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.

Visit to Lalbaugcha Raja 2013

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It is September and since last one week, the 10 day Ganesh festival is on in Mumbai and rest of the country. Last week I had the opportunity to visit Lalbaugcha Raja in Parel. Lalbaugcha Raja is one of Mumbai’s most famous Ganapati’s and attracts hordes of people every day while the festival is on. I It is believed that this Idol of Lord Ganesha is Navsacha Ganpati (which means the fulfiller of all wishes) and hence over 1.5 million people visit this Ganesh Pandal daily during the 10 day Ganesh festival. Soon Lalbaugcha Raja may become a place of pilgrimage. My tryst with visiting Lalbaugcha Raja started 3 years back when I decided to go and visit, since I had heard a lot of people visit the pandal and because it is so famous. Since then I have been going there every year. The entire madness around the place attracts me. There are so many people just waiting to get a glimpse of the Lord. There is always a mad rush to visit. For the past years, I used to visit early in the morning in the anticipation of fewer people, but was proven wrong. So this year, I decided to visit around midnight. As soon as I crossed Curry Road bridge, I was amazed to see throngs of people just walking towards Lalbaugcha Raja. I have never seen so many people gathered in this part of the town during this time of the night. It seemed that all the people from Mumbai were there. In this I decided to call up my friend Prakash and asked him to come along with me. Luckily Prakash knew one of the volunteers who manage crowds and we could enter the VIP lane, which was sparsely populated and managed to pray silently for some time. This isn’t the case when you are standing in the other two lines. You get jostled, pushed etc, which hardly allows any chance of a silent, peaceful prayer. The entire experience this year was just too good and couldn’t have been possible if my friend didn’t know a volunteer there.

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Trek to Asherigad fort

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Last Sunday we, me and 5 of my friends, decided to go to trekking to Asherigad fort. The fort is atleast 800 years old and was rebuilt by Portuguese when they had captured the fort. In 1737, Peshwa won this fort during his campaign of the Konkan and in 1818 this fort came under the British rule. We had two places in mind before commencing the trek – Gorakshgard or Asherigad. Since some people had already done Gorakshgard, we decided to go to Asherigad. Asherigad is approx. 80 kms from Mumbai. Since there were 6 of us, we decided to take a car and a bike. Since the monsoons are almost over, I wanted to take the bike out for a long ride and decided to take my bike. We started the journey at around 745am in the morning and reached the base village (Khodkona) at 10:15am after having a healthy breakfast. Since this was our first time trekking here, we decided to hire a local guide who would take us to the top. I read quite a few blogs which mentioned that there are signs showing direction to the top and back all along the route, I was only able to see few very signs.

The trek begins from the village and the first 30-40 mins are relatively easy as the ground is flat and ascend is not steep. But as we started walking deeper and deeper through the forest, we were practically climbing on the rocks and going up. We reached a spot which was the most difficult part of the entire trek as the climb there is nearly 90 degrees. There is a ladder upon which we had to climb. However, we had still had to lift our entire bodies to reach climb the rock as the ladder covered only 80% of the climb for that rock. Post passing the only major hurdle so far, we covered the rest of the climb relatively easily. The entire uphill climb lasted for almost 3 hours and by the time we got there we were dead tired and had exhausted our supplies of drinking water. Luckily, there is a fresh water lake on the top, where the water is very cold and clean. We filled our water bottles there and decided to rest by the lake for a few minutes.

The path downhill was challenging but relatively easy as we knew the route by now. We were able to reach the base village in 2 hours 20 minutes. We were fortunate as it didn’t rain else it would have been a very difficult trek and a lot of broken bones. Overall it was a good trek and I enjoyed every bit of it.

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The India I had hoped for..

~ Akshay ~ 1 Comment

As most of the people are aware, in the last few weeks the Indian Rupee has lost almost 20% of its value when compared with the US dollar and other currencies the world over. I am not writing this post to discuss on that. We already have those discussions everyday with a whole lot of expert panels on TV and news papers. I am writing this from the perspective of what India should have been. I went to the US for my undergraduate studies, worked for a period of 8-10 months after my graduation and due to visa expiring, could not continue my stay over there. I kept working for the same organization while in India and on the same project. During those times, I believe I had a choice to return back to the US. But I chose not to, because I believed in the promise of India. I felt things were changing for the better, things were improving, the country was moving towards modernization. Poverty was reducing, income was rising across all sectors. The standard of living across the length and breadth of the country was changing for the better. I felt the government of India was finally doing the right things and which was in the interest of the nation. India was a country on the rise and I wanted to ride the wave and be a part of the change. I was 24 then.

But after 7 years of staying here, I have realized the more things change, more they remain the same. There is still widespread corruption amongst all walks in life. The government still indulges in vote bank politics. They still do not have the strength or the capability to take tough decisions – decisions which would address the problems that the country is currently facing. We still pass reforms which are motivated only to get votes. From a security perspective, things are moving from bad to worst. Every time my wife leaves work late at night, I am worried for her security. Common man still faces difficulty in filing complaints. They are being made from one police station to another on the pretext of ‘right jurisdiction’. Politicians shunting out honest officers, people who are willing to make a change to remote areas. We are still not able to respond to any terrorist activity in the country. We are not able to defend ourselves from constant intrusions from Pakistan and China. Economically, we are the worst performing currency in Asia. Job markets are drying, manufacturing sector is almost dead or stagnant. Nothing is being done to revive the same. Red tape prevents setting up of new industries, and now with the Land Act, it is going to be even more difficult. The list goes on and on.

I am 31 now and I realize that the India which I had hoped for, was an illusion and that illusion has faded away.

Rant on HDFC Bank

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I am sitting here at HDFC BANK which happens to be one of the best banks in India to work with. I am here because I need a loan account statement, something which HDFC doesn’t offer online. I am not sure why they would not offer such a basic service on net banking to the customer. At the same time, they only have 3 retail loan branches in Mumbai and that means it is always crowded and results in long wait time for everyone. I have already wasted 20 mins just waiting for my number to be called, all for a statement which they wouldn’t provide on online banking.

The other option is to use phone banking and place a request and they would take 7 working days to send the letter. Talk about some efficiency of work. I believe that a lot of the services which they are currently offering can also be offered online and this would result in considerable saving of time for the consumer and at the same time will reduce some manpower costs for the bank.

Leh trek update #6 – Hampta Pass

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Our journey to Jorba began at 7am in the morning. To get to Jorba, we had to get prior approval from the authorities here. The area falls under Allan Duhugan Hydro Power plant and prior approval is needed to trespass the area. There is another route also which can be taken via the Prini village, but it is a little longer. However no approval is needed on that route. Our driver dropped us at the start point at 815am in the morning. We encountered foggy weather while on our climb in the vehicle and also when we started walking. Our first target was to reach the Chika base camp and then continue onwards and reach Bhalu ka Ghera and camp there for the night. With this in mind, we started walking but with as we were not used to carrying so much weight and walking, frequent breaks were needed. After walking for about 2 hours, we managed to reach the Chika. We rested for a few minutes there and absorbed the surroundings. The valley looks beautiful with the river flowing next to it and is an ideal place to do some landscape photography.

We then moved towards our next target which was Bhalu ka Ghera. There is a bridge which needs to be crossed to continue the onward journey. The best way to find the bridge would be to continue walking on the river bank, however, we were walking quite away from the river bank and missed it by a long distance. We reached a place where we couldn’t go any further and then realized that we have missed it. We back tracked our way and finally found the 2 bridges. The bridges are basically stones put on 2 logs of wood with water flowing beneath. They are however, very easy to cross. However, we had one person in our group who was afraid to cross it and it took us approx. 45 mins to cross the 2 bridges. So in all we lost approximately 2 hours in just locating and crossing the bridge.
After the crossing the river, we continued walking towards our destination. The walk took us through green pastures and then through rocks. Walking with a heavy back pack and on the rocks is one of the most difficult climbs which i have done. We kept walking until we reached another river crossing and once again a lot of time was wasted in crossing the bridge. We were already running behind schedule and such wastages were not helping us. Me and Saurav then started walking faster, even with the heaviest of the bags, we were moving a lot more faster. But the rest of the guys couldn’t cope up with the pace and we would have to wait for them to join. We were now racing against time as the sunset was fast approaching and we were no where near the camp site. We urged the rest of the guys to move faster, but it was of no use. We arrived at our last river crossing but it was too late in the evening for us to cross as the light was fading away really fast. We then decided to camp at the river bed itself. The river bed was not flat and full of stones, large and small. In the fast fading light, we started to set up the tent with Saurav and me really going at it to ensure that the tent is ready. Even though we were carrying 2 tents, there wasn’t enough space to set up another tent and it was decided that we would leave the bags outside and share the tent amongst the four of us.
By that point i was extremely exhausted and was in no condition to eat anything and decided to go ahead and sleep. The rest of the guys were trying to get the stove going so they could eat something. But after a while, they all decided to just go to sleep. That night was one of the most uncomfortable nights for me. I couldn’t sleep at all due to the stones and acidity. I was very surprised because i had hardly eaten anything but dates, cashews and almonds. I tried sleeping sideways but the rocks would start hurting. The only way to sleep was to sit up and close the eyes. I did that a few times but it was of hardly any use. It had started to rain now. The sound of rain and the raging river was something which I had never heard before and I can still remember that sound while I write this. Since I couldn’t sleep, I kept checking the time and hoping that the night would end soon and the morning would be bright and sunny.