Chikmagloor Trip - Day 2

First day

Next day Psycho started his day with early morning walk in the chikmagloor's dense forests. Among us, few were still struggling to fetch unproductive sleep for few more seconds and rests were getting ready for Manikyadhara Falls. We took some nice shots of wild flowers and plants which were fresh like us at the start of the day.

We drove to down hills and after a small distance driver told us to hire a Gypsy as it was not possible for him to drive further. WTF, why can not you go? But as instructed, we hired it to reach to the falls. So hiring the Gypsy was the beginning of the most troubling road journey.

Our downhill road was little like road featured in Mountain Dew Ad campaign (Darr ke age jeet hai...). The road did not have concrete dammar path, whole path was rocky and above to that Mr. Driver was taking sharp turns as though Schumacher was driving his Ferrari in Chikmagloor GP. All of us could not enjoy the green on the roadsides to keep our head away from Gipsy's roof. While driving Michael pointed out the little stream of water, which was suppose to be most charming fall @ Chikmagloor. I was asking myself, did I waste so much of my energy for such a tiny stream of water? Was it a repetition of Waynad's abby falls? Why on earth I came to see this fall. But there was no return, so we kept rolling down the hill. Finally Mr. Schumacher stopped 2KM away from the fall and asked us to walk.

Manikyadhara fall was in middle of dense forest. Environment was so calm that running water was also creating a rhythm and Ashish sanyaas plans were straightening more. In such a peaceful jungle we crossed rivers, crossed big stones and finally reached to the spot. By now I was tasted from 3 blood sucking leeches. Seeing these stuck to my legs, girls screamed first, I almost jumped, gulti lost his motion (Most scared too). It was terrible to see these species sticking to your body and sucking your blood. You could not just take a second to throw it away.

Finally our jungle walk was finished; we were in front of the fall. To see the height we need to stretch our neck 60*, such a huge fall in the wild (Can’t be at my home for sure :)).

Thanks to our early morning efforts the fall belonged to us for next couple of hours (We were the only and lonely group there). Rocks were slippery, Water was freezing and wind was adding spice into it. But it took few thoughts to enter into the water. ASA I could get a place, I was welcomed with a splash of water on my face, in the same way I replied without loosing a second.

Garima, Vidushi were just sitting and video tapping five half naked guys :).

Wild has a problem, it makes people Jungly. So in its effect we were screaming, shouting and enjoying the moments there. After spending couple of hours the wildness came to an end. We returned back to our car in an hour.

Next destination was the Karnataka’s highest point. First we targeted highest peak seen from the parking. It took few minutes to reach to the peak.

That's it, is it? So were we standing 1926 Mt's above sea? No clouds, nothing like so high, where are we? I dint have either an inch tape or a barometer to measure the height, but I looked around to find out, am I on the summit of the mountain? No, this was not it; there is one more peak which is higher, a lot higher. So we still had lot to cover. Psycho did not have courage to move, but it was impossible to return without meeting to the clouds. We convinced vidushi to accompany us, so psycho was alone and bound to come. Here we started, first rolled down, then climbed up, climbed more and was reducing the gap with the summit.

We were above Clouds, breeze was cold and wet. Would you believe we had our lunch at the highest point of Karnataka? Locals there inaugurated one temple there and were distributing Prasad. Our lunch of the day was biryani with pachranga pickle (Truly earned lunch: P).

we were still few stairs away from peak. After lunch break journey was resumed. We were walking in the clouds and Clouds, that were covering the whole place, were growing denser. Downhill view was just stunning. My words may not be able to fill the cavity between what I watched and what I wrote but that experience of watching the world from this height was great. We stayed there for a little gossip and took some souvenir pictures before returning back to the parking place.

There was nothing much left in folks, so moved to Bangalore. On the way we had our dinner at chikmagloor that was sponsored by ashish, reached back to Bangalore 11 o'clock in the night. Chikmagloor trip was a great trip, all the members of the trip had great time together and at least I did.

I am looking forward for next trip very soon in future. More pics

Trip to Chikmagloor

Can you u imagine the trip after 3 years of college with college friends? Reviving your college memories is always an enlightening experience. All of you (Trip crew) know each other from the deep root level. So such trips, with college geeks, remain memorable and fresh through out your life.

It was Thursday night. Kunal reached home, we opened Google, searched tourist places near Bangalore, and found 3 probable destinations. Gulti with his little experience finalized our future for next two coming days. We all were set except few hiccups, like Psycho, did not want to come with out his friend vidushi, vidushi could not come without any other girl.

I do not think there is any need of introduction with all big guns. Vishal me, Gulti the exitincting species, rajhans saint, kunal evergreen, psycho sharmila, vidushi our new listing in friends, Garima my sister.

We planned to leave Bangalore at 7, but because of Bangalore’s morning traffic, our car arrived 5 hours late. Dude, Gulti's eyes were boiling in rage. I did not know what is going to happen to our driver. I was thinking Gulti should settle the things in little arguments. Once driver reached, he fired up, and he asked, "Kya bhaiyyyya, itni der kahan laga di, traffic mein fans gaye the kya" :). That’s all really.

Trip was started at 12 and our first stop was a temple (Name: I am still thinking :)). We all did not enter into the temple, and none of us had courage to climb down approximately 100 stairs. So we planned to ease our self and find the fall's starting point. Here the wildness of ashish woke up (Some time our saint behaves like a rahul Roy in Junoon.).

One decent guy told us that this water is coming up from top of the hill and hill top is just 300 meters above. So here it started. Water, mud, Stone, big stone we crossed everything on the way, just opposite to water flow.

We completed one KM, no peak nearby, we completed 2 KM's still no peak (Was the peak also walking with us???-RVG can only answer this...AGYAT-2). Gals behind us were just to faint, then my conscience woke and I asked Rajhans to halt, who was not willing to stop his journey in the excitement of discovering something unknown/unseen. Kind hearted Ashish finally decided to adjourn his tracking all because of those poor gals, who were at the verge of surrendering the courage with which they started their passion to accompany us on such a difficult track. Now we choose the safer path to move little up in the forest. But there were no stairs to reach at top, Psycho tried searching in each direction (Actually he lost the directions so he was wandering here and there). Finally we all gave up finding source of water. All of the sudden, Gulti's weird imagination went into Stone Age and started putting off his cloths (:))... Gulti wanted to cover his whole body with leaves and woods. Thank God, gals were there with us. Otherwise Gulti ka name bhi "Patte Wale Baba" hi hota (God with leaves).

Oh yeah, how can I forget, Kunal successfully saved one tree there from us. he saved it by giving it a big hug. So this was little forest trip.

After wandering in the forest we marched ahead to find the place for spending the night, as sun started hiding and announcing the EOD. We found one lodge and lodge manger informed about unavailability of the rooms. Where will we go? Will we need to spend our night in mogali (Jungle Book hero) mode? Kunal was quick enough to start making friends, Ashish started dowsing (Got chance to sleep in nature.), Gulti started talking in Gulti with driver (Jugaaaaad), Psycho was shell shocked and gals were cool. I was the one who still had some guts to talk with the rishwatkhor manager and manager came up with two vacant room and we got place to spend our night. After dinner, it was walk time. Dark night, no lights, no men on the streets, some screams, some wild sounds, on such a horrified road we were walking in the direction of nowhere. Will we become the inspiration of RVG's next movie? After 20 minutes, we headed back toward lodge. We all settled down and talked about college, college friends, achievements (Who all could manage to escape from marriage till now, who all could manage to find a gal and run with her and few talks were about jail... etc).

12 AM, Ashish became the victim of atrocities(It was his b'day, and we did bumped someone's a** for a long time. Poor ashish :(). It is night, got to get a nap.

Good night.

Road to Where???

Development, progress, and growth these synonyms are more associated with developing countries than developed one. Today developed nations are secure enough to feed their people and take care of their needs, but developing countries are still struggling to feed their people. Apart from all these, developing countries are marching ahead, crushing the needs of their citizens, in the desperate attempt to reduce the gap with developed territories. Have we ever thought what are we loosing to reduce that margin? What have we achieved from these developments? Is our progress mocking the saying "To Gain, first you need to Loose."?

Today I read one article that was covering the story of protest held in Delhi by the farmers to claim their agricultural land from big entrepreneurs. This article took to me 2 year back, when I had discussion with my roomies about the building path of progress. Their thinking was to rule out such demands without delay as they are the road blocker in the path of development. According to them it is not possible to keep 1 billion happy at the same time. To make progress possible, the Indian government has to take such harsh decisions. To achieve the progress developed nation had followed the same trajectory, then why should not we follow the known path?

Now, are the comparisons between developed and developing nation fair enough? When comparing two countries, why do not we look at the infrastructure/resources possessed by each country? For the matter of the fact, USA is the 3rd biggest country in the world, while Indian continental total field area does not even stand in top 5, and the people using that piece of land is in 1:10 ratio. The land available to one person of USA is equal to the land utilized by 100 Indians. Wookay, Why to compare with the extreme, china is also developing faster than India. Then why not compare with china? China and India both overpopulated countries, but the land available for 1 Chinese is equivalent to 2 Indians. So in china too richness of resources, area available is far better than Indian Territory.

Lets just consider the Land requirement for the purpose of development; land is the resource which is the starting point of new set of troubles. Indian Rural population is marching toward cities to find a job, because either there land were snatched or were bought in the lower prices by big guns which is resulting in demolition of agricultural India. As land of agriculture is reducing, it is leading to less grain production, asking for high import of grains, so in few years we will be eating imported floor. Won’t it be a luxury? Poor will loose their jobs. So India will move further, but along with the increasing burden of problems.

Guys, I am not really against the industrialization, but why are we chasing the external dragon, even if our internal dragon may swallow the country soon? Do not we have some moderate path which will not save us from destruction marching us to the construction?

X-factor

In office all of a sudden this discussion was sparkled. We could not finish this debate there, so I thought of sharing it. The question was, are Muslims more Aggressive/Ill tempered in compare to other communities?

I will leave this on you to decide. in our discussion one answer was hanging in between of other two generally acceptable answers which was supporting both sides by stating that Muslims are chauvinistic about religion. So anything stated against there religious believes turns them aggressive.

I was on the side of NO. My thinking says it is all about teaching they have got in their journey of life. For example, In our rural areas, Muslims kids are sent to study in Madrases where center of their studies are narrowed down to teach hating people other than Muslims. Most of the part of their teaching is, "what is bad in others?" which is a negative start of life. If someone other than Muslim would have brain washed in the same way, it would have been the same results. So in whole If someone is kept apart from the world, providing him the knowledge of X-factors only, then the person will get plenty of time to process and understand the X-factors. Any human being can be moulded to become aggressive if situations are contradictory to those X-factors. There are muslims who have learnt with us in the same school where we have learnt. Can we figures out the differences between them and us?

It is true in current scenario "Ismal's modified studies" are posing the threat of extinction to Human being. But these studies are introduced by people who do not want others to know positive of society. Looking at the difference of change seeker's and Orthodox's, there is a need of prophet's reincarnation. He only can lead them to teach and learn the positives of Islam instead of negatives of others. That can bring peace to human breed.

Teaching assignment

Teaching, what a fantastic job it is? Enter the room, take the attendance, open the book and ask one of the boys to stand up and read the whole passage. That's all :) Isn't it? Hee hee hee, yah for few teachers it is! Teaching was an activity that I always wanted to do but never wanted it to adopt it as profession. Why not as a profession? As all are aware teaching does not guarantee good money, as some of the other more lucrative jobs, and above to this, I hated 90% of my teachers who ever taught me.

Why did I hate those teachers? Not because they had big tummies, nor because they used to spit like some physics teacher in MAIN HUN NA, But I hated them because they never took their responsibilities seriously. Or worse, they never realized, they are carrying a responsibility. Whenever I look back at my small success I always feel there are some holes that remained open in past and till now I am trying to fill those.

I got the opportunity to take up my first teaching assignment on November 29 in Hope school. Before starting, I had mix feelings - of excitement and tension. It was fear, not of the kids, but of a challenge and a responsibility. The question that were thrilling my conscience was, Will I be able to do my best in the time provided? Will It be possible to convey my knowledge to the kids?Will I be able to do justice to the trust which was shown in me? To add to the woes,I was not well prepared as I had to prepare for the event too.

Before I could take my lecture I had to prepare for a exam and had to revise the whole chapter. Here as soon as I started studying, words started dancing in-front of me. Here, I could realise the fear of Ishan Avasthi(Taare Zameen Par). It did not take me long to realize what it takes to become a Teacher? It is not, like , a IT professional will wake up some day, and will revolutionize the educational way(I thought the same). A teacher has huge responsibility to make children understand the various facet of subject. Without showing their frustration they have to keep repeating the same things again and again. Responsibility, that was assigned to me was little more complicated. For children, English was the bottleneck and in reverse i was not able to decode the script of children who had stronger vocabulary of kannada than Hindi and English. I kicked off my lecture with the discussion on parallel rays. I was far better than what i had thought, I was able to do my best. I was able to to give them the examples. My hands were able to bring light from sun, this hand was able to stop and reflect those light rays. Everything was going smoothly. But for kids it was not as easy as i had estimated. I had to repeat one thing for 5-6 times. Even after that they seemed confused in the examples and definitions. For whole one hour i struggled with them to make them understand very basic concepts of light. I am not sure if they still got hold of that untouchable and unexplainable phenomenon, called LIGHT.

I realized that the job of a teacher is not that easy. He can not go according to the guy who is intelligent or dull. He has to keep all in sync. He has to be creative, quick, Sarvgyani(Knowledgeable), patient, strict, friendly, interactive and responsive. Wow, god, have you taught me these many adjectives for a teacher in a single day.

PS: Thanks to Kunal, he gave the final touch to the blog...

Day with my Childhood

When I was a child I used to think why can I not grow faster so that I can earn a hell lot of money. That wish was fulfilled, just in a short time span, I became a grown young man. Now I wish why did I wish to earn the money? Sometimes I miss those mischief's that were part of my childhood. But we can only miss. We can feel those stupid things in children game, playing next door. Some time I want to be part of those mischief's.

Last weekend, 18th Oct 2008, I got the opportunity to engulf myself in the act of those stupidities. I and Rajhans volunteered in one of the events organized for school children near RT Nagar. Those Kids were 1^st – 2^nd standard kids who were hardly 5-8 years old. They had god gifted sweetness.

We were 9 volunteers who took part in the event, and we all were having tasks, assigned to us already. There were 2 teams of volunteers and 2 teams of kids, having 20 kids each. It finally started. People worked hard to bring those activities on the paper and charts. Lakshmi who surprised us with her motivation and hard work in creating charts, was leading the Treasure Hunt. Then after treasure hunt there was a game in which bacha-party were suppose to burst the balloons of others. I myself burst a few balloons. I was the winner though I didn’t get any prizes (:()... (I burst the balloon of the winners :P).

We started with the first group. Children's enthusiasm to play and understand the treasure hunt was inexpressible. The chart provided to me had 3 pictures each one of train, pig, calf (Kids had to tell me those name in kannada and then they will write it down on the paper from which we will conclude our first clue). I was told those three names in kannada, but I needed a few more words to communicate with those bachas, So one school teacher (Hema) helped me. Finally when they got the clue we ran like P T Usha, roaring like we won the game, our clue was hidden in the tree. We ran, ran hard here and there, in search of the clue, and finally Srinivas found that hanging on the leaf of the tree. We got next clue which was a church. So we need to figure out where the golden key was hidden near the church. We all ran 5-6 times all around the church and finally we could not win, why? Cause Ashish's team had found it. Koi nahi. Next event was bursting balloons. Now those 20 children were divided in two groups of 10 each. We stung the balloon on their ankles. They all were running to burst others’ balloons. None of them was really concerned about theirs’. So it paid to some of them. It was fun watching them and bringing them near to each other so that instead of running competition they can participate in bursting competition.

Oh didn’t I talk about second group, they were busy in pottery. They were designing different kinds of pots. Few pots were not able to stand properly, few did not have base. I made the best out of that, I made one bowl having the spoon popping out of the middle.(I know it is hard to imagine but you will love it once I will post the pictures.).

We followed the same sequence of events after the break. Now the group we took over earlier was busy in pottery and other group was with us. This time my team won in treasure hunt. Please do not ask how? In the second treasure hunt I was running with the key and children were following me. Once I stopped they all surrounded me. It was the trap from the honeybees to kill masoom Vishal. The eagerness of clinching the key in children was superb.

Once both the groups were finished, we danced on some kannnada songs. Dude!! you did not see the astounding performance of the kids there. The move of their bodies was failing the move of Hrithik. Seeing such a splendid performance was a wonderful experience. I never thought of dancing in my childhood. Even now I cannot dance. But those guys were superb.

So after running, laughing, scolding, dancing with the kids I was pumped up with more energy. The interaction with my childhood could not be better than this event. Thanks to Vibha, for providing me such an opportunity.

Sorry for adding the link late.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jeydev/VibhaHopeEvent3Oct?authkey=wzSzt0NydQQ

Kavita College

Some time you feel great, some time you feel like crying. But all those emotions can be expressed well when you know the way to tell them.

It was when our college was gonna end in one month and we guys did not have any clues what to do next. People with different interests were doing different things... Drunkard community was busy in drinking daily. Players were sharpening there skills. and gapodi community members were improving there skills to argument. But all have one single pain of loosing the freedom, friends, ash and fearless environment. In such a mood i could write few words about my college...

बैठ जाऊ लब्जों की राह में, लिख्नने दिल की तरंगों को,
वक्त बचेगा नही बाकी, अपने आँसू पकडने को।
सजा के रखुंगा दिल में, इन लम्हों को यादों को
कोइ तो होगा कम्ब्खत, इस दर्द से अपना दिल लगाने को॥

पहले को याद करुं या करूं मैं आज को
फ़र्क पडता नही लगता कल की ही बात हो।
पल वो भी कुछ अजीब थे, लगता था हम बदनसीब थे
पल ये भी कुछ अजीब हैं, लगता है हम मौत के करीब हैं।
तब सोचते थे आ गये किस जहान में हम,
अब सोचते हैं, छुट जायेन्गे जिन्दगी से हम॥
ए दोस्त,
ये आना जाना तो तक्दीर है, खुदा की ढाली एक तस्बीर है
जो ना बदलती, ना बदलने देती हमको॥
वक्त बचेगा.....

मिलता एक अवसर, यदि बीता बदलने को
मिटा आते हम, मीठी सी उन हसीन बातों को।
बातों को
जो दर्द देंगी, तन्हाई में हर पल
रुलाती रहेगी मुझको, बनके दिल कि ये हलचल।
चला जाउंगा दूर मिटाने इस दिल कि तडपन को,
कोइ तो होगा कम्ब्खत.....

Liked it or not depend on you. But I love this.