Sudipta's Life

Like a soul lost without its body, I drift across the wide seas. I know not, when this shall end. But whoever said "distance makes the heart grow fonder", lied. It does not. Distance tears the heart apart. It makes you roam around in helpless rage, in a frustration of inexplicable sadness. I looked up at the flights leaving the airport runway each evening... the engines gunning, the sound of the airplane cutting through air, the soft dimming of the roar as soon as the plane lifts off, and then you can see the flight soaring into the distance, hurtling through thin air towards the one you love. It is a horrible experience, to wake up each morning into an unfamiliar room. Then the memory comes rushing back to me. Why am I here? What am I doing? How will this day turn out? Will I be able to go back today? It is a weird feeling to be in - a day when you look forward to the weekdays, since the rest of the world works on these days. You live in a society, remember? Others need t...

You get to hear the sound of mom's voice from the very first second of your morning... imagine not being forced to wake up to a wailing alarm clock and hear your mom calling you instead. You don't have to cook, clean or do the laundry. Warm, fresh chapatis appear magically on your plate during meals, refills and second helpings come unasked for. People will always find that you've thinned and take up the challenge to stuff you enough for the next six months. You clothes get magically selected for washing, cleaned, dried, neatly folded and ironed if necessary, and then they appear in the closet. You don't need to worry over what will be cooked, and whether it will be available on time. People actually bother to come and tell you to come and eat breakfast. In fact, they will even drag you to have your food. You get to haggle over the price of vegetables in the market, mentally calculating how much you saved when you bring down the price of a cabbage from 0.2 $ to $0.1 . Y...

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the pics from the hiking and trekking trips of last weekend to the Sequoia National Park, as promised . I'd let the pictures speak for themselves. Our initial journey started off with our the car speeding through yellow grassy fields like these: Soon enough, we were in the mountains, when the roads changed completely into winding and steep turns such as these, while some melted into the wilderness, like these. Oh, did I forget to tell you about the breathtaking views we saw? During our trip, we saw the largest tree on the planet. Don't miss the man standing at the foot of the tree in the pic above. And then we also walked and trekked through snow while we climbed from 7500 ft to 11,000 ft over sea level. Yeah, we climbed all the way to the top of one of these . We watched deer from this close , saw waterfalls like this and spent a lot of time sightseeing. Oh, what captured my imagination were a few private cabins built along the mountains -...

We went trekking and hiking to the Yosemite park and the Sequoia national parks over the last two weekends. I will be putting up a post or two with the photos and description of the magic soon --- right now I'm just trying to organize the photos and all. For now, let me describe to you an evening by the campfire at the Sequoia national park which we spent this weekend. The trek that day had been about 5 mile long each way. Steep and narrow roads like these had exhausted some of us, and it was getting darker every minute. The temperature was predicted to drop to -6 degrees Centigrade, and so the fire was necessary very soon. I took up the charge. Yes, I specialize in starting fires, and besides like being in control of situations. :) Soon, firewood was gathered, savagely cut into pieces, charcoals were lit and we had a fire blooming. And with the creeping cold, sprouting fire, warmth of buddies... beers weren't too far behind. Out came a box full of 8% alcohol Steel Reserve, and...

I was off to St Louis this weekend. It is magical, how the prices of tickets nearly double during the vacations. So, while I enjoyed Christmas and New Year's celebrations right here, I went over to St Louis for the first weekend in the new year. My old manager from Accenture called me over: he is here with his family now and my good relations with almost everyone from the past sure seem to come handy at these lonely times :) The biggest attraction of the whole visit, I'd say, was this little angel, who took a great liking to me as I was the only person in the house ready to converse in her language of random syllables instead of meaningful sentences others tried to talk to her :) Anyway, the tourist line for the city reads "You don't know what is cute until you've seen St Louis". I don't know about cute, but the arch did seem to invoke one feeling in me: majestic! Yeah, if that did not give you an idea, maybe this will: Really, it is all of those Six Hundr...

For some people, they say, the actual realisation that they are going halfway across the globe sets in only when they are actually seated on the plane. In my case, I think, it never did or never will. Or perhaps I knew it the moment I decided to take my GRE. I realised something very different when I was about to start my journey, however. But I am rushing things here... let me start at where things started. I started off from home when my dad and brother came to see me off at the railway station. My mother had bid me farewell at home itself. Her face, all so expressive, kind-of lingered with me briefly as I sat in the car and sped towards the station. The wait on the railway platform was eerie, though. The sodium lamps throwing off the white light, the passing of the mighty trains to destinations far far off, and the soft cool wind playing by as the announcements kept coming on the microphone that mingled with the tea-hawkers dusting off their weary kettles and an occasional "Cha...

"If you have been to Scotland, and haven't gone up north to the highlands," I was told, "then you have not seen Scotland itself!". Now, that was a tall order. Or so I thought, until last month when we went 'up north' for a day-long tour of the Scottish highlands. Thankfully, the worst part was over first thing in the morning --- getting up! Come on, it always hurts to get out of the covers from a sponge bed to get ready for the full day, especially on a weekend. But soon the day started off well, with an early morning start and everybody fully packed and excited about the trip. As soon as we moved out of Edinburgh, we were presented with the scenic greens across the countryside. It was the middle of March, so the snow was just melting and roads were clear and sunny. We were in a bus -- or as they are called here popularly, a coach. The good part about it was the curtained but clear open fiber-glass panes that we had for our windows, but the bad part was ...

I am sorry, folks, for not being able to post this long. Have been kind-a busy, and also have very limited access to computers. I hope you'll enjoy this one with the pics. We had snow over the past few weekends. This was a really novel experience for a person like me. I have seen a few hailstorms, but nothing like this crossed my imagination before! When it snows, it looks like this: where everything is difficult to see, and at the time we had snow there was also a chilly wind alongside.... so it is not really the best of times to go out. But who can stop a bunch of 25-year-olds who are bent upon having fun? We had been talking to the other office folks about how much we wanted to see the snow! And when the time came, we were rather busy and had not noticed anything outside. So soon one of our managers came up to us and said that we could take a half-hour break if we wanted... We did not need a second invitation :) Out we went into it, all trooping along in a whoosh! Outside it wa...

In the old days, there used to be wars; fought with swords and daggers and hoarse battle-cries and men looking murderously at each other from horseback. These days, the action has shifted to the playground. Wars are still fought, on football and rugby fields amidst rain, snow and mud. The men still look at each other murderously, and the spectators still cry themselves hoarse in support of their team --- welcome to British rugby and soccer. We went to a football match between Hearts and Aberdeen some time ago, and it is an experience worth telling. Both these teams belong to the top Scottish division in soccer, and so the match promised at least a good game. It was scheduled to start at 3:00, and we went there to support Hearts!! (Direct dil se ;) Well, the real reason we were supporting Hearts was that three of our colleagues from Edinburgh (umm, not colleagues, really -- client system admin, client associate manager and project manager) were Hearts supporters. We met at 12:00 noon ...

Ok junta, I know that some of you have been waiting for this new post to come up. Actually blogging is a problem here.. don't get much time to surf, and whatever time I get, I usually end up spending on checking mails, etc. But don't worry -- I will have something good coming up very soon. For now, I think that this post is best said with pictures. So read on... "Edinburgh is", someone had said, "what Rome should have been like". This place is indeed beautiful... with all the old-era buildings and statues and monuments, I get a fairly good idea what that man meant. A couple of weekends back, we had set out for the castle at about 12 noon (now, don't squirm please... even in Scotland you cannot do without a 12 hour sleep on Friday nights). But outside, it was still cold, windy, and as good as a 6:30 a.m. morning at home. Take a look below -- that is how it looks at 12 noon here: At the top of the hill is the castle... and the fountain you see in the foreg...