SALE SEASON – and not looking at womenswear! It made us so giddy that we spent an hour in a bookshop buying books and stationery for each other – and picked up a book for our new sister to be, a book called “How to kill your husband”. And it was so much fun watching Jitu turn into a clotheshorse; we must’ve made him get in and out of some three dozen shirts, trousers and shoes.

Thursday, 11 February 2010.
The night of the yellow stuff.

Who came up with the idea of anointing Jitu with the ubtan( it is ubtan, right?) I was instructed to bring some besan from the kitchen and mix it with some water, milk and malai. The bridegroom to be was pinned into a chair by a houseful of people laughing and shouting so hard it was unbelievable. I did hear his plaintive cries of –“Please,please, no malai…..I hate malai, please! What IS going on? What are you planning to do to me?” So I skipped the malai, added cold cream instead. Then other people took over and god only knows what else went into that hideous looking concoction that was to be applied on Jitu’s face. What a lovely tradition….I couldn’t stop laughing. Puneet had gotten on top of a chair to secure the best vantage position for the video that he was making. Oye Puneet, where are those pictures/videos?

I will not go into the details of what the bathroom looked like after Jitu had finished cleaning himself in it.

Post Script (05Jun 2010, some three months after this post, but what the heck):
I've changed my mind. I WILL go into the details of what the bathroom looked like when Jitu had finished cleaning himself in it. We're a family that has an unexplainably high interest in the human excretory system and we derive a lot of our jokes from it - it's a subject that somehow lends itself to hysterical laughter with us. It would thus be unfair to not record for posterity what the "Pathiji" saw.

So the "Pathiji", who was part of the group who had come from the Gurudwara to do the prayers at our home, went into the bathroom at 2300 hours to take a bath before his turn to sit at the "paath". He came out at 2305, looking extremely uncomfortable and informed Param, that someone had had an upset stomach and not been able to empty his bowels in the pot and had, in fact, done ite everywhere on the floor. His relief on being reassured that the yellow stuff on the floor was just "ubtan" was quite touching.

The Best Wedding Ever - II

2010-02-28T05:07:00.000-08:00

My brother and I turned from enemies to best buddies somewhere in the late 90s. Among the few things we had in common was a dislike for attending weddings. I hated dressing up but could sometimes be lured by the promise of great food.

The poor guy enjoyed neither. After yet another argument with our long suffering father who hadn’t given up on us back then, Jitu had attended some function or another, come back, sighed philosophically and said, “You know what Manu, my wedding will not be boring. I’ll not have these stupid receptions and things. I think I’ll have a cricket match to celebrate my shaadi.” And I had said Yeah, and I’ll get married on a boat.

With time, his plan only became firmer, clearer and more detailed. How I love it about my no longer little brother that age and maturity never succeeded in leading him to believe that his idea was anything other than perfectly feasible.

In 2003, when we went on a toy train trip to Simla – “I’ll get married in Simla! The baraat will travel in the toy train! There must be Gurudwaras in Simla, right? Wow, think about that – a cricket match in Simla…”

In 2006, after he came back from a trip to Shoghi, - “Manu, you HAVE to see this place. It’s a resort called Park Woods, it’s about 20 km outside Simla, and it’s beautiful. It has tents and cottages and its ideal for a wedding party!”

We will pass lightly and respectfully over the next three – three and a half years. My brother grew into this self assured MD of the software firm that he had set up fresh out of engineering college, and met the girl who, before anything else, became his best friend. And as we knew Rubal better, my mother and I always felt she was so much more to him – but I will not dwell on the romance part here. The post is about the wedding!

Cut to February 2010. The fact that we had less than two weeks to plan the wedding had not prevented Jivi from being all gung ho about his old dream. To charter the toy train for 50 people and then to book the entire resort for two days was the first thing he must’ve done the day our parents met Rubal’s family! The tough part was to convince Mom and Dad that the idle dreams of nearly a decade ago were about to become reality. Not have a reception? My parents, cool dudes though they both are, could not swallow that the wedding of their only son would not be celebrated by a reception for their friends. And Jitu was unwilling to forego of his crazy fantasy of loading only the closest of his friends and family in a toy train and carry them off to Shoghi for a bonfire and a cricket match. So we reached a compromise. We had the formal reception and the Shoghi trip both.

Jitu and Rubal designed a card that made jaws drop; my dad somehow convinced a guy to print some 200 cards in two days; Chacha-Chachi in Kapurthala shopped for an average of 4 hours every day for some 10 days; my mother spent the evenings calling people up and packing presents – and then Leena and I landed in Chandigarh on 07 February, six days before the wedding.

Time to introduce Leena. Leena is our 21 year old baby sister (the daughter of our adored Chachu, the poor thing will be our baby even when she is 41, I think). She’s studying to be a dental surgeon and dreams of arming herself with an LLB degree and running an NGO sometime. Blessed with the two of us, the one thing Jitu and my parents did not worry about was the wedding shopping.

Leena and I, on the shopping marathon.

.....to be continued.....

On the Best Wedding Ever

2010-02-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

Professor Jeffery Sachs is my new hero. I’ve been reading his book – “The End of Poverty” for the last 10 days and it is more unputdownable than a Ruth Rendell whodunit. But this post is not about him, nor the book. Today I’m sitting marveling over the fact that I have somehow reached this place in my life where Fiscal Deficit makes more sense than Fibrous Dysplasia. That my desire to understand the physiognomy of Inflation seems far more than the curiosity I ever had for the pathophysiology of Ischemia. And that it’s exactly two weeks ago that Jitu got married.

Jitu is my brother. His name is Jivtesh Singh and he prefers being called Jivi, which is what we call him when his friends are around. He’s my best friend and he saves me a lot of money that I might otherwise have had to pay a psychiatrist. Other than being the best brother anyone could have, he’s a also very thoughtful son and a brilliant entrepreneur. For the last two weeks he’s also being a dream husband to a quiet and gentle creature who adores him.

Was it only 26 days ago that I went to Hyderabad? What a memorable month this February has been.

Sunday, January 31, 2010.
ISB Interview.
I spent the day exploring the campus with Anu, convinced more and more that this is the place I wanted to spend the rest of the year at. The interview itself was an extremely stimulating experience; far from the ‘friendly conversation’ that is sold so charmingly at the information sessions. But after six weeks of lazy lounging at home, I enjoyed pitting wits with three rather interesting people. But my heart did sink when I realized that I had spent no more than thirteen minutes with the panel – how could they possibly know what a great person I am in such short time? I knew the next 15 days were going to be difficult. As things turned out I had no time to fret about the Feb 15 deadline for the result. Thank you, Jitu.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010. Delhi.
9:00 PM.
Call from Jitu –
J - “So how was the interview?”
Me – About me you asked. It was ok I think….I’m not sure. I know I’ll bite my nails over the next two weeks.
J- You never bite your nails Manu. Anyway I’m going to give you more stuff to worry about. Are you sitting down?
M- Huh?
J- Sit down or at least hold on to something. I have news. Big news.
M – (palpitating, no kidding) Stop being melodramatic. Tell me.
J- Can you come to Chandigarh, like immediately?
M – WHAT HAPPENED?
J- Rubal’s parents came and met Mom and Dad today. We’re getting married on the 12th. Can yo come and help me shop?
M- What? That’s only 10 days from now!!
J- Yes. Can you come quickly, please? Papa is getting hysterical.

Jivi, in Lonavala

to be continued....

My Fiction Library....

2009-11-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

.....is all catalogued and ready to go into storage.

Agatha Christie’s
1. Crooked house

2. The Listerdale Mystery
3. Sparkling Cyanide
4. Three Act Tragedy
5. Problem at Pollensa Bay
6. Cards on the Table
7.Hickory Dickory Dock
8. By the Pricking of my Thumbs
9. A murder is announced
10. The Hollow
11. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
12. The Moving finger
13. Evil Under the Sun
14. The Pale Horse
15. The Sittaford Mystery
16. While the light lasts
17. Poirot investigates
18. Five Little Pigs
19. The Thirteen Problems
20. Miss marple- Complete Short Stories
21. Appointment With Death
22. Third Girl
23. Sleeping Murder

Dorothy L Sayers
1. Unnatural Death
2. Hangman’s Holiday
3. Murder Must Advertise
4. Have his Carcase
5. Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
6. In the teeth of the Evidence

Ruth Rendell
1. The Fever Tree and other stories
2. The Rottweiler
3. Portobello
4. The babes in the Wood
5. The Crocodile Hunter

John Le Carre
1. The constant Gardener
2. A Murder of Quality

Mary Higgins Clark
1.The Anastasia Syndrome and other stories
2. The Lottery Winner

P.G. Wodehouse’s
1. Something Fresh
2. Indiscretions of Archie
3. Meet Mr Mulliner
4.Mr Mulliner Speaking
5. The Luck of the Bodkins
6. Uncle Dynamite
7.Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
8.The Old Reliable
9. Piccadily Jim
10. Cocktail Time
11. A damsel in distress
12. Doctor Sally
13. Girl in Blue

J.K. Rowling
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
2. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

John Irving
1. The world according to Garp
2. The Cider House Rules
3. Trying to save Piggy Sneed

Linda Goodman
1. Sun Signs
2. Star Signs
3. Love Signs

62. White Banners – Lloyd C. Douglas
63. The Devil wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger
64. False Impression – Jeffery Archer
65. Cat O’ Nine Tails – Jeffery Archer
66. Man Walks into a Bar – Stephen Arnott and Mike Haskins
67. Marrying Anita – Anita jain
68. Unnatural Causes – P.D. James
69. Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
70. The Riddle of the Third Mile – Colin Dexter
71. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkein
72. Mort – Terry Pratchett
73. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
74. The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith
75. The Right Attitude to Rain – Alexander McCall Smith
77. The Hundred Secret Senses – Amy Tan
78. To Kill a Mocking-Bird – Harper Lee
79. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
80. Emma – Jane Austen
81. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
82. Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
83. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
84. Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
85. One – Richard Bach
86. Papillon – Henri Charriere
87. The War Lord – Malcolm Bosse
88. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
89. The Remains of the Day – Kazugo Ishiguro
90. A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
91. Scarlett – Alexandra Ripley
92. Pygmalion and Major Barbara – George Bernard Shaw
93. Fury – Salman Rushdie
94. Four Chapters – Rabindranath Tagore
95. Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
96. The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
97. Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho
98. One night @ the call center – Chetan Bhagat
99. If Tomorrow Comes – Sidney Sheldon
100. Doctor on the Job – Richard Gordon
101. The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth
102. Mistral’s Daughter – Judith Krantz
103. Maggie Rowan – Catherine Cookson
104. A spot of bother – Mark Haddon
105. The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell
105. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
106. The Complete Adventures of Feluda Volume 1 – Satyajit Ray
107. Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
108. The Penguin Complete Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton
109. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
110. Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
111. Red Dragon and The Silence of The Lambs – Thomas Harris
112. Hannibal – Thomas Harris
113. Kanupriya – Dharmvir Bharti

I believe I can soar....the pictures...

2009-11-25T00:45:00.000-08:00

I believe I can soar….

2009-11-25T00:14:00.001-08:00

Before officially putting 22 Nov 09 in my list of 10 Best Sundays Ever, I would like to send out a proper thank you into the universe for introducing me to Dilip Kotecha and his brood. These are four perfectly ordinary people five days of the week – going to school, managing a business and a home. But come Friday, they pack their car and drive up to Panchgani where they set up tents and spend the weekend paragliding. I met them on Saturday and was invited to take a whiff of their exotic weekend.

But first, about the drive from Lonavala to Panchgani. I still live in the dark ages and do not have maps on my phone. So I figured the route out on Google Maps on Saturday night , and - I blush to say this – took a 3 page printout of the map along with the instructions , which I consulted every half hour as I drove. But what a great concept - Google maps. The instructions read something like this : Take a right, drive 55.8 km and then take another right. This thing was made for people like me.

I rediscovered how much I enjoy long solitary drives. The solitary part is important. For one, I can sing cheesy Hindi film songs as loudly and as unselfconsciously as I want. And for the second, no guy gets to criticize my driving. In the last seven years that I have been driving, the one consistent thing has been that no guy over the age of ten sitting in the passenger seat has been able to resist telling me, in great detail, about the flaws in my driving style. I hate clichés and I never find it amusing when people say that women drivers are the most dangerous things on roads; particularly since I know many excellent female drivers. But there is a subset of this species which IS extremely dangerous - a woman driving with her teeth set together trying not to murder the male passenger who has told her for the nineteenth time to Take Her Foot Off The Clutch. How would you like me to take the foot off the clutch and use it to kick you, buddy?

Anyway. The drive from Lonavala to Panchgani is a delightful three hour thing – 160 km of good roads, winding in and out of the Sahyadri Ghats. I started at 0800 and following Google’s and Dilip’s instructions to the letter reached Camp Echo at 1100. I wonder if it is a good idea to not write too much about the camp; would not want it to become too popular. The place is like a dream and we will let it remain that way.

Much of paragliding is “parawaiting” (It is a rather nifty little word, but it’s not my original). One needs to wait for the right winds, the right time and the right place as well. Dilip took me to a place called Harrison’s Folly where we spent about three quarters of an hour, with the canopy all spread out and ready, waiting for the winds. It was time well spent, because I learnt much about ‘thermals’, cross country flying and about how useful birds are to a paraglider because the way they fly on any particular time helps him plan his flight(no kidding).

At about one o’clock in the afternoon, my instructor decided to leave Harrison’s Folly and we arrived at a place called the Ravine where the winds were better. Paragliding looks simpler than it is. You harness yourself to the canopy, run towards the edge of the cliff …..and just take off and fly. Since this was a tandem, it was completely zero stress for me. No worries about canopy flying, wind directions or landing. Maybe I didn’t know enough to be scared or maybe I trusted Dilip completely - whatever the reason, I wasn’t scared at all. All I felt was the pure joy of flight for a very short fifteen minutes. Even when we landed just at the edge of a very dense tree line and Dilip made me get up and walk to mak sure I was all intact, my primary concern was – did the camera survive such a hard landing? It did and the pictures are great. I’m hooked.

2009-08-09T01:52:00.001-07:00

"No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength."
- Jack Kerouac

No woman either.

HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINEERING INSTITUTE, Day 04: 12 May 09

2009-07-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

The roads wind, go up, go down and open into views that take your breath away. The morning jog route is lined with trees and quaint little houses which look like they’re straight out of a six year old’s drawing book. Every morning, as I run among these lovely hills, I thank God. But I also wish that my shoe lace would come undone so I could stop to tie it and take a few extra breaths before my lungs explode.

But of course, it never does happen and I keep running. As does everyone else. We meet a lot of early morning walkers – people of all sizes and colors and they seem to really like find this group of panting, puffing people. We get a lot of “good morning”s and “hey, good show, keep going”s.

Today will go down in history as the day we did Sports Climbing on the institute’s indoor wall. Everyone has different reasons for this but the indoor sports climbing is something no one will easily forget. The lesson learnt is that to be a good climber, enthusiasm and sincerity is not enough; strong upper arms and Perry Allan shoes are absolutely essential. I cringe as I remember how often I slipped and fell and how I watched in envy when Akanksha just kept on going, like some human lizard. For those of you reading this BEFORE going for the course, I would like to say that carry a pair of shoes which has minimum surface area and good grip. The shoes that you use for running and/or trekking are simply not the thing. Also, do some chin ups in the gym. If you are like most people, you will be surprised at how difficult chin ups are, not say to how painful.

Sports Climbing, also known as Artificial Climbing and Wall Climbing, is about climbing walls which have shapes like nothing on earth and which have footholds and handholds in supposedly helpful places. A climber’s expertise is graded on the basis of the speed in which she covers the maximum distance. I think it is a fantastic sport, satisfying both physically and mentally. The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute has two excellent artificial walls - one indoor and one outdoor – and the instructors are great too. My only grudge is that they didn’t give us the right shoes for the thing.

It’s been four days, and we’re all finding likeminded people and making friends that will go a long way in deciding the type of experience we have over the next month. The day starts at 0600 in the morning with the run and the PT, and bedtime is at 2100 hours - Fifteen waking hours in which we do all we do is learn about mountaineering and talk. No TV, newspapers, sightseeing, partying, or shopping. So we live into each others’ lives, talking and sharing in ways that come naturally to women. A large part of the reason why the Basic Mountaineering Course has been an experience that I will always count among special blessings is that I have found friends here that I will always be proud of.

Hey, didn’t one of you girls promise to find out walls in Pune where I could climb once I got back to Lonavala?

The Quadrangle by night

Denial

2009-07-27T11:09:00.001-07:00

When a patient who has received treatment (radiation and chemotherapy) for carcinoma cheek develops a hoarseness of voice that persists for weeks, it has to be taken seriously because ENT cancers have nasty habit of wanting to go everywhere. That much is simple. An intern fresh out of med school knows as much. But what is difficult to learn is how to explain this to the old man who persists in pretending that he has no idea what you’re talking about. His doctors told him, last year, that his cancer was gone. This heaviness in his throat – couldn’t it be just infection? A sore throat, for God's sake? Why am I making a big deal of it? Who am I, a non specialist youngster in a small hospital in Lonavala, to doubt the wise old oncologists who treated him last year? I draw diagrams, explain concepts like metastasis as simply and as kindly as I can, but he’s just bored.

All I want to do is to write a referral to the Onco Deptt. All he wants to do is to get the hell out of my office, go back to his life and completely forget this unpleasant conversation. We reach a compromise; I let him go, after making note that his son is a junior sailor in the Projects Department. I call the son to the hospital to tell him that he needs to take his father to the Onco Specialist again. Father and son turn up together, looking like yesterday and tomorrow of the same face. I say the same things to the son that I said to the father – that it may just be an effect of the radiation, or it may be that the carcinoma has spread; either way, the hoarseness in his father’s voice needs to be investigated. He listens with a polite resignation and agrees with everything I say. The father listens with the same irritated skepticism as before. I write the referral and call up the boy’s boss so he can get leave.

I would like to believe I did everything that needed to be done but I keep remembering the look of angry despair the old man gave me as he left and keep wishing I had handled this better.

MOUNTAINEERING MAGIC,continued

2009-07-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

MOUNTAINEERING MAGIC, Day 02: 10 May 09
The group of 31 is divided in to six groups, or ‘Ropes’ as they are called in the mountain lingo. Each rope has a ‘Rope Leader’ and a ‘Rope Instructor’. I’m the rope leader for Rope no. 1, also the Course Senior. The morning begins at with a PT at 0600 hours. First a 2km run on these spectacularly beautiful roads, then we stop near a park and do some strange exercises whose benefit we will apparently know when we start climbing, and then the 2km run back. I am losing most of the long cherished belief that I’m extremely fit. Running on the roads and tracks in Lonavala hasn’t prepared me for this mountain workout; I huff and puff in pain through the morning, among the last in the group to reach back at the institute.
Breakfast at 0730, followed by classes.
So many classes..
1. Lecture on Ropes – their types, uses and maintenance
2. Demonstration of Knots.
This one was maddeningly funny. Suraj Gurung (Rope instructor for Rope 2) would demonstrate a knot with a Piece Rope( ref to lecture on Ropes; a Piece Rope, also known as a Sling, is 5-6 feet long, has a diameter of 5-6 mm and is used to tie harnesses, Jumars, etc. It can take upto 150 kg wt. Ha! My Rope Instructor will be proud of me). The rest of us would watch, transfixed with concentration – and then attempt to make our own. Ok, pull this one, make a loop, put this end through the loop, umm… other end through this, and…What happened? Looking at each other with frustrated confusion…”Did you get it? “And then so much sheepish laughter. It was a riot. No less than nine type of knots. It was a long class.
3. Lecture on the Himalayas – their origin, six main divisions, important peaks. Fascinating class. Phuchung took this one methinks.
4. Lecture on Avalanches - What causes them, how many types there are, what to do if caught in one. Exciting, interactive session.
5. Lecture on First Aid. The less said the better. The medical assistant may be a good guy (he is, actually; he managed a lot of mountain maladies quite well in the trek) but he is no good with teaching.
MOUNTAINEERING MAGIC, Day 03: 11 Jun 09
The morning run today was followed by a Yoga class. Our instructor, Dheeraj, looks like everybody’s idea of Little Buddha. Very cute. But this is not one of those popular, breathing type of Yogas. Terrible, painful contortions.
Classes of the day –
1. Principles of Rock climbing
2. Mountain Terms. From Bergschunds to Verglass, I love all the mountain jargon.
3. Mountain Hazards

2009-07-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.

- Alfred d Souza

A PRAYER

2009-07-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

The steps feel damp as I sit on them
a cup of warm adrak chai in my hand
The garden looks like the dream of some mad painter
the puddles are blue, sometimes grey
it's so so beautiful
the mists roll beyond, and I want to sing some song....have no idea which one.

I sip my tea
and realize I feel gratitude,
and making lists has always been a hobby-

near perfect health
loving family
dreams as big as the universe
a friend's visit to look forward to
memories that warm me up, instantly

Memories.
freefalling at 14000 feet,
jogging in the rain
the view from Renoke
.."You're my best friend..."
..."We're so proud of you..."
..."You can everything you want, you can be anything you want to be....It's you after all!"
..."You're so beautiful..."
the patient who said with tears in her eyes today-"Thank you, I feel better.."

I take another sip
and say it, out loud

Thank you, God

MOUNTAINEERING MAGIC

2009-07-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a month and a half since I returned from Darjeeling and the cry “Why are you not writing about the mountaineering course?” has become too loud and too shrill to be ignored anymore. It’s flattering ; and the reason why my coursemates want me to write about the course is that my blogposts on the skydiving course were such a hit (those posts also probably made sure that my skydiving career with the Indian Navy was short lived, given some of the too - candid observations I made, but that’s another story. One lives and learns.)

In many ways,writing about mountaineering is nothing like writing about skydiving.
For one, you cannot post every day. Even if I had the energy to write at the end of an eight hour long climb, how would I post it when I’m 17000 feet above sea level in a place, where the nearest road head is a three day trek away? The World Wide Web cannot reach where only people addicted to adventure( and of course, yaks) go - where things like running water, electricity and phone networks feel like strange, distant memories. For another, mountaineering as a sport has less glamour and more bone hurting drudgery and one has to be truly in love with it to understand why people would go through so much pain with so much eagerness. What I mean is that the audience for these posts is not as readily available as it was for the skydiving posts.

But my friends are right – somebody has to write about the soul changing experience that course was and it’s touching to be the chosen writer. I’ve been reading an amazing book about how the brain constantly modifies and compresses our memories to store them in the most efficient of ways (Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert(Not Craig).Note to self: Must write a post about the book some day, it’s one of the best I’ve ever read). So, if I do not document these stories soon, they will dissipate and change in unrecognizable ways in the heads of the people who experienced them.Thirty women, thirty memories, thirty versions.

I do have scraps of paper I wrote in the days I was feeling overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the Himalayas and the camaraderie we shared (as opposed to the days I was feeling overwhelmed by sheer exhaustion). I’m going to dig them up and post them. Not only will they serve as the receptacles of our memories, they will serve other crazy dreamers who plan to do the Basic Mountaineering Course at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute Darjeeling - Know what you’re getting into before you apply. And here’s what I need from you – the Basic Mountaineering Course No.272 - the 29 crazy women who lived into each others’ lives and mine for one whole month – keep sending your versions. I promise to put them in.

Here we go.

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute is one of the three establishments in the country that initiate you into the mad world of mountaineering. I tend to agree with the view that it’s the best of the three. They have an official website, where you can get all the details about the courses and their achievements. I plan to give the insider’s view here, the scraps out my diary, so to speak.

MOUNTAINEERING MAGIC, Day 01
09 May 09
I can’t believe I’m here! It has taken unending argument, struggle and persistence; I have had to use every inch of my persuasiveness, but I’m here. The All Woman Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC) at HMI, Darjeeling.
I’m one of 31 girls in this BMC No. 272 - 31 girls who have almost nothing in common. The age ranges from 17 to 39; the language in my room swings from rapid-fire Marathi to rolling Haryanvi – it’s hilarious to watch how difficult communication gets sometimes. There is a girl who has just finished class ten, a law student on a sabbatical, an engineer who has just shifted from a 15 year long career in programming and helped in the birth of an NGO for rural entrepreneurship. But there is one very noticeable common thread that runs through this eclectic group - every single one of them is addicted to adrenaline. Never again will I believe that I’m weird, that my enduring desire to do something new every now and then needs to be tamed. Never again will I worry about fitting in.

We have accommodation in a ‘hostel’. For the four faujis (one naval, one air force and two army officers) used to being treated like kings, it will take some serious getting used to. NO HOT WATER?? BUNK BEDS?? EIGHT IN A ROOM? Oh yes. I introduce myself as “Surg Lt Cdr Manjot Kaur” until I see people looking far more impressed than I can deal with, and at least one smirking ( I know you’re smiling, Pre). Ok, I get that I’m going to be spending the next month with 27 civilians and instantly shed my fauji skin, fond as I am of it. From now on, it's, "Hey, I'm Manjot".

Its Tenzing Norgay’s death anniversary today, so we’re taken to the memorial built in his honor where we get to be part of a short prayer session by the course instructors. I find myself moved, in spite of myself, by the serious passion these guys have, for the sport, and for the man who made the sport a religion, at least in this part of the country.

Classes of the day –
1. Lecture on Equipment in Mountaineering – the clothing, and the technical gear.
2. Lecture on the rucksack packing
3. Lecture on Mountain Manners and Customs

Rakhi ka Swayamvar

2009-07-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

With science and scientists exploring and deromanticising (is there such a word?) everything, there does remain one area which continues to baffle and that is - “What makes people laugh?”
Apparently, gender, culture, age all contribute to make different people laugh at different things in ways that are difficult to define. So some people may find some joke funny beyond belief while others might find the same joke terribly distasteful. Whatever.

I read somewhere about the book “Three Men In a Boat" that almost everyone finds it funny. I do. I first read it when I was 14 and I’ve loved it ever since. I’ve read it about eight times and it still makes me laugh. But that is not the point of this post. I’m going to give this arguable distinction to the new show on NDTV Imagine.

So here’s another dark secret from the recesses of my twisted mind. I love the new Rakhi Sawant show. It’s called ‘Rakhi ka Swayamvar’ and its about 15 odd supposedly random guys who supposedly like Rakhi Sawant enough to want to marry her and she’s supposed to be spending the next n number of episodes evaluating and eliminating them until she maybe decides which one she wants to be with. The show is meant to end with the wedding. I think.

Before anything else, I want to clarify that I’m not one of your usual reality show addicts. In fact, I’m not terribly fond of TV either. For days, I forget to switch the thing on, eating my meals with a book or a movie on the laptop. If it wasn’t for “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” all day on Sundays and my occasional desire to catch up with the news, I would forget I own a set. I specially dislike those song and dance and talent hunt shows because their USP seems to be unadulterated nastiness. I often think they measure TRPs in the liters of tears that flow. Or maybe the number of time they have to “beep” the dialogue.

I stumbled on to R ka S quite by accident. With my parents visiting the television gets some attention and I saw about three dozen promos in the one day that I was at home. It’s a one hour daily and I’ve seen about one and a half of the three shows aired and I think it’s a great show. It’s unbelievably funny. All that mock- serious earnestness….these guys were actually writing (and reading) love letters out loud and reading them like they meant every word. And this woman, sitting so coyly on a couch listening to the renditions of love - Man she is good! Batting eyelids and blushing like she’s moved to bits....she actually closed her eyes and did some serious heavy breathing through one particular love letter reading. She may have a pea sized brain or whatever but she can ham. And how. The melodrama of it, the outrageousness of it – I was laughing for a good half hour. It does get too much at times, it does make you cringe in parts, but the hilarity soon overtakes the embarrassment.

Other than the fact that it totally tickles every funny bone in my body, the other reason I like the show was that in a weird kind of way, it is about female empowerment too. She’s tacky and melodramatic, true, but see, there are these 16 guys who are falling over each other to be tackier and more melodramatic to …well yeah, to get their seven seconds of fame, but also to impress her. What wouldn’t I give to sit dreamily listening to how wonderful I am and cute and how talented - even if it was done for the camera. It beats singing and getting insulted for it and it beats eating cockroaches or whatever they do eat in the other reality shows. She gave a ‘pyar ka nazrana’(gift of love) to one guy, went out for coffee with another , asked a third out for dinner and was unabashedly sighing over a fourth guy. What fun. She doesn’t have too much to choose from - all the suitors look equally dense, but she seems to intend to have fun in the process. She asked the guy she went out for dinner with, totally seriously ( I think we were meant to see some tears in her eyes or something)- “Aap mera dil to nahin todenge?” No kidding. I fell on the floor.

I intend to watch the whole thing. Or at least till I get bored of the slapstick.

26/11

2008-11-28T03:48:00.000-08:00

Although it is the usual thing that we hear (and say) about terrorists and terrorism all the time – that it is mindless, that it achieves no purpose – I’m beginning to wonder about this, for the very first time.
I like to understand the rationale behind things. It’s important for me to know what drives people. I may not approve or admire, but I can usually get into most people’s heads and comprehend what it is that leads them to whatever paths they choose in life. It is this one particular establishment that continues to mystify me. The supply, the demand, the infrastructure and the driving force of the terrorism industry – I need to figure it out. Does it really serve no purpose at all? When I say purpose, I don’t mean some goal aimed at the greater good of the universe; but at least some gains, for the parties carrying out these grand activities are expected. Would such a large body of people spend so much time and energy, giving up lives (their own included) in the process if they did not foresee some serious achievable gains in sight? Or are they really as misguided as all these vociferous speakers would have me believe? So misguided that they would expend so much, motivated purely by the thoughts of undoing the wrongs done to their community/sect/religion? I find it difficult to believe that a group of people would have the vision to plan activities of such magnitude and the grit to carry them through – all the while do it without an agenda. Or worse, an agenda as elementary as a desire to spread fear and wreck revenge. That’s it? Spending so much money, dedicating whole lives – just to scare people? It has to be more than that.

I’m willing to concede that your regular militant may have been motivated by the thoughts of the rightful revenge. That, and the thoughts of the 72 virgins waiting in heaven. But the guys at the top must have more. Wreck revenge, terrify people and earn God’s love – all very fascinating I’m sure – but are they enough to make someone dedicate his whole life into planning and materializing grandiose modes of destruction? All the fundraising, all the technology shopping, all the human resource recruitment and the state of the art training – is meant to achieve….what, exactly? I plan to spend some serious time trying to find what it is that drives so many people to such single minded devotion.

The Rainwoman

2008-09-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

I wrote these pieces during my first fortnight in Lonavala. Wrote them on bits of paper because my internet connection isn’t activated yet and walking to the cyber café in the pouring rain just to write blog posts did not seem worthwhile. Found these pieces of paper strewn all around my room and now that I too have developed amphibian characteristics like the rest of them Lonavalans, and now that I do everything I want to do, anytime (only I remember to carry an umbrella all the time)…and now that Jitu threatens to get me disinherited from the family fortune unless I publish something……I have walked to the cyber café tonight ….and here they are.

11 August 2008
When the transfer order came last month…. "You're getting posted to Lonavala? Oh WOW. I’ve been there …It’s such a beautiful place."
"I've lived there. It’s awful. Your clothes will never dry"
"Oh, you lucky thing. You'll walk in clouds every day..."
"Oh, you poor thing...You'll have fungus growing in your car..."
"Sometimes when you drive, you can't see more than two feet ahead; it’s so foggy...You'll be driving with hazard lights all the time."
It was all true. I have been here five days and I feel like I'm drowning in fog. I don't remember what the sun looks like. That shiny yellow ball….doesn’t it make everything look colorful, unlike these shades of blue and grey all the time? Doesn’t it dry things up?

I have never lusted for the sun like this before. The rain absolutely DOES NOT STOP. It simply doesn't. And I do have fungus growing in my car. And begging forgiveness for being crude, I would like to inform the world that fungus in a car smells like shit. Literally. It smells like the products of defecation. In fact, it’s a lot like the smell in restrooms at petrol pumps. The kind of petrol pumps where the managers don't believe in flushes and take care never to use the loos themselves.
Ok, enough on that. I just needed to get that out of my system(!).... It isn’t that bad. Have given my car to be cleaned, against all well meaning advice to wait till the end of the monsoons.

And I have walked among the clouds. This defies description. It has to be experienced. I could write pages and it wouldn't touch the magic this place is. Yesterday I carried a book (The Last Lecture, awesome book) to the lakeside and settled down comfortably to read. Breathtakingly beautiful view - think moss covered hills all around, then think silvery, shimmering lake in the centre....surreal. Fifteen pages later I looked up and I could see - NOTHING. I was sitting in clouds. Surrounded on all sides, it seemed impossible to know where I had parked the car! I could actually have started walking and stepped into the lake....

But although the fog and the rain follow absolutely no timetable, although some days it pours for hours together, the interesting thing is how life goes on. Here in Lonavala, people live as people in other parts of the world do – only they carry raincoats and umbrellas ALL THE TIME. No longer do I smile in disbelief if I see people going for walks in perfectly clear weather with umbrellas tucked under their arms. They know they might need them and they always do. People in Lonavala will never say – Hey, it’s raining cats and dogs, let’s not go out tonight. They just get up and go – to shop, to jog, to party, to eat out, whatever.
12 August 2008
I spent my fourth afternoon in Lonavala today getting some rain gear in place. Bought a pair of floaters and, as happens so often when I shop alone, I hate them now; I chose function over form and now I feel I should have bought the prettier looking ones ; they were only slightly uncomfortable…this pair makes my feet look so ugly!! Anyway, also bought the largest umbrella ever manufactured (what WAS I thinking? Did I plan to have picnics with friends under it?). A room heater- to dry clothes and shoes, lots of socks and chocolates – to keep me warm and happy. All I need is to develop gills and no longer will the nonstop rain bother me.
I decided to celebrate this new resolve to thumb my nose at the weather by walking to Mahima’s house for dinner. She’s an old acquaintance, rediscovered here, and she had invited me over for some rasam and rice to cheer me up. In my new floaters and my lovely new umbrella, I started my walk to her home. Mahima had given me the clearest possible directions, which I had promptly forgotten. I walked around in circles until I got bored of the scenery and then called her up to come pick me up. Had the most pleasurable meal in a long time. And after as much girl talk we both needed, I got up to go at about eleven in the night. She asked me if I wanted to be dropped back and I said I would rather walk. So once again, Mahima gave me detailed directions and I assured her I wouldn’t get lost again. Really should have known better, given my record. The walk back was like a dream. Or do I mean nightmare?
12 August 2008. 11.30 p.m. The walk back.
This is the stuff stories are made of. Ghost stories I mean...
The shadow walking in front of me does not look like mine at all. Seriously.
Halfway through my way back, all the streetlights go out. The world looks like the blackest of black holes. The sense of being in a Ruskin Bond story deepens.
(To imagine the darkness - close your eyes really tight; then cover your face with your hands. That’s how it was. And I was walking through it.)
There MUST be other people in this world. There always have been. But somehow I cannot convince myself of this. I have no doubt, that I'm the only human in this dark, dark city.
The light from my mobile display shows me about half a meter of road ahead; so that is what I concentrate on - hoping all the while that I am walking on the right road. There is absolutely no way to tell. I've been here less than a week so I have no clue about any landmarks; I have no roadmaps in my head - though fat lot of help landmarks and roadmaps would be if you can't see beyond your own arm.
After maybe about a year and a half of walking in the darkness - convinced that I'm walking in circles - I see a small light up ahead. It looks like another mobile, attached to, I hope, a person, although there’s no way to tell. One burst of hope, also fear. I vividly remember that Ruskin Bond story in which another solitary, scared walker on dark night meets two watchmen carrying lanterns….he asks them for directions and they raise their lanterns to show unbroken, unmarked flesh where there should be faces. No eyes, no nose, no mouth…just smooth white, pale skin. It takes me all of my courage to remind myself that it was only a story, these things don't really happen. The voice in my head says-"Really? You're sure? You really want to ask this person for help?”
I'm not terribly sure actually.

...to be continued......

About Varsha

2008-08-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

I've been in Lonavala for about a week now and I'm so full of so many stories about the rain but that's another post, some other day.This is quite another 'Varsha' that I want to talk about today.
Went to Mumbai for a meeting yesterday. The dry roads gave me more happiness than can be imagined. With the return reservation unconfirmed and the TTE so unhelpful ( where have all the chivalrous TTEs of my college days gone??) Ratna and I got into the Ladies' General. No less than a hundred and fifty women in one coach. Awesome. It truly is a universe with its own rules. Its a good thing I do not know Marathi for God only knows what soul shaking abuses that woman in the green saree screamed at me when I stepped on her toe. She sounded scary enough even with the content so obscure. But I'm a not a sardarni for nothing. I do not let anything intimidate me for long - neck deep crowds, shouting , glaring women - I can deal with it all . Hung my bag on a hook that already had about eighteen bags from it, recieved and ignored eighteen pairs of angry eyes, planted my feet somewhere and pulled my Ruth Rendell out and started reading. I was supported on all sides by jostling women so it was like reading in a hammock. Quite comfortable, and Ruth Rendell can always make me forget where I am. Ratna had found a similar niche - and was listening happily to the radio on my phone.

About an hour later, tap-tap on my back-"Beta do you want to sit?"
I don't mind.
Someone was getting off from the upper berth and had decided to pick me from the seething mass to present her seat to. These things have their own rules. I don't understand why she had decided to be so kind but I've never been one to look gift horses in their mouths. So up up and away - I climbed up , in the process stepping on a few more toes and recieving a few more glares.

And in the land of the fortunate seated, introductions were made and greetings were exchanged. I charmed the ladies into agreeing to accommodate Ratna as well. She climbed up, and made friends with the chirpy 5 yr old sitting next to her. The two of them listed to the radio together for a while and then gave my phone back to me when it stopped catching FM. A few more minutes of reading and then tap tap again- "Your friend...."
I looked up from my book. "Hey! Where did she disappear?"
"She wasn't feeling well. Just scrambled down and ran to the door....."
Crane my neck as hard as I might, I couldn't see where the poor girl had got to. And we don't want a fellow officer to fall out of the door, no way. The paperwork would be mind boggling. With great regret I climbed down too, committing the ultimate sacrilege apparently because I heard a chorus of voices behind me- "But you will loose your seat!!" Yeah. Sigh.

Reaching the coach door to see Ratna was as much fun as an expedition to the north pole would be. I found her sitting happily at the door. This girl seems to love the rain as much as I hate it. Anyway she was doing fine so I started reading again and THEN...I realised that my phone was no longer in my pocket.

All I did was say this to my friend - O my God, where did my phone go?" And I wasn't terribly loud either, I never am. But thirty seconds later, the whole coach knew.
"What happened?"
"She lost her phone..."
"Who?"
"That girl in black jeans..."
"She was standing here...yahan dekho"
"She went and sat up there- did it fall there?"
"Hey tell us your number...lets call it and see if it rings..."
" She walked through this aisle....see if its under your bag..?"It was unbelievable. Some fifty strangers were lifting their feet, their sarees , their bags and looking for my phone. About five of them were calling my cellphone number and telling the others to shut up so we could hear the phone ring. It was ringing. But then I remembered that I had put it on vibration mode in the meeting. ...
"Tell her to look here..."
"Why doesn't someone call her number and see...?
"She put it on vibration mode, silly girl..."After about twenty minutes of wading throgh that jungle of feet and bags and shoes and sarees , I gave up.
"If everyone gets out of the train at the next stop, I'm sure she'll find it..."
Yeah, sure, THAT sounds like it can be done.
" Someone has stolen it....she should start checking people's bags..."
This I was totally unwilling to do.So I gave an apologetic smile to the crowd in general, turned my back on them and started reading again.The effect on the populace was electric.
"WHAT??"
" Crazy girl!!"
I tried reassuring them - "It's okay auntie, it was a very old phone anyway"

"Don't stop looking!!"
"Why has she stopped looking?"

My brilliant solution was to write my name and address on paper and give it around -"See, in the morning, when the train empties, if you find it on the floor or something, maybe you could mail it to me?". People were rolling their eyes at that.And then. Enter Varsha. She was the most vocal of this very concerned lot, sitting squeezed somewhere in one of the top berths, yelling her encouraging suggestions, and calling my phone number frantically. Pretty girl, about my age. Exasperated by my seeming indifference and my having accepted the state of affairs - "I'll look for your phone."
She shimmered down from her hard earned seat, tucked her dupatta and went to work. Down on her knees, pushing people's bags and feet like they were so much fluff....every few minutes she would emerge, red faced, take another gulp of air and go down again. It had to be seen to be believed. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude.That someone could be bothered by a stranger's trouble to such a degree....I have no words. I was thinking, whether she finds my phone or not, I'll never forget this creature.

But find my phone she did. After an half an hour of serious digging and diving and bullying ("Move your leg auntie!!"), she came up with ten inch grin on her face and my cellphone in her hand. The coach erupted in cheers. Women slapped her back,patted her head(and mine) and laughed in so much genuine happiness!
"She found it!!"
"The other girl.."
"Where was it?"
"I always knew it was there somewhere...you only needed to look properly!"Like in a relay race, from hand to hand my phone reached me...I shook hands with Varsha and said thank you about five hundred times. I wanted to hug her but I would have had to climb over too many bodies so I blew her a kiss instead. She climbed up to her seat and I think its a testimony to the admiration she had earned that no one had even considered taking her seat, lying vacant for the last half hour. She gave me e few well deserved homilies -" See? you shouldn't give up so easily...You want something real bad, you always get it." Paolo Coelho would be proud of her.

She had found the thing just in time, because we reached Lonavala almost immediately afterward.
I hope she reads this somehow, someday. Thank you Varsha. For finding my phone. For warming my heart with the knowledge that strangers can connect in so many ways. For grit and single mindedness that I needed to see and remember and learn.

Clint Eastwood has a new fan.

2008-06-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

For all those of you, who have not seen “True Crime”, just let go of everything and go get the DVD. If you like murder mysteries, this one is for you. If like thrillers with nail biting climaxes, True Crime is for you. Fight for the underdog grab your attention? Funny, sarcastic men your thing?

Clint Eastwood has produced, directed and acted in this awesome, awesome film.

I actually watched two Clint Eastwood movies today. What, you think it just took me one film, fantastic as it may be, to fall in love with the guy? The other was “Perfect World”. Kevin Costner is the lead in this one, along with an absolutely adorable child artist called T J Lowther.This one’s a cynical though racy story directed by none other than Eastwood who also plays a rather subdued sheriff on the trail of Kevin Costner’s dashing convict on the run. It’s a touching story, funny in the most unexpected of places and has one of the most heart rending climaxes. It isn’t every day that I find my jaded self weeping at the end of a movie. Maybe tomorrow I’ll watch the Honkytonk Man.

And for all those of you, friends and strangers, who have been calling and asking why don’t I write more frequently, saying things like 'I’ve been waiting for your next piece' - to all of you I want to say thank you for making me feel like Vikram Seth or something. Forgive this writer’s block – sometimes too many things happening is as awful and as ennui inducing as nothing happening! Maybe once I shift to Lonavla, the muse will strike again. The hills will inspire.

Endless Night...

2008-04-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

MY GOD WHAT A NIGHT!

April 10 - 11, 2008
2245: Reach my room, falling apart at every seam. Have just taken a Paracetamol, post dinner. I so hate it when I’m sick. And this is my 7th episode of tonsillopharyngitis in 12 months.

2300: Gargle with Disprin..Get into bed all bundled up in my feel good pyjamas….dare I use the thermometer? If my fever is higher than 100 deg F, I will start panicking and missing mummy. Dare I?

2305: The thermometer says 101.5. Pop one more PCM. Start listening to Chapter 26 of Psmith In The City. Should send me into a happy sleep.

0005: Finish listening to Chapter 28. Pop in the thermometer again. 102.5

0006: Cry for 10 minutes.

0016: Call up Jitu. Cry some more.

0030: Splash water over my feet and face. Pop thermometer again. 102.5 deg F….@!$@%$#^%$#!!

0035: Wrap myself up. Go and sit in the garden with my audiobook and earphones.. Maybe someone talkative will be about. I need some sympathy and conversation.

0045: Finish Chapter 29 of Psmith In The City. And the only company I find are mosquitoes who have chewed my ankles through.

0055: Back in my bed. Will sleep. WILL NOT see that stupid thermometer again.

0100: Put the thermometer in my axilla again. 102 Deg F. Arey! Theek ho raha hai! I’ll sleep now.

0130: Up again. I feel hungry. Gobble up a banana. One more round of gargles. Switch on computer. Download a few chapters of Northanger Abbey. That should help me sleep. Log on to gmail and viciously decline and delete 8 contacts from Jeevansathi.com . I will not even read a profile that has the word ‘homely’ in it. Nor ‘slim’ nor ‘beautiful’. Nor ‘cultural values’. What does that mean anyway?

0145: Find Sapna online. She tells me in great detail how to burn 8 red chilies to get rid of my fever- she’s convinced someone’s cursed me. I love it that she cares so much. Thank God for friends. If I could find red chilies in the middle of the night I might just have done this, I think.

0150: Thermometer says 100.00 deg F. Thank God. To bed.

The GMAT Tutor

2008-03-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have received calls from no less than eight future test takers who want advice on how to prepare. One, it is very flattering and two, I honestly think I can help. Hence this post.
How long a time is most appropriate for preparation?
A. Three months. Less than that, you might end up feeling unprepared and insecure; more than that-you might burn out. Studying for GMAT is fun, but there can be too much of a good thing.
Should I join a prep course?
A. It depends entirely on the kind of person you are. If you like competing, go for it . On the plus side, it gives you a chance to be part of a charged up environment where you'll meet other like minded people who will encourage you to study. On the minus side, you might meet a self effacing bunch that aims to "score a 600 and be happy in that" . If competition can shake your confidence, go ahead and do it on your own. I know a lot of people who scored a 770 without any outside help. There are plenty of books and sites that make it possible.

Suggestions on how to begin:First, buy or borrow these books and start plodding through them -
Princeton's Crack the GMAT
Kaplan Premier Program For GMAT
Official Guide to GMAT, 11th edition
Arco Essay Book
Buying them is better because you get CDs that way, AND you get codes to enter their respective sites which have plenty of prep material.

Second,spend a weekend going through these websites:
www.mba.com. This one has two free tests. Download them and do them BEFORE you start doing questions from the Official Guide(OG) because some questions are common. The fantastic bit of news is that these two tests can actually be thought of as SIX tests- because the question bank keeps changing every time you take the test. So I suggest that you take the first test two or three times in the beginning of your prep and save the other test to maybe the middle of your prep; it would serve as a measurement device for the level of your preparation.
www.gmattutor.com. Another very helpful site. Spend at least two hours reading this one.Once, in the beginning , then towards the end. It gives excellent prep tips. But the best thing in this site is a list of study plans. Take a very sincere look at them, select the one that suits you best, then take a printout and try and stick to it as much as possible.

Some More Suggestions:
1. Early in your preparation, you will figure out your respective Achilles' Heels. These are the ones you need to conquer. If sentence correction is what is bringing your score down, search for the toughest Sent Corrections on the net and do them until you're correcting the conversation of people around you.If Data Sufficiency questions are ones you get wrong most often, work at doing 40 data sufficiency questions a day for a week. There absolutely is no substitute for hard work.
2. While solving questions, spend a significant amount of time reading the explanations. The questions are not important ; the explanations are. And in the above mentioned books, the explanations need to be read more than once. In a few days' time, the authors of Princeton, Kaplan and the OG start to feel like old friends. They definitely reminded me of MY friends - they're reliable and they have pathetic senses of humor.
3. Make notes. Whether or not you decide to join a prep course, making notes is very important. Making a list of math formulas, idioms, etc may seem unnecessary but trust me, it comes very handy in the fag end of the study months.
4. Aim for 800. Remember, if you aim for a 600, you might end up with 500. So, think positive, and talk positive.

Will write some more later. Watch out for GMAT Tutor Two. I will gather my scattered collection of free tests, useful links and podcasts and post them here soon.

Here's what I figure - If the eight of you do all that I did, plus if you do not commit the mistakes that I did, logic says that you will score more than my 710. I will follow your preparation with interest. In return , I will welcome insights on my admission process.

FAQs

Thank God for Librivox

2008-03-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

It’s a beautiful, beautiful world.
Mine is a family that belongs to that exotic genus – The Voracious Reader. Books, magazines, eBooks, novels, nonfiction, self help, newspapers, the newsprint from paper bags….we move through it all like hardworking termites.

When I was growing up, the most fascinating thing in the house was that big box full of books that my papa had collected over the years. It had seemed to me then that I would probably read them through life, slowly, one book at a time. But as it turned out, I had chewed my way through that lot before I finished high school. Visitors to our house always ask that inevitable question-“Have you actually READ all these books?”
No, we keep them on the advice of our decorator.

This posting at Daman has contributed in a big way to my own collection. One of my friends here says that there are only two libraries in the city and the larger one is in the doc’s room. And here too, yesterday, “Auntie, have you read ALL these books?”

I recently volunteered to tidy up my brother’s bookshelf and to catalogue it. Considering that it contained, at a vague estimate, some five hundred books, it wasn’t a mean offer. About an hour later, the poor guy walked into his room to see me perched on a table and reading The Times Guide to Everything. After that I read Now Put Those Strengths To Work. And then, five hours later, I went and convinced him that his bookshelf doesn't really need to be tidied up.

I was convinced that I knew all about the joys that the printed word can give. And then, last month I discovered audiobooks. I love the internet. I love this new world that makes it so easy to share stories. Every night, I download a chapter and transfer it to my phone. And then I go to sleep with someone telling me my favorite stories, night after night. Haven’t explored nonfiction yet but have listened all my favorite authors one by one- Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse, Dorothy L Sayers, G.K. Chesterton- they’re all there, at the reach of my fingertips. There is only one problem. I sometimes go to sleep in the middle of an episode and can’t remember where to start it the next day! So I listen to the whole thing all over again. But not complaining, no.Even as I'm writing this, I'm downloading chapter two of 'Psmith in The City'( P G Wodehouse). I've read the print version about seventeen times.

Here are my recommendations for the best audiobooks available. Oh, and did I mention that they’re free?

www.librivox.org. This one is absolutely the best of the lot. A seemingly limitless supply.
www.audiobooksforfree.com Especially for Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton fans
www.freeclassicaudiobooks.com Check this one out for a wonderful reading of Alice in Wonderland.
www.audiobooks.net Some books here are in the wma or the wmd format so use some software like switch to turn them into mp3 files
www.simplyaudiobooks.com This one has one free audiobook every month. So bookmark it and visit it once a month. This month it’s Sherlock Holmes’ “Priory School”
www.audiobookscorner.com Look at this one for the two BBC radiobooks- one comedy and the other a mystery.

I'm curious about one thing though. How come I sleep better when a man is reading the story than when a woman is ?

End of the GMAT Quarter

2008-03-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have scored 710 in the GMAT. It's not earth shattering but it’s a decent score and it’s “an accurate estimation of my ability” (this phrase comes from one of my prep books). It was a fantastic battle of wits and though I miss the adrenaline charged prep days, I’m very happy and want to thank some people here:

Jivtesh (aka Jitu, aka Jivi) – Best brother in the world. Also my best friend. Expert at the carrot and stick approach. “If you get a good score, you’ll go to a good school …If you go to a good school; you’ll get to be with the most interesting people in the world for the rest of your life.”

Col Kanwaljit Singh – Father, friend, support system. My dad is not the overtly expressive, affectionate type. He’s the type who spends hours and days researching prep institutes, making a comprehensive list of them and then ranking them according to multiple criteria- duration of course, distance from home, success stories, et al so that I can decide which one is best for me.

Ashish K Gupta – Friend and sharer of happiness, misery, trial and triumphs for the last ten years. “What you need is a change in direction. You need to get into something that you will be effortlessly good at. In short, you need to get an MBA. Just take a look at the ISB site.” And all I needed to do was look at the ISB site.

Neelesh M – Gave me the all important last minute tips the night before the exam. “Remember to cap your pen - it keeps drying up; Carry something to eat in the break; this is just your kind of exam- you’ll do well”

Pooja Negi – One of those blessings that only the luckiest people get. Pooja and I have been friends since we were both giggling schoolgirls. She’s the kind of girl who calls you up from London twice a week just to say that she believes in you and she can just ‘sense that you’re going to do great things’. And this woman has this ethereal, other world air about her that you find everything she says so convincing.

Sonal Verma – A ten year history of mutual affection and admiration. I know that she does not lie, so when she says that she knows that I’m going to go places, I believe her.

P Promod and Nileena Promod– My boss and his wife. He, because he voiced encouragement and gave quiet support; She, because she always listens with perfect empathy to all my rants and also because she makes such fantastic coffee and ‘puttu’.

My friends Kimmi , Sapna , Anuradha, Vishal, The RDs and of course my supermom – What did I do to deserve such a consistent support system?

So I have taken the first step towards the dream. But like Jitu said, it’s only 30 percent of the job done. But what a thirty percent it was. Specific goals to fulfill, a deadline to meet, and success so much within reach - how I wish all of life were like preparing for GMAT. When it seemed that coordinate geometry was going to be my Achilles’ heel, I spent one whole week doing nothing but coordinate geometry, hour after hour. Marcus Buckingham (now, Discover your strengths) tells me to concentrate on my strengths and not worry about my weaknesses. I love him but I refused to obey him when it came to my GMAT prep. When I started out, Critical reasoning was another fragile area but by the end of three months, I found myself analyzing my friends’ and colleagues’ conversations…..”Sir, it rather looks to me like your plan suffers from the fallacy of biased sampling. What would strengthen your argument is some evidence that your survey actually did consider all the parameters required. Also, there exists an unsupported assumption that wishing for change is the same as a desire to work for the change…..” I bet they’re all glad I studied for only three months.

THE MATH CLASS

2008-02-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

February 18, 2008

I have a dream. I see myself in the corporate world. Making strategic decisions, organizing, negotiating , stretching the boundaries of my experience. Acquiring authority and clout to make things happen. The realization that I love being in charge( and how much do I love it) dawned on me sometime last year when it was left on me run the office for months with the top man posted out and the reliever nowhere in sight. The joy of daily decision making, the lessons from the daily pitfalls, the responsibility of creating substance out of shambles - I hadn't known how much I had in me !

And from knowing it to realizing that career my career lay beyond medicine was but a small step. I rather enjoy the mysteries and the excitement of medicine- there nothing is quite like hearing 'Thank you for making me well again'- but the world of Hippocrates uses no more than a tenth of my skills. And provides no more than a hundredth of the stimulation I need.

I have a very interesting set of friends and family. There turned out to be quite a few who "always knew I was going to move beyond medicine".
"Take the GMAT.Go for an MBA."

I spent the next few weeks surfing the net so exhaustively - going through page after page of university after university, writing to complete strangers for advice("Sir, you were a doctor in the army, how come you decided to get an MBA?"), reading career profiles by the dozens. And then I saw the light.This IS what I'm meant to do ! This is the reason for every tough experience that I've had.How else would I have known that this is what I WANT to do?
Result of research: MBA, here I come.

Next step- GMAT.I hesitate to admit this, fearful of being labeled the most uncool geek ever, but I happen to love examinations. An entirely new bunch of books to read, to take a hitherto unheard of examination - it was just one more source of the adrenaline I need.I bought, borrowed, downloaded study material and got down to it.A couple of months later , I'm ready and prepared but my dad suggests that I should take one of these test prep courses. One doesn't want to be overconfident about these things so I take a month's leave, come home and join one of these GMAT test prep courses.

Which brings us to purpose of this particular post.What an evening I have had today.

Day one of Math class at the institute -
The instructor walks in, says Hi to everyone and writes on the board-"Number Theory". Oh good. I do have some issues with this part. I sit up, all ready to soak it in, and all ready with so many of doubts and questions.But this guy spends the next five minutes FILLING the board up with formula after formula- not one of which I have seen in Princeton or Kaplan or the Official Guide to GMAT- Heyy!! I seem to have entered the wrong class. But no. It is the GMAT class and over the next hour I'm reminded, painfully, of the the day some 13 years ago when I had actually stumbled into an engineering section Math lecture and was too shy to walk out until it was over.I had sat in glassy eyed silence then and I sat in glassy eyed silence now. And there was this group of nearly a dozen other people( all engineers I presume) who seemed to know what was going on.
'Should I tell them that these formulas aren't tested on the exam?'
But maybe they are, which means I'm lost.

Dr. Dolittle

2008-01-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

The next person who says to me – “How can YOU be sick? You’re a doctor!!” – is going to see me pulling my hair out.
…..or maybe I should pull their hair out instead. And have my answer ready.The thing is that I forgot to take my daily quota of the magic potion in medical college that was supposed to make us immune to disease and disability.

Doctors falling ill is one of the saddest things that can happen - and not just because non medical personnel ( I’m thinking of calling them ‘duggles’) give you incredulous looks and keep asking with infuriating facetiousness – “But how can doctors be sick?”. Richard Gordon says in ‘Doctor In Love’ that the first diagnosis that a doctor makes for himself has to be the most exotic, the second the most fatal and the third so inaccurate that his med school people would come climbing over each other to take his degree away.

It is terrible having oneself as a case study. I had this awful headache some days back. With my skull threatening to split into a minimum of eight pieces, I just could not stop trying to figure out what it could be. Cluster Headache? Giant cell arteritis? Migraine? Brain tumor? The chapter on ‘Headache’ in Harrison runs into some 60 pages. And logic does seem to abandon you if you get your head to figure out why it is hurting so much.Its worse than Hannibal frying up Ray Liotta’s brain and making him eat it. It’s like Hannibal slicing a piece of his own tongue and then trying to eat it.

Amitabh Bachhan in ‘Majboor’ has a place in my head that is more significant than the place that those countless Clinical Medicine classes could make. I read up the signs and symptoms of Brain Tumor and was a tad disappointed that I didn’t have even one of them.

And if you decide to consult a fellow physician, things don’t become easier. It can so easily turn into replays of those dreaded vivas from final year med school.You can be sitting clutching your head in agony, unable to open your eyes and this wise old man will look at you with a huge smile and say – “ so, Manjot…What do you think? What is YOUR probable diagnosis?”

Mr. Yogi, Episode 5

2008-01-11T02:35:00.000-08:00

Another of those things that simply beg to be recorded for posterity. I got out of bed to write this - I just hate laughing alone.

This isn't slander because I'm not mentioning any names. Still if you return to read my blog ever and if you recognize yourself, please forgive me.

Ok,so here goes the latest installment in my adventures with shaadi.com.

SMS on my mobile today- "Hi.My name is XYZ.Your dad gave me your number. Regarding Shaadi.com". Cryptic. A man of few words.
I wrote back-" Yes, Papa told me to expect your call.Call me whenever." And he, the potential suitor for my hand,writes back-"Can you call me? My balance is zero."

Well. Let's not get judgmental here.It's no big deal.Who knows, this will be the thing that we will laugh about years from now.So I stopped tittering and called him.The conversation went like this-
ME:"Hi! I'm Manjot. My Dad told me about you last night. So, how're you doing ?"
I think I'm beginning to develop a Joey routine here. Should watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S less.
XYZ:"So, what's happening?" Apparently he has his own Joey routine. Mine is way better.

I've never needed too much an invitation to take the floor. SO I tell him in great detail about what's happening - about my day, about the Blood Donation Camp I'm organizing next month.
"....And what's up with you?Are you at work?"
XYZ:" Yes, I'm just leaving now."
Uncomfortable silence.
XYZ: "So,what's happening?"
O my God.That's what you said just now.
But I'm not going to turn someone down just because he can't talk.Maybe he's just shy. Look at how terrible Ross is when he meets women for the first time......I really should give those F.R.I.E.N.D.S DVDs away.

ME: "Not much else is happening here. Why don't we ask each other some specific things. Tell me what you're looking for here..What kind of woman do you hope to find? I saw your profile on Shaadi.And the thing that totally struck me was that the list of professions in 'your preferred partner' starts from Accountant and goes upto Social worker and covers Beautician, Lawyer, Legal Professionals and Merchant Naval Officer....among twenty five others...How did that come about?"
That will give him something to talk about.

Not much apparently.
XYZ: "There were so few hits on my profile all these months so I figured maybe I was expecting too much.Maybe I should not be choosy."

ME:"Awww...come on.Don't sound so disheartened. There's your perfect woman waiting for you somewhere. You'll find her someday.You have to continue being as choosy as you want to be.Your destiny will give you exactly what you choose."
He's supposed to woo me.Why am I working so hard here?

XYZ- " I don't believe in destiny and stuff. This happens in movies, not in real life. In real life, you just keep looking for the most suitable person in your social circle, and Shaadi is another way to widen that social circle."
Great.A bit of cynic here.But hey! Now we have something to argue about ! Maybe it can still get interesting.

ME: "Hey! Movies imitate life, you know. And people find magic on matrimonial sites too! I can tell you so many stories of friends who did...."
XYZ: " Ummm..."
No?Don't want to hear my stories?

God, How I hate silences. What do i talk about now?But he takes initiative this time.
XYZ: "So, how tall are you?"
Sigh.
Me:" ...158 cm.5 feet 3 inches"
Silence. Am i supposed to...?
ME: "So how tall are you?"
HIM: " I'm six feet and one inch."
I'm remembering so many dirty jokes at this point, but I'm guessing he's not ready for them.
ME: "Wow, that's really tall."
HIM: " Yeah, it's ok."
Yeah, it really is ok. But what are we going to talk about now?

HIM:"I was thinking of asking you something."
Yes, please.Something.Anything.
"I need to see some more pictures of you.Your profile has only one.Can you send me some more?"

By this time the most incurable bits of my optimism have abandoned me. All I want is this to get over.Fast.
ME: "I have a blog. There are some pictures there.Why don't you check them out and maybe we talk later"
HIM: "OK."

Later, when Jivtesh asked me how it had been, I told him I give this guy 4 points.I actually give him a lot less, but I really don't want my family to give up on me.
JIVTESH: "So what did you guys talk about?"

..........so i tell him what we talked about......there was a bit more than what I've written here, but in the same vein....
JIVTESH:" O my God. And this was the guy from IIT, wasn't he? You poor thing. Oh, you meant 4 out of a 100 then."

I think I did.

The Purpose of Daman

2007-12-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

Every person that we meet, every experience that we have, is towards the learning of something that we need to learn, towards some future only the universe can see. I don’t quite remember where I read this, or some words to this effect. But I find myself turning to these words so often these days. Because I’d really like to know exactly what is it that I have to learn from Daman, exactly what purpose this city is meant to serve in my saga.

I’m convinced that Daman occupies a place in this universe entirely unique to itself. There is no other city on this planet that is as astonishingly full of dismal contradictions.

This city has four multinational banks but not one bookshop. It has dozens of beautiful beachside hotels and ‘multi-cuisine’ restaurants and not one single coffee shop. It has no less than two hundred bars, but you will never see a drunken brawl anywhere. The last I’m not complaining about, by the way.

It is like being on another planet, or maybe in another time zone. No, being on another planet or time zone would actually offer so much scope for exciting new experiences. Maybe it’s like being on that planet and in that time zone ALL ALONE.

Bright lights, professional salons, book fairs, theaters- these may or may not seem like unreasonable desires. To me, these things define life . People may gush about mountains and streams; nothing warms up my heart more than the neon signed skyline of Bombay.

As I long to meet people that I can flex my mental muscles with, I worry sometimes that I will lose my ability to be amusing. A sort of disuse atrophy, so to speak. Will this continual pretense of deriving pleasure from the trivial become real some day? I laugh at things that don’t amuse me, I aim to find thrill among the blandest- will all this change me? Oh God, will I forget how to talk? That’s about the only thing I’m really good at.

Seriously, was I MEANT to be in a place so quiet? Maybe there has been a typo error up there- maybe I was supposed to be in a place that answers to this description AFTER I died, as punishment for the many sins I have not yet had a chance to commit.

And what is it that I’m meant to learn here? Ok, let’s see. To learn to live in the moment. Sans people, sans shopping, sans films and plays and interesting people. To learn that there is more to life than just these. But seriously, is there, really?

But there are some real joys in the dullest of places…when I somehow manage to decipher the gurgle of a two yr old and realize that what he said was- ‘come to my house for dinner, Manjot aunty!”- the warmth I feel is something that I had not known before. I have learnt to shop alone, to watch movies by myself, all the books about life being difficult make so much sense- I never did know what the fuss was about self help books before this. Last week I read something about pain being the best teacher in the world. A year ago, I would’ve laughed and used four letter words that refer to the process of defecation but it seems like such profound wisdom now!

Day 14- The end of all good things.

2007-12-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 05,2007

Day 13- Freefall !!

2007-12-09T07:16:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 06 2007

"You will be going for freefall tomorrow morning."

I must've woken up four times at least in the night. And every time, repeating to myself-"Check in-Check out-Horizon-Up - Down - and Arch!!" over and over, like a mantra- I tried to reassure myself to sleep.

My very own Accelerated free fall, stage one. Half of me wondered how I got so lucky; the other half wanted to know if I really and truly wanted to be the recipient of this grand gift. I have no qualms about admitting that my pulse rate was a good 120 per minute as the sea king climbed to 10,00 feet. "Why don't i tell Rajesh sir that i absolutely feel terrified-i'll ask him to give one more static line jump and then my five jumps will be over....I really don't think i can do this! I'll forget what i have to do...I'll forget to pull the cord...God, I bet everyone can see how scared I feel..."

But then i realized that admitting that I was too scared to jump required more courage than actually jumping out. This thought made me laugh and when I saw Gaurav Sawant taking position at the door of the Sea King- his face as white as a sheet- I thought, " If he can, I can, and better!!" Gaurav jumped out with Lt Cdr Rajesh and Lt Cdr Mahesh and then it was my turn. Took position at the door, LME Borah to my left and LME Rao to my right. I turned to the left, to Borah " CHECK IN !" He gave me a smile and a " OK!" that was at once so amused and so reassuring and so happy that all my fears slipped away as if by magic. I mean, if anyone should be scared it should be these guys- jumping out of an aircraft at 10000 feet with a complete greenhorn who might mess things up so completely- but if he's so happy, so confident about it......he must have good reason....and I just knew I was going to have a great time. To the right now, to Rao, this time grinning," CHECK OUT!"...."OK!".... "Horizon! Up, Down and Arch!!"

And there we were, falling through the sky....my eyes are filling up with tears at how much of a joy it was, even now as I write this tonight( was it only three days ago?)

My first thought was "O my God, I actually thought of not going through with this!!"...and my second-"These people get to do this everyday!" ....my third, " wow, the world looks so unbelievable pretty from up here!!" At this point I checked my altimeter and we still weren't at 9000 feet...."wow, I really AM doing thisssss!!yesss!!"

Ok, 9000 feet. PRCP. Followed by the delayed PRCP. " I'll go tell Rajesh sir that I do have the 'Altitude Awareness' thingy..." You seriously have so much time to think up there....I mean come to think of it, I'm falling at 120 miles per hour and I'm actually thinking of so many things....I saw the coastline and to my utter surprise, i identified our dropzone as well. 5000 feet.Wave. Ok, now time to pull the ripcord. I closed my fist around it and pulled....but as it turned out, I could pull out only half of it ...it seemed too long... Rao helped me with rest. For some reason he seemed to want to take it from me but I didn't let go( he later told me he was worried I'd drop it and lose it, but he hadn't known known how stubborn I can be!...my cord, I'll bring it back!)......My chute deployed and I have to admit that I had neglected to count the thousands. As my fall slowed the first thing I did was stuff the ripcord in my overall. The stupid zipper got stuck and I had to struggle to zip it up. It worried me that i had lost valuable seconds in this process but my altimeter said it was only 3500ft. I relaxed, faced the wind, saw the target and planned my foolproof course for a perfect landing. It apparently was NOT foolproof because I landed in front of the ATC building. This is only about a 100 meters from the target so I'll say I'm getting better. At least this time I was near enough to walk back to the hangar.No one had to come pick me up! I seriously think I'm getting the hang of this. Just a couple more flights and I'll totally get the precise canopy flying I dream of....:)

Day 12- The day i jumped out of an aircraft thrice!!

2007-12-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 05 Dec 2007

My very first static line jump and my anxiety to do it well can only be imagined….by people equally crazy. My tandem jump last week was so much fun but I’m ashamed to admit that I had not paid much attention to the nuances of canopy flying. Which is how I’m hoping to explain why I landed in such varied locations today- all they had in common was that they were nowhere near the target landing area. Anyway here goes-

First Jump.0645hrs.
My heart was pounding as were boarding the Sea King (it is pounding now as I’m typing this!). Rajesh Sir and Mahesh Sir were smiling at me with me so much reassurance that I thought, “Whoa! Do I look so scared?” I like these guys when they’re screaming and yelling and generally being nasty. If they start giving these kind smiles, it rather throws me off balance. And for the umpteenth time Rajesh sir mimed his brief- “Winds- very strong! Face the wind the moment your canopy deploys!”

I was fifth in line to jump. As other trainees went out one by one, I realized just how much I wanted to do this. I know now that that yearning to leap into the beyond that gripped me that instant will never ever let go. That first leap- magic. Pure magic. Kilos of adrenaline rushing through me, I forgivably forgot to count ‘the thousands’. Or maybe I did count; I didn’t hear it anyway. Facing the wind was the very first thing I did and I saw that my altimeter was about halfway between 3000 feet and 3500 feet. Plenty of time. So I did one 360 degree turn after another and admired the scenery all around. Man, this IS fun. And suddenly the altimeter said 1000 feet and my shocked eyes said that I was downwind of the target. Ooops. I could hear in my head the debrief I was going to get- “have you been paying NO attention in class? Have we taught you nothing?” I faced the wind, covered as much ground as I could, and landed just outside the fence surrounding the dropzone, on my feet. The canopy had settled on a big thorn bush so I decided to wait until someone came to help me get it out. Rajkumar reached about 10 minutes later. Reassured to find me unhurt, he untangled the canopy, and then told me about his own terrible landings as we walked back. He was in splits as he was telling the story to people later-“Madam was standing with hand clasped in front, looking so sad and waiting so patiently!”

And the debrief wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Apparently I had landed just a few meters short of some marshland so it could’ve been much worse. And apparently standing and waiting for help rather than trying to free the canopy myself was a smart thing to do. The canopy was undamaged and I was unhurt. Not a bad first jump :)

Second Jump. 0800 hrs
This time I did count to the thousands- “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four— …and my canopy opened. I caught hold of the toggles, faced the wind and looked back over my shoulder and saw the dropzone. This time I had resolved to stay upwind, COME WHAT MAY, but as it turned out I was more careful than I should have been. At 1000 feet I was upwind and soo far away from the target. I planned my own target, did a fantastic circuit pattern and landed on my feet on the other side of the civilian airport. This is almost a kilometer away from our DZ, as the crow flies. Unhurt, though embarrassed to death, I saw that a jeep had already arrived to pick me up by the time I folded up my chute.

Third Jump. 1530 hrs.
The winds were said to be even stronger than the morning and so was my anxiety to land at the target. I was rapidly becoming such a source of amusement to everyone. More than one person asked me as I was gearing up for this jump, “So Manjot, where are we planning to land this time?”

Hmph. Whatever. Good exit again. This time, after I had identified the target and started on my slowww progress towards it, I realized that this was my second last jump! Once again I was caught in the wonder of the blue skies and I have no qualms in admitting that I sang “there she goes….” I stayed upwind all the time…And landed across the civilian airport. Again.

I’m going to count my blessings- One, I exit so confidently. I bet no one ‘clears the aircraft’ as well as I do. Two, I haven’t got hurt at all. I have landed upwind and on my feet every time. And three, most importantly, I’m having so much fun! Those five minutes in the air- my god! It’s like being in a paradise all my own. So, three positives against one negative- that I can’t maneuver the canopy. It took me a month to figure out the car. All I need are five more jumps- I’ll figure this thing out as well. Amen

The days in between....

2007-12-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

ON THE BOSES

Would these magical days have been so magical if I had decided to stay in the mess instead of with the Boses? Logic, experience and well meaning friends say that too much of being together can kill affection like nothing else can. “Ok, so they’re great friends of yours- so go to their house for dinner, go everyday if you want, and go spend a Sunday with them- but don’t stay with them for two weeks!!”
And yet, here I am, having defied logic, pooh poohed the well meaning friends.

Bhavna wakes up with me every morning at four a.m., we have a major fight every day about whether I should have breakfast and go.
“Look it’s still dark outside...as far as I’m concerned it’s still middle of the night! I can’t have breakfast at 4.30 in the morning!”
“You’re the doctor! You’re the one who’s supposed to know how important breakfast is!”
The same argument, everyday. We wind up with Bhavna putting in biscuits, nuts and an apple in my bag- all of which I eat with so much thankfulness at 11 am. When I come back, drained and ready to drop dead at 7 pm, Aryan is all geared up to spend some quality time with “Muh Aunty”, who finds herself equal to all the games he want to play- no longer tired at all !!I’ve been called lots of things but I really adore being “Muh Aunty”. Bose sir and Bhavna turn out to be the best listeners anyone could ask for- every story; every one of my trials and triumphs receives the kind of attention it deserves. I lie sprawled on the carpet, sipping coffee; talking about all the dumb things I did and said at the camp- it’s like being home.

ON GARY

In spite all my declarations of planning to be in bed by nine, I have not done it even once. What, I’m in a new city here, unlimited places to see for the first time - am I going to let a 14 hr a day skydiving camp get in the way of so much discovery?

So thank God for Gary. Gary is Siddharth Garekar, the best buddy of two of my best buddies. We met for lunch last week because we are both planning to take the GMAT next year so we could swap notes a bit. Life can surprise you so much with such sudden friends sometimes. We have gone out practically everyday since then. And no one has talked about the GMAT except for that first time. It turns out that we have so much more in common than the fact that we have common friends, more than the fact that both of us are such losers at romantic relationships, more than crazy dreams of switching careers !! This guy is such an amazing listener (Or maybe I give him no choice). And he's game for painting the town red any time.Poor guy says that he driven more in the last week than in the last six months! I hereby give Vizag an honoured place in my list of Hottest Cities Ever.

Day 7- The Day of Disappointments

2007-11-30T19:52:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 30, 2007

0900 hrs
It would be funny if it didn't hurt so much.
....The instructor says- "Ok, please sit down.Hold your left leg straight,bend your right leg perpendicular to your body; now sit on you right heel. Got that? Good! Now hold your left toe with both hands; bend forwards, bend, bend until you touch your forehead to your left knee. Excellent!! Now RELAX in this position...."

Yeah, right. How DID i spend 28 years on this planet without learning how to relax like this ??

As we finally finish the day's stretching exercises, Cdr Baburaj next to me collects himself up from the ground and says-" Wow, I feel so refreshed....owww!!"

1300hrs
My heart is going to break. No jumps for the next 4 days.

Day 6- TANDEMMM !!!

2007-11-29T07:17:00.000-08:00

Prelude
28 November 2007: Today is the day when the previous batch get their wings. Ceremony in the morning, party in the evening. As I get back from a long day of ground training, I get a call from Nishant sir who tells me I'm going to get a tandem freefall tomorrow morning."Be there at five."
I will be there sir, with bells on.

November 29, 2007
Having dreamed of being in freefall for close to six months, I was conscious of today morning being as special as it can get. The best thing about a tandem jump is the total absence of any performance anxiety.Lt Cdr Rajesh gave me a short briefing before we boarded the aircraft. It went something like this- "I will be sitting on the aircraft door. You are attached to with this harness, see? And you will be sitting outside the aircraft. Make sure your feet are firm on the outside of the plane- your heels on the belly of the plane. And when when you hear me saying ' out-in-out' ,make sure you kick the back of my parachute hard. And then, don't forget to arch as we go down. That's all i expect you to do. Get it?"

And i said, yes sir absolutely. I totally get it. But what I was thinking was- OUTSIDE?? SITTING?? I'm sitting outside the aircraft? Why doesn't he just say that he's gong to hang me out of a plane 13000 feet up in the air?

My happiness as we were taking off and climbing was almost unbearable. Couldn't stop smiling, kept on checking the altimeter every few seconds. Lt Cdr Karthikeyan took a couple of pictures of me here and told me he was going to come shake my hand when we were in free fall. " Wow, really??"
"Yeah, but make sure you shake it and let go...don't keep hanging on to it."

Rajesh sir attached the four hooks at this point and made me feel them. "See, you are attached to me at these four points; even one of them is good enough to take your weight. So don't be scared at all, ok? I wanted to tell him I totally trust the harness and I totally trust you sir and I don't feel scared at all. But I think my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and I couldn't say anything at all . But i did nod. My first moment of real fear was when the aircraft door opened....umm, why exactly AM I doing this??? Took a couple of deep breaths as the other jumpers went out one by one. They don't jump - they just, like STEP OUT...like hi, i think I'll go out and walk a bit, see you in a while. The crazy exhilaration, pride and fear that i was feeling at this point is indescribable. It's a feeling that i want again and again...and again.Moments later, I was sitting outside the aircraft and loving it. I looked at the camera and I wish I could say I smiled confidently but that kind of thing cannot be lied about, because it's there on camera ;) Behind me I heard Rajesh sir saying, "out- in- out" and we just fell into the blue skies. It was so beautiful it was like a dream.I saw Karthy sir and the other skydivers- the red jumpsuits against the gray blue skies were so, so beautiful.I smiled at the camera and waved and all too soon, or so it seemed, our chute had deployed. And as we slowly descended to the ground, I voiced my primary concerns- I asked Rajesh sir if I had kicked the way i was supposed to, if I had arched right. "Yes, Yes good tandem....but you haven't looked at the altimeter yet!"

Right. My altimeter said 3500 already! We did a couple of 360 degree turns- he let me do one - then told me to make sure I appreciated the circuit pattern he was making. I did that but I also totally enjoyed seeing how lovely everything looked-the hangar, the aircrafts parked outside, even my friends. We went into full glide at 400ft and I landed comfortably sitting on the tarmac. Karthy sir took a couple of pictures here, then I went forward to meet Surg Cdr B...I told him that I was the happiest person on the runway that morning. And I think it was the truth.

Day 4- The Runaway Husband

2007-11-29T06:57:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

I remember reading that skydivers always walk the earth with their eyes to the sky...Because there they have been and there they long to return.

I have a fascinating new friend in this course. His name is Surg Cdr A Bhardwaj and he has come from Delhi for this course. He is 48 yrs old and he has done a basic course with five jumps some six months ago. He's dying to do more but his wife( understandably , i should think) feels rather aprehensive about the light of her life jumping out of aircrafts. He loves his wife, and he loves skydiving. So he told her he was going to Raipur to do some recruitment medicals, and got into the flight for Vizag- one that goes via Raipur, naturally. He feels guilty about the furtiveness of it- he packed all his uniforms , stamps and the equipment he'd need for the recruitment medicals, then he packed the dungarees that he'd needfor the course when she wasn't looking but there's so much glee mixed with the guilt!! I couldn't stop laughing all day today. He says- "I hate lying to her, but how could I not come ??"

Basic Skydiving Course ( Day 3)

2007-11-29T06:22:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 26, 2007

How come no one ever told me how PAINFUL it was going to be??? I was prepared for the fear, was totally expecting to lose sleep with performance anxiety, I knew I would have to struggle with complicated physics...But this back breaking pain....:(

The word "arch" sounds like such an ordinary harmless thing. But for a student of basic skydiving, it is the beginning of a nightmare...
When the instructor yells..."ok! ARCH!!"... a bunch of people ranging from ages 17 to 50 VOLUNTARILY contort their bodies in such unbelievable attitudes....and I'm thinking, is my body even designed to keep up with this? Suppose my enthusiasm goes farther than my flexibility and something just goes "Crack!!" It's an alarming thought, but then logic says these people know what they're making us do . I hope.

My day begins at 0400hrs. I reach the dropzone at 0500 and along with some 50 trainees go for a short run followed by about 45 minutes of completely unreal stretching exercises....I have aches and pains in places that i did not even know existed in my body...I remember all my first year's anatomy classes because i can identify every muscle group that hurts with every movement....I used to think I'm rather fit...by 0700 I'm huffing and groaning like a 70 yr old woman!!

But its all totally, totally worth it. I'm getting to know and spending time with some of the craziest people in the world. One of the most beautiful things in the world is the face of a first time jumper when he's walking back to the hangar with his parachute on his back. Shining happiness. Unwipable smiles.

My instructor does not walk. Ever. He hops, skips or runs from one place to another. Even when he's on the earth, you feel that he isn't really there- he is a bit up above. He moves around among trainees taking classes, planning manifests, pleading for more flying hours- everything with a maniac's energy and always with a ten inch grin plastered on his face. It's like if you get to fly in the sky, then nothing on the ground can bother you anymore. These guys must've conducted this course so many times, tediously, repetitively. But it seems like its their first time too- they seem to be enjoying themselves so much! The chief instructor, the guy who doesn't walk, is one Lt Cdr Rajesh N. There are other training officers- Lt Cdr M Birajdar and Lt Cdr K Nishanth- both are terribly awe inspiring. And the guy whose job I find the most fascinating is Lt Cdr Karthikeyan- he jumps with a camera on his helmet and the pictures have to be seen to be believed. Completing their team is almost a dozen sailors-instructors,writers and packers ,who have one thing in common- this single minded focus and this happy camaraderie that persists through the long days.

We finish the day at around six in the evening. All i need is some food and then i want to drop dead.

Skydiving here I come!! ( Day ' -1' )

2007-11-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

23 November 2007

2318hrs

Apparently skydiving is the only thing in this universe that moves me enough to write. I last wrote for this blog some six months back...about well, skydivers. The last six months have been so eventful- a naval orientation course, an engagement AND its subsequent breakup, so many new friends and experiences...so much sorrow and pain, so many surprising bits of happiness-and not once was I pulled out of bed with this irresistable need to write.
Today was day 'minus one' of the course that i worked so hard to get into. Never before in my life have i comprehended the need for what is called "approach" and "jaan pehchaan"....People used to say- "Why don't you ask your father to approach his old cronies to get you posted to some decent place?" Because it seems undignified and petty to me, that's why. But when a signal asking for volunteers for basic skydiving came in september, guess who abandoned all pride and reticence and "approached" EVERYONE in the world who claimed to have any connection with the Navy Skydiving team? Please, please , oh please get me to the course. I've spent the last six months reading everything that google chacha has to offer on skydiving, I've watched shows on Nat Geo and Discovery with my heart pounding and eyes shining- if nothing else i need to know if it is half as good as my fantasies.
When the signal saying I was finally in the course came, I was not able to sleep all night. Every few minutes I would sit up and think- Oh, my God, it finally IS happening. Now, I'll know.
My classes begin tomorrow. Can't wait for morning.

On buying phones and getting married

2007-02-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

In the old days of my innocence I used to imagine that getting married was a very simple thing....the next natural step in the progression of life.

You study really hard, get the degree of your dreams, then get into the job of your dreams.....wow life's really beautiful and God loves you so much. What next? Maybe in the middle of all this work and partying and travelling you'll meet some nice interesting guy who will be nice enough and interesting enough to make friends with. With time it'll grow into a wonderful close relationship and you''ll both feel that this team is good enough to be launched officially onto the world. There will some sort of ceremony and then the partying will continue , now in the company of this great creature . As a bonus, you get another family to love and be loved in turn.

Welcome to the real world. With the world's population touching seven billion, and about half of being in possession of the XY chromosome and at least maybe a tenth of it being of eligible bachelorhood...things still look rather bleak. That wonderful lovable creature that God meant you to have seems to be as well hidden as hay in a haystack. You travel the length of the country , you meet and make friends with some really great people, and meet and deal with quite a few creeps too in the process.....but that what you expected to happen doesnt seem to happen at all. Then your well meaning parents organise this project MARRY MANU .They follow the set guidelines for the project - put matrimonials in the newspaper and on the net and collect and compile the results in a highly organised manner. The trouble with this technique is that it makes you feel like a car that needs to be sold....plus it makes you feel like such a loser -"God, I'm so boring I couldn't find someone in real life, need help from the virtual world!"

Phew! Other than who to marry, the other thing that is occupying my energy and time is which phone to buy to replace my old fuddy duddy model. And I confess that the latter decision is the one I'm actually working hard for. Because contrary to whatever you might have believed, buying a phone is as important a life event as any. So now Nokia India can actually employ me to write reviews for all their latest models. I've spent maybe 20 woman hrs on researching their phone models. I can now categorise them quite comprehensively based on looks, features, camera quality, music quality, prices et al. Today when I went to the Nokia outlet the salesman had his eyes popping out of their sockets at the stuff I knew and the stuff I wanted to know.
So today when my mother came to me and said , come let me show you some more of the guys we've shortlisted, I said, I'll show you something a lot more cheerful. Let me show the two phones that I've finally got to decide between and tell me which one you like better!

On skydivers

2007-02-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

February 5, 2007

5.45pm
Five days ago I had no clue that such people existed. Today I suffer from acute skydiver deficiency. Were they here really? Or did I dream them up out of my monotonous daily existence? I should write about it before it fades away into my imagination and I can no longer separate fact from remembrance. And it WILL fade away. It always does. So it needs and deserves to be preserved some where out of my head. So here's my Pensieve:
DAY 1. January 30. Tuesday Evening. Sudden Panic. 04 in no. army officers have arrived at the mess. And they absolutely hate the mess (who wouldn't? but that's part of some other pensieve). The utterly absent mess secretary that I am, I had no idea whatsoever that such an arrival was expected. The first I heard of it was when I was asked whether Comdt Sidhu's cabin could be given to these snooty, used-to-living-in-style devils. Of course it can be given. Why else did that poor old man spend so much money on his cabin dressing it up and then go away on compassionate leave? The mess driveway was strewn with luggage - a veritable mountain of suitcases and rucksacks when I returned from the gym to give Sidhu sir's cabin keys. And two beautiful creatures were guarding the mountain (my memory was rather fuddled up so I couldn't remember which of the four these two had been, so I asked them later. On day 5.This was Maj R.D. Singh and Maj Sarvesh Dadhwal. I expressed my sorrow at not being able to provide more suitable accommodation and they assured me that they'd survive. What an army officer would feel, on being so suddenly exposed to the coast guard way of life…the confusion and the misery and the disbelief that they were feeling…it's all forgivable I think. I went back to resume my 20 minutes on the treadmill and it was only later that I bothered to find out why these creatures had descended on us. Turned out that there were 04 of them- one colonel, two majors and one captain. They were a skydiving team and they were going to perform as part of the mela celebrations. I was mildly impressed but I had no idea that less than a week later I would be writing about them!!
DAY 2. January 31. Usual Day. Still unaware that my life is about to change.

Still unaware that I'm going to be given a dream that will absolutely refuse to let go until fulfilled.Must have seen patients, slept in the afternoon, gone to the gym, met Bhavna mam and Sangita mam in the evening…but I don't especially remember anything. Oh yes, Shalini mam and I went to buy Winnie's birthday present. And she asked me why I hadn't seen their practice jumps. How could I have missed them? How could any amount of paperwork keep me from that kind of beautiful sight? I begged her to call me the moment they went up the next morning.
DAY 3. February 1. Coast Guard Day. (The Day Of The Blood Donation Camp). Very busy day. I was on my feet from seven in the morning to eleven in the night this day. At about 9.30 a.m., with the blood donation about to begin in 30 minutes…call from tower: MO madam to come to the tower if she wants to see the skydivers. I ran up the whole flight of stairs and commandeered the binoculars. "One minute to jump, madam!" Shalini mam and I ran out to the terrace. It is painful work…. Neck in hyperextension, eyes peeled wide…. where are they? Oh! Somebody has located the chopper! Look at 3'o'clock madam! Ok, so there's the chopper…. will I see 'em jumping out?
Not the first time, no. A few seconds after they were supposed to have jumped, I see 4 chutes coming down slowly. All that pain is suddenly worth it. I wonder how they must feel…. like birds? Invincible? God, I suddenly feel so jealous…it must be even better than going up in a chopper…that was the first time I saw skydiving in real life. And over the next four days, I did not miss watching it even once…no matter where I would be…."one minute to jump!" would bring me running every time. And with time, I learnt to see them jumping out of the chopper, then coming down together in free fall and then "tracking" which is just the technical jargon for separating and spreading away just before opening the chutes.
DAY 5.February 3. Saturday. The Penultimate Day Of The Mela. What is it about a group of four people in jumpsuits walking back to the hangar, dragging their chutes behind, that so tugs at the heartstrings? It's the same warm feeling you get when you watch a surgeon shrugging out of his OT gown after a surgery, the look of smug self satisfaction and happiness they have, the joy that comes from the knowledge that a job has been done well…
DAY 6. February 4. Sunday. Best Things For Last. I wake up with a song in my heart. Life suddenly seems so full of possibility. It seems like quite an achievable fantasy- jumpingfrom12, 000 . This whole day I had the typical mild blues that you feel when something good has to end. But it still is my favorite day of the mela because this is the day when Shalini mam and I went up to 12,000 feet and saw the jump from the birds' eye view. The experience will always be very high up in my list of best experiences ever…it will rub shoulders with the first time I scrubbed for OT, the first time I kissed….

It so happened that the number of skydivers went down from 3 to 2 during the last jump of the day, also the last jump of the mela. Shalini had been pestering the life out of everyone, wanting to go up 12,000 feet in the chopper. Today her request became all the more feasible with only 2 divers going up.She sat on the ACD seat while I was strapped into the harness on the floor, flanked by the two jumpers…Maj R.D. Singh and Capt Tushar.

R.D sir instructed me that the best way to watch them would be to go flat on the floor the moment they stepped out of the chopper with my neck hanging out.

Ok, sounds feasible to me sir. So, up, up, up we went, the temperature dropping every minute. I was shivering at 3000 feet and wondering what it would be like at 12000.At 11000, these guys stood up and solemnly checked each others' suits and backpacks…one, two, three, four, five, six…thumbs up. It had the quality of a prayer. And then they did that too. Feet planted firmly apart, they stood side-by-side, palms touching, they closed their eyes and RD sir mouthed a short something. Or maybe that way they just revise what they are supposed to do!!Then they faced each other, nodded and as simply as walking out of the house for a stroll, stepped out into the beyond. My heart was pounding, my eyes were stinging with the cold or maybe something else; but I didn't waste a microsecond before I fell flat on the floor and looked out from the side that RD sir had jumped from. It was a sight I will never be able to forget. Such a nonchalant expression, such comfort (of course they do it practically 5 times a day, might as well look comfortable!) For maybe 2 seconds I saw only RD sir, then Capt Tushar joined him and they went down together. I remembered what Col Verma had said, " It's a sport made out of an emergency procedure" And what a sport… I was hanging out of the chopper with one hand on holding onto the harness and the other holding my glasses or they too would have happily followed these two gentlemen into the free fall. The two divers disappeared from my sight much too soon: and when I sat back into the chopper I seriously was feeling hysterical with joy. I wanted to kiss Shalini mam; I could have happily kissed Nirmal sir and Bose sir! Nirmal sir turned back to look at me and reminded me to keep performing the valsalva. And then Bose sir pointed out the two divers again; they had opened their chutes and we saw these two small white flecks descending. When we landed I was incoherent for at least some time. Maybe half an hour or so later I was able to describe what I had seen. And since then I have been unable to stop talking about it. Or thinking about it for that matter.....:)