A Long day

A Long day...didnt know where it would end,
Now shortened,
A Long day...so much I could do,
Now flew by,
A Long day...waited for the dusk to arrive,
Now arrived,
A Long day...too many people I met,
Now only you,
A Long day...with you not long enough..
With you...A long day just went by.

इस फलक से ज़मीन तक का सफ़र है,
खुदा को छोड़ फिर खुद को ले चला हूँ...
बस्ता नहीं क्यूँ वो मेरे जहाँ में भी,
मेरी ज़मीन को भी फलक बनाता क्यूँ नहीं वो .....

First Picnic

Having deadlines on Monday just have one meaning -- work over the weekend :-) How come whenever there is some critical job to be completed, the environment to get things done just collapses...Anyway, deadlines met are always rejoiced - even though you realize that meeting them doesn't mean end or reduction in work !! So, this is the harsh though most prevalent reality of work or life - that is if work is your life :-)

So, Myra had her first picnic today. I am sometimes amazed - how kids speak so much even though they may not share. The don't talk about what they did -- they just talk and that's the beauty of conversing with them. How their eyes sparkle, when they weave a story of what happened when actually something totally different happened...Was I ever a kid? Cant really believe that!!! They just look as if they are what you never were!! The squeals of laughter after snatching somebody's toy...and in the very next minute loads of tears when the toy is gone!! Anyway, Myra's first picnic and even after much pestering, she never told me what all she did - who wanted to repeat what was gone..she was too busy living that very moment!!! I know she will tell me in bits and pieces and when she does so she will also accuse me of not even knowing what her daughter did on picnic! I still remember when once she reprimanded me, when I had left her alone in the room ; "Mom/Dad, how can you leave your 3 yr old daughter alone in the room and go out!!" And then there are days when she says: "This is my toy room and I am busy, so pls go away!!" And all we have to do is agree...after all she is the boss :-)

The silence of the moment,
when love touched you within..
The futility of expression,
realised there and then...
It came and went-
like snow surrendering to sun
So what if it turned into something..
something undecipherable,
So what if it changed its forms,
from mine to unreachable
So what if it changed my course,
Transforming the moment of silence..
into the long story of my life

My timeline....

If moments were bits and bytes, I would have owned over million memory cards by now...But they ain't and am no computer...But I have one...so I want to capture time. Let it run though, but just stop and watch it every now and then...then let it run and then again stop and watch the time that just passed by...

Just thought of capturing a few of Myra's varied moods, emotions, lovely talks...How many can I ? I don't even sometime notice them, they are an integral part of my life - as if my life is them.

Also thought of capturing my moods and emotions -- again they are too many...am always full of them, though they don't always translate into words, but I do try..

मेरे अंदाज़ को आवाज़ देने की कोशिश,
कभी नामुमकिन सी होती है पर करती हूँ मैं
लफ्ज़ कमबख्त कह ही नहीं पाते
मेरी रूह जो गुनगुनाती है बिना अलफ़ाज़ कहे ..


Just left a Saturday - with a wonderful evening. A hot cup of ginger tea with marie biscuit and hours of talk with a new friend. Realized how rare it has become -- when we can just talk, not about facts -- kids school, job, corruption, economy...but just talk, talk about life without getting into its mundane realities.While, she talked about experiences, I experienced the talk. The talk about expression, about how we see life, perceive people, how we have grown into what we have grown into today. Lovely...and precious - such times cant get repeated often simply because we don't have time. A long saturday evening turning into a long sat night....late night bouts of writing...so fulfilling! Sunday offered me Mehendi Hasan's audio..you can listen to it once every 5 mins of the day.... :-)  Watch Myra painting - not just painting but telling me the story behind her painting, what the bird is doing sitting on the tree she drew, who all live in the huts by the river. How she tries to fit in the cartoon characters she watches, into her drawings.

Varied emotions and varied thoughts, they fleet by and I try to live that tiny speck of thoughtfulness feeding my soul...feeding my soul to face a week of round the clock schedules. But I know those tiny specks will come by my way and I will be satiated every now and then....

I wished a miracle once,
God gave me life...
He said live it or leave it
I have been living since then..
Believing miracles do happen...

ख्वाब जो नींद में जगा गए,

उन्हीं के साथ से सुबह होती है रोज़ मेरी...

जिनके न होने से रात बेमानी सी लगे,

उन ख़्वाबों के इंतज़ार में शब् गुजरी है मेरी.

मेरे दीवानेपन को रोके है वक़्त की रफ़्तार
मेरे दीवानेपन को रोके है वक़्त की रफ़्तार
बरसों से जो ख्याल है वो...
बरसों बाद होगा कहाँ 

ज़िन्दगी से अलग कुछ पलों को कैसे करूँ

गर वो पल ही  ज़िन्दगी बन जाएँ...

मुहब्बत में तुझे याद कैसे न करूँ 

गर तेरी याद से ही मुहब्बत हो जाए

Drops of joy!

There's not so much of activity to see or hear around in Brisbane - no maid who comes daily and tells the juicy tales of your neighborhood, no wailing infants being chastised by their mothers in the balconies, no kids running around in the common stairs pressing the door bells just for the funny sound of it. Sounds hear consist of the wildlife(mainly birds) around the apartments and that of the dishwasher/washing machine/dryer/vacuum cleaner and the list continues inside the apartment. I can now identify the different sound waves from the different cleaning machines around me :-)...Yes, it good to be neat and tidy - that's one of the first lessons I think I learned at school.
For instance, the other day when we were generally ambling around in a park, we saw a man cleaning a flight of stairs, I think around 20 of them. It was not an easy job after all, the huge cleaning machine adding to the decibels, eating up all the dry leaves. This took around 10 minutes followed by a thorough cleansing job with water sprayed and sprinkled and forced on the stairs, each and every nook taken care of. I just thought this amount of water could wash 5 households in B'lore or more so fulfill the water needs of a BPL(this is controversial though with the Planning Commission coming up with strange criteria!) family for atleast a week!! Anyway, the task meticulously done was surely appreciable - 45 minutes of loud work by the machine. The stairs looked as good as new and I suddenly felt ashamed of not vacuuming my house for the past 1 week! I promised myself that it would be the first thing I did after reaching home, but to my dismay the grey clouds decided to release their waters at that time and I was stuck there for more time. Down came the rain forcing the cleaning man to rush for shelter leaving the machine near the stairs...The water poured on the stairs with full force for around an hour...I just wondered so much of water for those 20 steps...Just couldn't help remembering a few of the steps that were published back in my apartment in B'lore for conserving water : 1) Don't wash your cars 2) Don't wash your balconies 3) Don't use shower to bathe.....only thing left to say was - don't use water to brush your teeth..etc etc...:-)
A lot of questions and thought then crowded my small brain with full force - wondered if the pressure of population is so much in B'lore that it has reduced the water pressure in our taps? Or is it the pressure of a few selected people governing the country or state or constituency...whatever it is...it will soon be robbing our future generation of the basic human right - to be clean - to wash your hands..your surroundings etc...they will be either left with the industrial waste inflicted or the expensive bottled or tanker water...making it as precious as the yellow metal!! A nuclear power stumbling under water woes!

बहुत सारे लफ्जों से बना एक पल

बहुत सारे यादें लिए वो एक पल

मेरे कई तनहा पलों को संभालता

वो पल

खामोश पलो में बोलता वो एक पल

Outbound to Australia

Really hate the initial 1 or 2 weeks of settling in when one moves(or visits) to a new place...jet lag making you sluggish and you lose sense of time - when actually you don't have time and have loads to set in the new place! While the mind puts you in a deep slumber, the alarm clock goes off and you realize that its not the start of a long night but another hazy day! Really cant understand how people manage travelling jobs - certainly not my cup of tea!(talking about tea - cups of hot steaming cardamom tea has certainly helped in keeping my eye-lids up most of the time! ;-) )
Brisbane is picturesque..in fact it reminded me of Canada (out of whatever little I have traveled - I cant really categorize myself as an avid traveler -specially out of my country)  to a small extent. Till now, nothing can beat Ottawa - though its been very long since I visited that place but its imprint  is fresh and ink still shining bright! This is my first visit to the southern hemisphere - the sun being responsible for this divide..Sometimes think that it will be different to watch Christmas in summers!!! I haven't seen any movie that has showed hot and sunny Christmas day...I have always watched snow flakes flowing in the air while people celebrate Christmas by the fireplace! It will be fun to watch people sweating on the Christmas eve!! :-)
Its a picturesque small city...quiet and clean - these are the first things I noticed - of course coming from Bangalore where noise is just an inseparable part of your back(?)ground. Transit to Bangalore was not less adventurous - the taxi(to the airport) driver absolutely refusing to put any extra luggage in the front seat. Of course it goes without saying that we tried to exploit close to the 40 kgs per head luggage allowance provided by Singapore airlines. Anyway, after that was sorted and we finally reached the Blore airport - wrong to say its in Blore - its an horrible 2 hrs away from the city center! We, like law abiding citizens wanted to declare my newly possessed Galaxy Tab - when to our dismay we noticed that the customs desk was vacant with a sign to call a particular number. So the wait started and good 30 mins later the custom official arrived. So that ate into our time saved for dinner. So finally we departed from Blore without dinner, with good hope that the dinner in the airlines would be palatable and filling - and in fact we were not disappointed. So it was all movies and food in between moments of sleep! Full 11 hrs of movies - which was indeed a treat - don't really remember when I last watched a movie on TV without worrying about the daily chores or for that matter pending office work!! Anyway, the highlight of the plane journey was the butterfly garden in Singapore airport - truly amazing and one of its kind. So while we crossed different time zones and finally entered Australia. The first thing I had to do was give away my home made ghee-smeared besan laddoos as unpacked eatables were not allowed inside the Australian borders! So after an emotional adieu, we finally hailed a taxi(not to mention all the taxis we have hailed here till now had drivers migrated from Punjab - there are 3 lakh surds in Australia!)
One excellent thing about this city is its public transport - Trans-link, the road-rail that runs through the city and also the places around. Perfectly managed and convenient - you couldn't ask for better. It makes the city more welcoming - you just need to take your go-card (that's the ticket) and you could just go anywhere. I think by the time, if and ever, Blore gets such a transport system - I would be in my ninetees :-) But yes there's hope - hope also because of the events(related to Jan Lokpal) happening in India lately - that requires an entirely different blog - so I will leave it at this point. But, yes hope is there - that we will soon catch a speeding train to development - just that we need to build the tracks !!
Early days in Brisbane had been wet - with day long drizzles and winds - a few sunshine hours here and there when we could just sneak out to the beautiful Roma street parkland just opposite our apartment - and see the unique flora and fauna. What with the bottle ridge trees and ponytail palms, ducks flapping their wings and blue headed fairy-wrens(smaller version of sparrows) dancing around in between the rows of herb garden and spring-flower beds! Its surely a treat to the eyes right in the middle of the central business district! More later....

Our Naukuchiatal-Corbett trip

I love to go to the mountains when it is cold and chilly -- winters give a unique definition to the hills, its quiet, serene and cold!
Anyway, last december we decided to touch the Uttarakhand Kumaon region -- this was next on our list having visited Himachal to a certain extent. To save ourselves from the Christmas crowd we decided to start a bit early and to enjoy the ride to the mountains we decided to take a self drive(Safari(4-wheel drive) from Avis) from Delhi.
Thanks to Spicejet flight from Blore to Delhi, we reached really really late in Delhi and by the time we got our vehicle it was already midnight. We had planned our first stop in Noida, so the first challenge was to find the routes at the late hour it being our first tryst on the Delhi roads. Even with the GPS at our disposal, we were thoroughly confused at the AIIMS flyover -- the architect should be commended on connecting so many roads and doing an amazing job.
Anyway, finally reaching our first halt at 2 in the night, we started for the long journey of around 400 kms to the hills of Uttarakhand -- Naukuchiatal in Kumaon region
Naukuchiatal gets its name from the lake around which the inhabitation exists. This lake has 9 corners and the image of the glistening waters is still fresh in my mind. The lake is nestled among the mountains and we stayed at  'The Lake Village Resort' overlooking the lake. The pristine waters are abode to the geese and innumerable variety of birds nested among the trees surrounding the lake. But before reaching Naukuchiatal, we drove on the roads of UP and Uttarakhand -- I remembered the ad of Bournville -- " you need to earn it"...the National Highway in UP is messy, most of them is just 2 lanes and you need careful maneuvering to escape the potholes and bad roads.
We started around 11:30 am from Delhi, having got late the night before thanks to the big vulture(this is how my daughter described the Spicejet aircraft!) that transported us from Blore to Delhi. As we started late, we were welcomed by traffic and traffic jams thus slowing our speed considerably. The roads till Moradabad were more or less fine and we had a smooth ride in terms of jerks and bumps. Around Rampur, it was something that really showed that Mayawati needs to focus more on infrastructure rather than making memorials for the different categories of society including her! The Highway was bumpy for around 40-50 kms, just 2-lanes with nil bypasses through the villages and towns. Every town welcomed us with overflowing traffic and people on roads-- the only relief was the innumerable sugarcane and mustard fields which were surely an eye-candy. Battling the loads of trucks and tractors carrying the sugarcane at their own sweet pace, we reached Haldwani and this is the place from where the ghats start. It was already 5 by then and the sun was already setting. We were welcomed by the pitch dark mountains with lights here and there giving us a very vague idea of the settlements on the slopes. Our booking was already done at the Lake Village Resort which is located next to the Naukuchiatal lake and is around 35 kms from Nainital. Though I would write a separate review for this resort, but still I cant help but mention that their service was excellent. Because of slightly bad and narrow roads leading to Naukuchiatal, one of the persons from the resort waited for us in Bhimtal, which is at a good 20 mins drive from our final destination. We reached there by 6:30 and the air had become chilly and biting cold. We went shivering to our cottage and had the much awaited hot ginger tea  -- which tasted and smelled great. It was full 3 days of sumptuous, elaborate and delicious food in the lap of nature!! -- just heavenly!  We were the only occupants and got a very good personalized service. The cottage was big and round with windows on all the walls -- a beautiful terrace where in we had the view of the mountains on one side and the lake on the other. We had the luxury of having our lunch on the terrace with the sun warming us in the cold weather.

The fields at the foothills provided an excellent view. The resort itself has great plantation -- beautiful flowers and creepers made the place bright and cozy. We went to Saattal the next day. It was around 30 mins from our resort. Its a more commercialized lake and the route is simply mesmerizing -- trees guarding the lake with a beautiful path to walk around the water.

We roamed around at our own lazy pace stopping here and there clicking memories. In the afternoon on the same day we enjoyed the Shikara ride on the Naukuchiatal lake with the boatman providing us interesting tit-bits. Next day was reserved for Nainital -- which was surprisingly clean despite being a famous tourist spot. We rode in the cable car to the hill top to see the Nandadevi peaks.

From the top the Nainital lake looked like a bowl of water held by the mountains and the smell of pine and deodar trees on the mountain slopes was something you just take back home! We had planned our next stop in Corbett on the 4th day and one the way back we picked up kumaon lemons( 5 times the size of normal lemon) and kiwi fruits (5 times cheaper than what in Blore!) from the local market in bhuwali. So, after spending an idyllic time in Naukuchiatal we headed to corbett. We had planned to stay in Jaagar village resort (around 20 kms from Corbett) and after staying in the wonderful Lake Resort in Naukuchiatal, our expectations were really high. Jaagar Village resort is around 5 kms inside the fields with no pucca road leading to the resort. Our safari did a wonderful job and we reached the Jaagar resort late in the evening -- the worst part of the journey from Naukuchiatal to Jaagar was we couldnt get anything decent to eat on the way and we had to do with the fruits and light snacks we had picked. Corbett was a bit of disappointment as we couldnt see the big cat and had to just satisfy ourselves with the numerous pug-marks.

Jaagar village resort was just okay -- service average, food palatable though the cottage was good and scenery was great! Myra had privilege of seeing vegetable farms and taking out a few radish. After stopping for a day at Jaagar, we started for Haridwar enroute to Chandigarh which was a good 450 kms. We entered Haridwar around 7 in the night -- its a totally different feeling with the incense-stick smell engulfing the pilgrim city and the temple bells being heard from every nook and corner. Stopping at the Sarovar hotel on Roorkee-Haridwar highway was truly luxurious -- a perfect icing on the cake!!
Finally next morning the journey to Chandigarh was not adventure-less -- and I will surely cover the adventures around Yamuna river in my next blog...
So, overall the journey was hectic but not tiring , it was refreshing and has left us yearning for more of the mountains...motivating us to make more and more trips to the giant and unbelievable Himalayas!!