"Bull" Tea!

I thought of this funny incident this morning and had a strange urge to blog it right away.

During our road trip from Mumbai to Mount Abu (about 750 kms) for 2012 New Year, we stopped at quite a few places (considering I am the only driver and my friend couldn’t resist blowing away 5 Rupees every few hours). As soon as we entered Rajasthan state border, we stopped at a typical village road side tea stop, where they had these nice setup of rope beds for travelers and truckers to take rest by stretching their legs.

My wife and my friend were inside the car and I went to the shop owner and said "Dho Chai please" (Two teas please). And the shop owner who was half-asleep (considering it was about 11pm), asked me casually "Bull?". I, for one, thought he was asking something in Hindi and being SO fluent in the language, gave a blank stare and repeated "Dho Chai please", this time a little slower.

He nodded his head and again asked "Bull?" By then, I was a little frustrated as I was expecting to order the teas quickly and run towards the rope bed since I have seen those only in movies and wanted to try it badly. I asked him "Chai nahi hai kya?" (you don’t have tea?) and he answered "hai na" (Yes, we have!). I said "Ok, then dho chai chaahiyae" (Ok then, we want two teas).

As if saying it for the first time, he then repeated "bull?" I thought "what the fuck" and looked at my sleepy head friend and my wife. Thinking I'm having some kind of small talk, they both didn’t bother. Probably they felt too cozy inside the car or probably having fun at my attempted "Hindi-conversation"!

I looked around for help and the shop owner’s son came for respite. He came and tried explaining the word "Bull" by taking a coffee cup and pointing at the brim of the cup. I had no clue of what he was trying to say.

The rope bed seemed like a distant dream. I took a deep breath and told him "hum ko dho chai chaahiyae, aur kuch nahi" (We want two teas, nothing else). Both of them asked in unison "Bull?" I totally lost it and said "Yes, bull!" out of frustration. They smiled and the shop owner started making the tea.

I couldn’t figure what exactly happened or why I spent so long trying to ask for just tea. By then, my friend got out of the car and we settled in the rope bed. And I explained the "bull" episode to my friend (who by the way speaks Hindi very well) and he said he hasn’t heard of that word either.

Shortly, the shop owner came with two cups, two saucers and a kettle. He gave us both the cups, then the saucers and made sure we held them in the proper 'cup and saucer' fashion. Then he started pouring the tea and when my cup was full, he continued pouring. I said "Yeah, this is fine". He did not listen and continued pouring. By then, the tea was overflowing onto the saucer. I raised my voice and said "yeah, I'm good I'm good Thank you". He didn’t stop until the saucer was full too and one more drop, the tea would have overflown to my pants. And then he stopped and smiled.

He then moved on to my friend and repeated the ritual. He then walked away with satisfaction. Just then, I realized by "Bull", he meant "Full". Oh Fuck! He had been saying something in English all the while. Had I known this, I would have said "Definitely No Bull ". The moment we realized this, we just couldn’t control our laughter. Trying not to offend the shop keeper, we were suppressing the laughter. When you do something like this, you only end up laughing more.

With the tea being piping hot, we knew even the slightest shake would result in our laps ending up with third degree burns, but we were laughing uncontrollably. Finally, I ended up spilling quite a lot of tea on the floor before I could stop laughing. In a way, I made sure the tea was no longer "Bull" before I took my first sip. The tea was unarguably great though.

It was quite an experience and from them on, every single tea shop we stopped, we made sure we didn’t ask for tea or coffee that was ever "Bull" in Rajasthan!

Deer and the midnight drama!

On Friday evening I was browsing through Star trail pictures online and got all enthusiastic about it. So, I tried setting up my tripod and camera in my balcony and took a few test pictures (each exposed for about 10 minutes), even liked one of the pictures and uploaded in Flickr. But I was not hugely satisfied due to inherent light pollution in my area (due to shops and commercial establishments). I wanted to go a remote place that’s fairly dark. So, I went to Valley forge national park (though the website said they'll close at dark, I took my chances).

Once I reached there, I expected at least one cop car, but I saw none. So, I entered the park and as I drove very slowly through the park, I saw about 10 to 15 deer every few yards. It was slightly weird as I have never seen so many deer at one place. Most of them were asleep on the roads and got up to move on after staring at my headlights for a moment or two. There is this strange behavior in deer, they stare at you for a few seconds before they make up their mind. The problem is during those few seconds, you can’t say what they are thinking!

I reached the spot where the star trails photograph will be better (or at least so I thought to myself!). That particular spot had completely open skies and a soldier's hut in the foreground (which is important from a reference point perspective in star trails photography). I stopped the car, but was very reluctant to get off the car as there were deer everywhere. I contemplated for a while and then said to myself 'what the heck?! These are deer after all! It’s not like they will attack me!'. Still to be on the safer side, I left my headlights on and took my camera equipment and started walking towards the deer.

In about 5 seconds, my headlights went off (damn those auto off feature!) and I froze right there. Earlier when I mentioned that deer stare at you for a few seconds before they make up their mind, change it to minutes. I stood there and waited for the deer to move out of my way. So did the deer. I wouldn’t say it was pitch dark, but I could not see much except for hazy things (which I assumed were deer!). After a few minutes, I lost my patience and slowly started walking towards them. As I was walking, it dawned on me that deer can see very clearly in the dark. Yet those shitty creatures were staring at me without making any move. As I walked closer, I saw them getting up and slowly moving away from me. Good for me, I setup the tripod and spent the next one hour trying to take photos from different angles, lighting (or the lack of it), etc., It was quite silent and an eerie experience.

As I was taking pictures, I kept all my senses on high-alert observing any slightest movements in the bushes or any noise around. Though the deer pack never came back, it was quite a humbling experience.

A few lessons I learnt from this short adventure of mine:

1. Never try star trail pictures on the day next to a full moon day.
2. Start a little early rather than at midnight. I think around 10pm might be the right time.
3. Select a place which has zero light pollution.
4. If you can, try and stay away from the sleeping deer.

Anyways, this is the picture that turned out:

I most likely will try this again some time!

Impulse..

I have an impulse to write a post on my trip to India, but did not want to go against my track record of keeping all my recent posts fairly small. Writing a small post on India trip is simply unfair, which is when I realized I have a travel blogspot just for this purpose. So, if you are interested, check the post here with a few pictures.

If not, forget it!

Nearest Exit

Couple of days ago, I was on my flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia. As the flight attendant announced the mandatory safety instructions, I was wondering what the real purpose of those instructions were, as not a single passenger to my knowledge cared to listen with the seriousness with which the instructions were given.

It occured to me that most passengers in the flight would have heard those safety instructions probably a million times before. Made me thinking why even announce when people seldom care. Such instructions would be helpful only for first time travellers or those with selective amnesia. But in a local flight in the US, I doubt how many of them could there be.

For flights operating in third world countries, I understand the need for such instructions (I remember how I stopped everything I was doing and listened to the instructions the first time I travelled from India). For most other countries, I think its a simple waste of time. One could agree and say that the airlines could possibly use the time to start serving the food a little early or on a red-eye, switch the damn lights off so that people could doze off.

Or we would know only when there is an emergency and when people scurry around to find the nearest exit! That would be fun to watch.

The Passion contnues...

My penchant for photography has increased tremendously in the recent past. Anything I do in the weekends (or at times in the weekdays), I try and associate it with photography. I plan trips only if the place I visit is worth photographing (in my perspective). For the past 4 months, I have been dragging my parents to various destinations (and not to forget all those gazillion places I visited with Kavitha before that) with photographic thoughts more than anything else.

I amaze myself at the amount of time I spend taking pictures. There have been times I have spent two hours or so photographing a simple bridge or a lighthouse. Every single time, I would be surprised at how fast the time flies. I seriously have to give it to people who accompany me in such trips, God must have blessed them with abundant patience! I'm not sure if I would be waiting so patiently if I were them!

For somebody in my stage, every single photograph is a learning experience. Each photo is a challenge. Every photo makes me understand the technology better. More than the photo, what fascinates me is the time I spend planning for the moment, researching, taking the picture, feeling satisfied or taking the picture again with different settings or try everything all over.

A small example is yesterday's lazy afternoon. I was absolutely bored as parents were asleep after a tiring trip to Cleveland Air show the previous day. I was doing vetti browsing and stumbled upon some water-splash shots in the internet. After a few minutes of reading/researching, I was at my bathroom, with my camera sitting on the tripod aiming at the wash basin. With a glass bowl, a red backpack and some water, I came with this shot:

I took over 120 pictures to get about 4 shots I liked. I was quite satisfied, yet exploring my areas of improvement. Here is the setup I used (in case anyone is curious, I used the comb as the point to focus, as I expected the water to splash at the precisely that height and there was no other way to focus the water droplet!):

The other day, I also happened to read at somebody's Flickr photograph that that was his best photo and he would have died to take that picture 6 months ago. He also said he isn't sure where to go next. I was thinking about what he wrote. After a discussion with Amar, the guy who inspired me into photography in the first place, I realized maybe, when one feels they are perfect in what they do (and attained a relative success), they may stop doing it completely.

Currently, I display interest in photography, because I have a zillion things to learn. One day, if I feel I have attained the stage where there is nothing left to learn, I may stop. Or I may redirect the interest to a whole new dimension. Or I may just continue to learn. I dont know. I see some very good photographers redirecting their interest towards writing a book or selling their photographs, making a good business model out of them. Others just continue to take pictures with unexplicable self-content. I guess it all depends on how one wants to realize happiness.

Not sure where my appetite for photography takes me to, but it makes me want to travel more. It makes me want to do things I wouldn't otherwise do. It makes me spend more money. It makes me spend more time. It keeps me busy. It makes me learn. And finally, it makes me happy. Very happy!

[P.S: My photographs: www.flickr.com/photos/arunsundar]

Unknown...!

After a fulfilling 10 day road trip, I was royally subjected to the super fun of catching up with work, which took me another 10 days incurring more excitement than the trip itself. A total control freak I am, I find it a little difficult to agree something can happen right without my involvement, even partially. One thing leading to another, last night I ended up sitting on my couch wondering why is there just 24 hours a day. Just not enough, I said to myself like a scientist.

That spark of thought triggered more thoughts than my naive brain could answer. With limited span of human life, one gets a feeling that there is a lot that goes unachieved or even unrealized. There are so many places in this world (or universe?) that I may never get to visit. There are so many books that I may never get to read. There are so many good music that I may never get to hear.

There are so many cuisines that I may never get to taste. There are so many different climates that I may never get to feel. There are so many people I may never get to meet. There are so many technologies I may never get to lay my hands on.

The list, I guess, never ends.

Average human life span of around 65 years is simply not enough.

I watch 'Universe' TV series and marvel at our humungous universe. To make a one way trip to Pluto (in the fastest means known to humans), they say it takes around 10 years. And for further analysis and conclusions, it might take a few more years. One has to positively dedicate a good chunk of his lifetime for such research. Yet, there would be much more to still figure out.

Comparing the magnificence of things around us, humans seem pitiably small and endowed with minuscule time interval for what we call Life. Maybe, one needs more than just one birth to understand things a little better.

Only if I have the power to pace ahead of time (and space) to find out the unknown - But if I do, I promise I’ll write a blogpost.

Anxiety!

"Good morning, sir" the 60-year old security guard wished me as I entered my workplace this morning. "It is, isn't it?!" I replied, with all enthusiasm.

Today is certainly one of my happiest days - this evening, I'm leaving for a 10 day road trip across America. Anywhere anytime , I crave for driving, photography and travel. If I do this trip right, it would be sort of like three birds in one stone!

I have always been an enthusiastic planner - at times I even wonder if just the planning would give me enough satisfaction, even without doing whatever I was planning for in the first place.

This cross country trip is no exception - I sort of completed all my planning activities diligently. In the last few days, I have spent evenings sitting on my couch, staring at my laptop, persistently trying out multiple route options in Google maps, optimising the driving distance, choosing the best hotels to stay, selecting the right places to visit and jotting down the entire itinerary in a google spreadsheet. Ofcourse with the able help of her.

As much as I'm excited, my friends and colleagues at my workplace have been too. They have been suggesting places to visit, restaurants to eat and knowing me, a list of 'dont even think of doing that' stuffs!

After having heard all that and trying to curb the ever growing anxiety, I'm all set for the trip now. I'm hoping to write my daily experiences here. Do follow the action!

Cant figure out why, but I feel like a Pirate now!! Aye!

My other eye...

I give ample importance in life to friendship, travel & photography (necessarily in that order). Friendship has always been integral to me. The passion for photography in the recent times has increased proportionately with my penchant for traveling. As a measure of expressing all the three to a greater extent (than done otherwise), I take a step forward and start another blog. But wait, it’s not just me.

Looking back, I remember the excitement during the first few days of my acquaintance with one of my favorite bloggers. The excitement slowly turned into unadulterated joy, when I found we have myriad of common interests. And of all the interests, the biggest one is our love for traveling. From then on till date, we have spent a lot of time together to call ourselves very good friends.

She writes extremely well and the other day, in one casual moment, she asked ‘We travel a lot. We both write. We might as well start a travel blog together. What say?’ Bang! we started “Footloose on the Freeway”, almost instinctively the same evening.

Going forward, I’m planning to blog my travel experiences there. Encourage you to visit the blog.

[P.S: Arunsundarthinks would still be an active blog, throwing the same-nothings for lets say, a few more decades till the author gets either amnesia or euthanasia]

Thinking hard...

...to find an alternative to 'flying' when one needs to travel across continents is what one should be doing full time.

Flights are absolutely boring, irrespective of the crew or the airline or the equipment.

Where the heck is the 'Vittalacharya' technique, when one needs it?!

Tirupati...

...is totally f*cked up.

People are too civilised to be part of crowds. It may not be too long before Lord Balaji moves His hands from 'blessing' pose to His forehead, unable to witness the commotion.

Purpose of the visit gets defeated, when one gives the heaviest sigh of the lifetime on exiting the temple!

Philadelphia to Chennai in 42 mins!!

History channel says if a tunnel is drilled through the centre of the Earth to reach the other side of the earth and if I utilize nothing but gravity to travel thru the tunnel, I'd reach the other side in just 42 mins.

I can commute to work from Chennai to Philadelphia daily.

That'd be cool!

[P.S : Just saw this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train]

Beat the heat to Heat the seat!

A weekend doesn't end with just three movies, does it? I had rented a Volkswagen Rabbit and drove to New york city to meet Amar. And this Rabbit treated me with far more than what I normally expect from rental cars. It had all-electronic controls, intelligent cruise, bose speakers among other features. And one feature that caught my attention was heated seats it had. Yeah, with the winter snow fall and sub-zero winds graciously showering their blessing all over, this heated seats came as a celestial solace. And it does feel awesomely good to be in the cold and get into the car and immediately feel that 'comfort' on a 'Hot seat'. Anybody who has spent winters in the west would know what I'm talking about. After a movie, myself and Amar were walking towards the car and it was frigging cold. I couldn't even feel my ears and every now and then, touched them to check if they are still there. As we approached the car, all I could think of “lets go heat the seat!”

Rewinding a little bit, I was at one of my colleague's wedding at Nagercoil in India a year and half ago. I had gone there with a few of my other colleagues and every one of them had been to foreign countries atleast once - I mean they all have tasted the sweet of the winter(either in Europe or in US). After the wedding, we thought we’ll go out somewhere and we utilized the “Maapilai'oda colleagues” privilege to have a Toyota Innova booked for us. After a visit to a waterfall called “Thiruparappu” falls, we reached another place called “Thotti paalam” (this one supposed to be the tallest bridge in Asia). Needless to say, by the time we reached the bridge, it was beyond noon and it was scorching mercilessly. After a brief walk on the bridge and a few photos later, most of us felt completely drained and tired. And a “thaatha” selling tender-coconut came as a salvage. The tender-coconuts were more like elixir and we all must have gulped down at least 2 or 3 rounds each. That's when one colleague said “what is this if it is not ‘beat the heat’ concept, huh?”. And after that, every time we had tender-coconut, we were referring to the ‘beat the heat’ concept, as if it is a technical jargon worth referring to or something.

And coming back to the present, myself and Amar got into the car and switched the heater ON. And I don’t know why, all of a sudden, it reminded me of the “Beat the Heat” tagline. And I found it insanely self-amusing, when I realized that “Beat the Heat” and “Heat the Seat” rhymes and in their own style gave me so much of soothe. I stupidly smiled to myself as I was driving towards home and told to myself that 'heat the seat' can be the tagline for now. And I heard in a few minutes, Amar shouting, “Alright, I guess we have burnt our ass enough. Lets reduce the heat now!”.

I saw a point and smiled at the human body, which could sustain nothing even slightly outside the radar of normalcy.

My eye on Chennai...

A few immediate thoughts that pealed my mind, as I strolled around the city:

1. I love all the one-ways that has been newly introduced.

2. The first sight of G.N.Chetty road devoid of trees, wriggled my heart. G.N.Chetty road looks many times pathetic than I saw in Newspapers (One of my friends KK told me that over 130 trees were cut - shit!). I only hope that this appearance would turn into neat flyovers soon, paying a decent homage to all the trees. (As of now, I'm trying to avoid G.N.Chetty, one of my fav roads in Chennai and using alternate routes)

3. The AC MTC Volvo bus looks cool - the driver sporting whites and cap, comfy seats, low-floor entry, L.E.D display and pick-up equivalent to a car. More of such luxury buses are being introduced in the city. But I was told that a lot of local bus services (with cheaper fares) are being stopped, inducing inconvenience to many people who can't afford. That is totally unfair.

4. And finally, I want to nuke all the auto-rickshaws. They really drive in "cycle-gap".

"Snow Skiing" is the best medicine!

This weekend was quite good - the right combo of excitement and rest. Yesterday, myself and venky set off and tried our hands(or rather legs) at Skiing here. It was a pretty good experience I should say. I have done Ice-skating once before, but this was many times nicer and easier. I knew we aren't experts and this is nothing like driving, to start straight without lessons(yaa, for all of you out there, it's me bragging in a silly fashion that I started to drive myself - like Elakaivan..err....Ekalaivan!). So we started our skiing experience with one-hour lesson. The first thing we did was to rent the ski-equipments, which included the shoes, the ski and the poles. The shoes, once wore made my legs look nothing less than an adult elephants legs. A stature like mine standing on elephant legs - wow! that would have been a "delight-to-ridicule" for many on-lookers! And as I tried to walk, every step made me feel, as if somebody was holding my legs from behind and begging me not to go skiing. (Yaa, I should accept that those shoes were a little heavy!). And the second thing was to get onto the ice and wear the ski. Yup! now, my legs has grown 3 to 4 feet in length from front to behind. With those things on, I couldn't even stand - let alone skiing. But my instructor taught us easy ways to start balancing, moving, stopping, turning and even manoeuvring. And I tried. And fell once. And twice. And thrice. Though it was a little embarassing to keep falling that way(like a "Always-falling-out-of-balance-yet-to-walk-kid"), I looked around and noticed that I wasn't the only one who was falling. Since we were in the learner's trail, every soul there was learning and invariably falling. Wow! isn't that a nice sight to watch? It was more like a live and a personal episode of "Laughs:just for gags" or "The planet's funniest videos" being telecast for me.

After our lessons and saying "bye" to our instructor, I took refuge onto the bench and relaxed, as "Mr. Cant-control-himself" Venky continued on his try to ski. I should admit he skii'ed decently well, except for that "first-time-big-fall", where looking at the way he fell, I thought he had his specs shattered, arms broken and ankles twisted. But nothing happened to him and that fall didn't stop him either. As he kept skiing to downhill and taking the 'rope-tow' to go uphill and again skiing to downhill, I was watching the rest of the people. They were trying and hoping desparately that they would one day ski with ease. And most of them fell down atleast twice in my sight. Have you ever sat down in a relaxed manner and watched somebody keep falling(that too in "repeat" mode)? That was what I got to see yesterday. Wow! That made me laugh. And at times, I laughed my heart out with my eyes drenched. Everybody was having fun. And since it doesn't hurt to fall there, those who fall down would invariably laugh embarrassingly before they get up. And that made me laugh all the more. And if there was something called the "best-fall" award, some deserved that for sure. You simply can't imagine that! And with the ski shoes on, they find it difficult to get up and that gives us the extra-understanding of how they fell and the after-effects! I was on the "laugh-roll" for almost 20 mins!

I almost decided that if I go skiing regularly, l would be the happiest person in life and in turn end up an healthy person. As they say "Laughter is the best medicine", which triggered the post of this title too!

Christmas and my weekend...

What a weekend had this been?? My activities in a nutshell:

1. Paid a visit to New York City - Realized I still love my home away from home
2. Watched National Treasure – Understood treasure hunting is a little better than software industry!
3. Watched Mamma Mia Broadway show – Best thing that happened to me, of late
4. Met my friend on his bday – Got him a surprise gift, only to be surprised that he got the same gift for himself a day ago!
5. Tried Puerto Rican food – Made me realize I love India
6. Portrait of my face – After 20 mins of motionless stature, I saw the painting to realize I couldn’t recgonise myself. Phew…but one thing became clear: how difficult it would have been for Kate Winslet in the movie ‘Titanic’ (yaa yaa, so for DiCaprio)!
7. Went to Saravana Bhavan – Felt Puerto Rican restaurant was better
8. Watched Final Destination 3 and Poseidon – TV is the best invention in this world!
9. Watched 'Oram Po'(tamil movie) – Chennai Auto-rickshaws in street-racing! Enjoyed watching it.
10. Drove to Pittsburg on Christmas day – Had a darshan of Lord Balaji and lots of desis. No traffic in the freeway :)
11. Sad part - Did not watch even a single episode of Everybody Loves Raymond these 4 days :(

Florida....Thats wat my mind thinks of now!

This is holiday season. Thanks giving is approaching. That means I hafta plan something. And thanks to my new clients, I have 4 days of leave this upcoming weekend. My mind automatically starts to think of the only state in East coast of US thats been inviting me for long - FLORIDA!! There are quite enough reasons for me to have chosen Florida :

1. If I visit Florida, I would cover full of East coast, as a tourist.
2. This is one of the few holidays, where I get 4 days, which would be sufficient to visit FL by drive from Pennsylvania.
3. This is the right season to visit (would neither be too hot nor too cold).
4. This trip would increase the number of US states I have visited to 25.

Whatever reasons I think, I just wanna visit the southern-most tip of US in the east coast. And this is how I have planned : Four days - 43 hours of driving - 19 hours of sightseeing- 40 hours of rest - infinite fun and memories. I shall write a travelogue, once I'm back. Keep watching this space :)

And by the way, this is the first post from my mobile phone!