BG & AG

While staying with Mujaheed Bhai at Rann Riders,Dassada during last months photo tour of Gujarat had a wonderful experience. There was a picnic trip of some local school which had come at the resort. As we set out for our afternoon safari one of the girls Fatima got curious of all the heavy equipment we were carrying and enquired what we plan to do. I told her we were planning to locate and shoot McQueen s Bustard. She gave us a typical look like we were some fools spending all the money and wasting time and energy and said why don't u google and u will get the wonderful shot of the bird captured by Dhritiman. It sounded so similar to projects I see Divyansh doing for his school. It takes him less than 10 min on projects (courtesy Google) that we completed in the whole summer vacation. I differentiate the generations now as BG and AG, Before Google and After Google. In history we will not have dates in BC and AD but BG and AG. Long live Google.

The Angry India

In few days we are going to celebrate our Independence. 64 years of Independent country. One of the worlds fastest growing economy. Tremendous wealth creation for its citizen. Some of the best entrepreneurs and corporates ( The world is least bothered if some senator calls Infosys Chop shop). Some of the world largest corporates now are headed by Indians. It will not be a surprise to see some Indian becoming head of state of the so called First world countries in the next few years.

Then why don't we have quality life? Why don't we have civic sense? Why do we believe in always breaking the law of state? Why are we sadist? Whether newspapers or television - all show ugly sad and bad news? Why don't we have happy news? We always try to sympathize and also create an atmosphere around us where people can sympathize.

Everyday we have incidences of people destroying public property. For every mundane thing happening , some buses are broken, trains set on fire etc.... Why this anger? Why the frustration? Is it because we are attached with the way things are? Or we identify with the pain and feel it ourselves? Or is it frustration of being ruled for donkeys years by Mughals, Britishers and now the politicians. What ever be the reason - we do not see and realise that its us who loose. We only hurt ourselves. I have never seen or heard anger make any positive impact on anyone. Have you? I think we feel that if we don't show anger and be dormant , the other guy will walk over . This is a myth. We should be assertive, positively assertive instead of angry. We don't see any solution by being angry. We only get un necessary victims. People get killed and public property destroyed. Our own property. The taxpayers money. Its a different story that only 4 billion of the 120 in this country pay taxes. How do we bring the change? Of the various means available and possible the simplest I believe is Media. I have been following Indian Idol on TV and was discussing with Dad last night when one of the participants danced and hug Amir Khan - how this "nobody" suddenly has become a known figure within few weeks and till this time he never even dreamt of seeing Amir Khan in person and today he was dancing with him. There are hundred such examples. Ramdevbaba and his yoga would have not gone beyond Haridwar without media. I feel if the media spreads positivity - things may change drastically. Lets not glorify the wrongs. Why does the Media not do something to help making the situation better? Trouble is it has become a compulsive complainer. If it just keeps complaining that means it is not prepared to actually do something about it.

Hey friends, lets do something to make this country a heaven that is now part of only grandma's story. Even that generation has forgotten it as a Sone ki chidiya. Lets be honest towards our country and its people. Jai Hind and Wish all a happy Independence day.

QSQT - Part 1

It was autumn of 1988 when "Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak :(QSQT) was released. This was Aamir Khans first movie. His heroin was Juhi Chawla. I believe this was the biggest block buster movie of my time. This movie can be voted amongst all time ten most romantic hindi movies. Its effect on us was like "Bobby" or "Kashmir ki Kali" might have had on that generation or " Dilwale Dulhaniya le jayenge " in todays time. Every young person in love would visualise himself as Raj the heroes character or Rashmi the heroin in the movie. All the engineering students were more closely associated with this movie because of the line in the first song of the movie - "papa kehte hain" which read as "Koi engineer ka kaam karega". This was a hugely popular song and was played at all functions, marriages etc. Those times there were no discos or pubs specially in a conservative middle class town of Nagpur. Even if there were any we simply could never afford with the amount of money in our possession. And also understand and visualize that it was a very conservative society at that point of time. Talking or moving with a girl was always seen as going steady with her. It was not like today when you could bring your female friends home to your parents. There were no mobile phones . There was no long distance direct dialing. The only communication I had with my family back home was through inland letters.My Dad gave couple of surprise visits to me and I would cover them in future blogs.

The Jaycees club of Orange City had organised a Diwali fete. These fetes were one of our major entertainments. Usually the entry would be free and there would be games, food stalls and music. I went to this fete with a gujarati girl - Amita. We had known each other when I was living at my uncles place during my high school days but had lost touch. Then I came again in touch with her during the Navratri Garba festival. We did go to these Garba dances together for couple of years. The song "papa kehte hain" was being played at the fete repeatedly. We danced a lot. Suddenly I felt some similar faces staring at us. I was shocked to see my Uncle, Aunt and their whole family keenly following us through the evening. In fact Uncle was the chief guest and had inaugurated the fete. It was one of the most embarrassing moments I had. I just stammered and introduced her to all my family. I felt like I had committed a big crime and was so shameful of myself that I just ran out of that place.

Sekhar was one of the most serious guys in our gang. A typical south Indian , he used to live with his parents in laxminagar area of the town. He was totally a teetotaller and non smoker. It was August when we had our first interaction with the new students in the first year. Rashmi had joined to do her graduation in Computer Science from Allahbad. Sekhar changed suddenly on seing and meeting her. He was badly and madly in love with Rashmi. All one sided. He would provide all help to this first year student with notes and books etc. All the best stuff from our batch mates. We always had a feeling at Naik Bunglow that Rashmi was using Sekhar for these notes. Sekhar used to dream all about her - 24 hrs. And then came Qayamat se Qayamat tak. Jushi Chwala's name in the movie was also Rashmi and Mr Sekhar went ballistic. He used to think that Juhi is his Rashmi and I might not be wrong but he must have seen the movie at least 50 times. He took me to the movie at least 4-5 times and would continuously narrate each action of the filmi Rashmi as how much similar they were to his Rashmi. Naik Bunglow was his place of solace everyday when he would describe his romance everyday over tea,samosa and Desai bidi.

Naik Bunglow

As we entered our third year in Engineering, we wanted to live outside the campus. Naik Bunglow came as a perfect accommodation. Naik Bunglow was owned by Sandeep's(guy in the center with blue Tees) uncle. They moved out of this place as they felt it was not an auspicious place to live. They had some deaths in the family after they moved to this place. Naik Bunglow was a huge property with garden and lawns on all sides. We were lucky to get this place to live. As a student you can just dream of these type of accomodation. And that too without any rental. So four of us moved in there - Pallav, Prashant and both the Sandeep's. Interesting fact about Sandeep and me is that not only we share the same name but date of birth and year also. So we were lucky in the way we could share expenses of birthday party. Sandeep and Prashant were local guys. Pallav was from Kota. We had three rooms and a bathroom. We set up one room as our bed room and another as our study room. The third room was our store cum kitchen etc. Technically though we were four but most of the time the whole gang used to spend time here. Our good friend - Mittal used to live a few blocks away and was President of the college students union. So he always had lot of visitors. Our place was a perfect place for all the gang to freak out as neither it was a hostel nor there were other people in the vicinity. So there were no restrictions & we had very eventful two years here. We had been host to some unimaginable events . I would like to introduce other members of our gang here - Gill, Raju, Shekhar, Phalke, Pinku, Tolani, Benerasi - who used to frequent this place regularly often staying overnight. Please note that all the characters mentioned here are not fictitious and presently well settled in their life. Any incident narrated here about them is one off that happened during college days. This blog is just a preface of the best two years of my life. I am sure you all will enjoy reading it.

ANNAKUT - Mountain of Food

Today we had Annakut celebrations at home. The whole community of friends and relatives eagerly wait for this puja at our home. Annakut is celebrated on the 1st day of Gujarati new year and also called Bestu Varsh. The day as per Hindu calender of the Vikram era is Kartik sud 1. As Hindu year comes to an end, families come together to celebrate one of the most sacred and important festivals, Diwali. Traditionally this time of the year also coincides with the completion of the harvest. Young and old join together to collect God's harvest of bountiful blessings. As an offering of gratitude to God for his blessings, the new harvest is first used to cook exquisite foods for the Lord. Since may be more than hundred years Annakut is celebrated at our home. We have almost 150 odd close friends over for Prayers and then to take prasad(meal). It is said the 56 delicacies are made but if I am not wrong almost 75 odd things are cooked and everything is home cooked. And all those who have enjoyed this delicacies over the years can vouch that all the food cooked is delicious and tasty. All the food cooked is placed before the God and a mound of cooked rice, symbolic of Mt. Govardhan, is placed in the center. Everybody then sings prayers and kirtan praying to God to accept them. This lasts for almost two hours and then this sanctified prasad(food) is eaten by all the devotees. The amount of work that goes into making all the food and then serving to everyone makes me wonder how God gives us all the energy to do this. By the end of the day every one is just plain tired like hell.

There are three different versions as to why we celebrate Annakut. The first story goes that on this day Lord Baman asked King Bali for three strides of Land and King Bali pleased Lord BamanBamanji gave him a boon that this day will be remembered as Balipratipadaa.
The second story goes that because this is when all harvesting is completed and all food grains are bought home people used to pray to Lord Indra - the God of rains for being kind to them and giving them enough rains during the monsoon because of which they had a good crop. God Krishna didn't appreciate the idea of praying to Lord Indra as he believed that this was because of men's hard work in the field and there was no need to please Lord Indra. Upset at this Lord Indra had flooded with rains Gokul to destroy it. God Krishna then lifted Mount Goverdhan on his smallest finger to protect everyone from the heavy rains. The underlying sentiment of this episode is that mundane factors such as house, wealth, mountain, trees or earth, in themselves do not have the power to protect us. Only the Lord Purushottam has the power to deliver us. Relative to His powers, that of the lesser deities pale into insignificance. Therefore it is better to accept 'sharnagati' (refuge) of the Lord Supreme and offer Him pujan. Over the ages, these sentiments have been consolidated by offering Govardhan puja. This is also known as 'Annakut', 'Anna' meaning food and 'kut', mountain.
The third story goes that this 1st day of the year represents the day of happiness and joy. Lord Ved Vyas tells King Yudhisthir 'O Yudhishthir, on this day of 'Padvo' (first day), the person who remains joyous will experience happiness throughout the year. The one who wastes it miserably, will experience misery during the year.'

What ever be the logic behind this but we in the family enjoy each moment of this and its really so heartening to see grand mom at 80 or Divyansh at 12 serving each and every guest with so much of respect and love the delicious prasad.

Well the night before we celebrated Diwali with great pomp. It was all festivities , lights and firecrackers. Minoo lead in decorating the home beautifully and she has matured so much over the years in taking care of our rich traditions that I feel proud of her. Some pictures of firecrackers and Diwali lighting and lamps can be seen at my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandeep40/.

Shortly I will upload couple of videos on youtube and send the link for you to enjoy with us in our happy moments.