The Country of Happiness and the Land of Thunder Dragon

Bhutan, is better known as the Country of Happiness. I never knew this fact before, but Bhutan is the 8th Happiest country in the world, and the most happiest country in Asia. And we could see it there, everywhere. All smiles, everyone seemed happy, even the driver of our bus after he was caught speeding. He happily gave away the fine of Nu 1750 (equivalent to INR 1750).

The trip was a kind of a tiny summer vacation for us, since it had been raining fire all over India those days (Last week of May). Once we boarded the flight to Paro (the international airport of Bhutan) from Kolkata, we never saw sweat for the next 5 days. Oh, Indians and Bhutanese don't need VISA to travel across the borders. Although they check your passports since the immigration authorities would still keep track of your movement, but Bhutan has very friendly relations with India. So much so, almost everyone understand and speaks Hindi quite fluently. The Paro airport is very different from all the other airports I have seen. Although it's a small one, there was something special about it. A slight drizzle welcomed us as we stepped out of the aircraft. And this is the first photo we clicked.

Paro International Airport, Bhutan

And there was a big billboard with a couple's photo. I tried to figure out what were they advertising, until a few days later, I came to know that the picture was of the King and the Queen of Bhutan.

We then boarded our tour bus, and set off for our hotel in Thimpu, the capital city of Bhutan, which was our base station for the next 3 days.

The main cities of Bhutan are Thimpu, Punakha and Paro. Punakha was Bhutan's old capital till 1955. Bhutan is very sparsely populated, and the approximate population of the country is about 7.5 lakhs. The eastern part of the country is where most of the development has happened.

Bhutan's currency is ngultrum which is fixed to the value of Indian rupee. So, you would not need to carry any local currency. The INR notes are accepted everywhere, and they have exactly the same value.

In a span of few days, we visited dozens of places. Mostly cultural and religious sites, since the ethnic culture has remained intact and untouched by the westerners because of it's isolation from the rest of the world till 1960s. Rightly so, Bhutan has been named as the The Last Shangri-La.

Travelling to a new country, and not trying out their traditional dress!!! That's just not possible, especially when your wife is so adamant to getting clicked in the foreign attire. There you go. The dress for the men is called "gho" and for women, it's called "kira".

That's not a real bull.

We visited a lot of Dzongs (Fortresses, now converted to administrative buildings), and Monasteries, and other places of importance.

Buddha Doderma Statue, Thimpu

Paro international Airport, Bhutan

A random click from the streets

I excelled at their National Sports. My second arrow hit the bull's eye. The wife did terribly bad, and almost missed a live human. 

Archery

If you are interested in looking at more photos, we have shared an album with a few hundreds photos. Do check them out. Some of them are really beautiful.

When the 5 days were over, and we were as happy as all the people in Bhutan, we had to sadly depart from Paro. As soon as we landed in Kolkata, we were already thinking about the rising temperatures, office, traffic and such things. That was a well deserved break from our busy life, but a very short one. I hope there would be many more stories and trips soon.

Exams, Results and Dreams

Exams, well, obviously, they are not the stuff that people love. Results; even more hated. And the wait for the results can be sometimes, never ending. How long can you really wait!!! And especially, when you are just hoping that everything turns out good. But, it almost never happens.

Before exams, I have had weird dreams. Really really weird...

"I am writing my exams, and I then realize that I am completely naked. With that realization, I rush out of the exam hall, out into the street, no where to hide. I keep running towards home, and then I wake up."

One of them actually turned into reality. During the class 10 board exams, I was preparing for History. That was the most dreaded subject I have ever had. The next day, when I started walking toward the exam hall, one of my friends asked me if I have got color pencils and threads. I was terrified. I was laughing at the same time, on my friend, imagining how he would react on getting the History question paper, when he was expecting a Geography paper. Soon, I realized that it was me. I would have sweated out the most that day. I flashed towards the stationary shop, collected all that was required for the Geography paper and ran back to the hall, 10 minutes late. I was allowed to enter. And finally, I was able to score 78 in that paper.

At times, I have dreamed about being caught cheating.

By the way, I never cheated during the exams. Ummmm.. there might have been one instance as far as I can remember. I don't exactly remember which exam it was. I think it was in class 8. I had finished my paper, and was looking around. There was a classmate, a girl, and she happened to look at me. I was nervous. I had to do something. She looked beautiful that day. I had to do something. I had to strike a conversation. And then, I put up my hand, and gestured her to tell me the answer to one of the questions. She was happy to help. She murmured the answer. The distance was far, and I was very bad at lip reading. She must have tried 4-5 times, but failed. And then, she explained the answer with gestures. By the way, I already knew the answer. :)

I once tried to take bits of paper to the exam hall, but gave up the idea at the last moment. I guess, I never learnt that art, although in college, we were exposed to all the tips and tricks of the business.

And now, again, I am writing my exams. Things have changed though. One of the exams that carries the maximum weight-age is an open book exam. But still, when it's time for the results, I can feel my heart beating fast and loud.

Conversations and her

She is either very intelligent, or just loves to show off her arguing powers. One day, out of nowhere, she wanted to test me. Usually, I lose the argument, irrespective of the topic of the discussion. Here we go.

A chat transcript.

She: Did you see a soul-mate (past, present and future) when you first looked into my eyes?

I instantly knew that I cannot afford to be outright truthful here. Didn't reply for a long time, pondering over my course of action, and also anticipating the possible repercussions.

She: (Impatient) You didn't answer my question.
He: (Oh no.. Not again!!) Ummm, No.
She: No? You did not see a soul-mate in me? You are lying.
Me: (Trying to be funny, to divert her) Living life with you is enough. I don't want to linger around with you after we become ghosts.

She: You are saying that we were not together in our previous births?
Me: I don't remember. (Trying to remember harder as ever)
She: And you don't want to be with me in your next birth?
Me: Global warming, everything will be over soon. So, I am not thinking about my next birth. :)

She: Oh...
She: Okay ("Ok" would have been fine, but "Okay" is a sign of the approaching storm)
She: (She was reading a book just before we started this conversation) Then, I guess, I will read my book.
Me: Hahahahaha
She: Huh!!!

And after that, we had to continue this discussion over the phone and finally reach a conclusion, well, not exactly, but to a point where she can go back to reading her book normally, and me, well, telling myself, "A job well done" and gave myself a pat on my back. :D I won this time. Yay!!!

Ortel Communications: A review

You have probably not heard about this company if you are not from Bhubaneswar. I never wanted to write reviews for anything, other than, may be gadgets. But then, I had to mention about this company here. You will soon know why.

It's been more than a month that I have been using this broadband connection at home. When we got an internet connection (a broadband wired connection) at home, there were no other private providers here. Well, the BSNL guys told that a connection to our house wasn't possible at that point in time. Frankly speaking, we didn't have any choice whatsoever. Ortel Communication, had a monopoly everywhere in Orissa. Although, I was very reluctant to give my approval, we hooked onto their network.

Ok. To be frank, this is not a review, rather an outburst after all the torture and frustration I have gone through. So, I would only talk about their negatives here.

• At-least once a day, their modem goes offline. ("loses power"). <<----- That's what they say. And we have to call them every-time to let them know that the poor modem has lost power.
• I had plans of staying at home for sometime, and I would be also working from home for some time. So, I upgraded our connection to a 700kbps plan. I thought it would be enough for my needs. But then I realized that, although the download speed was almost close to 700kbps, the upload speed was pathetic at best (@100kbps). WHAT!!!!
• The day we upgraded our plan, I saw a weird problem. Almost all the pages I opened up, it had an annoying advertisement. I was frustrated, and tried to hunt down the problem. I re-installed my browsers, un-installed all my browser add-ons, but still the problem persisted. After a few more investigations, to my horror, I found that Ortel Communications was injecting this piece of advertisement on each and every page, by intercepting my requests.
• I started writing mails to them on the e-mail addresses provided on their website. Hahaha, I knew what would happen next. 2 out of the 3 recipients mail bounced back. And for the one recipient, I haven't heard back yet. I kept on doing this for 5 days, yet I haven't received even an acknowledgement.
• I did a Google search to find out if anyone else has this problem. Of course, Ortel has it's monopoly in Bhubaneswar.  I found almost everyone was having the same problem.

There is a thread here where you can find more people complaining. You would find a few interesting stories as well.  I had never thought that an ISP would do something like this. When I asked one of the customer care guys about this, they said that they do this because Ortel is providing internet connection in rural areas at a lower cost, and so they had to compensate for it by adopting this. WHAT!!!!! You are awesome Ortel communications. Great going.

By the way, here's the code that they injecting into every website that you visit.  They get their ads onto our webpages by using this script.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ui.streamride.net/ui.js"></script>

This is almost equal to cheating the customers. I don't really care if they are getting some extra revenue. It's just so annoying to see those ads all the time. Here is a sample of how those ads look like on your browsers. This is, in my view, breach of privacy and security and cheating.

Flower chor!! Flower chor!!

Ah!!! I thought things would have changed. It's been a long long time that I heard such tales from my Mom. Let's ponder over the background of the story.

Every Indian house does some form of Pooja, every morning, for which one of the most important ingredient is "Flowers". The flowers have to be fresh, i.e, freshly plucked. And the most important part is, the collected lot should at-least have 2 varieties of flowers (varying by color or species). The fun starts every morning. If you could fix a big camera over my colony, one could see people getting out of their houses just before the sunrise, with small bags, determined...

Their mission: Collect flowers for Pooja.

Target: Everyone else's garden.

We also have a few flowering plants inside our compound, and Mom recently noticed that everyday the number of flowers on our plants kept diminishing. And, on other days, she failed to find a single flower for our Pooja on our plants. It was obvious that someone was stealing our flowers. Although we somehow managed to get our share of flowers from other sources, Mom took up the responsibility to catch the erring neighbor and confront them, or may be teach them a lesson.

She needed a partner. And who else would be a better accomplish other than Auntie who was a close friend of Mom. She was on the ground floor, and Mom on the second floor. The plan was chalked out. Everyday, Auntie would try to wake up early in the morning, hoping that she would wake up before the THIEF reached our compound, watch the plants for a few minutes and alert Mom if she saw anything suspicious.

Everyday, Auntie and Mom used to wake up early in the morning, and kept an eye on our plants. Mom, from the terrace, and Auntie through the windows. For the first few days, the thief was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, he made his errands too early in the morning. After a few watchful days, the thief was finally caught. They were actually two (From the same house, Husband and Wife). To be sure enough before deciding on their punishments, Mom and Auntie wanted to be check that the culprits came and assaulted our plants daily. So, they continued for a few more days, and it was established that the THIEVES actually came everyday and robbed us of our flowers.

The plan: The next time when Mom would see them getting their hands dirty, they would be washed off by a bucket of cold water from the terrace.

But, the idea was finally dropped, considering...

• The culprits were from our own colony, and we knew them.
• It was winter time and Mom felt that the punishment would be a bit harsh.
• We also used to collect our flower lot for the Pooja from our neighbors few years back when we were not the proud owners of a few flowering plants.

Let bygones be bygones

I stay in Bangalore, a thousand miles away from my home, where I spent my childhood. When my mind is blank, and I am not thinking about work or anything else, I ponder over the past. I know those days will never come back, but to even re-live those moments with memories is truly nostalgic.

Recently, there have been a series of power failures in my area. "Damn it!!! @$#%3 @##@$ @#@$". No other thoughts come to my mind when the lights go off. When it starts raining, I curse the rain gods for the untimely downpours. Everything seems to have changed now.

We used to wait for the power cuts everyday when I was a child. Just before the scheduled power cuts, everyone could be seen getting ready with their snacks, water-bottles and other paraphernalia and walk up to the terrace. Those were the days when I learnt and actually saw the Pole star, the other constellations that we read in our Geography books. We talked about a lot of other things. About animals, birds, the moon and the sky. We talked about school. I miss those conversations. And I am sure that my parents miss that too.

When I was a child, I used to love the rains. I loved getting wet. Everytime it started raining, I made it a point that I had a good excuse before walking upto my Mom, for not using my raincoat. I enjoyed those summer days when it was a routine exercise for everyone to get rid of the mosquitoes every evening by burning mosquito repellants.

We also used to go for a walk after dinner, or played badminton right after our dinner during the winters. The Saturdays and the Sundays had a host of TV programs lined up for us, and everyone had a reserved place for him/her and nobody was late. We had only 1 television set and only 1 channel.

Sundays were really fun, when each vehicle in the house, including my bicycle had their weekly bath.

And now, I let my bike collect all the dust and mud until I give it away for servicing. I curse the mud and the overflowing drains when it rains. I use All-Out/Good Night to drive away those irritating mosquitoes. Even if it's not raining, I put on my jacket, just in case. I don't even remember when was the last time I looked up into the sky. I don't play badminton anymore. I keep on switching from channel to channel and end up watching nothing at all.

Sometimes, I feel sad about all these changes. But, you know what? There's an saying for everything.

"Let bygones be bygones"

Friends... Forever

What's a Friendship without fights? What's a Friendship without arguments? What's a Friendship without compromises?

Friends are supposed to understand what you don't say. Friends are supposed to advise when you are off the track. Friends are supposed to keep quite when you are mad. Friends are supposed to be there for you, all the time, no matter how busy they are.

But things change with time. You might not be in contact with your best pal from your childhood. You might have forgotten the name of your best friend in school. And the best friend from college, well, you might just call him up a few times in a year, perhaps on his birthday, or the new year.

Nobody has a single best friend. At-least, I don't have one. They kept changing, all the time, from the childhood days, to school, then college, and now at workplace. The concept of a "Best Friend" is a little flawed for me, at-least I feel so. I believe that, at a given moment, a person can have a pool of good friends, and it becomes almost impossible for one, to chose the best among them.

It might sound as if, today, on the occasion of "Friendship Day", I am trying to make all my friends happy. Well, in a way, Yes. I thank all of them who have considered me as a "Friend", but, also, those who have considered me as their "Best Friend" at some point of time.

I think I can list down a few friends who have been in my pool of good friends.

1. My Sisters (Mausumi, Sushmita): Well, obviously, they have to be among them. Had the best of times when we were children at home.
2. Hara Prasad Sahoo: He was one of the first who I met in Stewart School, and we were perhaps best friends till Class 4
3. Santrupta Mishra: We quickly became best friends in Class 4 and stayed Best Friends till 10th.
4. Shyam Bedback: In college, most of the times, we were seen with each other. Does that mean we were best friends? Perhaps.
5. Samiran Rautray, Ritesh Parida, Ashutosh Bag, Sidharth Gourav Nayak, Kapidhwaja Pratap Narayan Singh (Hope I spelled is correctly): Bet friends in the first year of engineering. Ragging was so fun in the first year. The whole year, we all sort of stayed together all the time.
6. Rishabh Kalra, Saurabh Shukla, Vivek Bhagbole: In addition to the first year friends, the pool kept getting bigger and bigger, and by the time it was my last year in engineering, the boundaries "Circles" of good friends started melting away.
7. Kunal Kishore Malviya, Vijay Kumar, Vivek Dwivedi, Rwitam Mitra, Sagar Mohane, Vinay Suri, Vishal Jain: All of them started to break the boundaries.
8. Nitin Chhabra, Gaurav Paul, Shakul Jugran, Sandesh Kothare, Rahul Jain: Well, those were the close group of friends with whom I spent most of my time in the initial days in Bangalore.
9. A few more which don't really fall into that chronological order: Amit Chahar, Vidushi Goyal, Rwitam Mitra, Debasis Biswal, Rajesh Jena, Santhosh Joshua, Padmaja Dash, Shantanu Singh, Vandana Toshniwal

And the list goes on and on and on.  I just can't really put every friends' names down here. Actually, it's a little unfair on my part, if I have left out anyone. But, I could, very clearly see the pattern emerging. The pool of good friends becomes bigger and bigger with your age. And, thus, the concept of having a "Best Friend" is diluted once you are exposed to such a large number of good friends. Sometimes, you can't make up your mind and pick a better friend among a two. At times, you will have to make a few compromises. It has frequently happened to me, that 2 from those friends would call you up and ask you to catch up for a movie. And now, you have to make a choice. When you make a choice, it's definitely hard for you, and it is perhaps hurts the other guy who you ignored. I also, feel the same, when such things happen to me. But then, everything is forgiven and forgotten soon, and then, the next weekend, you get to go with the other friend. And everyone seems to be happy now.

Ah!!! Ok, fine, Let's end this day here. By the way, A very Happy Friendship Day to all my friends, and I hope that I am always there in your "Circles" as a good friend. Don't ever think that I have stopped being a Friend of yours. Even if I don't call you often, even if I don't wish you on your birthdays, even if I have forgotten your last names. I still think about you all when I rest my mind. I still have dreamed about a few. It's just that Life has taken a toll on me, and that I have many many more friends to talk to, and keep my circle growing.

Thanks all, again, for being a FRIEND. Happy Friendship Day.

By the way: Did you notice? That list contains only 3 girl friends, apart from my sisters. I want to make as many girl friends as the boy friends I have. So, anyone interested on growing their pool of friends, please contact me.

Time machine. Umm, no, a teleporter please

Image Source : Wikipedia Commons

At times, I have been fascinated by the idea of Time Travel. Those movies on Time Travel were so enjoyable to watch. There have been numerous adaptations of this concept in movies, serials (Captain Vyom) and novels. No one knows yet, if it will be possible ever. But, I get a feeling that people have stopped working on it. Perhaps, they have given up, since it's been quite some time I have heard people talk or discuss about this, or new movies based on Time Machines. Perhaps, the interest, or rather the need of this generation has shifted to something else. Teleportation. :)

For some of you, it might be a new word. So, by definition on Wikipedia, Teleporation is "the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less instantaneously."

Time Travel still brings in a sense of excitement and adventure in me, but I would prefer to get teleported to somewhere, or wherever and whenever I like. Why? Here you go:

• I want to get to office and back home without getting stuck in traffic.
• Airfares have skyrocketed beyond the volume of my pockets.
• I want to visit my parents more often, and my girl friend too (Please don't ask who)
• I want to have a fag at midnight when I am with my parents, without they knowing.
• I want to meet Sachin Tendulkar personally when he is relaxing in his balcony.
• I want to be around Mrs. Sonali Bendre for some time.
• I want to keep a chocolate for a child on the streets without he knowing it.
• I want to retrieve all the documents from their hideouts which could land all the corrupt people in jail.
• I want to spend some time alone on Mt. Everest.
• I want to wish all of my family, friends and relatives personally on various ocassions.

Well, there are more, but I guess you can figure out why a Teleporter can be more helpful than a Time Machine. And by the way, if you change something, by going into the past or present, there's gonna be a hell lot of confusion.

And now, the secret: I am trying to build one. Please contact me if you are also interested in contributing towards this.

Need for a change?

Today, while I was passing by the Legislative Assembly building of Orissa on my way to some place, the sight triggered a chain of thoughts into my mind which was happily thinking about the sky, birds and the beaches before this. When I was a child, before I opened my Social Studies book, I wondered what would people do inside such buildings. I haven't yet seen the interiors of this building but then it wouldn't be much different than the Parliament houses we see on TV, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, apart from being proportionately smaller than the those.

I started thinking about how and whose idea it would have been to create a parliamentary system where countless number of people would be present, half of them sleeping, some of them day-dreaming, and a few ones shouting their hearts out. And then the Speaker siting there, as a king, on a raised chair, throughout the day, enjoying the drama going on the floor. Well, I am sure it wouldn't be anything less than a drama. As for me, I would rate Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav's talks very entertaining. He wakes up the house (read: sleeping members), lightens up The Speaker, and irks the opposition (who try their best to control their laughter).

I even remember, when cable televisions were not around, my father used to specifically wait for the show every day during the winter and the summer sessions of the houses. I could see him wearing a smile throughout the duration of the show, and there were occasional outbursts of laughter, from my father and from inside the television set. As a child, even I found it funny sometimes, the fights, arguments and the sleeping ministers. Ah, it was quite an entertaining program on National TV those days. But, now, I don't see my father even stop on this program while he is browsing through all the movie and news channels. I guess, his favorite stars have all retired, and he doesn't find it entertaining anymore. Me too.

Well, this wasn't the subject matter of this post. I will come to the point now. The moment I passed by that building, a picture of the large hall of the Lok Sabha/Rajya Sabha flashed through my mind. I thought, "Is this all necessary"? Agreed, that all the countries do this, and it has been standard procedure for the governments to meet and discuss issues and probably solve them. I wonder if this is the best way to do it, or a change is needed so that we could adapt the systems to match the 21st centuries demands and needs (faster actions and please please please no corruptions and scandals).

Well I know that the ministers actually do work when they are not in the parliament. And most of the work is done outside of the parliament houses and not in presence of virtually every minister in the country. So, why do we still continue to follow this practice of having parliamentary sessions? Can't we just chuck it? If there is indeed something to be discussed and voted for among all the Ministers, can't we have a better system? Instead of flying all the ministers from different parts of the country, the majority of which would have nothing to say, but a "yes" or a "no"?

We have progressed so much in technology, we produce or develop software for the rest of the world, but we haven't been able to use it ourselves. Our governments still use a lot of work and most of them refuse to accept the new hi-tech changes entering their offices. Most of the government offices don't have a website, and the ones which have one, haven't been updated since they were first launched. Well, the list can go on and on, but I don't want to make this post bigger than this. :)

Just one last thing!!! Don't laugh at me please. I am a software engineer, and so, my thoughts would be obviously be related to where and how I work. So, my question is:

"Does our Government follow Waterfall model or Scrum methodology to execute projects?"

I don't think they use any of the methodologies at all. In case they don't, has the time come to change the way our Government works? I would not mind to see an amendment in the Constitution of India, which would require every incumbent to be trained in Project Management, at the very least. I don't mind if they are just graduates, MBAs from Harvard or just plain illiterates. If at all they are required to work, they should be at-least have proven experience or should be trained before they take their oaths. Like the IT companies hire their employees. :D What say!!!!

We, the software engineers, do not take oath, but still fulfill our responsibilities and in most cases over-perform each day. Isn't that amazing? Are we corrupt? I guess, not.

Twenty 10 >>>>>> Twenty 11

 

YEAR

A few minutes... All those tweets and facebook status updates will become a thing of the past. 2011 is already knocking. I can hear people bursting crackers outside. My phone is already busy beeping. And there's a lot of noise outside. There's one guy, who pinged me exactly at 12:00, to wish me. His message read: "HNY". And somebody is sending me an e-greeting and forcing me view it right away. Mom and Dad called us on my sister's phone from upstairs to wish us both a Happy New Year. I can see so many people online on Gtalk and Facebook, just like I me, everyone changing their status messages to wish the world. Wow, That's a great beginning, I guess.

Had I been in Bangalore when the calendars changed, the atmosphere would have been completely different. At-least, it would have been far more noisier than here in Bhubaneswar, though I can hear a few people outside, wishing the world, at their loudest. I would have been among friends. We would also have celebrated yesterday in office. But, being at home, on such occasions is quite a different experience, among the people you have know since you were born.

Remembering the past 2010, it wasn't actually long for me. Oh, And if I remember correctly, I was in Bhubaneswar 3 years back, celebrating my new year in a similar fashion. I guess, that was in, 2008, Jan 1st. For the 2009, 1st Jan, I was in Chennai. For 2010, I was in Bangalore. Hmmm, That's strange, seems, like my next new year is designed to be celebrated in Chennai again. :(

Well, let's not think anything about the future yet. It's party time, enjoy, have fun, get ready to start afresh and be happy. Wish you all, a very very Happy New Year, and may all your wishes be fulfilled.

Talking about resolutions, Ummm..... I don't have one. If anyone of you already has one, believe me, it never works!!!! So, go ahead, and have a blast. And since it's a holiday(for most of us), I will enjoy even more. By the way, I am on leave till 12th of January, 2011. YIPEEEE!!!!!

My 100th post

Ok, so a milestone reached. Feels good. This was a picture clicked in Puri. I kind of like water, typical of a cancerian. I just can't resist the temptation, its too much for me. I like getting wet in the rains, love to play in water and that day also I couldn't stop myself from getting wet. What a pity, I don't know swimming and on top of that, we were in a hurry, Ashish's flight :(

Could have played a little more and may be watch the sun set. It was after a long time that I was at the beach, looking at the open seas. Away from the hustle and bustle of the city traffic, away from my laptop and work. I love the sound of the waves hitting against each other, love to watch the lone boats travelling the high seas, and the occasional noises of the vendors. It was a very pleasing experience. Wish I had a house besides the beach.

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Just in time - Again

Continuing from the previous post, the journey back to Bhubaneswar on the Scooty was very very thrilling. Every 2 minutes, I used to ask Ashish to look at his watch while I was on full throttle. The Scooty was running a race of it's lifetime. I had never been in such a hurry before, well, may be I was, 2-3 times, :).

Finally, we did manage to reach the airport on time, just before the checking counter shut down. And Mr. Ashish could fly back to Hyderabad that day. What a relief!!!

People had always doubted my Scooty riding skills, but yet again, I have proved them wrong, and yet again, I won the race against time. I was in a similar situation when a friend of mine asked me to drop him at the railway station. It was in Bangalore and I had a Pulsar 180cc with me then. I made it on time then as well. A few days back I was mocking at Vishal and Gaurav for missing their flight, by 10 odd minutes. Now, I realize the importance of each minute, especially when you are running to catch a flight or a train. Hahaha, but in the end, it's the result that matters. They missed it !!! Kudos.

A Scooty’s trip to Puri

For the people who are ignorant of this word “Scooty”, let me first  introduce this to you.

Scooty is an Indian brand of scooters manufactured by TVS Motors. Basically, it was designed for women, and at one time, was the largest selling scooter brand in it’s segment. Equipped with a 60cc engine, it can hit a top speed of about 60 kmph with a single person. However, the max speed dropped to a surprisingly lower value, somewhere around 45 kmph when you add on a pillion. If you want to know more about this scooter, visit the website.

Well, mine, not exactly mine, but my sister’s scooty is 6 years old now. And whoever rides it now, vows never to ride it again. But during it’s initial days, I used to love scooty rides a lot. :) And, so, there is some kind of attachment between the two of us.

Ok, the story continues. Ashish, who was in Bhubaneswar, for  attending Sidharth’s marriage, wanted to go to Puri. I told him that we can take a car/taxi. Not willing to contribute to the already increasing Carbon levels in the atmosphere, he recommended to avail the public transport. Hmm, Bad Idea, I thought. But, I knew that I will not be able to convince him to take a taxi, he would have never agreed. So, I gave him another better (looking atleast) option. My Scooty. And he somehow agreed.

Well, there was one little constraint. He had a flight to catch, the same day, at 6:45 pm, that very evening. And so, I worked out all the calculations (taking into consideration all the factors, including the max possible speed of my scooty) and arrived at our scheduled departure time, 9:00 am in the morning. Well, true to their reputations, NITKians, never made anything on time. Or they always did something wrong. Ya Ya, I am one of them. But, I can give you some more examples. Mr. Vishal and Mr. Gaurav missed their flights by just 10 minutes who wanted to attend Sidharth’s marriage. Mr. Srinath, who is currently a student at IIM, Kolkatta, by mistake booked a train ticket for the day after when he was supposed to travel. He managed his time well, but had all the wrong data and inputs. :) And I wasn’t even expecting Mr. Ashish to make it to my house before at-least 11:00 am. And I still over-estimated. He reached my house at 11:30 and then we started.

Puri is around 60 kms from my house. And, I just did a test ride on my Scooty. A max speed of 43 kmph. Hmm, Well, at that speed, I thought it will take at-least 2 hours to reach Puri. And we did it. YAY!!!

But the return journey was more fun, exciting and tensed. For some reason, my Scooty refused to buzz beyond the 40 kmph. At the place where we stopped for food, we got a bit late and lost a few minutes there (may be 10 minutes). And, it was already 5:00 pm and there was still some 30 odd kms to cover. If at all, Rajhans misses his flight, he and only he would be the sole person responsible. He did all this, wasted time, which could have saved us a few minutes.

Did Rajhans miss his flight? Did Scooty survive the torture? Did we manage to break the NITKians record of never being on time?
To be continued…