Madcaljan21’s Blog

I’m in India now spending time with my parents after long time. I did not hardly go out of the house afraid of mosquitoes and rain water on the road as it might affect my daughters health. After almost a month , I thought I would step out and see the place where I was brought up. We went out to the market place. I was standing there to catch an auto when I saw something which made me rethink of what I have in life and what I miss.

There was a mid aged person sleeping on a worn out mat near a big tree. He was a cobbler and there were couple of shoes in front of him. He was sleeping on the roadside, where there were so many cars , lorries, bikes, autos and all kind of vehicles moving to and fro. It was pretty noisy with the sounds from Vehicle horns, engines, people shouting at the top of the voice. But still the man was sleeping as if he was given a five star air conditioned room, with a soft bed , multi fragrances and melodious music. Apart from this there were lot of flies over his body and he was not drunk either. I was wondering if I get such a good sleep in my room with all the facilities. Absolutely not!!!

I’m talking about none other than my own honeymoon.. I want to share this interesting story with my friends..

We got married on May 27, 2007 and we went on our trip to kulumanali ,a beautiful place in North India. We started on May 31 2007 and had planned for 6 days to spend there. The whole trip was planned by my husband and he wanted us to have a memorable trip for the whole of our life. Please note this sentence, as it has a greater effect towards the end of this story.

We started on May 31 and took a flight to Delhi. We reached the airport around early morning and our next flight to Manali was at 7.00 Am. We waited outside the airport for our flight, as the security would not let us in the airport until 5.00 Am. We were waiting outside for couple of hours. Finally they let us in and we walked towards boarding area. We waited till 10 ‘o’ clock and there were no signs of the flight announcement for our flight. Finally after really looong wait we were called for boarding the flight.  We boarded a minivan, the van went around the runway.

The minivan trip looked really long. It looked as if we are going to another airport on minivan. We thought that would be the whole trip, they would take us around the runway and drop us back at the airport. Finally we reached a Helicopter , it was 25 seat helicopter which would take us from Delhi to Manali. It was amazing as I have never been on one before. (not after also :P)

Throughout the journey we were watching outside, it was flying low, so we were able to watch the ground and it was really beautiful journey till manali. On reaching manali we took a cab to our hotel.  The cab took us on unpaved mountain roads in other words its hour and half roller coaster ride without seat belt. I felt like throwing up what I had for last one week.  Finally we reached hotel. (ooffffff)

Took rest, looked around the place, had great food and spend 6 days.The food was really amazing, actually my husband spent more time eating :).  He had acidity due to all possible food he ate and he still went for more with the help of ENO.

The last day we were about to start and we went to airport early in the morning. There were no one at the airport apart from us and the cleaners. We were sitting there talking something , sleeping for sometime and it was so boring. Finally people started coming in and then we checked in our baggage. After a long wait we got an information from the authorities stating that our Flight was cancelled. We got so tensed, as we had booked for connecting flights from Delhi to Chennai. My husband got so enraged and started shouting at the airlines personnel, it was very bad standing out side when there was a big fight going on inside.

Finally the airport person booked a flight for us from Chandigarh to Delhi at 4.00 Pm. It was 12.00 Pm at Kulumanali, and it would take five hours for us to reach Chandigarh. We took a cab with prior instructions that he is not supposed to stop the vehicle for any reason, picked up couple of biscuits for our food. We were happy when the driver told us that we were going to go via the highway and the roads are really good.  But later on we realized as if we were pushed from top of the mountain to the base.

Our previous cab trip was much much better. We were upgraded to a much better roller coaster.

The whole area was hilly , it was the roads connecting from one hill to the other. The scenery around us was picturesque, but we did not have the focus and energy to enjoy mother nature at that time.  We also passed through a beautiful long tunnel which ran for almost 3 kms , which was the first time we have been through such a long tunnel. Finally we reached a flat surface and we finally thought we are going to still live for a long time. It was already 4.10 and our flight was going to be at 4.30 Pm.  We forced the driver to speed up and finally reached the airport at around 4.25PM. We thought we were going to miss the flight. We met a person at the entrance who had the ticket with him and we checked the baggage and rushed to discover that the flight was going to be an hour late. This is a sign of relief but next tension began as we had booked a flight from Delhi to Chennai at 8.00 pm.  We grabbed something to eat at the airport and was waiting at the lounge. We both looked like we were pushed out of the center of galaxy and came escaping from man eating aliens . This is not exaggeration, we both looked like worn out couple :), not like newly wed.

The journey began from Chandigarh to Delhi.  It was the hottest airline I have ever been and we talked about opening the windows for better air conditioning. There was no option to do so. We reached Delhi by 7.00 Pm. My husband picked up the luggage from the cart near the plane as we dont have time to pick them up from the baggage claim area. We ran from one terminal to other terminal. On the way my shoes fell apart, but I had to run with that , what else to do. We checked in our baggage and finally went to get the boarding pass, there was a big queue waiting for the airline. The clock was ticking and we were really tensed. Finally my husband managed to talk to the officials and successfully came back empty handed.  After 30 mins in queue,  viola , got out boarding pass.

As soon as we got the pass we ran towards the boarding lounge, a security guard stopped us on the way and said we were not supposed to enter now. I thought since we looked like escaped terrorist he was treating like that :). But now we realised our flight was delayed and it was suppose to arrive at 8.30 and they would not let us in until 8.00Pm. We both could not stop laughing at this. Oh my god, we started running at 10.00 Am and we were like crazy till now. We strolled around the airport and finally we got a call for boarding the flight and stepped in. Wooooof!!! The seat was comfy and we settled down. If you think that was a big releif , I would say it was not as the lights went off inside the flight :(.

There was a power shut down in the flight, (ever heard this before?  )  all these reminded me of FINAL DESTINATION!! I grabbed my husbands hand and said “If this is the last day in my life , you will never be forgiven!!”. After sometime the power resumed, but believe me through out the journey I was thinking what if the power goes off on the way. Finally finally finally we made it , we reached chennai. Again another dare before reaching home, it was raining heavily and most of the streets were flooded with water. We bargained to a cab driver and finally he took us to our home sweet home. We reached home at 1.00 Pm, there was no power at house. It was pitch dark omg the day still did not end 😦 .  But we were so tired , we closed our eyes and thats all everything was dark. ( not like in movies, we got up the next day !!)

I know its really a long story, but its not even half of what I experienced.

It was such an adventurous, racy, thrilling  trip you can expect on a honeymoon.

Recently myself and my husband  went to watch this movie “2012” in theater, cos it has been really a long time since we went to some movie. We dropped our kid at our friend’s place and went to this movie. No wonder, the movie was really good, all the special effects and the screenplay was all good. For quite some time we were feeling the pressure and the tension. Good work!! But  Somehow I feel that the movies  ” Volcano”, “The day after tomorrow”, ” The knowing” all happening in a single movie. It was like a collage of all the other movies , but presented in a grand way. Next awaiting for “Avatar” again the same concept but in animation. I was wondering , why everyone have already started thinking about the end of the world, the destructions , tsunamis engulfing the lands, volcanoes erupting from everywhere, oh my God. This is really scary, what if this all this happens in real

I liked one concept of this movie.  Information found by Indians, executed by Americans and finally the whole world look towards china for saving them. Space ships ” Made In China”. Hopefully the quality of those ships will be good, otherwise all their lives would be in stake. The next best point is what  if they write all the controls in Chinese, then it would be miserable.     Whatever lets hope such things don’t really happen, if it happens it would be terrible.

One day when we went out on a long trip, we started a conversation just to rip off the time and involve into something interesting. I asked a question “Which is the best fruit Apple, orange or Mango?’. My husband answered Mango, as he is a sweet lover and he loves sweet in any format. My mother in law answered the same. I rephrased the question and asked ” Which the best fruit for a diabetic patient”. Now the best fruit title shifted from Mango to Apple in chorus. Again I rephrased the question and asked ” which is the best fruit for health” and again the needle shifted to orange. I told them this is life and got a “Frown Brownie ” from my husband :).

Recently we took couple of books from library for my one year old daughter. Initially she did not have any interest towards books, but by constantly trying we luckily  got her attention onto books. Today morning she herself took a book , came towards me, struggling to get the book and falling off so many times. She reminded me of an ant, what ever may be the case it will carry its food. Finally she reached me and sat on my lap. She showed the book and said ” Bah bah booh”, which mean I have to read the book for her. It was an interesting book  with lot of pictures. It was “Lulu’s Happy Birthday!!”, the book was really colourful. I read it once and left the book down. She took the book again and saw me. I read the book again. She was doing this again and again and I was reading the book again and again. I tried many things like pointing colours, pointing shapes, pointing the toys , asking her to say the names, so that she will not get bored. It was a nice experience reading books to small kids. I was doing this so many times and finally she dozed off. Hope she does not bring the same book after she wakes up :).

Myself  and my two best friends ( Uthra and Durga),  love to wander around Neelangarai beach. The speciality of this beach is that there will be no one around you. You will be all alone and can play all day long in the beach. Similarly we were out one day enjoying the mother nature. It was the last day of our project ( Like project 🙂 ) , so we went to beach to enjoy the last day. 

We played a lot, had total  fun. Then we found a small fish struggling for life. We were confused to see such a small fish on the shore, as we thought small fish will live in deep sea, at least you need to sail for some time to catch such a small fish. We tried to push it back to water, but all in vain. The fish struggled, struggled and struggled and then was very still.

This made us feel very bad. All the fun we had was gone. We felt bad for not being able to help it. We returned home and almost forgot it. All these happened on Dec 24’Th. On Dec 26’Th we heard of TSUNAMI for the first time. We were all shocked of the after effects of  Tsunami. The first thing that came to our mind was the fish. Immediately we called each other to talk about the incident happened two days back. We could not prove if the reactions before tsunami made the fish to reach the land. But we thought we were saved by the fish. If the fish had not come out , we would not have left and played for longer time in the sea, without knowing that the sea  would no more be calm..