Some pictures from trip

The beautiful girl. She was always hopping around and always calling her mom for some thing or the other. Finally when she had her tummy filled, she slept with open mouth. Was very cute girl.

In Gujrat, before approaching some jungle area....

In Mumbai - Pune Rail route. Dense fog

In Motion....

These two pics are taken from both the rail tracks. Once on either side. This small dam is in MP.

The first one is my favorite as it shows the dam completely and also the man is seen walking.

On the way to rajasthan..

In Gujrat

This is the country side i was talking about in my blog.

This was on way to mumbai

the ghats

Regards,
http://antarikshv.blospot.com

The Day Of Meetings:

4th September: We started off early in the morning to go and meet our relatives. The occasion was of 12th day after the death of my uncle. I had never attended such kind of things and didn’t knew what was expected of me and what needed to be done. Well then we all started off. My relative having a full knowledge of what all things might come up at the occasion and Me having absolutely no knowledge of the storm.

As we reached the house there were people who were ready to greet us at the door. (I think they were like the vultures, awaiting the bachelor to be snatched.) They didn’t had the warm welcome smiles but had those looks. As we entered the house and I bowed to say namaste, the unknown person too joined her hands said namaste. She had those looks, she scanned my complete body head to toe. I was being scanned and kept into the hard drive. I think an immediate siren must have been sounded at the time of my arrival. Maybe the day yesterday all the preparations must have been done. Maybe this was a planned scene to be enacted by all the people who were attending except for the near and dear ones. The “Extras” were just the fillers of the show and came in to check out the new marriage material in town.

These extras were from a wide variety of background. Some had a very huge business earning around a crore monthly, while some had hundreds of acres of agriculture land. One of the most unexpected was the Minister’s brother. He too had come in to check me. Damn! Seemed like my relative was announcing “Ladies and Gentleman. Here I present to you Antariksh.The eligible bachelor. Please have a look at the exibit. He shall be answering all the questions you ask about his family and himself. Please start one by one. I shall make arrangements for the proper movement of the exibit within the hall. Please keep 2 seats vacant near you.”

And so the day of interviewing started. It was all one sided. I didn’t even get the chance to see the girl nor the chance to know anything about the firl. It was like just answer the one line questions and move further. Meet all the people in the hall and say hello. Damn! I think I felt how it feels for a girl to be interviewed. How the people ask girl, “Beta, tum kya karte ho, kaha rehte ho, papa kya karte hai, kitna kamate ho, papa ka number kya hai” hey raam!! Bas aur kitna jhelenge dost… Jhelna to padega. Shaadi jo karni hai naa yaar.

All this was totally unexpected for me. Had gone to attend some serious stuff and came out with something unexpected and customary things.

Yeah yeah, have to get married. But is this the right age to get married? I feel like I am still a kid. Or is it the goose bumps? Who knows? I? No dude, I too don’t know whether I am ready for getting married so early. Look I am still 24. Yeah yeah I knoaw I have been working from past two years and have been earning good, but still I haven’t seen the other enjoyments of life. What enjoyments am I talking about? I don’t know, this is the standard answer what everyone says when not interested in getting married. Ok what about financial health? What you still don’t buy this argument? Hey I hardly end up with some amount at the end of the month in my account. It’s a different story that I invest the amount instead of keeping it idle, but still I am not left with any amount to spend.

Ok, there is one theory of mine which will help me get married in about 2-3 years down the lane instead of getting culled immediately. All the things in my favour are the things and the rituals made by our ancestors. Our ancestors have said that for getting married the boy’s and the girl’s kundali must match. Matching the kundalis is the job of parents. Getting a matched kundali takes time of around 6-9 months. Once matched and once a girl is selected, it comes down to me. I will get to see the selected girl after around 1 year. The control is shifted to mua. Ha ha ha. I have to then select the girl amongst the parent selected girls. So till now I have already spent around 1- 1.5 years.

But once I select the girl the control moves to the pandit. He tells the appropriate time when the wedding take place. Also the hindu calendar has a say in deciding the time of wedding. Actually there is a period of 6 months which is not the wedding season. So he selects the appropriate time for the marriage and the dates generally are after 6 – 7 months. And finally the D day arrives after 2 – 2.25 years from now. So I am happy to attain an age of 26 or 27 years and then get married.

Disclaimer: It’s completely my theory of what the timelines may be taken. But it’s comic and a bit realistic too. So hope for the best.

Pre-Quel to ‘The Day Of Meetings’

There is one discovery i made today.Hello Freinds i am now going to publish the more of the exciting stuff happened in my life. The all "First Timers" of my life.



3rd September: I reach ratlam from bombay. Its a place of our relatives. A small city of good people who just wanna satiate their taste buds with all the yummy dishes both veg and non-veg and both sweet and salty. The city where you will have "Sweet Kanda Pohe", "Sweet Samose" ,"Sweet Kachori", and everything has little sugar added to it. Its a a town situated near to Gujrat border and many people do come in for buisness and the major food stall vendors and Jain's. So they put sugar in everything. And their sweets are extra sweet. Ok , a cultural change.



In ratlam i saw some of the famous temples. The temples were very faaaaaarrr. Aroound 3-4 km from their house. The temples were indeed ald and famous. Only one temple was a relatively newer construction. It was built by a defunct company "Jain Vitamins Limited". The temple was really astonishing. The temple was built around 15 years ago, when the company was on the top and was earning heavy profits. Once the company started building the temple, the worker unions opposing it. They were demanding a less expenditure on the temple and better salary for the workers, even when the workers were earning the best in the market. Now the company has shifted and there is no industrialisation in ratlam. Well keeping the politics aside, the temple was an extraordinary example of craftmanship. It was really wonderful and beautiful. The temple had recently received a terror threat, so nobody could take in their cellphones. So i dont have the pictures of the temple. Its a group of temples. Shiv, Ram, Krishna, Ganpati, Hanuman and Durga temples. The architecture was really wonderful.


During this travel for seeing all the temples, my relative had to receive many calls. These many calls seemed to be a bit distracting and time consuming. But i thought that it was ok to attend the calls. Later in the evening he said to me that all those calls were for me. Those were the calls from parents of girls for me. They wanted my details. This was my first encounter with the interview process.

So my Relative was busy talking to the fathers of the prospective brides, and here I was feeling the heat – both on the outside in the sunny weather and inside as to what I need to do.

The day was filled with lots of festive food (The day being start of Ganesh Utsav - Ganesh Chaturthi), anxiety and ACIDITY. I had a terrible acidity with the food I had to take in. The food had lots of sweetness, lots of oil and lots of ghee. I may be sounding one of those extra calorie conscious psychopaths but I am not. I am one of those who eat a lot of these stuffs, but not to this extent of having acidity. It was really too much. It was the extreme. It all started in morning. In the morning I had to eat 2 plates full of “pohe” – the rice flakes. It’s the staple dish for breakfast in those parts of the country. Along with that I had to have 2 samosa and 2 kachori. Damn god, it was really too much. All this happened at around 11 am. And then when I hadn’t even digested my breakfast it was already time to have the lunch. Lunch had 2 sweets and dal, baati, churma. Lunch was served along with the side dishes too. Ohh god! Why did I make this rule for not leaving any food behind in the dish? It would had been a lot better if not for this rule. But anyways this was the start for the first time for “Days of Acidity”.

At night I slept tight and without any thought of what was coming ahead the next day. It was the silence before a storm.

The silence.

Interesting

Hello All,
I wish to write this blog as a general e-mail letter which i generally used to write. So the following format will be somewhat similar to that.
Actually i haven't written blog from last 2 weeks and was having the feeling of being negligent towards my very own blog. i had the sinking feeling of this odd deed i did.
Well from last week onwards i have been traveling and traveling a lot. i have been in 6 states of India already, had a plan for the seventh but as i was really too much tired my stamina for more traveling gave up. now i shall just return back home.

1St September: I started my travel from bangalore to mumbai. The purpose of the whole trip was to attend the death ceremony of my uncle. So i thought lets have a look at the friends on the way itself. So i started on and went ahead. Traveling to mumbai was starting phase of the very big travel. Bangalore had a wonderful weather to start with. It was raining in bangalore when i started. It was a wonderful weather. Train was at 3.25pm but i started from house at around 12.30 itself, for fears of water clogged roads or the more famous of bangalore traffic jams. (i did not wanted to miss this particular trip, and wanted a very good start for this one.) so i reached railway station well before time and then the railways came to rescue. The announcement was being made "Lokmanya tilak terminus express is running late by around 30 minutes". Gosh now i have to spend 2 hours on platform doing nothing.
But then i had to carry on with the boredom. And finally i heard those beautiful words, the train was approaching the. There was one thing i dread while traveling by train, and that is "Hijada's" (The third type of sex). I dunno why, but i get a weird feeling while they are around, and i always try to neglect them. And as luck shall provide it, these kinds of personalities were available at the station and were ready to board the same train as Me. Well then for the first time i didnt faced any problems from them during the journey so i felt good. Then the journey was good, except for the weather. I was sweating right from the time i left Bangalore boundaries. En-route to Mumbai, i had traveled in Andhra Pradesh also.
I had a wonderful company for my travel. They were so co-operative that they allowed me to finish reading my novel. They didnt even talked between themselves. Hats off to them. A Truly Wonderful Experience.

2nd September: Saving grace was the beautiful morning which was a damn good welcome for me. Took some pics of the beauty. The indian countryside. I had never seen the indian villages on my travel. I had seen them when i was a kid and then i had only seen the high trekking mountains and the beautiful valley. But this was more soothing. It was the place where our food is grown, its the place of life. Looking at the vast expanse of the fields, i felt a pinch of jealousy for not being able to be there. It right now is my dream to own a 50 acre of agriculture land and own a house in it. Give it to farmers for farming. I wanna have this thing.....

By Afternoon i was in the urban areas of Maharashtra. I was seeing all the dirt and the lethargy of the living. This was in stark difference to the nature i had seen in morning. By the time i had reached my final stop i was at the Kalyan station. Kalyan local station was just a passage ahead. I bought the local train ticket. It had a very good facility of a person shelling out the tickets using his smart card. I got down at CST i.e VT. From there my friend had come in to receive me. We then went on to Pizza Hut. I was damn hungry and also was bathing in my own sweat. Finally was able to get into the Air Conditioned room of Pizza Hut. With this experience i started becoming more appreciative of Bangalore Weather, or in short Bangalore. I was of the opinion for not settling down in bangalore due to the difference of languages, and the rising cost of living. But then weather was the breaking point of all the negativities.

My friend had already made the arrangements for my visit. I stayed at her house till evening and then i had to start for the next slab of my travel to the Dhaar. It was nice. She was amongst my "circle of trust". Details later. From there on i took a cab to the station of my boarding, the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus. I boarded the train and after half an hour it started. I had my dinner in the train. For the first time i had a good company to chat to. I had people who were willing to have some discussions and not sit like manequins. And then theres the end of the day.


Rest of the journey details shall be put up in the next blog. Keep reading.

Regards,
Antariksh.

My Trip

Hello Freinds in some days i shall be putting up the detailed report of my trip. I had taken a log break from my office. All the fun and the sorrows shall be listed out here. keep reading and commenting.

Regards,

Antariksh