Author: Akshay

I am Akshay Varma, a Project Manager who likes writing, taking pictures, and listening to music. I am mainly work with projects in transition and onboarding of new client projects and business transformation. I like writing about current affairs and how they effect me, my personal life and anything and everything which comes to my mind. I like landscape and bird photography. Humans as photographic subject don't attract me :). This is a personal blog and thoughts written here are my own and do not reflect/ represent those of the organization(s) that I am with in professional or personal capacity.

Day 44/ 365 – Phir Le Aya Dil

~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

Been listening to this song form the movie since last night and I feel it is one of the best songs/ ghazals out there. It has been sung beautifully by Rekha Bharadwaj.

Phir le aaya dil, Majboor kya kije
Raas na aaya, Rehna door kya kije
Dil keh raha,Usse maqammal kar bhi aao
Wo jo adhuri si, Baat baaki hai
Wo jo adhuri si, Yaad baaki hai
Karte hain hum, Aaj qabool kya kije
Ho gaye thi jo, Humse bhool kya kije
Dil keh raha, Usse mayassar, Kar bhi aao
Wo jo dabi si, Aas baaki hai
Wo jo dabi si, Aanch baaki hai
Kismat ko hai ye, Manzoor kya kije ye..
Milte rahe hum,Badastoor kya kije
Dil keh raha hai,Usse musalsal, Kar bhi aao,
Wo jo ruki si, Raah baaki hai
Wo jo ruki si, Chaah baaki hai
 
Translation (that isn’t half as good):
I return- my heart compelled, there was nothing I could do
For it didn’t quite agree with me, the staying away from you!
My heart tells me, that I should go
And find that incomplete, half lost memory
Of very long ago
I confess today, it cannot be undone
I admit to all mistakes, each and every one
The heart stirs again to a lost desire
Wants to stoke again, the embers
Of a dying fire
That’s the way fate would have it, there was nothing we could do
Our paths kept crossing, but in a way the world would want them to
My heart cannot still bid adieu
To that unfinished, stifled, yearning
For being with you…

Day 43/ 365 – England suffer another defeat

~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

England suffered yet another humiliating defeat at the hands of Australia in the 2nd Ashes test. Simply don’t understand what’s wrong with this team. Most of the articles that I have read online suggests that the team is fatigued, however, not sure how fatigue only applies to the English players, especially when you are winning. This Australian team has bounced back very well under the new coach, especially after their performances over the last couple of years. While they are nowhere near the Aussies of the old, they appear to be winning by bullying the English players by bowling short and into the body. Such tactics always used to work on teams from sub-continent, however, I am surprised that it has worked against the English players who I believe are used to playing on similar wickets. IMHO, the England team is paying just too much attention to one person and one type of bowling i.e. Mitchell Johnson and short pitch bowling. They need to get over it and stop trying to prove that they can play the pull shot. I think they need to check the video of the match where Sachin Tendulkar where he made 248 not out and the entire innings didn’t include any off drives – because Sachin decided to stop playing that shot altogether as he used to get out playing the shot. Similarly the English batsmen need to curb this habit of jumping around the crease like rabbits and trying to pull every short ball, else they are just going to perish.

The 3rd test is going to be played in Perth and while most people have written England off, I am hoping that they provide a fight. They just need to go back a few years and draw inspiration from team India beat Australia on the same ground after an eventful Sydney test. Lets see how the match turns out. I am hoping to see some amazing fast bowling from Mitchell Johnson and hopefully brilliant batting from KP, else it is good bye Ashes for England.

 

 

 

Day 41/ 365 – House Hunt continues

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After a lull of almost 5 months, I resumed house hunting a couple of weeks back. I am looking for something close to my house and prices in my area are simply too high. I went to check out a house at 15 mins walking distance from my current house. The house was a 1 room kitchen. The owner had converted the kitchen into a bedroom by converting the space in the passage into kitchen. The carpet area of the entire house was not more than 280 square feet, which is very tiny even by Mumbai standards. However, the location of the house was extremely good and the building was old with minimal water issues. But the price asked by the seller was really exorbitant. He was asking for Rs. 70,00,000 (70 lakhs). I was really surprised to hear the price and felt it was too high for the space which was available. I decided to measure the flat and it came only around 232 sq. feet. For such a small flat, I felt the asking price was too high and gave him an offer which he promptly refused. From there on, I moved to other flats and found the average sq. feet for 1 bedroom kitchen flats in my area is around 400-450 sq. feet  and prices range anywhere between 70 lakhs to 85 lakhs. Oh and this amount does not include stamp duty and registration money which needs to be paid to the state government (all for doing nothing).  I have been told by some agents to not calculate the price per sq.feet as it would always sound audacious. If I am considering buying a house in my area then the price I am paying is for the area.  It is like the cost you pay for living in Orange County or Fairfax County, but I am not staying in the area which is even remotely close to that, so paying such absurd amount of money is just being plain stupid. I even found some sellers who were asking 50% money in cash and remaining in cheque. I started to wonder, where do these people come from and how should I person like myself arrange so much money in cash. Anyways the search is still on and I am hoping that I should be able to find something of my liking, within my budget very soon. Or may be I should play some lottery and hope to get lucky one day!!!

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Day 40/ 365 – Nasik Sightseeing – Part II

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After our unsuccessful attempt to breach the defenses of the Gangapur dam, we started driving towards the city. While driving towards Gangapur dam, I didn’t recall taking any turns and thus continued driving straight. However, after driving for a few kms, I couldn’t recall seeing some of the landmarks on the road and felt I was lost. Well I was lost – but it turns out we had somehow reached the city and were on the College Road. After driving for a few mins we saw a row of footwear shops and my wife said we need to stop right here and do some shoe shopping. There is something about handbags and shoes which makes my wife absolutely crazy. So we parked in a nearby mall which had one of the narrowest ramps ever and headed out to shop. We shopped for a hour or so and identified some shops with really funny names (Pics below). It was already 2 pm and we were really starving. I was not able to find any good restaurants on the College Road – may be there are some in the by lanes – but on the main road I wasn’t able to find any and we didn’t want to eat fast food. Finally we found a place to eat and finished our lunch and then headed towards Shalimar (Panchvati).

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Takle = Bald
Takle = Bald

We took an rickshaw from College Road and got down at Shalimar. The best part of exploring any new city is by foot. We wanted to go towards Ganga ghat, Ram Kund, Lakshman Kund etc. and kept asking directions from various people and walked right through the market area. Seeing the market area, my wife once again got into a shopping spree – but thankfully we didn’t end up spending a lot of time there. We finally reached our destination and I was really surprised to see people taking a dip in the dirty Godavari river – all in the name of religion. We saw a lot of people doing puja’s  and all. Panchavati has significant religious significance for Hindus with a temple complex on the bend of the Godavari river, which includes Kalaram Temple. It is a pilgrimage site, with the Kumbh Mela, the largest peaceful gathering in the world – involving over 100 million people in 2013, taking place here once every twelve years in rotation with Haridwar, Allahabad, and Ujjain. In Hindu theology, as outlined in the epic Ramayana, Panchavati was the place in the forest of Dandakaranya (Danda Kingdom), where Rama built his home along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman during their period of exile in the wilderness. Panchavati literally means “a garden of five banyan trees”. These trees are said to have been there during the exile of Lord Rama. However, we couldn’t find the trees. We did ask a couple of people who confirmed their existence somewhere on the other side of the road. But we didn’t really decide to check it out. We also came across vegetable market right there. The best part of Nasik is, the vegetables and grape products are really cheap. Since we had parked our car in a mall on the College Road, we didn’t buy vegetables from this market. However, we did end up buying raisins from there.  We spent quite sometime over there and then decided to continue shopping in the main market area. We roamed around the market for some time and then headed back towards College Road to pick up the car.

It was around 530pm by the time we picked up the car. We then decided to make an impromptu trip to Deolali. Apparently, I had heard a lot of good things about this place and decided to explore the place. The drive to Deolali was full of traffic and we reached the place after almost an hour of driving. As soon as you enter Deolali, you are surrounded by sanatoriums on both sides of the street. We kept driving further ahead in the anticipation of finding some good looking points etc. However, it had gotten dark by then and there was no point in going any further. We then decided to go check out the Levitt market as we had heard a lot about this place. Levitt market is a place where you can find branded clothes at reasonable prices. However, what we saw was very different to what we had read. The market is relatively small and most of the shop keepers have the same stuff and the prices are relatively high too. We also explored a local military shop and Empire bakery. We got cakes, wine biscuits etc from the bakery and it is good. We then decided to head back to Nasik and as usual got lost in the between. Deolali, by the way, also has a large presence of Indian Air Force military station and by mistake we entered the military area. We asked someone inside who gave us directions which required us to go out through the main gate which was barricaded – so while coming out of the gate – the soldier started calling me shahab (Sir) and gave us a smile. I think he thought that we were someone from Air Force and not civilians. For a moment I was very surprised and then realized that he probably would have got confused with someone else. We quickly made our way out and then found the road and returned super exhausted to Nasik. Overall it was a good day spent.

Day 39/ 365 – Nasik sightseeing Part I

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After our wonderful day at Sula Vineyards, the next day we decided to cover some of the religious places for which Nasik is famous for. Unlike the previous day, we decided to head out early today since it was a Saturday and we knew the temples could get crowded. We left around 8am in the morning to Trimbakeshwar Shiva temple – which is also one of the 12 Jyotrilingas. You can read about details here. The drive to Trimbakeshwar is good and the roads are nice. Since we had a relatively early morning start, the weather outside was also cool and I enjoyed driving on that road. The temple is around 30 kms from where we were staying and it took us approx. 45 mins to reach the place. You are allowed to park in one of the streets inside the temple complex. There is also a parking area which is some distance away from the temple – but is walk able. We decided to park inside the temple complex. On reaching the temple, we were informed that you cannot take camera’s and mobile phones inside and taking pictures of the temple is not allowed. The temple is really beautiful with intricate art work done on the outside. I was a bit surprised that not a lot of people were present in the temple, which worked out well for us as we were able to pray in peace.  The sad part was I couldn’t take pictures and I was really looking forward to taking pictures there. Behind the temple lane, there is a route to go Brahmagiri mountains – the origin of river Godavari. We wanted to trek there, but it was going to take approx. 4 hours to finish the trek and hence decided against it.

After visiting the temple, we decided to visit the Coin Museum which was en route to Nasik city. The coin museum is maintained by Indian Institute of Numismatic studies and was reasonably maintained. The collection that they had was also alright, I didn’t find it very good – but my wife did, so don’t know. It is worth visiting once though. The entrance fee is Rs. 10 per person and you can take pictures inside. The collection includes coins from 1st century BC until the latest currency issued by the Government of India. I was very surprised to know that each kingdom had their own currency and was wondering how or what was the exchange rate for those currencies in that period. Whether the one currency could be used in different kingdoms, if yes – how did it work. I am sure there must be some research on this – however, I have yet to come across it. We finished touring the museum in approx. 45 mins and then decided to head back to the city.

On our way to the city, we decided to make an impromptu trip to the Gangapur dam. The dam is located on way to Sula Vineyards and is very scenic. However, to visit the dam you need to take prior permission from the Chief Executive Engineer, P.W.D. Trimbak Road, Nashik. We didn’t have any permission and were just trying our luck. We found our destination after 30 mins of driving and found an open gate. I was hoping that probably the God’s have been kind to me today and I will get to see the dam without any permission. We walked through the gate and after a few meters heard someone calling us from behind. We walked back and the person asked to show the permission document. I said I don’t have any and I just want to go and see the place and take some pictures. He flat out refused saying that without  permission you cannot enter inside. Apparently a couple of years ago, some students had committed suicide at the dam and since then you need to take permission to the visit the place. With a heavy heart, we turned around and started driving towards the city.

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Traimbakeshwar Shiva Temple
Gangapur dam
Gangapur dam

Day 38/ 365 – Trip to Sula Vineyards

~ Akshay ~ 1 Comment

The next day we decided to visit Sula Vineyards. However, as mentioned in my previous post we were staying in my friend’s empty apartment. Since we arrived late the previous evening, there was no one to clean up the place. So today morning, I called up my friend and asked him if he knew someone who would clean the place. The house cleaning person arrived after one hour and took almost an hour to clean the place up. In the mean time, I went to the local grocery store and got some Maggie for breakfast. We prepared breakfast, waited for the house cleaning person to finish his work, and then got ready to leave. By the time we left, it was almost 2 pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I tried searching the route on the Here Maps of my Nokia Lumia 620, but was not able to find one (There needs to be Google maps app for Windows). So we relied on the old Indian way – which is ask for guidance and route. After asking a couple of people and getting lost once, we finally found our way to the Sula Vineyards. Once we left the main road, the drive to the Vineyards is quite pleasant and you enjoy driving here through a couple of little villages which fall on the route. We reached our destination around 3:00pm and registered for wine tasting and facility tour for 3:30pm. We registered for 6 wine tasting which cost us Rs. 250 per person. The tour of the facility is short and brief. The best part is the wine tasting part. We tried 6 different wines – I don’t remember the names of all – but there was a sparkling wine, three white wines, couple of red ones – Dindori and Rasa. The tour guide taught us in brief as how to recognize an old wine from a younger wine based on its color (tilt the glass against light – lighter the shade younger the wine for white wines – opposite is true for Red wines), how to smell the aroma of the wine (swirl the wine in the glass for a few seconds and then smell) to even how to hold the wine glass (don’t hold the glass by the palm). The entire tour lasted for 45 mins and was quite educational and fun. However, we didn’t get to crush grapes as it isn’t grape season yet. Post our wine tour, we decided to buy wines for family and friends. We also ended up buying Grape seed oil. Apparently it is good for cooking and can be used in salads as well vegetable cooking. We spent around 2 hours at Sula Vineyards, before deciding to head out towards Nasik city.  There is also a resort in case people wish to stay over for the night, however, being Friday it was going to cost us Rs. 6500 per couple and hence we decided to skip it.

The drive towards Nasik city in the evening was extremely chaotic. The problem which most car drivers in India would face in any tier 2 cities is the number of the bikes which are on the road. Nasik is no exception to the rule and there are plenty of two wheelers on the city roads and one has to be extremely careful while driving. We were extremely hungry when we reached the main highway and once again decided to halt at Kolhapur Express for an early dinner. After having a sumptuous dinner, we decided to explore the city via car. Big mistake!!! Since we didn’t know where we wanted to go, we just kept driving aimlessly and got stuck in multiple traffic junctions and at one time were thoroughly lost in the Panchvati area. We finally managed to find our way out (thanks to the GPS) and then decided to head back home with plans for next day ready. Next destination – Trimbakeshwar temple, Coin Museum, Panchvati and Deolali. (Pics to follow later)

Day 37/ 365 – Drive to Nasik

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Since I have an extended weekend, me and my wife after a lot of deliberations (yes/ no) decided to go to Nasik for the weekend. Nasik is approximately 172 kms from Mumbai. One of the reasons we chose Nasik over other locations was that one of my friends has an empty apartment on the outskirts of the city which we could use and save some money on the stay. Other than that, there are plenty of things Nasik has to offer and we decided to explore it to the fullest. Also it was our (me and wife together) first holiday for this year. We keep traveling with friends, but this time it was just us and we were looking forward to the time together. We left for Nasik around 3:30pm. After finishing some petty work on the way and picking up the house keys from my friend, we were finally on our way to Nasik around 5pm. The drive to Nasik is very nice. The roads are good and the scenery is excellent. There was a lot of traffic near Bhiwandi and Kalyan junction, but post that there was hardly any traffic and it was a pleasure to drive on. We took a break near Asangaon at a rest area – they had Dominos, KFC and other variety of food over there. In between, we came across Kasara Ghat and it was my first ever experience of driving on a proper ghat. The best part of the drive on the ghat was that it was unidirectional – no two way traffic. That really helped in negotiating some of the curves. We reached my friend’s place around 8:20pm and waited for him for 30 mins to give us further directions. Once we got the next set of directions, we reached within 10 mins and unloaded the car and decided to go find dinner. I had visited Nasik earlier (may be around 7 years ago), but a lot of things have changed since then. We wanted to find a local dinner place where we can eat authentic Maharashtrian food. The sad part about travel nowadays is that anywhere you go, all you get pizza, dosa, idli, pav bhaji, Punjabi, and Chinese food. In this rat race to get customers, the local cuisine of the area is lost. I call it the influence of the traveling Gujaratis. I will write a detailed post on that later. We really wanted something local and went about finding it. Luckily, we didn’t have to drive too far and found a local food place called as Kolhapur Express which serves authentic Maharashtrian food. They have thali system (they have 2-3 varieties of dishes, chapatti, sweet, rice and curry (dal for veg) all served in a single plate – picture below)and have a variety of thalis – chicken, mutton, fish, prawn, eggs, and veg. For vegetarians, there isn’t much option to choose from. However, that’s expected. The food was good and after dinner we decided to call it a day. Next stop – Sula Vineyards.

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Day 36/ 365 – Happy Thanksgiving

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All these posts were written earlier, but it didn’t have a chance to post hence posting everything now.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Not sure how many of  you observe the Thanksgiving holiday, but it is one of the biggest holidays in the US. Since I have been working US holiday calendar (I know you all know about it by now), I have Thanksgiving holidays, thought why not write about the holiday. Thanksgiving is all about being with the family and celebrating with them. I remember one Thanksgiving where my roommate, Mark, had invited me and Samer for Thanksgiving lunch at his home somewhere near Chesapeake Bay in Maryland (This was around 10 years back – so my memory about the event is not too fresh). The drive down to his house was really awesome, though we did hit a deer on the way and the car had a big dent. The deer appeared all of a sudden and even though we were driving around 40 mph, couldn’t avoid the hit. We went to check on the deer and it lay whimpering on the side of the road. Since, there was no option but to go ahead we reached Marks dad’s house. I believe the house was entire built by his dad brick by brick and I was amazed to see that. Here in India, we have laborers’ to do all that work for us, so I was really surprised to know that his dad built the whole house himself. Anyways, we were greeted warmly by Mark’s parents and we informed them of the incident. For lunch, his mom had prepared a sumptuous meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet corn, various fall vegetables (mainly various kinds of squashes), and pie (not sure which type – mostly pumpkin). It was one of the best meals I ever had. This was the first time I had stuffing and since then I always used to go to the superstore and get stuffing and eat it as lunch – whenever there was no option. After the meal, we decided to laze around and watch some Thanksgiving parade before calling it a day. It was one of my best experiences ever. 

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Day 35/ 365 – Just travel

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Since change of jobs a couple of months ago, I have been following the US holiday calendar. As many of you would be aware this is the Thanksgiving week and hence I have Thursday and Friday off. Taking advantage of the extra long weekend, I am hoping to go away for the weekend. Earlier in the day, I was discussing with my mom that I wish I could leave everything and just travel the world. That would be such an awesome thing to do. Sure traveling the world requires a lot of money and there are people who save quite a bit of money before they start traveling. Earning money while traveling to different places in the world would be such a thing. I really enjoy traveling, exploring new places, new people, local culture and cuisines (vegetarian – of course). It just thrills me to imagine that one day I would be traveling to the Pyramids, enjoying the boat ride over the Nile river, and the next day exploring the romantic city of Paris. That would be one of the best things in life to do – just travel. There are so many places to explore and so little time. A career in travel industry would have been awesome. While we (me and Saurav) were trekking through the Hampta Pass, the thought did strike us. The valley was so beautiful and everything about nature was just so nice, colorful and open compared to our desk jobs. We wanted to set up shop in Manali and offer trekking tours to people. May be we will do that, maybe we wont. Unfortunately, at this stage of my life, I am not sure if I would be able to switch careers. However, I do want to travel the world. May be after I have earned enough, I would probably call it a day and just set about exploring the world. In the mean time, I guess I will make do with being a project manager and enjoying vacations once in a year.

DSC00180 DSC00213 DSC00259 IMG_3303 IMG_3627Image courtesy Saurav Roy