The really green bits of Rajasthan.

Alwar Bagh is a small, privately-owned resort near Sariska Wildlife Reserve in Rajasthan. I went to this place with two friends hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of a tiger in the Reserve and also to get a day off from the city.

Reaching Alwar Bagh isn’t difficult as long as you have your basic navigation system in your smartphone in place.

The Reserve, merely 20 kms from the resort is very vast and full of beautiful animals we have been given liberty to ogle at. We couldn't catch a glimpse of a tiger or any other member of the cat family but the highlight of the safari was the dancing peacocks.

Shortly before it started raining, all these peacocks, left, right and centre, started performing their majestic mating rituals. It was purely enchanting! For the lack of a good dancing peacock picture, I have tried to compensate by putting up here a picture of a peacock sitting as if it owned not only the tree but also the entire bloomin' park.

Back to the resort then!

The place is decent enough. I'd give it a 3.5 stars considering they are severely under-staffed and a little rough around the edges. The owners are warm, friendly and quite chatty. The food is very good, very home-like. There really isn't much to do inside the resort except beat the heat in a swimming pool located very conveniently near the rooms.

Alwar and surrounding areas are surprisingly green- maybe because they have yet to be exposed to tourist onslaught. Here is a picture of Siliserh Lake- a big, beautiful, clean body of water with not many tourists around. What more can you expect?

Here's another surprise, a big Hollywood style signage on top of a hillock.

All in all, it was a day well-spent in a place surprisingly pretty, quiet and mostly undiscovered.

Clutter In My Head

And there is lots of it- all carefully categorized and stacked in my brain. I hate messed up minds.
But stuff keeps spilling out.
Like we all know, a particular song might remind one of someone/someplace- for no rational reason.
For no rational reason, stuff keeps spilling out.
Even now, there's this memory aching to come to the forefront so that I could think about it like I've done zillions of times already.

The hotel in Ranikhet, Uttaranchal, was very close to a forest. 4-5 years back, I was there with my family, and somehow managed to get them off my back. I picked up a book and a camera, thought that's what real travellers always carry, and took a narrow, curvy, but beautiful path into the forest.
The place is hilly, so, lots of ups and downs later I reached a part of the forest where I could officially declare myself as lost. I wasn't scared of course, I was proud of myself!

I looked around, and this is what I saw-
Tall oak trees
Leaves strewed around all over the ground
A steep slope, very close to where I stood
And...oh wait...Was my mind playing tricks on me? I think I saw a very good-looking guy!

Now, with all the forest magic (erhm!) around me, I just had to follow him a bit. He was around my age and was carrying books. I couldn't believe my good luck- not that I expect him to fall in love with me as soon as he looked at me!
He probably sensed someone following him and turned around. And he frowned.
The forest magic vaporised, and a sense of dread took it's place. It finally hit me that it wasn't a good idea following a stranger in a forest. I wasn't proud of myself anymore.

Just when I thought he was going to say something angry, he turned back around and walked off. I didn't know what to feel- relief or disappointment.
Anyway, I started walking back in the hopes of coming across that narrow curvy path again, when I realized I had an unopened book and an unopened camera in my hand.
The relief/disappointment soon forgotten, I got down to work. Clicked some pretty pictures and now some reading was left to do so I could be satisfied I had been a good explorer/traveller.
I picked a nice, cozy spot near a huge tree and sat down with my back resting against the tree's bark.
Now, that bark was probably never destined to give a lost traveller a moment's respite. It was hard, very rough and after a couple of minutes I stood up, cursing.
I stomped back towards the hotel.
Frustration cleared my vision. I realized that this 'forest' was the teeniest forest in the whole wide world. I was barely 200 metres away from the hotel.
I stomped into the hotel, into my room, onto my bed and picked up my book to read.

Jane Austen's Happy Endings

So, just finished with Pride and Prejudice - the second time I took up the book; but the first time that I couldnt help but enjoy it.
I'd blame my own poor understanding for finding it a dreadful bore when I first tried to read it - at 13 years of age.
Well, its everything but a dreadful bore! Often when authors or even movie makers try to combine all of comedy, drama and suspense into one, the result is a mess.
Jane Austen, however, manages that successfully and effortlessly. The secret to this success, I believe, is her trademark 'superficiality'. Not going deep into the characters' emotions and staying away from all bad feelings that may result from bad happenings in the plot.
What is described in details is trivial, and stuff which you would expect other authors to fill pages and pages with - is lightly brushed upon, all condensed (at times), into just one paragraph.

The story is about a mother whose sole object in life is to get her 5 daughters married to well-off husbands, though that is only the secondary/tertiary focus of the author. It is also about how the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet overcomes her prejudices and looks at certain people in a new way. Throughout the book, the first time reader might keep wondering if the heroine and the hero are going to end up together, and when and how?
The hero, by the way, is Mr. Darcy - he has all the hero qualities too. He is super rich and handsome and generous and has a fantastic house and though you might not think it in the beginning - he does a lot of charitable stuff.
Elizabeth Bennet's character is supposed to be complex and there are a lot of people who'd sit and spend hours analyzing it. I found it to be a very readable character though. She is ahead of her times, no doubt, but she is all too fallible. She mis-reads, mis-constructs, mis-represents almost till the very end.
She represents Prejudice.
On the other hand, Mr. Darcy represents Pride. Too proud to even dance with someone he considers beneath him, he goes on giving these airs and building a reputation which has him pinned as unpleasant, proud and repulsive.
All, of course, is solved in the end, where both realize their faults and make due amends. A certain happy ending is hastily described where all members of the family settle down after a book-full of chaos and unnecessary emotional uprisings.
Jane Austen, it seems, loves cheesy happy endings and so do I.

Romantic Remedies

After the utter failure of a group with the same name (as the title of this blogpost) that I had started, at Orkut (several years back), Im now thinking of resuming dissemination of romantic advice.
This is because some people, for god only knows what reason, think I should do some service to the society by distributing what I have too much of in my head - romantic ideas and solutions.

Lately, (though its an age-old tragedy) , I have been hearing of/seeing for myself girls unfortunately trapped in destructive relationships. Now the definition of a destructive relatinship may or may not include actual violence. Oh by the way, there is a class of mentally challenged (as I'd like to call them) girls who continue to claim to love their guys even though these guys hit them (and unspeakable more stuff) repeatedly.

A destructive relationship can also be one wherein a person (not necessarily the guy) plays football with your heart and self-esteem. Though victims abound of both the sexes, you'll most certainly find the number of female victims to be higher. Women are emotional fools - lots of wise men have repeatedly been saying that, and I'll agree.

These women victims obviously dont realize that the simple fact of them being a woman - a much more complex (hence advanced) , a much more prettier (who can deny that?) , and a much more feeling (ok - debatable) human, than man - automatically gives them a sort of power our poor men folk can never claim.

Call it the Girl Power if you will. Because we girls tend to deposit every single feeling, every single resource we have in the hands of a guy our foolish hearts fall for. All this depositing is OKAY - but only for a guy who ATLEAST realizes that you are a woman, and just being that, you deserve all that you've always wanted!

Realize when hes no good for you and likewise, dont ever let him go if he is.

When I learnt the science of Reiki

I went to attend this 2 day course with loads of cynicism and some genuine curiosity. How can they possibly teach this 'ancient Japanese art of healing using just hands' in two days?!
Had to be bogus. Well the just 2 days part actually is. Because it doesn't work that way.

Reiki uses focus of the mind to call energy into the palm of your hands. And how is that done? Extremely simply to my utter surprise. By just asking these energies to appear.
 Since they are present all around you, all the time, they do not take long in manifesting themselves. It requires that kind of focus and that kind of deliberate awareness in the beginning to feel it in your palms. Gradually, though, when you have practiced enough, it comes to you even more quickly.
Thats where the catch is. Nothing of this sort is learnt in 2 days. It takes a very long time and long hours of practice to reach that level where you'd be amazed at what reiki can do. I myself am only beginning to understand it.

The science requires thorough understanding of the chakras in the human body, disorders of the human body, and human emotions. And that energy that you feel in your palms..can actually 'heal'.
I haven't healed anybody yet. But I have felt the energy between my palms, and thus, have no doubts about its potential.
Lots of people have said lots of wise words about all the cosmos being yours if you chose to have it, or, there being some part of God in every one, or even something as simple as the power of prayer healing and making wishes come true. And by God, I have started believing in all this. I am quite surprised at myself.

All those who know me, know I have anger issues, it arrives real quickly.
One of the tenets to be followed when practicing reiki is to take an oath every single day of never allowing yourself to be angry.
Believe it or not, I am trying :)

Puke-worthy education

Zoology is what I'm doing my graduation in. We learn about all kinds of animals - even minuscule little icky creatures which you'd never imagine can be called 'animals'.

We have been dissecting animals right from the initial few days in college - cockroaches, earthworms, prawns, fish, pigeon heads, frogs, rats...
In the final year, in our subject of Physiology, we are supposed to record a frog's heart beat. Now, for the froggy's heart to keep beating - it has to be alive - and the poor little thing's heart has to be removed from the body.

How do you think we manage to do that? In the most brutal, horrifying way. It is the stuff done by psychopath killers to their victims..and worse..
A frog (alive and healthy and kicking) has to be held by its legs and slammed on a flat surface. Twice. Thrice.

All this slamming does the following things to the poor creature :

1. Stuns it.
2. Makes some of its blood splatter.
3. Damages its skull.
4. Makes its tongue hang out in the most heart wrenching way.

Stunning it is what is required for the rest of the experiment procedure. Next it is pinned and/or a pin is pushed through its brain so that it doesn't move about when one is going to tear him up. Then follows a complicated set of steps requiring pushing pins through the heart, ligating the main veins etc.

I absolutely hate doing any of this.. Many others do too..my classmates, students who have been through this already. Nobody has been able to do anything about this outrageous practice of wasting hundreds of frogs' lives.. and all of it for a completely useless purpose of studying a frog's heart beat - something that can be done simply through a text book!

Teachers don't seem to see reason here. Venting out the exasperation regarding the insensitivity and unwillingness of the teachers to understand logic would require another post though.

Till anybody of consequence decides to do anything of consequence about this deplorable physiology experiment, we'll continued to be blackmailed to kill poor froggies.. as it so happens..this particular practical experiment carries a hell lot of marks in the exam. Will be soon posting a video showing some of the above mentioned atrocities on frogs - not for the weak of heart that video.

Why did she die?

Radhika Tanwar,20, was shot on Tuesday, 8th March 2011..right outside her college. She was shot in the back of her neck - not fatal - but she died anyway.

Ok..who shot her? A young guy, possibly a rejected lover, out to take revenge. He had also been stalking the girl for quite some time. Himself stunned for a whole minute, during which he stood utterly still, after pulling the trigger, he made a mad dash for it, losing himself in the crowd. Yeah, there was a crowd present. It took 10 full minutes for them to realize that a gun shot results in bleeding and bleeding can result in death.

Do you think the poor girl could have imagined in her wildest dreams that she'd die that way? Amidst people who had neither common sense nor the balls to do anything except just watch the 'tamasha'.

The police are now REQUESTING witnesses to please come and give specifics about that man. And why should it make me feel indignant, shocked, shameful? Because I am of the exact same age - it could've been any of us. I don't wish to die that way.

I'd like people to pounce on that sonofabitch and tear him to pieces, rush me to hospital immediately and the judiciary to make his remaining life hell.

People, please, get a goddamned sense of duty.