I'm back.... back to blogging... not that i was a very regular blogger.... after one pathetic attempt at blogging 2 years back i got too busy to blog.... i joined tcs in sep 2006 and i have been working in tcs for 2 years now.... it has been an adventure.... right from the first day when we landed in kolkata and were greeted by roads filled with knee high rain water.... my first impression was its filthy and dirty... atleast the place where we were provided lodging near college street in a guest house called raja guest house was not the poshest place in kolkata and was quite dirty...

But soon my opinion about KOLKATA changed....

i fell in love with this city.... I was in kolkata for my ILP(initial learning programme) and I spent 2 months having lots of fun with my friends some of whom i already knew... Dechamma, Sachin, Prasad, Sandeep, Amulya and Soumya were all from my college so i knew them but we weren't really friends.... but 2 months of hardship (naa not in terms of studying or any such thing... but in terms of waking up early and running to catch the train at the metro station and reaching on time for the classes, and trying hard to stay up in classes and washing ur own clothes and basically trying to survive in a new envt) brought all of us close to each other and we became the best of friends and have remained so in the past 2 years....


Our trip to shantiniketan even though it turned out that most of it was closed is memorable because of the beauty of the whole country side that we could see during our train journey from kolkata to shantiniketan and also because shanitiniketan itself is so beautiful and serene with its big and huge trees...

We went around kolkata during 4 days of holidays that we got thanks to durga pooja... we went to the victoria memorial and it's beautiful marbel statues and paintings were a treat to the eyes... i got caught while trying to capture a few images on my cam :P

We went to St Paul's cathedral and lots of other places around kolkata.... esplanade, kaali ghat, kaali mandir, birla temple, etc... we went on tram rides and went around in taxis and buses but mostly we walked around on foot in the slight drizzle and we were one of the huge crowd... mine and dech's biggest fear during kolkata's rainy days was getting our eyes poked by the umbrellas of one of the short bengalis(most of them were v short) walking ahead of us... If going out was fun so was coming back to our rooms in raja guest house... the same rooms that some of our ilp mates had protested against during our initial days ...

Each day after the classes in CMC on park street we would return after a crowded ride in the metro and we would be met by knee high rain water and passing durga idols being carried on lorries... we would be exhausted and bugged up soooooo we would treat ourself with these huge rasagulas that were worth just 3Rs served in earthen matkas... I havent tasted such good rasagula anywhere else.... not even KC Das's tinned rasagulas could ever taste thaaaaaaat gooooood. mmm just think of it makes my mouth water.... Back in the guest house room where we were lodged we would have a little dinner of rotis and dal and then the fun began.... we would watch tv and sachin, prasad, sandeep, amulya and soumya would all come to mine and dech's room and we would play UNO... Dech and i were notorious for cheating.... See Dech caught on cam in this pic peeping into someone else's cards...

and here i am with amulya, prasad and dech playing UNO... we would stay up playing uno and chatting all night till 2 in the morning.... sachin and i would beat each other up for no reason... and we would all trouble dech by tickling her or bugging her about something...














I couldn't possibly catalogue each and every moment I spent in Kolkata... all i can say about those moments is each one of them feels like it's out of that ad for master card which goes... "there are some things money cant buy.. for everything else there's master card" each one of them was priceless....

At the end of 2 months parting from friends I had made was very tough... Time and again I have realized that the saddest moments of my life have not been when I scored lesser marks than I had expected or when I didn't get what I wanted... the saddest moments were when I had to part from my friends... when life took them on a path that was different from mine... As a kid in school when one of my friends who lived close to my house and with whom I would play and cycle every day moved to bangalore was probably the first time I felt helpless and scared about losing a friend.... Now again parting from Soumya and sandeep who were posted to bangalore while Dech, psd, chin, amulya and I were posted to chennai was 1 of the saddest moments of my life... But I have realized over the last 2 years that in spite of losing touch with them and in spite of any misunderstandings or little scuffles between us I treasure their friendship and the time spent with them and I will count Sandeep, Soumya, Dechamma, Sachin, Amulya and Prasad in my list of friends for life...