The magic of Animated movies

"Ha ha ha... YOU WATCH CARTOON MOVIES!!!... hu ha ha ha" - one of my cousin sister blurted out at me when I said I had recently watched this movie called Shrek and it was wonderful. I could only watch her and give a weak smile on the outside as I saw her elder sister also join the conversation and join in the laughathon. The elder sister also shared the same belief as her younger sister, the belief that the animated movies were only for the children to watch and not for the so called "grown ups". Tough I could smile weakly from outside, I was laughing from inside at the arrogant ignorance of these two sister and I could only squeak out "What you believe is wrong, anyway its no point explaining to you gals now. Time will come when you will recognize what I am talking about today." and I left the place at once ignoring their continuing laughter. 

Generally people who are moving from these pre-teen to teenage, tend to believe that they have "Grown up" and usually do believe in such silly stuffs about animated movies are for children and what not. However this was not me around 6 months back, because even I did share the same belief until I happened to be forced to watch this Shrek. Once I was through with this movie, I just could not help watching it another twice or thrice before becoming a fan of animated movies. However this was just the beginning. It was just pure magic in these animated movies, looking at the various types of creatures, characters coming to life and you just cant avoid falling in love with these characters. The creativity and the believable narrations that show up in these movies are just too awesome.

It was hardly 6 months after this incident that this same cousin sister called me up asking if I had some more animated movies as she had just watched Ice Age and had begun to like the animated movies. The magic of animated movies had got to her now. I could only remind her about this incident before sharing around 5-6 more animated movies with her. Then it started that I used to be the first to watch these movies and recommend the best movies to her so she can go and enjoy the same. 

Months passed by, years went by, and today she is the one who watches these movies first and suggests me on which ones are to be watched. Following on her recommendation, I am here watching "How to train your dragon-2" and as I continue to watch the movie, I recall this small but memorable incident which instantly brings a smile on my face as to how the magic of these animated movies work on people always. Before I wind up, below are some of the must watch wonderful animated movies from my personal likes (in random order) -

Shrek (1) - Just the movie which introduced me to the animated movies. Introduced to a character like Ogre and the use of fairy tale creatures was amazing tough for the short time in the movie.

Ice Age (1 & 2) - Nice movie, characters like scrat, mammoth which are not normally heard of became more of a common animals to be known. Tough part 1 and 2 were good, the Ice Age series deteriorated so much that part - 4 was not even inspiring to watch the trailer. 

Ratatouille - Imagine a rat cooking in kitchen the delicious food, well watch the movie and it seems believably real.

Wall - E - Love story of a garbage robot. An amazing movie with least effort on dialogues and you are still guaranteed to sit through the whole movie without blinking an eye-lid.

Megamind - A truly genuine masterpiece. Wonderfully scripted dialogues and the amazing creativity of villain becoming a super-hero is amazingly narrated.

How to train your dragon - The movie which just turned out to be a monstrous hit when nothing much was expected out of it. looking to be a "childish" movie, turned out to be one of the best movies as you fall in love with the dragon named night-fury.

Cars - Amazing movie about the race cars and their feelings. Very well narrated and you will simply feel good after watching this movie.

Kung-Fu Panda (1 & 2) - You just cant stop watching this movie again and again just for the fact of seeing a panda do kungfu. This hilarious movie keeps you interested from frame 1 until the end credits are complete.

Chicken Run - An intelligent movie on the schemes and plans about a chicken trying to run away from a chicken farm. Very enjoyable.

Bolt - An animated movie inside an animated movie. Story of a cute little dog which believes itself to have super powers only to realize its a gimmick of the film-makers. 

Up, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo... and many more which have come and gone about ants, bees, bugs, penguins, monsters and other animals but the magic of animated movies keeps spreading and improving with growing technology.

Recovering Precious Snaps from my old PC

Well, It is my Anniversary day of 2014 and what do I have? Both my wife and kiddo are in native town and I am all alone. Good news is that I have all the time in the world to spend it nicely and effectively. So how do I spend this time nicely now? I have a very important task which I have been waiting from long time to get it done - There is a desktop computer of mine which is around 8 yrs old and it contains lot of my old precious snaps which I have not been able to transfer to my new laptop, because of the USB ports not working on that desktop. So I want to spend my day in getting those precious snaps with an organised plan in place.

Plan - A -

It is simple. Remove the hard disk (HDD). Take it to a computer hardware shop. Get a cable which connects the desktop HDD to my laptop USB port and copy the data. Pretty simple. So as planned I remove the HDD, take my two wheeler and go to the computer shop which is nearby. As from my history books, simple plans never fall in place as planned, so as I did not expect, the shop was closed. So what, no problem. Move to next shop. Again, as I begin to start expecting, that cable is not available. The same is the result in another couple of shops. Well, it dawns on me that my Plan - A has failed miserably being a simple one. I have no choice but to return back home.

Plan - B -

I see the size of my precious photos, its around 10 GB. So I decide to think of Plan - B now. Again, plan B is now to connect my desktop to internet, copy my files into my share drive (which is called Skydrive by Microsoft) and then download it using my laptop. Its a time consuming process but will definitely work. So as it happens, I boot my desktop and notice that it is running on Windows XP. (For those who do not know, Microsoft has recently stopped any kind of support to XP operating system). So I try to open Google in my old IE version 6 browser and it starts throwing all sorts of errors. Somehow I try to avoid all of those and go on to Skydrive homepage and login. After logging in, it asks me to upgrade my browser to either IE8 or Firefox or Chrome or safari. Well, its simple, just click a button and it starts downloading the update files. However, once download is complete, I try to start my update process and it shows a message on my face saying update cannot proceed due to some internal processing error. The same error comes for all the specified browser update files. Now this is getting a little weird. I cannot update and I cannot use Skydrive without the update. Its a road block again. After trying few more tricks, I give up. There is no point in pursuing Plan B anymore. Its failed again.

Plan - C -

Well, its a namesake plan. I do not have any plan C now. Running out of ideas and am still wondering and thinking about how I can get past this. As one final resort, I just plan to try out my USB slot. This is the same thing I had tried somewhere an year ago without any success. Still out of the living frustration, it is my only hope now even-tough I know the truth. And as I expect this not to work, my only way would be to take the HDD to one of my friend's place where the USB slot could be working and use it to copy my files. So I get my pen drive, insert into the USB drive of my desktop knowing the result as failure... but what do I see here. Suddenly there is prompt on my desktop saying "a new hardware has been recognized". Somehow I freeze and stare the monitor in disbelief that my USB drive is working. I double check and YES, it is working. Immediately without wasting any further time, I get my external HDD and insert into the USB drive and start copying.

With a happy and a pretty much relieved mindset now, I see the files slowly copying on my monitor and start wondering why did I waste my last 5 hours using the Plan A and B. If I had tried out the USB in first place, it would all have been copied by now. As it dawns to me that I am still a software engineer by profession and its a pretty usual practice that we always try all other routes before touching the basic routes unless otherwise specified. I recall another similar incident which brings an instant smile on my face and keep staring at the monitor looking at the files being copied with total disbelief.

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 2 -

Missed the first part - Click Here.

So during the travel, lots of colorful people board and alight the bus, there are usually quite a lot of group of 2 peoples around who are usually their working colleagues and most often these 2 people are of opposite sex. That's where it gets interesting. Few of the conversations (which I overhear) they have are funnier and I really do not know if the conversations are worth the time spent during this travel. In the end it does not matter since its the best way to keep yourself entertained in the middle of traffic.

So here it goes - Generally I have observed in their conversations, always the female counter-parts are whining about their work, managers and other colleagues when the male counterparts are always like super-dudes who give moral support and supposedly guide the female counterparts on how to react to those situations as if the males have got lots of experience in this field. That's the interesting part of these conversations, normally females start off saying - "Oh my god, just when I was about to leave - Manager comes and gives me work. I had to beg him to let me go home and had to convince him that I would do it first thing on the next morning." So Male counterpart - "Dont worry yaar, managers are always like that. You dont have to beg for that sake. Since its beyond office hours, its your right to get up and keep going. Dont even bother to such things. Next time he says any such stuff, call me. I will speak to him." I laugh in my mind for this advice thinking if the situation was a vice-versa (i.e. If manager had given work to male counterpart), would he have reacted the way as he was advising. I would bet he would've begged too or kept his mouth shut and worked out the night to complete the task. However when it comes to moral support, all sorts of advises come along.

Similarly another instance - females talking about their colleagues spending more time during coffee and tea breaks whereas this female supposedly is working harder but never gets the credit for her work and stuff. So she wants to revolt and demand manager on why this injustice towards her by giving her more work. For this, the male starts off suggesting her to go on and talk to her manager and do this, do that... blah blah. So lot of times these are very interesting only because the suggestions and advises that come out for moral supports are not always followed by themselves. 

Sometimes it is tempting for me to interrupt them and ask then to stop talking the nonsense or whether these are general guidelines available somewhere only for the sake of talking or is it really that they generate dynamically when they hear the question. More than the stress beating techniques, it feels like - how to impress a lady in next one hour or so. however I resist my temptation to talk to them in the fear, the fear of getting to listen about "none of your business", "get lost", "Excuse me, who that hell do you think you are" kind of stuff. Generally it will be like pouring the oil into a burning fire. So keep myself out of it, enjoy the conversations and be happy.

As the travel in bus ends, nothing would change in male or female counterparts either personally or in their professional life, yet they keep talking on the same piece of crap every time they board the bus until they get down at the destination. However whether it helps them or not, it certainly does help me in killing the time and virtually reach my destination happily thinking about all these things are worth their talk or not. Certainly worth my time for listening to them tough.

This is what has been making my travel a fun stuff until now. So keep looking for these group of 2 coming together. Once I get closer to these people, I close my book, fold my bag and keep my ears open....!!!

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 1 -

As the previous 2 new years my life has just started to expect something major happening on a new year eve. However, this time it has been a sudden gradual change which has started from this new year and has been continuing since then. 

My workplace is hardly 5 kms from my place and I usually enjoy travelling this distance on my own vehicle so that I can control my in-time and out-time. However a week before this new year, I got a sudden news that I would need to go to client place for the next 3 months on account of a project. Normally this is not a bad news unless your client place means it is in same city and an additional 20 kms to travel. Again, under normal circumstances, this 20kms does not matter much, unless you are living in a town where travelling this 20kms takes 2 hours on public transport and 1.5hrs in your private vehicle. I had no choice but to accept my fate (rather curse) and move on. 

Few points to consider before moving on were -

1) The client place starts the work as early in morning as 8am. (In my work place it would be around 10-30am).

2) The client place does not work on saturdays (however, since we are moving on to work with them, they somehow decided to work on saturdays instead of letting us OFF).

3) To reach the client place on time, I need to leave my home by 6-45am. (Something which I have never done before in my professional career on daily basis).

4) I would need to take public transport (read Volvo buses) to reach the client place. (Taking private vehicle was ruled out since it would just empty your pockets on petrol cost and driving in the traffic was stressful in itself).

5) There was nothing I could do to avoid this transition. (Blaaah...!!!)

So I decided to get my monthly pass for Volvo and started the hectic travel to the client place. It seemed like 4 hrs of travel time was too much to take in without any entertainment on the way for first few days, so I decided to take use of my library membership to the full extent. So my usual travel plan would include getting on to bus as early as 7-15am and start reading the books. The same plan while returning from client place as well. This routine continued for a while but somehow due to the hectic travel timings, my sleep deprived body started to argue. It was then I decided to take full use of the morning 2 hrs to just sleep away in Volvo amidst the cool A/C. This also turned out to be routine for a while until one day everything changed for me.

Usually I started cursing this routine thinking it some kind of a punishment to me and having to cope up the client pressure as well as balance the work and family life. But then few things changed. There is a dialogue in movie "Paan singh Tomar" where the militaty captain says - "Pehli baar dekh raha hoon ki koi saza ka maza le raha hai" (Translates to - "Looking at someone for first time, who is enjoying his punishment"). It started happenning to me as well. I got used to this routine and travelling became more fun. How? - Well all happened when I started to observe the people in the bus on how they talk, what they talk, their reactions, their emotions etc. Normally all people on these buses which I travel are from one or the other IT companies which can be found in abundance near my client place. 

Would like to share some of these experiences in the next part. Click Here

Movie - Dhoom 3 - My Review -

Aamir... Aamir... thats what is the movie all about. His Revenge, his childhood, his action sequence, his songs, his circus and last but not the least HIS BIKE. Dont keep your expectations high, neverthless you wont be disappointed by the movie for its sheer entertainment and nothing else. Here and there, few frames are available in the movie without Aamir in it, but in almost 90% of movie, you would see him and he is a pleasure to watch as well. Anyway, so lets get back to the review.

Movie starts off with a very nice background story of aamir's childhood, the child portrayed as Aamir has also done a nice job. Its about his dad (played by jackie Shroff) being an owner of a circus in Chicago which is in loss and the bank of Chicago is behind him to recover the loan or close down the circus. As the hindi movies in the past have shown, the dad does not want to close down the circus and cannot repay the loan as well. Hence his short role comes to an end and rest of the movie is about Aamir to take revenge on the bank.

Now supposedly Aamir is negative in the movie, and then the supposedly positive cast of Abhishek and uday need to team up again and stop Aamir from taking his revenge. So the intro of Aamir starts with a chasing sequence, himself on bike and rest of the Chicago police in their cars. I admit, these chases have been done over and over again and you can possibly guess each and every frame of what happens in this chase except for one silly move where aamir makes his escape as expected.

Then the theme of movie, blah blah blah... Nothing much happens and movie runs normally until 5 mins before interval. An amazing twist in the movie which makes the first half of the movie amazingly watchable and keeps you insterested in the second half. And then second half starts with a romantic angle (well you need to realize there is Katrina too in the movie), and hence one song and then normal drag of hindi movies. yet again there is another interesting twist towards the last half hour of movie and then the climax is as usual on the expected lines.

Overall not a brilliant movie or a fantastic movie, but pretty much a one time watch movie. This could've been a better movie if only they focussed more on how Aamir robs the bank instead of the chase sequences. This is in similar lines of Dhoom-1 where none of the robbery is shown as to how it happens and we always see the cops chasing the robbers on bike. In that aspect, Dhoom-2 was little bit better since the robbery is shown on screen which keeps viewers interested.

Finally this is just a movie which does not show the best performance by Aamir but the Aamir's performance is definitely the best in the movie. A movie to watch only for Aamir and nothing else. Around 2 stars out of 5 but an extra .5 for Aamir ;)

CLASH OF THE TITANS - 2 -

Missed the first part - Click Here

So for the first attack - I show him my index finger and on a little higher note, I tell him to go to kitchen and help his mom. He looks at me and blankly says "Naa...", I tell him the same again by raising my voice a little more, and he outright rejects it with another "Naa... No...". So I take out my triumph card and tell him - "Oh boy, mumma is going to give you chocolates if you go to kitchen...". Aaahh there it is, his eyes are now gleaming when he listens to the magic word - Chocolate. My triumph card has worked. He is now on his way to kitchen at a double speed. I relax and get back to watch my match in peace... Only for next 40 secs.

40 Secs pass-by, my kiddo is back to my place. Taps me on my hand and says "choc... jayeeee... " (meaning he wants choc). I just cant understand why is he asking me when I had such wonderfully sent him to his mom asking for the same. At same time my wife comes to the hall, gives a wicked smile. Instantly I get the signal and understand that my wife would've told my kiddo that the choc is not with her but to ask daddy to get one. Hence he has come back to me asking for choc. My triumph card has been crushed by the combined force of my kid and my wife. Back to square one. I decide to take on the aggressive mode. I point my hand at him, in a flash I realize I have held the tv remote in my hand and at the very moment my kiddo grabs my remote and starts clicking some buttons. It changes my channel and I get up from my seat to grab my remote back... "No... no... na...naa..." he screams and runs towards kitchen with the remote. I have no choice but to run behind him. 

Obviously he cant outrun me and hence I catch him soon, he tightens the grip on the tv remote. Again obviously his strength is no match to mine, hence I easily over-power him and get the remote from his hand. He starts screaming and runs behind his mom. I return back to my tv and switch back to my match. Since my kiddo is now crying in the kitchen, I believe I will be able to completely watch my match now. 

Hardly another 30 secs pass-by and my wife carrying my kiddo comes to hall. "Now... there... dont cry baby, pappa will put on the rhymes for you". Instantly my kiddo stops crying and shouts - "Ee... ya... O...", "Ee... Ya... O...". I am stumped out now. I cant change my channel now, but not only my wife has made my kid remember his initial demand but has also silenced him out from crying by showing him a hanging carrot (i.e. rhymes on TV). Now my kiddo is expectantly watching me and slowly murmuring - "Ee... Ya... O..." repeatedly. It seems like he will again start crying if I don't put on his rhymes. Unexpectedly, my wife has hit 2 birds with one stone here. I cant watch the match in peace when my kiddo is making such a sad face nor I can put on rhymes and surrender to my kiddo. One final punch was missing until this moment and my wife just lands the final blow - "please put on the rhymes naa... Look he is so much keen to watch his rhymes...".

Thats it. I cant take it anymore. I accept my defeat and surrender to the combined mighty force of my wife and kiddo. I finally change my channel and put on the rhymes. My kiddo has now started saying loudly "Ee... Ya... O..."... and feels pretty excited too. He gets down on the floor, moves closer to TV and starts watching his rhymes being played on TV. After sometime, he comes to me - "Appppaaaa.... Apppa... " calls me and points his hand towards Tv and says "Ee... Ya... O..." and gives a big giggling smile. I too return my smile and realize that the match was just not worth a watch in exchange for the smile on my kiddo's face. I keep the tv remote on the tv top, hold my kiddo and take him on my lap and start enjoying rhymes with him.

As they say History repeats again, on the next day... the clash of the titans repeats again... another fierce battle awaits... !!

[THE END]

CLASH OF THE TITANS - 1 -

It is always a case when you have freedom to choose your TV channels at home. In my home I have this exclusive rights on keeping the tv remote with me when there is a cricket match going on or my favorite movie going on and I can choose to watch it over the melodramatic serials my wife and mom prefer. Most often I generously give away the TV remote to my mom or wife so they can watch their channel when I am done with my cricket or when my team is winning easily or when my team is losing badly and hence I settle down to watch those dramatic never ending daily soaps and doze off.

This has been the understanding at my home from past few years and I have been enjoying it until recently. The things are changing from past few weeks and the reason is none other than my 2 year kiddo. Usually he does not like to watch TV and often he gets irritated if anyone else is watching the TV unless his rhymes dvd is playing on the TV. He usually refers to his rhymes dvd as "E..ya..O..". So here I was, starting to switch on the TV and watch my cricket highlights as I had missed out on the LIVE match.

Kiddo comes, sees what I am trying to watch on TV, stares at me. I give him a smile back. He does not smile back, but continues to stare at me and points to TV and tells "E..ya..O..". I understand instantly that he wants me to put on his rhymes DVD now. I cant do that, I need to badly watch this match. I have to distract him now else he has made his motives clear (to Attack me and capture TV). I open a civilized conversation with him explaining him that there is this interesting cricket match going on and we both can watch the same. He nods his head and I assume he agrees with me on this and now to my surprise he is going near the TV and watching the cricket. I thank god, give a satisfied smile and start watching the match. (Defended myself smoothly. nice move.)

15 secs pass-by, kiddo starts staring at me again, he is not convinced with my cricket theory and he is not finding the cricket match interesting. I tend to ignore him and continue to watch my match expecting another brutal attack. I need to keep my defensive tactics ready to tackle his attacks. Anytime now... and there it is, he notices that I am ignoring him, he comes near me... call me "Appppa... Appppaaaa... E.. ya...O..". As expected, another attack. I watch him, start explaining him again how important it is for me to watch this match now and I promise him that I will play his rhymes once this match gets over (45 mins more left). He is convinced again... (my defense tactics working)... I carry him on my lap and he starts watching the match with me...

25 secs pass-by, kiddo starts staring at me again. I realize he is not in mood to watch cricket as he is definitely not finding it interesting. At this point of time the only thing which is interesting as per him is his rhymes. I somehow need to distract him and defend myself for the next 45 mins, and distract him in such a way that I should be able to watch my match in peace as well... which also means its time for me to go on an ATTACK now...

(To be continued… Click Here)

Life of my sweetie pie - Second year -

Its been nearly one year after the grand celebration of his first year Birthday. This year has been very unusual and the most unexpected of things have happened which we never dreamt of. We hoped for a decent normal year as the last one, but how can it be the same. This kid has gained one year of experience, known all the people around from our family, neighbours and friends. He can now identify our family members from the strangers, he can identify his apppa(for some strange reason, he does not call bappa), aayee and ajji, he can identify his closest and most often visited Amma(with a stick), abbu, amma, kaaka and kaaki, he can identify all his other kaaka's, aatya's, maama's, maushi's, abu's, amma's. He has developed this extra-ordinary ability to identify the special food joints - McD, KFC and Dominos, afterall to give his dad a big company. 

One month after his first birthday - he could stand up on his own feet and start to walk slowly. The most amazing and happiest day arrived when he started to put his first step without holding to sofa or a chair. The happiness slowly started fading away from us and started appearing on his face more often. It was very clear that he was enjoying his days of walk and run, but clearly he had gained a lot of energy. We tried to control him for few weeks and days by running behind him, but soon ran out of our energy and patience as well. Since he was very new on this field, we often saw the days where he would stumble on the floor, fall from the stairs, hit out on chair and on each of the occassion escaping with minor scratches. His energy was doubled and ours halved. Yet these are still enjoyable and memorable days of our lives.

This year has also seen him develop few emotions like react to the pranks, identify the teasers, feel humilated when scolded, laugh, cry and ofcourse his main weapon being emotional black-mail. His naughtiness has been doubled from last year and we were forced to put him into a kindergarten school. His school is scheduled for one hour everyday, and that one precious hour is enough to complete all the household activties which seemed impossible if he were at home. His activities at home have been so intense that we are forced to keep an eye on him every second, else something or the other is going to happen. The last 3-4 months have been so much high in his activities, that if the normal human has a BP of 120, we have easily crossed 300 atleast thrice a week either in scolding him or controlling our irritation inside us. 

This year also saw him develop some peculiar kind of liking to kitchen. He more often than not plays with the utensils than his toys. Altough he does not have much taste for music, he likes to create noise using the kitchen utensils. He is in front of TV to watch only when some item songs from hindi movies are being played. He likes these munnis and Sheelas and his most favorite being jintata chita chita, on other occassions when the TV is on, he behaves as if its not playing anything not only for him but for others as well. He does not like anyone to watch TV when he is not watching it himself. Its been that kind of a year when your kid is saving electricity bills when you are forced to turn off the TV and also saves your movie budget, because we have not attempted to watch even a single movie in theatre from past 2.5 years after his visible hatred for small screen. 

The year 1 to 2, the most difficult year if your kid turns out to be double naughty. It is said that the kids are unstable from year 1 to 3 when they really are not aware of do's and dont's, rights and wrongs, they fall, they learn, they start judging the rights, wrongs in their own way, their memory starts to increase, they observe lot of new things, try to talk words, we fail to understand but our guess is the best option. If we fail to understand what the kiddo is trying to tell, we try to divert his attention on to other things successfully only because his mind can be moulded at this stage. Finally no matter how difficult this year was, it has been by far the best year of our lives. This year has been the most entertaining and the most enjoyable in our lives. 

The Regret –

It was month of November. It was early morning, around 7-15am. He was not feeling cold anymore even with the cold chilly wind blowing around. His eyes were moist. He had not realized that he would have to face this situation today. He was now thinking if only he had been a little bit brave on the previous day; this situation could have been avoided. After every few minutes he used to remember this very moment and again the tears would gush down his cheeks. Even the cold blowing wind could not dry the tears up on his cheeks.

It would take another half hour to reach home now. He was traveling on a two wheeler sitting on the back seat. His dad was riding the two wheeler and they were now returning home. He was hoping that they would reach home early, very early, but you cannot beat the distance by just hoping. Even without any traffic on road, his tuition classes would take atleast 45mins of travel on two-wheeler. Usually every morning his dad would wake him up early and travel all the way to drop him to his tuition class which begins at 7am. It was a daily routine, but today was different, a lot different. So his agony did not end even when he reached home after half an hour. His dad parked the two-wheeler in basement; he did not look at his son at all. He just entered the house and straight-away headed to bedroom and slept off. He knew that it was his son’s mistake but he had already forgiven his son for this. His mom followed him right behind and took his temperature reading and result read 103 degrees.

His tears were not stopping at all. He just wanted to say that he was truly very sorry to his dad but did not muster any courage to speak and he continued to cry and cry silently sitting in a corner of the hall.

It all started in morning when dad knew that it was public holiday today. Also he knew that he was not feeling well that day, so he asked his son – “Are you sure, you have your tuition classes today?” Son - “Yes, Sure dad, our teacher did not inform about the class being canceled today”.  So he got dressed up as usual with an additional sweater on to protect as much as possible from the cold wind. At 6-45am Dad and son were in front of tuition place. The son gets down and rushes towards the classroom only to see that it is locked with a note on door saying – “Class canceled due to public holiday”. Son was shattered to see that. He had dragged his dad out in cold when he was not feeling well. He knew it was his mistake which he did on the previous day and he realized it now. He thought he would spend some time there and wait till his dad returns back. He could not dare to tell his dad that it was holiday and they had traveled all the way needlessly in this cold weather. He peeped through corner of the wall to see if his dad is still there and saw that his dad was waiting for him without returning. Son had no choice now. He had to go back to his dad now and tell him the truth. He mustered all the courage that he could and went back to his dad. In meantime, his dad had already asked the watchman of that building to check if classes were being conducted today or not and after knowing the truth he was waiting there for his son. He did not ask anything more to his son, just saw his son return and turned on the two-wheeler to return back home.

On previous day – At the end of the class, he knew his teacher had informed all students about something which he could not hear clearly. He now realized that it was this same thing about classes being canceled. If only he was brave enough to just ask back the teacher on what he informed or for that matter of fact, any student who had listened to the teacher’s information, this situation could’ve been avoided. But he did not, nor did he care to bother. His ignorance had now turned into a biggest mistake of his life. He could only sit in the back seat behind his dad and regret for what he had done.

Even after many years now, the regret still lingers in his heart and he only wants to tell his dad how sorry he was for that day but alas the hard truth is that his dad does not live anymore today.

[THE END]

Three Amigos and a memorable drive – Part – 2 -

(Missed the first part…. Click here)

Suddenly we saw a hotel open and a petrol bunk nearby. We decided to intake our fuel first and let the car wait for sometime. So we barged into the hotel and a waiter came to take the order. Me: “Idli vada for all?” Others agreed, but it means nothing if we agreed, the main guy waiter replied: “No idli vada. Still not ready, sir” Ok, so we changed our order to masala dosa or poori. Waiter: “Not yet ready sir. Only vegetable upma is available. If you wait for five minutes, I will get vada also”. We all stared at each other then in one voice: “Get the upma first and start making vada’s and get them too.” When you are hungry, anything you eat seems tasty. That day, the upma was so tasty that we were almost tempted to order another plate, but just as we finished our upma, the vada’s were ready on our table. We pounced into vadas and finished that in no time. It was hot and again tasted delicious. Then had a cup of coffee each and then as we started to leave, we remembered that it was a decision time. Remember we had to take one of the two routes from spot 1. This was exactly the spot 1 where we had to deviate from highway. We looked at each other and discussed on which route to take. Obviously we were not able to decide. Best thing now was to gamble. Out came the one rupee coin, heads – route 1 (little bad one) tails – route 2 (better one). Flipped the coin in air.

We took car to petrol bunk, added fuel and continued on the route 1. Few kms on that route and it seemed to be nice road. So Prashanth spoke up: “Hey this is not bad at all. Seems good road” Just then the potholes started from nowhere. After some distance, the road got better. This time Prasad said: “Ok, seems like only that part was bad” Just as he spoke, again the road got bad. Some more time and again the road got better. We stared at each other and nobody dared to speak about the road condition now. We did not want to take any chances especially when we had encountered such situations with rain first and now roads. So we continued our drive silently. Thankfully the road continued to be better and finally we reached our first destination Sirsi. In Sirsi, we had to search for some new bus stand and continue on that route to reach Hulekal.

So whenever we came at some junction where the road split into two, we searched for sign boards as to which road goes where. Surprisingly the sign boards always pointed in one direction and always showed the way where one of the roads lead. There was not even a single clue as to where the other road leads. Somehow with our own guesses we took one or the other roads and at every such split junction, we always knew where one road goes but not the other. Thanks to the “well planned” sign boards. Finally we had to take help of some people who mislead us for some time on wrong routes and finally lead us onto the correct one.

Finally we reached Hulekal. People greeted us and gave us some scolding for our night drive. Then we freshened up, had one more round of breakfast and at this moment we were totally tired and exhausted. Our eyes were slowly coming down and vision was getting blur. At around 10am, all 3 of us thought of taking a small nap and slept off. We slept like logs on that day and don’t think we even changed the position in which we slept and finally we got up when we were forcibly woken up for lunch at 2pm. Then had lunch, went out for some shopping and finally returned home at night for yet another long sleep. Next morning we were supposed to leave back to Bangalore with my wife at around 7am, but as usual we got up late due to our tiredness and finally left for our return journey at 11am.

So this marked the end of my first night drive and the most amazing till now. I still don’t know how our elder people agreed for our night drive. We three amigos set off without any planning or schedule or the proper decided route on this memorable and the most enjoyable drive which I would cherish all the time. As far as possible, would be avoiding anymore night drives as it is always safer to drive in the morning than night. Nevertheless, this night drive would always remain as a wonderful memory for rest of my life.

[THE END]