The Sh(G)ames

Just recently I saw a video in Facebook about India, like, all the great stuffs about India and Indians and that we should feel proud of it and all that "father of surgery, Algebra, Pythagoras theorem, largest GDP.....crap crap crap" things. The video has the background score of "Ye jo desh hein thera", by A R Rahman from the film Swadesh, that makes you really proud to be an Indian............or does it???
Well I was and am really sorry, but it does not make me feel so ........its just because we cannot rest on our laurels which were achieved some 1000 or so years back.........just see where we are with respect to the Common Wealth Games or the Indian Premier League, or the case of Kashmir or the RTI(Right to Information) Act...........why are we(Indians) so unreflective and unthinking when it comes to our own country's issues??

Politicians have made corruption a habit, a hobby or a duty, which if unaccomplished will be like a "talk of the town" between themselves, just like how it will be if a late-teenage guy or girl will be when he or she is a virgin in the western countries. At one side the US reports that India is the third most powerful nation in the world after US itself and China. Japan, Russia all are behind us. But at the other sides we hear all about Common Wealth Games Scam, viz a viz, leaky roofs of stadiums still under repair and construction, poor unhygienic conditions in the Games village, unknown persons shooting at foreign tourists, a bridge collapse, champions and top athletes pulling out of the tournament siting security reasons, a traffic Armageddon, car bombs, a snake found in one of the CWG Village rooms, bed-collapse and what not??  The CWG has been a shame for India so far.

Kalmadi and team has seen the chairing of CWG as a fishing rod with which he can catch all our taxes and put them in his basket. Crores and crores have been wasted...sorry, eaten up by the committee. The irregularities in many of the deals made with different firms for CWG just shows everything. Kalmadi has hired treadmills for rent at an amount of a whooping Rs. 9,75,000 per piece. It doesn't stop here, toilet paper rolls for Rs.4,138!!!, Liquid soap dispenser at Rs. 3397 while the best one in the market is available for Rs.460. Computers rented at Rs.89,502 per piece, well, for that price, I would have bought 4 computer systems and given them to each of my cousin brothers.....LOL. He must have pocketed anything near to 1000 crores, and I don't know if this is just the tip of the iceberg!!

India could have taken this opportunity to showcase its organizing capabilities and extend its cordial warmth to the world and match China or South-Africa in that matter, but it has made a mockery of itself. There is nothing that we can do now but try to conduct the Games in a peaceful and incorruptible manner.

Most of you guys who are reading this post now might be thinking why am being so negative in my view on CWG. But, I would like to state that its not being negative or positive, but its being REALISTIC. Should all of us keep mum when our country is being let-down by a few (oops, sorry....not few but many) so called Politicians who like to play the DIRTY GAME(S).....

a day training

Training days were fun-filled, days when we came to know about each other. Since only 8 of us were recruited as a  batch by the company, it leaved no option but to mingle with everyone.And slowly we started to enjoy each others company. And when I think of training, the first thing that comes into my mind are the training classes..

 Well, as we had a lot of experience coming out of engineering colleges in how to sleep during lectures, we had no difficulty in applying them here. The most experienced of us all was Jophin. The moment someone starts a session, we can see him leaning to anything that is near to him and sleeping, and when I see that, I feel what the f**k am doing without sleeping.................ahem..........factors of jealousy , normal human feelings.I  was also not too far behind regarding these matters, though I had a different experience. Usually, when I am sleeping in a class, I will be waking up because of periodic bursts. Once, when our manager was taking class on web-services or something, i fell asleep within some 5 minutes, and after some time I suddenly woke up and said, "YES, WEB-SERVICE". Listening this, my colleagues and manager turned up their faces such a way that I thought I had done something terribly wrong..............well, they didn't know I had sleep bursts.........so, the fact is neither I nor those who were in the class knew why I shouted WEB SERVICE..........

There are many things to say, Meryl's  monitor is unforgettable, there are many things to tell about myself, but I am not doing that, coz, I don't like boasting....eh.Darshan's pinky is another thing to tell. I didnt mention before where our training was, right. Well, it was in an Engg College, not a normal one, but one of the colorful, ahem.......i mean best colleges in Coimbatore. Kumaraguru College, it was huge.............the main attraction being the big white palace-like building , which is one of Cognizant's training centers. The college has around 21 acres of playground , and many engineering departments too.........obviously. So, that means, more number of gaaaaalsssssss.......We used to have our lunch from the college canteen itself, so got to see some good birds. And one of them was Pinky. Well, I don't know when it all started, but Darshan used to look out for Pinky whenever he saw a group of girls sitting or standing somewhere. The name was also a given name. Darshan gave her the name, as most of the time, she wore a pink-colored dress.He used to tell the way she sat under one of the trees in the campus and prepared for exams. Her beauty, her smile , her innocence, well, we could see everything from Darshan's words.......Maybe this is what we call the first signs of love. But, he couldn't get the time to go forward as training was over by three months....

Another incident that happened to me was a little frightening one. Could have been avoided had I been more alert. Myself, Kushal and Bijesh were walking back home after our training. We thought of cutting through the college ground and reach the exit instead of sticking to the roads, for which you have to walk around the ground. It was dark, may be 8:00 in the evening or so. Suddenly, Bijesh screamed "aye ayyee!!" looking at something very near to our legs. The moment I heard this, I jumped to the front, didn't stop there , but went on  jumping three, four times to the front. Bijesh and Kushal where standing back , and shouting at me. When I turned around, I saw a snake crawling by, cutting our path. I got terrified, coz, as from what Bijesh told, I just missed the snake by a whisker when I took the first jump forward!!!

There's this another incident that happened just a week into our training. Sriram used to  wear a golden stud in his right ear. One day, while we were waiting for the cab to go back, at around 9:00 PM, he told us that he lost his ear ring. Naturally, we all started searching for the ring in the dark with the help of our mobile light. And yes, Darshan's phone came very handy for the first time............it had flashlight in it. After some time, one of our seniors came and asked what we were searching for, and we told him what had happened. As you might have guessed , he too joined us in "the search for the unseen ring"!!! Well, it ended in a wasted effort as we were not able to find it. We all forgot about it after some days.
One day, I think it was a weekend, and we all went out to spend the evening. While taking out his purse to pay for something, Sriram found the ear ring in it. The sudden flash of joy in his face and anger in our face was  to be seen, but then he got what he was looking for, and that's fine.

The stay at Rehaja was another unforgettable thing. We had a very king-like stay there for a week provided by our company. Taking pics of all the Benzes, BMWs and Volkswagons was our first job. I still remember how I made Jophin to jump many number of times just to take a pic of him in the air...........but the skills I possess to take that kind of shots with the cam resulted in pics that had only the background taken after Jophin landed !!! Ya, but in some shots you could see the side view of Jophins back....eh.
Sleeping in the class was one thing, and applying the same while travelling in a bus seemed not much difficult. We were coming back home from Gandhipuram after some shopping and I fell asleep in the bus. I had a cover in my hand too. Just after getting down, I checked for my purse, and it was nowhere in my trouser's or shirt's pocket. The bus took off, and I ran like anything, luckily, reached for its door and asked the conductor to stop. I went in, and just then the cover in my hand got my attention, and when I saw, my purse was inside it. I saw the conductor with a sorry face, and he told something in tamil, that I dont wanna mention here. But, after that I thought, if I had run the way I ran behind the bus, I would have won the 100 mtr race held in my college!!! Well, sorry if it was too unbelievable............but the point is, I could run fast!!!

Many things more to tell.......but not much time to post. Even this single post took me around 6 months to complete......cause I used to edit it once in two weeks and all. May be you will find the next one a more serious stuff......wanted to spread some message .....thinking of it..........ideas awaited , comments much awaited.......

the chalakudy saga

Well, after a "well" deserved break am back again  to share my one day trip to a place called Chalakudy in Kerala. It was my B-tech classmate's engagement on April 17 and we all planned to get together on the occasion. As usual with all kind of similar stories, only 7 of my friends out of 15 odd who had promised to come, turned up for the occasion, and sadly all were boys..........:-(.......err........joking.....eh.

All 6 of them told they will be in Chalakudy by 11 am, 4 of them coming in a car from Kottayam and other two in a two-wheeler from Cochin. Since am staying in Coimbatore, I had few options to reach there at around 11 in the morning. I took Island express from coimbatore on saturday(april 17) morning, at 5 30 am. Thanks to Jophin who dropped me till the station early in the morning. The train came half an hour late and I slept off the moment I boarded in. I reached Chalakudy  at around 9 30 am.

I had to wait somewhere till my friends arrived, and nothing was more conducive than the railway station itself.
I took a seat and started reading the magazine I  bought in coimbatore railway station. The next 2 hours were very boring and nothing worth mentioning. At around 11:15 my friend Vijay called me and told he will be there within 15 minutes. He was coming with JK in the 2-wheeler.

I came out of the station and stood near the bus stop opposite to it. Vijay called me later and this was the conversation that went between us:
Vijay: "Hey, are you standing near a bus stop painted red in colour??"
Me: "Yes, but where are you??!!"
Vijay:"Can you see a green bus in front of you??"
Me: "Yes, of course...."
Vijay: "Get inside the bus........."
Me: "But, what?? Where are you......??!!"
Vijay: "Get inside it quicky.......or else you will miss it..."

I ran and boarded the bus just before it was gonna start. When I asked him... "Now what???", he replied........."ooooh, man I was just joking!!!"..........I thought of hitting him like anything, but first I had to get down the bus!!! Thankfully, JK followed the bus in his bike.  I got down at the next stop hoping the conductor won't tell anything, as I didn't take the ticket, luckily he didn't tell anything. I went back to the station with JK and saw Vijay pointing his finger at me and laughing.......I chased him and beat him to satisfy my anger.

Then came up the next issue. When JK asked the other friends coming in car about the exact place of Engagement, they told that I knew the place. But, the fact was no one  knew where the place was.....we all knew its in Chalakudy. I tried to call Lucy (it was her engagement ), but as expected she didn't pick the phone. We called Linda, our friend, but she also didn't pick the phone. It was great thinking about the fact that 7 friends going for their classmate's engagement didn't knew where to go??!!. I remembered Lucy sending mail to us about the place. I called my another friend Sachin, working in Trivandrum. He was at office. I asked him to check his mail and tell us about the details. He said he didnt receive any mail from Lucy. I had to give my g-mail credentials to him, and he checked the mail and told the location was St.Sebastian's church in Thachoodaparambu.

From athirapally

We found out the place, not far away, and waited for the others to come. As expected, one of them called me to know about the location. I knowingly told them that the place is St .George's church in "Choodathu parambu", just to have fun. But these guys reached the place without any hiccups as they knew I was trying to play with them. As for the engagement, It went on smoothly. It was the first time I attended a christian Engagement. And for the lunch there on, my friends had  a great time having fish, chicken, pork and beef etc. I had to manage with some vegetarian stuff.

After taking some snaps with Lucy and her partner, we went straight to Athirapally. It was about 35 km from her place. We reached the waterfalls at around 2:00 pm. It was great to see the water flowing down, making splashing sound when it reaches the bottom of the falls.........I don't think you will be able to spot such a magnificent view anywhere else in India.The river appears silent and serene at the top. But, when you go down to get a good view of the water falls , it looks very aggressive and dangerous.

From athirapally

The green canopy surrounding the whole place just adds to the landscape's beauty. We had no plans of plunging into the waters and taking a bath until we went and saw the place. The river's bank at the top was beaming with people. We went little inside the place along the river's bank to have bath.

From athirapally

From athirapally

It was after a long-time, 2 years or so , that we were having fun in the waters. Earlier it was in the Meenachil River near our college. After some time , the clouds covered the sky and we could see lightning and thunderstorms. The climate at that time created a great feeling overall..........We went down the falls after bathing and took some snaps. When we came back to the top, it was raining like anything and people were running awestruck to catch some shelter.

After some half an hour or so, when the rain was not stopping, we decided to go back to the parking lot and leave the place. We had no other option but to get wet in the rain. We started from there at around 4pm and I reached home at 7 in the evening. All-together it was a small but jolly trip.

a day in vijayasree gardens

scene 1

Time: 5:30 AM

suddenly....."ttttrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnggggg"
Sriram wakes up hearing the deafening voice thinking "bullshit, shud b jophin's alarm........its like he sets the alarm for me to jog daily morning...."
Jophin will wake up at this hour(precisely, opens one of his mouth, eh sorry....eyes, looks out of the cover), but as no one is there to make him sit up, watches sriram getting up, but he himself sleeps off........thinking...."nalle jog cheyaam.....ennalum avanne enne vilikaam ayirnu..(I will jog from tomorrow......but he could have called me....)."
Sriram  gets ready n goes to jog.............

Time: eh....can't specify the exact time.........usually between 7 and 7:30 AM

Jophin  wakes up...... Sriram  has just come home after jogging.........
jophin:"hey!! y didnt u call me when u went for jogging???!!"
Sriram  :"U were sleeping man......."
jophin:"what do you expect?? I will be dancing on my bed???"

End of scene 1


Scene 2

Time: exactly between 7 and 7:30 AM

The first thing I see after waking up will be either of the two things below

1) Darshan brushing his teeth

2) The western toilet in the bathroom

Very sad to say but I used to get a beautiful, closeup view of the always stinking, very fantastically ill-maintained, seldom cleaned and regularly dirtied toilet in my room as my bed lies straight to it. Only if I happen to turn my neck around 110 degrees to the left will I be able to see Darshan !!! I would be thanking the God every morning if the latter happens.

I wake up, brush my teeth..........almost everyday by this time Jophin  might have woken up or in some rare occasions would have had his bath too!!! Sriram  will be walking in and out of bathroom at this time. Since, he has to jog, wash his personal stuff, boil egg, heat the water for bathing, clear the dust on his plane, ahmm....bike..... .......phew!!!!..........he would not have finished bathing by this time.

Around this time , the mother of all bathroom battles starts off.................

End of scene 2


Scene 3

Time: 7: 30 

First it will be Darshan  who gets ready, after that may be Surjith or me, depends on who wakes up first..........around this time Kushal  will wake up. The first thing he will be listening early morning is something his ears find totally crazy and his brain hates to understand, MALAYALAM..........jophin, me, darshan, jayan, Bije..........oh oh ohhhh..........now, where is Bijesh???? Focus shifts to main hall, center bed...............there you go, theres our Biju.........sleeping like a little baby, with his legs resting on Darshan 's bed and his head resting on the pillow which was on the bed when he slept but now is on the floor!!! First Sriram  calls him, then I call him, finally after some 20 minutes, around 8 AM, Bijesh wakes up................booting......please wait for a few hours till the system(Bijesh ) loads, loading brain memory, identifying people around, initializing first task to do (this may take at least 15 minutes)................physical activity of the person will have nothing to do with whats being processed in the brain, but sometimes the system may halt and resemble the action of what to do next?? Well, thats Bijesh  for you.

Suddenly Jayan comes and asks bijesh.."Aaa, RPD ennito??(has RPD waken up?"

............Bijesh replies back, "RPD ninte thandhayada thandha(RPD is your father......)........", Jayan, "ninte Mamanaada...(your uncle....)",well now they will come to a mutual agreement about who is RPD, they stop it, but daily they will reconfirm the same fact.........I haven't seen any other people than these 2 who find happiness in their own Craziness..........

In the meantime, we can see someone taking deep breath-ins and breath-outs..............oh, well well............its none other than Kushal   doing push ups in the front room. After all he has to maintain his body.......... Jophin  follows after Kushal  , he takes some 10-12 push ups.............then Bijesh  too joins.............well, he will be at-least trying to do it, and he does too, and I will be thinking of doing it from the next day, but since tomorrow never comes, I wont be doing anything called "exercise".

End of  Scene 3

Scene 4

Everybody is ready and set to go, but since we don't have any own vehicle,(untill Bijesh brought his car from home and Kushal his bike), we had to rely on Vijaysree Gardens.....erp........sorry.........Sree Balaji Travels for going to office. We call a cab, it will be usually me calling the cab......"Hello, Vijayasree Gardens, send a taxi to Sree Balaji ...........sorry,". Man on the other end...."Understood sir, just give a miss call from tomorrow". The cab comes and we go to our very own Cordys office.

End of Scene 4

To be continued....

Ponmudi

I don't know why, but blogging about beautiful places in Kerala is something I am enjoying the most these days. Last week I had gone to a place called Ponmudi in Trivandrum, Kerala.......a part of Western Ghats, this place is famous for the unending cool breezes that flow through the mountain ranges here, sometimes capable of blowing you away!!! Am not exaggerating, but during rainy season, you should use some muscle power to withstand the speedy chill winds blowing at you.

We were 8 people, and traveled in 2 cars, both my friend's. This was a treat given by me for my college friends as I got a job in an IT firm. We started off the journey on 16th Jan, 2009 early morning at around 2:30 am from my house in Newsprint Nagar, Kottayam. Ponmudi is around 180 to 200 kms from there. We reached at the foothills of Ponmudi at around 7:30, took a room to freshen up, and continued our way up the hill.

Ponmudi, as against what I thought, is not a dangerous place. The way up the hill is narrow, but as the Indian Govt is setting up the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology(IISST) ,

work was going on to widen the roads leading to Ponmudi. Its around 1100 mts above sea level. There are many resorts over this place, we also saw a caravan going ahead of us, maybe some film personality.

This place is very silent, the only voice you hear once you reach the top is the gushing sound of the tree leaves waving to and fro due to the blowing winds. Well, there is nothing much you can do here, but if you fall in the "drinking" category, you will like it here. We spent

around an hour here, climbing the hills and enjoying the great view. There are many places nearby like Meenmutty waterfalls, a lake nearby, the Neyyar dam, Crocodile lake etc. We decided to go to Trivandrum( roughly some 24 kms) after that. On the way down, one of the cars showed some trouble. A metallic sound was coming from one of its front tires............we stopped to see what happened, had to use the jackie and remove the tier. A stone was stuck between the break pads and the tire.....which was making the sound. Once we removed it and fixed the tires, it was ok. On the way we had our lunch.

We reached Trivandrum at around 2 in the afternoon. Met our friend Sachin over there, and decided to go to the Kovalam beach, well..............you know why people go there............its not the waves or the sunset that draws attention............but the people who come to the beach. I must say that this is one of the beautiful beaches India has, after those in Goa, and thats why you can find a number of foreigners enjoying the sun and the beach. We had a great time at the beach , spent around 3 to 4 hours there. Went back to the city, had dinner near the stadium in the city. There was the Asianet Ujala awards going on in the stadium and we could hear a hell lot of voices from inside the stadium.

Our stay that night was at Sachin's place. We had to wake up early in the morning as it was our college mate Rigin's sister's wedding on that day. Well, after all, trips are to enjoy, and you won't get time to sleep, even if you find time, you won't be allowed to sleep...........This was a memorable one , after a long time, everyone met again.......memories to be cherished forever..........

Nelliyampathy

This is my first extensively dedicated blog, and am doing this bcoz I want to show u guys a place in Kerala most people haven't heard of much, or seen much............circumscribed by beautiful hillocks and dams, inundated by tea plantations and callow forests, this place is where every adventure loving man seeks to go.........yes, am talking about the silently mystifying Nelliyampathy...........

There is one more reason that am incline

d to do this and that's bcoz when I googled "Nelliyampathy", not much results came out that gave information about where the place is or how it can be reached.....so sad!!

So, I will start by mentioning about the trip we went to Nelliyampathy in Nov'07......I was doing my b-tech in Kottayam, Kerala at that time and was staying along with 11 other pals in a PG. We started on a Thursday night at around 12:00 am in a traveler and reached Pothundi dam at the foothills of Nelliyampathy. We took the route from Kottayam to Muvattupuzha, Chalakudi , Alathur and Pothundi Dam which took around 4 hours. This place is a very silent one, we could hear only the sound of the water

falling off from the reservoir.

As we had a little bit

tiresome, 4-hour long trip, we slept-off in the traveler. It was around 6 in the morning when I

woke up and the sight in front of me was truly mind-blowing....as dawn was just starting to fall upon the sky, it was like the nature had changed its colour from the serene green to the exotic blue.....(you can see the first photo at the top). After freshening up, we started on our way up the hill towards Nelliyampathy. We

were expecting bumpy

roads but it was just smooth all the way, Kerala government has done a good job regarding that. About half an hour later we were in Nelliyampathy. The place is famous for its ravaging beauty of the

steep hills. There are many

suicide points here, I don't remember their names .......and the best part is you can actually watch clouds floating at the same level where you are standing, its like the hills are kissing the sky. Well the first place we went was just great, we had to walk along a narrow path and at the end we could see something in white colour. What we saw when we reached that point

was the open sky, and down below some 3000 meters the lush green land lied, stretching across the horizon.

Well there are many resorts here, where you can stay for two three days and visit all the places nearby. If you are talking about Nelliyampathy, you should not forget to mention about the top-most point over there. Its a 14km up the hill drive, only 4-wheel drive powered vehicles can take that route. You can hire a jeep from the town, the driver can tell you about the place. Its about 4000 mtrs above msl. The route is very rocky and at times you should get down the jeep,

so that it can drive up the way. Sometimes, the driver said that, wild boars may come on the way. When you reach the top, you can almost have the view of half of pallakad district, some 6 dams, clouds floating just before you............its just amazing. After we came back from this place, we had our lunch from a house. We had asked them before to prepare lunch for 10 people. The thing is there is no proper restaurant over there to have food.

Then, we went to a place called Sithakund, its another suicide point, a hill, and if you climb down the hill, there is a huge cave that you can see. It was an adventurous experience for us. We met a local who took us down the hill to the cave. The place is full of leaches, so you should take care of your own blood, or by the time you watch your foot, all the blood might have gone.................huh, was that a bit over-board???

After this, we started our journey back to Kottayam and reached there at night

Well, this is all I can tell about the trip and the place. Its a must see place for adventure seekers. Also, you can have campfire , trekking sort of things here, if you plan accordingly. Any information you need about the place, feel free to contact me....

Writing off

Patruni.......