Christmas and New year is arriving and it is that time of the year when gift sales are at peak. Here are some gift ideas what millennials expect from you
Paid app for smartphone/tablet
In-app purchases for Apps
Smart watch/ band
Body composition scales
Bicycle GPS computer
Heart rate monitors
Gym membership
Diving camera
Keep fun aside, these are not what millennials are expecting from us. What they truly desire or must desire is
It is raining at my hometown and one more night of rain will bring water into my house. As I was wondering whether it will rain tonight, my thoughts drifted back in time. Not so long, till 90 days back, we were facing acute water shortage. We bathed, washed clothes and did many things only once in a week. Such was the crisis for water. You have to take leave to office for arranging bare minimum water required for household purposes. Everyday I would dream of rain. I could not bicycle in those three months. We barely ventured out of air conditioned rooms. Even the drain water from air conditioners were caught in vessels and used for toiletry purposes.
Food is among the top basic necessities and water tops food. And finally when it rained all were happy. We even bicycled in the rains to celebrate our joy of seeing water finally. Ponds and lakes are not yet full but the incoming quantum is good. Hoping we will not have water scarcity in 2020.
Those 90 days without water taught us a good lesson. I request all those reading this blog to use water sensibly. I don’t even consume water unnecessarily other than for drinking purposes.
It is our responsibility to provide a better future for the upcoming generations. I request all not to learn about this the hard way. Let us all conserve water and plant more trees to avert this in the future.
During my tenth grade there was a lesson titled same as title of this blog. At that age I wondered, why did such a lesson was part of syllabus. Now I truly agree “water is the elixir of life”
If you have visited temples in india you can easily find most of them are located in remote hills or in a forest. Recent constructions dont qualify for this. Why was a temple built at the top of the hill where nothing is available or in remote places. you can easily argue that remote places have become remote over time But why most of them on hill tops? May be hill tops are cooler or it can be easily identified from a distance. Did it serve as a resting place during journey? or some identification point among a cluster of hills. The answer is upto ones own imagination.
People in the past be it any civilization, they traveled a lot. They built a home wherever they went. Home was not a place to live. How was a place for people who retire from traveling. even people who retired traveled once in a while and they called it pilgrimage. Over time it became a habit of going regularly and few lazy people constructed temples near to their homes and the habit continued and reached to a point where there is a temple in every street in south india.
For every imagination of human mind a god was invented and the process is accelerating at such a pace, history will surely be rewritten entirely erroneous, like i am deviating from the topic i have chosen for this blog. Now let us go for the topic.
Views on the way uphill to the temple. Do you want to miss this?
It was in 2011, i heard through one of my friends about the vaishno devi temple in jammu, India. To reach the place you have to hike a 13 km trail on foot. Only mode of transport availble then was horse or a helicopter. And i was 29 years old and had never been in a plane then. I joined my friend for the trip and plan was made.
A week before the trip we got the news that our executive director is going to visit our office. I know if i ask for leave, i will be asked to postpone. I decided to go without asking for permission. The flight was at evening 6 ‘o’ clock. so i thought i could attend my office and then slip away early in the evening without anybody noticing. But the meeting in a corporate world would extend late as usual. I did not enter the hall, and i escaped for my adeventure. I feel what i did was right even now.
We started from mangalore and reached delhi. stayed at delhi for the night and the next day reached jammu by morning flight. From there we reached katra by cab. We rested for an hour. By now i was totally relaxed.
We embarked on our journey and i was really over excited. The 13 kilometre uphill trail was awesome. People of all age group were walking. I could see from the clothing that both rich and poor, traditional and modern, men and women, boys and girls, kids, elderly people, all going in one direction. I really liked the place, climate, purpose and all stories. The feeling was unexpressable. It felt nice to be there, not a moment i thought about work place.
My friend was narrating the story of vaishno devi. The hilltop was the place where she hid inside a cave and did penance. On attaining the power, she killed the bhairava and later when asked for forgiveness, she forgave him and blessed him. The place where his head fell is also worshipped. The physically fit does not feel any difficulty on reaching the top and other take rest often. People go there round the clock and there was crowd even in mid night. Anybody must surely experince it atleast once in a lifetime to understand it.
Temple barely visible from bottom of the hill
You need not believe in the stories, but you will surely feel better because of the atmosphere. I wrote this blog in just under fifteen minutes. The memories are still afresh. A pilgrimage or hiking or trekking or both together- I am not able to tell. It is upto you to decide. If you have read “Aleph” by ‘paulo coelho’ you can empathise that.
Most of the temples are in hill top in india and it is definitely worth the trek to reach top.
Many in India doesn’t know about this hill station called patnitop. If you had asked me six years ago where is patnitop, I would have blinked. At that time I have never been in a plane. Me and my friend planned for a trip to Jammu and Amritsar. We have planned a hectic trip and yet we have completed the itinerary in less than 3 days. We had one evening and one night left, so we enquired with the driver. The driver was an enthusiastic person, who likes travel like us, and offered to take us to this place. We gladly agreed without knowing anything about the place.
Patnitop is a lesser known hill station in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. Need I tell more about the beauty of a place which is adjoining the famous Kashmir. We were traveling in the national highway number one. The road was not that good and not bad except for he few landslides taking place and getting cleared right in front of our eyes.
landslide in NH-1landslide in NH-1landslide in NH-1
Our driver assured us that landslides have become part of their life and at times it takes whole day or two to pass through the highway to reach the capital of Jammu. Fortunately for us patnitop is only four hours drive from Katra. There were numerous monkeys on the way and birds singing, indicating that humans have not spoilt the area much. The weather was warm, or so we thought during the journey. We started the journey around 4:00 in the evening and reached 9:00 in the night.
Our distant relative
Local people were rearing their cattle freely. The cattle too seemed happy for plenty of green grass to graze.
cow grazing atop the hillearly sun rays
We stayed right on the hilltop area and found a suitable hotel to stay for the night. The temperature was so cold outside and as well as inside that could be felt even when an electric heater is on. We are to depart the very next day in the morning at 7:00 am. Will we be able to see anything at all? We woke up at 4:00 in the morning and got ready to go outside. It wasn’t dark and the first sun rise hit the hotel around 4:45 am. We could see pine trees all around, green grass, and some horses loitering there. These are used for transportation by local people and for tourism.
The flowers were very vibrant and colourful and i decided to capture them in my lens.
flowers of patnitopflowers of patnitopflowers of patnitopflowers of patnitopflowers of patnitopflowers of patnitopwhite leaved treehorses in patnitopArray of pine treesearly sun rays
We spent until 7:00 am as planned and then departed for our return journey. Even during the return we were busy taking photos at many spots. We just went, slept and came back- this is not what is to be told. All those precious moments there mattered to us. It was a terrific getaway from our daily routine corporate job. We needed those moments. I cherish those moments. I thank from the bottom of my heart to the driver who has introduced me to such a place. He was a Kashmiri guy. I have felt the hospitality of people of Kashmir. They are warm and nice people. Hope terrorism dies sooner than later. I am still dreaming of living in such moments although I have had many such.
It is those journeys that make me repeat always “sometimes journey is more beautiful than the destination”
I am on an official visit to hyderabad, India. Sitting inside the guest house and rewinding my travel memoirs, 8 years of traveling and yet still going, juggling between my job and free time to travel, This job has taken me to places where i would have not landed, even if i had plenty of money. On the other side, This job has not allowed me to travel when i want to(see my earlier post).
180 kilometres from Hyderabad, there is a place named raichur, which was once a great place and today known only for the thermal power station.The old fort at raichur was used as jail and then converted to library and office and so on and on. The place has literally nothing to do or so i thought,like everybody thinks the place to be. This place inspired me to travel as hard i can. I started overnight journeys on saturday night, sight seeing on sunday and then return overnight back to work on mondays.
I started pursuing my old dropped hobby-Bird watching, from this so called nothing to do place. I practised photography targeting the winged visitors to the river krishna, which was barely 1 kilometre away from my room.
From raichur i visited bijapur , goa , dandeli , mahabaleshwar , mysore , bhopal , bangalore, haridwar and rishikesh, delhi, mantralayam, dandeli, belum caves, yaganti temple, hampi, tunghabadra park, and hyderabad.
Always look around you with your inner eyes open. You can see lot more than what you perceive. And now after 6 years i finally realised, from this nothing to do place(raichur), The grass on the other side always looks greener.
If you ask me ‘Will you go back to raichur?’, my answer is ‘no’ even now because, I have realised, from here, ‘The grass on the other side will always looks greener’.
Its three weeks since i left indonesia and i’m facing challenging times here back home. I am not afraid of the problems but i do not know the solutions to them. Living with the problems is much worse but the only way out is to slowly dimish the magnitude of the problem continuosly till its magnitude becomes zero and come out. I listed out the challenges so that i can find some consolation and better ways to resolve them.
My mom is suffering from hallucination which is beyond her reach to understand. – I am able to counter this if i spend time with her but unfortunately i am in a day job. Yet to find a permanent solution.
I cannot travel now – Just migrated to home country, i have to setup a lot of things, basicaly home itself. I love traveling and cannot travel for few months. It is temporary but anxiety builds up and disturbs peace of mind.
Insufficient and insecure space at home – This may seem a silly problem but is not. My own kin and kith are looting from my home, exploiting my mothers condition. So i cannot keep anything in the open. Even my laptop went missing from home.
Time for exercise – Firstly as i have to spend more time with mom, she feeds me more food affectionately which i cannot refuse. Secondly i left my bicycle at indonesia.
My job – I am a multi passionate person. So not allocating time for my passions stirs my heart continuously. My day job wastes most of my precious time. I can easily find another job but i think i must go the enterpreneurial way. again mom’s situation holds me back.
So each problem resonates and magnifies the other. I iknow i can overcome them but i want to overcome them at the earliest so that i can resume living my dreams. I have already fulfilled many. Life is not an one-time-experience of joy and sorrow but a continuous experiential thing to be lived.
People who only exist in this world will not even consider these as problems because they dont live, they cannot empathise with people who live life. So many people around me only exist thats why i am not able to share or explain to them.
And many people are single passioned or does not have any passion at all and i am multi-passioned and so not able to spend sufficient time for my passions.
I dont like to get a loan. May be it is time to change my philosophy.
Hope these challenging times soon fade away like autumn leaves and bring the best in me.
Gone are the days when i used to go only near shallow end of the pool, afraid to venture into the deep end of pool. After months of practising alone , I feel confident to practice in the deep end.
This photo collage reminded me, I was once a active bird watcher. My job eats most of my time and i could not pursue my hobby. Can we not live free like these birds , fighting for daily bread and enjoying their life(atlas from my perspective). Freedom is powerful choice exercised out of own self will and time and again we humans chain ourselves to the cubicle and cry for freedom. These photos were taken during my stay at raichur, India on my first posting.
How did i manage to spend so many hours waiting for these birds to come into my lens? Was i so much patient then and now fooling myself to be busy? Only quantified self analysis revealed the truth. Thats why i like quantified self so much. It saved me from beating myself. It gave great insights about my life. I have changed from one hobby to another depending on circumstances and this is a positive move , a right step in right direction. The greatest discovery of the century is that human beings can change their lives by changing their attitudes.
I am only doing what best i can do in the present circumstances and therefore i need not feel for missing bird watching as a hobby. When things fall in place, can be right back. Keep going…
