Another year, another bakra day ..

After a successful April 1st 2007 prank , I wanted to do something this time too. Amal and I became partners in crime (read prank) sometime back but he ditched me with this :

"me: we were suposed to fool ppl
12:10 PM Amal: what the hell
12:11 PM Dont be so childish
grow up
and drink some complan if u cant grow up by yourself"

So he became my first victim:

I had set my status message to "Yipee, I am coming hyderabad" and stayed online whole day for a change...

"Amal: when are u going to Hyderabd ?
me: month end man
Amal: for what ?
me: for april fooling u ;)
u r the first one
thanks man
u made my day"


And it continued for the whole day...

I had divided the set into 2 groups -
1) Batchmates who would not believe something big so I had decided to tell that I was going for recruitment for my company
2) other friends : who would believe something big. So I told them I was joining M$ :P in hyderabad


and I had one busy day. Here are few excerpts from my chat history ;))

"Sunil: kahan kyon kab
5 minutes
12:37 PM me: tomorrow
recruitment "

Some people are smart ;))
"मंजीत: when? or is this a AF
me: cool man..u r smarter than amal :D"

"Ranjeeth: why are you coming to hyderabad
me: :)
goin tomorrow
Ranjeeth: saala... so whats the ocassion
me: no occassion man
interviews..
recruitment related
Ranjeeth: oh.. i see
i thought you are making another jump
:D
me: hehe..
Ranjeeth: good... so its campus interview or off-campus"

"Gaurav: kab ?
me: tomorrow man
12:47 PM Gaurav: kewl"


Some people made programs ;))

"Amit: will u get ne free time ?
me: yeah..
Amit: oh no :(
ha ha ha :)
me: thursday friday busy..
sat/sun free
Amit: wow... fir to aish hogii.. !
me: yeah
Amit: whr r u planning to stay.. ? mera ghar khula hai , khula hii rahega tumhare liye :)
12:23 PM me: thanks man..
friday raat tak to i wil stay in hotel
Amit: cool..
me: uske baad either urs..or dixi..
Amit: uske baad dekhe lena..!"


Some keep it short :P

"Priyanka: wht for?
3:53 PM me: recruitment.. :)
Priyanka: where?"


Some had big questions

"richa: going to hyderabad?????????????
me: :)"


Some, I didnt feel like fooling :)

"Garima: hyd ja rahe ho ??
kab ??
5:12 PM me: ullu mana raha hoon logon ko :P
april fool
Garima: wow"


Some people tried senti like always ;))

"Vidit: ola
when are you coming here mate ?
me: :)
fooling ppl man..wont fool u :)
Vidit: playing wiht ppl's feelings"


Some asked lotsa questions :D

"life: wn u appeared for the interview..?
4:08 PM me: around 2 weeks back..
life: okay..
4:09 PM wo log interviews weekends pe lete hain.."



And there were a lot more. In all I had a chat with 21 people :P, must have broken my own chatting records. Thanks to everyone for your love and support , I wish to keep my pranks alive and kicking always :P. This time I didnt get time to think, will try to have something better next year .. till then have fun ;)


PS: No hard feelings :))

Holy Time..

I had not spent a full weekend at home since so long that the long weekend around holi became a treat. I had dumped whole season 8 of FRIENDS, few episodes of LOST and few movies on my laptop and was eagerly waiting for the holidays. This time I was even in the mood to play holi after a gazillion years.

Got up late on Friday morning and saw my favourite Matrix - I again. Mom asked me if I would like to eat Puri/Chole and I got excited and told her I would learn make Puris ;) . Started from beating dough to frying puris I did it all. Mom was offcourse their to guide me all through, but I didnt do a very terrible job ;). Bon appetite.

Saw 'Into the wild' in the afternoon and liked the concept of going to alaska to live alone ;)). Not going to try it, atleast not in near future :). The weather was great in the evening so went upstairs and a full moon was waiting to greet me with fresh and cool air. They were burning logs on occasion of holi which reminded me of old times when we used to wait for the bon fire whole day. Went out for a walk and sat near the bon fire for sometime seeing people dancing on music that someone had played near by. It was fun.

Slept late and got up late on Holi and was joined by Priya n Kapil and my sweet bhanju. They colored me as soon as they entered and I took revenge by drenching them in water. Bhanju was confused to see us all doing funny things with colors and must have felt 'what the hell happened to these people'.

We all went for dinner to Great India place which was more than over crowded. Kapil n Priya left in the morning and my rest of the day was spent watching more n more Friends. Season 8 is over.

another interesting weekend..

Last couple of weekends have been very busy for me. Out of the last 6-7 weekends I have only spent one saturday night at home. Generally my Friday nights are by default spent with friends in Noida but 2 days in a row was never the case. I have been virtually living out of my bag which now permanently has a towel, a brush and few extra clothes.

I was planning to go home early on saturday morning but the unexpected happened. After watching a bad movie on friday - 'we own the night' (rating: 2/5) and spending a long night with friends dancing and blabbering we slept around 4:30AM. I went to office on saturday morning to finish off some work fast and wanted to go shopping after that. But murphy's laws about work have always been true. I got stuck with more work, and then more, and then still more. It was 5:30 AM on sunday morning when finally I could leave office and so I went straight home. Although I had got comparatively free by 3:00-3:30 and I started watching "LOST" series which Gaurav had recommended me lately. The first few episodes were attention grabbing. I also gave miss calls to few friends (a habit I have recently acquired from Manjeet) around 5:30 which was fun. Sishant (a school fren) called me various times while I was asleep late in the morning thinking that I got kidnapped or whatever that I called him at 5:30 AM ;)).

Needless to say that I slept like a dog (why do they say 'slept like a dog') after coming back but got up at 12:30 to attend a call. Vikas (another school fren) came over and we went for shopping to Shipra mall after lunch. There was a time when I hated shopping, but now I just love it. We came back around 6:30 PM and I again slept like a dog. I got up to see Namaste london and eat more and felt like blogging after a not so long time so thought of writing about this weekend...

Looking forward to Holi holiday - 3 days together. Planning to do some more masti.

My Best Friends Wedding

Nope, am not talking about the movie. I am talking about Manjeet and Namrata's wedding. Yes, Manjeet got married and offcourse we attended the wedding and had a blast there. I still remember the day when he first broke silence and shared the news of his 'roka' with Namrata in october end. I felt so happy that I kept smiling whole day. All memories played back in my mind of that day when I had joined college on 22nd July 2001 and Manjeet came with his fractured hand in a sling and introduced himself. We shared the same room for couple of months and became friends. Time flies, really.

We were planning and planning about gifts, how to go, when to go etc etc and finally on one of the great days of year - 14th Feb (ahem) 8 of us started our journey in the night. This journey just like all others was great except that most of us were meeting each other after years which added more fun to it. We took all possible roads, and were almost sure that we will be late for the reception that was scheduled in the morning but against all odds we made it in time. Special thanks to Ranta for his intuition that guided us like a GPS ;)) and Vardhman for asking the right questions to people (where is the guest house ;)).

Bikaner is a very nice and quiet place. Just after entering the city we got a very laid back feeling which was particularly good as all of us were on vacation from work ;). We finally met Manjeet who came personally to welcome us and arranged rooms and stuff.


The first function was quiet interesting with great food. There were so many variety of sweets which we later came to know was a norm in Rajasthani weddings. Special attraction was the Rajbhog (Yellow Rasgullas) which we all loved (atleast then :P). We were all very tired from the journey so we decided to take a nap and get ready to see bikaner in the evening.

Around 5:00 we started for the Mice temple which was a bit far from main city. The drive was fun as the road was flanked by sand dunes on both sides and most of us were seeing Desert like that for the first time. The Mice temple was interesting and annoying at same time. It was definitely not a treat for eyes to see so many rats lingering around everywhere like kings.

By the time we were back it was late already. There was a small get together arranged for the night so we stayed back. After dinner all family and friends gathered and the function started. Some youngsters from the family had written poems, shers and had even prepared for dance sequences. All couples were called on stage to sing and dance one by one. Piyush sang two songs and Amit also danced on two. We had a small group dance also in which all friends jumped in. The evening was great fun. Although we were dead tired but masti never stops so we finally still slept late.

We had decided to go and see Juna Garh fort (also called Bikaner Fort) in morning. Although we all got ready by 10:30 or so we could not start before 12:00.
Piyush and I went outside to checkout the local taxi (auto) who told us that the fort was quiet far. We had heard that the city transport was very cheap so we asked him how much he would take for 8 people to which he answered 40 bucks after thinking a lot. We could not stop laughing ;).

Juna Garh was just another fort. Nothing very great about it for people who have seen other forts. But still it was pretty beautiful and worth visiting. After seeing the Fort we went to the famous Parsvnath Juice corner which was recommended to us by Manjeet. After having enormous liquid intake ;) we decided to skip lunch. We reached back to the guest house after stopping at some (I forgot the name) king memorial road which is quiet famous in Bikaner from where we bought the famous Bikaner Bhujia. Ranta's intuition was still at work all this time ;)

Abhinav, Vidit and Sourabh also joined us in the evening just in time to get ready for Barat. We all got ready and went to the Barat assembly point and started dancing with the Barat. It was just awesome. We danced for more than an hour and half (leaving Ranta who danced for more than 4 hours that night ;)).

The food again was delicious. AC promised to drink 15 glasses of juice but stopped at just 6 :P. Within few minutes Namrata also came and varmala ceremony was done. We all went and met Bhabhi ji :) on the stage. Pheras were scheduled around 10:30 and we all went inside for Pheras.

The best part of the Pheras was the pandit ji who looked like a standing comedian and made everyone laugh with his pravachans :P . Around 12:00 the dinner was laid outside and we all got seated and something happened which nobody was expecting (atleast those who had not attended Rajasthani weddings).

Manjeet's Relatives started stuffing Rasgullas (Rajbhog) in everyones mouths. It started with one and went to two and then to three for those who tried to escape ;). It was great fun. All of us were over stuffed with those Rasgullas and after managing to eat atleast 5-6 of them we could not stand seeing them around us. The best thing was that taking Rajbhog's name stopped AC from talking so we found one thing in life that could stop AC.

Finally we met the Bride and Groom and went back to the room. We played Dumb Charades in which AC discovered a new action for each word ;). We slept very late and got up at 8:00-8:30 though we had decided to leave around 6:00 AM ;). The return journey was equally good but a bit more sleepy. We stopped to enjoy the deserts at one place and stopped for lunch in which we ate like 50-60 chapathis in total ;). We almost got AC's flight missed in Jaipur (supposedly a nice flight after ahemdabad ;)) and reached back home late in the night.

Overall it was a great experience and we had a lot of fun. And yes, eagerly looking forward to attend the next wedding ;)).

Wish Manjeet and Namrata a happy and prosperous married life.

school memories..thoughts..

Yesterday while I was leaving for office, my Mom told me to drop her on the way. It was 10:30 AM on a chilly winter day. I said fine and we left home. We had hardly left the home when I saw a guy riding his bicycle peacefully with a notebook (register) carefully placed in bicycle's carrier. It immediately reminded me of my school days when I used to be in his position riding my Bicycle going to School or Tuitions.

I could not help but compare my situation with my old self. Then, I was a free kid riding my bicycle all around the city fooling around with friends all the time in school, after school and before school. In those days we used to dream about driving a Car or bike some day going to work at 10:30 AM on a winter day rather than waking up at 5:30 AM for tuitions. In those days we used to think what all we could do with the 50 Rupee note that we had got as pocket money which now has no more value than a coffee in barista.

Then we all grew up and achieved most of those small dreams which used to be big for us. And now we take all those dreams for granted. Rather than always craving for more and better we should take some time to appreciate what we have got today. We should learn to respect and admire all those things that we have achieved, all those wishes that were fulfilled which were once our far-fetched dreams. Because what we have got today is the 'more and better' which we craved for yesterday...

December 2007 trip part 1 - Rishikesh

I went to Rishikesh with Office friends and it was an amazing experience. We did all sorts of things starting from Camping, Rafting, Rock climbing, Rappelling, bonfire and trekking. A complete fun and adventure trip. Here are few photos.


Our Camp

Me Rock Climbing (or say me rocking ;))


On Trek in the evening


Bon fire in the night at 12:00..Temperature less than 5 degrees.


Yeah thats me at the top. And yeah, I didnt jump ;)


Someone did jump afterall ;)


Starting from Shivpuri to Rishikesh - 16kms/2 hrs+


Tired..eh!!


Sunset from Ram Jhoola in Rishikesh

- overall rating: 4/5
- useful info: Himgiri Adventures phone: 0-94129-02361, cost anywhere between 1200-1800 depending on package. It was cold in December (especially water) but doable. Worth visiting.

Few good things we wont forget from the trip:
- A cartoon series of some guy , especially the line 'Ze kya laga rakha hai, chalo haath upar kar ke khade ho jao'
- The cool driver and his 'rula doonga aapko' with 'bhoot's hand on the shoulder' ;)
- Ghost stories
- the first crushes of few of us ;)
- how the girls didnt want to go for rafting, rappelling and how we convinced them to do otherwise :D

A bike trip after long time..

Whats the best way to get rid of stress after a long busy week? Yes a trip. But who needs a reason, I was hardly stressed out but bike trip did sound like a good idea. I just opened mapmyindia.com and tried searching for a place in 100km perimeter and came across Hastinapur wildlife sanctuary. Some googling showed that it might not be a bad idea to go there. But who needed a destination, we just wanted to hit the road.

Kapil, me, Jagan and Abhinav took off on saturday evening around 6:00 (planning started at 4:00) and hit the roads. At 7:30 we were close to Meerut sitting in a dhaba having Tea when everyone was convincing me to go to Hardwar instead which we finally didnt and got stuck with the original plan.

The road was in good condition, and biking was fun. Best part was switching off the headlights when no vehicle was around in pitch darkness. It was breathtaking and fun too. We reached hastinapur and much to our surprise didnt find a single open shop in the market, leave alone a hotel at 7:30 in the evening. Driving up and down the road we ended up going to the Forest department office and ended up chatting with a old Forest incharge who could not stop talking.

After hearing more about him than i would have ever heard about anyone, he finally agreed to arrange for our stay and arrange for a stroll across the jungle in the night with two staff people. It was fun to roam around in the jungle in total darkness with only 3 dogs and a Torch to guide us at 11:00 PM in the night. We were back by 1:00 and after cherishing the bonfire for sometime we went to sleep.

The best part was our beds which were laid out in open in the middle of the jungle with only a pair of blankets and a quilt to save us from animals and shivering cold. Fortunately we survived to see the light of the day and took leave. We came across a nice collection of big and beautiful Jain temples which to our amazement were quiet empty. After spending some time there we left off to see the Ganga river closeby.

After a 12 km long drive on a broken and soiled road we reached Ganga. There was a small village at the corner and everyone there was busy in their usual activities. We took few snaps and left to come back to Delhi.



Fortunately there were no back or body aches even though we drove around 220kms in less than a day with only a few hours sleep. Overall it was a very different and funfilled experience.

Looking forward to more bike trips :))