Turning back the time..

Sipping your favorite coffee and walking down the lanes of childhood days never seems to be a bad idea, especially when you are out of touch with your close pals for a while. A hiatus of two grand years from my school teachers, friends and people of colony gave me an excuse to hang out with my school friends.

Smile Please: Mr. Banker,Miss Fund Manger
and I strike a pose for the camera

The meticulous planning of the trip, whose destination was initially decided to be Kerela, tapered gradually over the time to culminate the location at local places near our old houses. And the number of friends turning out for the trio slowly plummeted from nine to three! If two is a company and three is a chaos, then four five six and on are pandemonium. The turnout was optimal to personify our wishes and requests for the trip. However that did not deter our plans. Me, Mr Banker and Miss Fund Manager kick-started the journey by visiting a popular temple of lord Ganesha in south Orissa. Mr Banker was quick to share his experience of visit Siddhi Vinayak temple in Mumbai. The soaring mercury, which did not do good to us, however was somewhat pacified by the AC in the taxi.

Prop under use: Mr. Banker and Miss Fund
Manager pose for a pic

What started as a normal trip turned to a voyage of fun and madness. Thanks to the super soaring mercury in Sambalpur, which gave Miss Fund Manager a right to exploit(yes, she made us slog with the camera work) us. With her frequent one liners such as “take a snap from that place” and “this heat is nothing as compared to that of Sambalpur”, she made sure to cover each nook and corner of the places we visited. Mr. Banker was a mixed bag as he often posed for photos and clicked photos and bemoaned the excessive frequency of snaps that were taken(at least 3 pics per 3 steps!!!). Three cameras and a never ending auto click mode(which was turned on in Mr. Banker’s mobile) increased the permutation and combinations of pictures. Literally every prop on the way was utilized to be stored in the frames of memories.

The photoshoot prevailed throughout the journey, as we headed next to “almost a college turned sanctuary” and an exotic hotel on sea shore. In a way, the photoshoot allowed us to experience the exotic and decors of the hotel. Not surprisingly did Miss Fund Manager or Mr Banker outdid me in the food department during lunch, as they tasted almost all possible dish available.

Splash Game! : Dirty, saline water of Bay of
 Bengal  under use for  splash game

The fun doubled with a packed sea beach, where we took recourse in splashing dirty saline water on each other. Mr. Banker shied away from this splash fest and took charge behind the lens. Finally, after rejecting Mr. Banker’s plea of dropping him home first, Miss Fund Manager took us to her home where we were welcomed with a good coffee and snacks. The whole experience drained out our energy, did gave a moment to capture which would bring in smile on our faces in future. Yes, everything in this world is a transaction and in this trip we traded our energy for fun and smile. Down the time, such hangouts would act as impetus for us to continue assembling for such more mad trips.

This time that year

Completion of a stint is a great thing. Especially when you mask yourself a man on the mission and come out with a i-finally-survived look. The scary experiences in the black box of stint jolts your perception, changes the alignment of your constellations and approach towards things.

While I come out from one of a stint, mind takes me back years ago during the bachelor in engineering/technology course. Mobile phones were a growing fashion that time. Class was determined by the weight of the phone, rather than its appearance. The torchlight mobile phones and the ever lasting samsung(RIM) phone were the alternatives during those days. Few had the liberty to hunt in for sony-erricson and other mobiles.

What drives my attention back to those days is an introduction of an offer(free talk time for reacharge of 500 INR within the telephone operator network). The teen couples rushed to pounce on such offers and did not bother about the low(extremely low balance offered by the cellular operator). In case you happened to own a number of different cellular network operator, either the onus was on you to call them up/ or you had to take the risk of never listening back from them(if they every call you, it would be a maximum two times ring missed call).

There were others who were not bothered by these offers(inelastic demand) and preferred the full talk time package. They took pride in changing hello tunes, more often than they changed their toothpastes, activated 'missed call alerts' despite not receiving much of calls and were frequent fan of more value added services of cellular operators.

The SMS alert was high during cricket matches, with people texting to those four or five digit numbers to learn about the score updates. That year, I also saw the quality of grammar deteriorate as alphabets were chopped off the words to be accommodated in the text limit of single SMS.

Those days can never be brought back, but I would like to travel with those loners and no-loners on those memory lanes and wonder how they perceive the world today(when mobile technology has leaped a long way ahead)?

Climax days...

Snatch some time...

The final days are one of the most boring and busiest period on universe. On one hand when one is saddled with completing the last formalities and strives to wrap them off in as minimum time as possible, the specified time period when he/she is needed to stay makes the experience a bit boring with a sprinkle of patience.

Smart Dude tries to fit in to a baby
high-chair to prove his fitness

I cajoled Smart dude to head out for a party. The trio headed after our classes to one of the outlets of a brand started by Col. Sanders. On seeing me pushing for payment(and thanks to pre-payment system before ordering food), Gold Lady ordered a delicious dish. The spiciness of the dish made us sip those mint drink which Smart dude ordered. Time had smiled on me, as I dictated the chit chat and Gold Lady supported my points. Naturally Smart dude was the casualty, but he seemed to enjoy those missiles of banter.

We soon headed to watch a bollywood flick, whose name coincided with a location. Sloppy story line, lousy dialogues and loose acting helped ease our mind as a action thriller was converted to a parody. We three joked and enjoyed. It took a while to realize that three protagonists in the movie were actually using the same song (without any alteration in lyrics) during their introduction scenes.

The movie finished with 1 hour in hand for the gates of college to shut down. We fed our hungry stomach and returned campus. That culminated the experience of trio. A chilled out educational hub gifted me experience with two cool folks and I would cherish it forever.

Lessons of life

I happened to develop rapport with an ex-service man. Before leaving the place I payed a visit to his place and enjoyed our chat. He mentioned his experience of serving in various locations during his tenure in a defense organization. One can never say on seeing this person that he has been a part of ambush, been at place with some of the tense security climate and endured much hardships during the course of service. It was interested to live this experience, where interacting with a person opened up a gamut of learning and experience of life. I would cherish the fact that we developed a good rapport and I have one more person who would be here when I visit next time.

I also met up with an entrepreneur, who happened to be my acquaintance. Though younger than me in age, he was older than me in facing the music while realizing a vision. And unlike our assignments, where a mistake can be made up in future actions, this guy did not had any luxury to go for mistakes. I was happy to learn that his initiative was recognized in various global and national business plans competition. The passion which I see in him, gives me the answer to the question "why this guy works harder despite things nothing going the right way? why this guy is so optimistic?" Perhaps that's how one is supposed to approach life, and I would continue to look up to this sort of attitude.

As I leave a crazy, wacky place with a crazy and wacky experience I would always turn back to relive those few good memories I had here.