Mountains and much more…

As I set off towards srinagar( in uttrakhand, not Kashmir.. mind it ;) ! ) , in a sudden ( you will know why I said “sudden”) and a hot summer afternoon from Delhi the only thing that occupied my mind was .. Please oh please ‘mera kam ho jaye, for which I am travelling so far’ … but who knew this would turn out to be such a treat, a well deserved and long awaited break from work and Delhi.

A new road … new people … new journey … unplanned excitement!

And as we moved along … it took us ten hours and couple of thousand pictures to reach here, but sometimes the journey is far more pleasurable then the destination itself. And what can I say … cool breeze in your hair, pleasurable company, nice smooth road, long trees on one side and Ganges on the other side … what more could I ask for!! Some part of me just wanted to carry on this way endlessly. The canal that had ganga water ran parallel to us for almost to a 12km stretch, and the water level was so high it seemed as if we were strolling on the bank of the river… just a few steps and you could actually touch the water.

It was refreshment if I put it in one word. Beautiful terrains, lovely music, chit chat and twilight. People often say that these mountains are standing here for so many years silently … I disagree, who said they are silent... infact I would say they know multiple languages …. They speak spooky, they speak beauty, they speak life, they speak height, they speak surprise, they speak whisper… a whisper in their own language... Different for different people and they speak change … change, the one thing everyone needs every now and then.

As we bypassed the cities one by one... and started on Rishikesh, that’s when I realized rather woke up to the fact that nature had a lot more then the boundaries of my imagination and anticipation. The long unwinding snake like mountain roads were like a treat to me … especially when you come from a city full of red lights, honks, and traffic jams! As for the roads … ya it was like a snake... but might I say a rather disfigured twisted snake (which by the way was goooooooddd)!

Stopped for dinner at 11 at a road side dhaba, nothing fancy at all … yet the only thing I would say was superb, perfectly simple fresh home cooked food, with a rhythmic background music of gushing running river behind you, blinking sparkling fireflies across the road and you perched on top of mountain in between all this… WOW!!!

Finally we all arrived in Srinagar at 2 am with a sleepy head. What followed after was like I said “unexpected”… honestly I liked Srinagar. Though I won’t say its every tourist dream destination, but the route was awesome and so is this ‘unplanned-trip-change-stay’. Today I went to see the lovely temple ‘tara devi mandir’ here…. Really pretty one must visit here, Alaknanda River being the second on the list.

… One of my favorite parts about this trip would be clicking pictures... Which I shall SOON UPLOAD so watch out. Though I caught some of the most amazing landscapes behind my lenses... but there are a few things I would never be able to capture… like the joy I am feeling right now being here, the thousands of twinkling stars outside my window smiling at me … lol if I put it in words of someone I know here “it looks like the sky has got chicken pox” , the gushing wind singing to me, the sparkling flowing water which I can listen to out here in the balcony, the random light covering the mountain here and there, suddenly running panther on the road from our car, the relaxation that has enveloped me here and much more ….. Sigh.

What more do I say, will have to be back tomorrow once my job is done here, but oh wow … its nothing like I thought… it’s more... Much more.

Journey so far... then and now ...

time has surely changed to a great extent .... it is rightly said that "man proposes and God disposes" so is what is happening with me .. never did i thought i would be here at this point in my life right after college, and what startles me most is that i am not sure should i be happy or surprised upon it ! "?"

Was a kid in school when all i wanted to do was have fun.. which is more or less what did !! :)
growing up increased my impatience and eagerness to get into college, it sure was pictured rose colored to all of us !! Routine was never me ... i was always capable of finding ways to somehow alter my everyday life ... to bring something new .. even if it were as small as a new sticker for my copy lol !

Two years of working .. and more or less in a stagnated fashion has bought me to this post of mine. The alters now would be a occasional outing, or a new movie ... dosent really excite me anymore. At times i find myself talking and behaving like my parents ... craving for weekends to come and all i want to do on my weekend is to rest .. maybe catch up on lost sleep! I remember how me and my sister would get on their nerves to take us out on weekends, and they would react as if a catastrophe hit them ... and we would just stand there stubborn and puzzled .. why would any one want to spend a nice holiday at home resting !!!?? lol ... now i get the answer !

when i was living my school life college was a "oh - so - wow" dream that i was looking forward to, and when came college ... i never realized when and how those three years past by ... and one day i am sitting in an office giving my interview, and then comes my first day at work ... lol was so excited i arrived at 8 am when office starts at 9:30 ! and today i sit here exactly 1 year and 10 months later .. revising my life! (at least a recent part of it).
.. No am not really complaining.. rather just stating.

those 19 years of life are surely the most treasured and blissful heavenly state one can have ... even a small achievement like completing holiday homework a month before school would give the feeling such immense triumph as if i just won myself an Oscar ! to think of it ... it came down to -
benches to a cubicle
notebooks to a pc
sneaking bites of lunch during the periods to short coffee breaks
pocket money to salaries
pencils and erasers to keyboard and notepads
wild bunch of friends to office colleagues
timetables to work reports
evening play grounds to facebook and gtalk
exam (phone) preparations to excel sheets and presentations
and much more ... which i really miss now. i guess somewhere all of us does.

... Now that i come to think of it, this sure is a good path to lead on but cant deny that dullness has occupied most of the space in my today's life. what can i say.. i could have fancied it up a little to maybe disguise the fact but then again ... wont really make much of a difference.

treading on ... somewhere knowing that this will change .. smiling and now thinking of the work that i have to get back to !

LOCAL TRAIN AXE-PER-OUNCE !

.. This one is still under construction .. as its as fresh as 2 hours ago... ! Its not about the fun trip i had over the weekend or how much i shopped or what yummy (total typical U.P style stuff) i feasted on .. NO. Its about the 5 hours i spent in the train coming back to Delhi, and whoa it was not just any other ordinary train journey ... man was it wild !! It had action, comedy, drama, thrill, suspense... and lots of ACTION (you shall know why i emphasis and repeated that).

No pun intended but i guess i now know where Ekta Kapur picks her (female) inspiration from. A journey of a short 5 hours had so much packed into it that i am still absorbing my midnight episode with the "local-ladies-compartment" train, travel once and you shall realize women are force to reckon ... irrespective of (their mosquito) size every female was all set to fight even before being given a reason to... !

2 am - I woke up (after sleeping at 1) to catch a train leaving at 4 am, distance from house to station 15 min ! i was surprised as to why i was being dragged out of my comfort sleep so early...and so i was told "YOU SHALL SEE" ... so i dragged myself up and got ready in half an hour, and was on my way to station in a rickshaw... totally open and at every turn you feel you are gonna tumble out of it. Got our tickets and was at the station at 3:30 am and then i realized why i was being woken up so early ...

3:30 am - The station was bloody crowded, it was not only me who was having a 3 day vacation, but who would have thought that half the globe plans to chug down to Sahranpur of all places *sigh* well, anyway i braced myself to push and rave through to grab 3 seats (me, mom and oju) as soon as the train halted on the platform, *phew* am sure that must have burned more then 10 ounces of my calories (lol). Finally after (feeling as if a ran a marathon) covering 10 steps between a hurricane of hooligans, i dropped myself and my luggage on our seats, foolishly being happy to grab decent places.. unaware of the following 5 hours and EVENTS.

4:00 am and followed... Sharing the top berth of mine with two huge bags and 3 females, me literally clamped to the very edge against my bag i thought "when did this happen, could it be more of a disasterous uncomfortable journey" hahaha .. i didn't realize we had 6 stops on our way to Delhi "merath" being one of them.

Finally somehow "ADJUSTING" ourselves for the way, i started my journey... within one hour the train was as alive as if it were bright day time and we were in a party !


And then i hear a voice to my left, a skinny lean freckled girl climbs up and asks (all three of us), rather say - "HELLO thoda shift ho, jage karo" and i was perplexed at HER BELIEVE SYSTEM, what the hell was she thinking ... oh BTW it was MERATH station... *ahem* so as i was saying, this female with the dirtiest of expression and bossiest of tone asks us to pile two heavy bags one on top of the other (ONE WITH A LAPTOP) so that she can climb atop (ON A SEAT FOR MAXIMUM 3, ALREADY ADJUSTING 4 PEOPLE AND TWO HUGE BAGS) ... all i could do was to blink at her and she was already picking up our bags to move them, and before i could react a very shrilled voice hit my ear drums from the adjacent seat where a FEMALE HULK (trust me she looked scary) was screaming at top of her voice on a group of college girls "tum yahan ki mahrani nahi ho, mujhe mat samjhao chalo hato jagah karo" and other things that i should rather not say here... and then i was again distracted by this female still waiting us for making space and says "hello" (rude) to which i say "hi" (laugh) SHE looks at me surprised and smiles, i smile back .. she "apne ye compartment kharid nahi rakha, jagah karo" ME "really, mujhe nahi pata tha ki 30 rupee mein compartment bik jata hai" SHE "- shocked, still smiling, waitng ME "scooping GOD KNOWS HOW" pressed against the trains body .. while she sits "PHEW" !

Me laughing, girl next to me laughing, my sister laughing... all three of us discussing the new color scheme of the compartment that we "now bought" hence she laughing lol !

Somewhow getting rather scooping up and changing positions to the most horrid best i could afford there, laughing and cracking jokes we carried on, behind us a brawl taking place between two females - one haryanwi and one UPite... you can imagine the kind of diction and pronounceation they used, sending me in fits of laughter... trust you me the only thing that was left was for them to knock each others teeth out !

As the heat increased in that fight, a couple of women started singing rajisthani folks song, new set of passenger(S) by the dozen climbed at every station, in the already sandwitched ladies compartment, one left four scrammbled to grab those 2 inches of butt rest area (sorry i cant call it a seat).

Across me a smart young mom with her sleepy little kid in her lap trying her level best to "adjust" with fellow passengers in terms of space, some times smiling sometimes awed
(I GUESS IT WAS HER FIRST TIME TOO, LIKE MINE) both of us sharing at times "i know" and at times "hahaha" looks. SO ON AND SO FORTH ......

... And so i guess my high usage of "action" and "adjust" term is justifies, but even after this so shocking and new 5 hours of my life, strangely i enjoyed it all ... stepped out at delhi station with a puzzled large grin on my lips. AM SURE I AM NEVER GONNA FORGIVE THIS AXE-PER-OUNCE OF MY LIFE EVER.

Complexed .....

.. And here i sit wondering how to put it, not that i am not aware of what to write but "how" is something i am mulling over.
it rains.. and when it does just close your eyes and when you listen close and careful you realize the sound of rain drops is hypnotic... might sound mushy boring but then again i am just a girl appreciating and most importantly paying attention to those small things that bring a smile on my lips ... and set my thought ticking ... so yes it is raining outside and YES it is me sitting here , and YES i am happy.

The one thing that no matter how hard i try never occurs to me is why is it that satisfaction is like a horizon .. go forward and further it backs up, and all the while you think you are nearing it ? the more i think of it the more i wonder why are human emotions so COMPLEXED?
it might be true .. i might be an inquisitive being, but the point here is i am glad that i am inquisitive, lot many things are solved and understood due to this trait.

... don't be puzzled as to where the above para cam from ... this post was meant to be complexed and about complexities right... !!

Its ranning outside ( and i guess that works as an inspiration for me .... FYI first post was also triggered by rain lol ) and i just feel like a little kid ... happy and dancing enjoying in my lala land ... drifting and loving to be carried away... the part i enjoy the most about being "me" is that no emotion, especially the bad and dark one are for too long... its easy for me to sway and convince myself and hence i end up being happy... no matter what. I think more people should be that easy to tackle by themselves, half the problems in life would be sorted as you have a new perspective now.

so then i guess life is a beautiful mess all around you, you just need to pick your favorite specks! :)

... a few somethings...

I really itched to write, from the past couple of days but when i sat and thought as to what i should write of , cause no new event has crossed my paths so far, i came up with nothing and so waited for something... anything.... to happen when WHOA... i suddenly realized "events" "somethings" duh ! Every new day is a riddle which you might or might not be able to solve by the end of it ... so well here goes to those .. SOMETHINGS that i encountered....!
life can be a treat and also a real punishment at times....and especially the recent past few days have taught me two very important things:

1. is that you can never be certain and can never be sure... the moment u expect it least it hits you right in your head..
2. unpredictable... a hell lot of unpredictable.

As hard as i shall try to keep this on short there is a plethora of emotions tossing in my head screaming me to give them words...it at times baffle me and not just baffle but a "drop - a - jaw" baffle that things that you took for-granted in terms that its very much bloody normal uummm... like brushing your teeth in the morning, turn the key to start the engine, open your mouth in order to eat etc can one day be not so normal.. you know what i mean... nothing that's happening (and i thought to be normal) is normal anymore.. in fact its total complete opposite of normal disguised and telling me "jharna... where have you been, revise your definition of normal for a change ya". and yes i know i have used the word NORMAL many times here .. that explains how much its effected my thought process.
After leaving me somewhat shaken what option did i have but to accept it but now that i come to think of it, it indeed was good, surely strengthened my immunity kinda enhanced me with a shock absorber mechanism and also made me realize i can be real foolish at times... So all thanks to my friends, colleagues and strangers around me.. giving me a reason to write again... kudos !

and well now that i am sick (viral) , sitting in my house... the free time gave me a lot to ponder which i kept postponing... and on that serious-happy note i shall end it.

... things that makes me smile.

well.. it isn't original, but simply loved it, how small nothings matter so much and how they turn out to be few cherished moments...




The BEST Things in Life :)


Falling in Love

Laughing so hard that your face hurts :)

A hot shower

A special glance

No line-up at the supermarket cash

Getting a mail from someone you love

A thick chocolate milkshake

Taking a drive along a scenic road

Hearing your favorite song on the radio

Giggling :)

Cuddling :)

A long distance phone call

Lying in bed listening to the rain outside

A nice long bubble bath

Hot towels fresh out of the dryer

Laughing at an inside joke

Spending hours at the beach

Finding the sweater you've been wanting is now on sale for half price

Finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your coat from last winter

A good conversation with someone special

Laughing at yourself

Midnight phone calls that lasts for hours

Running through sprinkles of water

Friends!

Laughing for absolutely no reason

Having someone tell you that you're beautiful :)

Falling in love for the first time

Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you

Waking up and realizing you still have a few hrs left to sleep

Your first kiss

Sweet dreams

Playing with a puppy

Meeting someone new in your life

Hot chocolates

Late night talks with your roommate

Swinging on swings

Road trips with your friends

Having someone playing with your hair

Going to a really good concert

Making chocolate chip cookies

Baking a cake on the night of 24th December with all your family for Christmas next day

Cuddling up with someone on a couch to watch a movie with someone you love

Watching the sun set

Wrapping presents under the Christmas tree while eating cookies and drinking eggnog

Hugging the person you love

Watching the sun rise

Making eye contact with a cute stranger

Song lyrics printed inside your new cd so that you can sing along without feeling stupid

Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much desired present from you

Getting out of bed in the morning and thanking God for another beautiful day

Meeting an old friend after several years

"Life is beautiful, you're not a mistake, you were chosen for this beautiful gift "Life" try and live every
Moment of it !

SO.. WHICH ONE (IT CAN BE MORE THEN ONE..) ARE YOUR HAPPY NOTHINGS !?

trip to shogi... and oh wht a trip!!!!

Two things i realized (which have no mutual connection what soever 1st is that a blog that is shorter is read more... honestly no one has the time to sit down and read an entire episode of long events and 2nd is that a sudden UNEXPECTED sweet word or compliment can elate you for every time you remember it....weird but true !)

..it started with deepti (a fellow colleague) farewell when we (the entire team) ,and she were to say a few parting lines for each other and if i put it plain n simple words,with no added adjectives i liked what she said (more because i was unaware of what was about to come) , n now later when i did my favorite thing i.e. to ponder, i realized how these tiny nothings can turn out to be a bundle of joy in once mundane life. wont drag it on further, as that is said and done (a whopping done) i would skip n hop to shogi trip..(as it is most people would know i was to write on this, the chatter box that i am..!) if i need to summaries it in just one word expression it would be "aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.........." !!

To start with an excited me reached office Fri. evening ,all set to go station, sat in the "chuck chuck" train set rolling.. and already i was smiling bright (as if a two year old was bout to c a 3D animation movie)..and after a long 1 and a half hour of setting our scattered seats together, we sat down and after that banggg.... the gala time began, dashed for the window seat...lol !Dinner ,followed by endless chattering... all of us laughing,talking, staring and then laughing again, "ahem ahem" came a voice behind us all heads turned to see to find a patrolling police man saying "ap logon ko ise pehle nahi bola mene par ap shor mat machao complaints a rahi hain.. light off karo" n bang he clicked our lights off and marched of with high air silly enough to think it will put a full stop to our talks, he left ,we laughed (again) and carried on talking hardly realizing it was 3 am in the morning!

....Finally after a highly interrupted nap of an hour, we reached shogi in the morning next day...well by avoiding getting into details... of a relaxing two day trip i would say it was one splendid trip, it had all - laughter, sports(obstacle course), fun, food, breathtaking view, comfy accommodation, amazing company and most of all quality time to do nothing...! and then before we knew it we were sitting in our shatabdi ac chair, coming back to Delhi hoping every minute that we would get a day more.. or that we would miss our train! lol!

I would say the best part of this trip was that i got to do something i forgot or was out of touch for really long and i.e. NOTHING..! and when i say "nothing" i mean it, all we did was relax eat sleep n merry making! If you come to think of it what would you say if i said i had a total "do-nothing-relax-enjoy" time of 43 hours!!! sure is something aint it!?

so were we, happy was i, and treat was the trip..!