One Night in Ooty

It was year 2005 and those days were special as it was not a very long time we got our first job.  The second and 3rd quarter of year 2005 was quite hectic as there was no holiday for a long period of 5-6 months. Everyone so eagerly waited for 15th august as it was on Monday. So, finally we had a holiday after a long wait and a holiday on Monday just spiced it up. Most of the people had some plan for the long weekend and we also had something on our mind.I, Lami and Kamal decided to visit Coorg. We heard a lot about Coorg from our friends who stayed in Bangalore for a long time. I tried to google about Coorg that time and was happy to see so many good reviews. In some of the websites they even mentioned Coorg as “Scotland of South India”. I was very much excited as it was our first Coorg trip.We booked our bus ticket from Bangalore to Coorg a week earlier and it was scheduled for Friday 9 PM. That particular evening we started a little early as we knew about Bangalore traffic quite well. We took a bus at around 7:30 PM and by 8:15 PM we were somewhere near the railway station. The bus moved very slowly but we were not worried as we had hell lot of time. At some point the bus was motionless for almost 15 to 20 minutes and that moment we started to worry a bit. We took a very good decision that time and we got out of the bus and started to walk. We walked for almost half an hour and somehow fortunately we didn't miss our bus to Coorg.

Coorg is indeed a very nice place situated in the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka. Next morning as soon as we reached Coorg we had to struggle for almost an hour to get a hotel, the kind of hotel which would fit into our pocket. After breakfast we had a chat with our hotel manager and had an overview of the places to visit out there. We hired a cab for the entire day and visited all the well known places like Abbey falls, coffee plantations, Harangi dam, the Tibetan monastery and few other places surrounding Coorg. 

It's really a very nice place to visit, the entire surrounding is refreshingly green, the streams are so beautiful and the weather is just fantastic. But in one day we visited all the well known places and there was literally nothing more to visit. Earlier we had a plan to stay the entire weekend in Coorg, but there was literally nothing we could have done there for another day other than chill out. Coorg was a perfect holiday destination for honeymoon couples that time and to be honest the entire Coorg overflowed with honeymoon couples that weekend.  

We decided to return Bangalore on Sunday evening itself instead of Monday and we were about to book our tickets on Sunday morning. To be honest I was not very much satisfied with the trip so far, may be because I had too much expectation for the long weekend and wanted to enjoy for another day or two. All of a sudden I had an idea “what if we go to Ooty from here?” My friends laughed at me and said that's a weird idea. I tried to justify but they said that's wild idea as everyone had to join office on Tuesday. I said if we hire a cab, it would hardly take us 6-7 hours to reach Ooty and on the way we could enjoy some beautiful scenery. Next day we could visit some of the places in Ooty and in the afternoon we could come to Mysore by the same cab and from Mysore we take a bus or a train to Bangalore. It took me a long time but finally I was able to convince them.

So, after lunch we hired a cab(Indica) for Ooty and we started at 3:30 PM. The journey was awesome and quite thrilling as we also had few sips of vodka on the way. We enjoyed some wonderful flora and fauna, sunflower garden and some dense forest. We missed some of the thrills when we passed through the Bandipur national park as it was dark outside. We expected to find some fierce wild animals on the way, but had to satisfy ourselves with some wild pigs. We reached Ooty at 9 PM and it was damn cold outside. We saw a hell lot of crowd outside; there were people all over the place, almost like a carnival. We saw a huge group of students enjoying their camp fire and most of them were singing and dancing.  We were so much thrilled and I said to my friends “see, Ooty is so lively and you guys were not ready for it”

We went to a nearby hotel and there was a huge crowd at the reception. We asked the manager for a room but not even a single room was available. We went to a different hotel and even there we got the same reply. So, we went to a 3rd hotel and there the manager asked us when did we arrive in Ooty? When we replied that we reached Ooty just half an hour back, the manager started to laugh.

He said “You see those people standing in the road? They came in the morning and till now they are not able to get any room. I just did a small favor as I agreed to keep their luggage’s safely here”

We were stunned with the manager’s reply. We tried our luck for another 2 hours and approached almost every hotel in Ooty but no where we were able to manage  a room for the night. It was a pathetic situation as we all were so tired. Our cab driver was also very much surprised and he said to us that he came to Ooty more than 15 times but never experienced or heard of such a situation. This kind of situation is quite common in Goa during New Year time. We even tried our luck in some expensive resorts but Ooty was on carnival mood that night. At around 11:30 PM we had our dinner and everyone wondered where to stay the night? Our cab driver was generous enough and asked us to sleep the night in the cab itself. That was the only option we had that night and the driver parked the car in a safe place and we tried to sleep inside the car. It was a pathetic situation and the vodka helped a lot but after sometime my entire body started to pain.

Early morning we went to a small restaurant  to have tea as well as to refresh ourselves. After tea we didn't waste much time and immediately we were on our way to Mysore. The early morning journey through the Bandipur National park was quite thrilling and the smell of the forest was so refreshing. On the way we saw hell lot of deer’s, few peacocks, some elephants and few more wild animals.

We reached Mysore by 10 AM and had to wait in the railway station for a couple of hours for our train to Bangalore.

Cost Cutting

My wife is into Health Care industry and she works for a company which provides health care services to the corporate. She is part of operations as well as business development and quite often she has to go for client visits. They have various kinds of health care services to impress the HR of the companies they visit. Organizing health camp within the premises of the organization is quite popular among the HR  community. Companies usually organize free eye checkup, free dental checkup, free heart checkup and so on. With some big companies they have a little different kind of business called “OHC”. Don’t worry if you are not familiar with the term, for me these terms are just part and parcel of my everyday life. OHC is basically “Occupational Health Care”, which is nothing but a kind of dispensary set-up within the organization itself. HR's usually outsource these kind of services to those companies which provide health care services. The minimum requirement for an OHC is to have a doctor and nurse with necessary arrangement of basic medicines/first aids. Also there should be an ambulance along with a driver ready for any kind of emergency 24/7.

The OHC concept was initiated by the “WHO” and is actually a primary health care service that any organization can provide to their employees working in factories, construction sites, refineries and many such organizations where there is considerable amount of probability for the employees to get hurt. But now days the concept is not limited to such organizations, it’s within the HR policies of some of the large software companies as well. Now for doctors as well as for nurses it’s a pretty cool job. In the whole day few employees would visit the OHC for their minor problems. The visiting frequency could be a little higher if the doctor on duty is an admirable one. Whenever any employee visit the OHC with a little serious problem the doctor never hesitate to recommend him/her to a bigger hospital.  

One day my wife was in the middle of a discussion with a client and all of a sudden the client shared one of their OHC experiences. They said that they have outsourced their OHC to a health care company the previous year and everything looked so perfect, as all the doctors and nurses were quite good and the OHC was open 24/7. The client said that the OHC also had an ambulance for any kind of emergency. The OHC guys were quite professional,  specially the ambulance driver. The driver usually used to chill out but was always visible in and around the OHC. Whenever any patient employee used to visit the OHC, the driver stood proudly in his  neat and clean uniform near the ambulance. He looked very enthusiastic  as if he was fully prepared for any sort of emergency and  almost ready to take the patient  employee to a hospital.

Now in a software company what kind of emergency one can expect?  Hiring ambulance drivers for 24/7 and literally doing nothing is  a waste of money but we never know when any emergency kind of  situation might develop? Also it's a part of the business deal that ambulance driver should be available 24/7. The client lady said that after almost 6 months of setting up the OHC one day they had an emergency situation as one of their employee had a mild heart attack. Some of the HR people also came along with the patient to the OHC that moment. The doctor out there suggested  to transfer the patient immediately to a nearby hospital. The ambulance driver as usual was very enthusiastic but was a little nervous that time. Initially he had to struggle a lot  to start the ambulance and once it started in no time the vehicle had a head-on collision with the nearby wall.

Hostel Picnic

                                    

After passing out from AEC (Assam Engineering College) I enjoyed a few picnic trips but hostel picnic was something completely different. It was purely raw and we enjoyed our picnic in some of the most exotic places. December/January was the peak picnic season and all the well known picnic spots was usually crowded with college students. Some of the exotic picnic spots in Arunachal Pradesh were not very much crowded even in the peak seasons. In order to enjoy in those spots we had to go a little  deep inside the forest. sometimes we could hear elephant sounds from the other side of the stream. Some adventurous guys dared to cross the stream and used to go a little further  inside the forest.  Those days New Year celebration was incomplete for us without a picnic trip.

Those magnificent places in Arunachal Pradesh was favorite picnic destination for all the hostels in AEC. In fact those places were admired by  most of the colleges in and around Guwahati.  There are hell lot of highly recommended picnic spots in and around Bhalukpong and Tipi in Arunachal Pradesh.  It was almost like a dream to booze in such exotic river banks, as if Mother Nature herself  treated us. 

Even though it used to take almost 8-9 hours from hostel to our destination but the journey was so amazingly exciting. We used to keep big sound boxes inside the bus and the voyage was completely "Dum Maro Dum" kind of. During the drive we had the opportunity to listen to all sort of music, right from Bollywood blockbusters to rock music to metal and never forget our very own Bihu songs. Everyone was quite well prepared and used to keep the stuffs in excess quantity than the usual capacity, just to be on the safer side.

Oh !!!,  I so much miss those picnic trips; they were just out of the world.

We usually used to start early morning, in fact it was late night as we started by 2:30 to 3:30 AM. Some guys used to sleep early that particular night but out of excitement some of us couldn't sleep at all and after dinner it was a long wait for the picnic bus to come. 

Out of boredom and excitement some of us used to open our stuffs a little early. Everyone was highly charged for the initial 2-3 hours of the voyage and then many of us experienced snoring sounds echoed all over the bus. We used to have breakfast somewhere near Tezpur, situated in the banks of river Brahmaputra. After breakfast everyone was recharged and the party would come to live once more.  All of us used to party like hell the entire day and our hostel cooks also used to enjoy a lot even though they  were quite busy preparing food the whole day.

We usually used to have our special picnic meal by 3 PM and finally at 4 PM, it was time  to say good bye to those wonderful and magnificent streams. By that time everyone would be literally tired. After such a hard core party some of us, specially few of the first year brothers usually had to struggle  a lot to balance their foot steps.  Now, it was the senior’s responsibility to see that everyone is inside the bus. The return journey was almost lifeless, no music and there was complete silence all throughout the journey except those snoring sounds. Quite often one or two guys used to make the bus a little dirty, as they couldn't digest the over dose of the stuffs. We usually stopped at some place for the evening tea and after tea everyone used to come back to life for a while and someone would play the music. But after some time again most of us would go to deep sleep. We used to reach hostel at midnight.

We just returned from one such picnic trip and I was in my 5th semester that time. My good friend JP was the kind of guy who was able to digest hell lot of "Kamur" from us. “Kamur” is an informal word and used very frequently among the youths in our state. "Kamur" basically means “pulling someone's leg”. JP remained cool almost all the time but sometimes even he also used to get irritate and that time we realized that we may have crossed the line. That particular day JP somehow digested too much over dose of "Kamur" the whole day from many of us. We all were so tired after returning hostel at midnight and most of us went to sleep. But there were few stuffs left and some of us thought to  finish them off. We were some 7-8 guys and JP was the center of attraction for us and to be honest he started to show some symptoms of his irritation. After few rounds all of a sudden we realized that JP was not there with us. We went to his room but he was not there either. We were little worried and started to look for him in the entire hostel.

It was already 2 AM and we couldn't find him anywhere. Then someone said "JP is a very sensitive guy, he might have committed suicide”

Another one replied “holy shit !  what the hell are you saying?"

Our level of tension considerably increased  and some of us went to other hostels and few went to the nearby surrounding to look for him but JP was nowhere. Finally we gave up but  still awake, may be because we had to finish those stuffs completely. At around 3:30 AM, someone went to the loo and was little surprised as he heard some unusual sound out there. He had a close look and saw something bizarre and immediately came to call us. We went there and everyone was highly amused to find JP  lying inside one of the bathroom and was literally snoring like a pig.