Sexto Semestre

Two men, both basketball players and victims of their own deeds. One's wife is the best friend of other. Two girls, the best of friends. One has an eye for fashion and the other capable of expressing herself through art and music. A father, who manages to have the trust of the town but not of his own family. The fictional town in North Carolina has managed to keep itself and me interested for quite sometime. 

In the meantime, the grit cold nights have changed to nights impossible without air coolers. The 6th sem has gone in a flash prevailing for just 3 months, the shortest one till now. Come April and I am facing the prospect of facing the inevitable -  exams, the ones which will haunt me for quite some years and may be beyond that too. 

Though i scored my highest marks in a sem this time, i expected myself to fare much better. A not so sharp mind, some pre-conceived notions and reduced expectations combined to let me down. But i still have reasons to celebrate... for this sem has given me some confidence. I won some competitions and managed to get back to form with public speaking. Had a trip to remember for a lifetime. 

The ability to turn this part of time into an academically memorable one still lies with me and i endeavour to do so.. 

Pachmarhi


A place memorable for a lifetime. The first thing that struck me was its proximity to raipur (one night's journey). Secondly it was untouched by commercialisation. As we climbed through the mountains, we were lucky enough to see peacocks flying, and dancing with their feathers open. I didnt puke as there were very less (almost nil) hairpin bends. The climate too added up to joy of the romantic travel on a private jeep on a traffic-free road. And surprisingly the roads were pretty decent for a hill station.... for i was expecting a bumpy ride, kudos to the madhya pradesh tourism board. 


Sridhar, Surya, Hari and me, Vishnu, Soin and Kavin
As the young driver expertly guided the car, the scenery of the yellow leaved trees unfolded before us after wading through each turn. The boarding arrangements were decent enough to put up and the greatest cheers came when we came to know that we could watch the champions league match from our room tv itself. We set about arranging for the sight seeing after freshening up. What a memorable one it would prove to be... 

The pandav caves had a beautiful garden in front and as its name goes, it was supposed to be one of the places were the Pandavas lived during the 14 years of exile. The apsara falls showed us a glimpse of what to expect from pachmarhi.. because the falls not being too high and the place being small, it still enthralled me as the water was fresh, damn cold and mostly less no. of people. 



All were horribly hungry after the bath and drank loads of lemon water. The result... we could not walk back climbing to the top. Next came the Bee falls.... Oh my god... that was the first i saw such a high fallsin front of my eyes... but this one was everything other than what i expected. It was full of people. It was a long and deep way down. So we had to shout our respective club names to cheer ourselves up and run along. It was very rocky and the rocks were slippery. But that never deterred us from climbing through the rocks and enjoying the falls.


After the heavily tiring duty of climbing back all the steps, we decided to feed our begging stomachs. We retired for the day. The next day we covered the temple, Begum palace (a ruined and unrecognisable building).  I was scared to surf through it because i was expecting it to collapse any minute.

 
The Jata Shankar temple was situated naturally inside a cave and a small holy pond adjacent to it. The floor was wet with the pond and it felt cold to even walk on the floor. The sceneries around were just as awesome as it can be... we found a rocky cliff which was in the shape of a lion's roaring face. The Mahadeo temple was also situated in a cave with water dripping all over the cave and starting to form a stream from it. It gave us enough opportunity to enjoy and admire the naturally formed Ac room, the only problem being the monkeys which were hanging around wagging their talis.. 

The sunset point was also good and we ventured further into the forest. The gypsy rides which we experienced were nonetheless very exciting. The roads were almost inclined more than 45 degrees at a few places.. 
The next day dawned with the news that chelsea and liverpool progressed to the quarter finals with liverpool thrashing Real madrid 4-0. We were at the sunrise point to see the dawn of the day. As the sun rose, we were lying on the top of a rocky hillock, tired after climbing upon it. Some brilliant shots were taken.. 




Then came the Dutchess falls... My goodness, how deep down it was for it took my energy away to climb down itself... leave alone climb up. It was the day of holi. So after we had finished bathing people came there to wash their colours after playing holi. Lucky that we came ahead of them. We had a minimum of 3 glasses of lemon water after climbing the tortuous yet exciting way up. 



After such great times that we enjoyed, the only thing that went wrong was that we did not foresee that it was holi and no jeep would be available to take us to the station of pipariya. But somehow at last we managed to find one and came down. On the whole it was the trip of a lifetime for me .. and we had a great time there..

Debut

I have been asked/persuaded to start a blog for so many months by someone(not the one who has made me start one right now), but i have been in denial mode giving myself a variety of excuses to shy away from it. Whenever i start something new that is completely unknown to you before, i tend to start thinking how it will fit me / how i will fit into it and its consequences and etc etc. 
As i had my initial thoughts to start this one, my intutions came to the fore to scream at me that i should have done this earlier for various reasons. One thing is,  i am not a good writer but i believe that i am capable of putting my thoughts to pen. 

"Try and fail but dont fail to try". 

So here i am.

I too had many wannabe's (as most us do), but they were just wannabe's and they never converted to I am. The reasons for it, I was never supposed to know. But it has changed my lifestyle very much. Socially , i might have been the same, but to myself I am not the one who I was 3 years ago. Of course everybody change with time and I too have changed. It was more like breaking the shell and coming out. It felt more secure, bright and challenging to be in there. But my destiny is far from the place i wanted to be. I am still coming to terms with it. 

In due course, I have developed various interests in unexpected areas esp. football. Previously i had never thought of any other sport happenings(except cricket of course ) off the playing field. 
But I was introduced to "The beautiful game" after i joined my college. In my first year people used to ask me which English  club do i support. For various reasons, i always told i supported none. But I always felt an affinity to Chelsea, which no other club made me feel. May be it was due to one of my best friends supporting the same. But i never knew much about football at that time. Probably that was the main factor because even though Chelsea did not win the Premiership in that season, I still supported them. They did not play exciting football that Arsenal did, nor they scored as many goals as Manchester United did. Liverpool was out of my choice anyway. As I watched the season come to an end, I hoped always that chelsea should win in any match. And I turned supporter from the 07-08 season. But supporting Chelsea has not been as smooth as i expected it to be. There has been so much turbulence in the club that it felt like a storm in the ocean. But winning is not assured for anyone and it has to be part and parcel of the game. Last year, Chelsea did not win any silverware even though we came agonisingly close to lose it. And this year we have already staged more drama than last year. But what the fans can do is only hope and I am doing that. And there is a man who has done a great job with Australia, South Korea and PSV Eindhoven holding the reins at Chelsea currently. 

Watching matches every weekend, visiting football sites regularly has become very much a part of daily life and has opened up new avenues for killing boredom. 

Have a good day!