Be Safe!

[Source : A forwarded e-mail] 

Oof!

“I write. I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself seeing that I am writing. I remember writing and also seeing myself writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remebering that I was writing and I write seeing myself write that I remeber having seen myself write that I saw myself writing that I was writing and that I was writing that I was writing that I was wrirting. I can also imagine myself writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I was imagining myself writing that I see myself writing that I am writing.”

- Salvador Elizondo / The Graphographer

lifted from Oof ya!

A wedding and a love story

I have returned from a wedding this morning. In spite of it making my weekend too hectic it has left me with a smile on my face. And the reasons are multiple.

The groom is my cousin, ex-roomie, friend and a wonderfully calm and composed human being. He also gives me tough competition in the laziness department, and in-fact he’s the only person in the world so far who has beat me into it a few times. The fact that he got married to the love of his life, makes me feel happier for him.

Weddings (specially weddings in our family) are a noisy affair, because of the collective craziness of our entire khaandaan. Typically maharashtrian weddings are very simple and lack any kind of show off. It’s only the hysterically loud laughter that our grand family makes, which makes it an interesting affair. This time there was an added zing to the wedding because the Bride comes from an Assamese family, so it was an interesting mixture of Assamese and Marathi wedding. The baraat was received in a Assamese way, with the typical holy sounds they make from mouth. Not surprisingly very soon our entire family was found practicing to make that sound. Minutes later when the bride and groom were on the stage for wedding rituals, the groom wore the conical Assamese topi while the marathi mangalashtaks were being sung.

The event also provided an opportunity to the relatives for filling my mom’s brain with unwanted thoughts. They had some kind of wicked pleasure in poking their elbows in my ribs and asking, ’so when are you gettin married?’ and when i made bad faces, they went on quizzing ‘is there someone?’… AAARRRGGHHHH

but the best moment of shaadi was when a very beautiful cutie with a golu-molu face walked up to to me with hesitation in her beautiful eyes, and after standing in front of me for few mysterious seconds simply said ‘I love you‘.

It was such a lovely moment and it caught me so unprepared that I automatically responded ‘I love you too’. I wasn’t even finished admiring that look in her wide blue eyes, and she just ran away giggling while her other friends who were observing all this from a li’l distance ran behind her. It took me a while to realize that I din’t even know her name. So i went out, bought a chocolate and came back searching for her at the wedding venue. She was there, sitting pretty with her friends, chit chatting. Without giving it a second thought, i jumped right in between their conversation, saying ‘hey! girlfriend, you dint tell me your name?’ Her face changed colors due to the blushing, she said with her eyes buried deep down into the floor, ‘Shivani’.
‘So Shivani,’ i continued, ‘here is a small gift to begin our love story’. I presented her the chocolate bar and moved on to another room, I heard girlie screams by her friends behind my back even as I left. Within few seconds she came in running into the room, screaming with joy, ‘Mommy, see Amit gave me a chocolate because he loves me too.’

I was shocked to realize that her mom was in the same room where I was. I hesitantly looked at her mom, who was already looking at me - our eyes locked each other and then we both laughed. So did everyone else in the room, only my new 10 yr old girlfriend did not understand what the laud laughter was all about.

Innocence.

:-)

Wake-up Call

Okay! I have been too lazy to post, lot of things happening too in life. Nikhil tried tagging me and then threatening as well, Phoenix cursed my Garfieldness — still i did not budge, and kept being lazy…. :D :D

But erimentha’s call woke me up, let’s help her by harassing her harassers:

“I’ve been receiving a lot of blank calls on my mobile in the past month. They started as just that - blank calls on which no one would speak. They moved on to heavy breathing. And last week, I unsuspectingly gave out my name, not recognising the number. As you can imagine, they have gotten worse.

So I decided to turn to my blog for help. I know most of the people who read this know me, so I don’t need to prove to you that this harassment did in fact take place, before I ask you to help. And this is what I want you to do for me: Please call that number.

Remember, the number is +91-9440764653. To be on the safe side, please use a public phone. Don’t identify yourself or me. Don’t say anything except to deliver the message - that harassment by telephone is a punishable offence.“

I am gonna call these buggers, and if you do that too I’ll be thankful and I promise I’ll be super active on my blog. :D

Road trip to Ladakh : Some pictures

yeah! Garfieldness has taken over me big time, and I am too lazy to post on my blog, even reading other blogs.

Till the time I break free out of this state, enjoy some more pictures from my visit to Ladakh almost 2 months back….

All these pictures are from the road journey from Manali to Leh, undoubtedly the most magnificent and adventurous road trip of my life so far… :)

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Morning rays at Sarchu

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Over night camping at Sarchu

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Snow!!

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Tanglangla Pass : at 17582 ft the second highest motorable road pass of the world.

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Tanglangla : Another view

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Entering Leh… Buddhist structures called Chartons are visible :)

originally uploaded by AmitKen.

more to follow …..  :o)

Update: even as I have published this post on the blog, i already feel like i shud have added few more words along with these pictures to make it more meaningful and tarvelogue type… So dont be surprised if you see me back in action a lil too soon ;-)

Tags: India | Ladakh | Leh | photography

When Turtle lost to “22 Delhi Bloggers”

Today I attended yet another Delhi Bloggers’ Meet. Now DBM’s have become an occasion for me to catch up with some fellow Delhi blogger turned good friends and also to meet and know new interesting people. And frankly speaking, my idea behind attending Bloggers’ Meet is very much having fun and meeting friends. Just that.

It’s only a welcome byproduct that you get to hear varied views about many things from other bloggers, some of which is fun, some of which is enlightening and some of which is sheer crap (and I am generally a big contributor to that crap part).

On my way to the venue - Cafe Turtle in Khan Market - I had picked up Ajay, who btw doesn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure, and when both of us entered the venue, Dan Husain, Ritu chugh aka junoesque, Sourabh and Madhavan were already there wondering where the other bloggers were? So we joined them and Madhavan lost no time in telling us that he was an observer from The U.N. and even without asking he added that he’s not planning on posing any threat to Shashi Tharoor’s candidature for Top post of U.N. Not that I really care about Shashi or The U.N., but I still was a little relieved hearing that ;-) Later Madhavan told us that he was there to make n meet friends, to understand what bloggers think about their relevance in the big bad world of media - which is also his actual field of work (and interest). Saurabh was comparitively quiet, but if Cricket is your religion, you got to checkout his blog deamonsdealer (which i first heard as womensdealer, and i was psyched!!!).

Now, a word about the venue. I had never been to Cafe Turtle before, but since I had heard good reviews about it - I had suggested it as a venue. In absence of any better alternative suggestion - we went ahead with this venue. As it turned out - Cafe Turtle is not a place to meet a large group. Since it was a hot n humid day today, we kept avoiding sitting in the open terrace till the time it became impossible to squeeze in more people on the just 2 small tables that we had. But thankfully the smaller place did not dampen the spirits.  More bloggers kept coming in, and soon we were sitting in the open terrace, which could have felt very nice if only the weather was better.

Back to from where I left - Prasoon came in next. Harneet & Nikhil Pahwa followed by Twilight Fairy n Lazy Lump joined in as well. Lazy Lump has become a lil’ less lazy and has started blogging once again. Nikhil and I tried to float some conspiracy theories but since no one paid much attention to our crap, we backed off. Soon came in Uma aka Toinks along with hubby Sriram. Toinks happens to be one of the bloggers who first started blogging on rediffblogs. Sriram revealed to us that he started blogging to impress his girlfriend and soon after he married her, he gave up blogging. The purpose was served I guess :)

Amit Verma, Amit Gupta (1), Sanjukta, Snigdha, Amit Gupta (2) and Viral also joined in the fun. The noise levels were increasing, introductions were being held and all of a sudden the Waiter at Turtle introduced himself and requested us to place the order. Masala Chais, Black Coffee, Smoothies, Fresh Lime Soda along with Pita Bread, Pasta and Cake was ordered to make the discussion more delicious.

It was a pleasant surprise when another Blogger Couple, Deepan and Priya joined us as well. Deepan was depressed that he blogs on oh! so uncool blogspirit.com domain, which no one cares to block or ban.

Smiles were turning into laughters - all varieties of discussions right from recent blog censorship drama, to RTI act, to Movies, to Music, to books, to techie/geekie stuff, to new trends in blogging, to santa-banta jokes were being held. Time was flying and it was once again the waiter who made us realize that the Cafe was to close at 7.30 pm (another sad thing about Cafe Turtle). We had to leave that place, and the fun-filled discussions still continued on the pavement outside Cafe Turtle for a while. It was then that Mr. Better Late than Never, Rajshekhar showed up. He came only to say bye to many people who were leaving, while some of us (Twilight Fairy, Dan, Nikhil, Harneet, Amit Verma, Rajshekhar and me) moved to “Yellow Brick Road” at Ambassedor Hotel. It was perhaps a bad venue day for us, as YBR - though it had a nice American look - is not a value for money place. The food is very ordinary, not a place where I’ll visit again. However once again lot of fun filled conversations took place, another couple of hours later we all called it a day with big grins on our faces…

Joshua Newton who actually took initiative for this meet, and his friend Bobin James were also expected, but they unfortunately got stuck at work, and could not make it to the DBM.

In all 22 bloggers attended the meet, and I had a lot of fun. I am sure others felt the same.

Great Going! Delhi Bloggers.

Update 7/31:  1) Twilight Fairy’s account

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Tomorrow is yet another DBM, being organized by few other bloggers. It’s proving to be a super weekend for Delhi Bloggers. If time permits I can end up being there as well. Hail Blogging! :-)

Update: I did attend this one too :)

Technorati Tags: delhi bloggers | blogging | delhi

Musaladhaar

I was sleeping away to glory this morning when I heard a distant beep, subconsciously I decided that it was my cell phone which beeped because of some incoming text. While my eyes were still closed, my hand reached out to the side of my bed to retrieve my cell phone and even as I thought of opening my eyes, something told me “don’t spoil your sleep for that stupid message, it’s gonna turn out to be a spam sms”. I paused, and only then another voice from within said, “read it on, it’s gonna be good”. So I voted in favor of positivity, and half opened my eyes to read the text, it was from a friend and read only one word “Musaladhaar “.

I smiled and tried to look past the slit between the drawn curtains on my window. It seemed like very early in the morning, though i could not smell or listen any rains. So I looked up the time, it was around 9 am. “WOW!” I thought aloud about sleeping till that late :) I got up and ventured into my balcony and looked at the sky…. it wasn’t raining yet, but the clouds looked like a face just about to burst out with laughter….

Suddenly some sense prevailed and I decided to pickup clothes left for drying in the balcony. These clothes were hanging out there for just about 2 days now. “Lucky buggers”, i thought , “this time they are getting back to cupboard pretty soon”. I picked up the news paper, went back to balcony and looked around, there was something special in the air today.

I felt positivity filling up my lungs. I felt happy. “Great times are around the corner“, I murmered to myself and just then I felt a drop fall on my forehead, and then on my hand … it was raining.

  I feel great today, and the best part is that I feel so for no apparent reason. :-) Life has been good, but then there is always scope for it to get even better. I don’t exactly know what to expect from life, but I surely feel that something great is just around the corner.Hope. Joy. Happiness. Musaladhaar.

“Good times begin with a good sleep” I thought, and jumped into my bed to catch another sweet nap.

:o)

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* Musaladhaar , for uninitiated, is a hindi word which signifies heavy rains.

** The pictures that you see above are from my very recent amaaaaaazing road trip to Ladakh….. and before you start asking about the travelogue and more pictures, let me assure you that it’d all be there in the very next post. :o)

Blogger’s Block

There is much of hulla gulla going on over the blocking of blogspot and many other blogsites. And as it often happens in such cases, rhetoric has once again taken precedence over sense. We have seen some very strong reactions from bloggers across India.

I am sure no blogger is happy about their blogs being blocked or about being unable to read others’ blogs. And it surely is frustrating. However we must put things in perspective before crying out loud….

Was the ban imposed to stop certain people/organizations with doubtful integrity from exchanging information via blogs ?

Now, if the answer to this question is Yes, then I’d say the we the bloggers should take a chill pill for a while. Though no one likes to be blocked, but this is least of the inconveniences we should not mind suffering, given the delicate nature of times we are going through as a nation.

The recent 7/11 ( or as per Indian/British convention, should we say 11/7 ? ) bombings have caused an red-alert situation at a national level. Everyday there are hoax calls threatening another bomb attack at one place or another. So it is understandable that in the larger interest of National Security, we the people of India might have to go through some inconvenience. Aren’t we already frisked at multiplexes, airports etc? The India Gate bomb hoax caused disrupted traffic and inconvenience to the people visiting India Gate, but that was necessary. Security forces can not take chances, just because people are inconvenienced.

So in that sense, if the idea behind blocking blogs was to stop terrorists/anti-national outfits from exchanging information via blogs, I do not mind at all if for a few days I am unable to blog. I think government can, in such a scenario, take a decision of temporarily blocking websites. Bloggers & blog readers in India after all form an extremely small percentage of over all population, and blogs are not a critical and mass means of providing information. Though the manner in which Government went about this decision is still questionable.

However if the answer to the question above is NO, then there are several more questions to be asked. As it has been reported widely in media, there were some 20 odd websites which government wanted to be blocked. Which in my opinion was a ridiculous step to be taken in today’s time and age. In such a case government has actually overstepped and violated our freedom to voice opinions, and our freedom to know what others opine. There are questions which need to be answered by Government and ISP’s and air needs to be cleared.

Both the government and/or ISP’s have shown their technical incompetence by thinking of blocking only a handful of blogging servers (like blogspot, typad) and leaving others (like wordpress, live journal, and many others). There are various ways of how these blocked sites could still be accessed. The lack of clarity, the clandestine approach and no clear cut statement from government till now only puts them on a slippery ground.

A group of Delhi Bloggers, of which I am also a member, has taken lead to put an end to various speculations being made in blogosphere about the whole issue in absence of any clear message from government so far, and Abby - another member of this group - has invoked an RTI petition. The motive is not to challenge and corner government but to understand government’s point of view (which unfortunately has not been communicated to the nation). Based on what comes out of this, if required, bloggers may as well think of challenging government decision. The media has also been highlighting this issue prominently and CNN IBN was supposed to cover reaction of Delhi Bloggers earlier today.

Hopefully the unanswered questions will be answered, till then let the sense prevail over rhetoric.

We don’t deserve this

After the shocking news of 7/11 blasts in Mumbai, I tried to contact all my relatives n friends thru phone, SMS, e-mails. This is what a Banglore based friend who’se family is in Mumbai wrote back….

“Dad was travelling in the same train (mahim) the blasts took place…fortunately he was in the first class toward the rear of the train… apart from slight pain in the ear due to the impact of the blasts…he is ok and reached home safely 4 hrs later… at the same time my sister was travelling to borivili and the blasts took place when their train left kandivili and was nearing borivili… they had to jump of the train and walk to the borivili station…where they saw dead bodies being carried away… all phone lines were jammed…i got to know they were safe…thanks to yahoo…but got to speak to them only after mid night…

hope all other families are safe and not affected like mine… we always talk about the victims being one among us…but this was so close… thank god i was not affected….but i do feel for all those who lost their near and dear ones…

they were just getting back home from a hard days of work….and didnt deserve it… i am so angry with this incident….i feel its high time some action is taken… we need to march to karachi once again!!! and this time not hand it over back…“

In this moment of anger and shock, I think what he said is right - that we dont deserve this. Would we continue being a soft state and wil our political leaders keep chanting the age old matra of ‘this won’t derail the peace process’? Peace Process!!! my foot. How many innocent lives later will our government dare to take a decisive action?

L.A.U.

Life As Usual.
Sine curve.
same ol' Routine.
2003 Kanpur-Delhi Shatabdi Express.
Mom's visit.
yumm Food.
"is there someOne?".
loads of Pampering.
"who is She?"
dusseri Aam.
"there Must be someone!"
a Lonely visit to past.
"let Me choose."
increased Interest in football.
"duh! yoU are impossible."
lots of Work.
2452 Delhi-Kanpur Shramshakti Express.
back to Canteen.
late Nights.
world Cup.
friends to sHare thoughts with.
hiGh expenses.
all time low bank balance.
big plans for a new High.
loW oxygen.
nEw f.r.i.e.n.d.s
packed Bags.
sunScreen.
sleePing bags.
adVenture extraVegenza.
no moBile.
no interNet.
no bloGGing.
a whOle new wOrld to be explored.
expecting pUre delight.
anticipated absolute KadKi*.

………..

…….

See ya all…

.

* for the uninitiated 'kadki' is a term which  signifies the state of being penniless. Wait for the formal announcement of "AmitKen Welfare Fund", after I am back. I am counting on generousness of you guys. ;-)