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Sunday, June 30, 2013

For the Idea Caravan

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

colgate indiblogger entry

motorcycling

This is my entry post for the Castrol Power I blogging contest by Indiblogger.

Motorcycling for me is the fantasized form of bicycling. What to do I still have to learn how to drive.
I therefore, call my riding experiences on my bicycle the ultimate biking fun.

Wish some day I shall graduate to the motorized biking fun experience !!!!

Ignorance is indeed a Bliss

This post is my entry to the Kissan's 100% Real Blogger Contest. And here I am recollecting my memories to come up with my 100% real experiences from my childhood years. To list all of them in a post will be a disgrace to the 16 years of my experience of living in all the remote locations of my country. By remote, I mean they are not the cool sounding places that are worth a google-check in, mainly because I am still not sure if those places could be traced on the location searching devices. I have many stories that hail from different times of growing up and include different locations. Locations were many, because my father was serving in the Indian Air Force as a pilot. But to keep this one a post and not a book, I have decided to put in the most hilarious and astonishing one. This experience was in fact the first one in the series of experiencing a life, i.e. 3 - 5 years of age.

I am dedicating this post to my father and the IAF. If it was not for him and the IAF bases set up at the borders of our country, I would not have had so many thrilling experiences that I cherish till date. I thank both for the beautiful and real childhood that I have experienced. If you end up smiling while reading this post, I would be honored.

Kumbhirgram, Assam 1985-88

Today if you have to catch a flight to or from Silchar, you will land up at the Airport station there, which is located in a place called Kumbhirgram. I do not know what it looks like today, but I can explain what it was more than 2 decades back. I was 3 years old then, but was really big and mature for my age. My maturity graph shot up the day my younger sister, who is 2 years junior to me, was born. 6 months after her birth my dad got a transfer to the helicopter base of the IAF at Kumbhirgram, Assam, the place which became an important landmark of my life. If you check the images of the place on google, you will find the place to be an excellent vacation destination, with greenery, lots of fauna and beauty spread all over. However, the real beauty that you get to experience is something more than that, that I would love to share.

Considering the fact that I lived in the remotest village of the remote locales of North-Eastern part of the country, you can imagine the ignorant World that I grew up in. Compared to the kids of today, back then there were no Playstations, X-boxes, or the Pokemon series, Google or even a calculator; in fact I had no idea of a television, radio, telephone or even a COW. My world included the following - playing in dirty muddy water with other kids, playing peek-a-boo in the wide-spread tea-gardens, playing with the poultry that were farmed in the military base; preventing my little naughty sister from going close to jackals; avoiding stepping over the snakes while roaming in the house, identifying poisonous snakes from the non-poisonous ones; preventing my sister from picking up and eating the snakes, leeches, snails, spiders, scorpions or any other stuff that crawled like her; informing and reporting to an elder about the locations of the poisonous snakes, of any human being who is infested by a leech or bitten by any other insect, and also report about any new looking animal roaming in the campus. In return for these reporting of the first hand information I used to get a toffee and praise, which was a lot in those days. Also, I along with other kids used to shoo away an aging tiger that used to roam around in search of left-over food from the inhabitants in the place !!!

Yes, each and every mention in the above paragraph is a truth and not a work of fiction. Also the floor in our house and the neighbours' and of every one in the vicinity was of pure mother Earth. The floors were not cemented; though we were rich and lucky to have a thatched bamboo covering us. Yes, we used to live in a bamboo house and everything around us was of bamboo, including the furniture, mats and the walls. I am sure this all would not astonish you as much as the coming paragraph would.

me-my-sis-and-the-bamboo-chairs

my-sister-in-her-bamboo-crib

The-tiger-shooing-gang

Luckily, I was not aware of the ghosts and witchcraft then, otherwise I could list many other events that I have observed then, which today can be included under the paranormal studies. Outside the protected vicinity of the base camp, the locals of the region were involved in a lot of activities that made them busy. The activities that I vividly remember seeing then, but never found them abnormal included - over-feeding a black dog and sacrificing and eating it as a festivity. Attracting/ hypnotizing a large group of birds towards a strong source of light and then watching them hit the light and then rejoice seeing them die when they strike against the heat. This bird suicidal activity was experienced at a forest cum village which if I recall was about 500 km from the base camp.

And by the way, did I mention that I and my little sister and all the kids that were with us in those parts of our world during those years never drank a cow's milk. We were fed on the formula milk, Nestle milkmaid or the Amul milk spray because the Cows never existed there. They were also sacrificed and eaten as a local tradition. That is the reason I got scared when I saw the cow for the first time when we moved out of Kumbhirgram to a bigger town in the northern part of the country. That is in fact the reason that I have put the term "cow" in upper case in the previous paragraph. Also, it is worth mentioning that the memories of Kumbhirgram haunted me for many years after leaving the place in the year 1988. I used to feel that sensation of a vomit the moment I would see chocolates or the Maggi noodles. Chocolates were hated because the brown colour reminded me of the peculiar variety of worms that were found swarming in groups everywhere in the IAF base camp of Kumbhirgram just after the rains, and their form was just like the Maggi noodles!!!

Also, there were few more Indian military bases that were situated close to the China border. My dad used to get ad-hoc calls to serve flying duties at those places. We used to look forward to such instances because on his return my dad used to get imported smuggled Chinese stuff from there. The stuff included torches, fancy looking nail clippers, lighters, a transistor, alarm clock, a hot plate, or a fancy toy that could blink a light and could also make a sound. All this used to make us feel so rich and hip in those times.

Today I would feel embarrassed to admit purchasing a Chinese product, but in those days it was an accomplishment worth putting in the local newspapers.

Indeed ignorance is a beautiful bliss at times...

innocence-and-bamboo-all-over

Greek God went into a doom

This is my entry to the ExpediaContest on Indiblogger. The contest is about describing a meeting with an interesting person during a travel expedition. Well, I got many such memories of meeting interesting people during my travels. The list includes cab drivers in Mumbai, cycle rickshaw pullers in Jaipur, bhajia sellers at Tarkarli, hotel owners at various places, bouncers at club shacks in Goa, fishermen at the beaches of California, young executives at Singapore, teenage girls from Japan, craftsmen from Chiang Mai and many many more. By the way, I am in touch with all the people mentioned in the last statement. There is only one person with whom I am not.

That one person I happened to meet at my trip to the Switzerland and today I remember him the most.

This incident of meeting him up happened 2 years back. The event was my delayed honeymoon. “My” and not ours because my husband was just not interested in it. And a delayed one because this was after 5 years of marriage, that I had our official honeymoon. Rather for my husband, it was a tormented journey of staying day and night with his wife of 5 years and girl friend of 5 years; altogether staying together with the woman he had detested for the past 10 years of his life.

We were spending our time at a beautiful place called “Interlaken” in Switzerland. We were put for 3 nights and 2 days at the place. The place is a beautiful city, which has lakes and lakes everywhere, may be that is why it is named Interlaken. We had our our first day planned with a sight-seeing tour to the Jungfrau Mountains. They constitute the Swiss part of the magnificent Alps.

The route to reaching the Jungfrau consists of a rail network that takes about 2 hours to reach the place. Firstly, one is supposed to reach Grindlewald and then from there board another train that goes to Jungfrau. So that eventful day we too got down at Grindlewald and then got into another train that was supposed to take us to the Jungfrau. Our journey till Grindlewald was fine and boring; well it is always boring when I travel with my husband. It is because he expects me to keep quiet, which is his idea of enjoying a happy vacation. Luckily, that part of the journey was just of half an hour, and it ended quick. Then we boarded another train at Grindlewald to reach to our final destination of the day. We were waiting for the train to get started, and there came a young, good looking, cheerful man who greeted us and the elderly couple who were sitting just next to us. He told them in a joyous tone that they were sitting at a wrong compartment and should find a place in the compartment next to that. I had noticed that we also had the same traveling vouchers as the elderly couple, so that would have meant changing compartments for us too. I informed my husband the same and we both stood up to change our seats. But as soon as we stood up to do the same, the cheerful guy returned to us and told us to remain seated. Since we looked puzzled, he therefore, told my husband that he did that purposely so that he could have a comfortable day at his job of a travel escort. He was escorting a group of octogenarians on their Europe trip, and except the couple whom he asked to leave, rest all were his clients in that compartment. And since all of the aging people look the same, he could have had a trouble time in identifying and preventing those ones from mixing in his travel group. But we were not a threat to him, so we were more than welcome to be a part of his entourage. Hearing his story we both started laughing and were instantly drawn towards him. The entire 1 hour of journey went happily. We both loved the way he was treating his elderly customers. They were short of sight, so he would show them the landmarks that passed by the route individually, and would instruct them to use their binoculars. Some of them would complain of the cold environment, and then he would place a stole on their backs. And the ones who dozed off were simply allowed to relax and were not disturbed.

Finally the time passed and we reached the Jungfrau. We could not bid adieu to him because he was busy in helping each of his client in getting off the train, slowly and slowly. Me and my husband enjoyed the beautiful snow peaked mountains for about 10 minutes. Such a long time because we had woken up early for this and had spent almost 2 hours traveling to see the destination. So, as per my husband it would have been unfair if we had not spent enough time there. It was indeed 10 minutes, because you see my husband hates to do sight-seeing…LOL I was still fine with it, at least he came in person for the honeymoon…Any ways, after that he was sure that he made his wife happy, so then it was his turn of putting up a demand.

That eventful day he just had the luxury of drinking 2 cups of tea in the morning, cause that day he feared that his daily indulgence could have made us arrive late for the early morning sight-seeing activity. So he had to have one bigger cuppa to fulfill his daily dose of drinking 1 entire kettle of tea! So then, we found an Indian restaurant at the Jungfrau and there we both indulged in our daily sipping activity before going all the way back to our hotel in Interlaken. The entire return journey we, rather I did not speak. Guess I had a lot of adventure for the day coming up. May be I was amassing all my synergies to face the upcoming events in the day. Firstly, I met this smart and adventurous travel escort, whose idiosyncrasy kept me entertained for a while. Secondly, I spent entire 10 minutes with my husband at the Alps. Both the events together contributed to having spent a beautiful day (till then.)

Then, we took the same journey back and reached the Interlaken West station. From there we started walking back towards the East where our hotel was. Surprisingly, my husband held my hand and I realized we both looked like perfect boyfriend-girlfriend. Please note that we did not look like a couple or a husband-wife then, if you are one of the two and reading this, I am sure you will understand what I mean by this strict demarcation.

But as my destiny is, I could not enjoy that moment for even 10 minutes. My experience of living a blissful married life was shaken when I realized that I was not carrying my hand-bag!!! My handbag was not with me that had my wallet, my glasses, my medicines and little important cosmetic stuff without which I fail to turn myself into a beautiful human optical illusion. Also, my wallet had all the 17 credit cards, my government identity cards and a lot of cash. I screamed in desperation and then my husband started screaming in anger. He took off with his “I told you so and so…..”. And for another 10 minutes, his “I told you so and so….” did not end. He kept on with “thank Goodness I am carrying the passports; you cannot take responsibility for anything.” After his 10 minutes were over, I started off with my half an hour of rebuke.

“So what, , why am I responsible for anything and everything in our World. You also could have taken the cash along. You never carry cash, because of which I have to carry the entire bank with me. Being a wife I planned everything in this trip, which was actually a husband’s job. 99% of my work is perfect, I am never thanked or appreciated for that, but the moment I fail in doing 1% of it correct, you never fail to bash me up for that. And in any case all that is lost is my bag and my money and my stuff in that, you do not need to worry for that. Go to your room and sleep, because that is what you can do best. ” I shouted all that to him and started going back towards the station crying. Little did I know then what would have happened next.

Suddenly the escorting travel expert appeared from nowhere and asked me if the white coloured bag in his hand was mine. It took me sometime to realize what had happened, since I was so engrossed within my choler. When in another 2 seconds I came in my senses, I could only ask him “How come??”

Then, he held my left hand, hanged my bag onto that; took my right hand and pulled me towards my husband, whose back was turned against us, or rather was facing towards the West direction. He greeted him and pushed me towards him and said "Gentleman, all your lost baggage is with you now."

My husband was also surprised seeing him, seeing me with him; seeing me with my handbag; and seeing all of us together. Since, that travel escort was always the last passenger to get off the train compartments and almost from every place due to his slow walking customers; he therefore was the first one to spot any unattended baggage.

We asked him to have a coffee with us in return for the help that he had rendered to us. He accepted our invite willingly and we all went to a deli nearby. Just few minutes into the conversation and we all got friendly with each other. Please note that he term "Each Other" includes me and my husband with each other, as well the stranger with both of us. His name was Nicolas and was from Greece running his own travel escort service. Most of his clients were the elderly who dread to go alone for travels. He said he loved his job and shared his business card with us. He also said that 20 years hence he would be happy to take both of us for a traveling expedition and would expect both of us to be happily married to each other that time.

With those words he parted from us and wished both of us a happy journey, we wished the same to his future travel expeditions and thanked him again for the help.

Reaching back to India, I searched his email id on the facebook, and sent him a friend request. He accepted the same after 2 months. Both of us stayed in touch for a long time. We did not interact much, except for sharing our recent travel pictures with each other. I guess it was around few months back when all the financial news on this Globe was concentrated on the Greece economic melt down that I thought about the Greek God that I met 2 years back. I checked for his name on my facebook friend list, but could not find him. I even sent him an email, but the mail bounced back. I have no idea where and when did he vanish from the World Wide Web.

It really hurts me to realize that I never took a picture with him, and today I have no idea how to get in touch with him again. All I have is his memories and his business card, I have attached both with this post.