Woh Pune ki barish..!!

    Once I heard somebody saying about pune on an FM channel. "Ye pune ki baarish, ye November ki tandi, ye summer ka garmi aur ye traffic ki lambi line". I really liked her description of her Pune. I have lived in pune and in the suburbs of pune more than four years.I came to pune with the dream of a career in automotive design.
   Just like my dream it used to  rain heavily at pune, if I could remember every day. I used to go to the academy on our motorbikes along with my room mates. Even with the thick layer of water proofing that we do with rain-coats it wet us some way or the other. We ( Chandu, Dev, Ameen & myself) used to stay at Ameen's cousins house at Dhayari area on the Singhgad Road at pune. The apartments where we stayed are located on top of Dhayari hills and got a big town ship up there. It is very scenic there and Ameen ended up buying an apartment for him there itself years later. 

    During our college days I used to be the last one to wake up in the morning but I don't remember getting late because of my extra sleep..! We put on our academy uniforms and go to the small resto near to the apartment for the morning breakfast. There the talkative daughter of the resto aunty serve us garam "Pohe" and tea. She was indeed was very talkative and very active, running around all the time. As we sit there and sip tea and light a cigarette before we start our epic 12kms journey to the academy, the adjacent shop's owner come for opening her shop for the day. She used to be very beautiful, especially in the mornings with her untied locks after the morning bath..!. After all these morning quick, routine fun sessions we set out on our trustworthy two wheelers. If I could remember only once Dev's bikes foot rest broke away in a mid turn on our way to "Khandala" and we almost flew off the cliff.! Chandu and Dev got their bikes from home for our conveyance. Our academy was on top of another hill in the heart of city. So we travel from one hill to another every morning and evening. The daily dose of "gyan" was not that
easy to digest. So we try to make it up in the lunch time and have a sumptuous meal in the canteen. After the days study we find ourselves on top of our bikes again heading towards our "residential" hill. More than tackling traffic it was difficult to tackle the traffic police men of pune who is all set to get that "extra" for finding a vehicle with a different state registration. We poor guys coming from south of India obviously used to have our vehicle registered on south Indian states. So it was a tough time escaping their greedy radar.Once I ended up paying too. As we pass through our usual route I notice familiar faces by the road whom I have been seeing at the same  place on our daily trips to academy. We also had our dose of falling off the bikes too. I did my first "launch" on Dev's bike and ended up breaking the instrument panel of his bike. Chandu also couldn't solve the puzzle of traffic one day and fell off his bike.

    I found terrain of pune very similar to my home town Trivandrum. "Khandala" the popular destination of local tourists did'nt got me in awe as I am used with a similar terrain. But we did make a trip to Khandala on our bikes. The 60kms jounery on Dev's Bajaj Boxer saw the limits of my spinal-chord which is usually very durable. The place we used to visit the maximum was "khadakvasala dam" . The reason being its awesome place and just 4kms from our apartment. Its on the way to "Singhgad Fort". We made some three or four attempts to go till the fort all the way up the hill. But the winding roads up hill tested our patience and we ended up sitting in between some bushes and finished our stock of booze and return back. But I did went up the hill once but that was with my wife Anjaly almost three years later.!.  
       Stay at pune was my first real experience of living of my own, even though I used to stay away from home during my grad-college also. Though I enjoyed a lot but the tension of getting a job after the course was always there since I was on bank loan for my studies taken on my name . But eventually everything fell in places and I managed a job in an vehicle OEM in the suburbs of Pune. The later stay was spent riding my bike to and from pune city every weekly off. That drive was in deed another epic one. May be I can write about it also :)
       

Onam..and some memories ..

Onam is a festival unique to Keralites & all mallus. Its celebrated irrespective of all religions, cast & creed. I think there should be very distinctive feel about it to everyone who grew up in Kerala for Onam. Its not celebrated for the worship on Gods, nor for any spiritual leaders nor for some historic day. Its just celebrated for the good old memories..!! Some memories of good old days which is said to have existed years back about the amity people shared each other. Memories of color, smell of paddy fields, whispers of blessings tender touch of grandmas.

I don't know if I really believe the history I've been told about this festival since by childhood when I was growing up in Kerala. But for me it was a nostalgic story which I always wanted to hear back to back, different versions of it every year. I always loved the story of that noble king. :). Apart from the school holidays Onam offered, the real fun part was visit to my parents place - 'Kilimanoor" some 40kms away from  'Trivandrum". We go fishing in the small canals by the paddy fields using bathing towels, then drop them in the drinking water tanks...!. We pluck mangoes and it doesn't mattered whether its good to eat or not but the best thing was getting mangoes from the tall trees. Playing games with cousins was never been so much fun. We drank water from the wells, we had grant feast on plantain leaves everyday from my "ammooma" (grandma),  we played in the paddy fields, we slept on cemented floors over a mat. Not even a moment I thought about a world other than that.

Every day when I see the morning sun I used to realize, its one day short from leaving there. I never wanted to leave that place. I sit on the stone paved steps and see the sun getting ready for the day and as my cousins wake up I just forget everything all over again. Finally the day comes when we all say good bye. The journey back home on the state transport bus I hated the most. As the bus laps in on the winding road I pass my time counting vehicles coming against us...finally one more vacation  is over and back to school..I hated schools..:))

My akku

Now as one more Onam is round the corner, I have planned something similar.  I am going home for a 9day holidays. I hope I can recall some of those lost memories..For sure my kid's around now..:))
 Happy Onam to all..!!!

First Day

I just couldn't believe myself  that I am waking up at 7 in the morning and getting ready for the office. I gathered  some lost strength after yesterdays surprise fever and dragged myself into the bathroom. Somehow I took bath and had some juice. It was almost 7.45 and I got out of my room only to find that all damn rooms and floors are so identical that I completely found myself lost standing before my room. I just cant remember which room Mr Nagappan, my colleague is staying. He promised me to come along with to show the way to Nissan Tech Centre being the first day. I went two floors up and down two three times and was so drained out of energy that I came down to the launch and sat there wondering "what the hell man". But my good colleague came back for me as they have already left for the train station and couldnt find me at the station.

      It was raining a little that day, I stepped out of the dorm to find some of the others who came the day before along with me. I could read some frustrations on there faces as they also had come back looking for me along with Nagappan. We are at a small town named Atsugi in the Kangawa prefecture which is around 50kms from Tokyo city. Nagappan was explaining everything from taking tkts from vending m/c to boarding "trains"..!. I switched my brain off and blindly did what ever he did.. I was picked up at NTC by my team lead Mr Siva and took me to the advanced tech centre -NATC.
    My office building looked like an abstract painting, but highly functional. Total of 7 floors and escalators till the third floor. From the third floor if we look up rest of the floors were visible like balconies in a theater. I walked along with my colleague and he showed me my seat. Later I went along with Siva for my first "morning meeting" where I was told to introduce myself. There was this 15 Japanese guys looking at me waiting for me to speak. I never addressed a 15 member gathering that too complete foreign nationals..! I some how picked up some words like mmm, euhhhh, errrr and in between I filled up using  "India" "Renault - Nissan" " first time outside India" . I felt like I was begging sorry for being here..and I dont know why I felt like that..! They all wanted to know my age and when I told I will be 30 next June they already made me 30 and compared with their colleague (of-course now my friend and colleague) Nakamoto-san who also has turned 30 and is getting married soon and laughed out loud. I thought I would have told I am 29 and not 30yet..!!. They day went off  with out much events and I got back to my dorm and had half cooked noodles and slept off....zzzzz

Days in Japan. (The arrival ! )

When I first boarded the flight to Japan I never thought even in my wildest dreams a return like this. When I write this I'm still in Japan and waiting for my flight back to India. The land of rising sun has already gone into a comma after the earthquake on 11/03/11. Since then disasters struck this land back to back in the form of tsunami & the Fukushima Nuke plant explosion and the radiation fears following that. 
    Coming to Japan, the tech savvy, anim crave nation has been an opportunity of a life time. The first day I arrived at japan I got a nasty fever and checked my bags at airport to find that I got everything except Crocin, damn we miss the one thing we need the most in most of the travels, I just realized it again. I somehow managed to crawl into on of the seats of my bus  to dormitory and passed out..!. In between the travel through the strained opened eye lids I saw skyscrapers and neon lit places going by. In the dormitory I somehow managed to open my baggage to find a packet of noodles and had it half cooked and slept off.


Days in Japan to be continued....!!! :)

Reading faces

I left office for my flight from Chennai airport. Mind as usual have been in a roller-coaster. Leaving
Japan yesterday & coming to office directly, a little bit of jet-lag, a bit of missing Japan, a
much of await in seeing my wifey, little one & my parents and some random emotions which I can
never explain.
    My mind know no boundary when I sit in sub urban trains.Its like letting the dog go free
in a park. It just wander itself and make some wildest possible thoughts & sometime I need to
intervene to get it back...!! Something It usually do is reading people faces which I see along
my travel. They tell a lot of story, I think about them, I walk a little with them. I keep
reading faces of vendors selling peanuts and fruits, college girls chit chating,
crying babies, people talking on phone, pensive eyes.

    This time my eyes locked on an old couple. Seems like they are in their 70s.
The man was partially paralyzed and need a helping hand to find his balance in the moving train.
The woman with him,may be his wife is definitely his help. The mans face was emotion less and
his pale dark eyes have seen it all, A silhouette of peace & satisfaction was there on his face.
Sure he is not among a middle class earning group, he wore a 'veshti'  and off white shirt.
He doesn't seems to have much to expect from his life but yet he seems to be well conceived
of his earnings. I thought about the exotic things I'm fond of in my life and how uncomfortable
I become in not getting them. I keep saving my money to get them one by one. May be its a car,
home theater or whatever. I felt like its of no meaning nor no value at all by a just look in
his eyes. .Some eternal vibe was there around his face. I even felt like " is he giving me a
grim smile"..no its just the way his face is. His eyes just made me think when you are through
your major time of your life, will I be happy in looking back what I've earned through my life.

Food for soul

Well its all about satisfying the soul. A human soul which craves for something else, something different than what it thought will put off its hunger. Its taste keep changing with the age. My soul have reached its age to think "am I really feeding myself". Well literally I'm, I keep myself busy with my regular work which turned out to be highly technical job. Well I thought I was more than happy with it- high profile job, pays well etc. But at times I found that the job which I does doesn't come naturally to me. My soul craves for some emotions to play with, some vivid color to paint its dreams, some tender lines to describe its thoughts.

So much blues in the first post..!! I m just looking for some platform to vent out my creative soul. My be I can  find some " Food for my soul" in the form of articles, photography, sketches or any form of artistic value. Hope I can find some souls out their of same genre.

Thanks for reading..:)..Hope I will keep it more "yellowish" next time..just started..just a little spill out,,