Wanderlust at Vizag

Los Angeles, "The City of Angels" is a beautiful city. It has beautiful beaches and beautiful mountains, and, it is my dream location to visit. Well, this summer, Vizag or Visakhapatnam was on my cards, and it was a hell of a place. As the title holder of  "The City of Destiny", Vizag never disappointed. Beaches, mountains and forests, this city was fun to travel and explore.

 Never stop exploring,
(Picture: RK Beach road with Sougata and Bhaskar)

Calcutta Calling '15-'16

Laziness is the source of all evil. Seriously.

Calcutta winters are really comfortable. As a soothing 16°C, a jacket is suffice to avoid catching the cold. Less winter wear reciprocates to more travelling ease ! I know, stupid logic. Well, clothes or no clothes, home is always the desired destination. Home is literally where the heart is, and I miss home. Not really, but at least the cool/weird/awkward people (dogs and carts included).

so many vehicles going whroom

My hometown, Calcutta isn't far from weirdness. I woke up and heard a bridge had collapsed on a large number of folks. Its really sad, and this isn't the first time its happened. And the most ironical part is, we as Calcuttans pride our city with bridges, the magestic Howrah Bridge, the Vidyasagar Setu and the newer Nivedita Setu, the first being a monument of British engineering. And fucking flyovers fall out of skies. Sigh, the poor souls who got hurt, my wishes are with them.

Still, infrastructure back home isn't that shitty, its okay by Indian standards.

Winter in Bhubaneswar

Dammit. I procrastinate and push away all the writing till a deadline, Sigh.

The time during my end-semester examinations left me in tremendous anxiousness and pain. I have absolutely no idea how, when, or where they got over. They just did.

Some enjoy college, some loathe it, while the rest simply survive it. I'm on the survival lot, where even the things we take for granted at home, have to be carried out. Mundane activities, done for the sole reason of survival. Still, it is far from any jungle. It's an ecosystem within itself.
I wasn't alone. A number of my pals were here. We explored the city, ate really good food; I personally enjoyed my time at the debate club and read books over warm cups of coffee. But I've got two set of memories, which I'll cherish forever, and I felt they're worth sharing. Bhubaneswar was cold during the November-December gap. It always is during this time. The eastern part of India enjoys a milder version of winters compared to the northern and north-eastern parts of the country, but blame it on climate change, it was cold. Ah, that time of the year where your end-semester exams are over. Free time on our hands! And this semester break, I decided to spend my week here.


One

Nostalgia

One memorable trip was with Sougata and Shivam. Damn, it was thrilling as ever. The three of us hopped onto some bus headed westward, and opted for three usual tickets. After a period of kilometers, we were kicked off the bus because our tickets expired 6 blocks ago. We merrily walked about the boulevards,visiting Churches, cine theaters, nostalgic musical stores, second -hand book stores, and ventured into the Indira Gandhi Park. We took out a shortcut, and voila!

We were in the busiest market of the city, Market number 1 and 2. We simply strolled through the streets, and along the way, lost direction. Nonetheless, we found out our way back, and got back to our hostel.

Deras Dam

I'm an idiot. A major jackass, and this post had been due for a really long time, but well, this is it.
One mundane afternoon Zeshan and I were got really bored, and decided we should pack our bags and head over to Dehradhun. Later, we joked about it and told Shubham about our idea, and one thing led to another and we prepared to visit the Chandaka forest reserve one night before.

We left at 6 o'clock (Couldn't sleep due to the sheer excitement), boots strapped and bags packed. We reached the required junction and hired an Autorickshaw. The guy was very friendly, magnanimous, pleasant.....BAH ! He was an utter pain-in-the-ass, (entertaining too), and constantly lamented the fact that the four of us should have got AT LEAST some women to hang out with and have fun. I really enjoyed the auto trip and the auto-walla, the bumpy roads, cows on the run, and the vivid trees, but in all brutal honesty, we couldn't handle all the BURN inflicted by the constant harangue of the auto dude. We eventually told him to shut the fadoodaas up.The road-trip to the forest was pure bliss. The lush green fields, the wind blowing through your hair, the hills looked like you could run and hug them, the wind breezing by, the little ponds with bubbles and fishes poking their noses, broken ruins, the wind whistling right you, more cows mooing away minding their own business.(Did I mention about the wind?) The weather was perf-wala-perfect. A thin, crispy cloud cover with the Sun playing the naughtiest peek-a-boo. We had a pit stop and refilled with some refreshments, and shared a coke with the auto-man. AND THEN HE BEGAN THE SAME OLD JABBERING. We had to tell him to stop again, and half-an-hour down the road, we reached the spot.It was okayish, I mean it looked okayish from the distance. We crossed the boundary gate and walked up (what seemed like a conquerable hill) and found what we had come all the way for.
It was vivid.It was serine.It was picturesque.I could write a million adjective and hundreds of synonyms of the incoming word, but in every sense, it was beautiful.

The banks of the reservoir

We stood there for 5 mins, and those five minutes magically became thirty. The place just took our breath away, and the romanticism of the place seemed to slow down time, just like time seems to slow down when you're hanging out with your lover. I'm sorry we didn't take too many photographs. Cameras couldn't do justice to what we saw. It was a check-dam, we were on top of the dam, and there was the deep reservoir, and it seemed to have a mind of its own. Out there, beckoned an hills waiting to be explored, and an island with really green trees and really green crocodiles. Yes, we had spotted crocs and we knew it. Too many dead wood in the reservoir? No way.

My Train trips to home

Home is, where my heart is, and so are most of my pants. Well, I have a really strange fetish. Instead of opting for the easier air-conditioned or the 30-min flights, I take, the pain-in-the-ass seater train. That's right, Dhauli Express, or the Bhubhaneshwar-Kolkata Jan Shatabdi.

My college buddies (most of them sane individuals) consider my choice as repetitive "mistakes", but I love to see how people behave. True, a General coach would have been a much better experience, but that's for next time. Till then, seaters it is.

Awkward seat number

Well, I remember clearly my first train journey ( crummy ass Dhauli Express) from Kolkata to Puri. On my way to college, I was terrified about the whole college experience ( how to live with random individuals and exist without Ma waking me up or Dad shouting/criticizing). Well, Dad was there, and my ticket said "Male 18; Coach: D6 Seat:69 ", a window seat. As I dragged the luggage on to the
train (Dad criticizing). And, as I secretly knew, my seat was occupied. My Dad told me to be smart and approach the guy and to be polite. I followed orders and Whoa ! He asked "Babu where is your ticket?" I was taken aback as surely, Dad has the tickets. In a quick flash I asked the man for his tickets, which were swiftly handed over. As I read the ticket (he really didn't expect) I spotted it was a backdated ticket. Ah ha ! "Sir, that is my seat and this is a backdated ticket", with expressions flushed red. The man, out of the blue, changed from a predator to a soft kitten and "Adjust please?". Well, Dad stepped in and asked him to shift over to some other seat. Again, Dad was there to save the day (and I got reprimanded, for the fifth time).