The next day we both woke up early and got ready in our shoes to trek. It was pleasant outside; we went to the cliff via a backdoor in our hotel. But after a 10-meter ascend we found that the way up had been blocked by a thick overgrowth of thorny fence. We tried to find a way out from all sides but in vain. This fence was probably erected to restrict domestic animals from wandering beyond a point. But this could not spoil our spirit, we came down and tried to get a Birdseye view of the cliff; and finally found a small opening at the edges of the hotel walls. Then we started climbing up, the rise was a bit steep and it was a challenging trek. But the fun started when we were about 7-8 meters below the peak – and we saw a temple. As we moved up we found that this was an abandoned temple, probably of the tribes and they might be visiting it only on occasions like marriage. It was nice and cool up there and we both enjoyed the place because we could see almost the whole of Abu from here.

The next day started early. I and Abhishek (my younger brother) got up early and rushed to the railway reservation counter to cancel our ticket and also to book our bus tickets. After coming back we had our breakfast…. And soon our tourist bus came and we set out for the ‘Abu Tour’. Abu, as I said in the last post, is a small city and there are not more than 4 tourist destinations as such. But the tourism corporations and the municipality of Mount Abu have made it a more enjoyable place than what it could be. Apart from the tourist attractions the Abu tour includes some artificial destinations. The natural tourist destinations include Dilwara temple, Adhar Devi Temple, Achalgarh, honeymoon point, sunset point and the Guru Shikhar (highest point of Gujarat Rajasthan). This fills in just 5 hours of the trip. The rest of the tour is populated with the Nakki Lake, the Universal peace hall, World Peace Park and the world peace museum (all of the Brahmakumari godly university). These non-tou

On 29th of June, my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. To commemorate this event we went on a trip to mount Abu and Ahmedabad. The planning for the event was done well in advance; in fact information about Abu and its tourist attractions had already been found on the net before I reached Bhopal. I have always been the ‘working-son’ for my parents. What that means is that both my parents wait for me to come before they launch any new work. For example – planning a trip or painting the house or buying a new appliance etc.; even things like changing the position of a wall clock and sofa set are delayed for my arrival. It is this training that has made me an enthusiastic and ardent worker even outside. I am known for my working spirit and ability to get things done. So, when I came home, I was pushed into operational planning – dates, travel plans, tickets, hotels etc. All this done, we set out soon for our trip. Everything went to the clock. We left Bhopal by train on ev

Just 2-3 days after I had visited the Indira Sagar site that news started pouring in about it. Monsoon was at its onset and the dam waters were rising to their expected levels for the first time. The district of Harsud was the major target. Authorities had passed orders to vacate the area and even the electricity and telephone lines had been snapped off. But the commoners of the area were reluctant to leave their homeland; reasons like non-payment of relief amount, inadequate arrangements at new location and corruption were sighted. But finally the media’s loud protest and intervention pulled the CM to the site and relief operations were speeded up. Whether the CM’s visit did sort out all the issues is questionable but it at least got the work moving up fast. Media the fourth pillar of democracy finally did help the commoners get their say to the world. Above all discussion brings one fact to the fore; all the mega projects aimed at mass development and national growth finally are not

Jawaharlal Nehru called Dams as the temples of modern India. One hardly realizes the outlook behind this statement without actually seeing a Dam. Being in Bhopal I have seen a lot of dams since childhood so when my father offered a visit to the Indira Sagar Project I wasn’t surprised. It had been a long time since our family had gone on an outing (all together) and this was an ideal time and moment as my grandfather was also visiting us… We set out early in the morning by car; this was going to be my longest drive – the place was about 210kms from Bhopal near Khandva district. The journey was full of adventure and a cool drive except for 25km patch of bad road. I got a chance to drive in all seasons – it was sunny initially and it started raining as we reached nearer to the dam site. The trip was just like another till we reached the site. Cool weather, green lush surroundings, ghats, mountains and even a river bed crossing us. The river obviously was Narmada on which this dam was bu

It’s been an obscenely long time since I have written to this blog… was in home for the last month and then when I came back I got busy with the new batch and its induction process… well anyway, now that I am back I would like to blog about all my experiences in the last few days… home was fun this time and so has been the induction process … This blog ends here …. The next ones will start at the start of my ‘holidays’............. Let me end with a nice poem which I wrote a long time back (year 2000) but is apt for this situtaion... DAYS PASSED BY Days passed by The days of struggle tiring yet sweet they were The days of tension difficult yet meaningful they were Every day unique in itself gave me new experiences Opportunities; to understand myself The days contributed in building me up Each day told me my shortcomings Difficult future life could have been Without the days The days which passed by Happiness, ease, satisfaction Pain, grief, sorrow All are impor

Its evening about 7:00pm...Was just walking back from the main gate into the Aditya Birla Centre when i realised that I wouldn't be seeing an evening at this place any more....reflecting on my life at Aditya Birla - its been enjoyable....have got a feeler of corporate life especially because was positioned right in the middle of the corporate office of the Group. Got to see a lot of ups and downs ... power struggles .. ego clashes and happy times too... In fact the Aditya Birla Management Corp was in the stage of moving into its new office - Aditya Birla Centre when I joined. And my department was the only one in this building for my 1st month of training. So 'we', Corporate IT were the hosts and I was very much into welcoming the rest of the Corp into this building. Helped set up a lot of things - the access control system, the cafeteria management system etc ... also got to revise the roll list of the Corporate office atleast 4-5 times during the course...it is an advant

I have been on my 1st 'job' i.e. Summer Internship since the past 2 months... and by god !! its been taxing...and yet enjoyable... to be frank I was a bit frustated in the beginning since I had to stay for long hours and seemingly there was no work...the fun started when we were involved in a website review project, and had to stay till 3:15 am in the morning...working when u cud see the results was fun.. however long it might be. The project went fine..i again was a bit disheartened in the beginning as the amount of work seemed little....but now that the project is getting implemented I m enjoying it ... firstly because I am seeing the results.. and secondly because I have realised that what I did was not as trivial as it seemed. I have realised that if used properly summer trainees are a source of many revolutionary inputs and fresh ideas to the corporate. I realised this when we were in a meeting with Wipro professinals. They on the basis were arguing that it was not

Life is full of chance events...and many times chance experiences are pretty rewarding and thought provoking. As I boarded the bus today at Churchgate and sat by the window, ready to doze off for the next 2 hours, I was startled by a thick voice over my (partially deaf) right ear - "Whats happenning to Google?". I turned only to face a fat dark person who repeated his question on noticing a confused look on my face. It took me a second to realise that his question was directed to me owing to the magazine-article on my lap. The man sounded knowledgable, and so I became interested. We started talking about Google, its business model, its technology, its servers.. and then from there we went on to a host of topics related to technology. Soon we were introducing each other. This was a software engineer from Hyderabad around 33 years old who was in Bombay for some personal work. He was quite an entreprenurial person. Had his own recording studio where his team of (what he called

Today office time was rewarding, had a meeting with a 3 member team from Wipro Tech..so the gr8 news is that unlike most projects my summer project is going to be implemented !!! And the implmentation was kicked off today with this meeting... apart from business, the meeting saw a lot of philosophical stuff form my boss.... "Nature has not given us the ability to express joy, happiness and sense of achievement in words....this is because u must urself experience joy and never should be able to surrogately 'feel' it from others. Indian religion has realised the need for expression long ago and hence we have so many gods and goddesses signifying feeling of achieving 'wealth', 'knowledge', 'power' etc... " The essence of all this talk was that even in software and business application design all companies must have to undergo a pilot phase, a chaos type growth and then a structurisation; no shortcuts are possible. This however went against th