that was what i call it a day.......

Reaching Sanchi, the famous Buddhist Stupa of the great Ashoka and one of the most frequented wonders, an ancient seat of Buddhist culture and learning, at the first stroke of dusk were dented by a bad dusty road on way. I set out on my adventure (rather a pilgrimage… eh!) regardless; a day prior to this LOSAR, for the day being an auspicious one. The dust was gushing alongside the road I was riding. Some 1 hour of my bike ride zigzagged amidst the most spectacular views. The most photographed place perhaps in the whole of that region, I was told, was mysteriously abandoned for 600 years and was over run with vegetation.
The very first sight of this magnificent landscape totally captivated me with its clay and stone architecture, and spotlessly cleans surroundings. Built over carefully chiseled stone blocks, I can still find the specimens of almost all kinds of Buddhist architectural forms, Stupas, temples, and the ruins of the ancient monastery near the Stupa clearly shows a testimony to the marvelous engineering skills of the early Maryuan period to 12th Century A.D.
I wonder how much more commanding the place must have been when it was at its golden peak. Clearly, I feel the mystery about this place, still many remains unknown continues to charm thousands of tourists who set foot on the sacred land. My longtime desire of visiting personally to see this wonder of the once secluded buddhist days thus became a reality and after riding back an hour from Sanchi to Bhopal the same evening was, myself… satisfied, waiting for a good LOSAR eve party with my friends there…..cheers!!

Let bygones be begones.......

Folks, today I am in a nostalgic mood, chatted for almost 2 hours with a very old school friend after almost 5 years….….we talked about all the fun we had in the school, the games we played, all the gals who were ours but never were and of course about the first time we got drunk…and most importantly, the way we felt this world to notice us in everyway, eh!
It was the end of my stay in the hostel, my Certificates were in hand and i was supposed to move for further studies soon. By this time i was well accepted in the hostel community and we had our own little gang. Till then we had never drunk, one of my friends had smuggled his father’s scotch bottle, and sometimes we used to take little swigs from it. That’s about it. Then one fine day one of my friends fell for a gal in the school, we managed to convince him to propose to the her. He was hesitant, but we prodded him on (we thought it would be so much fun if she said no), and then we said.... look man if she says yes ,we are going to celebrate by drinking tonight but every bit of penny, ofcourse from him. The poor guy went ahead and of course was promptly rejected (all my friends share my fate in love it seems ….lol) , poor guy was completely heartbroken and came back to the hostel late in the night.
So we thought , what the heck lets get drunk anyways. If not in celebration, then otherwise too, afterall since when drinking requires any excuse? None of us had any experience of making drinks, but my friend who had turned into a devdas overnight, took a swig directly from the bottle.
I missed my school chums and college friends…such lovely years… such carefree times, na duniya ka gum, na zinadagi ki chinta..jaane kahan gaye wo din……. may be the that time was soley our's!!….Though I do wonder why i am turning so nostalgic these days….am i running away from my present? ….am i being an escapist? …Something i accused someone else of being….ahem ahem….

Marvalleous this world is

I’ve had a bit of analysis-paralysis over what to write next here, and in which order to tackle it. I have a large pile of requested items, in addition to my own list of topics, but I’m not sure how much of what I say will make any sense without a baseline of how people works, thinks, and so forth. So rather than take this blog into the retentively planning stratosphere, I’m just going to start riffing on topics all over the map. I’ll use the comments (or lack thereof) as a guide. The riff-du-jour is whether everybody stifles innovation from their subordinates, which a few people asked about.
I’m not talking about our place in the country in driving/stifling innovation; that’s a whole different beast. But rather just me as lowly software person being able to poke my head up from the drudgery and try something new within our walls.
Dangling from my badge is the TIFR Card, and one of those values reads DAE. This is perhaps the most talked about value internally, and is held up as a measuring stick against people and projects. As a general rule, people who are on more challenging, innovative, exciting projects do better in Focal.Taking a risk with network availability just doesn’t win you a lot of fans.
This applies a genuine, positive, corporate pressure to innovate and try new things. I’ll offer my senior up as an example. In the past one year I’ve moved fairly freely between programs, telling my management far more than I’ve been assigned to something from Upstairs. Two of the programs I worked on were entirely the creation of myself and a few interested cohorts. We drafted our ideas, made our case, networked for resources, gathered like-minded people, and eventually ended up with fairly large initiatives on our hands. I had pleasured woking with TIFR and for the country during this time.
Other people are not so lucky. Risk Taking is a corporate value, but that doesn’t mean everyone at my work place practices it the same way. Different people handle that discomfort in different ways. It can result in some enormous back pressure against being able (or even willing) to take risks and try something different.
So I find this place to be a work heaven that values innovation at a corporate level, but has plenty of places it could improve down in the trenches. It’s not perfect, but it suits my temperament and is one of the things I enjoy about working here.........

the rallying of disparate factions..

It seems like the world started spinning a little faster.. or a lot. I almost don't even know where to start
Well I went to an Il show *finally*. I've been promising them for some ridiculous amount of months that I'd make it out and stuff always gets in the way. It was such a great night, I'm so glad I went. They had a great set and performed perfectly. It was great running into Rainbow too, we got to catch up on so much and it made me feel like there is someone in this damn city I know... even a little.
I quit Khukri yet again. I have no idea why I keep asking for that stupid s**** back, but I'm quite happy to be back across the street. It's nice waking up 20 minutes before and still being able to shower and make it on time heh.
I finally hooked my butt up with some recording equipment, not that I have even a faint clue how the hell to use the programs. Everytime I open them I stare blankly at the screen and then oops.. back on myspace. Thank god, the boys know what they are doing for they have been there for almost a decade or we'd be a mess heh.
Great show coming up! I'm especially excited for this, which is suprising since my collegue's is in less than two days. I'm finding intimate presentation wind up being a lot better of a night. Having to deal with thousands of own unanswered realities, most of which have high technical and scientific reasonings, pushing you and drowning out the demands of what the client's and that you actually went to see... isn't as much fun as it used to be. It's nice to go through a great software job with a bunch of friends and let the group know how great they did after. -->random thinking I guess...
Other groups working on this module is showing a lot of progress, which is good... I wish I had more to say on the subject, but sadly I'm never good with these things nomore on other's business. It's so hard to deal with, I can't even imagine what everyone feels like. When we showed, I worry about their's... but I don't want to say that because I know how painful this must be for them and their group, and they'll just emphasize how bad things are... leaving everyone with not a lot to say. All I and my associates can do is be there to listen, but they never wants to stare to us all. I just keep thinking positively that the outcome will get the majority citizens of our wonderland a lot to know and to their family soon.
I guess that's all I've got for an update.. should probably be asleep right now heh.............

Nature calls everyone here...!!

Realization that I am in Hanle came really late, in the car on the way to my work place. It was completely different from the image I had before I came.
The tyre of the vehicle i was travelling in punctured, and I was nervous when cool breeze blowed all over the place accompanied with drizziling rain. Soonafter, the rain stopped and so the breeze. That moment was worthseeing with crystal blue sky and more I was amazed to see a small group of black necked crane. I sighted them quite a far lest they see and fly away......!! I called my friend in the car to get me my camera as i know what i was seeing that particular moment was one of it's kind and if i manage to get the crane in my camera then probably i may be one amongst the few proud owners of the collections of blacknecked crane and it's family. I thought I should go more closely them so that i may get much closer... infact put them all inside my camera he he ( that's what is lust all about, na?), I was frightened because I found that I had travelled much unawared towards the somewhat virgin Lake beneath the lone sandy hill and I didn’t go for it. Whatever I got from that little moment was much more than I ever have dreamt of. However, my friend and I were tightlipped about this for some reason or another. After a little while the car was ready, fixed it and started towards my destination finding great places and scenic beauties along the way which made me feel that atleast this part of the land where I am travelling should also be allowed for the visitors so that everyone can hear the call of the nature. But anyhow, I think it was a great experience nevertheless.

I think i must table it here

This has been much to the reality of everyone and as a concerend citizen of my beautiful yet neglected howmetown "Leh". The writing below was in a portal of Ladakh and i had to let you know about what's all happening and so thought to take your time to let you all know:
"There are strong grudges among the people in travel business in Ladakh against the state government for its, alleged, dubious role in impeding the fast growing tourism here, which has touched new heights in the recent years.“The list of complaints is endless, however, to point out some immediate problems I would like to begin with the permit system,” said Tundup Dorjey, General Secretary, All Ladakh Tour Operators Association. The unnecessary rule of traveling in group of four in restricted areas cause serious complications to everybody including tourists and administration showing more strictness in issuing the permits has added to the problem, he added. Another major impeding factor, he raised, was the restricted flight operations to Leh and government’s apathy in this regard, although, many low-cost airlines have been added to the flight operations in the Kashmir despite the poor state of tourism in the trouble-torn Valley. A delegation met the Union Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel last winter to take up this matter and they were promised about reduction in airfares, however, on the contrary there has been sharp rise in the fare. One of the delegation members Tsering Namgial, Joint Secretary, ALTOA said, “In 2004 there was sudden surge of domestic tourists visiting Ladakh but, in the following year this encouraging trend sharply fell due to the curbing of Indian Airlines flight operations between Leh and Jammu and Leh and Srinagar.” There was unprecedented 40 percent reduction in domestic tourists with the record 13000 figure of 2004 going down to 7000 in the following year.He said, the government cannot jeopardize the tourism potential of Ladakh by stopping the flight operations and it should stop such discriminatory policies against Ladakh. Here also brought out another matter of a CD containing a documentary titled ‘Srinagar to Leh’ produced by the J&K Tourism Department. He said, the visuals in the CD are completely mis-representing and misinforming depicting such blunders as ‘Kargil: situated beside the River Indus’ and ironically there is nothing shown about Leh. Similarly, the bus fare from Srinagar to Leh is higher than from Leh to Srinagar, which speaks for itself the intentions behind such unreasonable fare system, Namgyal pointed out."....................
So, this is where i live and afterall it's everybody's concern, right folks?

Trekking for joy.......

A while ago, I saw one of my orkut visitor posted a link to a website where somebody had tried to make a massive trek (which didn't quite work, possibly because they tried to shoehorn it). Anyway, as a trekker and more of an enthusiast I gave them link to a few of my nearest and dearest, and my friend sent me back a link to a strange site, where the people do the same thing with lots of extraordinary and so called experiences, including a rather wonderful some tips and guidances for the firsttimers. There's also another veru beautiful trekking destination to attempt, only marginally more successful. Anyway, hope you enjoy it as much as I should. With treking love, nawang.
PS. I've been with many information gatherers before about a debate(probably at a place where i would be more a free to join openly) with some Crossiant and Doughnuts from the famous German Bakery of Leh - we're a tad obsessed with any kind of tea accompaniment. So I thought, as an self help project, we should try to contribute to one and for all, but we've had trouble coming up with something that should be made massive. But my places talking here is concerned about the trek destinations in Ladakh. So, any ideas?

The time has been for all......

For years, I had used various news collectors and sites that promised to build the greatest personal portal an ape could ever want. Never truly satisfied with the various options out there, an evolutionary process was apparent however. I bided my time, living with the lies of perfection and hoping for something better.
I fondly remember starting with Yahoo settling for the twenty or thirty sites I could stick on one of a few templated pages, and changing the colors to reflect my "bad coffee" / "good coffee" moods. I thought this was the greatest possible portal available - who could beat the mighty leaders!?
Then the Linux geek starting rumbling in my throat and, for months, I looked at the clippers there but eventually thrown it up.... rather i was going for easy yet majestic one!
Dejected, I returned to the smaller, but functional Yahoo. It slowly became a scar. My interests were changing, and those portals wasn't following them. I grew listless, and cast off the shawl of "portal", content to spending hours a day going through bookmarks for my news.
The sky turned blue again the day I found this page. They didn't try to force pre-jarred content down my throat. They pointed me to a small box, said "type in the site you want", and allowed me to clip parts of that site into one page. Immediately, I spent a weekend splicing all of my bookmarks into here. When I finally finished, my daily routine was shortened by an hour or more. Suffice it to say now that years later, around the same time I was falling in love with "my page". Different tools were released to read and write pages, aggregators and sites were beginning to integrate and share headlines, and I started to reinvestigate the options available. I shook in my boots: this was good! I focused all my energies on it... once again, my weekend was spent tweaking, hemming, and hawing.
A month later, my enthusiam was stronger for the next stage of syndication evolution. The development was a wonderful piece of work, but little things here and there were slowly contributing to a nagging sense of unease. There was something that bugged me about individuality, a collection of "should have's" and "wished for" that seemed too fickle to be acted upon.
Now that i got almost eveything done.... (from bringing my page to reach out to the world out there) I had now got to scrap in the everything i have been longed for. The people allaround appeared rather suddenly one day and nicely solidified a firm distinction between "I wish there was..." and "Hey! I'll roll my own!". See, ever since the Leh geek starting awakening; realization dawned: I could screamed what I wanted! A email exchange with friends (how they codes with only three fingers is beyond me) solidified the lust. The sky and sun turned cheerful blue.
Don't jump to conclusions, however. I don't believe this to be the next step of the evolutionary process. I consider it a step toward bringing concerned aggregators to the collectors and gatherers of tips. There's some unique individual out there who knows the year ahead of Leh, he just needs to be pushed in the right direction. And with the ease and happiness of the friendly locals, maybe all will turn on their proverbial lightbulb.
After that realization, Leh looked busting strongly ahead, focussing on tourists paradise, environment friendliness and removing and fixing the desires of curios onlookers.
The place is for you and me. It's for my mom, the mistresses I can't believe I mentioned, and the 30 year old gardener who cries when she commits illegal operations. Whereas Leh is a wonderland for the many more, it is accessible to the neophyte, yet lovable to the comman.
And if you don't like it, tough... I do.