Tag: Places

A Pensieve in a Muggle world

It’s always a good time to give up your general indifference, get rid of recklessness in the name of independence and start feeling a little responsible once in a while. That said, you can only learn to be responsible towards others once you can solely and wholly feel responsible towards your own actions, accountable for your life decisions and answerable to your ever-confronting self doubts. While you can always benefit through your professional engagements to achieve this, there’s another non-methodical, relatively deeper plunge that you can dare to take. Travel .Travel across boundaries and horizons and languages and cultures.

The deal kicks off with the planning itself. You are already levelling up in your responsibility-meter as you chalk out an entire roadmap for the trip, book tickets and hotel rooms at the best price, pack in necessary medications for emergencies, prepare a checklist for all the cuisines to try and work out a line-up of all the locations sequentially. If you are doing this in your early twenties, do it more often. If you’re doing this in your mid or late-twenties, you are already running late. In hindsight, you’ll realize that you could have certainly started earlier.

Image Credit: Sumaiya

All things said and done, now you have taken charge. The dates are finalized, the place is fixed and your leave has been granted as well. But then there’s the glitch. To balance out anticipation, there must be a glitch. Do you have friends who get cold feet at the last moment? Too many rain-checks all of a sudden? Or colleagues whose schedules turn super busy as the time for booking the tickets approaches? Or family that takes up the longest time to make up their minds? And amidst all of this, you have to cancel out on your plan and on yourself? Don’t.

Here’s the amendment : Travel Solo.

The thought of travelling alone morphed with the society’s forced categorization of unsafe places, a ‘proper’ age, the weaker sex and much more can be a little daunting initially but it has everything to give you the much needed push that you otherwise lack from sitting in your cubicle. You get to run your own show here. Want to go hiking? Go for it. Want to do Bungee jumping? Do it. It’s on you whether you want to cut some slack on your expenses or you want a satisfying budget trip. You can take take any number of detours, stop by as many halts as you want, wake up as early as you wish and start with the day. The perk of travelling alone is that you get to change your mind and your plan innumerable times without driving anyone crazy. Revel in this freedom. Always carry a book, a good playlist and lots of snacks to nibble on if you ever feel lonely. Run into familiar inhibitions in unfamiliar people and learn that you aren’t the only one fighting. Document your journey with good photography instead of check-ins. Avoid social media and phone calls except notifying your extremely anxious mom and terribly worked-up dad about your whereabouts from time to time. When you are on your own, you will realize that being responsible becomes liberating in itself.

Allow newer establishments to teach you about older civilizations. Pick up words from the local language, strike up conversations with strangers. Search for the place’s culinary identity, do your taste buds a little favour. Inform yourself about the rooted prejudices of the place. Find out how the system along with its people are trying to curb it. Travelling alone is one of the finest ways to increase your resourcefulness. Don’t think of it as a trip. Think of it as a process to grow independently.

If you’re in love, take the distance to see how far love travels and allow that to make powerful revelations to you. If you are heartbroken, let travelling help you find some respite and maybe, even closure with time. Now, if you are single and lucky, you might come across a little holiday romance too. If you are very lucky, it might materialize into something serious but the odds are very low and there’s a reason why it should be. The prospect of meeting new people, preferably among the likes of Juan Antonio, while travelling is always thrilling and you might even be swept off your feet by a sexy accent or a heavy voice but that is no prerequisite of love and by the time you realize that, it’s already late. So be seduced by it, just don’t fall for it. Use travelling to let go of your baggage, not take in some more. Try to strike a balance between your vulnerability and self-preservation during the trip. Know whom to let in. Know where to stop. If you don’t want anything rash, travel solo and eventually learn to say ‘No’. Take care of yourself in new cities at nights. Do a lot of bar-hopping but be watchful of your drinks. Keep an eye on your valuables. Your responsibility-meter is beaming right now.

Scream your lungs out at the top of a quiet hill. Seek solace at the heart of a new city. Travel alone to lose yourself once. Travel alone and find yourself again.

It’s always a good time to start. Travelling helps you do real-time adulting without the pointless philosophizing part. Give your mundane day a little structure and your frayed life a little hope. While you are coming out of a pub and captioning the night(that you are possibly not going to remember the next morning post-hangover) as #YOLO, there are people with their backpacks on who are literally making the most out of it. No trip is ephemeral on its memory count. You get to decide the ones you will bring back home. Keep a diary, upload the videos, make a scrapbook, start a travel blog. Do things to make sure your time-stamped photos live on forever and not just digitally. Get in there to share your experiences with people who will never be able to afford a trip . Make yourself heard. Write a book. Release your stories out. Let the universe create a cosmic ‘Pensieve‘ for you and others to have a full retrospect of the beautiful life you crafted out of small paychecks and larger than life goals.

My team in ILP!


When I look back at the last three months, I see a journey that has components of a lifetime…
I am not a fan of travelling, but even I would have to admit, it was a sort of essential experience to have. It was a different journey altogether. We wanted to learn; it wasn’t like it was for an exam or something. It was the start and we all wanted to make something out of it. We tasted apartment lifestyle and it was awesome. We acquiesced to the 9 to 6 schedule and so upon returning, all that

we could do was to play table-tennis. Some became serious players, while for some, it remained a kind of mini-badminton. During the learning, I found a group that, in simple words, was the most positive team (not group), that I have ever seen. I will accept that at start, we weren’t the most enthusiastic of batches, because  we all had our college groups with us, and hanging out with them more often, logically made sense. But as soon as we realized that our time to disband has come, everyone was like in a hurry to get to know about each other. We hanged out more often with each other and started making memories. We joined Gujaratis in their celebrations in garba, executed a night out starting with open-theatre and ending with dozing off at office canteen at 7 in the morning, going out for dinners more often than usual and many such more in relatively short span of time.
On the final day, we bid goodbye to various people, saw them crying, became part of their commotion.
Finally, when my time arrived, I felt like something was missing, which is a strong testament that I will seriously miss this part of life. I saw a lot of people leaving with smiles going home and on the contrary, saw people crying, on being separated from their long known buddies. Got an opportunity to meet various different kinds of people, some introverts like me, some dynamic extroverts, some exemplary team workers.
When you leave such a group that has been conflict free and remained positive during the entire tenure, you feel like its not enough yet, you need some more time. Since, we became a team a little late, so there were few interactions that were still incomplete; some wanted to make the most of the time, some wanted the memories to stay forever, while some wanted to stay back at any cost. But in the end, we all had to move on because career was calling. Everyone departed with the words ‘touch me rehna’.
There are times that you like to remember, as in that would make you smile, but you don’t want to relive those again, it was good when it happened, that’s all. And then there are memories that you want to relive over and over again. This was one of those times.

The unforgettable journey has made me stronger in multitudes of skills and that’s something that everyone would agree to. It has been like a gift that will help me in different ways. The gift that is the memory, laden with useful skills and great friends.
(With inputs from Geek )

Life at Gorakhpur

Gorakhpur…….my birth place, where I was born, grew up in the early decade of the 21st century, but now leaving for the sake of my future, I mean to study. Situated in the eastern UP, this city has everything a big city has, but for the skyscrapers (and the home delivery by Domino’s Pizza which I kinda have loved to have in this city). Its a big city in terms of the land, but the technically still to fully called a ‘mahanagar’. Its got its name from a saint named Gorakhsnath, who founded the city.
            Well, I can’t tell you about the history & geography about this city, but can certainly give reasons why one should visit here atleast once.
Starting about the things that will make people here feel good is the fact that it is the headquarter of north-east railways. This city is famous for its ‘Bhaiyyaji log’ & many films & TV serials have made several hit shows on our bhaiyyaji. The common language here is Hindi mixed with a little bhojpuri. Even many comedians found their roots from Gorakhpur.
            Places of interest here are The Gorakhnath Temple, The Taramandal (Planetorium), Gita Vatika, Gita Press, and many more including the new city mall(a very small mall which was like a feather in the cap), adding to the charm of Gorakhpur. Students are seen enjoying their evening either with a movie or just chilling up.
The nightlife is at an inactive stage, coz there aren’t many who like it.
The people here like to comment, they have an opinion for virtually everything in the world……even a layman may give you an expert opinion on a crashed NASA shuttle. On the contrary, it has been a constant provider of natural talents from all walks of life, be it Premchand from literature, Syed Modi from badminton, Diwakar Ram from hockey etc..
Premchand stories has long been the inspiration for the young tots & even the teenagers. The themes of his stories really pour some thoughts in one’s mind, & his stories on the poor farmers & other ignorant class of people ought us to think about them.
One more interesting fact about Gita Press is that it is the publisher of many Hindu holy texts, including the Bhagvad Gita. The Press was the first to publish the text as a book; prior to this the Gita existed solely in the oral tradition of the Brahmin. Gita press holds a place in the Guinness book of world records as the largest publisher of religious books in the world in terms of volume.
          In educational field, Gorakhpur has a world class DDU University and MMM Engineering college which gathers the upper cream of students.
In a nutshell, you can visit here as a tourist, as a guest(to your own relative, ofcourse) or in whichever way you like, but you will get a mix of traditions, people living a colourful life.