Learn to Earn

"Sir, I actually wanted to tell you one thing.....". On the way to our building inside the office campus, I came across this Fresher girl who had just joined our project. A few days back I had delivered a formal session related to project and software testing concepts to her and 2 more people. "Your session was really very good..". No need to mention that I was happy to hear that but I went ahead and asked her some more question  as I wanted to know my plus points and minus points.  "Why because...... Actually after we left university, we didn't listen such kind of session.... the Company training also was also not so good... they just focussed on completing the syllabus stuff..... so after a long gap we got to hear a session in which the concepts were explained so clearly... ".

I am not trying to boast about myself here(well not intentionally :P). All i wanted to point out was about the education system in place in our society today. Lack of good teachers is cause of worry for a long time now. Parents in Cities trying their best to get their children admitted to premier schools is common sight. In the name of providing good education, the way these so called premier schools charge the fees is also well known. What is the impact of all these? Quality education becomes a luxury that can be afforded only by Uber Rich class. Providing education to children becomes as expensive and as stressful as getting a house constructed on loan. Professional courses have already become super expensive. No doubt about that. What I'm talking about is the elementary school education.

The other day i was reading a article in a newspaper (or Mag i dont remember clearly). The author had presented a really nice solution for this potential-bomb. There is no other service or job in our country which is respected the way Civil services is respected. So why not have something called ITS - Indian Teaching service? Such that bright people don't loose the opportunity to achieve their dream career of getting into Civil services and also can contribute to the teaching fraternity. It may be difficult to do it at UPSC level taking into consideration the sheer number involved. But definitely it can be achieved by the state level public services (with a little bit of effort).

The Govt hardly cares about the root cause of any problem. It is only interested about the symptoms. There is this Food Security Bill in pipeline, waiting for parliament approval , which assures food grains for all BPL families at magical rates. There is a symptom prevailing in the society - malnutrition. Any 7th grade student will tell you that this symptom's root cause is illiteracy. But the govt and the people are interested only in quick-fix for the symptom. Nobody gives a damn to the root cause. What this Food Bill will do? Create some more burden on already strained coffers of the state. This inturn will be passed on to the tax-paying middle class people whose disposable income gets further shrinked, making it further difficult to afford the basic things. Finally it boils down to this - drag on GDP. The financial matter of this ill-concieved bill can be discussed with finer details. But that is not the point i want to talk about here. I just wanted to present the picture of what is happening at macro level .

During the recently concluded 93rd convocation ceremony of Mysore University, the Union Education minister gave a statement that it is impossible to make education available to everyone! It took considerable amount of effort on my part to fight back the anger that raged inside me when i read it in the newspaper. People with responsibility are giving as absurd statement as this instead of concentrating on putting some effort in the positive direction. There was this one more stupid Bill that was cleared a couple of years back by our parliament - RTE Bill. The Right to Education. The supreme court had to poke the govt to get it implemented after it was passed (somebody had filed a PIL showing the lack of interest on the part of govt to oversee the implementation of the bill). But alas, this was again a quick-fix for the symptom that was growing. Lack of enough schools is glaringly visible for everyone out there. But the Govt forced the(existing) schools (itself) to induct min % of students from BPL families. This in turn pushed the fee for the available seats (to others) further skywards. What did the schools do? They sold these reserved seats to rich-class people for exorbiant rates by fudging the records. A part of this money also went into the pockets of the BPL family which had applied for that seat!

The only Asset that our country has in abundant is Human Resource. The onus is on us to elect a responsible govt, or to do something effective such that the country's economy improves in a way that this HR asset's Capability can be tapped positively. Stagnant Economy has little to offer for the Educated youth. If Providing good Education is one half of the job then ensuring the growth of Economy is another half. Hope we see a sea of change in coming years which can make these two things happen.

The Q mentality

Wow, the first post of this year. Had completely forgotten that i had not posted even one blog this year. And what made me to post this? The same old too cliché topic, problems that our country face.

I was waiting in the gas station to get the tyre pressure checked. It is quite common to see that two-wheelers want to get their bike's tyre pressure checked first whenever there are 4 wheelers waiting in the queue. "Our's just two tyres ree.... your's 4 tyres... what??? "people would grumble when the car owner insists on following FCFS (first come first serve) rule. A typical indian would get "adjusted" to these sort of things after experiencing it for one or two times. So is the case with me. I didnt protest when a couple of 2-wheelers jumped the queue, overtook my car and insisted on getting their vehicles attended before the cars -including mine - standing in the queue.

So after attending to 2 - 3 such q-jumpers, the guy was about to attend to my car when out of blue a biker came from nowhere. It was quite natural for any normal-sane guy to tell point blank that the car deserved the turn since it was waiting for quite long time and the same the station guy also did. He then requested the biker to move ahead a bit so that the car can come in front and stand within the length of the air-pressure pipe. This infuriated the biker like anything who took it as an insult. He sped off from the place after shouting at the guy his heart content. I was amused.

I was reading a book called "Jack patel's Dubai dreams". The book started with the writer, a NRI, saying that if there is one thing he hates most about india, it is the lack of ethics in following queue rules which is contrasting to how it is in UK. I first attributed it to the population explosion. But slowly i learnt it is not the only reason. Recently there was a record breaking longest traffic jam in China outsied Beijing. The traffic had piled upto 300Km in length. But surprisingly, not a single soul tried to jump the lane or resorted to any dirty-shortcuts to come out of the jam. The traffic was held up in that situation for quite a few days!!

Compare this with our fellow drivers on Indian roads. Recently I was driving in Indiranagar 100 Ft road and had stopped in one traffic signal at a junction where 4 road meet. When the signal turned green, i tried to go straight. Suddenly a Car which was on Left lane, suddenly took a steep right turn with great speed. I applied the brakes hardly and was too taken aback to even react at that stupid car driver.

It is not limited to roads alone. People resort to dirty-tricks in any q that you see in any corner of the country. If someone asks me what is the one thing that you think is common among the people of entire India, i will say the mentality that we all have w.r.t  q-jumping-tricks. Be it temples, ticket counters in cinema halls etc. People want to break the rules with unique dirty tricks. I think they derive the joy out of it. When a person gets the task done before those who were standing in the line for more length of time than him, he feels great about himself. He is now owner of a great success story involving himself which he treasures and shares with his friends, family and even with unknown people if required. "Dukh bantne se kam hoti hai aur khushiyan bantne se badthi hai... " Paresh Rawal says in the epic movie "hera pheri". So this chap who defeated others in the line, has to share his story of "Success" so that he can derive more joy. Whatever time he saved in his life by jumping the q line, he will invest that in going around the town talking about his success.

Off late, i feel that the educated people are resorting to this more than the so called illiterate/less-educated ones. Just a few days before I was standing in q to get the tickets for the movie "Kai Po Che" which was being screened in our office Multiplex. In that one hour i was standing in the q, I was witness to so many dirty-tricks being played by so many "Educated fellas" that it left me ashamed that such people are all the part of same company that I am also in. You should see the smile on their face when they succeed in their attempt to squeeze into the line. This in spite of the fact that there were nearly 10 security people deployed to manage the rush. Having the security people to manage us itself has to be a shame on our part. Do we really need them to help us remember the mannerisms and to remain honest in the q line??

Compare this with the q lines in front of Govt fair-price shops (which normally we call as society or ration shop) in smaller towns and villages. People follow such good mannerisms while in the q. When we were in Chickballapur, there was one such shop in front of our house. Once in a month, the kerosone oil would be distributed to the people. One should see the discipline that they follow in maintaining the Q. No security, no police to help them maintain the integrity of the line. The long serpentine q used to reach till the end of the long road. Still nobody dared to play any tricks. And like the cinema tickets, even the supply of oil used to be limited. Hardly half of the people in line would get their quota of the oil. Those who didnt get today, have to come tomorrow and stand in the q once again. And they used to come if required.

Tailpiece : I didnt start writing this post as the last and final part of my "Time, Technology and generation" series. But when i was done and was reviewing it once before posting, i felt it has got relation with the topic coincidently. With all the advancement in technology, we tend to get everything as fast as we could and end up trading the good manners and honesty in bargain i think. Recently while i was waiting for my turn in Aadhar enrollment q, i was witness to one more such incident where a mother of 2 children used child-sentiment to get turn ahead of others with emotional melodrama. This is where it starts i felt. Parents and teachers, who are supposed to teach  good principles in children, end up doing entirely opposite.

Time, Technology and... generation. Part 2

(continued from previous post.. )

 

"ye naye zamane ke ladke... " every generation bollywood movie has got this dialog. I used to think that 70's and older movies would not have this line. But a little bit of research helped me to derive the correct fact - the dialog has been the asset of the bolloywood for many a generation now. Like the ancestral property, the line has been inherited by all generations. So the theorem thus proves that every new generation gets deviated from the rules-of-good-book by certain degree. And every deviation of every new generation is aided by a new change that is remarkable in that generation - Movie, computer, internet, fashion, and the latest spoiler of current generation - the mobile phone and tablet pc. Every new generation deviating  got drifted away from the complex business of understanding the religion and its underlying fundamentals.

Lord Krishna says in Geeta “I provide the intelligence to human beings, how they use it is left to them”. Why go till Geeta, in the hit Hollywood movie “Bruce Almighty” Morgan Freeman says the same line. Technology has been developed by the humans with the intelligence they r gifted with. How do we use it is again dependent on us. Mobiles are used by teens for what not these days. But the same can be used to access social networking sites and share useful information. Recently I happened to watch the movie Oh My God and I instantly shared the good dialogs and scene pics of the movie. Many a people liked it.

The movie tried to expose the dirty affairs regarding the self-appointed religious heads (swamijis, christian fathers and maulvis) and showed how foolishly people are getting duped by them. Huge sum of money flows into their fold due to innocence (if it can be termed like that) of people.. There are a lot of rituals which many people follow in various religions. With the change in time, people started to ask questions behind these. Unavailability of people who could provide proper answers has made the younger gen loose faith in their respective religion. The movie OMG had an excellent message. If you don’t understand the rituals, fine. Instead of going behind the magic-making-self-appointed-swamijis and wasting crores of money, donate it to the people in need. Help the human kind (or at least that is what my conclusion was after watching it). Both the movie and the book have helped me a lot for answering so many questions that I myself had.

Thanks to the authors like Amish and Ashwin Sanghi who have made good attempts to decode the mythology and making it an interesting topic currently in the market. Amish's books gave out a message that "Gods are human beings, who became god due to their good virtue". Lord Krishna in udupi turned around in diametrically opposite direction, to give darshan to his famous devotee kanakadasa, thus creating the famous kanakana kindi (the window of kanaka) in the holy temple in udupi. Recently, i happened to listen to the pravachana that is read by purohit during satyanarayana vrata. In that, purohit explains as to why the vrata is so sacred. It seems Lord Narada asked some question to the Lord Vishnu(forgot the correct question) for which the lord replied that "for the sake of simplicity of the people of kaliyug, who are under delusion and always pressed for time and dedication for god, it is enough if they worship me by doing this higly simple vrata. No need for them to do any difficult yaga and homa as this vrata will be equivalent of all of them".  There is plenty of opportunities around us to feel the god and get answers for anything related to mythology. Only dedication is required i feel.


While Movies such as OMG might have helped us build the faith, there are some movies which might have acted in negative way although unintentionally.  The way the divine weapons (or rather magical weapons as one gets tempted to say) are shown in the war scenes of certain mythological movies have been matter of fun for many people. I too had this question as to how come there could be weapon of this kind in that era. But I was proved wrong. With every new Yuga, the knowledge of people goes down, opposite of what we thought. So these technology products such as Mobiles, computers and weapons of modern times are not greatest as we have believed. Just consider this – the fact that sushruta - the father of surgery, existed such long ago itself is the proof of great knowledge that the ancients had. There could have been so much of science knowledge present in those times that all the things which we read in mythology such as a person coming out alive from near-death situation, passing thru fires, building highly sophisticated palaces are not because they are connected to gods in some or other way. But due to the help of science! The fact that science was present during that time has been ignored and thus when we read such miracles without keeping the fact (of existence of science) at the back of our mind, either of two things happen i.e. we may either get forced to believe them without any logic since we believe in god or one may loose faith completely since we don’t find any logical base for that.

(To be continued... )

Time, technology and ...... generation - Part 1

And one more bday came and went. Lots of wishes, lots of calls. Good to talk to so many friends on the same day. I feel good that at least on this day, my mobile battery gets spent on the actual functionality for which the mobile was designed - call and text, rather than on listening to FM and music.

Looking back, i feel quite amused as to how we manage to survive without this electronic gadget. These days, it doesnt matter where a person is located? just dial his mobile number and talk to him. If there s not much to talk, just text him to convey the short message. Cities has grown, it is practically not possible to go and meet friends and relatives easily. Not that it was easy before, but the lifestyle too has changed now. I still remember my first year of engg. Mobile was just making its entry into indian market then and it was a expensive device. Even the incoming call was as expensive as 16/- per min. Only Airtel was offering the service then. I was staying in a room in mysore. Owner was in ground floor and our room was in 1st floor. My mother used to call to the land line number in owner's house and the maid used to shout from the window. I had to rush down, wait beside the phone sitting on a sofa till my mom called again.

Monsoon season is very tricky in mysore. One can hardly predict whether it will rain on that day looking at the sky. It would start raining all of a sudden and sometimes wont stop for hours together. One fine day, when me and my roomate went out for first time after joining the college in 1st sem, it started raining cats n dogs. We had to wade thru knee deep water thru the center of city to reach the city bus stand (majestic of mysore), catch the bus and reach our room. It was not too late and so i wasnt worried much after reaching our destination. Vignesh, my roomie, quickly rushed upstairs and i was following him when i heard the maid shout out my name from the window. I was dripping all over and certainly didnt quite feel like taking a call from home at this situation. I stood in front of door. As soon as she opened it, she started questionaire. Apparantely, my mom had called some 3-4 times in eve and was eager to know where i had been. Being still new guys, and that too jst out of teenage, there was certain amount of apprehension in owner's mind. So there was a huge burden on us to convince them that we are not smokers/drinkers or making-merry-on-dad's-money kind of guys. I told her that i will change and come back. After 20mins, when my mom called, i spoke to her and there wasnt even a small degree of worry in her voice since she knows me very well. Since it was the first time i went out, she wasnt quite used to know that "I can/need to go out". If only i had the mobile then there was no need for the maid to show off her attitude, nor i had to listen to her and answer her questionaire.

It was only in 3rd sem that i got my first mobile. It was a great relief for me as well as my roomie since we could talk to our family sitting in room itself. All we need to do was give a missed call to dad's mobile and within a couple of mins, the mobile would ring. It was definitely a great relief. As time progressed, more and more functionalites got added to the small hand held gadget. Now it is hard to see people sans their earphones plugged to their ears. Whether they listen to FM/Music all day long? I wonder. And for girls, there are only 3 things. Either they will be talking to companion (girl/boy) who are with them, talking on mobile or listen to FM if they r alone.

(To be continued.... )

Along the way

Recently, I completed reading the 3rd book of Ashwin sanghi - Krishna Key. The book was brilliant. Lot of research was being done by the author around the Krishna-Dwaraka-Shiva. But at some corner of my mind, I felt that it didn't match the brilliance of his earlier book - Chanakya's Chant. The way he had structured that story, creating the fictional version of Chanakya's story which ran parallel with a contemporary story set against the current affairs in politics, the charm was missing in his latest offering. I thought I might have not concentrated properly while reading it (there were just too many proofs for various beliefs related to mythology) and hence I felt so. But when I browsed the net, I got to know that many shared the same opinion as mine.

That made me to think about myself. I was introduced to the Writing-hobby when the Newsletter team in the project in which I was working in my 1st company invited articles or other contributions from the project people. I just wanted to give it a try and submitted a imaginary story which if you ask me even now, I feel there was nothing special in it. Well the rest was history and I think I have discussed already about this in another post. I was a hero overnight and this overwhelming reaction made me to take up blogging where I made a promise of writing regularly, just to break that promise later.

None of my contributions to the newsletter received any special reaction after the stupendous debut I had. People started stacking it up in their To-do list of the day, since they knew that there would be something in the article but definitely not "That something" so as to give it first priority in the day. No, I'm not saying that I felt let down or that I stopped blogging. None of them happened (well, blogging went on to become more and more less frequent). But I wanted to pour it out from my heart here and tell to myself that it is really so hard to be a writer, to win people's satisfaction, to churn out that-really-interesting-story regularly, to deliver something fresh and new each time. And when I see this feat being achieved by so many authors out there, I feel so great about them. I just sit and admire about their creative abilities after finishing the last page of that book written by them.

For a writer to get new ideas, he has to be in touch with people. People from different walks of life. The more we converse with people, the more broader our ideas get. The more fodder for our brain. Recently, I  felt that I wanted to be in a profession where I could meet lot of people on daily basis - a doctor, a Public servant etc. MY friend who was working with Marketing division of a very famous MNC used to share stories about the people who he used to meet from Govt dept. owing to his sales responsibility. There are other friends who being doctors, have to meet so many people, whether they like it or not. "The toughest assignment while doing M.S is when you are posted to govt hospitals. So many people die daily just because they cannot afford the treatment cost in pvt hospitals, where we ask them to move the patients due to non availability of facilities in the govt hosp".  I asked him how it felt. "Initially there was lot of agitation inside... the urge to hit someone, shout at someone..... do something... something to save them...... but gradually we started to admit that we are helpless..... " A pause and then we force the smiles on our face and switch the topic.

My mom is an ardent fan of Sudha Murthy (not sure if I have made a mention of this in my earlier blogs). She just loves them for one reason - practicality. No other novels are so close to reality - she tells me. There is a reason for that. Being part of the Infosys Foundation (charity trust), she has met Millions of people, both good and other side of good. And her books are nothing but the reflections of her experience with them. My personal favourites are - Mahashwetha (I just love it. Had tears in my eyes at several junctions while reading it), Gently falls Bakula.

To put it more broadly, meeting people will give inputs - inputs turn to idea. IF you are not a writer, the idea can be learning lesson. There you are. This is nothing but the basic theorem of life. Meet people, watch good movies & TV programs, read books - everything that gives input for us to handle the different challenges that the life throws at us. "If you don't do now itself what you want to do , you will repent after 20 years about it..." My friend told one day while having lunch in my favourite Fish restaurant one day. I was discussing with her my desire to learn how to ride a geared bike and to own one. But my parents were totally against it. Apart from the desire to learn it, I wanted to switch over to a geared bike from activa to save on my monthly fuel bill. "I think you have to go for it... millions of people ride bike.... if you think you can ride it safely and have self control, what is stopping you? " My friend concluded. There I was, being firm on my decision to buy a good economical and "Safe" bike, I conveyed it to my parents. Though there was a slight reluctance, my mom agreed looking at my confidence and not without giving a disk full of safety instructions.

There is definitely lot to discuss... But I don't want to bottle up whatever I've written so far and work on it later and make it a lengthy and boring to read. Instead I will divide it and would make it interesting to read. If my decision doesn't change, I will come back with part2 of this.....

"Buy this, or else.....

Every year the period from March to july (sometimes till august) is the best revenue period for Newspapers. This is the period when most of the competitive exams results will be out and the colleges will start giving ads in various newpapers to show "their" achievements.

Recently, i was attending a training. The trainer there made one excellent comment on the business tactics that the various industries survive upon. Not tactics, its just one single "Tactic" that they make use of. And what is that?"To sell something to a customer, prove to the customer that he is going to be a loser without that".

Take one simple example - fair and lovely ad. Always the company makes one (several aspiring models) to believe that they cant survive in fashion and related industries (media, news, entertainment channels, sport etc) if they are dark complexioned. If we go by their view, Kajol should not have entered bollywood. People who dont trust their own natural abilities and talents, fall prey to such misleading ad campaigns and start loosing their self confidence. The ad, if not anything else, makes one to think about a newly created problem (not being fair skinned) and the talented person drains his/her energy completely on that useless, stupid problem, instead of planning to move ahead towards the goal.

That was an example of how unfairly this fair n lovely co has been promoting their products (beware - recent studies has shown that these fairness products contain harmful chemicals like Mercury!! Please be very careful with such kind of shady cosmetics which claims to improve the shade of your skin). I fail to understand why people are so obsessed with changing somethings as skin color, nose shape, etc, which are god given and our personal identification characteristics.  ultimately, one fine day we all have to leave this body here and go back to pavillion from where we came. We will not carry this body nor whatever we have earned here. Why this obsession? Why cant we live in peace with what we have got naturally by the grace of god? Are we afraid of being a subject of gossip - "look at that curly haired guy..... see see, that girl thinks she is kajol or something......... look at that bulgy nosed girl..."? It is this fear that the cosmetic companies, the beauty parlours etc are using as their "tactics" to survive upon.

Lets get back to the point which i mentioned in first paragraph. Recently, while in mysore, i was reading a local newspaper. There was hardly any news in that except pages n pages of ads of various high school toppers in SSLC and PU toppers, put up by their respective schools and colleges. I failed to notice any difference between these institutions and the insurance companies ads that are coming these days. Both try to drive home the one single point - "Plan for future". While the insurance co shows how badly the situation gets at the time of any accidents or other health problems, if we dont have the insurance (a genuine way actually, but show some sensitiveness also), the educational institutions try to fool the parents and students that  if they are not studying in their institutions, they dont stand to get a chance to win the rat race - potential cause of worry in future. The child - even though talented and having god gifted iq, gets carried away by the ad and starts losing his/her confidence. Same goes with parents too.

Two movies made me to realise how vulnerable we are in the hands of this news channels - Rann (hindi), Aarakshan. Both Amitabh bachan movies. The former movie shows how the news channels, in their bid to be the top channel, twists and tweaks the truths and present it to viewers.  its this mad race for gaining the TRP's that the news channels are fogetting the ethics of the journalism profession and doing whatever it takes to be at the top.

Aarakshan shows how the coaching classes are thriving these days, due to the highly competitive entrance tests existing in our educational system today. As the ads show the photos of succesfull candidates in IIT, IAS exams etc. Parents start to panic - what if my child fails to make a place for itself in this space? Or to put it other way, and the most probable reason that haunts the most of the parents is - what if our neighbor's/relative's/colleague's child makes it to the top institute and my child fails to do the same? Fear drives out the confidence from the minds of both the parents and the students. Unless a student gets enrolled himself in Bansal coaching classes in Kota, he will not have a remote chances of making it into any of the 7 IITs. This self created fear consumes the most of the energy in the victims mind, making it to loose confidence in themselves ( A human mind has a something called as energy which drives one to achieve what it wants - to reach to a goal, to complete a work, to do something in general. It heavily depends on how a individual directs this energy to achieve the goal. This was explained in our traditional books as well as scientifically proved recently.  if required,  we can google and check more info on this).

Lets take a look at 80's and 90's - a period when the fourth estate - the news industry was not muddied by too many players. There was one DD1 on which we were dependent for the news and a Indian express newspaper (or a regional language newspaper) - which though expensive to afford, was the commonly used news paper. With the cost of ads at peak (due to non-availability of too many choices like today), these shady educational instis and coaching classes were not having a option to create a fear in the minds of students and parents. The result was that more number of self-confident, naturally talented, self-coached students were making it to the top institutes in their respective fields. So what has happened today? Ofcourse i'm not telling that the students those days used to think that it is dead easy to crack IIT-JEE or UPSC or AIIMS medical test. But atleast, they(the naturally talented folks) were not wrongly lead to believe these are the only career options to survive and so you have to join coaching, read our materials, and what not, to be able to crack it.

I strongly wish that we - the society stops getting fooled by the ads. Be the owner of our choices. Dont give away that freedom to some companies. Lets be genuine in our choices. Lets not loose our self confidence. Lets start doing what we love, what we have envisaged as our goals, what we know as our natural talents, what we think will help us to live in peace with ourselves and with the society.

Let me end this blog with two interesting facts - in US, in last 1 decade alone, more than 50% of news papers have closed down as the citizens there have realised how foolish they are to read those stupid news. In Kerala - a lady who was a nurse by profession, cracked the UPSC exam twice. Once she scored 560th rank which she felt was not good enough and hence took it for 2nd time and got 50th rank!

Shirdi Nashik Tour

5 days & 4 Nights, 3000+ Kms, 2 days and 2 Nights spent
in train journey - the stats sounds very impossible to imagine. But not when
you want to have darshan of the Lord of Shirdi - Shri Shirdi Sai Baba and one
of the 12 Jyotirlings of Lord Shiva at Tryambakeshwar in Nashik.


Yes, with the gods blessings, Me and my mom were able to
accomplish this. Like how it was mentioned in one of Sai devotee's blogs - its
not possible to have darshan of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba without his divine
blessings - all i want to say here is that, though it may look like the tour
was planned by me, it was just because of Lords blessings that we were able to
have his darshan and I was merely acting as his instrument.


On one fine day in end of jan - begining of Feb month, I
just casually proposed this idea to my mom about a trip to Shirdi. Mom agreed
instantly. All i had to do was book a train to shirdi, since my mom cannot
travel in bus for long distance journey. I thought that if i manage to get a
LIC guest house booked near shirdi by dad, we will stay there overnight and
return to bangalore the next day. Once the proposal was accepted by mom, i got
down to train ticket booking business since i had heard that its very difficult
to get ticket to shirdi by train since many people visit the holy place and
hence tickets are booked very well in advance.


As expected, the tickets to Kopergaon - the nearest station
to Shirdi - were booked till the 90th day (the max limit which the railways
website allows you to book your ticket in advance). So this option was ruled
out. My idea was to plan the trip during the Ugadi festival day since it is off
for me on that day & with one day of paid leave, i get full 4 days for my
trip. But with the disappointment of not getting the tickets, the planning took
backseat for a couple of days. I really dont know what happened after that.
gradually one fine day, from the sources i dont remember now, i came to know
that Shirdi is 4 hours journey from Mumbai. The plan was restructured now.
Instead of going to kopergaon by train, we will go to Mumbai and stay there in
my aunt's (Mom's dearest elder sister) house and from there we can go to Shirdi
by either bus or taxi. Bingo, the idea got its approval stamp by mom. A formal
announcement was made on this regard to others in my family as well as to my
aunt, uncle and their son - my cousin, in Mumbai. My aunt was happy hearing
this. But they didnt pay much attention to other details like - whether they
should join me n mom, how to go etc. But neverthless, the idea got its stamp of
approval from both the stakeholders. Thus, i booked tickets for me n mom
(Asking dad to accompany us on our tours during the month of march - financial
year end month - is like asking my dearest sis Nikitha not to read Novel during
her semester vacations!!) for to and fro journey.


The catch - while restructuring the plan, the fact that we will be going to mumbai failed
to get registered in my mind properly. It never striked to me that I will
hardly get one night of stay in my aunt's house. Neither did my mom realise
this.


March 21st 2012 - 8.10 P.M Sharp. Location : Majestic Railway
Station, Bangalore. The Udyan Express left bangalore at 8.10PM sharp. The train
chugged its way through Kar, AP and Maharashtra, reaching mumbai at 7.30 PM
sharp next day. My Aunt and uncle were at Dadar railway station an hour before
the train's arrival - despite knowing that the train is on schedule !! It took
another 1.5 hours to reach home at Borivili east.


March 23rd - 6.15 AM. Left the home at early morning to beat
the weekend crowd and traffic in Mumbai and get out of the city at the
earliest. My cousin, with the help of his friend's network, had booked a Innova
taxi well in advance. we Had the breakfast at a restaur in the outskirts of the
city. when we were out of the city, in Mumbai Nashik Highway, we noticed large
number of small groups of people walking along the side of the road. SOme were
even walking bare foot. Later my cousin told that they are all going to Shirdi
by walk!!! They start on the day of Gudi Padwa (ugadi) and reach Shirdi after 7
days!!! I was speechless. How much effort may go into planning for such holy
tasks.


We reached Shirdi around 11.15 am. By the time we were
standing in the q it was around 12 and the aarti for the lord started. So we
had to wait till it got over and then the q started moving. It took nearly 3
hours altogether when we finally came out after having Lord's Darshan. In this
blog, all that i want to write is how the lord led me to his place and gave his
darshan to me. Because this is the only way I can repay him - by helping his other
devotees to know my experience. The one
that i find it difficult to explain in this blog is the beauty of the moment
when I had his darshan. I jut dont know how i can explain that. For all those
who are having that desire in their mind from long time - to get the blessings
of lord - this is my suggestion : Please do plan it today. Lord will take care
of rest of the things.


we had lunch in a hotel in the shopping mall just behind the
temple campus and started to Shani Shingapur. I dont remember the time exactly,
but we reached there well before the sunset and had good darshan of Lord Shani
there. The place is around 80 km from Shirdi and lots of shared taxis go there
from Shirdi. Like it was mentioned in one of the blogs, you need not search for
a taxi to go to shani shingapur, the taxi wallahs will search for you:)


9.30 PM. We reached Nashik. It took 15mins of roaming inside
the city before we located the LIC guest house (make good use of the company
resources). The building might have been built by british, said my cousin, looking
at the room situated one floor above the terrace !! But for 300 rs, it was the
most cheapest & best room that one could get. We stayed overnight here.


24th of March 2012: 6 am. Thanks to my over cautious uncle -
we all got ready withing the self imposed deadline of 6 am, even if it meant
that the common bathroom and toilet had to be seized and banned for use of the
guest of another room till then!! We first went to Panchavati - a place where
the river godavari meets with another river. This place has some significance
with the Holy Ramayan. (forgive me for ignorance of complete knowledge of this
place. I had not imagined that we could go to Nashik within 2 days and one
night!! So i didnt make it a point to google, before starting on the tour).
Then we went to sita ki gumpha - a underground temple dedicated to Godess sita.
As per my uncle, Sita did her penance here. Note : if you are a obese, stay
away from attempting to reach this temple thru the narrow steps leading to it
under the ground.


After having the breakfast, we started towards
Trayambakeshwar. My first visit to a Jyotirling temple situated in North of
india ( The only other jyotirling temple i visited was Rameswaram, way back
during my 7th std). What to explain about the natural beauty of this place. The
whole place is covered by mountains of different kind, which you hardly get to
see down the south India side. It seems the temple is located at the origin of
River godavari (i assume so, not sure though). Its a beautiful place. It took 2
hours for Darshan of the lord. The temple is built by one of the prominent
Marathi King. The temple has beautiful carvings on its walls.


5.45 PM: Reached home in Mumbai. I wanted to do so many
things within the 2 hours time we had, before we left to railway station. But
all that i managed to do was, answer nature call, take bath and go out with my
cousin and buy a few of my fav mumbai-special food - Dahi Kachori (please for
god's sake dont imagine the dahi kachori that we get here in Bangalore),
Dabheli, small kachoris, Pav bhaji etc. Dont ask me how much of it i ate (or rather stuffed) there itself and how
much of it we packed and took along with us to bangalore.


7:15 PM - Cousin got a taxi to go to Dadar railway station.
Mom, Aunt and me felt really bad for having not stayed in home properly for a
day, even after coming so far. I had tuff time explaining my mistake ( please
refer to "Catch" paragraph above and do understand me). It was time
to say bye and leave. Aunt and cousin accompanied us to the station. (Due to
the concern and love of my aunt's family, hardly have i ever ventured out on
mumbai streets all alone. They dont want us to go out alone and get into any
trouble in the megacity of our country. Due to this, I always feel like a illiterate
village guy whenever i step into mumbai city.)


8.30 PM: Reached the crowded Dadar station. Spent 1 hour
inside the train talking to aunt and cousin. Ofcourse the often discussed topic
was the mistake I did by not spending a day more in mumbai and one more
important personal family topic. But at the end of it, the happiness was
visible on everyone's face - my mom, aunt, cousin and well..... me (yeah, i
experienced it). Train left at sharp 9.30 P.M.


25th March 2012: 10.45 PM. Reached yeshwantpur station,
Bangalore.