DEL-UDAIPUR-MOUNT ABU-DEL

Every year QAIT takes its employees to a 2 day trip and it is planned in the 4th quarter. This practice has been followed for last 4 years and employees look forward to two days of non stop fun. The favorite destination is Rishikesh and followed by Mukhteshwar. Last year, my friends from other team had planned for Mukhteshwar and I wanted to join them. However, the company wants it to be a team event rather than a group of friends going out together. Therefore, I had to go to Rishikesh. With the advent of fourth quarter of 2008-2009, teams had started planning their destinations for 2 day trip and as expected, most of them decided on Rishikesh again. However, my group of friends was interested in visiting Udaipur and Mount Abu and all the planning was done in time, courtesy our event manager Koul Saheb.
On Friday evening, we were raring to go to Udaipur through train scheduled at 7 PM from Nizamuddin railway station. I had promised my mates to reach QAIT by 5:30 sharp but reached, around 5:40, due to professional commitments at Adobe. Our event manager had organized two cabs for railway station and asked all of us to sit in them. After 10 minutes into the cab journey, I got a hunch to check if our event manager has kept my luggage in the cab or not. To my dismay, my luggage is not in the cab and I realize it is with a junior who is standing outside the B-8 office premises. Suddenly, joy and happiness gets converted to anxiety and anger. Event manager takes a quick action and turns his cab towards office. Finally, all of us are able to board the train and we start our march towards Udaipur. Males were happy with the young college crowd in our compartment and they were assessing the female crowd in either ends of the compartment before moving to any one. All males followed this pattern but only one of them was caught red handed and we got one more reason to laugh at him. During our journey, we noticed a drunken man who was staring at us through his upper sleeper berth. Our event manager gave him a hard look and stern warning. Navneet was ready to fight with him as he had fallen on him while making his way to the ground. After few minutes, we noticed that he was selling tea in our compartment and all of us had a laugh. Then, there was Manik, who was busy chatting to his fiancée on mobile, giving her minute details of the train journey. Akshima, Amit, Rahul and Vijay were listening to music on I-pod. Others, me, Navneet, koul, jitu with the support of her wife, were busy playing cards.
By 7 in the morning, we had reached Udaipur, our first destination and checked into the hotel. Meanwhile, we had decided to visit Mount Abu on Saturday and Udaipur on Sunday. We had Aloo ka Parontha as our breakfast and started our journey to Mount. The hired cab to Mount Abu had a small plasma screen with “Bachna Aee Haseno” songs playing on it. Me, Amit and Navneet with our cool goggles were eager to dance on the tunes of the movie and actually danced a little bit. In order to involve the entire crowd, we started playing antakshani and sung love, vulgar, sad and party songs. After traveling for about 5 hours, we reached Mount Abu. To our delight, sun was hiding in clouds; a cool breeze was blowing with little rain. We started our sight seeing by visiting an old jain temple known as dilwara temple. We were enthusiastic to visit our next destination because its name was Honeymoon point. In my view, lots of emotion is attached to the word Honeymoon because you and your beloved spend quality time together. Then, we went for normal boating and moved to Sunset point, our final destination in Mount Abu. Few of us reached sunset point through horse ride of 10 minutes and we could have imagined ourselves as Rats who is marching towards Meow. If you are wondering who is Rats and Meows, you need to watch “Jane Tu- Ya Jaane Naa”. The most interesting, scaring and adventurous part of Mount-Abu was our return journey to Udaipur. According to locals, there is a stretch between Mount-Abu and Udaipur that is unsafe particularly in night because of the tribes who have attacked vehicles in the past and killed people. This breaking news was confirmed by restaurant owner where we had our dinner during our return journey. Thus, we decided on a safer route but a longer one. Around midnight, our driver halted at a tea stall to drink his favorite black tea and then, we had to leave the highway and move on a deserted single road. Within 10 minutes, we were traveling on the deserted single road and Akshima, Amit, Rahul, Navneet and I were awake. As we traveled in the dark night on deserted single road, we were busy sharing ghost stories. The frightening road had curves, crest and trough and mountain terrain. All our eyes were glued to the front enjoying our adventure and seeing the mystery unfold step by step. We as software testers were raising What If questions such as what would happen if cab halts and luckily we did not experience any such situation and safely reached Udaipur around 3 in the morning. To be very honest to my audience, I had never traveled so late in the night on a deserted, frightening and curvaceous road and all of us were little scared. Through this return journey to Udaipur, we had our share of adventure and we could compete with Rishishek’s guys in terms of adventure.
Koul ensured we started our Udaipur sight seeing by 10:30 and Udaipur palace was our first destination. We had hired a guide who was educating us about the palace and clicking photos for us. I and Navneet managed to pose at every nick and corner of the palace and I have heard good reviews on my pics. We were able to annoy our event manager because he wanted us to wrap the palace asap and it would enable us to cover all sight seeing places. Second destination was cable trolley ride, in which were taken to the top of the hill through cable trolley. Over there, we posed as group and individuals in front of the camera. The time was passing by quickly and everyone wanted to shop for their loved ones. Therefore, we went to a wholesale shop and almost all of us purchased suits for moms, wife and sisters. Personally, I wanted to gift something to my mom and she liked the suit. Our final sight seeing destination was Vintage Car collection with a soft drink. All males were eager to click photographs in front/with vintage cars and managed to do it successfully. Finally, we started our return journey to Delhi and reached at 6:15 AM on time.
All of us enjoyed our two day NON-STOP fun trip to Udaipur-Mount Abu and have loads of sweet memories.

We the People

It is a weekly television program broadcasted on NDTV 24*7 and anchored by Barkha Dutt. There is a panel of experts discussing on a current topic and an audience sharing their thoughts and asking questions. I thoroughly enjoy listening to their views every weekend. Between, I have a small anecdote to share of my college days. One of my friends, through his jack, would enable us to participate in a cricket quiz to be telecasted on DD sports. I also got an opportunity to participate in the cricket quiz and every participant was supposed to 500 rupees. The icing on the cake was your partner in the quiz will be a girl. With all the benefits, everyone was eagerly looking forward to participating in it and having fun. Also, the participation in sports quiz was added in extra curricular activities section of the resume.

Coming back to We the People, Imran Khan, great cricketer, was invited for the show and topic of the discussion was related to recent Mumbai attacks. Brakha Dutt, asked, Imran Khan “Do you agree that perpetrators of Mumbai attacks were Pakistani and state actors had supported them?”. I was enthusiastically waiting for the response from a great cricketer and a politician. He replied that “Brakha, I agree that perpetrators were Pakistani. But, there was local support for militants as they disposed the trawler kuber, took taxis and reached their respective destinations”. With his statement, he smartly transferred the blame from Pakistan to India and safe guarded his country against the allegations. Barkha replied to Imran’s statement “Let’s not get into an ugly argument”. I was impressed by Barkha’s reply as she avoided an argument and moved on with the show.

One topic of discussion drawn from We the People and other similar shows is “Should we call Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats on Indian television show similar to We the People after Mumbai attacks?” I personally don’t support their presence on these shows. It is a well known fact that Pakistanis won’t agree to the allegations imposed on them because if they agree, there are chances of him/her being assassinated or fired from the job. A recent example is Pakistan’s Security Advisor Mehmud Ali Durrani, who was axed because he had acknowledged Kasab, a lone survivor of Mumbai attacks, is a Pakistani national. Also, the duration of the show is limited to 60 minutes and precious time is wasted on hearing Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats. If Pakistanis are not invited, more time is available for Indian panelist to discuss the topic. Further, regular denial of allegations by Pakistanis only increases the frustration and aggravates the temper of Indian public. A recent example is of a Pakistani stand up comedian, who was shooting in Mumbai. He was stopped by a group of MNS activist and forced to leave the location.

I will like to conclude by proposing an alternative. The alternative is that India media can call Pakistani media who are the voice of common man.

New Year Resolution!!

I have been pondering over an idea for past one year and discussed with my friends. However, the implementation of it has been postponed due to several unavoidable circumstances namely work pressure and laziness to some extent. With the advent of 2009, NEW YEAR, I thought why not have a New Year Resolution and follow it stringently. Because, only speaking and not implementing is not going to help. Thereby, I decided to implement my idea.

By Now, speculation must have ended as to what’s my New Year Resolution. If some of you are still wondering, my idea/New Year Resolution is to publish my blog weekly. This exercise allows me to write a piece of paper on any topic and even if I write a bad piece, there are no ramifications like a dressing-down from boss/an appalling email from your client. Then, you are mourning the entire day and venting out frustration on juniors.

Strong verbal communication and writing skills are an indispensable trait in today’s GLOBAL and COMPETITIVE world and essentials ones for growth. These were my weak points during initial stages of my career and I learned the hard way the paramount importance of them. After all my failures, I have tried to communicate in English as and when I get a chance. Also, I have tried, in my own little way, to encourage others to communicate in English. Ex: Ensured communication language is English during our internal team meeting and training sessions.

Grammar and vocabulary are two essential components of writing skills. One analogy coming to my mind; grammar is analogous to tyres and vocabulary to gear box in a four wheel vehicle. My writing skills have improved as one need to communicate with clients and you are supposed to keep it very simple, straight and polite while communicating with them.

I urge my friends to start writing a blog as it will enhance their skills.