Eurotrip : Part 2

So we continue from where I had left before...The Oktoberfest 2007

If you are in Europe during this time of the year you cannot miss Oktoberfest. Tents afters tents filled with beer drinking revelers is what one might not see on a day to day basis. The entire experience was just awesome. I had just tasted beer once before attending oktoberfest and I must I was no big fan of the beverage going into the fest...but that was about the change. Bavaria-the region of Germany which boasts of the finest beer - is where all the big breweries that take part in the fest originate from and they surely know their business.

So there we were, me and sahu, completely exhausted from the overnite train journey from Paris Gare du nord to Munchen but in extreme hurry to get a decent spot in one of the many tents. Luckily we were on time and got a chance ot take a look of couple of the tents before zeroing on the HB one. Being the early entrants into the tent we thought of getting sober before the others came in. So both of us had a 1 litre mug of HB beer and I must say that it was good. Giving us company were two Italians from Verona. Though the company kept changing from Italians to Canadian chicks to Irish cricket fans to French mountaineer the high was perennially there.

The Indian team had recently won the T20 world cup and gave the two weakest members in the tent-me and sahu- to take a shot at the huge Australian contingent :). The 8 hours stay also saw lots of expletives being shouted about our great neighbor- pakistan (I don't think the capital P is necessary for this country)- from a group of cricket loving Irish fans, with little support form us.

After 4 and half litres of bawarian beer and self realization of the fact that we had to leave for Salzburg and were in no physical condition to do so, me and Sahu finally bid adieu to our friends in crime and swayed back to the Station. I remember us ordering a veg pizza somewhere between here and there but who cares!. Thanks to our Eurail Youth Pass (A must for every student traveling on exchange) we got a ticket to slazburg. I decided to get back to my senses by gulping in a starbucks mocha but it did not make much of a difference.

You think thats the end of it? wait up...we somehow managed to spot our seats and rested our asses there just to find a hot chick and her friend come sit next to us :) and how did we know they were there?...They were the ones to wake us up at Salzburg !!! (Expected sparks to fly?Well! sorry for the disappointment)

Eurotrip

Hi Reader,

Its been a long long time since I have posted something on my blog. Couple of reasons for that, for one I did not have much to write about and second and the important reason I did not have the patience to type what I wanted to :)

But now I have both. Due to a stroke of luck I happened to get a chance to travel to Europe on an exchange program and above that got a scholarship that funds my travel across this continent :)

So where do I start? Reached Paris on the 25th of september and happened to get a free acco and merc as a cab to travel around. Thats a grand start one might think but when you are in Europe nothing is grand enough.

So I reach my insti on the 27th and find out that I need to take only 4 courses which leaves me with 5 full weeks to travel around. WOW!!!

Why wait I said and the very first weekend we travelled to brussels and Bordeux. Lets look at each one at a time. Brussels , as many European cities, has this great blend between traditional and modern architecture. Huge monuments that take your breath away to the dazzling glass structures that Might make u feel th building u saw before was from a stone age. Two of my most passionate activities very touched upon in Brussels. One was when we went to the autoworld museum and the second the trip to the comic museum. The entire collection of cars and bikes from over a century was everything an automobile enthusiast might want to see and there are no words to explain the beauty of the original artwork of the great cartoonists.

From Brussels we went to Borduex the "Wine Capital of the world". With the entire IIMC junta there it wa sgreat fun and the great St. Emillion wine just made the entire trip even better.

Today as I'm writting this I took part in the Oktoberfest and will add the snaps very soon. The cafe is closing now...rest is next.

Telugu flicks rock !!!

If you are a southie and ever visit Kolkata...GO TO KOMALA VILAS (KV). period.

KV is this pleasure retreat for the (good illad) food deprived junta of IIMC.It has become this weekly tradition of ours to visit KV and drown our management learning pressures in hot sambhar, mini idlis, appam, adai aviyal, thali with unlimited applam(papad) and last but not the least a steaming hot cup of Kaapi. Boy! I'm already hungry.

In one of these sessions to KV the discussion drifted towards movies and as usual my Tam friend applauded the brilliant performance of Ranji in his latest flick SIVAJI. I forgot to mention we all went for the first day first show of sivaji here in kolkata. On a personal front,I thought that the heroine was under utilized and the glimpses of talent that she showed in every dance number (unfortunately her only contribution) were breath-taking.

Neways, the discussion then moved on to Telugu films papularly known as GULT movies. I had recently seen the movie "Bommerellu" and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it, considering the fact that I don't understand telugu. My first encounter with GULT came when I was in Hyderabad and my circle of friends were all ardent GULT movie lovers. During my 8 month stay in Hyd. I went for 2 gult movies in the theatre nad one of them was a "Cheeru"starrer. Both of them were raw action packed films and true entertainers going by the crowd hysteria that could be seen in the theatre.

My early impression about gult movies, I must say, wasn’t that great. There is this 20 mins cycle of events that repeat themselves 9 times to complete the 3 hour duration. The split-up of those 20 mins are as follows: Comedy scene (if with heroine part romantic), a song sequence, villain pitching in with his antics, an emotional angle where the hero swears to take revenge and as would be expected the action sequence. All this with a background score that too on dolby surround sound, the crowd has to go bonkers and which it does.

Bommerellu was a deviation and I recommend it for any movie buff. But hardly did I know that there was a different angle to gult movies. A friend of mine over the dinner conversation (we still haven’t left KV) enlightened me about the attitude that has to be developed to appreciate them. One has to have an open mind and should be receptive to the ideology behind such movies, the audience that they cater to etc. With this new outlook I saw “Athadu”,a Mahesh babu starrer, I in my sanest self saw that I really enjoyed it J

The Living dead...

Yesterday while surfing through channels on the idiot box I came across this weird Piece of news. There is this government servant in Delhi who has been declared dead and has a death certificate but is very much alive. This realization came to this person concerned when he saw a 3 storey bunglow built on his land by someone else!!! (Khosla ka ghosla in real life). While digging deep into the papers he came to know that someone pretending to be his son had proclaimed him to be dead and got a death certificate issued :O

The idea about telling you this is not that this incident was funny or to highlight the kind of lawlessness that is rampant in India. The thing that caught my interest was what can a man do when he is alive but has been officially declared dead?

I guess he can do a lot. I feel I'm correct when I say that the law governs/is meant only for the living. If this premise is true that makes this person concerned the most powerful man as he is above the law !!! So what can he do now? get away with a murder telling that a dead man can't kill someone, u can't arrest a dead man, evade tax laws and not pay income tax (what a relief!)and just go around breaking whatever law that has been made for the living :)

What a cool situation to be in? I guess this is an area that has lots of exploration to be done. What if what I said was true and no law exists? I guess we will have a new thriving business in the most law abiding state of Bihar and see all Netas and Bhais fooling around with their death certificates in hand. Now its easy to get away with crime in Bihar even without this but look at the possibilities that this opens up for emerging young guns of the state !!!

God save India.

Between the Line...

Ever felt this drive in you to accomplish something? I guess most of us have.

Ever felt this drive to accomplish something that you dearly wanted to do? I guess most of us haven't.

The are reasons for the thought process behind the second statement. You might completely disagree with this but I feel most of us are driven by the goals that others set for us. Top the class, get a slot 0 job, have a girl friend ;) etc. While we are at it we tend to loose focus on what exactly is it that we want for ourselves. It should be the question that we need to ask ourselves often but we seldom do. You might be thinking why is this guy giving us gyaan that too arbit ? The reason behind it is that this was precisely the kind of discussion I had with my friends Varun and Anila before we embarked on the journey of shooting our first music video.

As a member of IIMC's music band, JBS BaroC, we composed our own original - Early days@IIMC. The song, right from the moment it was open for public, has caught on like a wild fire among the junta on campus. Thanks to everyone involved with its genesis. I didn't want the journey or the reach to just end there, that was the drive behind the video.

Though I always wanted to shoot a short film (I'm sure I will someday) and never really thought I would be shooting a music video, the pleasure of seeing one's imagination take form was too compelling a reason to go ahead with the plan.What happened next you can read it @ http://btlp.blogspot.com/

The entire video was shot in a weeks time and by far it was the best week of my duration in IIMC so far.

Hoping that the year ahead gives us more ideas that we can capture on camera and you all can enjoy with us.

Glad that the first year of my post graduation is done with, I started my summer vacation by picking up this awesome piece of work by Gregory David Roberts – “Shantaram”. The beauty of this book lies not only in its adventures but in the fine thread with which all those adventures have been woven into this lovely blanket of a novel. Being a pseudo mumbaikar myself who never really liked this city,I was made to feel that I really missed something that this place offers to so many. Hmmm!!! Never-the-less it was sort of a Mumbai darshan for me with an expert guide in Roberts.

Before picking it up all I knew was this was a story about this guy who was part of the Mumbai under world, fought alongside the Taliban etc. , in short a dark storyline . The novel surely does have its share of darkness but what’s remarkable is the tint of brightness that each chapter ends with. Having read “City of Joy”, I felt it would be the same description of helplessness of the slum dwellers that would be portrayed in the part where the hero lands up in a slum. I was in for a surprise. Never once in the entire novel will u feel a sense of pity, all you feel is the exhilaration of a bystander on the victory of a fictitious friend slogging it out.

The factor the strikes the chord with the Indian reader is the lingo used. Very Indian ,very mumbaiya and very apt. The language used really makes u connect with the character and see with him the picture that he wants you to see. Though the width of this 1000 page epic might scare the reader, esp. if he/she is as thin as I…here’s my advice…give in to your crazy side and you will be part of this amazing journey that Roberts has charted for you.

Bon Voyage!!!