India in a Weekend

From Deobald

I went to India for a weekend. I saw the other side of the world for the first time and I fell in love with the land and the people. It will take a much longer stay to satisfy me of my desire to return to this amazing place and explore the largest mancrush I've ever had.

Contents 1 Kerala 2 Bangalore 3 Canada 4 A full account by Ananth

Kerala

We stayed at Kavadu Resort in Kerala. It was beautiful - click the picture above. Karthik also took some pictures.

Bangalore

We returned to Bangalore where I hung out before I flew home. I purchased many shirts.

The traffic is not done justice by internet videos. It tends to be much faster, dense and fluid than they tend to show. I must attend to the garden before I tend to the children. Tend.

Canada

By the time I returned to Canada, I was feeling quite sick. One can always blame the food, but in the airport (on my way to Regina for Canadian Thanksgiving and the Rolling Stones concert) I read the side effects:

• Tiredness, weakness, giddiness, or breathlessness (symptoms of anemia). Check.
• Neutropenia. Uh... Check?
• Hyponatremia. Check.
• Loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhoea or constipation. Check, check, check, check, check, check.
• Mouth inflamation (swelling, redness, pain) and mouth ulcers. Check and check.
• Allergic reactions including rash, itching, and swelling. Check.
• Headache, insomnia, raised body temperature, abnormal dreams, eyesight problems, depression, anxiety. Check, check, check, check, check, check. (Everything but depression.)
• Hair loss. Check.
• Fever. Check.
• Cough. Check.
• Dizziness. Check.
• Abnormal heartbeats. Check.
• Back pain, muscle pain. Check.

Oh, and "STOP TAKING MALARONE AND SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SEVERE ALLERGY SYMPTOMS:"

• Sudden wheezing, tightness of chest or throat, difficulty breathing. Check.
• Swollen eyelids, face, lips, tongue or other part of the body. Check.
• Wide spread rash. Check.

And the warnings on the pharmacutical pamphlet are even scarier! Next time I go to India I'll just take Larium and have hallucinations instead, thank you very much.

A full account by Ananth

Ananth sent me a full recounting of the weekend in Kerala. Here it is, completely unedited. I make an appearance at the end of day one.

let me warn you before u guys start. This mail is not for the fainted hearted or dumb headed. And certainly not for kids below 15 years of age. And since i'm a misspeller, spelling mistakes must be overlooked :)

THE BEGINNING:

It all started on one afternoon, friday afternoon, when the entire TWI decided to say good bye to work and go to kerala for the weekend. The sun was shining high up in the blue sky. What a beautiful afternoon it was. I was all set to get on the bus and enjoy the trip. I was ready with my luggage (which i had managed to get on my bike.All alone. People on the road actually mistook me to be a stuntman with a freakish plan. But nothing was going to stop me that day). I finished my timesheets and my cards for the day and relaxed for i still had half an hour more to go. But then it occured to me. "what am i gonna do with my bike ?? Its still in diamond district and its not safe for me to leave it there for 2 days.". I didnt have enough time to go back home and come back. So i was sitting there, all hopes lost, cursing my fate, and suddenly there comes this man called Apoorv Gawde. He had a brilliant idea. He suggested that i leave the bike at somebody's place who stayed close to diamond district. So my hunt for someone who stayed close to diamond disrtrict began. They say "friend in need is a friend indeed". I found this friend in Vikram Ahuja. Unfortunately he still had some work to be completed before leaving. So he gave me directions to his house. Another true friend of mine, (whom u all know ) known to this world as Karthik decided to help me on my mission. We had twenty mins left now and ganesh was already getting people to start moving into the buses. Karthik and me raced to vikram's place overtaking all kindsa vehicles on the way and breaking traffic signals. We reached his place which is on CMH road (i think u guys know CMH pretty well now). We did the distance in 5 mins. We parked the bike and decided to get back by a rickshaw. The auto driver had all the time in the world (of course he had. He didnt have to board a bus or face ganesh's music.I thought we would reached faster if we had decided to walk back) . Finally after fifteen long mins we found ourselves back in diamond district. I was very happy to find out that my sweet little duck (aravind obviously) had saved me a seat next to him on bus No. 1 (which actually turned out to be the best of the 3 buses). This was a strange bus. It was blue (the other 2 buses were white) and it had a cabin at the back where we stacked up all the food and snacks. And then at 2.30 pm (an hour later than the scheduled departure time ) the much awaited journey to Calicut began.....

THE BUS TRIP:

It was everything we could have hoped for. It took us about an hour to get thru the horrible bangalore traffic and get on the highway. We took the bangalore mysore highway. One of the most beautiful stretch of highways in india. The ride was getting more and more smooth. I was listening to my true travel companion (my beloved IPOD). Just then, Chirag had an idea. "We could all play dumb charades". Everybody got out of their seats and gathered at the back of the bus. We soon realised that we were a bunch of highly intellectual indiviuals who could come up with movies that were just too cruel on the person trying to enact them. There were movies with which even our great John Johnston (popularly called JJ) struggled and had no idea how to enact them. Movies like "serendipity", "barry lyndon","strictly ballroom","frankenstien","U571"(JJ did a good job with this one but aravind was not really happy with the way JJ split it) were thrown in just to make people suffer. But inspite of all this we realised that we were actually more intelligent than what we thought we were( or shud i say freakishly lucky ??). No matter what people enacted (sometimes the movie was no where close to what the person was trying to enact) someone or the other would get the name of the movie right!!!. The most interesting bit was when Rohit tried to enact an angel. Somebody cried out he is doing an angel. People came up with all kinds of names "charlies angels", "angels and demons"...... But they were all wrong. Suddenly somewhere from behind a voice cried... "Cinderella."... And guess what ?? the voice was right!!!! I still havent been able to understand how cinderalla (as far as i know, she is just a normal girl with a missing shoe) and angels are related. It continued for a long time, sometimes people guessing the movies even before the actor could start acting. As the game progressed, people became more and more cruel and started throwing in conditions like "the name of the movie can not be split", "The name cant be acted out but instead a scene from the movie should be enacted". But good luck was smiling at us. No matter what the movie was or what the person was trying to enact, we still managed to get all the movies.

Just then, the bus came to a halt. It was Coffee time. We got off the bus and went to kamat hotel. The same place where u guys had breakfast (or maybe lunch. since i wasnt on the trip i dont know) on the way to mysore. We were really happy to see fresh sandwitches and Bondas (fired chilly and banana fingers) waiting for us along with hot coffee and tea. We met our friends from the other buses. Each bus had its own definition of fun. And depending on the kinda of "FUN", we could classify the buses as 1. Fun (That was our bus were people had fun in the normal sense of the word. By playing Dumb Charades) 2. Noisy ( with people singing and dancing) and 3. The drinking bus (people started drinking right after the bus started and continued to drink till we reached calicut.) .

The buses kept reminding me of rajeev's diversity session. Even though we were all from the same country (or atleast most of us), we had our own definitions of fun. Anyways, even with all the diversities, the buses started and we found ourselves back on the road heading towards mysore.(our next pitstop). I really dont know what happened in those 2 hours till we reached mysore because i was sleeping like a log (or a dog. hmmm.. maynot be like a dog because i dont think dogs sleep too much). I was awakened by a phone call. It was not a familiar number and it didnt even look like an indian number. I decided to answer the call not knowing who it was. The voice at the other end said "Hello.. How are you ?? ". It was a voice that i recognised immediately. It was the bird(or should i say "Chick") from Zimbabwe, calling from london. As i spoke over the phone i realised we were in mysore already and our beloved chetan was handing me over some snacks. We stopped somewhere just after we crossed mysore for sometime while waiting for the other "FUN" buses to catch up with us. We had dinner there which i should i say was inedible but hunger makes u eat anything. So just hogged whatever i could find. Thanks to aravind again who decided to share food with me. Else i would have wasted a lot.

After we finished having "FOOD" we left for our final destination, "Kadavu resort". And again i managed to get some good sleep (even though the seats were a bit cramped and i hit my knee twince on the sit in front). At last !!! at 2.30 in the night Mr.Duck woke me up and i could see the much awaited board onto my left. It read "Kadavu. A Resort by the riverside". We had finally done it.. Mission Accomplished!!! Destination reached !!!

My roommate was Bhavin (for those who dont know, he is binal's brother who also works for TWI). We managed to get one of the best rooms the resort had to offer. And then we just slept like logs (surely not like dogs).

DAY 1:

The sun rose in the east (as he always does.. DAH!!! ) . But this day was special.. U dont always wake up with a beautiful balcony right next to your bedroom and a beautiful a view of the river from the balcony. It was just unbeliveble. The riverside was lined with coconut trees. There were 2 boats in the river. and the fisherman were collecting sand from the river bed. ( The sand from the riverbed is supposed to be damn good for construction). I freshned up in notime and was all set for the nine o'clock breakfast At breakfast i met Kiran (popularly known as K1) and a 5 footer female called deepti. (maybe she is an inch or 2 longer than that). We took a walk on the bridge right next to the resort. And we met a person as we entered the bridge who told us its gonna start raining in 5 mins. We didnt think so, and it didnt look like it would. So we continued on our journey to get to the other end of the bridge. Minutes passed.. one, two, three, four, five.... and suddenly there it was. Something we thought would not happen just 5 mins back happened. Varuna (the hindu god of rain) or Zeus(if u believe in greek gods) didnt like us crossing the bridge decided to bring down showers and it started pouring cats and dogs. So the 3 of us (Doctor Desitny (me!!), K1 and the 5Footer) ran back to our resort. We reached the place all drenched. The rain did spoil our mission but not our spirits. But the sessions we had after we came back killed the spirits too . (Just kidding ??) . We had talks by sita, markku and roy, followed by a fish pool session. And then talks by markku, Gknee and others. We then jazzed hands as we had a session by JJ called "whose line of code is it anyway??" which was filled with energisers.

At last at 4.30, with all the sessions complete, we were finally free to have more "FUN". i realised i have a new found interest in pool (or snooker or billiards). Vishnu and me decided to learn the game and tried our very best to pot balls. But we soon discovered that it was far more difficult then we thought, So i just decided to switch to a sport i suck less at. so played tennis with karthik and then some badminton as well. At 7, a few creative and talented people got together (wonder why i wasnt there.. i'm creative and talented !!! hmmm...) and decided to put on a skit. It was one hell of a skit. Very very funny!!! we laughed our hearts out. And then it was time to do wat i do best, Get drunk and dance !!!! The drinks and snacks were too good. And the dance floor was full all the time. I never knew so many people could dance (at the same time i realised i cant dance !!). It continued late into the night after which we had dinner. Me and my duck had a nice conversation with Steve (A guy from canada office). i loved his rants and thoughts.

Finally after a long tiresome day, i decided to go to my room and sleep. when i reached my room, i found my roommate fast asleep on his bed already. So. I thanked gods for the all the good that has happened to me and prayed for world peace and entered the dreamland.

DAY 2:

Day 2 started off pretty much like the first day. But today the boats were gone!! probably to collect sand from someother part of the river. I decided to go boating myself and joined a few others on a half an hour boat ride in the river. It was a quite ride and i thought i can utilize the time to reorganise my thoughts (But as it turns out, i dont have as many thoughts as u think i would, So i just decided to sit back and enjoy the beauty around the river). A hungry me returned from the boat ride and went straight for breakfast. I found familiar faces again at breakfast. I Rushed through my breakfast and went to play my new favourite sport , POOL!!! But unfortunately i saw deven (the pro) and Nick (he is not bad either but he needs practice) already battling it out.Deven kept winning all the time but nick kept trying. Nick helped me learn the rules of snooker (he had loads of time at hand since deven at the other end just kept potting all the balls on the table) . I then decided to try my hand at TT but pretty soon realised i sucked at it too :(. Again, i had lost all hopes, not knowing what to play, i was sitting on the couch at the lobby, dejected and rejected, i saw a silver lining. This time it was selva. She said she had a plan. She wanted to go to the port and see some ships. I decided to go with her. But soon realised there were far too many people and just one car. We were six people excluding the driver. I thought somebody should back out and i thought it should be me because i was the last one to sign up for the trip. My hopes were fading. But the others showed true TWer spirits and decided we should all squeeze into one car and nobody should be left behind. So there we were, 4 people in the back seat and 2 people in the front passenger seat, sitting on each other and enjoying the 20 mins drive. We reached the port but when we went there we didnt find anything special about it :( So we decided to go to the beach. The beach was just 2 mins away from where we were. The beach was not too good either, it was a dirty and stinking but smita and selva decided to go into the waters anyways. palani too joined them later. Uday, rahul and me decided to stay on the beach and enjoy the ..... (i dont know what.. i think we were just talking..) After staying there for about 20 mins, we couldnt take it anymore and decided to head back to the resort. We made in just in time for lunch.Since i was really hungry i hogged like a dog (finally the dog made its way into the simily) and then had a very interesting conversation with aravind deepti (yes!! the same 5 footer.. good that u remember) shrushti and vishnu, deepti kept putting her mouth... errrr... sorry ....her foot in her mouth(sorry deepti..had to put this in) every second min (not literally though.. i think u guys understand.. ha ha ). After the interesting conversation, i decided to hit the pool (no no... not the pool i suck at.. this is the swimming pool) . We played water polo (or something that was not even close to that) for hours.. it was one hell of a game.. My team won (or i think i we did). When we were enjoying the pool (or polo)., some of them went to the beach. (no no..not the stinky one i went to but another one which was supposed to be good.). I dont know what they did there but they came back all happy !! By the time i got out off the pool and freshened up, it was drinks time again. As usual i drank loads. When u people start drinking, they start talking. So a few of us started talking about things i dont even remember now and that continued into dinner. We were still having fun when suresh and ganesh came in and asked to vacate the rooms The time everybody hates had come..It was the time to leave :(..

THE RIDE BACK HOME:

We started getting into our buses. I was in the same blue bus again. (the good one with lots fun.. remember ?? ). I got in first andsaved a seat for my duck. But this time i found deepti sitting next to me. She was a good journey companion and we talked for quite sometime. (unfortunately i dont remember what ??? i think i talk too much.. DAH!!! isn't it evident from this mail!! ). Since i was a bit too drunk,i decided to sleep. Deepti however couldnt sleep and she stayed awake for most of the journey. The bus finally stopped at 4 o'clock for refuelling. i got up and found myself struggling with my right knee.. i would have done something in the sleep i thought(maybe i hit my knee against the seat in front). but deepti was sitting with her legs folded and had absolutely no problems (advantages of being short !!). I was awake from then on for most of the time till we stopped again at 7 for some coffee. After a short break we hit the roads again with one destination in mind which was about 70 kms away.. dear old BANGALORE!!. as soon we entered bangalore, people started getting off at places which were closer to there houses. But i decided to go to the offie (i had left my bike at my good friend's place.. remember ?). And the conversation with deepti aravind and shrusti kept me busy again. And finally at 8.30 we found ourselves at the place where it had all begun. So were back in diamond district filled with great memories and memorable moments. I made quite a few good friends on the trip, missed all those who couldnt make it. Especially the TWU guys who couldnt stay for one more week.

To sum up the long mail, it was one great trip. Something which i can cherish for a long time to come.