He and She Part 2 : The Interview

She: So, I see this is your first real job.
He: Yes.
She: So, tell me about yourself. What are your current responsibilities and your roles.
He: My name is HE. I am done with my Bachelors. I have not worked on specific projects from scratch, but I have been given responsibility of managing young kids, every now and then. I am very passionate in what I do and would love to help organization to grow more by being an effective team player.
She: What kind of skill sets do you posses?
He: I am good with house cleaning. I have an expertise in Washing Utensils. I have a really good hand on washing Glassware. I have a good recommendation from my previous employer.
She: (reading through the resume) So, you used to work for Mother previously.
He: Right!
She: Pardon me, but your skills are very generic. The position for which you are applying need lot of exposure to different technologies. For example, have you ever worked in Kitchen before.
He: I have done some academic projects in Kitchen. I have done some low end automation like Tea, Coffee and Poha. If given an opportunity, I will be more than happy to work there.
She: That's fine! I am glad to see your willingness.
He: Thank You. (silent relaxing sigh)
She: I will give you a scenario. FRIENDS is being aired on TV when you are about to sit for dining. What would be your best seating position.
He: (thinks intensely for a minute) I would prefer to sit with you on dinning table maintaining the sanctity of food consumption. FRIENDS episode will definitely be repeat-telecasted or I could watch it later on Youtube as well.
She: Impressive!
She: If your nose is running, what would be your cleanup mechanism?
He: I would use Towel. (notices the frown on her temples). No, No, wait a minute, let me think. I would use a stored handkerchief from Cupboard.
She: Good Choice! You didn't mention about Washing Clothes?
He: I have not worked on any open source technology for that. In my previous company, we had a tool called WhirlPool Washing Machine, I must have forgot to mention that in my resume.
She: Here, we don't have such tool in process. Till that tools is purchased, you will have to work from scratch on some open source frameworks like Rin and Hand Brush.
He:(nods reluctantly)
She: Do you have any questions for me?
He: I would like to discuss few employee benefit programs which you organize. What will be the count for treats in a week.
She: That depends. Sunday morning will definitely be a treat. Apart from that on weekdays, you will get surprises.
He: I heard from different forums on internet about unlimited facebooking.
She: Mr. He, you must be aware that all of these are hoaxes. No other employer provide this facility, it can hamper the business goals of the organization quite badly. But, we do have unlimited 2 hours TV and 1 hour Laptop access on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes, it may be monitored or shared.
He: That will do. That's all from my side.
She: Congrats you have been selected for the position of Husband!!!
The traditional handshake is replaced here by ring exchange ceremony.



   

Ile Maurice Part 3

So, this is the 4th day in the tour. We had a lunch-like breakfast in the hotel and we were waiting for the minivan. Surprisingly, today the vehicle was even much bigger. We happily jumped in. There were 3 new couples accompanying us this time. Yet we went to another resort to pick up the last couple. This was our first visit to another resort than ours, in Mauritius. That resort was too good, even though we saw it from Van that too from outside. But we envied its occupants and cursed our resorts. The tour guides, this time, there were two of them, were frantically calling the couple. Later they went to reception and inquired about the late comers. After 10 minutes, they got really angry when the receptionist told them that the couple just got out from Swimming Pool and will take another 10 mins. We left the resort leaving them behind. I realized the importance of Punctuality that day. Every now and then, we joke about IST (Indian Standard Time, 15-20 mins after actual committed time). That joke is no more funny. We really need to understand the importance of time. Later one of the guide told us that if we don't get out of the bay area before morning, we would be stuck in the traffic and schedule will collapse indefinitely.

After today's sightseeing, we had two free days and what should be done then was my source of worry for a really long time. I heard from here and there that there is a Cruise Ride which we can plan, and it was supposed to be the most awesome experience. We were quite unsure about how to book it though. Still we had told our hotel manager to book them for us. The uncertainty was very high. One of the co-couple started passionately describing how eager was he to attend the cruise ride. The guide told us that its not a single cruise ride, multiple cruises start from east-west and north shores and go to respective islands. Most of them were prebooked by Chinese tourists who have come to Mauritius in abundance for celebrating new year. Later on fort, I found excited couple giving advance money to the guide for lobbying their booking. I don't know why but I felt that the couple must be from Delhi. I am such a stereotyped ass. Anyways, on our way, the guide started telling us what are the spots that will be covered today, the fort, the botanical garden and the Mall. He also mentioned that later we will be dropped back to resort at around 4. 'Just 3 spots for the whole day...such a waste of time', as I was thinking that, he bombarded us with one more information. As I mentioned earlier, one day ago, there was Chinese New Year Holiday, apparently, today was Mauritian Independence Day and lot of shops in the mall would be closed post afternoon. The guide, thus gave us two options, either to skip Botanical Garden or to be ready to take a risk of visiting almost closed Mall. Murmur started among all the couples, about where to go. In the middle of it, some of us raised a valid concern that travel agency should not allow these dates for anybody at all. Like any public discussion, two groups were created. One voting for Botanical Garden and another voting for the Mall. 'What different trees could be found there?' 'We are here for sight-seeing and not shopping' 'In India, we have many better Botanical Gardens, It will be waste of time visiting it here' 'What different brands/shops will we find in Mauritius which we can find nowhere else?' Lot of such questions were thrown into the air without targeting any particular couple. Cold war strategies, I felt. Finally shoppers won over Botanists. The moment the decision was made, guide announced that we have reached the Fort.

The fort is located in the middle of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. The name of the fort was La Citadelle. It was the french activity headquarter before England took over it and made it as a jail for political prisoners. It gives the best view of the whole port activity. There were number of binocular tower viewer which tourist can use to check out the port activity. One more special thing about the fort is that, to the right side of it, all residential area of Port Louis was spread and to the left was the industrial/commercial areas. There was a race-course visible on one side of the port. It is considered to be the second oldest race course in the world. The views from the top of fort were breath-taking. Being from Maharashtra, the land of Shivaji Maharaj's Forts, this was too childish a construction for a fort, yet finding it on foreign lands was exciting enough. We clicked lot of photos here and there till guide shouted our names, to come back.

Our next destination was the Mall, Le Caudan Waterfront. It is built on the top of Water. When we reached there, guide informed us about a famous library there, which was shut down because of the holiday. There was a bridge on the artificial canal around the mall where a scene from Movie 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai', was shot. The whole mall was decorated with typical Chinese Lamps hanging around. They were mostly Red. It was a beautiful decoration.

Also there was some live music going on in the mall. They were singing Afro-western songs. Suddenly there was a commotion and they did a performance. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Later, we lingered through all the mall floors and took many photos here and there. A couple friend of mine was quite an expert in Couple Posing. I know even though it sounds ridiculous, this is a science. Not everybody is expert in adding variety to the poses to pics when clicked with your spouse. We had a live training where we imitated their poses and managed some cool photos for house wall frames. Suddenly, all of us felt hungry and decided to eat somewhere. These are the places where you learn the importance of global brands like KFC, McDonalds. We spotted a KFC and had some food there. Later we went to local mauritian market for some signatory mauritian mementos for the people back home. In that foreign land, we found a gujju shop who offered us lot of items at discounted prize and also provided us MRU on cheaper conversion rate

In the night, we were again surprised to see the live band at the dinner hall. This time, they were accomplished by Two Mauritian Dancers, wearing typical tropical Frocks, yellow and green with flowers on them. They were dancing merrily. Lot of people joined the dance and tried imitating their steps. Humming the mauritian tunes, we went to Reception and heard the good news. Our Cruise Booking was confirmed. So, next day morning we were going to Cruise Finally.

Again I decided to clean up the memory card. It was late in night and the french guy was not sitting outside. I shared my dilemma with couple friends and one of them declared that he had bought the Memory Card Reader with him. I was like, 'Where were you till now my good old friend?' He bought us the Reader and we connected it to my laptop. I clicked My Computer, waited for a long time for Card Icon to come up and when I double clicked on it. Woosh! there were no jpeg files inside. 'How slow is this card reader!', I thought to myself. But the files never appeared inside the folder. Finally, we concluded that the card reader is bad and have corrupted all my photos, all the memorable moments were lost within a second. I lost all the hopes suddenly but my wife was very optimistic. We decided to recover it by downloading a recovery software from Internet. In the Wi-fi enabled resort, we were at the secluded corner, so for getting browsable speed, we took all the laptop and other belongings and settled our self in reception area, closest to W-fi router. Our friends accompanied us, dipped in the feeling of Guilt. My wife downloaded a recovery software from Internet with lousy speed, it took almost half an hour. It started recovering the photos, we became really optimistic and happy. Suddenly it pointed out that for recovering them in drive, we need the license. Bamn! Back to step 1. Another Software was downloaded thinking that it will allow recovery in the trial period. One more hour passed. Same failure again. I started loosing my patience. One more, my wife consoled me. Third attempt was unsuccessful as well. I asked our accompanying couple friend to go and sleep while we work on it. They returned reluctantly. My eyelashes started dropping voluntarily. I asked my wife to leave the memory card as it is. I made up my mind to go on Cruise without a camera. I was completely defeated, tired and sleepy. But she was persistent in her attempts. Finally, she informed me that we may need to buy the license worth $25. I was ready for that as well. All the piracy we ever involve ourself into need to be repaid, just like Karma. I went to room to get my card, when I returned back, she had somehow cracked the puzzle and our photos were getting recovered successfully. I gave a relaxing sigh. That day, we slept finally at 2 o'clock. All the photos we had later on the trip and also the previous days' photos were saved and could be shown to the world, only and only because of my wife. She deserves the salute for that.

Next morning we wake up and got ready really fast. A friend of Hotel manager picked us up from hotel and using local commute, we reached Grand Bay, the Ship-stand for the cruise.

Generally, when we hear cruise, an image of Titanic or mini version of Titanic comes up in our mind. But this was actually a nano version of it. The cruise had a capacity of around 50 people. We had two options, either to seat in the deck or on the top of it. We chose the later. As the cruise started leaving the bay area, we hooted and took photos. Slowly and steadily, just like vehicles move from Town and joins highways, our Cruise came in the Ocean. First the bumps were very less but as we went deep, the waves started coming heavily. We could see the waves getting as high as our height on the cruise, and then would go down our cruise and lift it up frantically. The vastness of the ocean was clearly visible. How tiny we human being are, I thought for a moment. Long into the sea, we saw a huge mountain emerging from the sea. Our Cruise moved around the mountain and far near the horizon, we could see our destination, Ilot Gabriel Island. It took us around 2 and half hours to reach there. With heavy bumps and violent sea around, I started feeling the Sea-sickness. With each wave-ride, water was splashing all on to us. Somehow we managed to keep our DSLR dry but we could not capture that angry look of the Indian Ocean on our journey. As we reached island, we were served a lunch and some drinks. I wandered here and there, watered some plants, if you understand what I mean. I tried to imagine the Island shown in 'Lost' similar to this one. We played in water for some little time. The main reason behind less water activity was the Cruise Guide pointed us to one of the rocks in water on the beach and said, 'If you go beyond that rock, you win the free trip to Madagascar'. On our return journey, I feared the sea sickness would come up again but contrary to that, we had a really smooth ride on way back. Some of us pointed a theory that both the cruise and waves are travelling now in the same direction, hence the comfort. I slept on the cruise top for some time. The scorching heat of the Sun burnt our screen profusely. There were some Mauritian people on our cruise. They asked us whether we are from India and told us that their ancestors were from Bihar. They knew lot of Bollywood Retro Songs. We sang with them and enjoyed the time. Remembering the awesome experience of the Cruise and carrying our burnt skin we returned back to our shelter.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Ile Maurice Part II

So we were sitting after dinner when we suddenly felt the insult of the driver from the morning. We bitched a lot about him and called our travel guide and asked for another driver on the next day. As I was going through the DSLR photos, I found out that most of my memory card was almost full. The HD quality photos ate so much space. 'Don't worry, I will transfer them into laptop.', I reminded myself. I went into the room and put the SD card into my laptop. Nothing happened for a minute or two. Annoyed, I restarted the laptop and checked SD card, but it was not detected. Then the realization stuck me that I have always used office laptop's card reader to transfer photos. In short, here I was, sitting with laptop with bad card reader. My wife blamed me for my carelessness. Frenziedly I called a couple friend to check whether he had brough any such device. But he was smart, he had brought extra sd card. I went to reception to check whether they have any such device but that was in vain. I can feel the sweat on my temples, I have to find some way. I asked receptionist that whether there is any electronics shop nearby but he told that we were near beaches and all shops are far away. I would not get any time next day until evening. So one day sight-seeing without dSLR, I shivered in terror by that thought. So I came back to the room indecisively. From my porch, I could see a french middle aged man sitting outside in his porch with his laptop. I had seen him everyday, evening onwards, he used to work a lot on laptop. I had an impression that he must be a writer, finding a tranquil environment to do some creative thinking. I gathered courage and approached him. He knew a lot lesser English than what I had anticipated. But he was very welcoming. I explained him my problem and he was ready to help. He gave me the control of his laptop. I was relieved. It has windows vista installed on it. I inserted my sd card and opened 'My Computer'. Wait!, there was something wrong with his computer. At first I was not able to understand what but I felt it quite unfriendly. Suddenly I realized that his language was set to french. I did right-click and asked him which text belonged to copy. Somehow I transferred that data to pen drive. We chatted with him for some time. He was actually into some financial firm and every now and then he would check the share prices on his laptop. This was his 4th or 5th trip to Mauritius. I bet we would not find any Indian like that. I mean, I myself would never go to Mauritius, I would think to visiting some other place, but here was this old man planning to come to this place again and again. Anyways, I thanked him wholeheartedly and warned that I may come back again.

Next day we were the only 3 couples in the van and there was another more friendly driver. We felt special. (see how perception is so deceiving thing, after an insult, a minivan exclusively for us felt like a special thing.) Anyways, the day was supposed to be spend on South Island. So again we had to cross the whole country. On our way, driver stopped at some mall for us to do some shopping, we went just for the sake of it and came out of mall within minutes. Moreover that day was Mauritian Holiday so many shops on the way were closed. The next day was Chinese New Year day and this new driver told us that most of the things will be closed. I hadn't seen that big number of chinese people in mauritius for having a holiday for their new year. We cursed our travel agency for these tourist-unfriendly dates which they planned their tour with. So, finally the driver took us to a place where small miniature boats are created. They showed us the factory briefly and took us inside the factory outlet. There were thousands of mini ships, boats, speed-boats in the showcases.

The art of manufacturing was so clean and exquisite. But they were quite expensive as well. I mean, few prices were quite debatable to be compared with actual boats. There was also a section of pearls where pearls were available in different kinds of ornaments. We took some souvenirs from that shop and took photos of all the 'photography prohibited' art-works. Our next destination was Trou Aux Cerfs.

These french words are completely different when pronounced. It was a crater surrounding the extinct volcano. We took a lot of photos there. Suddenly, it started raining. We ran in the rain. Waited in shelter. Just like in India, we shared our shelter with stray dogs. Ate an ice-cream in rain. It was such a nice time. After doing so much of physical exercise, we started to the next spot, a Shiva temple near a lake called Grand Basin. In Mauritius, the Hindu culture is quite populated. There were lots of temples around. On the way, driver took us to the hotel for lunch. It was the hotel of a south-indian lady. She was looting people like nothing. We shared a thali of food and payed almost 1400 INR for it. Food in mauritius was ridiculously expensive. But we were helpless, in a foreign country and rain was pouring heavily outside. We felt sad. The rain made camera as useless accessory. As we reached the temple, we found a big statue of Lord Shiva. We prayed to him, to stop the rain so that our day does not get wasted. The temple was on the hill and we had to climb couple of hundred stairs to reach to the top. In the rain, we climbed the stairs. The chilling air had numbed my ears. When we reached top, there was a ShivaLing and Hanuman statue. We prayed to god and looked around. We were told that the top view was breath-taking, but all we could see was fog. We ran back to the lake and took some photos. Completely drenched in rain, we started for the last spot of the day, the seven colored earth and charamel. We saw coffee plantations in rain. Looked at a waterfall from a distance and took our photos with it in background.

Finally when we reached at the Seven colored earth, the rain has almost stopped. Due to some volcanic action, the sand had 7 different shades. I could distinguish 5 out of them. Some claimed to find all 7, but I blamed rain for creating mud in the sand. There was a big tortoise with whom we took some photos. There were lots of chinese people at this spot. I found a chinese family, so independent, the father took out his tripod stand, put the camera on it and took the family photo in timer mode. We asked some other chinese man to take our group photo. I thought that for him, handling a Nikon DSLR would be like दायें हाथ का खेल , but he fumbled to take a photo and I had to teach him. We have so many stereotypes, don't we? Me expecting a chinese (now I even think of him only as a chinese, he could even be japanese, korean etc) guy to be gazette friendly is like he expecting me to be Indian Spices expert. Finally, there was a coffee shop where we drank a deliciously tasty coffee and started back our journey. On our way back, there was a viewpoint where sky and ocean meets. No one can spot the horizon.

The spot showed us such a beautiful wonder. The sky was as blue as water and we could not distinguish where water stops and sky starts. I tried to capture that brilliance of color fusion through camera, but the actual scenery was much beyond what was captured. In the evening at 5.30, the driver dropped us back to the resort.

Now being back at resort so early was annoying. We still had lot of enthusiasm in us. So me and my wife freshened up and decided to explore the area. She wanted to try out some seafood and hence we roamed across another beach near our resort. The beach was named as Mont Choisy Beach. It was a semicircular long beach and it had lots of vendor vehicles, but surprisingly many of them were closing. Somehow, we found out that one was still open but it was an ice-cream shop. There were lot of families around who were doing their cooking, but nothing was on sale. So, finally we came back into the residential area. There were all big banglows, deserted though. We walked through many lanes until we reached a small restaurant. It was a typical french restaurant with small chairs and tables, but not a single customer. When we entered the premises, the owner welcomed us. He was looking like a Mauritian origin but had a thick french accent. He 'Bonjour'ed us and we replied back. The table was decorated with a small candle like light and fresh flowers. He gave us the menu cards and waited politely at the corner. As we started going through the menu, there were lots of sea-food varieties. I don't eat sea-food so I had least options. Moreover I was looking at the right column on the menu before reading its name. My wife said that she is not hungry enough to eat any sea-food item alone on her own. We called him and asked him few more questions like which one is more spicy? He started loosing his patience. He asked us which wine we would like? I realized that it would be customary to order wine with any dish. Our uncertainty grew more faster. Finally we ended up ordering a fish salad which we asked him to parcel up. (This was done to avoid the wine expenses.) He lost interest in us and we lost that french touch in his hospitality. Eventually, as evening grew darker, we came back to our resort. I jumped into the swimming pool and was enjoying the resort feel while my wife ate her fish salad, which was nothing but baked fish. Suddenly there was some commotion on the other side of the pool. Some guy has lost his room keys into the pool. He was getting quite a good scolding from his wife. Within few minutes, I felt some metal touched my feet and when I lifted it with a feet, there it was a key. I took it out and went towards that other group. I announced in a cool dude style (this was all in my head) that I heard them talking about a key and showed them I found it out. They thanked me from heart again and again. I swam back to my wife and friends and exclaimed, 'How can that guy loose his key?' and we laughed. But he heard me laughing, not that guy but उपरवाला. Next day I did the same mistake. Ok, I will describe it later. Lets go by the timeline. After an hour or so, we assembled back at the dinner table. There was one big problem with his resort, all the lights at every corner of that estate, were yellow. There was not a single white light. It annoyed few of us so much. The first two days of dinner were quite un-eventful. There were all indian cuisines, so food was not the issue. But when we reached there, we found out that there was a live band playing for all of us. There were two singers accompanied by some pianist and guitarist. It lifted our mood. The singers sang lot of African-mauritain songs. There were such a melodious songs, though we didn't understand a word in it, we felt happy listening to it. There was an african family...a big family in the hall. Few amongst them started tapping their legs to the music beats and within minutes, many of them were on the dance floor. Their dance steps were very simple and reflected their joyful hearts, I had an awesome time enjoying the music and encouraging the dancers, while eating Indian food and tropical breeze soothing us. With stomach full of food and heart full on joy, we returned back to our shelters.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Ile Maurice Part I

Even though my first foreign tour was to Nepal, I never reminded myself of the same thought. I have never been outside India. Going to foreign country was one of my prime time ambition. When my wife strictly rejected my ideas of going on vacations within India, I found my long time pending ambition taking place. In the leisure day of office work, I opened Thomas Cook website and started searching for Mauritius. After painfully neglecting the Europe Button on the home page, I clicked on Asia and started going through all the tours they had. Singapore..No, Thailand...No, Bangkok..No, Malaysia..No, Qualalampur..No. Huh?? I had reached the end of the page. I went back to the home page and went through another option of package tours. Still I was unable to find Mauritius there. After rigorous search of 5 minutes (With google on our side, the rigorous search can go as far as 5 mins only), I typed 'Thomas Cook Mauritius'. Meanwhile, I came up to conclusion that all dates for Mauritius are full. When I got google search result, I got my first lesson.

MAURITIUS IS A PART OF AFRICA CONTINENT.

I booked my ticket on phone. Can you believe that??? Yup and after the payment was done, I came home flying with tropical mauritian air in my head. Till now, I didn't know anything about foreign exchange, who provides it and what are the conversion rates. I was told by my travel agent that I should carry USD. (United States Dollars, in short, $). I understood lot of things in my second lesson.

FOREX STANDS FOR FOREIGN EXCHANGE.
I SHOULD START PAYING ATTENTION TO ANY CONVERSATION WHICH TALKS ABOUT RUPEE VALUE COMING DOWN OR GOING UP.

As days progressed, we started visiting frequently to malls and started piling up clothes for trip. (Not a single dress should be repeated, said my Wife. Women are women!!) After fighting and deciding on different beach-wears (Here beach wear for me refers to t-shirts and 3/4ths with bright colors which you usually would never wear in day to day civilization.) The credit of single yet big travel bag for both of us should undoubtedly go to my wife. With all baggage done, we had passed one more hurdle.

Now comes one more unknown territory, visa. My third lesson was quite simple and straight forward.

MARITIUS HAS VISA ON ARRIVAL.

I checked it again and again on Internet and verified with Agent. So, till we were safely outside mauritius airport I had a strange lump in my throat, 'What if they reject the visa?' Mediocrecy takes time to go, you know However the visa processing went as smooth as it could ever happen. As we came out of the Airport, we faced a small crowd, each individual was holding a board of the agency it belonged to. None of them carried name of my agency. But before I could shed some sweats, a guy approached and announced that we belong to him. He pointed us to the counter of Thomas Cook which said 'Foreign Exchange'. I was like, 'Dude, I know, I have bought USDs'. But he surprised me by saying, 'Get some Mauritian Rupees there'. I remembered the golden words of my Indian agent (who ironically had never come to Mauritius) and thought foolishly, 'How much mauritian rupees would I need?? I have USDs' I took Mauritian Rupees for 10 USD. It was like around 300 MRU. Lession number 4.

ALWAYS CARRY THE LOCAL CURRENCY RATHER THAN USD UNLESS YOU ARE IN U.S.

After coming out of waiting area, my eyes were searching a big Volvo bus but there was none. And then the agent pointed us towards a minivan. "Are we going by this?", asked my wife. I could sense the disappointment in her voice. 'There must be some explanation', I started thinking. 'May be they will be picking some more passenger from another location.' ''Which location?', my evil half asked. 'May be some other airport' 'Not a chance' 'Then railway station?', my mediocre half showed his inability to defend himself anymore. "Rahul, lets get in", my wife made her peace with that small non-AC vehicle and I noted down a point to mention this disappointment in Feedback form. Eventually, we started our journey from south to north. It seems the airport was in South Maritius and our resort (once you are on islands, all the hotels turn up into resorts!) was in extreme north. If I have to explain this as an Indian version, I would say, we booked the hotel in Delhi and landed in Chennai. Thankfully, the distance between Mauritian Delhi and Mauritian Chennai was just 2 hours. Needless to say, we crossed the boundaries of the whole nation within 2 hours. As we were on the way to resort, the 'Travel Guide' introduced us to the tour itinerary. He was quite fluent, not only in his English but also in his jokes. The mechanical way in which he cracked some of them, I felt he must have mugged them up. Anyways, he told us how to get the sim card and water bottles. Yes, you read it correct. We were supposed to buy water because the one given in the hotel was quite costly. We stopped at one of the shops on the way where the shopkeeper lady could speak hindi. She helped us with the items and again we started back on the route. Even though Mauritius was colonized by France, many migrants from South Asia, mostly India have moved here. So, basically we were not getting that 'Foreign' feel. Moreover the driver started the radio and it played some old bollywood song. Me and my wife gave a nauseating glance at it. Still there were other things which made us feel that we are out of India. For example, the roads were extremely clean, not only the ones which were in cities but also countryside roads. I really wish we should follow that discipline in our country. Here were us, trying to feel the foreign touch, and there was our travel guide who had his notion that unless he speak in Hindi, we won't feel connected with him. So, every now and then, he was cracking some joke in Hindi. Let me tell you one more thing about this travel guide. He was like an HR in IT company, on your first day in a company, you rome around with your HR who becomes your buddy, but from second day onwards, you hardly see him and generally never interact. So, this travel guide who told us that he will be our single point of contact and we should call him for any damn thing, never came back to us. We saw him for the first and last time during that journey.

Ok, so finally we reached the hotel 'Le Grand Bleu'. Yup, it spells Bleu and not Blue. By the way, we came to know about actual accommodation just 2 days before our departure and the pictures of this resort were quite few on internet. But when we actually went inside, it was quite a good resort. We were welcomed by Watermelon juice. After completing the formalities, we were allotted rooms. When we entered the room, the spaciousness of the room stuck us like a blow. It ended even before we could walk more than 5 steps. We immediately went to the reception and exchanged the room. After taking a bath and freshening up, we decided to take a walk over hotel's private beach. The only problem with that beach was it was separated from resort by main road and was mostly rocky. We wandered over the beach in the evening light and took some photos. By evening, we had dinner. Till then we got friendly with other two couples with us. Joking about hotel arrangements and knowing everybody's marriage story, we spent rest of the evening. Next day was our actual sight seeing. I had my fingers crossed.

Next day morning, we packed our extra cloths, as it was the water sports day and were waiting at reception as we were told by our driver a day before that 'we have to be one time'. He was not there. Suddenly, someone told us at reception that 'resort provides with towels for beach activities, for free.' Last two words stuck us like lightening. Being Indian, we kind of think of it as moral responsibility to make use of any free service. We went down to rooms area to get the towels and we missed our so called punctual driver's guidelines. He came into the resort area, calling our names and our mobiles simultaneously. We rested our case by saying that we have been waiting in reception area for long time but he treated us as badly as any teacher treats a student who turns up into class halfway through. Sulkily we followed him outside to the same vehicle. This time, 3 couples were already sitting inside that small van. We practically stuffed us in and our first day started. He took us to the Palmer beach where there were lot of sport activities. That was the most clean beach I have ever seen in my life. There were people but there was so much space. I mean if you go to Goa or by that matter to any public beach in India, there are so many people around that you can not take a photo of beach without half nude unwanted people in it. But that was not the case here. All the photos we took had only us in it. The water was beautifully blue and transparent near the beach. On the sunny day, we found number of resorts alongside the beach, may be there were some houses. We envied them with all our heart. After enjoying the watersport activities like kayaking, para sailing, we were taken to a platform on the middle of ocean where we were going to do undersea walk. It was an awesome experience where a large sphere made up of glass is put on our head which supplies you oxygen and also pulls you down to the sea-bed. There were trained professional which took us to detour of 100m and showed us the marine life. They took our photos there. Though it sounds like the one shown on the discovery channel, it was not that high quality but definitely awesome experience. After coming out of water, driver took us to another location from where we were about to ride in speed boat and would go to an island called Ile Aux Cerfs. On the way, he tried to brainwash us by asking us to order food which would be 200 Mauritian Ruppess (400 INR), but we had plans to skip the lunch after heavy duty breakfast in the morning. The couple friend ordered the meal and while we were waiting for speed boats, there meals came. It was rice, daal and one curry in a plastic container. It was such a backstabbing betrayal by that driver, thought all of us. Finally waterboats arrived and all of us jumped in. To increase the excitement, we sat on the front side of the speedboat. It was such an awesome experience. Winds flowing through hair, we were riding into the Indian Ocean. The speedboat driver gave us brief information about a waterfall we were going to visit before reaching Ile Aux Cerfs. We could see our speedboat cutting sharply through the blue waters till we reached the backwater area. Once we entered that area, greenery was on both sides of us. Suddenly, the boat driver pointed his finger to sky, we saw a white bird in the sky Paille-en-route which is actually symbol of Air-Mauritius. We awed at it. Suddenly I remembered number of events during Kanha-Kisli trip with my friends were I used to 'aww' for no good reason. Anyways that is one different story. Finally we reached the waterfall. It was one shameful waterfall.

It was so small that in rainy season, Mumbai-Pune Highway has many such. But as this one could be visited only through sea-route, it was special. We enjoyed the waterfall from the speedboat and started our journey to the most hyped island in Mauritius, Ile Aux Cerfs. The moment we reached there, I realized why has it been so praised and hyped in all the travel forums on internet. It was the most beautiful island I have ever seen, just like any hollywood movie. Here for the first time, I felt like a foreigner, all the french crowd on the beach, people were sleeping on the beach, playing in the water and how can I describe the cleanliness. There was not a single piece of garbage, neither was there any signboard mentioning fine for putting garbage, otherwise in India, such sign boards are the perfect examples of irony. Small kids, I mean unimaginably small kids were trying to learn swimming with their parents. Kudos to that attitude of European/Americans. We were allowed to stay for only 1.5 hours which was such a small span of time, I mean it took us first 10 minutes just to gulp the notion of being on that beach. We spent most of our time in water and finally came back near our boat on time.(Remembering the morning fiasco) On our way back, the chatted with other 3 couples and came to know that they were here from last 3 days and today was the most fun day for them. This news saddened us, I mean if only today was the fun which we did enjoy thoroughly, it was only 1/3rd of our trip. What was going to happen for the rest of the trip, I wondered??


TO BE CONTINUED...

Semi-Annual Roadmap of this blog

मला वाचनाची आवड लागण्यामागे पु.ल. देशपांडे ह्यांच्या पुस्तकांचा फार मोठा हात आहे. त्यांच्या लेखनशैलीचा माझ्यावर प्रचंड प्रभाव आहे. त्यांची विनोदबुद्धी, कोटी करण्याची शैली मला भयंकर आवडते. त्यांची प्रवास वर्णने काय सुंदर असायची. त्यांच्या निरीक्षणशक्तीची दाद द्यायला हवी. खर पाहता माझ  पहिल पु.लं च पुस्तक हे एक प्रवासवर्णन होत. 'जावे त्यांच्या देशा'. व्हेनिस, हंगेरी , सान-फ्रान्सिस्को अश्या नानाविध ठिकाणांवर जाऊन तिथल्या संस्कृतीच, तिथल्या लोकांबद्दल पु.ल यांनी लिहिलेल्या गोष्टी वाचल्या की इतके सुंदर चित्र डोळ्यासमोर उभे राहतात कि कोणत्या हॉलीवूड चित्रपटात इतक सुंदर चित्रीकरण सापडणार नाही. अनेक वर्षांपासून माझ्या पण मनात एक सुप्त इच्छा होती की मी देखील असा प्रवासवर्णन लिहावं. यंदा जेव्हा मी मॉरीशस ला गेलो (यंदा म्हणजे तस पाहता तर मी पहिल्यांदाच गेलो!) तेव्हा मी अगदी निर्धार केला होता की प्रवासवर्णन लिहीणारच. त्या प्रवासाला आता ८ महिने झाले पण आजून योग आला नाही… बहुधा ९व्या महिन्यात माझ blog child होईल अशी आशा आहे.

जितक सुंदर पु.ल. जागांबद्दल, संस्कृतींबद्दल लिहितात तेवढंच सुंदर ते माणसांबद्दल लिहितात. 'व्यक्ती आणि वल्ली' हे पु.ल. च masterpiece माझ सगळ्यात आवडत पुस्तक आहे. तस काही मी माझ्या मित्रांबद्दल लिहेल अशी college च्या दिवसांमध्ये माझी महत्वाकांक्षा होती. असो, गेल्या काही दिवसांपासून मी माझ्या फेसबुकच्या newsfeed वर Humans of NewYork चे photos पाहत होतो. माझ्या अनेक मित्रांनी त्या पेजला लाईक केला होता. मी मात्र खूप skeptically विचार करत होतो की 'काय आहे यार हे HONY, इतका काय गवगवा करतात लोक त्याचा?', पण नंतर जेव्हा मी ते photos पाहणं सुरु केल तेव्हा त्यातला brilliance मला समजून आला. काय भारी concept आहे… brandon नावाच्या एका छायाचित्रकारानी New York मधे जागोजागी जाऊन वेगवेगळ्या लोकांशी संवाद साधला आणि त्यांचे छायाचित्र काढले. आपल्या photoblog वर त्याने ते छायाचित्र आणि त्या व्यक्तीसोबत केलेल्या संवादाचा संक्षेप लिहिला. लोकांची स्वप्ने, प्रेरणा, अडचणी त्यांच्या डोळ्यातून आणि शब्दातून मांडण्याचा हा प्रकार मला प्रचंड भावला. मी स्वतः पण अनेक दिवसांपासून असच काहीसं करण्याच्या विचारात होतो.

पुढील दोन महिन्यात मी वरील दोन गोष्टी माझ्या blog वर करण्याचा प्रयत्न करील. कारण कोण्या हुशार मनुष्याने म्हटल आहे.

Imitation is the best form of flattery. 

Super Dad

He is a man with dark mustache, a man with big first finger, a man with knowledge of everything, a man who is most reliable. Other people call him by different names, I just call him Dad.

When I was just a kid, he was like superman to me. My belief has not yet changed. He used to lift me up and down. Swing me in the air and catch me without any efforts. I always felt safe with him. Whenever he used to take me out into the Mela, Circus, I used to put my hand on his index finger, it was a big index finger. He used to guide me with that in all crossroads of mela and today also he guides me like that through all the highways of life. After doing all the mischiefs with my sister, he was that un-penetrable wall that my sister could never cross. I used to feel invincible behind his back.

I remember once he fell sick and we had to take him to hospital. I was in my final year engineering. I was feeling so sad, so helpless, for no reason. The idea of my dad being sick was such a new experience to me. I thought, how come I never remember he falling sick before that? He must had sometime. But only moments I remember was me falling sick and he taking me to hospital late night. My sister, mother also had fallen sick sometime or other and every time there was this man who took them to hospital at odd times. He brought medicines for us, put us to bed, worked hard to give us as much comforts as he could. That day, I realized how much emotionally dependent I am on my father. Our Indian culture portrays the sons to be the devotees of Mother and in the grandeur of it, a father gets, I won't say neglected, but definitely cornered.

I remember when I was in another city for 11th and 12th, he used to come on weekends with all the meals and food cooked by my mother, even with tensions of his work life, he never had a frown on his face. When my results were declared, he stood with me in queue in scorching sun. My adolescent genes were irritated because of his presence in the queue of students, but somewhere back in my mind, the anxiety of results was reduced by his presence. During my engineering admissions, he traveled with me to all the counselling rounds. He used to run down the unknown roads to get a bottle of water for me, so that I won't feel thirsty during the elimination rounds. After unsuccessful rounds, he used to take me to nearby tourist location to lighten up my mood. I remember, for one of the college, we were short of attested copies of marksheets, he searched the whole area in the summer afternoon to find a gazetted officer.

I remember, once I got addicted to a ball and wanted to play throwball in the house, he patiently played with me every night 2-3 hours for a week till I got over with that obsession. Today, having an Apple Ipod with me, I miss the songs of the magnetic cassettes which we used to play and listen together on the walkman. Eating the gelato in the mall, I remember the Amul family pack he used to bring for us as surprise. When I used to reach from school, I used to wait for him to come. From far distance I could hear the sound of his Scooter. I would put away all the work at hand and would run to open the gates of the house, then I would take a look at the bag in his hands to find something interesting, something fascinating. This ritual continues till today. He taught me how to ride a bicycle, took me to swimming classes. I remember he used to seat alone for one hour when I had joined swimming class whose timings were late night. Today also he makes journey of 4 restless nights to be with me for 48 hours.

I have one fantasy, if got a chance to introduce myself in front of large crowd, like how the warriors in Lord of the Rings used to introduce themselves, I am Aragon, son of Arathon OR I am Gimli, son of Gloin, I would like to introduce myself,
I AM RAHUL, SON OF RAVINDRA VAIDYA.

FIFA

Even being born and brought up in India, I was never much a fan of Cricket. That guilt had its own space in my heart. However, I used to watch it when Sachin was playing, particularly against Pakistan. That too, when I was a child. I remember, once in my college, Ind-Pak match was showed in Auditorium, but I was busy watching FRIENDS with laptop on my stomach. So, the point is I was not interested in Cricket. I had few sports fanatic friends. One of them was boosting, once, about some match. Surprisingly, it was not about Cricket which made me curious. Later I came to know that he was talking about Football. Apparently, this world cup finale was watched by 46.4% of world population. This is quite a big number. This statistics made me wonder how much I know about Football. All I knew was

1) There are 11 players from each side and all of them are in field at a time, unlike Cricket.
2) Soccer was the American name for Football.
3) There is this great player called Zidan who ruined his team's chance to win finale over verbal fight with opponent.
4) There are 3 great players in Football Realm, whose names are quite similar and confusing. Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo.
4) I have seen all GOAL movies.

The basic indifference or you can say hatred, I perceived for football during my Engineering days. There were these cool dudes around who used to play FIFA on the laptops. I tried to imitate their Coolness, but I failed terribly even to play football on laptop. There were 2 sets of 4 keys which we have to manage simultaneously. Due to lack of ambidextrous key strokes, I gave up much earlier than I anticipated. That sulkiness took me away from Football. Suddenly, few days ago, I saw 30 days to go, 7 days to go, kind of status of Facebook and I decided, lets take this chance to understand football better. Why should I just not follow FIFA 2014. 'This is a great learning opportunity', screamed someone inside me. So, here I open the FIFA official website and checks Match Schedules. There are many matches everyday, obviously!! Now I will have to choose few teams and follow all their matches.I am choosing Spain(I have a perception that Spain is that to Football what India is to Cricket), Portugal (Christiano Ronaldo belongs to this team and I follow him on Facebook so my mind is kind of Brainwashed) as big teams, otherwise if I choose a small team and if they fail to qualify in final rounds, I will be heartbroke, pun intended. I will also follow Russia (because I don't want to follow U.S.) and Ecuador (because this is one bad ass country who gave refuge to Assange and Snowden). Today is the first match and I am excited. By the way do you know on which channel are they broadcasting the matches??....[after telepathically listening to bad words from football fan readers].....I am just Kidding!!

Let the dice roll..I mean football!!

(ob)Session

"Obsession is a young man's game" -John Cutter in Prestige.

I just remember this dialogue sometimes. Tell me where do you find obsession?
For the fat guy, hunger is an obsession.
For a drunkard, drinking is an obsession.
What do we call someone having obsession of power? Politician? Well mostly.
What do you think, is obsession a good thing for any individual??
Ohh..leave it. I can sense this is becoming a monologue questionnaire!!
I think it is good in some way. With today's outburst of technology, if you want to do something, you must do it at earliest because before you decide completely in your mind, something new..something better will come up. With all the options available in your hand, there are so many things which we can do still we keep on missing them. Let me tell you one example, I had a dream of an adventure trip to Ladakh. Going there and exploring all the natural miracles. If I won't get obsessed with this idea, I will not find the perfect time to do it. In this way, obsession is loosely coupled to Spontaneity. Get obsessed with ideas and start implementing them spontaneously. You wanted to learn a game since your schooldays and still you haven't played it. GET Obesed. Huh? Oh! that's spelling mistake. Get Obsessed.

Why there is general presumption about obsession being bad? When people get obsessed with people or habits, things start turning out dirty.The fine line of spontaneity gets darkened by whim. If you tie your madness to ideas, concepts, dreams, they are the good obsessions. So what are you obsessed about? Reading crap blog posts??

Superman

So today I decided to download some movie which I have missed and Man of Steel came to my mind. There was such a big hype when this movie was announced, many people waited for it to release. The trailers were promising. But the movie is such a bullshit. When I started watching the movie, within first 10 minutes, my opinion was 'I don't like this movie', but within next half an hour, I was mumbling with anger, 'I hate this movie'. Here are my reasons.
    This movie was done for people of krypton. Most of the story revolves around the issues of kryptonions.
Any superhero movie should have one strong point to make. The superhero is going to do everything to save earth and humans. I know they showed the same here as well but it was not that effective. The frequent flashbacks didn't work, so the struggle of alien hero to adjust himself in foreign land was not portrayed properly. Better would have been, if story would have progressed based on timeline. Moreover the bonding between guardian and hero failed to glue. It seems that was better in spiderman movie. The actor Henry Cavill is good but not great. His body was good but in bollywood 90% of people have same kind of body. No offense here!!(from the guy who has multiple fat layers on stomuch. :P)
      The action sequences were so so. I know it takes a long time and lots of efforts to create that kind of graphical animations but the fun to watch actions in Avengers was better than this one. The General Zod casting was ineffective. The villain failed to match hero's level. Russel Crowe's performance was good. Amy Adams was there just to fill up the space just like all bollywood actresses. Lots of people were crazy about some easter eggs. Things like 'There is a Call Batman poster somewhere hidden during the last fight.' I mean come'on yaar!! I am also comic nerd but that easter eggs can't increase your excitement for to be declared upcoming ventures. Its something like there is announcement in late 2013 that there will be a movie with Superman and Batman launching in 2015. So now we have to wait for 2 more years. What about the disappointment we faced for 2 years by seeing the trailer of Man of Steel during Inception and waiting for it eagerly??

Bottom line: Don't hype the movies, sometimes they are not worth it.

Things that don't make sense at all!!

Whenever we go out, we find so many things which does not make sense at all. Here are few of them.

1) Urinals with glass dividers:

You will see this kind of urinals in most of the newly build/renovated malls.

Tell me what is the logic of keeping these dividers made up of glass? Any (straight) man who goes at this place is minding his own business. Why to give scope for unfortunate glance?? This is such and absurd design, and why did they put it in urinals? Architectural/Interior experiments could be done in any other part of the mall excluding toilets atleast. I believe so.

When I first saw this, I was shell-shocked and I turned back to check the partition between the toilets. Thank god, trends have not changed for them.

2) Self service counters with a note:

There are many restaurants I see now a days..to be precise Mast Kalandar, which has a Self-Service Coupon Counter and above it, in bold letters a note is written.

"If you don't get bill for the meal, your meal is free. Call ********"

I mean how rubbish and stupid above claim is. First of all, you are providing coupon counter before ordering anything. How can I person bypass paying for the food before having it??

Anyways, even if by some miracles, a person sits without purchasing a coupon and without giving it to the waiter, and waiter brings meal for him (Here we have blind-folded many obvious failures...but still thinking theoretically), if a person has enjoyed the meal freely, why in bloody consciousness a person will call on the number to tell someone that he/she have just enjoyed the free meal?? 
(Moreover it also includes the risk of mobile number being Restaurant Manager's number who is monitoring everybody closely, who immediately picks you in the crowd and out of shamefulness or coutesy you pay the bill giving advisary nod to the counter-guy not to repeat the mistake again, you bring yourself to losses.)

3) eBay giving the discount coupons of Rs. 50

Recently I got the promotional mail from ebay claiming to use the discount of Rs.50/- Can you just believe it? What can we buy from ebay which will be good enough for this big discount??

4) Carrer Astrology Services from TimesJob.com

Recently, I got the annoying mail from timesjob to register for some paid services. I must have been really out of any good work, as I clicked on the link and got redirected to the timesjob website. There were list of paid services out of which one got my attention. Its was Career Astrology. How oxymoronic can this thing get??? So, they were predicting your career's ups and downs based on the date on which you are born, and this bullshit is not even free??

5) If Rash Driving Call this number

Everyday on my journey to and from office, I see lots of cabs with a sticker on their back, If found rash driving, Call **********. I am quite intrigued by the fact that if the driver is really driving rashly, would we even be able to get that number. Moreover my narcissist mind tells me what if the number belongs to driver himself??