Divide & Play

I generally don’t write about my country’s politics. But this time I am making an exception. Yes, our country is going to dogs. Con is opposite to Pro and that’s what we have as a result, yeah an old joke but pressing hard.

Yesterday, our Home Minister talked about Hindu Terror Camps, today his friend and our External affairs minister echoed his thoughts.

I was thinking, why all of a sudden these ministers thought of sharing the TRUTH with my Indian brethren.

I am not questioning the veracity of these comments. Though I have attended Shakha few times in childhood and I am aware that RSS is a patriotic and nationalist organisation and I have multiple sources to believe that.

There could be few hardliners everywhere, latest example is Congress STILL taking/giving support of anti national MP in Hyderabad, even after he is sent to jail. However, its better to be anti-national these days. Saves you from your conscience and gives you f***n amount of money and security. Coming back to the point, why suddenly sharing of the truth? First reason, getting into the good books of Buddhu Baba. he has already made public (thanks to wikileaks) that he considers Hindu extremism bigger threat than terrorism. So supporting the theory of their party’s vice president and second in command would only help them in keeping their posts. I am not sure how Buddhu Baba actually think and consider or evaluate things around him, I have never seen him speaking without reading. Same with his mother. Debate is out of question, I mean their mind’s scope. Its really a medical wonder.

Second reason, elections. We very well know that Congress plays divisive politics. Its own formation was to create a division in Indian society, and it has never forgotten its core values.

Some people are intelligent, some are fools. Sadly, there are more fools then intelligents. By intelligents, I mean those people who have basic sense of differentiating right and wrong not for themselves but for their motherland. Even an insect can differentiate between wrong and right for itself. Our current leadership wants to create a panic in the minorites, by subconsciously telling only current leadership will be able to provide safety, security yada yada to them. Hope someone will listen and vote for them.

Third reason, give the press something else to speak to. After severe inefficiency of government is exposed to everyone by repeated crimes in states and borders ruled by our current ruling party and allies, they just want to showcase that the opposition is their partner in crime by a different angle Anyways there is no use thinking, our country has gone to dogs.

Another Sunday Gone

Another weekend gone where I have just stepped out of my flat just once. Yes, in whole weekend. Watched few movies, thanks to Tandon and Pawan we have less time left to cover 2 TBs info, wanting to be shared.

After long I listened to Cliff Richard and its still refreshing. He is the most underrated musician of his time, but we cant blame no one when he was playing in the era of Elvis and MJ!

Was also reading a body language book by Kevin Hogan, and felt extra sorry for my dark eyes and all other dark eye people around as people cant notice the dark eye dilation in a rush. So I guess we all have been making some extra efforts since our childhood in terms of persuasion and reciprocation.

This post comes after a long break, it is totally justified as I got engaged on Sep 12th. Will try to catch up soon...

Night Trek @ Korigarh Fort

Boys again proved that they dont need directions, let the new destination be decided at 10.30 pm on Old Mumbai Pune Highway NH - 4.

After all hullabaloo till 8.30 pm, ten of us left Pune for a decided location Tung fort. We had an advantage of having Kalidas, who is quite an experienced trekker in places around.

It started raining and thankfully someone pointed out before dinner that there is no place of shed in Tung. People like me were still optimistic as I was carrying an umbrella :P, but I happened to be only one who was carrying it. So a new place was decided Korigarh.

None of us had gone to Korigarh before so it could amount to be a quite risky business as a night trek but we were all gamblers by choice. Energy levels were high, so it was decided almost unanimously without any concerns.

After dinner we left for Korigarh wishing ourselves very best for the decision we had taken.

We knew its near Amby Valley Lonavala, so it didnt take much time to figure out the route. 12 am and we were there bang on the spot.

Real guts testing started from there as we started trying to make our way up to the mountain.

Its hardest in the night to find your way up in a green terrain coz small trails which are obvious in the day time tends to become obsolete in the night. Every thin space which goes through two trees becomes a trail adding to the puzzle.

In our first trial, we reached almost 30 ft to the top only to be stopped by a upright slope. Getting up from there was only something Tom Cruise can think of. Hit n tries went on with heavy backpacks for trying a short cut but all in vain.

Then we came back to the base camp, to look for an alternative route. We found it and went but pretty like our previous try it was unsuccessful. Worse was that it took 3 times more effort and time than the last one. We heard that night treks are generally not successful and stories of displacing a snake to make some room to sleep. Time was 3 am.

We had almost decided to wait till the morning and then find the way but still 4 of us had some energy left to go and look for an alternative.

Luckily we found another trail about 30 ft below to our base camp but we could not call everyone as we were not sure this is the right one. We went ahead for sometime and special thanks to Gutka lovers we found more of their empty pouches along the way.

This was a clear signal that the trail is atleast going someplace more frequently visited. We sent a final call to the boyz. And soon everyone was there. We started following it apprehensively, the trail got thinner with trees in between and only thing we were sure of was it is going somewhere.

Then came the moment when we heard cheers from the first two. We had found the stairs!!!!

Going up from there was much more tiring, but the discovery had added to the spirits.

We reached up at 4:30 am with all zeal and hip hip hurrays. It is so pleasant from the top.

But our worries had no end, it started raining.

It started raining heavier, and we took shelter in an old and small Shivji temple. It took almost half an hour for all of us to fit in what we had. For the first time in my life I slept inside a temple, thanks to Shivji probably he wanted it this way.

7 o clock we were all awake by cold and different sounds coming from different birds. Thanks to the light, another grand discovery was made. We had a large pond besides the temple. Something that I tried to throw my torch's light before getting in the temple on but could not see anything except clouds.

Morning was beautiful and equally echoed the success of the trip!!!

Link: http://picasaweb.google.com/gaurav.teagi/Nature?authkey=Gv1sRgCI_Uua6qzZfZgwE#

Fast Bowlers & Rock Stars

Since my childhood, I am amazed by the quality of Pakistani rock bands music. You can easily compare it with the quality of Fast Bowlers produced by the neighboring country.

I mean, how can a unrest state produce not just one but many artists/bowlers and that too sequentially in all decades.

They were the harbinger of Sufi Rock and are still nurturing it. The best hindi/urdu rock band ever existed is still Junoon.

According to the history, we share the same genes. Then why democratic and business genes are primarily left within us and violent and rock music genes were separated with them.

With above line I am only considering the Rock Bands of two countries and not the play back singers and music directors (I'll take a dig at music directors sometime later), though we are pretty much aware of Classical artists dead and alive in both countries.

The answer lies within the Q, rock is all about expression and it can be as violent as death metal.

Fast Bowlers and Rock Bands both need high level of energy to sustain and perform and focus on just one thing. And piece of unrest appears to be a boon in disguise for booming a talent which just needs a cricket ball to play all day, or an artist with a guitar but no online lessons to come up with his own scale and pitch and style by rehearsing all the time. But the talent quotient is still unquestionable.

We as in people like me generally like to be jack of all trades :)

Would like to know everyone's view here?

IG Reunited - Finally

Since I returned from US in Jan, I was working freaking hard to regroup with my band. There was a huge timings gap in the presence of band members and it was like somebody was playing the devices, everytime.

We lost our bass guitarist Brijesh months back as he had to return home to join back family business and few days back our drummer Ashish informed he is going out of the city for PG.

It was like every rock band story is being repeated with us.

Our past jamming grounds were also no longer available and the band had to shift places to jam like on weekly basis.

While all this commotion was progressing, we had to find a way out.

Luckily, our multi talented rhythm guitarist Saj is also happen to be Sound Engineer by pure choice.

The deal is done, we are now working on the original compositions we created as a rough draft in past years.

I never wanted to do it by softwares, as more originality and truthfulness appears in a song if its recorded by complete band instead of mixers. In addition, you get comments to revise from everyone there and then.

The idea now is that the song should be exactly reproducible on stage, and we dont want any fancy stuff for the studio version.

They are coming out good but as said perfection needs a lot of improvement cycles. We are working and re-working on each song until we reach a magical number 11.

I am also looking forward some outlandish leads to be added by Nishad once the framework is set.

What I've learnt so far is that the easiest part of creating a song is to create a tune, rest is all an everlasting story.

Bala's Farewell Party

Common symptoms when you have returned from a party include memory loss, too much voices, heaven and hell, future & past,....

:) You hear that your friends are talking (you don't get a word), you can smell the smoke in the air, you are back.

Thanks to the host Bala (new entrant MDI Gurgaon) ... I am writing this post with one eye open...I have to keep one permanent closed to give my mind a false feeling that I've slept!!!

Thanks to Amit, Prashant, Pawan, Tandon, Gupta... The S7 ... Elevate Lounge wont forget us too!!

P.S. Sugar should be dissolved in Mojito!

Seva Sahyog

Yesterday I had a chance to be a part of Seva Sahyog Samiti which works for the well being of underprivileged ones. The inspiration for me was that I got a great environment at home to do what I can do, but not everyone gets it. So atleast, I can do my little part to bring a piece of joy in someone's life.

When I reached there I saw more than 50 like minded individuals working for the same cause.

They are distributing more than 18000 school kits to the children who cant afford it. And the volunteers are free to choose their work. It was a great lesson on supply chain management as well. Assembling the kits, checking for defectives, taking the count, putting the complete kits in warehouse, supplying the materials to assemblers, it was a small portable manufacturing unit created for the welfare of children.

They were also giving kits to other NGO's which were verified for veracity before.

I feel its a good cause to be with and contribute for. I have few plans in my mind and I'll share when I succeed in putting them to reality.