Ladakh – where moonlight blinds you

Ladakh – Good to read, not so good to reach. Ladakh – more Israeli than Indian. Ladakh – where sun burns your skin in two hours. Ladakh – like a chameleon, changes color every season. Ladakh – where not one visitor would have left without uttering, “Yeah, finally”. Ladakh – final frontier of an avid traveler. Ladakh – as alien to a malayalee as bucket in an American toilet. For me, Ladakh on a bike was one ride too many!
I realized, malayalees take nature and its blessing, the greenery for granted. More than once during the trip, I thought and shared with my colleagues that a Keralite should be made to visit Ladakh at least once. At nine in the night, wet all over with temperatures a little over freezing, more than eager to see another local human, riding on a bike on a three meter wide road with huge boulders ready to roll down the hill slopes on your left and Indus river flowing unlike anything you’ve ever seen before on your right, shadows of huge stones floating in it’s currents and the threat of another crippling landslide awaiting you around the next curve is a decent enough combination to make you remember all the prayers your mom taught you and you’ve refused to remember since you joined engineering college. Once in Ladakh, I was depressed more often for the lack of greenery than oxygen. It looks too barren, lifeless like moon’s surface. The beauty of enormity and monotony demands more than your entire life’s training, your conventional wisdom, to be appreciated.
I was warned, I was coaxed against it, but somehow was determined to break off the sickening routine and blend into what was exclaimed as a slow transition from the most planned city in India (Chandigarh) into the “virgin-ness” of the country’s most famed heights. While setting our bikes up for the task, not once did I believe Mahesh that the instrument in its current shape wouldn’t take me all the way. In less than a week, I realized how important the initial make-over and the spares were! We packed them off to chandigarh a couple of days before setting out for what turned out to be the most adventurous journey of my life.Chandigarh was cool, relaxed and to Nestor, Mags & me, everything seemed rosy then. Kudos to GATI, they did an amazing job of transporting our bikes. We picked up a few last minute items, replaced tubes, oil, Mahesh’s camera, checked our emission, and rode off to Manali by noon. Dixie had made it a day earlier and was awaiting us at Manali, all stocked up!

To be continued...

LBS and you...

Well into the eighth year after graduation and a few grey hair above my forehead (not to mention the ones behind my ear), I have realized that it is too ambitious to hope that the ghosts (spelled fairies!) of your past will leave you. I believe the four years of “myLBS” has sown enough to last for the next eight years and most likely the rest of my life. My observations range from gatherings with an LBS lineage and otherwise, I’ve been surprised and quite often confused at the consistency with which any of these meetings fail to end without a mention of it. And if you have a larger gathering of the former kind, all sorts of ghosts come back haunting.

You land up at your friend’s place and the four of you huddle around a bottle of single malt, the discussions and memories apparently shoot back to the Meghraj days (the only bar in ksd then) when the same eternally cash starved friends used to sink bottles of AJ rum (Rs twenty a quarter), mind you, without water or soda (the secret is to block your nose when you pour the liquid down)!.....when you pull out a couple of hundred rupee notes for the ticket to that mal movie in PVR, you glance back and smile at your friend standing next to you who is also thinking of queing up in the sun at Roopesh, Mehboob, (I am painfully refraining from mentioning “Kanyaka”) with a ten rupee note lining your pocket ….When you pull out a hundred bucks for a pack of “Goldflake Kings” and wait for the change, in the back of your mind you are solving, “how much do I still owe Hameecha for all the beedis I have borrowed and left without a trace?”….You are rushing into a meeting when you are suddenly consumed by this urge to call your ol’ pal whom you are still in touch with and remind him of the party meeting just about to start in room # 203, first floor, men’s hostel “dei, oru kettu beediyum edutho, just in case”…and you don’t need no occasion to remember the story of your good friend who is seeing the computer lab for the first time for his university exam, typing in “Pleasecome-onC” to open the Borland editor!...and for a very few lucky fellas who are getting married know they will have an explanation to make about the memento sitting pretty in their living room – the best “couple” in college – indeed a sinking feeling…driving a spanking new car out of your parking to your grocery store just a turn away, you think of the umpteenth time you have walked back thirteen kms to your hostel after the late-night film!....

In internet terminology “LBSCE” is among the top 5 “keywords” of our lives, and in google terminology, it has gathered a pretty impressive “page rank”!

In the end I have given up, I tried but there is no way I am getting over the intoxicating four years of my life. But can I pass it on?
For current students: Traditionally at LBS, there has been more to life being in the back benches that the front ones and more to life being outside the buildings than the back benches!
For the alumni: As you read this, in your current capacity, what is it that can make you a great ambassador? And what is it that the college can gain from it?
Institute a cash award for the top 3 academic projects done inhouse? Sponsor a domain and hosting the college website? Help students spin projects around it? personally conduct sessions on tech trends, industry trends, job opportunities within and outside IT? Arent building impressive resumes, presentation skills, communication skills etc trainable and key to a graduate’s prospects? Help students network, reach out and present to the HRs of different companies that we work for? Or even more ambitiously, help find funding and market the ideas to be taken beyond the campus? Arent a lot of us making money from the internet doing a lot of unconventional things? and so on ...

Take a little time to pool in your ideas…and of course your memories :)

Cheers,
Anoop

A long awaited trip

These are my lines and hence I am the hero.

Other minor characters:

Maman: Praveen, with whom I am traveling.
Vipin: Vipin is with us too on the trip.
Pattar: Arun, whose wedding we are going.
Manjith: We are attending his reception too, on the day before Arun’s wedding.
Sajan: Joined us during the second half of the journey, for the weddings.
Sreenivasan: Great Malayalam movie actor; aint got a role in here but am quoting him generously.
Jagathy Sreekumar: Great Malayalam movie actor; aint got a role in here but am quoting him generously.
Suresh Gopi: Great Malayalam movie actor; aint got a role in here but am quoting him a lil less generously.

Arun (henceforth addressed as Pattar) is in his new avatar. Haven’t really tried to observe the family man in him but am sure he’ll come up to speed and let the wind blow through his hair. But more interesting part is the three days we spent anticipating the ceremony and the ultimate verbal post-mortem of it thereafter.

I had planned a similar trip with Praveen (henceforth addressed as maman) a couple of years back and Bangalore flooded like never before, cars floating and the mortal Anoop wading the dirty waters in the Infosys bus towards Yeshwantpur first and then on foot back with a glimmer of hope of catching the train to Calicut at Hosur with maman in it. With the ticket in my hand and a lot of desperation in my mind, grossly failed to make it and left Praveer to the general compartment rush or to the mercy of a sleeper coach TT, don’t know which.

19th April, two days before Pattar’s wedding

With the common factors of maman and me, and with clear memories of the same, naively unaware of the climate outside but with an almost accurate anticipation of it I set foot outside. It was pouring and the poor auto driver charged the poor Anoop double meter and took an hour to cover 5 kilometer. Gosh, it sucks to plan it with maman.

From then till getting into the bus was quite uneventful, and I was quite happy that I could trick Vipin to reach madivala an hour before departure which otherwise would have happened and hour and a half later. But soon after that we realized there is a lot of luggage waiting to go up the bus. Start delayed by 90 mins. Salem (Selam? Salem? Has there been a spell error that has been carried over for centuries?) had more surprises, we were stranded for 2 hrs in the middle of nowhere – some freaky accident. Like we have all seen in the “swearing-in-ceremony, pha pulle, uchishtam, amedhyam, ” movies in Malayalam, Valayar check-post is the nucleus of action – lost another hour. Having missed two square meals in a row, my stomach was growling, almost inviting my fellow travelers to turn around till we reached Palakkad at 12 noon, a good 5 hrs delayed.

20th April, the day before the wedding

The first two hotels were booked out, checked into the third and after some elaborate meals (Raw rice, fish curry, fish fry, sides – palakkad style) stretched to the cool AC breeze. Later during the evening, maman and I repeat, maman started watching “Blood Diamond”. Having promised Manjith that we would arrive in Trissur by 6 pm, we started off from our room at 5:30 planning to choose a gift and travel 65kms in the next 30 mins. Maman and me, and our way with the devil got the rain gods pouring down again, and we reached Trissur at 9:30 pm. Fortunately the first highlight of the day, we were treated to my favourite cuisine with servings in plates, glasses and narrow-neck bottles of the “keep walking” and “life is calling, where are you?” fame and the second highlight of the day, Sajan joined us there. Had a great time on Manjith’s terrace, gave him our blessings and left him before he could kick us out. Well, the night before weddings are really tiring you know. Ask me. An expensive amby took us back to Palakkad, maman dozing off on my right shoulder and Sajan on my left; and me on my chest.

21st April, day of the wedding


7 am, having postponed Pattar’s gift for the morning of the wedding-day, thought of waking up a lil early and buying a pair of double kasavu mundu for me and Vipin. Buy we did, but couldn’t make it to the wedding before 10, missed all the action. Drooled on stories of pattar toppling off the swing and attempting a trip to Kashi - a figment of imagination, a rather convincing enough one. We had our share in an awesome feast. Wedding is over, Pattar is in his new avatar.

As planned, we took off to Mannarkkad, the serene greens of palakkad, rows of coconut trees (ofcourse this is keralam, buddy) strewn between massive rubber estates (damn, this is Christian country too, buddy) with big houses in the middle. They look beautiful when it rains. Humble people ambling through the narrow guttered road leading to the kanhiramukku dam, painting a Sathyan Anthikad picture of the old times when the state was the only employer (“Don’t you dare talk about Poland”). But things are quite different these days, mind you exactly when you pity them for not being able to make a high flyer like yourself, you’ll be equally pitied for struggling so hard to make it. What makes kerala what it is today are its “humble” rich people. Humble maman’s humble abode had some 7 bedrooms, two balconies, and couple of rooms overlooking the lonely road to the dam and the wet estates around it. The humble abode had two permanent residents in it.

A stroll in the night to the dam and back, an awesome dinner and some 2+ hrs of chatting in the balcony with feet stretched out was good enough recipe for a great night’s sleep. Early morning “kurbana” – (damn, am not going), what would have happened of pattar? Will he collapse out of tension? Will he stand near the window opposite the wall with a rose in hand, “Shyame, ninakkettavum ishtapetta niramethanu?” arun’s mom, “eda dinesha, poi panthalukarkku kashu koduthu videda”. Will he cuddle up and doze off with a pillow, and a tv remote in one hand? What if there is a power outage? Will he scare his wife? Or will he do a Jagathy in Meleparambil Aanveedu? Nan.. err.. unn err… punnak…ai…manna…an, God save pattarrrrrrrrrrrzzzzz…..zz……