Here comes my surprise christmas gift, a visit to an english family’s house. Hannah invited me to come over and visit her family in Milton Keynes. I was all excited about the trip because their family wanted me to cook chicken curry in Indian style for them. Given the fact that this is the first time I am cooking for an English family, I had done trails of it at home. I reached MK at 11am by coach, they call it the grid aptly. Being a very new city, its planned very well and ahead of its time I guess. City centre is mainly shops and MK is known for it. I even heard that people in and around come over to MK just to shop.

I met Hannah and her sister Rebecca in a local mall there. The sight was extremely funny at the mall. Being the 27th of Dec in UK, people are still not out of the madness of boxing day. We saw a lady so tired sitting down with a grumpy face unable to drink her coffee….. It was a laugh riot for us in the shopping complex itself.

Next up I went to their home, had nice noodles immediately and went shopping for a few things again. We came back after a couple of hours and I did have a go at the chicken curry and it came out awesome. I myself loved it and their family appreciated it too. We had generally discussions at the dinner table, a few things about english a few about India. A very frank family and they were disappointed that I did not go with a head bob to their home. Well, I sort of still feel that’s a false claim . Being aware that I am not English, they were very careful to ensure that there isn’t any culture shock situtations. A few moments when Howie was eyeing Hannah (letting her know that she musn’t say a few things), were very admirable . It just showed that they cared a lot for me just to make me feel at home.

Post dinner we wanted to go watch a movie but ended up going to the pub because it was houseful. We had a few drinks and then headed back home. Its the middle of the night and the Indian kid (me) wanted tropical climate in Britain. I rang up Hannah asking her to switch on the heater, well probably shouldn’t have done it. But then Hannah would get it, so I did ring her. Probably my body has still not got adapted to brit climate…

Woke up the next day and well had breakfast for toast (Again culture clash strikes a bit). I made a sandwitch from the toast given, which might sound absolutely funny if you are from the west. But unfortunately I guess I have always eaten bread sandwiched . Well, Hannah did tell me how its done… that helps and wouldn’t embarrass myself next time around.. Ta luv …

A started back from theirs by mid day and met another friend Stuart Scott in MK, watched Mission Impossible with him before heading back to cambridge.

Overall, I was absolutely glad that I met their family. Its gonna be in my sweet memories for a long time for sure.

Bala

But I am gonna talk about the other end of the spectrum, i.e., how one must not interpret the message. The message is to live your life, but keep in mind the cost you are paying????. The challenge I am putting forth to my readers are simple, Can you live a life your way and still not hurt anybody around you? I would like to emphasise on the later half of my challenge. How would it be to live a life where you still follow your passion and not hurt anybody’s sentiments/ feelings or whatever you wanna call it.

Let me define what it means to me when I say some one is hurt…
Lets take eve teasing for instance to illustrate this. Is it eve teasing if you attempt to exploit a woman physically? Are you gonna be jailed only if you cause physical discomfort to a girl? I would say that even the slightest of your actions, causes a girl to secure herself then you have completely disturbed her. The same is with racism. It is not just using bad words or slangs against a race that hurts some one. Even the slightest ignorance, avoidance will be felt and is gonna cause agony. An usual excuse happens to be “Mei mazza ke liye kiya” (I just did it for fun). Now stop giving such useless excuses, your joke is not something everyone would buy.

Now that I have defined what it means for one to be hurt, lets head back to the topic. Following passion, without caring anything at all. Now what was really intended was for you to follow your passion overcoming all obstacles. Its not an excuse for students to stop studying and say classes are so boring. It is not an excuse for the youth to get wasted every weekend and say Zindagi na milegi dobara. It is not an excuse for parents to make their son study medicine just because he would be the first doctor in the family. It is only unfair to live your dreams by taking away others. Speak up, consult, talk to every one whom you know regarding the situation and solve the crisis rather than saying “Zindagi no milegi dobara”.

Remember one thing, everyone on the planet is blessed with 24 hours only and that is a lot of time to do anything and everything. Follow your passion, not at the cost of anything or anyone hurt? Your passion might take time to be accepted until you prove the worth of it. Try that rather than to live a life where we no longer care about anything..

I wrote this post because I can feel that happening in the world every day. The notion that we all belong to the human race is disappearing totally. After all we live in a world where a square shape with a button was patented for no one else to use. Such a shame, Imagine some one patenting the round shape of wheel… wow now that would be amazing, we would have had a zillion research papers now on different shapes of wheels on the planet…. Germany all of a sudden wants to war, I was just thrown off when I read that. You can claim to get out of EU, but common war and destroy everything around…

Can you really live a life free of guilt that you have not hurt anyone by any means just because you wanted to live your life the way you wanted it? After all Zindagi na milegi dobara, lets live the correct way the first time itself

To a better tomorrow and a better human race… Here is a video

– Balaji
Yeah, I give the readers permission to swear in their replies, i.e., if they wanna use em..

1st – Re-incarnation
I got a lot of guidance about how to live in UK even before I left India and that was something which was very helpful. Because, Once I was here there were too many things to take care off. There is simply no time to come and start learning here is what I felt. I sort of tell this to people who go abroad for their studies, consider yourself being just born and start leading your life. This I believe is the key to success and has helped me a long way in the last one year. I used to learn everything at the university, sometimes even the basics. I even went to free english classes at the university, not because I can’t speak well in English but learning it from the brits is something new. You must admit, its after all their mother tongue and they are better than us in the language. I took up all training courses which the university offered, be it the careers team, be it the student support and to my surprise there was always something new I learnt. I know a lot of my fellow friends who did mock at me and thought I was silly, but I still stand by what I did and it has helped a lot. So, please give up the attitude that you know everything when you come abroad.

2nd – Know yourself
Some of the students are really not sure why they do their masters course. People get offended when I say this, probably I don’t see them working towards their goal, maybe that’s why. Keep yourself a goal after a year, whats your highest priority. Work towards it, do not stop until you hit the target no matter how hard it is. There would be people who might say that your target it unreachable and impossible, never stop. STOP LISTENING TO PEOPLE AROUND YOU, its your life, fix your priorities and proceed towards it.

3rd – You are always healthy
Now, most of the students start missing home at times, well even I have. It’s human nature, you will miss your dear ones. But make sure you hide that away from your parents. There are 1000 miles away, the last thing you want is them worrying about you. I still remember when I wasn’t well, I washed my face put on some make up and then spoke to my parents on webcam. When you see them happy, am sure you get well in no time.

4th – Cycle inversion
This apparently is something people are very proud of, they are awake all night and sleep all day. Screwing up ur sleep cycle might sound fun at times, but be aware your productivity goes low drastically. You would feel tired all the time, miss classes and can’t cope up.

The list is endless, but I got to stop blogging and head back to work now.
More of it will continue later.

Balaji

This is what the song actually means.. I got the lyrics off a webpage in Tamil, anyway am translating it here in my blog… but before that i ought to say that the english lyrics are awesome… infact thats not what it means, but thats sort of what you hear… damn funny…
And this is from a movie and the guys is prabhu deva.. pretty famous dancer back home.. often referred to as MJ and he danced in one of the Miss universe shows.. pretty famous..
anyway let me not bug you more and here is the song..

KALLURI VAANIL – PRABHU DEVA LYRICS

Male
Kalluri vaanil kaayndha nilaavo?
Are you the bright moon on the college roads?
Maanavar nenjil meyndha nilaavo?
Are you the moon in students heart?
En madi meedhu saayndha nilaavo?
Are you the moon lying down on my lap?
Ennidam vandhu vaayndha nilaavo?
Are you the moon enslaved by me?
Haikuvae haikuvae… high speedil vandhaayeâ?¦
Haikuvae happens to be a jap warrior and he compares her to the warrior..
Eye browai male thookki, I love you endraayeâ?¦
You raised your eyebrow and said I love you…

Female

Kalluri vaanil kaayndha nilaavo?
Same just with a change of voice…
Maanavar nenjil meyndha nilaavo?

Haikuvaai haikuvaaiâ?¦ I love you endraaleâ?¦

This is where there is nothing profound sung in the song.. they are just humming something,
but the video subtitles is hilarious here… Pee on us tonight..

Thats when i found this link on youtube where the translation of the song is available..

Overall, good song originally.. and the subtitles rock too..

Here are two of his famous classic songs

cheers,
Balaji

1) pour oil, add hua jiao and then throw it after extracting its contents
2) add 1 spoon garlic paste, 1 chilli, 1 onion and mix for 1 minute
3) add 4 spoons of chilli bean sauce and mix for 5 minutes.
4) add vegetables, chicken, shrimp & rice and mix.
5) Add soya sauce so that it does not stick to the vessel.
6) add sesame and serve

bala
Xie xie Master Yan Li

I reach the terminal of Bengaluru intn’l airport just on time to collect the boarding passes. Only mom had come along and the others were back home. I was rushing into the airport and did see my mom with mixed emotions. My friend Rohit’s family was there around too and hence she had company to console. The flight kicks off delayed a little 7:30pm, well the fact was it really didnt kick off as i expected. The pilot took almost 10 turns to get trafic clearance, felt i was in a bus. Then the showstopper, the pilot brings the flight to a stand still and kicks off the engine to full throttle and before i knew i was air born. The inertia was there for a long time as it was a domestic flight to New delhi. Four of us heading to univ of liverpool from blore made ourselves comfortable at the New delhi int’l terminal. We completed our immigration check and logged onto mails using wifi. Facilities in Delhi int’l airport is amazing, they are planning to bring in domestic and intn’l terminals under the same roof. We had to take a shuttle which took half an hour from domestic to int’l. Super hungry we enter the terminal and head to McDs. Then at 2:30am in the morn the next flight which heads to brussels.

Met an erasmus exchange student on flight, great chap infact. Had a nice conversation all the way long. was able to squeeze in a tamil movie Payya which i wanted to always watch, thanks to Jet. so next time i will make sure i travel on Jet itself. The flight over the sea from Brussels to manchester was astonishing, i was able to spot large ships. At some point of time in life, make sure all of you reading this take your dear ones on a flight… Final destination reached at 10 am in Manchester exactly on time.

The university had arranged for a meet and greet service, so they come and received us and took us all the way to our new homes. I just love my room, probably Melville will become my second home…
The Brits here are very friendly and the city is vibrant as they call it. Had been around to quite a few places including the albert dock, liverpool cathedral and metropolitan cathedral. Except for the fact that its pathetically cold out there, every thing else about the place is just great. Looking forward to a kick ass year ahead..

All this happened because of one important soul, my neighbour Greg. My airport cab never came, forget being late. Greg roared his hyundai along with me and my mom and reached the airport in an hour or so. I just reached half an hour before the flight took off, Thanks a zillion ….

Bala

The night was young, filled with alacrity we kicked off to Coorg at 11pm from Silk board. Coffee day is no longer a culture, its attained cult status in India for sure. We were no exceptions, we halted at Madhur coffee day and spent a couple of hours just to make sure that we do not reach Coorg at 3am in the morning. Let me introduce you to the gang before getting along.

Abhishek, Badri, Rohith, Priya, Rekha, Shalini, Nithya and myself…. We call ourselves rhapsodies. Given the fact that I know only shalini and nithu before the trip, the team gelled easily and we felt like a team soon. Abhishek – down to earth person, admire the character a lot. Badri – Eclectic in his words, tech geek… I did see my professional character in him. Rohith – Ever smiling reddy in the team. Priya – the one who issued decrees in our first meet scared me, but then again too good a friend and too sportive a friend. Rekha – Bluff queen, she got up from fever just by hearing the word bluff. Shalini – What can I say, absolute energy keeps the crowd alive wherever she goes. Physically fit, she won the spirit of wipro marathon couple of years ago. Nithya – Coolest character you can find on the planet, let me not add a zillion lines talking about her.. Let me get back to our trip now that we know who is travelling.

Day 1 was planned pretty much for sight seeing. We hit nisargadhame first up as we had to take bath. Well getting bath in the river is truly an amazing experience and we hadnt had enough of it even after three hours. The energy never ebbed away, be it for splashing water on each other nor taking pics. There were eerie looks from the others present there, as always we never cared as such because it wasnt something new to us. Effrontery seems to be part and parcel of the youth today. We tried boating after the bath, honestly a bad option. We had to manually pedal them, we were enervated to core after that. All our elated spirits craved for lunch and we reached kushalnagar to treat ourselves for a great lunch. Post lunch we had decided to hit Dubare national park and if possible the buddhist temple. I was all ebullient for Dubare national park since i had read a lot about it when googling. Stuff like you can feed the elephants and take rides on them excited me a lot. Surprise awaited us in the Dubare national park when we reached there by 3pm. Holy shit! All activities such as feeding elephants and rides were organised only in the morning. In the afternoon you were expected to see two elephants and come back. Dubare turned out to be an absolute disaster. For guys going to coorg make sure you go to Dubare national park in the morning even though it has to be scheduled to a different day. (Simple reason: Nisargadame river bath cant be missed either). Spirits were down and we headed to the Buddhist monastery in kushalnagar. Very peaceful place, worth spending a couple of hours there. You get see a different class of people and culture out there, you can afford to skip this if you dont have much time. We headed to virajpet where we had booked a lodge to stay. Well this is one of the most disgusting lodges i have ever seen in coorg, every room has all cheap crowd and their soul purpose on earth seems to be only to booze. plan ur stay in madikeri or kushalnagar……

Day 2: Thadiyandamol here we come……
Its half an hour travel from Virajpet, we headed out to treak at 9 in the morning ready to get toasted by the scorching sun. Its a decent trekking range with no necessity of a guide. Its the tallest peak in coorg and apparently you can see the arabian sea from the top. Many told me that its a 4 hour trek, you go up at breakfast and come back before lunch……. Lol, rhapsodies were spl they took the whole day to trek… It turned out to be worth it.
So many pics were taken that we actually started the actually trek only by 11. Water supply got exhausted and we just started to trek uphill. Just one stretch looks dangerous in the whole trek, its a little muddy better wear a good shoe. It started getting colder for a change as we went up and we saw a thick mist of fog moving towards us. We were lost in the mist and it felt like monsoon. Here are a few pics on the top where we were surrounded by mist alone.

It was 2pm when we ate the last apple left out in the bag. I ate it all the way just sparing the stem as it was the only source which had some water content. We started trekking downhill and it we had thunders rocking us in the sky. Next up was the hailstorm…. Who expects a hail storm in the peak of summer…. Nature was truly on our side. it was time for a rain dance, unlike the rain dances in all resorts this was in the real rain. My sony erricson was the only phone working and it came in handy. It was 3:15pm and i wasnt feeling like leaving the wild, not a single muscle of mine wanted me to come back. I sat down asking a few of my counter parts to go ahead. I wanted to check the time and looked around for my watch. I had dropped it into my trousers pockets due to the rain. I was shocked to know that it was missing, thanks to the hole in the trousers. I just told it loud to nithu and badri who were around that my watch is missing. Couple of trekkers who just passed along, one of them turns around and reveals my watch. Fuck, fucking shit what timing i thought……. I was speechless for a moment, infact every soul around was speechless. I just cant thank that guy enough, it was my bday gift and i didnt want to loose it at any cost. Apparently he told me that he found it in the hills, this put me speechless even further. I owe that guy……. . Elated to cloud zillion (9 is too low u see) i felt close to the wild once again. Its my wish to earn a lot and then settle down in the wild after 40′s. I need to chart out the plan for that.
Over thadiyandamol rocks and is any day worth a trek. feast yourself, esp the pic on the cliff edge on the top. Just a killer. Back to virajpet lodge, we dined early after knowing virajpet’s culture. Still food is a problem in that place. We went to kamat where we had dosas and then hit a juice parlour opposite. Every soul had 2 milkshakes atleast with shalini parcelling stuff too :)… Its night and what good is a night with friends without a pack of cards. Rekha was apparently not well and was unable to trek well too. The word bluff served as an elixir for her, she just sprang up from the bed all ready for a game. We named her the bluff queen, she did play well rather. Nithu was the best bluff master though…… i was making collections as usual.

Drenched in hail storm, thadiyandamol an unforgettable trek....

Day3 We were in a jinx to visit either abbi falls or cheluvar falls or irupu falls. People had only one comment saying that its summer and there wont me water. We heard that in abbi falls u must stand on a hanging bridge and look at the falls, sounded too lame whatsoever. We head to cheluvara falls, as expected the falls hardly had any water. But still this one is rated as one of most dangerous falls in coorg. Many have apparently died because of the inherent structure. Its the traditional 5 ft, 5ft and then 5000 ft law that the water fall structure is based upon. You really cant make out where the rock floor ends when there is lots of water. So people keep your eyes wide open. Now to retrace our path back to blore, we tried to elicit the route back to bangalore. Driver was telling us that we had to head back to kushalnagar and he didnt know any other route. Google maps to the rescue, we were able to trace a state highway from virajpet to gonigopal and via nagarhole. Thanks to the map we saved couple of hours travel, google maps is getting installed in my phone straight away. We feasted ourselves for a non – veg lunch on the way in hotel pranam international, Gonikopal. On the way back we celebrated badri’s bday in the TT, it was a great time. Here are the pics……. The cake was from the girls side …

Badri the mandai......

Its time for eloquence now…….. We exchanged a lot more than happiness in the trip, we exchanged as to our views towards each other. It was wonderful to meet 6 new faces and like them all at one shot…….. God bless ….. I apparently forgot to record our speeches, there will be a next time so not to worry.

Bangalore here we come… wait wait.. its not yet over. we dropped into balmuri falls to check it out. next time wont drop in there thats all i can say.
Next destination is Ranchi in a few months from now…………

More pics…

http://picasaweb.google.com/balaji.venu/CoorgTripTrek#

Bala
Friendship is all give and no take.
PS: For a successful friendship the above rule is two way.
live it if you can…. zindagi will rock

Almost forgot, homestays are the highlight in coorg. A little expensive but worth it anyday. You get food served on time and you get a feel of living in coorg over night. We ditched it because of budget constraints, but a lot many told us that its worth fasting and saving up money for the home stay. And yeah call up lodges and homestay and book rooms before going. You never know when coorg gets filled, we were lucky enough that we had reserved three rooms before going there if not Tempo traveler would have been our room for a night. Ideal places to stay are kushalnagar and madikeri, last option would be virajpet.

Hope the blog was informative, there will be a post on my experiences in coorg shortly. Keep a look out for the same.

Bala