यादें

चलो आज फिर यारों से गुफ्तगू हो जाए,
पुराने सालों की यादें फिर कुछ ताज़ा हो जाएँ

सुना है बारिश का मौसम है वहां फिर से,
याद है मुझे, वोह भीगना, और कभी देखना classroom की खिड़की से.
हाँ याद आया, उस दिन भी तोह बरसात हुई थी,
ताज महल की सीढ़ियों पर फिसला था कोई.
उम्..कौन था वो.. नाम याद नहीं है,
पर हम खूब हसे थे... रहा होगा वोह कोई.

बात बेबात हुए झगड़ों का भी अलग मज़ा था,
class के अंदर हुई बहस का result स्कूल के बहार लगता था.
एक सूजी हुई नीली आँख, और एक फटा हुआ होंठ अब भी याद है,
फ्लिमो मैं देखा था, उस दिन देखा की हकीकत में भी होता है
पर वो लडाई भी मानो बीती class की History जैसी होती थी,
जो result के बाद कभी भी याद नहीं रही.

कुछ अलग फिजा चली थी 98-00 के सालों में,
फरवरी का महिना कुछ ख़ास हो गया था सारों में.
Pocket money से बचाए हुए पैसे रोज़ गिनना,
Archies और Hallmarks पर सारा सारा दिन भटकना.
फिर बहुत मज़े से सुनते सुनाते थे कहानियाँ,
Rejections की ज्यादा और Accepts की बहुत कम, बस कुछ यहाँ वहां.

और कई पुराने किस्से हैं,
कुछ देखे हुए और कुछ सुने सुनाये,
चलो आज फिर यारों से गुफ्तगू हो जाए.

Just write

Here I am, back again after my sabbatical of more than 4 months. Neither had time nor a subject to write about. In-fact as the title of the post suggests, I still haven't come out of the writer's block and don't know myself what this post is going to be about.

I just don't want to be consuming a URL on the blogspot.com where it's already become impossible to find one that you think usable. The internet has grown like anything in past few years. I remember the day when I created my first email address. That was way back in the year 2000. Hey, that means I am celebrating 11 years of my online avatar this year. Yey!!! Here's remembering the good old days of cyber cafes and creation of my identity in the virtual world.

I still remember. I was fresh out of school enjoying the feeling of "I never have to go to school again". Sitting in a Cyber Cafe, waiting for my turn. Already 30 minutes have gone by since I registered my name in the list of people waiting for a computer. Demand was much more then supply back in those days. I can never forget that mechanical cacophony of the modem dialing up to get a 128Kbps connection. The guy, who I was supposed to replace, decided to spend another hour with this mysterious new creature that was driving crazy both men and women alike. I waited patiently for next 20 minutes and my name was called. I walked inside the temperature controlled room adjusted myself on the roller fitted chair.

The snow white monitor sitting atop the black cabinet of CPU looked like a mismatch. The keyboard and mouse were hidden in the tray under the table top holding the CPU and monitor. The complete arrangement was certainly not much different (mouse was an addition) from what I was used to see daily in my bedroom. I befriended computer much early in my life. I spent a lot of my early teen years with my Pentium 386 running on MS-DOS. Yeah, those were the days of black and white screen without even mouse, forget about rest of the things.

The room was cold, they used to keep it at abnormally low temperature those days. With little difficulty finding the keys on the keyboard, I typed www.yahoo.com in the address bar of the IE page that was otherwise displaying a static HTML page with adv. of the internet cafe I was at. The screen did not change for first few seconds. My already low confidence was fast moving towards the rock bottom when there was a flicker and then the whole screen turned white. As if choosing a new canvas before painting my wish on it. The wait was getting longer by each second. The waving flag(windows) and rotating earth on the top right corner were not exciting me any more.

I was about to call for help when the first few images started to appear. A deep red Y with an exclamation mark. The bottom left of the screen read 20 images remaining. The blue blocks were filling, the otherwise blank, status bar one at a time. I was getting impatient, but never cursed the internet speed or even thought that way. That's how it was supposed to work back then. After spending one full hour and 35 bucks, I was the proud owner of an email address on yahoo.

Even then I couldn't get the same email address that I was looking for. It was like all the prime locations in the hot selling virtual cyber land were already taken up. But I still managed a decent name plate for my online habitat.

11 years down the line, it is hard to believe how much our lives have changed. It seems like a previous life sometimes. And looking at the trends, I am sure I will enjoy lot many more before, as they say, pulling the plug...

500 Days of Summer

Happened to watch this 2009 blockbuster movie this weekend. A very touching movie with power packed performances by all the actors. Some smart non-linear storytelling and great music. Here is one of my favorites from the movie-



And hey someone is writing some serious stuff here, you might wanna check this out. The guy shared his next poem with me this evening and its great. Looking forward to see it on your blog bro.

Enjoy and have fun!!!
Cheers
Y.

If life's to come to an end in 2012

Just a thought. Not to be taken seriously. I am very much sane and in my senses.. :)




Just a thought, it may or may not be true,
For a second, I would like to assume,
that the world will come to an end next year.
With a sense of fright and lot of fear,
I try and imagine how would be those last days?
Will they be full of misery, sorrow and pain?
Or may be they will not.
That brings to my mind another little thought.
I'll be free like a bird in the open sky,
enjoying whatever is left, before I die.
No fear of loss, neither for objects, nor for relations.
I'll set off for a never ending vacation.
Somewhere close to sea,
with only waves all around me.
I will spend my last few moments,
sitting on the shore, calm, in retrospection
visualizing the memories of my life in it's reflection....

I'm back and here to stay.. :)

Writing after a long time. A lot has changed since my last post. I have moved back to Delhi, my hometown, from Hyderabad; Has been engulfed in lots of work and most evidently has not been able to blog.

Thanks to Emo, Arun, Kote and Chir, who asked me about my next post, I am writing it now.

I wrote the above lines around 2 months back and left it in the middle. So thought of completing it today. Well a lot has changed since then as well. I am in Brussels, Belgium for last 1 month. Deeply immersed in work or pretending to be...

This is not the first time I am away from home, but this time its different. Its the first time I am staying alone.. Alone in my studio apartment on 4th floor with a nice view of the city. Well you may think "nice view from 4th floor?? this guy is taking us for a ride..." Nahin guys seriously, not many high rises in this area. Will post some pics to prove my point.

What it means is that from cleaning to cooking, its all going to be done by me. As services here are very very expensive.. Enjoying it till now. Let's see how many days..

But I am sure, this blog is gonna be my medium of writing down all those Random Thoughts that come to my mind. I am sure there will be many.. Now to consider this as information or a warning is upto you...

So till my next post, here is a pic of the first thing I cooked here in Belgium.. Enjoy!!!



Take Care and do Comment

Y.A.

Go Goa.... Part 2

Continuation of my previous post...

Now with Introductions already done, lets move onto the real trip.

The trip dates were well suited to all of us, but the problem was it well suited a lot many people like us. So the end result, for people like me who believe in making reservations at the 11th hour, it was not easy. Hyderabad to Goa.. huh? What is there? Just an over night journey. I will get train tickets easily.. I am comfortable in Volvo as well.. but it was too late already.. So ultimately my 14 hrs journey converted into a two day break journey. Hyderabad to Mumbai to Goa. It was not that bad an option considering that I saved 4K, by not going by flight. It costed my company another day of WFH :). So It was all settled, Nigga booked my ticket for onward journey from Mumbai to Goa is the same Volvo as his. So my journey started a day before everyone else.

I was cursing myself for the lazy bum that I am, but that was only till we reached Goa. I and Nigga were the first ones to reach Goa. Shivering the whole night for the simple reason that there was no blanket provided in the Volvo. Recession has not spared any one, cost cutting u see.. Damn, I had Nigga with me, kisi aur ko hona chahiye tha ;)

So we reached hotel (paying 200 bucks for 10kms journey from bus stop to hotel), dropped our luggage and headed direct to Calangute. Boy, what a view it was, nothing can beat an early morning stroll at a nice, clean white sand beach.. Spent sometime there and Nigga clicked a few for his Calender ;-)

Well, well enough about me and Nigga for now.. So where are rest of the gang members? Yeah, they are coming.. A couple in train and others at airport.. Yo maan, Paapi managed to board a flight though he was told that it has been cancelled.. He narrated this story atleast 8 times during the trip though we were only 7 in all ;-) Expecting flights to be on time from Delhi in January is like expecting Mohan Bagan to beat Manchester United in EPL. His flight following the tradition was delayed by 4-5 hrs. He had a good time sitting in plane and waiting for take off. Good air hostesses are a must for any airline.. :) He finally made it to Goa around 2:00 PM..


Emo and Sane were somewhere in Maharashtra, enjoying their train journey for an additional 4 Hrs :) and guess what, they were not charged a penny extra for this extended ride.. Nigga and I were getting constant updates of their movement sitting at Calangute beach, thanks to Emo.. boy she was in bad mood, I could tell by listening to Nigga's replies to a rapid fire from the other side ;). Girl equipped with freshly learnt abuses and not in good mood, too dangerous ;-) Their arrival time in Goa, around 4-4:30PM

Where are Monchi and Rathi, yes this was the question everybody had.. BTW, Rathi comes from a class of select few who can go to an airport anytime, point at the aircraft and say "Mujhe Ismain Jaana Hai" :).. No kidding guys, his Dad is in IA and hence he is the privileged one. The last news from Monchi was that his flight is delayed by 3-4 hours. Nothing after that... Nothing till around 6:00PM, when we finally heard from Rathi. He was at Goa airport, finally in Goa... And he waited at the airport for another hour and a half for Monchi to land. I am sure he must have got 5 star treatment at the airport as well ;)

With everyone in Goa now, I will stop here for this post. Next post will have day 1 and day 2 highlights :) Till then have fun and happy reading.

Cheers
Yogi

Go Goa.... Part 1

After a couple of postings and a lot of drafts, here I am, back with a bang. I think there are few things for which you don't have to write and delete and write again. Words and thoughts come automatically. Writing about my trip to Goa is definitely one of those.

Wow man, where to start from... Just the beginning of a new year, with all the new year resolutions already down the drain, I was desperately looking for a change...

It was the end of 2009 when I came back from Jak.. Yet another grueling trip with a lot of work and timelines almost impossible to meet. Only consolation, that I was with my family and friends to celebrate the new year. This is when I first got to know from one of my close buddies, Nigga, about this Goa trip. The trip was well timed to leverage the holiday on 26th Jan which happened to be on Tuesday. So most of us took off on Monday and some like me were on WFH :). To be honest, I was not very excited the first time I heard about it.. Now how hard I may try to reason it, I don't know why I was reluctant to say yes at that time. Probably this is how I am..

I must say that had it not been due to constant bugging by Nigga, I would have not gone for this trip. Once I made my mind to go for it, the next logical step was to check who all were coming for this trip. Well it was refreshing to hear that it is going to be a different set of people all together.. In a group of 7, I knew 5(including me :-)) from my college days. Other two were strangers. But I have heard on and off about both of them from Nigga.

This trip was coordinated almost completely by Nigga. From hotel reservation in Goa to purchase of tickets for some of the travelers, everything done by him and quite efficiently I must say.. So before I proceed, let me introduce to you the whole gang.. As I told you we were 7 in all. you already know me, or if you don't then its not required.. I will name myself Yogi for this post.

Starting from Nigga, well he is one of my close buddies whom i know for almost 10 yrs now.. Haven't seen anyone like him in my whole life. He always has a different point of view to everything along with a very logical reasoning to back his PoV. He started his journey from Mumbai and was closest to Goa in terms of distance.

Next is Paapi.. yeah he actually lived up to his name through out the trip. Just kidding, but I am sure Nigga will second, third and fourth me on this statement. More on this later :) He started from Delhi for this trip. Though we have graduated in the same year from the same college, but we really got to know each other during our trip to Nainital in the year 2007.

Next is Monchi.. Again from my college and we both knew each other since our college days. Well not the nappy buddies but certainly good friends.. Monchi was the only person who had been to Goa before, in fact twice. This was his third trip and he also came from Delhi. His prior experience was certainly a big add-on.

Emo.. I have heard about her on few occasions from Nigga, but not sure if I was known to her. She came to Goa from Bangalore. Well nothing much that I knew about her at start of the trip except for the fact that she had learnt some fresh abuses :):).. Was not sure if it was in preparation for this trip ;).. jokes apart but she came across as a very nice person.. more on Emo in coming sections...

Sane.. Again someone I had never met or interacted before.. Another of Nigga's friends coming from Bangalore. A nice fun loving person.. The only one in our group who can swim :). As expected both Emo and Sane were coming together from Bangalore. More on her in coming sections...

Last but not the least our very own Rathi.. Another one from my college, knew him since then but just casual chit chats. Got to know him better in this trip and it was a great experience.. Poor chap, he was teased a lot for his engaged status and his every action was scrutinized and ultimately linked to her fiancee :) :).. Travelling from Delhi, he and Monchi were the last ones to join us in Goa..

And of course, I started my journey from Hyderabad, but there was a twist here.. more on this later..

Well enough for the introductions.. I will conclude this part here.. Next part will have everyone's story of reaching Goa.. Believe me it was incredible how we all somehow managed to reach there just in time to make the most of our trip...

So till the next post, happy reading and enjoy!!!

Cheers
Yogi