i got killed. IT WAS AWESOME!!!

some ads in facebook are...simply awesome!

contrast

I'm on my way back from gokarna (a chain of beaches in north karnataka). I traveled by bus, both ways. the contrast was quite extreme though:

going: expensive ticket (1500 bucks to goa, another 200 to gokarna)
return: cheap ticket (1250 bucks direct from gokarna)

going: fixed pick-up point
return: major uncertainity over the pick-up point

going: last row window seat that barely even reclined
return: middle row seat, almost-sleeper recliner seat

going: bus took 18 hours for a 12 hour journey
return: 11 hours into the journey, I'm almost at bbay

going: money spent getting to the pick-up point: 19 bucks
return: money spent getting to the pick-up point: 130+700 bucks!

going: cheese sandwiches for dinner, no breakfast - wasn't feeling like eating. spent 24 hours in all, with those sandwiches.
return: a delicious fish thaali for dinner, chicken roll for breakfast.

going: didn't have time to charge the phone, so spent most of the journey with the phone switched off, or with "battery low" - and no plug point in the bus.
return: charged the phone fully before leaving, and the bus has a plug-point at every seat.

ps:

going: sat next to a random shady guy who didn't even get up from his seat for those 18 hours
return: still sitting next to a cute girl...we played nudge-nudge all night :P

a spiritual quickie

I've never been very religious. organized religion has given me a lot, no doubt, but god seems to give me far more through random encounters than through what I've ever received from an hour of devout attention at Sunday mass.

like yesterday, when I was walking to the nearest bus-stop from my friend's place (I was actually looking for a rickshaw, but it didn't look like they were interested in taking me anywhere). I called another friend who lives nearby, to see if he was free for a quick hi.

turns out he was in church.

I was right outside the church, and in no hurry to get home anyway, so I thought i'd do a quick march-past the pews outside to see if I could spot him. quickly, and from a distance, because I was probably smelling of whiskey and definitely looking and smelling like a sweat-drenched hobo with my soaked shorts and rumpled tee (the adventure that led to that is another story altogether :D)

I couldn't see him. but in those 30 seconds I caught a bit of the homily:

"the lady would walk by on the beach every evening and pick up broken and discarded bottles from the beach. and every time she would pick up one of those, she would say a silent prayer for the person who had thrown it there"

turns out, that's all I needed to hear that evening.

I went home a touched and determined man.

not because I'm planning on cleaning up beaches.

but because it's been ages since I've prayed for someone I didn't know personally. or for the secret intentions of people. or even just the greater common good.

good intentions and the road to hell

my mom always loves to say: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

and indeed, it is.

I set off from my friend's place with a will to walk as far toward home as I could. which, knowing myself, would be all the way.

8km. an hour and a half, at a brisk pace, with a slight drizzle to keep me company.

also, I was telling my friend about how I rarely get time with myself, thanks to my connected lifestyle.

10 minutes later, I studied the signboard at a bus stop and decided I might as well take a bus home. 5 minutes later, the bus arrived. an air coditioned volvo.

of those 15 minutes, I spent a grand total of 12 minutes tweeting, texting and calling.

and now that I'm in the bus, myPod has been switched to full blast, and  here I am, moBlogging away.

walking? myself time? my ass.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

level 2

another recent dream. almost a parody of an old one that I had in college. but the dream revised itself to make sense in a corporate setting.

I woke up one Monday morning. terribly late. so late that I was tempted to call in sick. but morals prevailed, and I trudged my way to office.

when I got there, it was already past noon, and there was an understandable managerial outrage.

funny thing is that, I my dream, my manager actually said that "if you're going to come in so late, you might as well call in sick and relax at home, instead of rushing to office".

and then I thought to myself: this sounds extremely weird. this is probably a dream. I should wake up now and check the time, and rush to work.

and so I woke up, checked my phone. I had overslept, but not as badly as in my dream. I jumped out of bed, raced to the bathroom, got into the shower.

and then, my phone started beeping next to me.

I opened my eyes and realized that was a dream too, and my phone was beeping for the first alarm.

I was early.

and I was dreaming in my dream.

and I had somehow realized that I was dreaming while I was dreaming in my dream.

as the old rhyme goes:

"row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,
"merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
"life is but a dream"

e1m3: new secret passage found

a few days ago, when browsing around google maps, i came across a curious looking small grid of roads near my route from home to office.

on closer glance, it looked like i may have found an alternate route that bypasses quite a few traffic jams on my way home.

so on tuesday, after work, i decided to explore the area.

what followed was something that took me back 15 years, when i was a big fan of doom: it looked like a secret passage.

it appeared out of nowhere. i wouldn't have even noticed it if i wasn't looking for it. it was a dark, narrow path, lined with high bushes on either side, peppered with briskly walking men and strangely aggressive bikers.

mud soon gave way to muck and slush, and finally, i got to the point where i thought the map was wrong: a 50-foot stream (more like an oversized gutter, actually).

everyone i had asked said there was only one way across that gutter, and that was the big, traffic-laden bridge, with traffic jams at both ends... and that was the main road.

but they were wrong. google maps was right.

there was a bridge. one that would have only been open to pedestrians, if it wasn't for a broken turnstile at either end (i'm sure it was the doing of those aggressive bikers!)

a few hundred feet later, i was back to civilization, and the strange aura of that mysterious path gave way to a squalid slum.

that's when i realized why there was such a tight grid of roads nearby: it was a neatly-laid-out network of lanes that led to each clump of shanties in the slum.

trekking in goa

this dream happened over 2 months ago - 19th may. thankfully my faved tweets (this, this and this) and a couple of narrations of this dream have kept it fresh in my head

there were 4 of us. me, dennis, and two girls i don't recognize (yes, i actually dreamed of people i don't know. strange but true). in the dream, i knew the girls too.

so we were at the top of the hill, in a slightly wooded area. there was a mossy, musty room that we had to pass through. and once we were out, it was just a cliff, and a drop straight down, into a rocky stream that was barely knee deep.

i was the first to step out of the room.

i stood at the edge of the cliff. i couldn't see a way to get down. and i was really scared of the height. one of the girls exited the room and was a few metres away from me.

she told me i could jump, the water was deep enough. but i was scared. i wanted to go back.

just then, a baby tiger jumped off a ledge that was behind me and onto my back. i was pushed off the cliff. i screamed as i fell.

and landed in the knee-deep rocky stream on my feet.

and somehow, when i looked back, what looked like a 100 foot was barely 20 or 30 feet high.

the girl jumped too, and landed safely. we crossed the stream and sat on a few dry rocks while dennis and the other girl got down.

we made small talk that i can't remember.

meanwhile, dennis and the other girl reached us. we looked around.

strangely enough, i can only remember what was on 3 sides of what i saw.



so we sat there, and watched the sun set behind the lake and the village. and then realized we didn't have any torches, and had to get to the village before dark. and dennis and i were craving a beer after the "trek" (that's what we called it in the dream, btw!).

thankfully, the lake was barely waist-deep too, and we splashed across as it got dark.

and that's when the dream ended :)