Leh Diary

Gar firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast And thousand have died protecting the heaven on earth. We owe you guys. Respect~Indian Army~Border Road Organization(BRO) and everyone else that has contributed to keep the place unadulterated.
Back in the days of sleeping giant(ORKUT), my brother forwarded me one of those Royal Enfield groups that organized trips to LEH.
The Fire Rises!
 And It did, very soon, trip to LEH went into my ThingsToDoBeforeYouDie list. (Honestly,many would do it over and over again. Such is the beauty.)
The year 2014 has been a surprise package until this is being written. The tickets were booked well in advance after extended meeting. Such was the seriousness that it took 2 days to decide nothing. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Plan Falana Plan Dhimkana- We had these options to chose from based on the number of days. A lot of effort went into it by my sis. Well done! ThumbsUp.
Considering cost/number of days/comfort/fun, it was decided that we would drive my brother's safari from delhi and be back. ThumbsUp for Safari! Awesome family!
I always had this trip planned in my mind. Take a bike from delhi-go Up- Up- Up until there's only you and no one else. Sounds dreamy, but it happens. Even though the tickets were booked, there were chances that I would miss the most awaited journey of my life. Thanks to other important things(Read MBA/JOB). But sometimes life is a bed full of roses. This was one such instance. And so we began. Oops…. we forgot to do the all important checklist.But got 2 bottles of Rum instead(planned well in advance).
We-Amit Ranjan(Sahib),Anshuman Solanki(The biker),Jyoti Nishant(joined us in Leh due to commitments, not to a girl but to his job), Saurabh Suman(Driver), Shaily Sahay(Photographer/Video analyst), Shweta Kumari(Memsahib).
Day 1(Pune-BOM-DEL)
14-Aug-2014
Shaily and I began at 1:00 PM. The bus was right on time, infact we boarded an earlier bus to avoid any mumbai traffic jams. And we did a right thing, Mumbai can be rude at times. We reached the airport on timeand were later joined by Amit and Shweta.
Airport was at total chaos. Chaos was on everyone's mind. System failures, final announcements and merry go round queues which hardly moved didn't dampened our spirits. Later when the servers were up, we were right up there at the counters.
Boarding pass collected, luggague checked in, Welcome Aboard.
An hour late, we were welcomed by my sis in law with delicious ghar-ka-mutton. Another ThumbsUp! I Quietly asked my bro if the safari was serviced-Negative.
No wonder what it led to.

To Be Continued..

In search of Love, Life, Laughter! Part-2

I quietlymoved out while Sumi kept on throwing questions at me. It was a plush area with Merc and Honda City covering up the parking place. I owned a relatively down-looked car in that area. I preferred a walk in the hot sun, it wasn’t something new, I was used to it. As I stepped out of premises, world seemed bizarre. Everyone had a purpose, the auto driver, fruit sellers…it was a small market just outside the housing society. I walked through the shops, and moved to a quieter place, the paan shop. I lighted up a cigarette, it was a no smoking zone but people hardly paid any heed to government rules. It was blown with the smoke. Where are you? We need to go for shopping? It was Sumi. She had been a good wife but a complaining types, may be because she expected me to earn some more, she expected me to break into reserve bank of India and steal few millions or may be she expected me to sell my morale and be just another common stupid man. This was the only problem with her…she was money minded, and money is happiness for we the Indians. I wasn’t earning less, but I wasn’t cashing in crores. Ignoring the message I walked without any purpose and headed towards the slum, the area that was considered to be a black spot on the housing society. Very soon I had to take out a piece of cloth and cover my nostrils; I didn’t dare to step forward. Dingy lanes, houses having no doors, a woman clad in single piece of cloth…the sight was distressing. I moved further. Little shops all around, filled with noise and everyone looked at me suspiciously. I was a foreigner in their Iceland! A small temple not bigger than my store room was probably the only place where thousands went for meditation. People were dark, unlike us, may be due to the pollution or genes, but they had a smile unlike us!
It was more of an exploration for me, although as a child I had seen poverty but never saw slum, it was intriguing. I was brought up in the fields if not born there and spent most of my childhood feeding the cattle or staying up with bapu in the fields for little help that I could afford. My eyes never saw toys, I never touched a bat, was alien to dumb charades. The only sport that whole village kids played was football, rather it was a mass of plastics rolled and tied into a single piece. I remember I had touched the ball twice, among some 50 odd kids chasing the ball as if it would run away if they don’t run behind it! And later when I left the village, I heard it was stolen. I could understand the pain of my friends, although they weren’t, and the void that the football created in their minds. But human beings are so cute idiots that they tend to fill the void sooner, or later be it a football or own blood. I lost my son; or rather he wasn’t interested to see the state of affairs of the world or to be more precise India. He left us when he was 2 days old, lived too long to create flashes of memory that haunted me at times.