"LOVE" FALL- My Entry to the GetPublished Contest

LOVE, a four letter word which often intrigues even those who think they know all about it. Love, a mystical word, whose derivation changes from person to person, situation to situation and relation to relation. It is the quiver of a blade of grass in the wind. It is in the way the wind flutters a blade of grass. Perspectives are different, but are the manifestations of love in either case. This chamelionisation is what makes this word so unique and so intriguing. Love is a thing which hurts us the most sometime or the other but every person in the world runs after it.

The story revolves around a shy, introvert teenager who is desperate to experience love. But who knew that this struggle to find happiness in love was to lead him to a dark, lonely place called as the heartbreak cell where he was punished ruthlessly by depression. He only saw the brighter side of love and didn't see the deep, dark crevasse in between. Our protagonist discovers a girl in his locality who, as he thought was, totally different from all other girls of the same age group. He started talking to her and he used to talk so much that others would think something was cooking. Yeah, it was cooking, he started falling in love with that girl. One fine day, he thought he would confess his feelings to her. So when he told her, her reply shocked him..........

This story is about a peaceful love triangle, which evolved into a dark, ruthless tragedy by the forces of possessiveness and anxiety. This story is very different from what is portrayed in movies and truly depicts what happens in modern day India, especially in teenagers. People today get influenced by seeing movies which shows two people falling in love  in moments but in reality its a long struggle of a person with a spectrum of feelings and myriad of people that he has to conquer and only if he succeeds to outwit them, only then is that he is allowed to get what his heart truly wants. This is the ultimate test that nature puts on a man to test whether he is stable enough to sustain a relationship and this is the most important point that many people miss out on while trying to get into a relationship. With this story the writer wants to spread this message through as many people as possible.


"This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India."

If you like the story and want to see it in print then click on the link below and click on the heart icon... 

http://www.indiblogger.in/getpublished/idea/552

This is a sincere request to all those who have liked this post and want to promote it further so that it gets to the bookshelves, pls. take a minute out to like this.

Lance.......

So that Lance guy has fessed up to cheating. I got wind of it yesterday on Facebook.

My first reaction was a giant yawn — which perhaps could have been bigger and louder with steroids.

It didn’t even occur to me that Lance Armstrong’s confession to Oprah had anything to do with the work that I do. Then my friend Naveen told me that readers would be let down if I didn’t weigh in with some wisdom and/or snark.

I said something like, I have as much to do with Lance Armstrong as a fry cook has to do with a sword fighter. They both use knives. The similarity ends there.

Hmm… I wonder what I’d get on eBay for this right about now.

This morning, still in nothing but my boxers, I opened the shirt drawer of my dresser, and there on top of the pile was my LIVEWRONG t-shirt. I took it as a sign. I need to speak my mind.

Some of you are not going to like it. Here it is:

I still don’t care.

I’ve never been very good at hero worship, whether it be athletes, entertainers, or any of the standard variety of famous people who are compensated for holding our eyeballs.

I bought the shirt years ago, before there was any whiff of scandal around Armstrong. I bought one for each of my Lance-worshipping friends — to annoy them. The shirts were being liquidated for $5 each at Haybren Adventures, who apparently had to cease and desist selling these shirts and bracelets after being a bit too successful at it. (The once thriving livewrong.net is now a sad link farm waiting for someone to bid high on the domain.)

Sometimes my herolessness feels like a social liability; sometimes it feels like a valuable immunity.

There is something hard-wired in our primate brains that leads us to equate high visibility with high significance. It probably was a positive correlation in our hunter-gatherer societies. But now it does a disservice to us. If we see someone on television often enough, our brains tell us the person is deserving of our attention. We end up filling our heads with names and details of people who are less worthy of our attention than some of the people living down the street whose names we do not know.

The so called “value” of celebrity, and the notion that celebrities can use their fame for good is based on exploiting this primitive characteristic that no longer serves us well. For every Angelina Jolie legitimately bringing attention to the plight of refugees, there is a Jenny McCarthy regurgitating pseudoscience against vaccinations.

Another friend of mine, Rahul, does research at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. A few years ago he was driving his car, and got stuck behind a group of cyclists taking up two lanes.

When they all had to stop for a red light, Rahul was able to pull up next to the group and ask, “Hey, Do you need to take up both lanes?”

He looked more closely and realized he was talking to Lance Armstrong, who replied, “Cut us some slack, bro, we’re trying something new.”

Mike got a little “brush with greatness” fever, and spent weeks trying to get through to Armstrong to perhaps get him come and visit the Cancer Center.

“He’ll remember me. He called me bro. Certainly he’ll want to know about the research we do.”

His efforts went nowhere. Armstrong was either too busy, or not as heroically anti-cancer as his public mythology would suggest.

Heroes will let you down. Not always, but often enough that you should at least brace yourself for it — or better: divest yourself of heroes entirely.

Lance Armstrong’s value to cycling was to sell cycling to people who view bikes as sports equipment, not as a practical way of getting around.

If you are commuting by bike, you are doing something that most people believe they can’t do — especially people who don’t see themselves as athletic. And the easier you make it look, the more heroic you are.

This Lance business has nothing to do with you.

“Distraction,” Simplicity, and Running Toward Shitstorms

It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. —Albert Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics” (1934) Context: Last week, I pinched off one of my typically woolly emails in response to an acquaintance whom I admire. He’s a swell guy who makes things I love, and he'd written, in part, to express concern that my recentSwift impersonation had been directed explicitly at something he'd made. Which, of course, it hadn’t—but which, as I'll try to discuss here, strikes me as irrelevant. To paraphrase Bogie, I played it for him, so now I suppose I might as well play it for you. (n.b.: Excerpted, redacted, munged, and heavily expanded from my original email) There are at least a couple things that mean a lot to me that I'm still just not very good at. Make nuanced points in whatever way they need to be made; even if that ends up seeming “un-nuanced” Never explain yourself. I want to break both these self-imposed rules privately with you here. [Editor’s Note: Um.] Because, I hope to nuance the shit out of some fairly un-nuanced points. And, to do that, I'll also (reluctantly) need to explain myself. But, here goes. First [regarding my goofing on “distraction-free writing environments”] I think there are some GIANT distinctions at play here that a lot of folks may not find nearly as obvious as I do: Tool Mastery vs. Productivity Pr0n – Finding and learning the right tools for your work vs solely dicking around with the options for those tools is just so important, but also so different. And, admittedly, it’s almost impossible to contrast those differences in terms of hard & fast rules that could be true for all people in all situations. But, that doesn’t make the difference any less qualitatively special or real. Similarly… Self-Help Vs. “Self”–“Help” – Solving the problem that caused the problem that caused the problem that caused the symptom we eventually noticed. Huge. Arguably, peerless. Viz.: How many of us ignore the actual cause of our problem in favor of just reading dozens of blog posts about how to “turbocharge” its most superficial symptoms? Sick. Focus & Play – Yes, focusing on important work is, as Ford used to say, Job 1. But, that focus benefits when we maintain the durable and unapologetic sense of play that affords true creativity and fosters an emergence of context and connection that’s usually killed by stress. BUT. Again, what conceivable “rule” could ever serve to immutably declare that “THIS goofing-off is critical forhippocampal plasticity” vs. “THAT goofing-off is justdumb, distracting bullshit?” Impossible. Because drawing those kinds of distinctions is one of our most important day-to-day responsibilities. Decisions are hard, and there’s no app or alarm gadget that can change that. Although, they certainly can help mask the depth of the underlying problem that made them seem so—what’s the parlance?—“indispensable”. Think: Elmo Band-Aids for that unsightly pancreatic tumor. Reducing Distraction through Care (Rather than braces, armatures, and puppet strings). Removing interruptions andexternal distractions that harm your work or life? Great. Counting on your distraction-removal tool to supplement your non-existent motivation to do work that will never get done anyway? Pathetic. Frankly, this is a big reason I'm so galled when anyone touts their tool/product/service as being the poor, misunderstood artist’s new miracle medicine—rather than just admitting they've made a slightly different spoon. Because, let’s be honest: although most of us have plenty of perfectly serviceable spoons, everybody knows collecting cutlery is way more fun than using it to swallow yucky medicine. Using a System Vs. Becoming a System. Having a system or process for getting work done vs. making the iteration of that system or process a replacement for the work. This is just…wow…big. But, maybe most importantly to me… Embracing the Impossibles. Getting past these or any other intellectual koans by simply accepting life’s innumerable and unresolvable paradoxes, hypocrisies, and impossibilities as God-given gifts of creative constraint. Rather than, say, a mimeographed page of long division problems that must be solved for a whole number, n. I just can’t ever get away from this one. For me, it’s what everything inevitably comes back to. The very definition of our jobs is to solve the right problem at the right level for the right reason—based on a combination of the best info we have for now and a clear-eyed dedication to never pushing an unnecessary rock up an avoidable hill. YET, we keep force-feeding the monster that tells us to fiddle and fart and blame the Big Cruel World whenever we face work that might threaten our fragile personal mythology. “Sigh. I wish I could finally start writing My Novel….Ooooooh, if only I had a slightly nicer pen…and Zeus loved me more….” All that stuff? That there’s a complex set of ideas to talk about for many complex reasons—not least of which being how many people either despise or (try to) deny the unavoidable impact of ol' number six. But, here’s the thing: as much as saying so pisses anybody off, I think the topics we're NOT talking about whenever we disappear into Talmudic scholarship about “full-screen mode” or “minimalist desks” or whatever constitutes a “zen habit”—those shunned topics are precisely the things that I believe are most mind-blowingly critical to our real-world happiness as humans. In fact, I believe that to such a degree that helping provide a voice for those unpopular topics that can be heard over the din is now (what passes for) my career. I really believe these deeper ideas are worth socializing on any number of levels and in many media. Even when it’s inconvenient and slightly disrespectful of someone’s business model. So, that’s what I try to do. I talk about these things. Seldom by careful design. Often poorly. But, always because they each mean an awful lot to me. […] But, no matter how I end up saying whatever the hell I say, I believe in saying it not simply to be liked or followed or revered as a “nice guy” who pushes out shit-tons of whatever to “help people.” Because, believe me, friend, a great many of those apparently “nice guys” swarming around the web “helping people” these days are ass-fucking their audience for nickels and calling it a complimentary colonoscopy. And, while I absolutely think that in itself is empiricallywrong, I also think it’s just as important to say that it’s wrong. Sometimes, True Things need to be said. Which in this instance amounts to saying, a) selling people a prettier way to kinda almost but not really write is not, in the canonical sense, “nice”—but, far worse, b) leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided impression that their “distraction” originates from anyplace but their own busted-ass brain is really not “helping.” Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful. “Helping” a junkie become more efficient at keeping his syringe loaded is hardly “nice.” It’s the opposite of nice. And, it’s the opposite of helpful. These are my True Things. And, to me, saying your True Things also means not watering down the message you care about in order to render it incapable of even conceivably hurting someone’s feelings—or of even conceivably losing you even one teeny-tiny slice of that precious “market share.” Well, that’s the price, and I'm fine paying it—best money I've ever spent. But, it also means trusting your audience by letting each of them decide to add water only as they choose to—by never corrupting the actual concentrate in a way that might make it less useful to the smartest or most eager 5% of people who'd like to try using it undiluted. Because, at that point, you're not only abandoning the coolest people you have the honor of serving—you risk becoming a charlatan. And, that’s precisely what you become when you start to iteratively inbreed the kind of fucktard audience for whom daily buffets of weak swill and beige assurance are life’s most gratifying reward. Sure. Those poor bastards may never end up using any of that watery information to do anything more ambitious than turbocharging their most regrettable symptoms. But, who’s the last person in the universe who’s going to grab them by the ears and tell them to get back to work? Exactly—that same “nice guy” whose livelihood now depends on keeping infantalized strangers addicted to his “help.” Holy shit—no way could I ever live with that. It’s so wrong, it’s not even right. ESC, ESC, ESC! […] Okay. So anyhow, there’s a really long-winded, overly generous, and extremely pompous way of trying to say I don’t know how to do what I do except how I do it. But, I do genuinely feel awful when innocent people feel they have been publicly humiliated or berated simply because I'm some dick who hates people. Which has to be my favorite irony of all. When I was a kid, I thought my Mom was “mean” not to let me play in traffic on busy Galbraith Road. Today, I'm not simply grateful that she had the strength and resolve to be so “mean”—I actually can’t imagine how sad it would be to not have people in your life who care enough about your long-term welfare to tell you to stop fucking around in traffic. To where you eventually might start even seeking 12x-daily safety hacks from some of the very same drivers whose recklessness may eventually kill you. Wow. […] Admitting when life is complicated or things aren’t shiny and happy all the time strikes me as a wonderfully sane and adult way to conduct one’s life. That there are so many folks offended by even the existence of this anarchic idea is not a problem I can solve. No more than I can wish useless email away or pray hard enough that it never rains on anyone’s leaky roof. All out of scope. And, then, I jizzed on at length about how much I admire the recipient’s work. Which I do. Good work doesn’t need a cookie I may admire your work, too. Especially if you care a lot about that work and don’t overly sweat peoples' opinions of it. Most definitely including my own. For these purposes, it doesn’t really matter whether we're friends and, honestly, it doesn’t even matter whether I love, use, or agree with everything you do, say, or make in a given day. It doesn’t matter because good work doesn’t need me to love it. Like tornadoes and cold sores, good work happens with total disregard to whether I'm “into it.” But, conversely, let’s stipulate that the points-of-view undergirding our opinions—again, including mine—will and should survive either agreement or lack of agreement with equivalently effortless ease. Because, like reallygood work, a really good point-of-view doesn’t require another person’s benediction. Guess we'll have to disagree to agree Now, to be only vaguely clearer here, I'm not posting this circuitous ego dump in the service of altering your opinion of either me, my friend, his work, or practically anything else for that matter. But, I would love it if we could all be more okay with the fact that real life means that we do each have a different, sometimes incongruous, and often totally incompatible point-of-view. Yes. Even you have a point-of-view thatsomeone despises. Ready to change it now? Jesus, I sure hope not. Then, to be only slightly more clear, I'm also not advocating for that fakey brand of web-based kum ba ya that gets trotted out alternately as “tolerance” or “inclusion” or some styrofoam miniature of “civility.” I'm absolutely not against all of those things when authentically practiced, but I'm also really skeptical of the well-branded peacemakers who are forever appointing themselves the Internet’s “Now-Now-Let’s-All-Pretend-We're-Just-Saying-the-Same-Useless-Thing-Here” den mothers. Because we're not all saying the same things. Not at all. And, it infantalizes some important conversations when we tacitly demand that any instance of honest disagreement be immediately horseshat into a photo opp where some thought leader gets to hoist everyone’s hands in the air like he’s fucking Jimmy Carter. Nope. Not saying that. Who will you really rely on? What I AM saying is that alllllll this seemingly unrelated stuff is absolutely related—that the pattern of not relying on other people for anything you really care about is arguably the great-grandaddy of every useful productivity, creativity, or self-help pattern. Where’s this matter? Pretty much everywhere you have any sort of stake: Don’t rely on other people to remove your totally fake “distractions.” Don’t rely on other people to pat your beret, re-tie your cravat, and make you a nice cocoa whenever that mean man on the internet points out that your “distractions” are totally fake. (Which they are) Don’t rely on other people to tell you when or whether you have enough information. Don’t rely on other people to define your job. Don’t rely on other people to “design your lifestyle.” Don’t rely on other people to decide when your opinions are acceptable. Don’t rely on other people to tell you when you're allowed to be awesome. Don’t rely on other people to make you care. Don’t even rely on other people to tell you what you should or shouldn’t rely on. Yes. I went there. Because that’s the point. These hypocrisies, paradoxes, and ambiguities that people get so wound up about—that many of us are constantly (impotently) trying to resolve—cannot be resolved. Because, yeah: all of these harrowingly unsolvable problems are immune to new notebooks and less-distracting applications and shinier systems and “nicer” self-“help” and pretty much anything else that is not, specifically, youwalking straight into the angriest and least convenient shitstorm you can find and getting your ass kicked until the storm gets bored with kicking it. Then, you find an even angrier storm. Then, another. And, so on. “Get the fuck off of my obstacle, Private Pyle!” Doing that annoying hard stuff is how you grow, get better, and learn whatreal help looks like. Even if that’s not the answer you wanted to hear. You get better by getting your ass out of your RSS reader and fucking making things until they suck less. Not by buying apps. You don’t whine about distractions, or derail yourself over needing a nicer pencil sharpener, or aggravate your chronic creative diabetes by starting another desperate waddle to the self-help buffet. No. You work. And, for what it’s worth, just like you can’t get to the moon by eating cheese, you'll also never leave boot camp with your original scrote intact by telling your drill sergeant to try using more honey than vinegar. No. That sergeant’s job is to make you miserable. It’s his job to break down your callow conceits about what’s supposed to be easy and fair. It’s his jobto emotionally pummel you into giving up and becoming a Marine. You? You're not there to give the sergeant notes; you're there to sleep two hours a night, then not mind getting beaten for 20 hours until a decent Marine starts to fall out. Who knows? He may even surprise you by introducing a surprisingly effective “distraction-free learning environment.” “Tee ell dee ahr, Professor Brainiac.” Like most humans, I like things I can understand. Like most readers, I love specificity. Like most thinkers, I love clarity. Like most students, I love relevance and practicality. And, like most busy people, believe it or not, I actually do really like it when someone gets straight to the point. But, here’s the problem. If my 2-year-old daughter asks me about time travel, and I blithely announce, “E=mc2”, I will have said something that is entirely specific, clear, relevant, practical, and/or straight-to-the-point. Forsomebody. But, not so much for my daughter. And, to be honest, not even to any useful degree for me. She'd probably either laugh derisively at me (which she’s great at), or she'd pause and ask, “Whuh dat?” (which she’s even better at). Thing is, her understanding that jumble of characters less than me—and my understanding it WAY less than Professor Al—has zero impact on the profundity, truth, beauty, or impact of the man’s theory. Sure. You could quite accurately fault me for being a smartass and a poseur, and you could even berate my toddler for her unaccountably shallow understanding of Modern Physics. But, in any case, you can’t really blame either Albert or his theory. You're turbocharging nothing Specifically, Albert can’t begin to tell us what he really knows if we don’t understand math. So, let’s say this theory you've been hearing about really interests you. And, let’s also pretend, just for the sake of the analogy, that you haven’t completed Calculus III (212) or Quantum Mechanics (403) or even something as elementary as, say, Advanced Astrophysics II (537). I know youhave. Obviously. But, let’s pretend. Where do you start? Well, you could read some tips about learning math. You could find a list of 500 indispensable resources for indispensable math resources. You could buy a new “distraction-free math environment.” Heck, there’s actually nothing to stop you from just declaring yourself a “math expert.” Congratulations, Professor. Thing is: you still don’t know math. Which means you still can’t really understand the theory—no more than a pathetic Liberal Arts refugee like me or a dullard Physics ignoramus like my kid can really grok relativity. Difference is, you will have blown a lot of time hoping that actual expertise follows non-existent effort—while my daughter and I get to remain total novices without charge. Only, we don’t get all mad at the theory as a result; a staggering number of fake math experts do. I mean, be honest—after all that recreational non-work and make-believe dedication almost trying to kinda learn math sorta—you might actually get frustrated at how brazenly Al defies your fondness for shortcuts by continuing to rely on so many terms and proofs and blah-blah-blah that you still just don’t understand. So annoying. You may simply decide that Albert Einstein’s a huge dick for never saying things that can be completely understood solely by scanning a headline. EPIC EINSTEIN FAIL, amirite? You never really know what you didn’t know until you know it But, Al just told the truth. Problem is, Al’s truth not only requires fancy things in order to be truly understood—the more of those fancy things you take away from his truth, the less true it gets. And, by the time it’s been diluted to the point where you're comfortable that you understand it? You'd be understanding the wrong thing. Even I can understand that. But, not one bit of any of this is Al’s fault. Al doesn’t get to control who uses, abuses, gets, or doesn’t get what he said or why it matters. Especially since he’s been dead for over fifty years. All I know is, regardless of who has ears to hear it on a given day, it would be to Al’s credit never to mangle something important in order to get it into terms everybody’s ready to handle without actually trying. And God bless him for never agreeing that your “distractions” to learning math are his problem. So, yeah, if you only need to hand in a crappy 5-page paper, you could certainly Cliff’s Notes your way through Borges, Eliot, or Joyce in an afternoon, and feel like you haven’t missed a thing. Trouble is, if you did care even a little, it’s impossible to even say how much you're missing since you can’t be bothered to soldier through the source text. The text itself is the entire point. Even the wonderfully cogent and readable layman’s explanations Einstein himself provided don’t really get to the nut, the application, and the implications of his real theory. That all takes real math. That “single datum of experience” matters Sometimes, complex or difficult things stop being true when you try to make them too simple. Sometimes, you have to actually get laid to understand why people think sex is such a thing. Sometimes, you need to learn some Greek if you really want to understand The Gospel of John. And, yeah, sometimes, you're going to have to just work unbelievably hard at whatever you claim to care about before anyone can begin to help you get any better—or less “distracted”—at it. The part I really know is what doesn’t work. Reading Penthouse Forumwon’t help you CLEP out of Vaginal Intercourse 101. Watching a Rankin-Bass cartoon about the Easter Bunny will teach you very little about the intricacies of transubstantiation. And, if you can’t be troubled to care so much about your work that you reflexively force distractions away, dicking around with yet another writing application will merely aggravate the problem. Ironic, huh? These quantum mechanics of personal productivity are rife with such frustrating “paradoxes.” These are True Things. Achieving expertise and doing creative work is all horribly complicated and difficult and paradoxical and frustrating and recursive and James Joyce-y—and any guide, blog, binary, guru, or “nice guy” that tries to suggest otherwise is probably giving you a complimentary colonoscopy. Do the math. Want a new syllabus? Sure: Run straight into your shitstorm, my friends. Reject the impulse to think about work, rather than finishing it. And, open your heart to the remote possibility that any mythology of personal failure that involves messiahs periodically arriving to make everything “easy” for you might not really be helping your work or your mental health or your long-standing addiction to using tools solely to ship new excuses. Learn your real math, and any slide rule will suffice. Try, make, and do until you quit noticing the tools, and if you still think you need new tools, go try, make, and do more. If you can pull off this deceptively simple and millennia-old pattern, you'll eventually find that—god by dying god—any partial truth that’s supported your treasured excuses for not working will be replaced by a no-faith-required knowledge that you're really, actually, finally getting better at something you care about. Which is just sublimely un-distracting.

No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome

After watching Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement speech, i got greatly motivated and i would like to share something with you all. Lets start with an excerpt from his speech

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single best invention of life.

It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new.

[…]

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

None of us should ever have to face death to accept the inflexible and, too-often, novel sense of scarcity that it introduces.

In fact, it'd be great if we could each skip needing outside permission to be awesome by not waiting until the universe starts tapping its watch.

A simple start would involve each of us learning to care just a little more about a handful of things that simply aren't allowed to leave with us--whether today, tomorrow, or whenever. Because, I really believe a lot of nice things would start to happen if we also stopped waiting to care. A whole lot of nice things.

If that sounds like fancy incense for hippies and children, perhaps in a way that seems frankly un-doable for someone as practical and important and immortal as yourself, then go face death.

Go get cancer. Or, go get crushed by a horse Or, go get hit by a van. Or, go get separated from everything you ever loved forever.

Then, wonder no longer whether caring about the modest bit of time you have here is only for fancy people and the terminally-ill.

Because, the sooner you care, the better you'll make. The better you'll do. And the better you'll live.

Please don't wait. The universe won't.

Trek to Sagargad

Last weekend, the Mumbai Voyagers group did not trek. Saturday was a meeting day at CCD, Dadar. This meeting of the group was much more successful than the previous meeting when only two people turned up. One - the group founder Vishy and the other - yours truly. I could not attend this meeting owing to personal reasons.

This week, activity on the messaging board started early from Tuesday . Most people had a place they wanted to visit. The moot point of these discussions was whether to go on a Saturday or Sunday. I was in favor of a Saturday trek as adequate rest can be taken on Sunday.

The members of the group continued adding messages to the board changing the confirmations. This was before a place or a date was actually finalized. There were also people considering an overnighter. This was not possible for me and with the exception of Vini, all other girls would have dropped out.

Varun had thought of Sagargad trek and I was interested, as I had never been to the place before. Sagargad is a beautiful fort very close to Alibag. There are two approach routes to the top of the fort. One is from a village named Khandala and the other is from Vaghole. Both these villages lie on the bus-route to Alibag, from Mumbai. The route to Sagargad is a scenic one with lush green vegetation complimented by a relatively thick jungle. The route from Khandala has the added attraction of a waterfall. Since this was a monsoon trek, the waterfall was the decisive factor in choosing our route.

After discussions with the other moderators (read Vishwa and Vini), we decided to go to Sagargad. I informed Varun about the number of people ready to join. The bus was at six in the morning from Thane. I informed Vishwa about the alternative to travel to Panvel to catch the bus. However he called me up at around 11:30 pm and informed me that he would be coming to Thane with everyone. By 11:30, three people had dropped out. Vini,Surender and Shabbir (Traitors). We had come down to our more normal, manageable number of six people.

There are a number of buses plying between Alibagh and Thane. The first bus in the morning is scheduled at 10 minutes past six. On this particular day, the driver of the bus decided to reschedule it to six am. So the bus started early. I was still paying the rickshaw fare, when the bus took off. Meanwhile, Vishwa, Miss Tee and Miss IRS were still in the train. The latest report received from them indicated that their train had reached Kanjurmarg station, three stations away from Thane. It would take them eleven more minutes to reach Thane station. Three more to reach the bus-stand. So me, Rohit and Varun decided to forego this bus.

The next bus is at half past six. So we wait for everyone to arrive. General introductions are made and Vishwa calls up at quarter past six to ask for directions to the bus-stand. He is accompanied by Miss IRS and Miss Tee. Another round of introductions follows. The next bus still hasn’t lined up. Varun and I go to Kunjvihar to have some coffee. We are served, when there is a call on my mobile telling me to reach the stand quickly as the bus has arrived. I gulp down the coffee as fast as possible, scalding my tongue in the process.

The bus – journey is un-eventful for me as I sleep through most of it. ;) We reach Khandala village by quarter to ten. This is one village which strikes me as odd. There are no chai stalls, no restaurants a very few stalls to be seen. All the stalls are selling is hot "batata-wadas". Just one item to offer. After having a couple of wadas, we proceed to negotiate with the rickshaw driver for a ride till Siddeshwar. Siddeshwar is the starting point for this trek.

At Siddeshwar, we proceed till the point where the steps begin. With Varun leading the way, I have no worries of getting lost. Varun has done almost all the forts in Maharashtra. He has a good memory of routes and rarely gets lost. However we do stray from the path once along the way. That is not so bad. After a time loss of about five minutes, we are back on track.

The route is every bit as good as advertised. Along the way, there is one point, where we have been surrounded by monkeys. I find it slightly exciting, but the others don’t want me to provoke the monkeys. I want to click their photographs, but people around me are tense. So I decide to forego this opportunity. The monkeys look menacing and there are about sixteen of them.

We proceed to the Math at SagargadMachi. A Math essentially is a temple with some accommodation arrangements attached to it. The particular Math has a nice stream flowing next to it. This stream is the source of the waterfall. Everybody goes to the top of the waterfall, while I proceed to keep a watch over the bags. There are more monkeys over here and I start clicking their snaps. I also notice a turtle in the well. I attempt three snaps, before I get one that looks right.

After this visit to the Math, we go to Sagargad Machi. Along the way we notice some buffaloes taking a bath in the water. All villages under the base of a fort are called Machi. At one of the houses in the village, we have herbal tea. This tea is wonderful. Between the five of us, we manage to finish 10 cups. The villagers are nice people. They do not want any money from us. We force 20 bucks on them. They want us to visit again. We give sweets to the kids.
We proceed to the top of the fort. The fort is a vast expanse of greenery with a few dilapidated structures on the top. We reach a banyan tree which looks majestic. I make a few attempts to capture it in a photograph.

Next to the fort is a pinnacle with a flag on the top. The pinnacle makes a good subject for the camera. I wait for sunlight and click a photo. There are some vultures flying around. Varun takes the camera and tries to click a few shots. The vulture is not interested in posing for the camera. It appears as a speck in the sky. I wish I had a telephoto lens and then this problem would not have occurred.


We have lunch. Everyone has got loads of snacks. Good work folks. I take out the butter chakli. Miss IRS has got some kind of religion related issues with food. So she foregoes most of the stuff. Good for us. I also eat some mawa cakes. Trekking does increase your appetite for food. It is exciting to eat Mawa cakes, butter chaklis and chiwda on the top. All the foods, that I normally avoid when at home.

Our return journey has started after spending some more time on the top. The return journey is equally uneventful. We come all the way down, reach the marker to the waterfall. Varun and Rohit prefer to stay outside the water stream. The rest of us jump in. Whats the point of carrying extra clothes if you do not get wet on a monsoon trek? The steps leading to the waterfall are slippery.
The waterfall is a lot of fun. The water is swaying due to the wind. In Vishy's words it is "paisa vasool". Rohit clicks our photographs.

On our way into the village, we notice a group of people beating up a snake. Varun stops them from killing it. Most of the villagers are naturally scared of snakes.
Snakes are an important part of the eco-system. They reduce the population of rats. Rat population grows at an alarming rate and snakes are required to keep them in check. This particular snake called locally as "kandar" is a poisonous species. Varun takes a plastic wrapper and picks it up. The snake is not yet fully grown. This specimen is about 10 inches in length. The tail of the snake has been thrashed by the villagers. The women-folk warn us about the poison of the snake. Varun releases the snake faraway. I hope it survives.

We reach Alibagh by auto. In the hotel, we have a nice lunch.
After a quick change of clothes, its time to take the bus home. There are people who wish to take a ferry. Ferry doesn't look like a logical option to me. I have to go to Thane. The return journey is in an Asiad bus. IRS and Rohit keep on quarrelling througout the journey.

Trek to Prabalgad.

Prabalgad is the kind of trek which could be done within half a day or even a whole week is insufficient if you decide to explore the thick forests on the top of the plateau. 

Four of the people decided to start at night. Vini, Vishwa, Pankaj and Prem spent the night at Panvel Bus Stand. Till the point Rohit called me, I was not really decided upon going to Prabalgad. Afterall it was my fourth time in this year. However it was the first official monsoon trek since I had been busy with Arun's camp at Karnala and my cousins wedding earlier. So I finally asked Rohit to meet me at the Ashok Talkies ST Stand.

The weather was pleasant and the companions were nice. The start happened with a tyre puncture at Kopar-Khairane, right in front of a tyre repair shop. My enthusiasm for the trek fizzled out just like the air from that burst tyre tube. Fortunately the group at Panvel waited and the repair guy fixed the problem quickly, without replacing the tyre tube. I clicked a photo of a kitten in the tyre shop.

After the fixing we reached the bus-stand at Panvel. I purchased a water bottle and got into the bus to Thakurwadi. The good thing about the ST services is that the bus to Thakurwadi has been resumed.

We took a number of breaks along the way to Prabalmachi. On the top Vishwa managed to prick a thorn into his palm. So did not come up. Prem joined him in his stay. The rest of us went up. On the way I slightly deviated from the route and realized that immediately. Fortunately we could get back on the route without too much effort. I have now realized that getting lost on a route is what provides the fodder for excitement.

The treacherous route to the top. On our way down.

This was my fourth visit to Prabalgad. It seems to have evolved into an exercise and nothing more. The going up the path from Thakurwadi no longer provides any excitement. Neither does the traversing over the crevasse or sliding across the wall. Some of my companions were a bit terrified, understanding that it was their first time. Also it had become slippery owing to the monsoon.

Coffee break at the end of the trek

OFF - The ultimate insect repellent.

One good discovery during this trek. OFF does work. Apply it on your face and you will no longer be bothered by any of these pests that seem to be thriving during the monsoon.

Donate Blood – Save a Life

Donate Blood – Save a Life

There is no other Noble cause as Blood Donation in this world. Human Body just takes 24 hours to generate the equivalent amount of blood which one donates. Average human body has around 10 units of blood out of which one unit is taken during donation.

Most of the time Blood requirement exceeds the supply, why so? The demand and supply of Human blood is incomparable, as per the available facts annual requirement of blood in India is 40 million Units and the sad part is only 4 million units are available. The pride and feeling of donating blood and giving someone a life back is unexplainable, then why are we running out of it.

Science has not yet found a technique to manufacture human blood hence can only be made available from generous donors. A blood unit donated by you can save lives of three human beings. You never know when you can save a life of small kid who has just learnt to walk or a young life that has zeal to fulfil his/her dreams like you and me or a father whom his children look up.

As per the standards a normal/healthy human being can donate blood every three months, which means 4 units in a year and you can go up to the age of 60 years, so count how many units you can donate till you reach 60, and multiply those units with 3, that is the number of lives you can save.

Most commonly answer from people who do not donate blood is that “They never thought about it”. Till Jun 2010, I was also in this category of never thought about it. In June 2010 I came across a situation wherein someone needed blood urgently and I never gave a thought before agreeing to it. I felt really proud after helping the needy.

The feeling was so noble that I took a pledge to donate blood every three months and added reminder in my phone calendar for next due date for donation.

On 25^th Sep 2012 I went to AIIMS Delhi for Voluntary Blood Donation. Since Doctors and other hospital staff understands the importance of blood donation, everyone there was looking at me with great respect when they heard that I have come for Voluntary Blood Donation. They treated me really well unlike their normal style. Donation process takes hardly 25 minutes from filling form till the completion of donation and refreshment.

This time I felt happier than when I donated first time. The difference which I could make is that in my first donation it was not me who took the initiative, someone really needed it so I offered my services there, whereas in second donation it was me who took the initiative for this noble cause.

Looking at our economy and average age of our country (somewhere between 24 to 29 Years) the significant difference in demand and supply makes me really wondering where is our youth hiding? Let’s stand for this noble cause together and carry a feeling of pride of being human.

Based on my experience I can tell you that it has no side effects at all and No weakness. Some words of precaution like avoid driving or travelling till half an hour of donation, No weightlifting or workout at least for a day and avoid any kind of physical stress for 24 hours at least.

Do it once and you will really realise that this is the noblest thing you ever have done and share it with your network with proud, because believe me nothing is greater than saving lives without any expectations, that’s called the HUMANITY.