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.

What's so fuss about God

There was a dialogue in Sholay ' Yaha se xx kms duur .... beta soja warna xxx aa jayega'

Xxx is still used as an imaginary term, and children fall asleep fearing about something that never exist. Like Fear of the Dark, imagining things which dont exist.

None of the religious preachers were ever able to prove God exists as an individual entity, and people take the absence of proof as a proof to validate their imaginations.

Why something happened 2 thousand years ago cant happen now? People who bring effective Karma into picture, for them there were more killings back then. The world's growing population is a proof.

Actually we humans (and I am no exception) are too weak to believe in ourselves all the time thats why we need someone to count on in times of troubles. Someone who will always listen to our prayers and approve our wishes.

I generally pray only on Tuesdays, start with Hanuman Chalisa, give a big Thank to the God for whatever I have, I Thank him for giving me such a great family, I Thank him for giving me nice friends and other things in life. Then I end it by asking for blessings for us all.

I feel like Hanumanji is watching me, guiding me in every step. And similarly anyone born in any other religion would feel about his/her God. Its Personal, take it or leave it.

My God doesnt take offence if anyone draws a picture, or even try to obey or disobey him. Neither him nor I have time for the same.

Remember the Birthday Post, the idea should be being true to your own true beliefs. Thats why we are given a conscience and a free will, to decide what our value system should be.

Thats the best way to please God, making the best use of the conscience given to you and not just relying on texts for factuality. May be its otherwise in Hell!!

My birthday post

About 14 years ago in 1996, I had received a b'day greeting from one of my well wishers. His name was 'Sanjeev Rathi' and he was suppose to fight the MLA election from SP ticket for Mujaffanagar. He had done some real ground work to achieve the same. But politics doesnt need good people. His ticket was later rejected because some other politician's brother decided to fight from that seat.

The card he gave said 'Gaurav - if you want to achieve something in life be true to yourself''... and thats the best thing that I have heard since then.

We all keep deceiving everyone including ourselves......

It never feeds a purpose!

Gunda!!

According to a famous quote, there are only two types of people in this world.

Those who have seen Gunda and those who shall.

I am privileged to be in the first group. A movie you can never forget, dialogs so poetic you cant imagine. There's already been so much research on the dialogs you can find the real meaning on the google... A cult I would say!! ..

If you havent watch it.. you are missing one of the best originals of Bollywood...

N missing the hilarious characters who were trying to play a serious role!

Idiot Box

Years ago we used to hear the term Idiot Box for TV, things have only got worse since then.

Personally, I try to spent least time in front of TV as its a sheer waste of time, whatever I watch.

Basically we have following channels floating around:

1) News - Statistically, this has never helped anyone except news makers. I'll come back to it in later part of this post

2) Movies - You can choose to watch it or any other at your own pace with better quality - rent a DVD

3) Music - There is NO authentic music channel left. Listen to Radio. Get CDs of your fave artist.

4) Entertainment Channels - There are already bigger issues in your own home/office. Write a story and contact the serial director you like to get it aired. Just learn some basic exaggeration.

5) Discovery etc - Go out camping/hiking/boating/kayaking and shoot. You'll love it more.

6) Sports - Do you play regularly?

Few weeks back I was in a presentation skills training and there we were asked to form teams and come-up with a topic. The best topic I could think of considering small time slot and team mates belonging from different technology was the status of News Channels. Past, Present and Ideal.

It went well, thanks to the present status of media.

Even today, there was a headline ..sorry.. 'Breaking News' of India TV .. 'Guru ya Guru Ghantal' about Gary Kirsten. This is sick, showing more than an year old pics of someone and equating it to cheating in present. Its all about selling and making it spicy to keep the businesses running.

But sometimes the Breaking News do give a good laugh that none of the comedy serials can provide. Eg. Billo Rani Chaaje pe chadi or Aliens ko pasand Himesh ka music.

No wonder why Himesh is reluctant to create music for human race now... Thanks to Aliens..

India - 10 years after - Part 1

I want to see India as a Global Super Power in next 10 years. Things that make me sad are corruption and attitude of our beaurocracy, judiciary system and above all the politicians who never appear to care about the citizens of India. And more sad to see that I am playing a role in this game by not making any change in the system.
I want India to have no discrimination policy instead of reservations. Though reservations have never hurted me much individually as I was never a top performer in academics and I am working in Private Sector but still its impartial to all worthy individuals who have to study a lot more than reserved category student to achieve the same aim.
The game should be open for all like its in US. They strictly have no discrimination policy in place instead of counting numbers and reserving seats.
In that way students can also live their life along with study. I see so much pressure for numbers in people, we dont need that many studious/dull people around. If every one is given a fair chance then atleast the laborious junta will get time to explore their creative/funny/cheerful side.
We have a capability as a nation to rise above everything in our lifetime. To realize that goal we have to give up our age old practices of casteism, dowry, corruption... and recognize ourselves as worthy individuals who have the potential to take the max out of ourselves and built a strong nation.
We need visionaries at high government positions who can deliver upto the requirements of our motherland.
Citing the example of China, there the infrastructure of cities was created 10 years before it was actually occupied. In Pune, they are creating buildings after the public has moved in.
We dont need places with a single Sirname, we need to recall of our glorious past and idolize it and much more as our target for future.

So much has already been written on it, just adding my 2 cents.

Metal vs Non Metal

I am a kind of music man. Like nicotine, caffeine I need a daily dose of rock beams else I get the symptoms of drug addiction. But its not same for everyone, few of my friends get head ache when they listen to Metal and the same and harder things work as lullaby for many of them.

I guess its like a wonder drug, its just allergic to some!!

Wat Else

Thanks to all who are reading my first blog-post. I was thinking to give blog writing a head start since almost an year, but like every human I was resisting to change.

Finally, I have started it at the time when nothing much is going on in my life, thanks to the hot sun outside.

I wish it cools down soon so that I can work for my pending weekend plans and make the most out of what surrounds this beautiful city 'Pune'.