AS THEY SAY 'DREAM COME TRUE','LIFETIME WOW'...blah blah

As per records, I am doing engineering ;well according to my Orkut profile’s Professional page its ‘forget it..just ‘cram’eneering. Anything ,in these 4 years…differential equations, tower of Hanoi, PDA ,Codd’s rules…..etc etc….have not been able to influence me (or I am not able to…who knows). Its always my ACCENT,my DEBATES, my “ANGREZI” that has given me respect, sometimes given me internals and one time , I guess, I got a GP of 49 marks. But to tell you the truth, I am not comfortable in it, I seriously love hindi, the language in which I scored distinction in class 10th, the language in which I learnt to talk with my parents, the lang in which I learnt friendship, and also how to abuse friends. But still for all that it has given me,I must respect the LINGUA FRANCA of this world and so….lets visit in cloak of this respected language, the “dream come true” and “life time wow” of this ‘cram’eneering session..TOUR de MANALI come ROHTANG come CHANDIGARH.


The night that brought us from the 6th to the 7th of September was not an easy one. Apart from the excitement and observance of the excited status messages of pals,it was the night when I had seen a hint of reality, of professionalism, which had confirmed me pf the fact that this mother earth is not perfectly spherical but a little deshaped and that’s what makes all the difference. So 7th started with an alarming call by Niteesh, the shrillness of the ring tone signified the height of exhaustion(and enjoyment) that we were going to face, and thus at about 6:30 ,the sun about to rise,the weather (at last) devoid of the clouds, we started our march towards the bus,towards a dream ,towards ecstasy.


My first impression about our TITANIC, the bus, was of coziness, which gradually changed to congested. The first voices heard inside the bus was a song..”aaya rey”..i liked it..started tapping my feet, until I realized the technical faults of the tape and thus the tapping and the liking slowly vanished.
And now, at last we were off, for me it was still a dream, which, a day back I was convinced would be a nightmare. All 40+ of us, girls, boys, girls with boys, digicams, everything was bustling…like boiling milk*. I don’t remember much about the first hour, as the 3 musketeers of A-6 , Shastri nagar(raja ,me and vikky) choose dozing rather than singing Love Aajkal’s ‘aise kaise ho gayi re’ which was an instant hit for the last 4 rows of the bus.

The bus moved on……

BREAKFAST TIME…and my dreamy, dozing self found some heavy breakfast. “Yes !!! it was true…the tour is really on..yipee” I was thinking until Ramandeep singh announced…”HOD was angry in the project lab, have to report him next week.” All my dreams, of playing in the snow,dancing in the bon-fire,immediately changed to nightmares of cut short internals,deducted GPs, Year Backs etc. I tried to bring the nightmare down for the next 7 days as Muradabad was the next target, both for the bus, and us. Basically our target was Pankaj Singh, Muradabad was just a buffer for that, came Muradabad and guys were charged up as if we had reached the ultimate, songs were instantly made,poems were immediately created with finesse, just to watch the glow(or not-so-glow) of Pankaj Singh’s face. “kisi din banoongi main RAJA kii RANI” was echoing in that enthralled atmosphere until my dancing,enjoying persona drowned again in a grand siesta.


The bus moved on…

I missed the chance of watching rest of the Uttar Pradesh. i discovered twilight when I woke up, and instantly I was told that we are somewhere near the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh Border.”wow we are entering in a new state, so finally a new state visited!!!”, again repercussions of “yes the tour is on” were in full throttle. In came the night and on came the Jat’s land, I realized that there were some expert information that was coming about the state, I soon confirmed that “saali beer keval 40 rupaye kii hai”..was all that was being announced. To add to those “just 40 rupees” I realized that road turned quite smooth and yes,I needed some more sleep. Well that was last of my sound sleeps.

The bus moved on…

Dinner time..was a normal one and here we got out first taste of Haryanvi-Punjabi culture as ‘maa ki daal’ was served to us. 10:00 PM and back to the bus and..sleeping was not allowed and thus started a session full of songs, full of shayari, the college life that I dreamt of during my struggling days at TRIVAAG was coming true on that midnight. All the fines that we had given, all the fights that we had done, all the cold wars that we were engaged in were just being washed away,until we discovered by the topsy-turvying of the bus that the mountains had arrived.

The bus moved on….

That night was quiet. Everybody was rich with sleep except me as the last seat of the bus did two things to me….draining me of sleep and allowing me to admire the mountains, the divine conic sections which made me felt proud of being a kumaoni. The prudence increased as morning came and Manali was welcomed. It was the second time that I was seeing snow-clad mountains..and least to say..i was glad. Manali was much like my Uttarakhand, scenic, confirming that greenery was still alive somewhere also confirming the presence of endangered yak. My 3 years in hostel have filled me with one piece of information that a girl looks most beautiful on her wedding night. Although it was day time but Manali was gorgeous like a newly wed bride. One felt like kissing them as one saw those greenish hills.
About those temples we visited: they had nothing in them ….still acquainted with something..they weren’t the worship domes of Creators, they were the cottages of the creators , the builders, the magicians of the universe. Everything was quite, serene seemed as God was having a date with us.


The night was firy. …seriously it was.. there was fire and we were dancing around it. Again the dance was different. Chacha’s b’day was the first occasion when I first danced my heart out, and then there were many, where we flaunted our joints,but this one had some chicks,had some fire, and then there were we, ever so desperate to bring the Elvis out of us, also there was the IT branch which was dancing along, probably reminiscing the 3.5 years long journey that started from 17th aug 2006 and were dealt with repercussions, reverberations,which today were adding more to the music of the DJ. Night came and the guys still jumping with that unity circle* thing , ate and slept to discover another mesmerizing ‘snowy’ day.

The night carried along……

After a long time we were in a room with a television + a bathroom+ a western toilet. The cozy quilts made our journey to Rohtang late by an hour.a hurried breakfast and a short stream of photo sessions was all that was needed to pull up our socks and head on to see the snow in all its feast and fervor. So at last ,we were there in a Qualis and I finally was heading towards seeing snow for the first time. Rohtang was the icing of that tour, the reason why half of the people of our tour were with us, it was a dream we were dreaming from academic blocks and canteen, we all had fancied and fantasized different faces of Rohtang and now we were about to unveil the prized veil of that gorgeous lady ‘always’ in white. There were some halts…
1. When our normal ‘tourist self’ was converted to an abnormal ‘eskimo self’, courtesy” that protective suit and
2. When we realized that that goggles that was worth ‘rs 100..bargained to.. rs 40’ suited us and we had an avalanche of photo sessions only to discover that battery was discharged. But still….

Our quails moved on…

And so…seeing a live demonstration of dealing with a land slide, and experiencing a mile long jam we finally were with the snow we were anticipating. It was like those fantasies where we are locked in the room with the girl we stare from our balcony. “why called rohtang pass??” ,was the question still disturbing me but those frozen water falls, and foamy snow were degrading that disturbance. And so finally the end point was reached, we discovered that we were there in that Leh-Laddakh Road and finally I understood the meaning of Rohtang Pass , its relationship to the silk route and admired myself to have reached there.

That snowy hill and the 9 of us…

That snow was shining up the mountain and we were dying to kiss it. We discarded those donkeys besides us, and we chose the hard way, we believed in our feet and for sure what a belief it was!!!! We started marching, there were , at that time just two differences between us and Bhagat singh, one we were not going to the gallows and two we didn’t know ‘mera rang de basanti chola’. So we continued and slowly but STEADILY the Bhagat Singh inside started fading away and breathlessness showed its colours, we took a rest, we were 22, felt like 82 but had that temptation to go up still like a 22, so we moved on…we stopped for a tea, which acted like a bisleri in the Sahara and incidentally I got my best ever snap (as Harry told) clicked there. The vegetation seemed lesser, the snow seemed nearer the legs seemed weaker, the excitement seemed tougher, at last God was felt closer and Bingo!!!! I had reached it,I was there in the snow, playing, caressing, admiring, except writing somebody’s name on that snow,,perhaps I had to wait for another destination for that. That snow point was where, I guess I was kissing snow and making love with success, I was discovering it, there was this sweet taste I was tasting which I got by overpowering the breathlessness, the exhaustion, it was beautiful and I was enjoying it.

Coming down I had just started celebrating our trek until I found out that I had lost my purse, with that my right to drive a vehicle( DL) and my ‘cash in palstic’(ATM). But then again, all was fair in love, war and rohtang. Back in the hotel the sorrow of purse was gulped down with the tea and so from that tops-turvying we were heading towards the ACHTECTURAL AJOOBA….the land of goddess …CHANDIGARH. And 10 PM sharp our journey to witness the modern wonder of India started.

The bus moved on….(this time a little quickly)..

This time I got a little sleep in the bus, as I was exhausted singing those medival times songs and screaming more than singing. we got no deluxe rooms we got dorms with no TV ,no western toilet , but with smoke detectors, that were not there in that deluxe room. Buzzes of ‘daaru yahaan bhii sastii hai’ were still buzzing around . Some sleep some paraanthaas and we were there in the INFY campus , on our way, watching, for the first time, more surds than normal shaven guys.


Eye-opener INFY

It was here that we were confirmed of the fact that not only we know nothing,but we also do not have a goal, we might have played with snow, bought beer at half rate, had travelled 4 states but PRO-ness was what we were devoid of. One thing we did there with confidence…eat that good quality lunch..though the custard was a bit like a Pain killer, but, perhaps we deserved it. ‘INFY.we will be back’ with this in mind and a snap clicked with its counselors we moved in to Rock Gardens. Rock garden was a gem,that’s it, nothing more, ……OK ..something more, it showed the perseverance of a single man, the creativity of a single self, that ‘life is not to waste but to cherish it’ was all that was written over it. We were having snaps clicked like anything but it was a place to be snapped in mind as that garden was telling the colours of life, all sewn to one, be it love , hatred, lust, everything being a subset of creativity….again Kudos.

The evening was spent admiring the BROOOOOOOOOOOAD roads of sector 17, 2 snaps (one infront of woodland) and an hour’s search for a food joint which ended with one chicken burger. You see,if manali was beautiful, rohtang was majestic, Chandigarh was ambitious, it showed realism,modernity. If manali was worth admiring, rohtang worth worshipping, then Chandigarh was worth experiencing,learning and imbibing, and so taking a rickshaw, studying the architectural intricacies of the city and with my maiden snap in the rickshaw we reached back to the dorm
‘Wake up SID’ was in the store …again just 2 statements for it
1. As vikky said…’it ended where it should have started’ and
2. Mota’s b’day coincided with that of Konkana in the movie

The day was over , the tour was over, the dream that we were dreaming was coming to an end , but we all were determined to cherish it forever. Next day, the journey back was filled with dumb-charades, songs, dahi-parantha ,a jam near Rampur and in the end I was woken up at Izzat Nagar, I wondered why,until I realized that I had become a Day-Scholar and life was somewhere in the city. Next day ,I woke up at 12:00, and …………

At last ‘life moves on and on and on……’

* Sorry for that bad similie
* a memorable moment where were not individuals , but IT-06 and also proud of it
P.S. – dedicated to Birju and Shashi Kant Sir..no need to tell why.