Banana Boat Trip

Among, other things, pressure, i am sure, ranks as one of the top catalysts of irrational behavior in humans. There are various other factors apart from pressure that support in ensuring that humans act irrationally almost always.

Back in 2002 or 2003, i don’t recollect, we had been working almost 24/7 for about 6 months and finally managed to deliver the software to our client. We had a lot of time in hand and nothing to do.The computer games that we smuggled into the company were getting boring.  Delivering the software suddenly stopped all the madness and that did not make me feel good. The calmness was too much to take. Finally the pressure won over me and i decided to go white water rafting. I had no clue what a raft is nor did i know how to swim. I just decided that i have to do white water rafting. Sometimes it felt a stupid attempt on suicide. I managed to convince 4 of my friends (KK, MN, MS and A ) from the company that it (suicide??) is going to be a great thing to do.I tried convincing more people but the rest of them were smart and understood my hidden intentions. It was not bad to have 4 people sign up to join me in a suicide attempt.

I took the responsibility of bookings and planning for the trip. We had to go to Coorg for the rafting and we chose a few places that we wanted to see while we go there. I called Jungle lodges to check if people need to know swimming and what safety measures they had etc. The gentleman explained about the inflatable rafts, experienced guides and life jackets etc. I wanted to know how much weight a life jacket could handle. He was amused by the question but said anybody less than 110 kgs can go rafting. I asked him if they had life different life jackets for different weights and he said “why don't you come over to my office”. I went and introduced myself and he burst out laughing. He was heavier than i and he said “I thought you must be extremely fat the way you asked me 200 times about the life jacket”. Once he managed to stop laughing he gave us the gyan on rafting and also suggested an itinerary for us. I convinced my friends that we should rent a car and drive to the place. Only MN and I knew how to drive a car. MN refused to drive on highways and said she will help if i felt tired. I never told any of them that i had not driven a car beyond my street in Chennai.Incidentally one thing continues till date, if MN and i have to go out together, she will switch from the driver seat to passenger seat before i can blink and i (have to) drive.

The d-day arrived and we were all excited. Just 4 hours before our start time, John, our river rafting guide calls me to say that there were no rains in the last week and hence we cannot go rafting that weekend. I told John that it would be a huge disappointment and how much we had planned etc. John realized that i won’t stop whining unless he solved the problem and suggested that we go to River Sita at the foothills of Agumbe. He said some of his friends were running rafting programs there and he would inform his friends about our arrival. We scrambled back to the maps and sketched out the route etc. Finally I started driving and KK started eating bananas! 

I am not sure if KK was nervous about rafting, my driving or did not like the car or thought rafting became easier if he ate bananas. Anytime you look at him he was eating bananas. When we returned to Bangalore (yes, we did) we found the price of bananas had increased by Rs 2/- due to shortage of supply. We were true friends, so we did not  tell anybody who the culprit was.

We finally reached the base camp from where we should start just in time KK’s bananas supply ended. So, KK managed to replenish his supplies without complaining. We were greeted by 4 young men who were very nice and courteous. They introduced themselves and explained what activity they specialize in etc. During the conversation someone slowly slipped in a bomb “This is the first time we are doing commercial rafting, we were just training before today”. Reassuring, very reassuring. I knew John had taken his revenge for my whining. We smiled nervously and got ready for the rafting.

We were taken to the river and were given some basic instructions about life jackets and their buoyancy etc. We were told it would take 24 hours before the life jackets gave up. So i knew it was bad idea to commit suicide by doing river rafting. It seemed like slow and painful death.But the life jackets were fun, they taught us how to lie down with the jackets etc.  It was all fun in shallow, knee deep water but at one point the guide made us walk up stream to a point where the river was gushing and said “Lie down”. I was like “Are you out of your mind? You think this is a bed” and by the time i looked for support, KK, MS and A were on their way floating already. I wasn’t even sure if they fell down or did it on their own will. The guide tried to convince MN and Me that it was okay and there was a raft waiting to pick us up downstream. I have no clue what came over MN she suddenly decided to lie down and go. Damn my male ego, i now had to go. At one point water was all over me and i thought it was all over but the life jacket did work and i came out within seconds. After i reached where river eased out, i saw someone coming after me. It was KK. Damn! now i know what the bananas did to him. He did that float the second time.

After a near death feeling (yeah, it surely was not a near death experience), we started rafting. Rafting was fun and exciting. Nowhere near suicidal as i imagined it to be, which was a big disappointment. We started our way back, saw Jog falls in its full glory and KK ate more bananas. And by the time we reached home Karnataka had a unusual shortage of bananas.

The last bit of excitement was when i had to return the rental car. All the driving and rafting had made me so tired that i crashed the car in to another car. Thankfully it was not when the others were in the car and the crash was not bad. Just small dents in both the cars. May be i should have eaten some bananas. 

Technorati Tags: Travel,Humour,Rafting

The Backpacking Trilogy - 2

Next stop Gokarna. Gokarna is a great place with clean and calm beaches. I think it is better than Goa in some ways. There are some great food options and lovely places to swim in the beach. Before we left Gokarna, VM suggested that we go see the sangam, where the river meets the sea.  The brilliant idea this time was to take a bus to that place and walk back along the beach to the hotel . We reached our destination by bus and we had to walk to the Sangam point from the bus stop.

As we walked, we reached a marsh and there was no way to walk around it. We had to cross it.We did not expect this and we had no clue how deep it was. It was a about 25 to 30 meters wide and we were stranded. We noticed a woman on the other side and waved to her. She waved back us to just walk across. With our experience with the villagers so far, we did not want to trust her. But there was no going back after coming all this way. We decided to sacrifice SC. The excuse? He was the tallest of us all but we all knew secretly he would have been the choice anyways.

It was deep but not enough to drown SC. The water came a little over his hip. He survived. We followed and we survived too. The sangam looked beautiful, smelled of fish and there was a fisherman community by the banks. Despite its beauty I was happy to walk away from there and escape the stink.We walked back. The colors in the sky was amazing. It was the pre-digital camera times (well..I could not afford one then). Somewhere in my collection I must have those photographs. It was a long walk.It took us about 2 hours to get back. KG was getting irritated and had one usual argument with AM which I cannot recollect now. It must mean that it was not as interesting as most others.

From Gokarna, we decided to go to Karwar. Another beautiful coastal city. AM said you could see dolphins in those waters and we managed to rent a boat to take us one of the islands and bring us back.  We had done 75% of the route when the boat just decided to give up. The engine wouldn’t respond. After some 20 minutes of fight, the boat started and as we reached the island gave up again. The next 3 hours went in fixing it. We came back without much problems and no sightings of dolphins either.

Our next stop was Kundapura. A nice town where we enjoyed some great food and some good sleep. We were beginning to tire. From Kundapura we decided to go to Maravanthe. This is one unique place in the sense that the road passes in between the sowparnika river and the arabian sea. VM excused himself and it was only AM, SC, KG and I. KG brought an umbrella on a bright and sunny day. It was good fun to listen him and AM to discuss why the umbrella was needed on a sunny day. He posed for some pictures with his umbrella which I hope to sell for a lot of money in July 2019 to pay off all my debts.

Either I don’t remember anything more or I was too drunk to know what happened after this. The next thing I know is we were in a bus to Bangalore.

Note:

The name trilogy is just because it sounds nice and I don’t know what they call a 2 part stor. Bilogy did not sound good and biology, I don’t like. If you know what is the name for a 2 part story, just DON’T tell me. I like Trilogy and Trilogy it will be. Thank You

The Backpacking Trilogy - 1

When you are in your early or mid 20s in an IT City (Bengaluru of course), anything usually western sounds cool. No wonder when someone said lets go “Backpacking” it sounded so cool to some of us. MM, for some strange reason opted out and said he is going on a motor cycle trip by himself. The usual uber cool personnel KG, AM, SC, VM and I decided that we will backpack.

VM decided to get some work done on the way. We packed our backs in a car and went to some village to see if it would meet the needs for his next film shooting. It was a quaint little village by a river. After we were done, we were to “backpack” in the car again but someone saw a boat and decided that we should cross the river in the boat. We asked the driver to get the car to the other side and took the boat. We were to walk to the car which was supposed to be waiting for us on the highway. We walked, walked and walked but the highway seemed to keep moving away. We asked a villager who was walking by how far the main road was. He said something like “You are only a couple of minutes away”. We walked 10 times couple of minutes and asked gentleman who was passing in his bicycle and he said “You are only a couple of minutes away”. We walked 10 times couple of minutes again. I suspect that it was a conspiracy by the villagers to make a fool out of the people from the city. There must have been so much fun at the tea shop about how stupid we were.

Thankfully, the taxi driver lost patience and came in to the village to pick us up. The next destination was Agumbe. Agumbe is a small village in the midst of a forest. The brilliant plan was to trek in to the forest and look at the site of a plane crash which apparently happened before planes were actually used for flying. All 5 of us were dumped in an autorickshaw and taken to a point from where we walked in. The site of the crash was some deep valley. Everybody looked to see if they could see a wreck. I don’t know if anybody could, I couldn’t. And I don’t know if there was crash or if it was another story invented by the villagers there. With my earlier experience it was hard to trust them.

On the way back,our guide/auto driver took off on his own to get some rest in his vehicle before we reached.  We lagged behind. I was ahead of my group and I heard something like a groan. I saw the group ahead of me and the auto driver starting to increase their speed to almost a run. I looked behind and could not see the rest of my friends. The groan was growing louder and I decided to run. On a typical day I could run 5 meters (No. No typo there) before I start panting. In my fear for life, I was able to do 12 meters before it occurred that giving my body to a wild animal might reduce my sins a wee bit and of course, would down the aches and panting. I lived and reached the autorickshaw alive without running. It was fun to see 4 people come running and panting saying “Did you hear that? “ The suddenly brave auto driver said “Don’t worry! its just a bison”. Did I see him almost running a few minutes ago?

Next we decided to go to Gokarna. We took a bus. We had to take a bus to Manipal and take another from there to Gokarna. The road from Agumbe to Manipal has about 14 hair-pin bends and is just about the width of the bus. And unfortunately, the bus driver of our bus had decided to commit suicide that particular day. He drove thru those hair-pin bends in great hurry and there were many times the passengers were almost dead thinking the bus was going off the cliff. Thankfully no words came out of people’s mouth to distract the driver. Despite the best of efforts of the driver, we reached Manipal and got in to a bus to Gokarna!

Chutney Cheese Sandwich

How insane do you think it is to carry bread, chutney and cheese 50 KMs, eat it and come back? And all this with the same set of people you work with all week in your office. You say it’s picnic or team building or any such crap? What would you say if i said, you had to start at 6 AM on a Saturday morning. Do you realize its absolutely insane? I can’t believe still that AM brainwashed a few of us to think it is the most adventurous and insanely greatest thing to do on a Saturday morning. All this “morning” thing just because she is AM and is an AM person unlike the rest of us who knew how to enjoy a good sleep until late afternoon in the weekends.

So some of us complete idiots would wake up at 5 in the morning, start packing up all the junk, bread and chutney and start riding our bikes at about 6 AM. Some of us would start from AM’s place and some people were even more stupid to promise that they will join us at a particular meeting point. At 6:30 AM, from the designated meeting spot, there will be frantic phone calls to the 2 people who would not have reached at 6:30 AM. The perpetual idiots included me, AM, SM, KG, SG and some temporary idiots who AM manages to brainwash during the week.

We would ride our bikes all the way up to a damn…no i mean a Dam which was about 50 KMs away, i think. On the way we would go and admire a big banyan tree which as old as my great, great and greatest grandfather and about 20 dozen monkeys. The monkey’s would stare at us as if asking “Are you guys out of your mind to come and look at this stupid banyan tree on a Saturday morning?” My guess is that their look had a worse meaning which we did not understand or care to understand.

While admiring the tree for a never ending 20 minutes, we would have tea at the tea stall. The tea stall owner was one of the few people who should have thanked god for creating idiots like us. How should he know he is giving too much credit to God while AM deserved almost all of it. We would talk all the nonsense that have no relevance to our lives with all the seriousness and then continue our ride. Our destination was a small Dam, the name of which i can’t recollect. The place would be absolutely deserted.Some of them would realize the their stupidity and start stone throwing practice. I am not sure if they spared AM out of respect and threw the stones  into the water or if they were not sure if AM was actually the person to blame. AM does one thing very well, brainwashing. Mostly, it saved her.

In a few minutes, after realizing that there is nothing more to do, we would process our breakfast. It was like an assembly line. One person would open the bread, pass it to the person who has the chutney. The chutney person will spread the chutney and pass the bread to the cheese man. The cheese man would then spread the cheese and send it back to the bread man. The bread man will add another slice on top to complete the sandwiching process and serve it. Well, “serve it” is probably the right way to say it. The one who grabs it first gets it. Remember, we had just admired 20 dozen monkeys. What kind of people are we if we don’t learn something from the monkeys?

The best part of this insanity is an absolutely intense and insane conversation between AM and KG. KG, as his name suggests, has a the heart of the kid. But he reads too much for that kid’s heart. So whatever he reads goes into his heart (yes, he takes his reading to the heart :) ) in a very unpredictable way. So he would make a statement in his inimitable style which AM would straight away disagree with. That would kick start an interesting and hilarious argument between KG and AM. SM, the Bangali Babu, obviously cannot keep quiet. It would be a shame on entire West Bengal and some parts of Kerala (the communist connection, you see) if he did not add value.So, he would add value (fuel) to the argument which would have turned to fire spitting levels now. The rest of us would have a hearty laugh irrespective of whether we understood anything in the conversation or not. Thing is, we were unsure if we should react in any other way so it was easy to just imitate the monkeys. This great conversation and the awesome chutney cheese sandwich would make all the insanity really worth it. Those days were so much fun.

Some days the destination changed to a pond before the Bannerughatta wild life sanctuary but the rest of story remained same irrespective of the destination.

Flamenco Puro

Flamenco Puro by  Rafael de Utrera on Saturday was so much fun. It was such an impressive performance that made the crowd go “Oley” every few minutes. “Oley” seems to be the Spanish equivalent of “Wah wah” or “bale” (Tamil). There were 5 artists, the vocalist, a guitarist, a dancer who also played guitar and sang when she was not busy dancing, a percussionist and a violinist (or was there one? )

The concert was mind blowing. The high pitch and voice control required for singing flamenco is amazing. Rafael had so much control, a voice with no shrill and a lot of passion for his music.  The program started with a very important announcement. No, not just to keep the cell phones off or silent, they asked us not to clap with the artist in his rhythm. A normal applause was okay but not a rhythmic one since the claps are important to maintain the artist’s rhythm. Made me wonder if flamenco had something similar to the claps (taal)  of Indian classical music.

My bit of copy paste from WIkipedia here: Apparently Flamenco is music form which developed only in the late 18th Century. And flamenco’s home town is Andalusia. It looks like there has been a lot of influence of Muslim and Spanish folk (Christian) influence in the development of this music form. The history of Flamenco seems as complex as the music itself.

There was an opportunity for everybody to showcase their skills except for one person. Rafael started with a small but dramatic piece setting the tone for the evening and getting all audience excited. The guitarist played a couple of excellent pieces. And the dancer was exceptional. She played the guitar for a couple of pieces and she danced amazingly well. Her feet were weaving magic on the stage. I could not believe feet could move so fast with such amazing rhythm complementing the music so well.

The percussionist was giving the necessary rhythm for audience to tap their feet with the dancer.

They closed the program with an impromptu piece with Rafel singing and the others joining him with their rhythmic claps and the dancer joining them with her awesome feet tapping to their rhythm. Flamenco dance is damn passionate for sure. I loved watching the dance. Rafael also danced impromptu for a couple of minutes and was really good.

Over all it was such an awesome performance by great artists. Now,  the standard nonsense that came to my mind

1) Every song in Flamenco seems to start with “ee yayee yayee ouuu”

2) I sure did feel there was Muslim influence in the music since sometimes the high pitch sounded like the prayer from a mosque.

3) The percussionist had a drum like the Djembe in front of him but he rarely used it (was it just twice and both for less than a minute?). He was sitting on something like a box speaker and drumming on the speaker. Why did he even bother to bring that Djembe kind of thing? Why would you park yourself on a speaker and use that as the percussion instrument too. Irrespective of that, the percussion was awesome.

4) The Spanish conversation between the audience and Rafel was nice to listen to in spite of the fact that i did not understand a word of it.

5) Only the people performing for the piece were in the stage.and the rest of them moved out. They came only when they were needed.

6) Now, coming back to the violinist. I had a feeling that i saw him walk in the middle of one song and play for about 3 or 4 minutes and i did not see him afterwards. I thought he was just an illusion and the reason lack of blood alcohol in my body since it was a Saturday evening. I picked up a beer in the break and after that i did not see the violinist. I saw the same guy at the end of the performance. After all i just had one beer which could not have kept blood alcohol level for long so the illusion came back.

On a serious note, he did his job well when he played for the few minutes.

7) Someone must have told Rafael his clothes looked very odd in America. When he came back to sing after the few minutes break he came back looking a little more American than he was at the start  :)

8) With a high heel shoe like that the dance must have been extremely hard. The woman did not seem to feel sorry for her feet and was tapping them so hard with those high heeled shoes. I had a doubt if she had some kind of a wooden leg fixed just for the performance. Man! What a dance. It was a pleasure to listen and watch, but surely not something feet are going to like.

On a serious note, the woman was full of grace and elegance in her dancing.

That sums up my great musical experience at the Kirkland Performance Center. Oh that reminds me. The place was just wonderful. One of the best performance halls i have been to.

Technorati Tags: Flamenco,world music

God’s Sense of Humor

God is like Russell Peters. Well, in a way. God makes fun of people and enjoys himself, as does Russell. Russell has a big audience for his shows but i don’t know how big is God’s audience. But one thing is for sure, God is a male.

Now, imagine this

You are  in Houston and had to return to Atlanta. Your flight is at 7:45 in the evening but you have to check out of the hotel at 2:00. You land at the airport at 4:00 PM hoping you would be able to catch an earlier flight to Atlanta

1) You don’t get tickets in the earlier flights even if you are willing to pay $50 to upgrade to business class.

2) You are told that the weather in Atlanta is bad and hence some flights are cancelled and one of the flights also has a technical snag.

3) You are also told that your flight will depart at 8:15 instead of 7:45

4) You come to know that there is no Starbucks in the airport. Your experience with some other coffee shops except Seattle’s Best Coffee has not been good. So, no hope of coffee.

5) You find that your internet service provider has a service at the airport and try to connect. You cannot connect and the customer service rep tells you that the Bank, for some reason had rejected the last payment to the provider. You can update the payment by going online. Isn’t that why you called him the first place that you were not able to get online?

6) You buy a 24 hour internet connection and start working/browsing.

7) You hear CNN going on and on about the meeting of Obama with a Professor and a Policeman from Boston. They really make a big deal out of a matter that should not gain this kind of importance. This annoys you further.

8) You start developing a headache

9) Your flight time has changed from 8:15 to 9:07.

10) Your headache grows worse and the airline crew announces that the  travelers have to get a new boarding pass but they don’t say for which flight. One flight is stranded due to technical snag and you have no clue about the flight you have to travel in.

11) You are getting desperate to get some sleep and the headache is getting worse. Exactly at that time a friend from India asks “Haven’t you slept yet”? You give a very frustrated answer which upsets him and you pacify him saying you are tired and will talk to him later.

12) Your flight is delayed further and is expected to start only at 9:50. Frustration and headache increase.

Finally the flight is announced at 10:15. You go “Whoa!! Finally!!” and board the flight and settle down to get some sleep.

A sigh of relief and you thank God for finally sparing you. But He has not had his last laugh yet.

He puts a bunch of noisy school girls in the seats right behind your seat. They start playing cards, taking photographs with flash and scream ALL the way to Atlanta.

When all the above happened to me and i finally reached home

1) I realized God is male. Women cannot do this. They have a different way to irritate you. All the above is purely male characteristics.

2) I started laughing out loud. I really did not know what else to do about my frustration and anger.

3) I wanted to say “Sankara” before i hit the bed but i ended up saying “Sankata”

Trust me, God has a great sense of humor. I can’t imagine how much he laughed yesterday.

Shopping in the US

Its been a long time since i posted Venkata’s Sankatas. I have been kept busy in trying to figure out my job and how i can be of some value to my employers.

Any case, here are some of my thoughts on shopping in the US. Even if i don’t trust myself usually, you can trust me on this. Shopping in the United States is awfully hard. The reasons:

1) The amount of choice you get. I have never had to think more than once about buying milk in India. All i had to decide was if i am buying a pack of GoodLife or GoodLife Slim. That is all it is. You go to a store here you will find

a) Full Milk

b) Half and Half

c) 2% fat

d) 0% fat

In the above you have a subset of other choices like Organic or regular, you will find Soy milk, flavored milk and a ton load of other choices. It took me 2 weeks to figure out which milk i wanted and since then i close my eyes when i see other kinds of milk except for the pack i want.

2) The stores have so many items that you don’t need but end up buying.

3) Huge stores mean you walk much longer, you spend more and you are tired.

Good enough reasons for me to find shopping very hard and wastefully expensive.

On the good side, i must also accept that they have some very simple and useful things which are probably not available in India yet. For example, i really like the food wrap, a simple plastic wrap that sticks to the container and can be effectively used to cover the food.

One small advice, Never! Never go shopping with a desi who has been in the US for more than 5 years. They are so badly outdated about India and think that India does not grow at all. About 75% of items that they go “Do you get this in India?" are available in India these days. It is so irritating when they say “I can’t live in India because i am so used to all these things”. Man! i might just strangle someone one day.

I recommend that if you plan to buy a specific item like a GPS, let’s say, do your research on the internet and order from internet. You want to know why? Because every shop attendant  in the US has an opinion about the products.

So, you go to the store spend 45 minutes walking up and down the GPS section and decide on one. You are looking at the features, price and you have almost made up your mind. The shop attend would appear from nowhere like Lord Shiva in our movies of the 60’s.

Att: how are you man?

You: Very well! thanks

Att: You find everything okay?

You: Oh! yes. Thanks. I am just buying a GPS

Att: Yeah! We have all these models here man and i personally like this one here. Let me know if you need anything

He would walk away saying this. Now, you chose a GPS after 45 minutes of careful consideration and confusion. He comes from nowhere and says that he likes another model. You are confused again and you start your research all over again. In another 15 minutes, you are tired of standing and chose something that you did not want or you just decide not to buy the GPS.

Trust me, shopping in the US is not so easy. You need skills, patience and most important of all you need to know the trick of the trade…just order online!!!