Tagged: friends

About two things that I happened to notice…

One
My workplace is on the eleventh floor of my office building. Therefore the lift is an integral part of our daily routine. The lifts here have these operator guys who are inside these boxes for hours together doing a pretty mundane job. I wonder how they manage it, because we the ‘elite techies’ get frustrated if the lift stops at more than one intermediate floor. It must be such a frustrating and thankless job that they are doing.

Then I started noticing Gayathri (my colleague, classmate, friend and ‘G’ on this blog) say ‘Thank you’ each time she got out of the lift. I didn’t think much about it then, but the other day after giving it some thought I realized the value of such a simple statement. It would make their day so much better. The power of one simple gesture! I have had differences with her attitude, with her behaviour many a time, but I admire her for all these little things she does And now I know why every time she gets in the lift, the operator always knows to press the 11th Floor button without her telling him and why that seldom happens to me. A small lesson in inter-personal relationships…

Two
The other day, my friend Ranjith got a call from one of our mutual friends. They had not spoken for a very long time and she said that age old excuse – ‘Was so busy, didn’t get the time’. Then he said something back that struck me then and there. ‘You can’t spare five minutes of your time for a friend? That’s the worst response to that’. It really is when you come to think of it. Aren’t your friends worth atleast 5 minutes of your time? If they are not well there’s trouble. He may have said that just for the sake of responding. But it did make me think a lot. Staying in touch is a virtue difficult to attain and I believe if you manage to do it, it is the armour to have against the bumps on the road in your life. You never know… sometimes the person whom you least expect to, would be the only one there for you. So its always better to keep the numbers high

We planned and even started off the latest in the series of ‘Keeral’ trips with the destination set to Goa. We even booked a place to stay there for a change, but circumstances (to be specific ‘Traffic’ and professional unpunctuality) made us end up at Chikmagalur, a good 700 kilometres away! First of all, we were left hung out to dry by some idiot in Calicut who had promised to rent us an Innova. We were delayed by around 8 hours when finally we managed to get a replacement car (a Qualis!). The plan was that Kurian and Hazer drove to Bangalore, meet the rest of the gang here and leave in the evening. But we ended up leaving Bangalore at 11.30 PM instead. And to our luck all the roads were jam packed with lorries and buses owing to the Diwali rush. So we made a quick decision to change routes and head towards Chikmagalur without having much of an idea about what to expect there.

Bad luck didn’t seem to end with the traffic though. It was around 5am now and I had been driving for around 3hrs and thinking about handing over the wheel to Hazer. But then the roads became suddenly better and I thought maybe a little bit more. Well bad judgement! As we were cruising along the superb roads, suddenly a huge gutter appeared from nowhere and before anything could be done, the car was in it with a huge thud. I knew something was wrong then and there as the steering suddenly had a jerk. We had to stop and luckily the town of Hassan was just 4 km away. We decided to limp on till there and get help. But that would mean another 3 or 4 more hours lost because the earliest of the earliest workshop guy would open shop max at 9. So we decided to do a gamble and change the front tyres because we had a feeling that the problem was that the wheel-rim was bent. Bad luck didn’t end there either, we did not have a lifting jack in the car to prop it up and change tyres. A good lorry driver lent us one though and we managed to do it and bingo problem solved!

The road from Hassan to Chikmagalur was awesome and picturesque. We stopped over at the town, had our breakfast, still having no clue as to what to do next. We called up Kurians friend and he told us about a few worthwhile places around. So we set off to the first one in the list – ‘Kemmangundi’. The road was all kaput, but the spectacular vistas made up for it more than enough. It took us a lot of time to traverse the 50 km to the place, but I would say it was great to be forced to drive slow as we could soak in the brilliant atmosphere around. We booked a place to stay there and head off to a place called ‘Point Z’. The road was motorable only for a little bit and after that you have to trek. I went along for a while but seeing the steepness of the mountains to climb I chickened out and went back to the car while the others continued. It wasn’t much of a miss though, since the peak was covered with mist. The one hour I spent waiting in the car was a totally different experience! It was mystical, alone in the forest, no access to mobile networks, knowing the nearest human is at least 5km away. I tried to soak in the experience as much as I could before my tiredness got the better off me and pushed me to sleep.

The night was spent in a dilapidated cottage playing cards and gossiping. Two years on and we still had something about college to talk about! The food was not that great and damn expensive – but that didn’t stop us from spending close to a thousand bucks there! The other major incident was the fight against the leeches. Each time somebody removes one from his leg, the next guy would start yelling ‘Leech!’ It seemed to go on endlessly. After a lot of blood and a lot of salt we managed to win the battle (it seemed).

Next day morning the plan was laid to go off to Kudremukh. We stopped over again at Chikmagalur town to have lunch and continued on to the next leg of the trip. We ended up driving most of the day, but again the roads were good and the surroundings smashtacular! At Kudremukh we went to this place called as Gangamoola which is the place were the mighty Tungabhadra river starts. It was again a nice place, but with more leeches. This time we were more careful and didn’t let too many of the slimy little things to prey on us. The only place to stay in Kudremukh is a forest department dormitory unless you are an employee of the iron ore company there. It was a very cheap option and also had the added thrill of staying right in the middle of the forest, though nothing noteworthy really happened there.

Next day was an early start since the guys had to reach back in Calicut by atleast 8PM before dropping us in Mysore. The roads again were beautiful by all means. We were able to do 200 km easily in 2-2.5 hours. By lunch time we had reached Mysore, had food at a mallu hotel there and it was time for us to split. Being totally unplanned we weren’t able to enjoy all the places to the fullest. We calculated that out of the 84 hours of the trip, around 50 was spent driving! But I’m not complaining at all! All the places we went to had a lot more to offer and I’m sure we’ll be back, well prepared next time!

Album @ Picasa

I rarely travel by train, mostly because of the difficulty in getting the tickets, the inconvenient timings and the thought of going to Bangalore railway station in rush hour traffic. But apart from this, it is probably the most comfortable cost efficient way to travel to Trivandrum. Especially ever since they (re)started charging big bucks for flights.

The beauty of a train journey is that you observe life around you. In a bus its more like, sticking an iPod in your ear, wondering why you never get the seat next to a girl, praying that the driver stops soon rather than testing your bladder control. Don’t know why, but the whole set-up for socializing is missing in a bus journey. Train is different. You seem to feel more comfortable to strike a conversation and you get to know a lot about your co-travellers, even without a word being uttered.

On this Onam trip to Trivandrum from Bangalore, I had this very interesting but typical gang as my fellow passengers. Passenger A, was the typical mallu hero. He comes from this small town near Trivandrum, now making it big in a big-shot company in Bangalore. He likes to tell his tales, his tales of glory especially when there is a girl next to him (Aw! Sounds eeriely similar to me ). Very quickly he takes on the protector role of Ms. Passenger B. For a moment Ranjith (who was travelling with me) and I, thought both of them had come together, then thought maybe they were college mates, then maybe old friends, then as their conversations progressed came to know that they had first laid eyes on each other on this very train. Passenger B was smart too. She made good use of the situation. In no time, poor Mr. A was running around getting water bottles, pushing heavy luggage, ordering food etc. etc. And then they started talking about Bangalore traffic and why you don’t get train tickets and yeda yeda. So attention had to shift.

There is always one pretty girl on the train who seems to be not concerned about the world around her. We had our own Passenger C to play that role. As soon as she came and sat, she pulled out a book and started reading it with vigour as if the fate of the world hangs on whether she completes the book in time or not. The other people in the compartment are unimportant subjects when it comes to our lady, but at the same I’m pretty sure she’s well aware that the glances of all the males in the compartment tend to converge on her. At least I’m sure about my case, since she caught my glance a couple of times hehe. Alas, the queen went to her hive too soon and in the morning as I woke up from my middle berth the lady was already out.

Then there was Passenger D and Passenger E. Mr. D is a perfect artist interested in watching classical French films (without subtitles by the way) and is also intelligent enough not to waste a single rupee as he knows how to use torrents. Mr. E doesn’t seem to be interested, but definitely now has great knowledge of the technology behind torrents, 70mm movies and why Heath Ledger doesn’t deserve an Oscar and some obscure French guy does.

Mr. F is an ‘almost’ fresh graduate out from an engineering college in Kerala. The first people he talks to are us and we start the regular flow of questions –

and in no time it is proven that I know all his friends and he knows all mine!

Then there were two guys absolutely bored. They gossip about old college mates, discuss world matters, ponder about the future of software engineering, wonder whether Chrome can beat Firefox.. more or less putting on a show that they know what they are talking about and at the same time ensuring that others (specially the pretty girl) are noticing them. But then all of a sudden, all topics come to an end. Nothing more to do, they start to observe the people around them. And as they make fun of others, and while one is planning on how to structure his next blog on these observations, they come to know… all these things they told about everyone else, every single one of the traits they can find in either themselves or their close friends. ‘They’ are ‘us’. God sure seems to have used the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V technique a lot when he was programming our genes. Good one my Lord! A true microcosm of people I know, didn’t I say trains were cool?

Around five months back I met one of my old friends after a long while. Friends as in, we were what you could call “best buddies” right from kindergarten till high school. After that we went our different ways, didn’t stay too much in touch and had met him just once or twice in the past 6 years before the above encounter. Well, he has this habit of not being in touch for a long time, precisely in intervals of six months according to him, and then pop out of nowhere. Seeing someone you knew pretty well, after a long time lets you feel all the striking changes that has happened to her/him. And I could see a lot of drastic changes in him, physically and mentally.

Well this came up during that long conversation over coffee that day. He had this notion that when you get away from people who know you well, you change much more than what you want yourself to change. And this guy was doing law school in Calcutta, far away from people who knew him too much. And boy did he change! Anyway I didn’t give it too much thought, as it was just an obvious thing. But now I was just thinking about this. It’s so true the other way round too. If too many people are around you who know you too much, its difficult to change, even if you badly want to. Admitted, I have changed a lot from those days in school, but that is just the natural change with age and experience. Nothing has radically changed with me, and as he put it I am that same old Loyolite he said bye to 6 years back, just that my mustache got thicker.

So many things depend on people around us, how we want them to perceive us. May not be true with everyone, but I think this is the case with every common Joe around us. Well I have been fortunate or unfortunate (depending on how I want to see myself everyday I look into the mirror ) that I have been surrounded by people whom I know well wherever I have been. Even in college there were a bunch of guys who were my schoolmates, who brushed off their knowledge about me to my other peers. You sort of get into a fixed “wire-frame” after that. You feel weird yourself, when you try something different, behave someway different because people expect you to fit into that wire-frame. And when pieces don’t fit in, it tends to be “Why is he doing that?” which translates to “Why am I doing this?”. I don’t know, I have been experiencing this phenomenon forever. Let’s see, even after I took up my job, the two people who sit right next to me are my college mates. They in turn have brushed off some info about me, involuntarily to my colleagues. And again the “wire-frame” is in place. Then I went on to live for a while in Germany, there too were more than a couple of colleagues, who were really much more than colleagues to me, to fix that wire-frame on me.

Not that everything depends on what others think of you, but the effort needed to make a change in this scenario is much much more. And also not that I hate being surrounded by people who I am close to me. Well yeah, I take back the word “unfortunate” that I said previously. I feel I am really lucky that there are these people who help me cushion my transitions. But on the other hand, in my friend’s case, having nobody around let him do a total restart, let him do things differently, because nobody cared a damn and because nobody knew what he was before. But it’s like I am living up to the wire-frame, unable to wiggle out of it. It’s like the frame is moulding me.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s bad, only time can tell.

School buses come in all varieties – big yellow buses, small mini vans, ones that reach on time, ones where all kids get a seat – then there is Bus No 3. Our very own “Three Bus”.

I lived around 20 kilometres away from my school and it goes without saying that I spent a lot of time in Three Bus. My best friends in school, the funniest incidents, the time of my life – I owe it to that old cheerful yellow vehicle. We had two rows of seats reserved for our gang. Shankar “Chubby”, Pranav “Paandi”, Aswin & I, being the first to get in, held fort and clung on to these two seats not letting any chirpy young kids or intimidating seniors to enter our restricted area – till our troop was fortified with the arrival of Sandeep, Arun, Vinod “Sticky”, Akshay “Chuksy” and occasionally Vishnu to complete the elite 3 bus gang.

“Three Bus”, now Bus no 8

And as any young kid would do, our main job was to obviously look out of the window and watch the city around us. And yeah we did see the entire city en route to school, for our three bus was the worker horse for Loyola – it traveled to distant suburbs many of my other classmates didn’t even know about. Our major past time was to spot vehicle number plates and find out which is the newest registration number we saw on the street. And the guy who spotted it first was our superhero hehe.

Then one day there was a huge fight. Pranav finally had learned of the ubiquitous 4 letter word and found an opportunity to use it against Akshay. Major pandemonium broke out, with Akshay calling Paandi back “goy”. Well I don’t know how he came up with that, but instantly people started taking sides on what was the bigger insult – the F word or “goy”. We searched dictionaries, referred library books (sadly no Internet at that time) – finally someone decided “goy” was the worst insult in the history of mankind. To this date, I have not changed my opinion. Then there was this other fight I remember vividly, this time again Paandi, but on the other side it was Sandeep. And poor guy Paandi, already reeling at the trauma for being called a “goy”, got his ear bitten by Sandeep! Yup he really bit his ear. And the amateur doctors in us were shocked – Paandi is going to loose all his hearing skills in 2 years. 10-12 years passed since the incident, I saw him last week with full auditory powers, helping him hear worser insults than “goy”!

By eighth standard we had become grown ups. Hormones were raging and it played an important part in us trying a major (failed) attempt to shift our seats to the other side of the bus. We all developed a crush on this girl who used to wait for the bus in a common bus stop. Someone told us her name was Praveena, I don’t know till now whether that is really her true name. Poor thing, I don’t think she ever knew so many prying eyes were on her all that time! Hmmm.. I wonder what she is doing now…

Time has gone on, things happened, life’s changed… We have gone our different ways, I became an engineer, Paandi is doing his MBA, Chubby became a lawyer… Yet those days don’t seem so long gone. They are so vivid in my mind as if everything happened yesterday… the golden days in Bus No 3

Bytes were being churned, products were being released, books were being digested and Life continued monotonously. It was time to go off the beaten track again and this time our journey took us to that majestic corner of Kerala called Wyanad.

Bachu, Kurian and I started off from Bangalore towards Kozhikode on a rainy night. There we were joined by Ranjith, Hazer, Anand bhai and Bose from such far away lands as Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram The plan was to rent a car and drive into Wyanad and as usual do what we do best – go where the roads take us. Using the deep rooted network of Bachu (the king of Kozhikode) we managed to rent a Toyota Innova without driver at a very cheap rate.

First day we started off with the goal set to Kuruva islands, but on the way after some typical spontaneous (in)decision making, we shifted target to Chembra peak. The route to Chembra is through a private estate and you need to pay a 20 rupee gate pass to take your vehicle through. We could travel only up to the end of tea estate and from there began the long 5Km (estimated) trek. It was incidentally Bose’s birthday that day and we gave him a grand celebration he will not forget, atop a small forest guards’ watch tower on the way to the peak. Half way through the path to the peak, yours truly lost all his stamina and decided to wait, while others tried for glory. It was a big miss though, and from the photos they took the peak was an amazing place with a small reservoir on top of it! Anyway Chembra is definitely in the must-visit list for Wyanad.

By evening we left Chembra for Thirunelly. The drive through the forest in the night was fun. The major attraction in Thirunelly was an ancient Vishnu temple there, and in another first for our trips, this was the first spiritual destination in all of the 16 trips we have had. We only just had time to have a quick darshan just before the temple closed at 8PM. That night we stayed at a decent government owned lodge there costing us merely 40 bucks per head.

After visiting Lord Vishnu again the next morning, we headed down towards the Kuruva islands. En route, I managed to put the car into a small gutter resulting in some annoyed looks from the co-passengers. Shrugging off their looks I continued on and 100 metres ahead as I looked into my rear view mirror, I could see a tyre lying on the road behind us! And yeah you guessed right, it was one of ours! Shocked, my first reaction was “Oh my god! Am I driving on 3 wheels?” Well that couldn’t be.. it was only our spare tyre that somehow slipped from under the chassis. Hazer the master took to the task and in no time we had the tyre back up. It was an experience especially since all this happened right in the middle of the forest and we had seen 2 or 3 boards saying ‘Do not stop your vehicle’ and ‘Do not leave your vehicle’.

We did’nt find Kuruva island that interesting, but probably because we expected more because of a lot of hype surrounding it. Anyway crossing the river by walking across it to reach the island was not that bad. We left the place by afternoon in search of a lesser known destination Meenmutty waterfalls near the Tamil Nadu border. This is one thing you should not miss! I do not know how to explain the adrenalin, the nature, the greenery in words. You have to be there to believe it. The place requires a 5KM walk of which 4KM is a treacherous climb down through non-existent paths. It was the most thrilling experience I have ever had. For every small step you take, you need to convince your brain that you are not going to die. Seriously!

It was an early start to Sunday as we headed towards the Muthanga wild life reserve. Though we were early, we were unlucky and couldn’t see too many animals except for some deers, foxes and peacocks. Hard luck! But anyway the forest experience was enjoyable indeed. By afternoon after a brief stop over at Banasurasagar dam, it was time to head back home. The journey back again was another adventure. We had to stand all the way from Kalpetta to Mysore in a KSRTC FP and just about got seats in the last non-stop bus from Mysore to B’lore, reaching home somewhere around 2AM.

It was tiring but brilliant fun! So glad that these trips keep on going.. on and on… Lesson for the day? When you need a break, go back to nature, its well worth the effort

The Route:

Kozhikode – Kalpetta – Meppadi – Chembra
Chembra – Meppadi – Panamaram – Thirunelly
Thirunelly – Kattikulam – Kuruvadweep
Kuruwadweep – Meenangadi – towards TN Border – Meenmutti
Meenmutti – Sultan’s Battery – Muthanga
Muthanga – Sultan’s Battery – Ambalavayal – Banasurasagar Dam
Banasurasagar Dam – Kalpatta – Sultan’s Battery – Gundalpet – Nanjancode – Mysore – Bangalore

Tips:

• Petrol pumps are few and far between, so ensure that your tanks are filled at the major towns.
• Keep your base as Kalpetta or Sulthan Bathery and then plan as it is difficult to get acco. at other places, unless you are looking at expensive resorts.
• Have some salt handy as leech attacks are possible in the forest.
• When going into the forest, do visit the nearest forest department office as they might have important information and some places do require a written permission from the department to travel into (which is free of cost).
• English is more or less understood but don’t always bet on it especially in the more remote areas, so it is always better to do your homework and plan if you do not have someone with knowledge of Malayalam with you.
• Enjoy the forest and don’t complain too much about inconveniences, because the whole point of going to the forest is that it is a Forest… away from civilization!