Things I thought I would never write...

The HopBucket widget View the complete travelog here —  https://hopbucket.com/plan-details/wMKGiPsgBN Coffee! Like a minion following a banana, I accompanied my family following the scent of the coffee to Kodagu (Coorg) district in Karnataka. Before I got there, I had no clue that Kodagu is only an administrative district. The district place is Madikeri and there are other talukas like Virajpet. The journey along the west coast of India on the Konkan Railway tracks was quite an experience in itself. It was lush green all along the route. We saw rivers filled to the brim and flowing steadily towards the west. When you see this beauty of nature, strangely enough, you marvel at the feat of engineering that the Konkan Railway is! After all, it is this railway that brought the nature closer to us. Konkan!!! The Club Mahindra resort at Madikeri is quite beautiful. It is built in the local style — AinMane. AinMane means ancestral home. There is plenty of ac...

I was about to start writing about my trip to Colorado with Sanika and her mom. However, the thought of merely jotting down the list of places we visited in the last three days seemed boring. I think this was dissuading me from writing. However, now I have decided that I am going to write about my experience rather than describe my itinerary. Hopefully, that will lead to something better. Colorado is very unlike any other place that I have been to. I have been here twice in a period of little more than a year. I have been completely won over both the times. The natural beauty of this place is unparalleled. In Colorado, at any time, breathtaking views are just a few miles away. Whether it is the winding roads through the rockies or just glimpse of the peaks from my hotel window, it is always impressive. The winding roads here are really special. For the most part tall mountains flank you on both the sides while a small rivulet or headwaters of a river gush through, over the rocky...

 This year, like the last year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Sanika and Pallavi’s place. The invitation email was sent out by Pallavi a couple of days prior to the actual evening. It was an email no one else could have written, no one else but Pallavi. It was a manager’s email. Me and Manan commented “We have lost our friend to the Managers!” Well, that is a good thing. After all she studies at one of the finest management schools.  Soon after the email was sent, people started replying to the email with the dishes that they were going to come up with for the dinner. Ok, this post is not about the dinner... :P So, enough of that now. This post is about the discussion we had after everyone had left, well ummm, everyone but the argumentative six or seven of us. Everyone else had assignments to take care of. We obviously had far more important things to care about. Assignments could wait. Sleep? It could wait too! The debate started at around 10:30 at night over bowls of ...

Some things happen to remind us of the past. However hard we may try to forget the past, we can't.     I was riding back home on my friend's, Ojas', bike after my college got over. On my way home, I saw someone. Someone so beautiful, she took my breath away. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. As I would know later, she was on her way home, too.      I asked Ojas to overtake her. I wanted to see her before she disappeared in the traffic. He adjusted the rear-view mirror for me so that I could see her. I stared at the beautiful image for a long time. By the time I realized that I was bothering her, we changed our paths. We actually changed our paths after a few years.     Five years later, history repeated itself. It was Déjà Vu. "What we learn from History is that we do not learn from History." Something similar happened. The rear-view mirror incident repeated itself.      But I can't share the story w...

It is hard to imagine a movie so bold, so in your face, with such a care-a-damn attitude to be so appealing and truthful. It is too painfully honest for a Bollywood movie. What this movie has done, apart from pleasing the critics and the mavericks, is that it has now officially raised Anurag Kashyap to a divine status. He is one among the Gods now. The way in which the real incidents have been portrayed is something which only Anurag could have done. He saw what no one did. He showed what no one had seen or even imagined. Whether it is the Delhi MMS scandal or the hit and run case, you find yourself in the witness box. The advantage that a director has while making such a movie is that he does not have to care about the story much. The story takes care of itself. The director gets a chance to be bold and daring and in this case, to be himself. Another great aspect of the movie is the music and the way it blends with the story. Like the movie, even the music does not sound artificial. ...

Ketan Ghatode and I can now safely claim to be quizomaniacs. We are in fact mad about quizzes. It is rare for two people to have so much as a passion for playing quizzes in common. It is a thread that now binds us together and runs through our lives. I started out on quizzing from my school days. I was a part of two separate teams which won the first and third prizes in two years. Then came the big event. While I was still in school, in the ninth grade, I participated in a quiz conducted by Viswesraya National Institute of Technology. My team-mate was my buddy of all weathers, Abhishek Shiwalkar. We realised the magnitude and scale of the competition after we actually won it. This entire hardcore quizzing thing took a backseat during my junior college studies. Not that I was 'engrossed' in studies, I just lost perspective. And with it I also lost my G.K. It took quite a while to get back on track. I was lucky to have a partner like Ketan Ghatode. We thought we were invinc...

Ingenious India Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not share it yet, is an attitude that only hinders progress. -Mahatma Gandhi. India - a country of more than a billion heartbeats, emotions, adventures, deities but most importantly- a country with more than a billion problems. Everyone has some problem. It may be a leaking roof, no roof, rising prices of food and fuel, limited access to even the most basic technology, limited access to knowledge, inadvertent power cuts, lack of hygiene, or lack of medical facilities. What we put up with everyday is not what we deserve. The India of the 21st century deserves better and demands better. With so many problems facing us, what should we do? We solve them. Let us keep in mind that it is not a task that we have to undertake. We should look at it as an opportunity to solve our problems and as a chance to find out potential leaders who can guide our society to its de...

Much has been said and written about Valentine’s Day. I would like to add my two paisa worth to the discussion (read debate). Valentine’s Day is celebrated world over on the 14 th Feb. It is the celebration of love, as I understand it. It is the day when guys express their love to theirs gals for the first time or those who have completed the first step renew their vows of love. It is the day when married couples remember their days of courtship and find bliss. Sure, we don’t need a special day to express these feelings. But what if there’s a day dedicated to love. Imagine how beautiful the thought is. In the hustle and bustle of our hum-drum lives we may be aware that we love each other but we forget to say it to one another. So a day like this becomes a reason for celebration. Some extremists in India campaign against the idea of Valentine’s Day. We are forgetting our culture is their argument. Don’t they realise that love is indeed our culture. G...