Thoda cake kha bhi lo

Yiipppppppiieeee..

My Bday gifts (in the order of [procurement]):

Two Shirts sponsored by my Mom
The Girlie card and Nike bag sponsored by my Office team
Flowers and Ayn Rand's Fountain Head sponsored by Manish
The Mickey card and Godfather sponsored by Bhojraj, Vaibhav and Kalpana

My BDay | Trip to Jaipur & Chauki Dhaani

"Chadhti Jawani" by Band of Brothers.

There are few things in life that can match the fun of singing songs.



Deewan-e-khaas.




Janana Baag. Maan Singh's 12 queens used to evening walk here. Just Imagine!



The lovely hawa mahal



Puppet show was extremely rejuvenating.

Nice Thoughts from the book "The Rule of Four"

"To count a hundred million stars at the rate of one per second sounds like a job that no one could possibly complete in a lifetime. In reality, it would only take three years."

"..Finally it was my friends who changed-or, I guess, finally I was the one who changed them. I'm not sure if I wanted friends who understood me better, or saw me differently, or what exactly, but the old ones , like my old clothes, just didn't fit anymore.

The thing that people like to say to victims is that time is a great healer.The great healer is what they say, as if time were a doctor. But after six years of thinking on the subject i have a different impression. Time is the guy at the amusement park who paints shirts with an airbrush. He sprays out the color in a fine mist until it's just lonely particles floating in the air, waiting to be plastered in place. And what comes of it all, the design on the shirt at the end of the day, ususally isn't much to see. I suspect that whosoever buys that shirt, the one great patron of everlasting theme park, whoever he is, wakes up in the morning and wonders what he ever saw in it. We're the paint in the analogy. Time is what disperses us."

"..a good friend stands in harm's way for you the second you ask-but a great friend does it without being asked at all."

"The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong"

"It is the greatest houses and the tallest trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves."

"Like all things in this universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years."

"..I've always wondered why Carrachi put two women in that engraving, when he only needed one. Somewhere in that is the moral I took from the story:in the geometry of love, everything is triangular. For every Tom and Jenny, there is Julius; for every Katie and Tom there is Francesco Colonna; and the tongue of desire is forked, kissing two but loving one."

"The two hardest things to contemplate in life are failure and age; and those are one and the same. Perfection is the natural consequence of eternity: wait long enough, and anything will realize its potential. Coals becomes diamonds, sands become pearls, apes become men. It's simply not given to us, in one lifetime, to see those consummations, and so every failure becomes a reminder of death.

But love lost is a special kind of failure, I think. It's a reminder that some consummations, no matter how devoutly wished for, never come; that some apes will never be men, not in all the world's ages. What's a monkey to think, who with a typewriter and eternity still can't eke out Shakespeare?"

A 'hearty' departure for Nikhil to london!

I got my first real six string!!

Thx to Manish for the guitar & tuning :D

Visit to the mobile creche on Sohna Road

This was my first time as an AID (Association for India's Development) volunteer,
so was pretty excited. Generally Saturdays were reserved for sleeping but I thought of
making them more productive this time around. Getting up early
and reaching the evalueserve office [the assembly point], I was delighted to
see 6-8 other volunteers who were visting the creche today. A couple among them
had been regular visitors. On our way to the creche I tried understanding
the concept of mobile creches and AID in general from a fellow volunteer.

On reaching the creche we were welcomed by a group of teachers who
took us over for a round of the creche. We then moved to the study room
where children sat in groups around wooden boards and fiddled with paper, pen,
etc. As soon as we entered, the children started shouting 'Namaste Bhaiyaa',
'Namaste Didi' and looked extremely excited. Each group was joined by a volunteer
and the study time began. I , not having the experience of teaching school children,
joined the group that looked much younger and held abacus in their hands. What I did not realise at that time was that this was going to be more difficult ;). It was extremely challenging to make children understand ek, do, teen and I felt handicapped due to my inability to seep in the concepts. With my eyes closed, I thanked my Nursery school teachers for getting the job done :D.

Some more children joined my group and I was delighted to know that they knew counting.
I started concentrating on them and taught them jama (addition), ghata (subtration) fundas. They picked up well and i took small tests to which they responded well.



After an hour or so of teaching, the wooden boards were taken away and the children were
assembled in a circle. The children were then asked to sing songs and recite poetry. Lots of them came forward and showcased their skills. The songs had a lot of meaning-most of them revolving around the desh prem theme. Every performer ended by saying 'Jai Hind' and saluting. It was a mesmerizing experience.

Click here to download one of the songs. The song talks about the inequalities faced by the girl child. You would need a Real player to play the clip [File Size:1.39 MB].

We perfomed as well - sung songs & recited poems. The children were entertained and clapped a lot. They were then asked to remember our names which they learnt pretty fast. Candies were distributed to all on our departure. We were wished 'Good-bye' and 'Thank you' from the children and it really made our day.