BANG

I was unable to visit my native because of hectic work at office (including weekends). It had been almost 8-10 weeks since I last visited my native. Due to the lucky co-incidence of Christmas falling on Friday, there was 3 days long weekend with relatively less work hence, I visited Dharwad. I met a gang of school friends at a school friend wedding, visited relatives home and had a small function in home during my 3 days stay over there. The 3 days time spent in Dharwad felt like just few moments passed.

Usually I always book Seabird Tourist bus for travelling to my native as I have a Seabird privilege card which fetches me 10% discount on tickets + it is the only travel which has pick up bus near-by to my home. Anyways, it was 10PM and i was thinking, how quickly past 3 days flew-by. I and sister had got the last right upper sleeper seats (atleast we got ticket during long weekend so "last" seat doesn’t matter). The bus left by 10:30PM and since I had to pay ticket amount at Hubli (20Kms away from Dharwad), I was sitting down at some random seat watching other fellow passengers.

There was a mid-30 Dharwadian with full of pan in his mouth sitting in the last row, and another two IT married engineers talking about their routine professional life, a girl who most probably be travelling for the first time to Bangalore alone as her parents were extra careful and telling all safety measures to her till the last moment of bus leaving the stand and another person who was constantly looking into his mobile. I was just glancing through people till Hubli. At Hubli, I paid the ticket price and climbed up to my seat to get a good night sleep after long tiring Sunday. Just before falling off asleep, I have this habit of checking up all social networks, whatsapp, twitter, instagram, snapchat, quora etc and then fall asleep. Also the thought about next day's several pending work at office reminded me to get proper sleep soon.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

BANG !!! A loud sound horrifyingly woke me up and immediately I opened my eyes. The bus was leaning on left side and my senses were suddenly attentive where I was listening BOOM, glass breaking and screaming sounds. For a moment, I quickly glanced at my sister making sure she is alright and tried covering her & my head as I thought our bus would be rolling over making us fall down or something might hit us on head! Suddenly, the bus leaned on right side then left side and gradually came back to normal level and stopped. OMG. WTH just happened. I was unable to process the events just happened. After few moments, I asked sis, what the time is, it was 3:30AM

As I looked below, by sliding the sheets of our seats, there were full of window glass pieces all over the left side seats of the bus. The people were scary and horrified all over. The lights were turned ON and that pan Dharwadian started shouting and went towards the driver. The two IT engineers followed him. The girl got injured where her hand immovable. Poor girl, she was crying. Few other pasengers sitting on the left side of the bus had glass pieces stuck to their hand/legs with minor blood bleed. I was speechless looking the environment over there.

Then I started to hear arguments, conversations, scolding which gave me an idea of what just happened. There was a truck filled with sugarcane parked on the left side of the road and our bus driver hit it by the side. May be he was sleepy or couldn’t get proper judgment, no idea. People were beating him and shouting at him. If unlucky, God knows what would have happened to all the passengers in the bus, especially those on the left side of bus. Luckily, we were on right side, so nothing happened to us.

The crowd was going crazy on driver as that fellow was replying carelessly and arrogantly. He was talking so casually as though, this kind of accidents happens very frequently. It seems, he joined seabird services just on that day and was driving the bus from that day. I mean, on what basis did someone recruited him in first place and took a decision to let him drive a bus filled with 30+ passengers in midnight on first day of joining!!!

While all this drama was happening on the highway filled with complete darkness other than occasional lights of fast moving vehicles at some place outside of Chitradurga, the "primary" driver (who drove from dharwad before handing over to this new driver) is calmly asleep. People woke him up in anger and told him everything happening around. The cleaner, driver (who hit) and other driver(who was asleep) were all amateurs and had no idea of handling the angry, horrified crowd in such disastrous situation. Btw, that mobile guy was clicking off pics while all this was happening.

I was sitting there, still in disbelief of how lucky the day was. If anything unfortunate had has happened, then gone. Just gone, puff. No trace. No Monday morning office work, no life tensions. Just everything gone in a spur of moment! I was sitting and wondering what were the last conversations I had with each and every one in my life before I slept off and will it be any difference to others without me? It was a very horrible feeling and I hope it should never-ever cross my mind again. Anyways, the bus was standing still for past 45-50mins. There was no supervisor available to answer the call or any alternative bus to come. There was not even a First Aid Box in the bus. Such a pathetic Seabird bus service. The people were out of strength to protest and finally agreed that the “sleeping” driver let drive the bus and glass pieces and sugarcane pieces were cleaned off.

The bus started to move approximately by 5AM and my heart was beating fast. I had never experienced such a thing till now. I mean, once I had mis-drove a car and might have met with an accident, but its okay as the mistake was mine as I was driving (I am responsible). But here, this kind of situation, where you have no control over but have to put your trust, faith on some unknown person (driver), was totally new after such incident. We travel in bus, train, flight several times and we never think of the driver who transported us safely. We never thank him. That unknown random person goes unnoticed. But that day I learnt, he is very important. Next time, when you safely travel, take a moment and thank the driver who was responsible for your safe reach.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year 2016 !

Bla Bla Bla

I am totally lost on what to write about for this month’s blog. I have no content to write, yet trying something to write by scratching my head to give some thoughts to scribe. After typing something, erasing it back, again type something, delete it out, finally I have thought, let me just type whatever comes to my mind. Well, here free flow writing goes…

It’s almost last month of this year from tomorrow. 2015 is almost past and will soon be a history. At the beginning of 2015, there were so many hopes, dreams that “this” would have happened by next year “that” would have happened by next year etc. But reality check is, nothing of things would have happened and we still keep on continuing dreaming next year this will be happening and that will be happening. Am I making any sense to you ?

Anyways, let’s see what else I think off. I am blank, not able to think what to write but somehow I have to fill up something. If you don’t have anything else to do, then read on, else you can stop now as nothing useful is presented in this blog.

If you closely observe, day-by-day, you might feel nothing much has changed, but if we think off from how things were in Jan-2015 and now, then it feels, lot many things have happened in this year. Few expected and most of them unexpected. As far as for me, I see that most people are moving ahead, departing, getting married, moving outside country, changing company/organization, etc. The dynamics are altered. I am certainly not sure, what next year has to offer but I feel it will be missing something because of so many people not being with me in next year. Nevertheless, New Year will offer new people; new experiences, new hopes and new dreams making us forget bad things of 2015 and help to move on in 2016.

I am not sure, what I’m writing. Anyways, last one more month remains to cherish and say Good Bye to the Year 2015 and let’s make use of it. Why am I feeling like, I’m writing December month blog? Ok, as I said, nothing much useful from this month blog. I just wrote down the train of thoughts which came into my mind as I sit in front of this laptop opening Microsoft Word. Let’s hope, next month I write something which has some actual proper content with organized topic. And thanks for reading till this line.

Directions - WE

During school days, I am sure everyone had their favorite teacher/sir, their favorite subject, their favorite sport, favorite book etc and similarly also had their most hated teacher/sir, most hated subject, most hated sport, most hated book etc. Am I right ?

Since my childhood days, I loved Maths subject with all those formulas, algebra, geometry while hated Social Studies alot. That History, Civics, Geography and what not. Why should I know, what people did some 100 years back ? Why do I need to know about Government positions and their powers when I never get to use that knowledge in day to day life? Why should I study about some foriegn land, when I stay in Dharwad? I mean, why torture students with this boring subject, SST !

Since I always hated this subject, I was weak with Geographical directions. I never understood, which side is South, which side is West and what side is South and which is East. I use to get confused as, sometimes, they use to say, we stay in South side while some other times, they use to say, we stay in North side. I was like, make up one mind folks !!! (Btw, my schooling was in Vilas school located in Dharwad City, Karnataka)

Later on, I came to remember & know clearly one thing. Upside is always North as this was the only direction which use to be given in most of the maps. Based on North as reference, other directions must be derived. So one thing was clear, North is UP, Jammu & Kashmir. So obviously, I came to know about South direction, which must be exactly opposite to North, i.e., down. This understanding was during late VIII standard or IX probably.

Now I started to realize why in my school few people use to say, we stay in North sometimes and other times in South. Any wild guesses??? The thing was, I never concentrated on the reference with which they use to tell. Actually, Dharwad is situated in North Karnataka, while Karnataka is situated in South India. LOL. I use to get so much confused, when people use to say, we stay in both these directions without understanding the reference in which they mention it.

Later on I analyzed myself and came to a conclusion on remembering East and West this way :-

I observed West-Bengal in the right side of the India map, thus concluding, right side is West and obviously left side must be East. I believed this theory literally till end of my engineering.

Then later, in some heated contradiction, I realized, West Bengal state is actually in Bloody EAST ! I was shattered inside realizing this fact. All these years, I believed West Bengal is in West & hence its name but it was not and that was some really hard truth for me to realize & digest that West Bengal is in East India.

Then from that time, I finally came to know that Right side is East with Bihar, Manipal, Assam, Sikkim etc while West is Left side including Gujurat, Rajasthan etc. Till last week, i use to remember these East and West directions as, opposite of West Bengal (right side) is West while opposite of West is East. Confused ?????

So last week, one my close one told a simple way to remember this East and West directions when we were arguing as in what directions does our earth rotate. East to West or West to East ? We were deriving the direction of earth rotation based on sun rise and sunset. On a tangential note, you won't believe that I got to know about sun rising and setting directions very recently. Oops !!!

The simple way to remember these west and east directions is with the word "WE". W is in the left side while E is in the right side so does West and East. From past 1 week, I am no more confused or won't take must time to tell which side is West and which side is East based on this simple word "WE". I can even quickly recognize, North-East, North-West, South-East & South-West direction as a bonus.

PS: BTW, Sun rises from East and Sets in West. Reverse of WE :)

Financial Deals

As I am growing up day by day (yes, I'm still growing up), I am learning life lessons. Recently I happened to learn a new life lesson & learnt it in a very hard way. I don't want to give all the internal details but I would just like to surface out what I learnt and make it generic.

Never ever make any Financial deal with your closed & dear ones. Be it your friends, relatives or in-laws or anyone whom you know. The meaning of financial deal in this context is any deal related to money. Once you make money deal, it is very difficult to keep the dynamics of relation the same! If you really want to make a financial deal, then better pick up some stranger (ofcourse with a legal agreement) and develop a pure new business relationship with them rather than the picking dear ones & add financial toppings to it.

Assuming you didn't had any other option but had to make a financial deal with known ones, then either make the "money" in the financial deal less significant or be ready to loose the relationship which you had for that quantity of money. Because no matter how much careful and understanding you are at the beginning, money has ultimate power to surpass all of it at the end. While beginning the financial deal, it might feel like, the person with whom i'm making the deal is so known & closed ones, there won't be much problems BUT trust me, the more you know the person, higher the chances of screwing it up.

I inherited one such deal and made another one unknowingly & heard several stories where closed & dear ones are no more the same after some "financial deal" between them. You might think that, even whatever happens with this so made financial deal but at the end, after probably some dispute, we will be back to normal but its a pure myth. When money is involved in a relationship, then no matter, how good you patch up after conflicts, the glass once broken, cannot be joined.

So in conclusion, just stay away and try avoid making any financial deals with your known/closed/dear ones. If you have any of such deals, then take my words and try to clear them off smoothly as early as possible and hope everything goes friction less.

Goa Trip

One evening, around 3 weeks back, while just meeting & chatting with school friends after long time, suddenly Santosh came up with idea like, "Lets go to Goa". I immediately said, Lets Go. Even Ravi, who was sitting right opposite to me, agreed. We fixed the date in next 5 mins by confirming with Chaitanya over phone as he was in Bangalore. Another friend Aakash also got ready. Totally 5 guys were just like that ready for Goa trip in 5 mins. This is how the idea of Goa trip was conceived.

I & Chaitanya left Friday 8th of August night from Bangalore and reached Dharwad on Saturday morning by 8AM. We both freshened up and Santosh came to pick us up. We then went to Ravi's home, had a light breafkast and went to pick up the last guy, Akash. He took some time to get ready and by the time we left dharwad to Goa, it was almost 11AM and sun was almost getting on the top of our head.

Only I had the driving license while Santosh knew driving but no DL. We both were in-experienced drivers but dared to take the car till Goa, that too in the Ghat section, rainy whether & might have to drive without sunlight. What a daring!!! Somehow we both managed to drive carefully to visit Goa and return back safely. Now we both are no more in-experienced drivers.

While on the way to Goa, we encountered a small mini water falls on the Ghat section and was a perfect break from long drive. We got down and took few of the best pics, especially for DPs.

We almost spent 20mins near this water fall and then 2KMs ahead, there was a temple just at the beginning of Ghat section. We got down there also and prayed for safe driving over curvy roads and continued our journey towards Goa.

Btw, i forgot to mention that this was my first time visit to Goa. Yes, thats true. Every other person had already visited and mine was first time.

Although the journey in car was a long one, but we really had fun listening to songs, and those crazy whatsapp forward funny audio's, talking our heart out about all those school days and other funny moments. Around 6PM, finally we reached GOA !!! Finally, i was in Goa for the first time :)

We searched for a guest house nearby to Calangute beach and without much effort, got a really well maintained guest house sufficiently big for 5 people. We spent some time to freshen-up after a really long drive and planned for a memorable night and trust me it was really memorable but not exactly the way you think it is;) Read on...

The plan was to spend the mid night on the beach and roam around and etc etc, you know what. So everyone decided to drop down there wallets & mobile inside room as we can roam freely. We took some X amount sufficient for dinner & party for all 5 of us and only my mobile as its iPhone which can capture good pics and battery lasts long. [Product placement for promotion ;)]

God, what a view of Goa. The people around there, pubs, bars, loud music, that climate and although its 12 in midnight but feels like just 8PM atmosphere over there is way too cool and makes me never leave the place. The Girls with all those dresses and those boys with full of muscles and foreigners roaming and partying hard is the best thing to watch on Calangute beach road. It was totally amazing. I can't explain how uber cool that Saturday Night in Goa was !

Anyways, coming to our story, we had some dinner and this-that and came over onto the shores of coean & spent a large amount of time talking the "un-talked" stuffs  which we wear hearing for first time. It was totally fun and surely memorable. Even if i close my eyes now, i can feel that experience of lying on the sand on the ocean shore at mid night 1AM and looking up at the sky with all the stars twinkling meanwhile ocean waves whispering the cool breeze making me to forget all the lively worries and just calmly hear my own heart beat. Mesmerizing.

Then we came back to guest house around 2AM and suddenly one of the person got an idea to go and spend some time in Baga beach in this oddly time. Nobody was sleepy and somehow agreed to visit for an hour and return back by 3AM. I drove the car in midnight to Baga beach (around 3KMs) from our place. We parked the car near Baga Beach and while locking the car, i broke the key !!!! OMG !!! Key broke and now we can't lock the car and leave there & neither we can start the car. DEADLOCK.

Its freaking 2:30AM in the morning and we are clueless on what to do next! That was the moment which we 5 will never forget (whenever Goa crosses our mind). This was the memorable thing i was talking earlier. Without having any option, although booked a nice big guest house, we spent our night in that car. YES, we 5 adjusted & tried to sleep inside that small car. Just imagine.

We were out of that X money which we had bought. Luckily, Chaitanya, the savior, had bought his wallet along with him (surprise) and somehow we managed to have breakfast & made a duplicate key of the car. It was Sunday morning and the key maker delayed to open his shop till 11AM. Our plan was to leave by 2PM so as to reach Dharwad by 9:30PM as we had Bangalore bus to catch at 10PM. Now it was already 11PM when we got back our car with its duplicate keys.

We spent an hour inside Baga beach. I and Akash didn't enter the water, but the other 3 enjoyed in water. It was already 12 in the noon and we came back to guest house (which was of no use to us). We took quick bath and left from Goa at around 2:30PM as per the plan.

Thats GOOD BYE to Goa

While returning back, i drove the Ghat section and later Santosh drove till the end and we reached almost 9:40PM to Dharwad. I and Chaitanya had booked 10'O clock Bus to Bangalore. Just right on time we managed to reach. We quickly had a dinner byte near KCD and left to Bangalore.

Over an all, although it was a short duration of time in Goa, it was totally memorable and we did have a great time. I can truly say, Goa trip was really FUN. It was a break which was needed from the hectic life for relaxation and this trip served its purpose. Goa, I miss you and want to see you soon :)

Chaitanya, Santosh, Aakash, Me & Ravi

Pinch Me !!!

This blog is mainly about me unable to believe where I am now and from where I started. Sometimes, I have to Pinch myself to believe that its TRUE.

Soon to be updated...

TV

A small write up about my first relationship! My TV :)

Judges

Do you think, only courts will have judges? You are wrong. Judges are everywhere. Every individual whom you meet in your day to day life is an excellent intrinsic judge. You ask question of what do they judge, they judge YOU. The way you dress, the way you speak, the way you act. Every minute action of yours is judged by several so called "judges" around you.

Once upon a time, I assumed people used to judge less and only on certain matters, but since last decade, I can see that everyone judges you in every possible way. Lot of judges in various areas of expertise are coming out in recent times. I used to be scared of doing certain actions or saying something or behaving something in front of a group of people (or may i call them judges?) thinking, what will they "think of me". This inbuilt thought in my head was causing lot of friction to do every small things in my way.

Lately, I have learnt that no matter what you do, people JUDGE you. Earlier I used to think, if I don't do "this" action then they might not judge me. But I was wrong. If they decide to judge you, then you'll be judged irrespective of what you do. Whether you choose to attend a party or not, whether you say something or not, whether you buy some stuff or not, whether you like something or not, whether you pick up the call or not, either you wear sandals or shoes, whether you eat too much or not, either you eat with spoon or bare hands, either you drive 2 wheeler or 4 wheeler, either you like Salman Khan or Aamir Khan, either you support BJP or AAP, and recently the level as has even dropped to this low that people even judge you whether you message in an whatsapp group or not, either you use facebook or twitter and they even judge you on what type of fwd messages you send or what kind of posts you hit "Like" & share or tweet & RT. Either you do something or the other thing, hard truth is people are going to judge you.

So in conclusion, what I would like to say is, no matter how people judge of you, don't stop doing what you were supposed to do thinking, what others might think. If it feels right, this is what you wanted to do then just do it. Let judges judge. Its their work to judge. Due to the thought of thinking, someone is judging you, don't lose your uniqueness.

In modern era of whatsapp & facebook & internet & technology, everyone is just following the herd of what others are doing thinking, what "people" will judge if I do things differently. Each and everyone of us are unique in our own way and we are losing that uniqueness with this poisonous thought of "what will others think". STOP IT. I say, screw these so called "judges" & bring on your uniqueness.

Accident

If you have read, Planet Prasanna titled blog post, then you must be well aware of my driving skills. In short, I drive like, the road is mine & i'm the only one driving on it. Everyone else should give way & adjust to the way I drive. I won't generally see, left/right/center during a cross but just go through expecting others will slow down by seeing that i'm driving. Well, in short, I just drive like regular Bangalorean ;)

I learned to drive bicycle when I was in 4th standard. I still remember. The neighbor boy (Srinivas) had a Ranger cycle which I was trying to ride for the first time. Srinivas & another boy were holding back the cycle & I was trying to peddle holding my hands on handle with my fingers on brake (I had just learnt about brake, peddling etc). Slowly as I started to balance & move ahead, they both left holding cycle & I was driving on my own. It was an anti-slope where one must keep peddling to go ahead & I applied strong break (I still don't know why) over there & fall off from the cycle. My skin of legs & hands were torn off displaying the red color of my blood.That was the only time I had ever fallen off from cycle/vehicle till last week. By the way, those kids made utter fun of me for weeks about my falling off from cycle by applying brakes on an anti slope !!!

Until last week, I was driving vehicle crazily as usual. Over the past several years, there were many moments where I felt, Oh My Goodness, that was very close. Thank GOD!!! But every time, I had somehow managed to escape from such horrible accidents. I had never met one since my bicycle incident which I explained above. Last week, while I was dropping sis to bus stop, I broke my record of "never falling off since 4th standard" record!

It was early morning & I was sleepy? probably. I had to drop off sis & got onto vehicle just like another day. There was truck standing still on the left side of the road while a car from opposite direction was crossing from my right side. As it was crossing I tried to go in-between them (truck & car) & there was big pot hole just in middle of road! As car crossed, I drifted into the pot hole. Damn it. I was point blank at that moment. Don't know what happened next & I was already fallen on road. Its like, FLASH, and next moment fell from vehicle on road. I couldn't control it all. That was very strange! I hope, every incident/accident (be it major/minor) happen in similar way. Once that point happens, we will be blind fold for a moment with everything out of control! Next moment, you know, some incident would have happened already!

Surrounding people helped to straighten up the vehicle and we both also got up ! Ufff... Although nothing much happened to sis(Thank GOD for that), but I was quite a bit injured (not majorly but minorly). Similar to cycle incident, skin of right hand & right leg were pealed off & still the same color, red, of my blood was getting displayed. It was paining like HELL but somehow managed to drive back home.

After this incident, next day I couldn't dare to take out vehicle to office. I worked from home (you know what I mean). After being off from vehicle for one day, next day I sat on vehicle and started to ride. This time, I felt different. I was being too cautious while driving. Looking into mirror while crossing roads, slowly driving behind other vehicles instead of forcefully over taking them, honking appropriately etc. I see this drastic change in my driving skills. Well, I thought, this is better and safe way of driving and I made promise to myself that, from today on, i'll drive like "this" only.

Although my record of "not falling off from vehicle since 4th standard" even though I drive like crazy does not hold true anymore, but I learnt a lesson out of this minor accident/incident, that I must drive more cautiously & safely. And I hope, I continue to follow it :)

BB

Breaking bad!!!

Hurdles of Life

Soon to be updated