My poor car...

My Honda City met with an accident in mumbai last week.  My cousin was driving; mom & dad were with him.  By Gods grace nobody got hurt.  While on the way to pune, at the chheda nagar signal a truck collided from the right. 

Luckily both vehicles were at very slow speeds, otherwise the result could have been very different.  Also, nobody was sitting on the rear right seat.  Mom was on the left.  All of us were left really shaken up by the incident though...

We keep reading about accidents in the newspapers but it always feels so distant.  Just another piece of the shit we are fed every day through all news media.  Its only when it happens to near and dear ones that makes one realize how vulnerable all of us really are.

I guess there's just too many people and too many vehicles out there.  This is bound to happen sometime!  Feel really sad for my car though.  She's a beauty (much better than the later versions of the City) and has been with my family and friends on countless trips.  Will make sure that she looks sexy again...

Safe driving, everyone!

2 weekends 2 trips - part 2

1-4 Oct: Sangli - Kolhapur - Saundatti

My mom has been speaking for quite a while about going to Saundatti to the Renuka Mata (who is our "Kulaswamini") temple.  Since 2nd was a public holiday a plan quickly got formed.  Since i rarely get out for religious trips, mom also made plans for a puja at Narsobachi Wadi near Sangli.

Bhau came down to pune on sunday, 27th, just a few hours after dd and i returned from our mahabaleshwar trip.  Mom had demanded his presence for Dassera on monday.  On tuesday bhau, mom and dad drove to kolhapur, while rashmi, chiu and i moved to my in-law's place at karve nagar.

Thursday evening we left for sangli in a hired tavera and reached narsobachi wadi by 10pm, approx a couple of hours after the others had reached from kolhapur.  We stayed at Ved Bhavan, a nice two-storied structure constructed by Sharad Upadhyay (Rashi Chakra) for conducting puja's, yagnya's, philosophical discourses, etc.  The pic below shows the hall in which the puja was done; there is also a yagnya-kund there.  Pittya had also come down in the car, and after a spicy dinner prepared by the caretaker couple, we chatted for a while before hitting the sack.

The puja started early morning the next day and was over just before noon.  Then we took darshan at the beautiful Dutta temple on the Krishna riverbank.  After that it was a half hour drive to baby (!) atya's place at sangli.  In the evening we went to the famous Ganapati temple in the heart of sangli; it is really worth seeing.  It is quite spacious and clean, with a beautiful idol that can be seen even from a few km outside.

Since the car couldn't seat all of us, dad and pittya took a bus to kolhapur while we drove down.  Rashmi and i were visiting after 5 years and in fact we were seeing yogya's wife and kids for the first time.  We hogged on some fantastic khichdi made by Rita maushi and then relaxed.  The whole attention was on the two Aditi's, both looking absolutely adorable.  A.Rao is 1yr 1m old, while A.Chavan is 1yr 9m old.

We left early next morning for saundatti, the car totally weighed down by 5 'healthy' individuals and a completely packed boot.  It had started raining heavily in many parts of maharashtra and initially it was very tough going because our windshield wipers were quite screwed up.  Luckily we managed to get the drivers side wiper changed at a small village on the way.

We had been told that the saundatti temple is closed from 1-4pm everyday, and so we took a small detour to see the Gokak waterfall.  What a sight!  Fed by the heavy downpour upstream, the waterfall looked like an angry monster.  You can check out a couple of great videos on my brothers blog on this link:
http://blog.quasi.in/2009/10/waterfall-at-gokak.html

There is a rope bridge on the river just before the waterfall.  It seems to be quite strong, reinforced by steel cables, and one concrete pillar roughly halfway across, but you have to walk on wooden planks which have gaps between them and the whole bloody bridge sways as you walk across.  It was very scary and real good fun.  The roar of the waterfall and the sight of the dark muddy river thundering past below makes it a nicely terrifying experience.  My dad had given us strict instructions not to go on the bridge, and so bhau, rashmi and I promptly went.  We went halfway and stopped at the pillar to enjoy the sight.  Then rashmi and I actually begged bhau to go back to the riverbank and to a nice small temple (see pic below) overlooking the waterfall and click a photo of us standing on the bridge.  Poor guy obliged.  :-)
You can barely make us out on the bridge though  :-(

We ended up spending too much time at gokak and reached saundatti by 4:30pm.  On the way one of my uncles called from kolhapur to inform us that there was a really bad flood situation in karnataka and south maharashtra, due to which many roads near and around belgaun had been closed off.  Saundatti is approx 65kms from belgaun and we bacame a bit apprehensive, but pushed on.  There was water everywhere in the fields on both sides of the road, and the small streams we crossed were full.

On reaching we were shocked to find that the temple was not closed in the afternoon and had just been closed at 4pm!  We somehow talked our way into getting inside for a quick darshan.  There were only priests inside, bathing the goddess and starting the puja.  We got real nice almost exclusive darshan for a few mins and then we had to get out.  There was a brief bad scene when some super aggressive beggar women started harrassing my mom for money, but we escaped.  The pic below shows the mandir kalash.

We were all really tired by now and the drive back seemed to stretch on and on.  The heavy rain wasn't helping at all.  I had been driving all the way since 7am and by the time we reached the highway near belgaun i suddenly started feeling damn exhausted and handed over the wheel to bhau.  We reached kolhapur by 11pm, extremely fatigued, and just crashed.

The next morning we woke up late, had a superb breakfast of some speacial wada's pittya got for us.  Then we were off to the famous Ambabai temple for darshan.  After that were visits to Avi mama's and Nilu mama's places, and then we left for pune.  Reached home late at night, with the wonderful prospect of monday morning hovering just a few hours away....

The whole family of 6 had gone out together after ages.  Overall a great trip.

All down...

Sniff sniff. Spent the last 2 days in bed with a bad case of cold and throat infection, accompanied by burning in the eyes, headache, etc etc. Thankfully no fever though. Wife was down with similar symptoms from saturday to monday, but improved today. Mom also had cold, cough and tummy ache, so even she's feeling pretty low. Dad was alright till today and was managing Choti all alone, but even he has developed cold today. Choti gave us a scare today by vomiting thrice, but is much much better now.... :-)

I've recovered 50% by now; throat seems better but nose is flowing at the rate booze usually flows at our parties...no takers though! hehehe Feeling really tired bec of the persistent cold, but am not complaining too much; have been through worse shit.

Eyes are tired, desparately need sleep but my full and flowing nose is making sleep impossible. Have to get up every few minutes. So thought i'll post my woes here, and then continue reading Othello.

Scrambled: Quasi

These are the various moods of Abhijit Rao aka Quasi aka Q aka Gadget Boy aka DaRao aka SPM Singh (only his school friends will get the last one)....

Q is a software dude of the highest order, a brilliant photographer, an absolute geek and probably the laziest, slobbiest, arse i've ever seen (not that i've actually seen his arse, mind you).

At the age of 12 he wrote his first porn story, built a flashing LED display on his bulky spectacles (through which he peered from below neatly oiled and combed good-boy hair), and fell in love (along with most of his friends) with the prettiest girl on campus.

He has a tendency to spend long hours in the loo (perplexing, since his regular twice-a-day "fun feature" usually lasts all of 30 seconds - self admittedly), longer hours in front of the computer and any remaining time stretched out flat on his back, snoring his nose-hair off.

Atleast that was the case till the end of his college years. For the last 4 or 5 years you could find him at all odd hours at the Ruia naka, mingling with guys and chicks half his age (and managing to cross a few bases with some of them! - both sexes). He also developed a major travel bug, and has burned rubber extensively, earlier in my Maruti 800 and his Maruti Esteem, and more recently in my Honda City and his Mahindra 4x4 open Jeep. His writings and photos, including those from his travels, can be seen on his blog and his flickr account. Quite a lot of it is really good stuff.

His geekiness has matured considerably from blowing nose bubbles during school, to accumulating a collection of gadgets that most commerce ch*ts like myself can barely even operate. His stash includes.....

-- many cameras, camera bags, lenses, filters, tripods, related arbit attachments and gizmos

-- more than a dozen torches of various sizes, shapes, twists, makes and strengths (all expensive, mind you),

-- more than a couple of dozen knives of various sizes and attachments

-- a walking stick complete with sliding rods, buttons, special pressure surfaces and grips (somehow serves the same purpose as my grandpa's simple wooden stick)

-- titanium spoon and fork

-- donald duck pen that actually quacks

-- fisher space pen (the kind thats actually used in space; note: Paul C Fisher developed the pressurized refill for NASA in 1965. The combination of tungsten carbide ball point & thixotropic ink in a hermetically sealed cartridge pressurized at nearly 35 pounds per sq. inch allows it to write in freezing cold, boiling heat, underwater and at any angle - even upside down!; reminds me of the age old "american jet propelled pen v/s russian pencil" joke)

-- mustard coloured floaters (brilliant thing about these is they totally fool you; you'd guess they cost around 400 bucks while they actually cost 4000!)

-- water bottle with built-in infra-red gadged to kill germs

....and many many more, believe me!

He has 2 major regrets in life: one is that for the last 4 years he has had a male wife (who is most probably going "sheee, flop!!" while reading this (sorry percy!)). The other is his phone voice; his carefully cultivated ranti looks are ofttimes jeopardised when he answers the phone and friends ask, "aunty, is abhijit there?" :-D

Most would agree that he can be quite a pain sometimes (quasi in an argumentative mood and a charging rhino are equally dangerous), but somewhere below the layers of body hair and grime, he's a really great guy! He has helped me get out of some pretty bad spots and has generally been there whenever i've really needed him. Quasi - my elder brother and one of my best-est friends. :-)