Monday, 29 July 2013

The Joy of Wishing and Gifting


Couldn't realize how and when my habit of buying greeting cards simply died out. In fact, during our early school days we’re encouraged to make greeting cards out of our own creativity. Even though I had a high level of expertise in the field of drawing/creativity kind of stuffs and that too, to such an extent that I found it extremely difficult to even draw my basic academic biology diagrams. But still I somehow managed to make few New Year/Diwali/Birthday greeting cards for my friends and loved ones. Later there was a phase in my life when I used to send E-Cards to my friends on special occasions. Well, that was much more convenient for me and just like earlier days, my emotional level more or less was still the same. Now days I usually wish my friends and relatives through Facebook post, but I don’t think I've ever compromised with my feelings and I wish them with the same level of love and affection, as I used to in my childhood days. Everything seems to be so commercialized in the present world, but it just couldn’t take away our sentiments. With time and technology the way we wish people on special occasions have changed, but the level of excitement and empathy remains the same.

Even now also whenever I use to receive gifts in any form from anybody, I feel as happy and excited as I used to be as a child. Gifts definitely have some sort of magical effects on most of us and I hope nobody would misunderstand me as a male  chauvinist, if I dare to say that the effect could be much higher for our superior female counterparts. With emerging technologies, like most other things the way of giving gifts have also changed. But the joy and pleasure of gifting hasn't changed at all. In today’s modern and sophisticated world we often forget to buy gifts, not because we don't intend to buy but may be we're just little too busy and tired. But with websites like giftisaha.com, one could no longer give any such excuses. Well, giftisaha.com is a unique gifting portal and they are the experts in the field of gifting. This Diwali you could very well surprise your near and dear ones with some amazing personalized gifts. giftisaha.com has taken Diwali gifting to a whole new level of personalization with their personalized Diwali Gifts.

As I am writing about gifts, so would like to mention a couple of little humorous incidents which are closely associated with the joy of gifting. We have a friend and during our bachelor days he was very obsessed about his birthday gifts. He used to irritate ask most of his friends to give him gifts on his birthday. For guys like us, he usually used to ask once or twice. But he had some soft targets and to them he used to torture like hell, reminder after reminder. Ultimately he was quite successful enough to receive a good collection of gifts on the occasion of his birthday, that too without giving any good damn party. 

During my college days one of our senior friends told us a story about his younger brother. The incident happened during one Durga Puja time, when his brother was in his 2nd standard. People were quite busy buying gifts and our little hero already received a couple of dresses from his parents. It seemed he eyed on a particular piece of new dress and he was pretty much determined to somehow get that. But his parents were not at all interested to buy him any more dress for that Durga Puja. The kid tried all possible ways but his parents were adamant at their point. So ultimately our hero thought of something offbeat and one fine morning he went to the nearby busy street and simply undressed himself completely. Whenever any known person used to pass by, they had a conversation with him. The little boy used to say “I don’t have any dress to wear. What to do? Even on the auspicious occasion of Durga Puja also my parents never bother to buy me any new dress” The kid stayed on that street for almost a couple of hours and then the news started to spread. By afternoon, his parents came to know about the incident and later on the same evening, the boy was extremely delighted to receive the same desired gift from his parents. 

Gifting is not only limited to friends and relatives, even the corporate also love to gift their employees on their birthdays, on Christmas, on New Year, on the occasion of their marriage and the list could simply be endless. Corporate gifts could be important for a company's image and might help in building a strong relationship with its clients. It’s already under the HR policies for many of the corporate. With more than 10 years of experience in the business of corporate gifting and catering to clients from various industries, giftisaha.com have effectively catered to more than 500,000 customers and still counting.


Thursday, 25 July 2013

An Unplanned Trip, Part-2

So it was around 2 AM and the cab driver was waiting for us near our apartment gate.  We asked him to wait for 10 minutes and we just took a couple of towels and one handbag and yes, we also took one of our laptop. We were so much thrilled for our night road trip and wanted to enjoy every moment of it by listening to our favorite songs.  It took us a while to move out of the city and once it touched the highway we felt the actual thrill. In order to go to Coorg from Bangalore, one need to drive through Mysore. For a perfect and refreshing road trip by car all throughout the journey better have a look at this page facebook.com/AmbiPurIndia

Coorg is a very fascinating place situated at the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka and is located at a distance of 250 KM from Bangalore. Some websites even mention Coorg as "Scotland of South India" Well, it’s not too much exaggerated. The Bangalore Mysore highway is smooth enough and most of the people usually drive at a speed of 100-130 KMPH. We kept the windows open as the cigarette continued to switch hands very frequently. During the night we played the famous Judas Priest song "NightCrawler" several times. Oh! I just love that song, specially the lyrics and the situation was so perfect to play it over and over again. 


Just a copy paste of some part of the lyrics:

Howling winds keep screaming round 
And the rain comes pouring down 
Doors are locked and bolted now 
As the thing crawls into town 

Straight out of hell 
One of a kind 
Stalking his victims 
Don't look behind you, Nightcrawler 


We reached Mysore by around 4:30 AM and it was still dark outside. After a few minutes it was almost dawn and we could see some form of light outside. We didn’t sleep the whole night, except those short naps. I just couldn’t have waited to listen one of more Judas Priest classics “Before the dawn” Oh! Man what a lyrics, just too good. 

Mentioning just few lines of it:

Before the dawn, I hear you whisper

In your sleep "Don't let the morning take him" 

Outside the birds begin to call

As if to summon up my leaving


I played that song almost 4-5 times and stopped only when it was totally bright outside. Even though we were pretty much tired but the early morning freshness recharged us.


As we drove through the forests of Madikeri, the cool breeze was extremely refreshing. The early morning heavenly forest smell was so mesmeric and as the dew drops kissed all over our faces, everyone felt terribly euphoric. We stopped the car at several places and kept starring at the clouds and the hills. OMG! That was such an wonderful moment and I can’t really express in words. We reached Coorg by around 8 AM and then we looked for a hotel. Our intention was to take the cheapest possible hotel, as our plan was just to rest and get refreshed for a couple of hours.  
Later we had a heavy breakfast and went for sightseeing. Firstly we visited the famous Abbey falls and stayed there for about half an hour. It's very refreshing out there and the place is always foggy all throughout the day. We so much wanted to experience river rafting and without wasting mush time we went to the spot. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait much longer for our turn. When Sinha came to know that they would charge Rs 900 per head, he immediate opted himself out from it. Actually Sinha had no clue about rafting and he thought we would be paying them just for some boating. So Sinha remained in the car along with the driver and expected us to return within an hour. That was my first rafting experience and I could never forget the thrill. That was one of the best thing I have ever done so far. It started smoothly and after a while the thrill began. The river stream was surrounded by hills and there was complete greenery all around.


The current of downstream water was very furious and at some points it was totally breathtaking. Our guide was an excellent fellow and on the way he narrated us few rafting stories of Rishikesh, as earlier he was posted out there. We crossed one hurdle after another and as I looked back, I just couldn’t believe we actually came through that way. It almost felt as if I was part of Nation Geographic that moment.

At some point the water was still and the guide asked us to swim. Even I also tried to swim for a while. It was so wonderful moment, but I was also little scarred, not of crocodiles but of drowning. The entire rafting took almost 3 hours and that was a life time experience. Well, there are few things which are really priceless and can't be measured with money. By the time we returned back we were damn tired, yet so refreshed. We just wanted to further liquefy our bodies along with some very heavy lunch and we did exactly the same thing. 

It was already 4 PM and we decided to visit the famous Tibetan monastery. Even though I’m not a great fan of religious places, but that monastery was something different. It was calm as well as very relaxing and we spent almost one hour out there. Later we had some tea and started our return road drive, back to Bangalore. As we passed through the forests we got to see few waterfalls. Well, I always return with a heavy heart whenever I use to come back from any forest. Our return drive was also quite exciting and thrilling. On the way we had dinner at a dhaba, along with icy chilled holy water and returned home by midnight. 


This post is written for Indiblogger’s "The Perfect Road Trip" contest in association with "AmbiPur"

Image courtesy: google images

 http://www.indiblogger.in/topic.php?topic=83



Monday, 22 July 2013

An Unplanned Trip, Part-1


During my forced bachelor days, as my wife was in Pune for a year, my favorite weekend hangout destination was the place where I used to stay earlier with my friends. Once I left that house, many of our friends stayed there and later whenever I used to visit that house, every time I got to see a new face(s), mostly some juniors from our college. The place was damn exotic, extremely clean and was extraordinarily tidy, almost like Hell. Every time we wished to visit there, we had to mentally prepare ourselves on few things. Like for instance, the cooking gas could have been finished in the middle of the night and we actually experienced that situation several times, but fortunately we never had to sleep with empty stomach. Conditions of both the bathrooms out there were only slightly better that some of those abandoned railway platform bathrooms. During the weekends, the two bedroom apartment usually used to accommodate around 12-15 guys.  Few of our friends preferred to sleep at the Hall itself, where we partied the entire night. The next morning afternoon, we used to notice that those guys were sleeping just beside the chicken bones, some empty glasses, couple of half filled glasses, pea nuts, chips and some left over chicken pieces. Wow! the Hall smelled so aromatic and even the maid also refused to work out there. But whatever, we used to get immense pleasure and used to get completely refreshed after spending the weekend out there. 

As the weekend used to approach, Sinha always dreamed to sleep at least for 30-35 hours over the weekend and he usually used to switch off his mobile by Thursday morning. Sinha was the kind of personal whom none of our friends wanted to miss in the weekends, he was so in demand. Even thought we had to do little hard work, but I and Lami somehow managed to convince Sinha for our weekend get together. During my forced bachelor days, Trideev was in Bangalore for a couple of months and he used to stay with me. One Saturday we planned to have a great get together at our favorite place. But we were on a little different mood that evening and planned to watch a movie together at the nearby multiplex.  But all the tickets were sold out and the only option we had was to watch a Tusshar Kapoor thriller “Aggar” Well, Sinha didn’t like the idea at all, but ultimately we decided to go for it. We booked our tickets and we had a couple of hours before the blog buster could have started. 

We entered one of the nearby Dhaba to liquefy our bodies. We were having a great time and people already started to give ideas and all of a sudden someone said "We guys are meeting after so long, let’s make it more exciting. What about a trip?"

Another friend replied "We could go to Nandi Hills early morning"

Sinha replied "How many times you guys would go to Nandi Hills?"

I said "What about Coorg? Let’s go tonight and we could come back tomorrow evening"

Trideev was very excited with the idea and Lami as usual, always ready for whatever we guys were up to. Mriganka also sounded positive, but I was pretty much doubtful about Sinha. But what the Hell? Even Sinha was also ready for it. Even though we were aware of the fact that Sinha used to behave quite differently under the influence of heavenly fluids, but we were little surprised with the extent he got influenced that moment. I immediately booked a Cab for our Coorg trip and asked the driver to come by 2 AM. Coorg is a very fascinating place situated in the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka and is located at a distance of 250 KM from Bangalore. Some websites even mention Coorg as "Scotland of South India". I already visited Coorg but missed the river rafting on the first occasion. Well, Coorg is quite famous for river rafting and possibly it's the second best place in India. Beyond any doubt Rishikesh would be the best place of river rafting in this part of the world. I was so much interested for rafting that time, although it's a different thing that till now I couldn't learn the trick to resist the gravitational forces in water without any life jacket and sometimes panic even after wearing it.

It was already 10 PM and it was the time for our encounter with Tusshar Kapoor. As we entered inside the theater, we noticed that 90% of the Hall was empty. We expected more audience once the movie get started, but we were wrong. There was a similar kind of group like us and they already started to applaud the movie and particularly Tusshar Kapoor, by clapping their hands. It was an ultimate thriller and I could remember one particular scene where Tusshar Kapoor’s face was extremely expressive, as he played the flute. The entire audience couldn’t stop themselves and the Hall came alive, people started to clap and whistle. Our group was also not very far behind and that was the most interesting part of the movie. 

After the movie we went back to our Hell and waited for the cab. It was already 1:30 AM and the cab driver never bothered to call us. As the influence of the heavenly fluids started to diminish, Sinha looked little worried. He said that he might have taken the wrong decision and was quite happy that the cab driver didn’t call. But then all of a sudden we received a call and got to know that the driver was waiting just near our apartment gate.

Next Part->


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