Have we forgotten to perceive beauty ?

Some things are so beautiful and meaningful in life that you never understand its beauty until you lose it. Last day I was going to the railway station with my friend on his bike that I saw the sky so beautiful in all those shades of red and orange and I could see the sun hiding behind the clouds and slowly going down the hills. The view led me to wonder why I don't see such things often ? I didn't have another view stamped in my memory of such similarity , not in the near past. I couldn't fathom what happened to me to not have enjoyed such small things of joy and beauty. Suddenly, my mind asked me back, "As if you come out and enjoy such views at this time ? When did you last see the sun setting ?" .  And yes, that was a self-realizing and embarrassing question to which I didn't have an answer.  Yes, am not talking about the sun setting down the horizon to be enjoyed playing with your friends on a beach or a snow fall atop the hills of Himalayas. Am talking about a view you could enjoy from the terrace of the building you live in.

A morning walk through the same busy streets you see while going to office and coming back is filled with so much joyous moments that the scenes you watch would be instilled in your mind forever. Last day I saw the man who serves me idlis and dosas at the restaurant near where I live coming out of the temple early morning. His god-fearing face told me how he prays to god to have given him a life that at least helps him make ends meet. I saw a school girl praying to god at that time when we would be fast asleep after having watched a Jack Nicholson movie from our 1 TB hard-disk movie collection. I thought how morons we are to think how our life's miserable and monotonous when we see people working hard to get themselves three meals a day. We complain about the food in our canteen whereas those people don't complain as they would not have had a meal even. For us the day after 10 in the morning is so unknown that we dare not go out at that time. We say its too hot ! I was dumbstruck to see the roof of the mall I go twice a week for late night shows. I visited the mall on a weekend when it was broad daylight and noticed that the roof was transparent and the mall needed no lights as the sun rays where coming down and it was bright all around. I thought how I didn't notice such a roof till then and realized that I was out at that time of the day after so many days. Yes, congratulate me.

We all have become so busy with our lives that we forget to enjoy very small things. We have to check our Facebook wall and twitter timeline , post pics in Instagram , watch movies in multiplexes and shop in malls. We have to go to discos and pubs to drink with our friends or go out on a weekend road-trip to come out of this busy life and enjoy it. But we don't see the beauty that's around us, through out the day. We miss to perceive the beauty of small things and we fail to understand the difficulties of others, how small it may be. Life's taking a toll on us right ? Really !

The western civic sense

Just as we judge a person by his character, we judge a city or a sub-urban town by the infrastructure facilities it has, right ? OK, not just infrastructure . I would say a lot of factors determine the completeness of a city. Things like public transport systems, civic administration, socioeconomic features, accessibility, environment friendly constructions etc are just a few of those. There is also something else that we would expect from the people of the city, Civic Sense. One of the major factors distinguishing Indian cities from its counterparts in Europe and Americas.

What is civic sense ? Well there is no clear cut definition but all I can say is keeping your premises clean comes under civic sense, driving obeying the traffic rules comes under civic sense and helping ourselves and others to make the city we live in a better place comes under civic sense.

I and my friend were walking on a street in Italy . It was half past 10 in the night and a lady was walking in front of us. We came across a small junction and the light was red . There was no vehicle in the near-by vicinity but the lady stood still till it became green. Now, we may think why to waste our time in such a situation when there is no danger to cross the road. But at least we could avoid all those hit-and-run cases that happen in metro cities in India, especially Delhi. It is this patient understanding of simple things that we miss as a responsible citizen. I wonder , how such a nation with such a great civilization history, rich traditional and cultural values, deep-rooted following of good ethics has become so impatient and disrespectful when it comes to obeying the rules and laws of the land. Our cities are filled with such chaos and cacophony, that we feel totally out of place when we visit a foreign land. I was dumbfounded after coming out of the Paris railway station at 9 in the morning. It was calm and quiet outside, no vehicles on the roads, very less people walking on the streets, for a minute I thought if am in the wrong place !! But even if it was a busy road, you won't hear much of horns . They wait till a cyclist gives you the way or till a pedestrian crosses the road. They wait till the car in front of you takes a left  turn or till they park and give you the way.

You can pat on yourself if you succeed to drive in cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad or Chennai without getting disgusted over your fellow drivers. Well , that's the way it is in India and we all are used to it. One of my Italian colleagues was telling me about how people don't care at all even when auto rickshaws brushes past their shoulders in a busy street in Varanasi. But, come further south and its not so horrible in Cochin or Trivandrum. Why ?? You will find out soon. The other day I was just going through some statistics of different countries and I came across this thing called the HDI - Human Development Index. Its a measure of life expectancy, income and education of the place or state under study. The max value is 1 and the more nearer it is to one , the more better is the standard of living of that place. Developed countries have this value near to 0.95. Norway, Australia, Netherlands top the table . Now, India's value is 0.547 and its rank in this list is 134, behind countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, China and South Africa. But, if you take Kerala's value and rank it with other countries in the world, it can come in 3rd position !! Its value is 0.92 very much comparable to the developed countries of Europe and America. (HDI values of Indian states) . These values tend to change often but not much though. Now, as HDI is a direct measure of education and income, it can indirectly mean that people here know more about traffic rules or more aptly, they try to follow them.  What am trying to say is that education is a major factor in determining many things . We know we need to follow some rules . Civic sense has a relation with the education of the civilization. All socioeconomic factors like these, be it mortality rates or dowry or cleanliness, have something to do with education. Now, you know why it is not as horrible to drive in Cochin as it is in Hyderabad .

One reason why people strictly follow traffic rules or we find the western cities more cleaner and neater than ours is because if you try to deviate from the law, you have to pay a heavy price. It must be the same for people fed with golden spoon though, and I don't see any difference in that aspect between India and any other country. But see, fines are there in our country too, only factor is we can over-ride them with something called BRIBE. Scams happen there also, India is not the only country where its difficult to count the number of zeros in the scam figures. Politicians play dirty tricks everywhere in the world, but not the people. You don't need to play games with the law and rules. That's the difference. This is not a derogatory statement but a fact. The respect pedestrians and cyclists get from other drivers in the west makes us feel shameful of our own country. Well , we don't need to stop blowing horns, but we can start respecting fellow drivers and obeying rules. We don't need to start building parks to make our cities beautiful but we can stop littering the public spaces, right ?

Go Goa

Goa, a bachelor's ultimate destination, eh, or that's so I hear from everyone. Well , I too had a fantastic stay in Goa with my dear friends and wanted to blog about it for a long time. And, it again gives me an immense pleasure to write , something that we seldom do these days because of our job. Without deviating much from the subject, I must say the time we choose to visit Goa was too perfect. The places were too scenic to be missed at that time of the year and the climate was awesome. OK, OK....well yes, there were chicks all around, but for some time we thought that all the sexy chicks in India, North India to be precise, had come down to Goa to shower their beauty on us right at the same time we went there . Stunning, gorgeous, steamy and hot chicks. Well, that's why I respect the northies (ladies of course), because they are very hot.

Baga

Well I want this piece to be informative too, so , I will be telling more about the places we visited in Goa.
We camped in Baga for 3 days. It was just in-front of the Baga beach, the sexiest beach in Goa I must say. Ok, not only because its full of sexy , bikini-clad foreigners but also because its the only beach were you get to make merry from late night till early morning. Candle light dinners in front of the moon-lit beach, discos and music set the atmos for a great evening. Baga is calm in the day-light and gets naughty in the evening. You can associate different behaviors for each beach in Goa and that's the beauty of it. The Tito's disco and Britto's food is famous in Baga.

Fort Aguada

Well, I don't remember any other place where I have seen so many sexy ladies together. If the govt had a law to tax for the number of  leggy lasses you get to see there, we would have been the highest tax-payers in the country. The climate was too hot to handle basically. Fort Aguada is back dropped by the Arabian sea. The setting is perfect for a romantic song. Green grasses, brown fort walls , blue waters and the tall and fat white tower of the fort make a wonderful scene. It was built by the Portuguese and thus the name, Aguada meaning water.

Calangute Beach

Water sports. Banana ride (well am getting back on this shortly), Jet Ski , Parachute and Bumper. As soon as you get near to the premises of this beach, a flurry of agents come to  you and market their products. The above mentioned four games, for 1000 to 1400 per person. Its your bargaining expertise that determines how much you end up spending finally. We went ahead with 400 or so per person. As I was telling earlier, you can associate something sporty and adventurous with this beach.
 Started off with Bumper,         2-seater, no, not a boat but on an air-tub kind of thing. Its attached to a speedy boat and you are given a bumpy ride over the waves of the sea. For starters , this was cool. Next came the banana ride . A long air tub of the shape of banana on which 7 can sit was brought in front of us. 5 of us sat, and 2 others who steer the banana in the waters sit in the front and back. Of the five of us, I was sitting at the back, Suman in front of me, Renjith, Darshan and KK(they say his name is Krishnakumar)  were sitting further front . As soon as we set off in the waters, steering through the tiny tides, the person sitting behind me told not to keep holding the banana when you fall , just let go. I passed the info to Suman and by the time it reached KK in the front, a huge wave hit us hard, and I was clinging to the banana, a tilt away from being drowned in the waters. At that time we were like 100 meters inside the sea. "Patruniiiii......let go the ride.........", I heard Suman shouting, and then I was in the waters  and then everyone was shouting. I looked around and saw a head. I swam to the person and pulled him above and was dumbstruck to find that it was one of the two persons who were giving us the ride. I didn't see anyone and so swam back to the shore. I was terrified but felt relieved when I reached the shores. The first person I saw was KK. He came to me lifting his hand as if he had just won the 100 meters freestyle event, gave me a hi-fi and said, "Maaaaan, that was awesome, shall we do it once again??". For a moment, I thought had the waves hit his head so hard!!

Then Suman and Renjith came along, and finally Darshan. Thank god, all were alive. Darshan, according to what they had to say, had drank so much of water that he could have replaced the water-tanker in Calangute. Suman was relieved to see himself near to Darshan and Jammy(Renjth) when they fell down, at-least even if you drown you have got company, that's what he thought. But a huge wave came and they were all separated. No one saw KK shouting or floating by. I really doubt KK for the fall. He might have given a hearty laugh when the ride started and the banana lost the balance. Well we had life-jackets to keep us afloat but it was terrible to be there among the waves and your feet not touching the ground .

After this we took the Jet-Ski. Two persons and one rider. The next thing I heard was that the ski on which Renjith and KK were there lost its balance and they again had a fall in the waters. This time it was more further away from the shore. Luckily, the rider pulled them from the waters and they came back. Even the ski rider might have experienced this for the first time in his life, thanks to two very lucky persons he was giving the ride to. Well, this is what KK had to say after he had the second fall , "Ecstasy!!". And now we all know who caused both the falls.

Mates, Merry and Munnar

Hi guys, its been so long since I have posted anything over here and so thought of writing about this trip I had gone along with my dear buddies, my school mates , most of whom I have known since my childhood days. I had never gone with them to many of the places they had visited together, so missed a lot of fun and lost a lot of  moments which otherwise I would have loved to cherish.

The last time I saw Anand , I had told him about this desire to go for a trip , all of us together , somewhere, where we can free our minds and souls from the daily routines,tensions and happenings at work. In short, I wanted to enjoy the max. He said he will tell others about this and plan accordingly. I wanted to go to a place where there won't be much mayhem and so we decided upon Gavi, a reserve forest in the border of Idukki and Pathanamthita districts. An apt place , something we were looking out for, but unfortunately a sad incident happened there a week before we were planning to go and the reserve was restricted for the tourists. We then decided to go Vaalpara but that also got cancelled because of some reason. Anand called me and told me about Munnar. I asked him what are the other options we have and he said this was the best option. Now, Munnar is a place where I had been to for some 3 or 4 times last year and now whenever I hear about this place my mind goes blank. All the streets and roads leading to munnar and in munnar were still there blueprinted in my mind and when they told me that we will be going there, I thought "oh no!! not again"...

Deepak was coming along with us and that was good to hear since he seldom used to get leave from his work and it had been a long time since I saw him. Since Anu was also turning up I thought this would be a lovely trip.
Anu is the man you would like to take along with you if you want to enjoy a trip. He could make us laugh with whatever he says, we call him the RAPPER(I think you are not thinking about the other rapper....ok, fine read on), coz he has this beautiful skill to turn any song to a laughable rap song , be it in English or Malayalam. And there is this another guy with whom if you just sit for 5 minutes you will end up with tears in your eyes. No, not because he tells all those emotional stuff but when he just starts speaking we will start laughing like a drain and our stomachs come out. Yes, I am talking about Hashif.....our very own Hashif P M.

We decided to start the journey on a Saturday morning, April 9 2011. I started from Coimbatore on Friday night and reached home at 1 o'clock in the night. Reneesh was there with me from Ernakulam, he was coming back from work. And since we thought of starting early in the morning, around 4, there was not much time to get some good sleep. There were 10 of us and so we went in two cars, Jithin's and Anu's. We reached Munnar by 8:30 and the first thing we wanted was to search for a good accommodation. Jithin had done his graduation from Munnar engg college and so he had some contacts. We managed to get a good house for a day's rent in Devikulam, a small village 6km from Munnar. We talked with the person who maintained the house and settled for a sum of Rs.4000 that included the rent, dinner with chicken curry and camp fire. All in all, it was a good deal, I must say.

After this, we went in search for a calm and serene place where all could have some drinks. Thanks to Jithin, he took us to a football ground, besides which a stream flows by, the other side of it covered by small hills. The place was apt for having drinks by the stream side. There was not much habitation around, so it was calm and peaceful. We spent some time there, took some pics. After that we went to Kundala Dam, a beautiful place with all those trees by the lake side , a perfect place to let your mind go, relax and rejuvenate. We
decided to go back to the rented house before it got dark. On the way back, we saw the shooting of a Tamil film. The scene being shot was a dance sequence, with the Hero, Dhanush, dancing and hopping towards the Heroine, Tammanah. And I must say how beautiful Tammanah is...just like we see her in films, very fair and beautiful...that scene is still there in my mind and eyes, whatever else if  I fail to remember :)

The actual fun started after going back home. We asked the housekeeper to start setting the camp fire. Meanwhile, we had some light dinner and when the camp fire was ready, the party began. The fire was set, the music was put on, cans n bottles were taken outside, the lids were opened, and with that the liveliness. We all let our hair down, danced around the fire, singed out loud, made merry, screamed and what not. Anu and Tijin sang some songs to which Deepak beat drums. Yes, I mean the drums made out of plastic bottles and tins, cans and chairs :). After some 2 hours or so, the fire and the flames got reduced to ashes. We all sat around the ashes and talked about our good old school days.The next day we made our journey back home.

Another journey came to and end. Just like the way the fire leaves behind the ashes , good old days with our friends get reduced to thoughts and dear moments in our heart. Yes, it was fun and unforgettable. You don't get to see all your mates together after you get some job. Its hard to meet even one or two, so these journeys and moments are like precious, priceless jewels. We need to keep them safe somewhere at the bottom of our heart. And every time you revisit those thoughts, you will have a smile in your face.

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.