Just Another Fantasy…

Image Courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/chefranden/436640711/ on Flickr, check usage terms and conditions

If it was possible, hardly anything else was needed for a good living. On a bright sunny and windy morning I would have called my dear friend to meet me, simply taking her by surprise, just somehow expecting her not to say no to a proposal of venturing out and spending a noon and evening with me! Once she agreed, it would have been fun to drive to pick her up from a place of her choice, hope its not very near to my place. On meeting her, would definitely greet her with chocolates, a smile, a sure “How are you?”, always miss it and yes finally will ask her to be in driver’s seat as I prefer sitting beside and simply laze. Once again assuming she agrees, I would love to sit in co-pilot seat and act navigator to her on calm and serene boulevards of my only constant love, Delhi. It would be nice to look around and her as melodies play on the stereo. Adding to the flavour we can surely binge upon some ice-creams or go to some low-profile canteens of not so “big-name” institutions and simply sit down at a table and talk just anything, expecting our order to never reach us! Why not take a stroll, along a not so busy street, not missing the car at all :) We could do a lot of things, including shopping, playing with smilies, rating boys and girls, planning eh let it be…

Enough of chemical dose of romantic hormones to brain, time to return to real world, pull up the socks as these illusionistic things are far from real world and not feasible as Shringi sir would definitely mind someone sitting idle in a restaurant and adding to the installation’s electric, land lease costs and other such economic considerations. ;) And yeah forgot cars gulp fuel and never ask mom-dad to fund your spoils!! :P

Rather it can be nice to ask her to join you at works and make money together, so as not feel bad spending the stuff like if it were only another piece of paper. :D

Unexpected

Image courtesy : aWeeon Flickr, check usage terms before using the image.

One fine evening you take an abrupt decision to leave for Jaipur after a short vacation in Delhi. It is just past 7, you reach Dhaula Kuan bus stand are annoyed by the regular polluted and dull evening environment, and suddenly good things begin happening.

After waiting for some time a Rajasthan roadways bus arrives, though you prefer Haryana ones not for quality of service but the excellent and speedy driving style. There are no passengers onboard the bus and you board it with few others. It soon starts rolling on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and you forget everything and start enjoying the state-of-the-art infrastructure available and being developed alongside this stretch. You witness a long concrete ribbon across the horizon complete with dazzling crystal streetlights. Flowing streams of red and yellow lights of four wheelers pacing up and down the highway. A little further and you see the IGI tarmac, and if you are lucky you might see a touchdown. Its fun to checkout a 24 something lane wide and about half a kilometre long bumper to bumper traffic jam, given that you are travelling in opposite direction, at Asia’s largest toll plaza! Once inside Gurgaon, you experience one of the most extreme commercial landscape available in Indian sub-continent with multi-national giants jostling to show there corporate might by means of glass, concrete, steel and lightings used to extensive scales. Think of an MNC and you find its office there!

Cross this fancy showcase you find regular crude Indian industrial landscape with isolated traces of organized construction, this soon gives into traditional rural terrain followed by vast wildernesses having industrial and agricultural developments. You might get bored in this scenario, a movie on laptop, a few calls or SMSs may be good time-passers.

Night draws dark and bus is nearing Jaipur. For the first time driver doesn’t takes bypass and sticks to NH-8, which passes through city of Amer and you are lucky enough to catch views of Amer and Jaigarh forts under bright moonlight, increasing there glory manifold. Drivers manoeuvres the bus well along the narrow, hilly stretches of roads. You for the first time observe an Air Force Station on outskirts of Jaipur. Beautiful scenes of forts illuminated up above some hills and Lake Palace, before breaking into the Pink City region, which is surprisingly still abuzz with activity at around 12:45 in night, probably because of some festivity. Its nice to find a tastefully modified swift parked at Badi Chauper just beside Hawa Mahal.

You soon de-board at Sindhi Camp and wonder why journeys should be unplanned and somewhat unconscious too!

A Colourful Power Cut

00:54 IST, Aug 04’ 2009.

A power cut leaves whole of NIT Jaipur campus in dark. Wi-Fi routers go numb rendering 3.5 hours of battery backup of my laptop useless. I have no option but to look out for traditional means of entertainment  called Radio. In Jaipur the 5 odd stations are serving ill quality of music, mostly very low tone oldies. I plug-in my earphones and move out of hostel to have a stroll, while my friend asks to sit back in the lawn and share the ear-plugs.

Outside the hostel vast darkness spreads over whole of the campus, everything has turned greyscale bathing in bright white moonlight. You can catch nice views all around the campus as there are few things to obstruct the view. Under the star-studded sky you find red-lights flickering atop the newly built high-rises dotting the skyline of city all-around the NIT campus.
Walking on the roads in campus, you find a few solar battery powered streetlights working to not much use. You can find headlights of autos and cars serving to students leaving for their home cities. I meet a pack of guys, interested in knowing if am mad or drunk that am pacing up and down the campus at those unearthly hours! I bullshit them and walk my way down to hostel, where I find numerous faces glowing under lights from the LCDs of mobiles and PCs.
Back in my room as I wonder, how my roommate can sleep so easily in dark and humid room and ease myself on the cot, electric supply resumes. I access net for sometime and then sleep to wake up early, a habit now-a-days!