Sunday, November 15, 2009

What makes him "The Legend"?



In the past twenty years many cricketers have come and gone, some good and some bad but one has stayed on and will do so for atleast 5 to 6 years more, that's Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Not that there is no other batsman better than him there are many(Including me!!). One thing that sets Tendulkar apart is his behavior both on and off the field. For example have look at this pic, Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj and Uthappa cant have enough of that girl! but Sachin has his sight on some other stuff(hopefully not on a more sexy girl!). Of course this does not make him great, this is just an instance why after 20 years people still call him "God of Cricket", certainly on field performance must have also helped.

Hope to see more of him. Wish him all the best for future.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Rumble In The Jungle

Finally am trying my hand on stories, here it goes......
This is the story of six unfortunate young men who are on course for the journey of their lifetime. I will begin with introducing the characters of the story, The doctor(he is studying medical), the rebel(any trip is incomplete without his unique antics), the hero(self proclaimed although he doesn't look like one), the gentleman(to the core), hippo(for his love for water) and finally me.

As hippo wanted to visit some place with water this sunday and we have been to every such place in mysore, we asked our favorite guide google for- "the nearest beach to mysore", The answer was either mangalore or kannur in kerala. Since we wanted "more adventure " we chose the latter one, which is about 300 km from mysore. We managed to rope in four others and convinced them that the 600 km journey is quite possible in a day and somehow managed three bikes. All the planning(so called) was left to the doctor and the hippo, doctor was to lead us in the journey bcos his girlfriend is from kerala!!(wtf).

The D day arrived, me hippo and doctor left our house at 2 a.m and headed towards hero's house, as expected he was still on the bed and more over took half an hour to get ready. As we were moving towards rebels house a black cat passed our way(it is supposed to be unauspicious). I was traveling with doctor he asked me "do u believe in that" I said "ru kidding, no way". A few seconds later the fuel in our bike dried!! after abusing doctor we started pushing the bike to the only 24 hour petrol bunk in mysore which was about 2 km away. Finally all six of us got together at 3 am, after driving for one and a half hour we reached the Bandipur forest.

To our utter surprise the gates were closed and we came to know that the gates are closed during nights and will open only at 6!! After few rounds of cursing hippo and doctor for their accurate "planning" we spent the next hour or so just looking at each other!(believe me its not worth it, even if you are a gay!). The gates were opened and off we went. We spotted some deer on the way and took some snaps. One thing we were sure of, is that wild animals wouldn't walk on this road because the road was so pathetic that even animals wouldn't walk on them, but we humans are accustomed to adjustment. After 2-3 hours of driving we saw roads as smooth, as it can get. That indicated that we entered the "God's own Country". It was 11 in the morning and we had to still travel 3 more hours for Kannur!

As we were all hungry we visited one of the hotel there. we couldn't understand or even pronounce the stuff mentioned in the menu. As I looked around, everyone else were eating fish. Even the plates were in the shape of fish! we ordered something which our neighbor was eating which looked like dosa, but it wasn't. And it too tasted like fish!

The next 3 hour journey was best part of the day, the beautiful mountains and coffee plantation all around was a treat to watch. After reaching Kannur we had to take a decision, due to lack of time we had choose between the famous kannur fort and the beach, everyone voted for the fort but the hippo for obvious reasons favored the beach. A mini drama was staged in the middle of the national highway, ultimately hippo managed to convince everyone to head for beach.

It was an amazing beach, only disappointment is that I expected lots of bikini babes and I couldn't find any, not even guys. Only 6 of us, thats when I thought "darn man,wish I had been here with my dream girl rather than these guys". I put on my swimming trunk and jumped in to the ocean, ran as far as I can and started swimming madly and did I mention that I am a non swimmer! I looked back to see where others were, I was shocked to see that I came a bit too far, others were still on the beach, taking snaps. They took hundreds of pics as if there is no other day,in different poses and in different background. And I didn't want to miss out, so I ran back as if my back is on fire, and when I reached the beach they had packed the camera and kept it deep inside the bag! morons..

Just when I was thinking that the rebel is very quite today, probably he has learnt from his past mistakes, there comes a missile. He took his 200 cc bike and rode it on the water, it stopped, our gentleman(gm) used all his expertise and repaired the bike, it started and gm warned the rebel against doing it again. But as expected the rebel rode on water again. Now it wasn't moving an inch. I had just played for half an hour, that was it, the next 2 hours was spent on the bike as we had move back the same day. We tried all possible options but it wasn't fruitful. So we decided to stay back and come back the next morning. As we were looking for a suitable room to stay I realized that I had internals the next day!! I stated my helplessness to others, and all of them had two sweet words to say to me "f**k off". Although I hadn't studied anything I had to attend this one, because since I was absent for the test, this was a make shift test given only to me! Suddenly there came a call from doctor's house that he had to reach house by night and if he didn't they would throw him out of the house! So we both decided to come back leaving others there.

This was the most exiting part. We learnt that the bandipur forest would close at 9 pm. We had exactly 4 hours left. A traffic police gave us a route which was supposed to be shorter and would have nice roads. As we started a cat passed our way. We both looked at each other and didnt utter a word this time! We drove as if our life is at stake, we didn't even stop to take a leak, it was dark and there were no street lights. Our speed was such that even Lewis Hamilton would have been put to shame!We reached the Karnataka check post and looked at the watch.

It was 9.30. We thought, we are dead there's no rooms near by and we are just dead. A forest official came to us and said "you are late, I cant leave you in. having said that you look like decent guys if you give 100 bucks I will let you in"!! We paid him and entered the forest. After about 2 km we saw something unimaginable, two big elephants in the middle of the road!(wish we had gone on the bad road) Doctor was riding the bike he thought of having some fun and focused the light on the elephants and was switching it on and off(fun! my foot). One of the elephant got agitated and started to run towards us. We turned the bike back and moved as fast as we can and me sitting behind turned to see how far we are from the tusker. It was right behind us about 5 feet with its trunk held high in the air. I bowed my head down, this would have been my last moments alive. I thought of my 'life', all that I have done in these 20 years is play fifa and watch movies! I came to a conclusion that "It was a life well spent!".

After few minutes I turned back to see the tusker it had disappeared, it just wanted to chase us away. As we neared the check post there was another elephant on the road, but this was an infant, we feared his parents would be near by and turned the bike and stopped in between the two elephants, with our hands on the head and we didnt even dare to breathe loudly let alone talking. Just when we had bad thoughts, there came a lorry, that was heading towards Kerala. We traveled the remaining 1 km stretch to the check post hiding ourselves behind the truck. We somehow managed reach the check post and slept the whole night with the watchman(fortunately he wasn't gay).Came back to Mysore the next day morning, My lecturer was kind enough to postpone the test once again. And doctor was in fact thrown out of his house.

Others left Kannur next day morning itself and reached Mysore by noon. It was one hell of a journey. But was it worth to travel so far and face so much difficulties just to play in water for 30 minutes? All I can say is "I have seen better days".