Jaipur Trip

I was feeling a bit disturbed and decided to go to some place to rejuvenate myself. Friday passed in all kind of arrangements. Cab, hotel, must see places and above all a group which can maintain harmony throughout the trip. Now next 2 days were going to be fun.

Trip started from 11:30 PM. I am sure that we had at least 3 dissatisfied souls out of four who were badly in need of changing their mood. How can I forget the first struggle to get a digicam from one of our colleague. I drove almost 15 kms and asked around 10 guys before that to get one camera. So you can see how tough was this trip to start with. 4 technocrats earning a decent sum of money every month did not have one single camera amongst them. A big relief came after we got that camera and came to know that our cab had a TFT screen with a stereo which supports USB. Thankfully this was something which brought a smile to our face. We started and took a record time of 8 hours to reach Jaipur. Not to mention that we slept very little and next morning our backbones were struggling to keep them normal. After this we started searching our hotel. On the way we came across those funny red lights of Jaipur where you can see the next few lights standing at one light and one of us passed a comment that these guys used to put a red light every time some big topnotch guys was annoyed with the system. One uncleji introduced us with a word called "puliya se takkar marna" while explaining the way to our hotel. Finally we reached our hotel and slept for next 4 hours to recharge our batteries.

Then we moved to Hawa Mahel and Jal Mahal and clicked some snaps. Both girls had an umbrella of purple color to protect them from sunlight and one of it was a branded one. The brand was "Jhakas Umbrella". So we all had started enjoying the trip by now. After these two mahels we moved to chokhi dhani. It seemed that whole NCR was there to enjoy the weekend. We had also a nostalgic creature amongst us who gets insane after looking at a vehicle with PB(stands for Punjab) or CH(for Chandigarh) number. We have seen that few hundred times and managed to get some more glimpses of that. So now we were inside the premises. We were welcomed by a sweet little girl who had put tilak on our foreheads. We were inside a virtual village of Rajasthan. Child inside all of us had woken up by now. We did all those things we used to do or always wanted to do. Some of it includes watching a magic show, puppet show,folk dance, riding on camel and elephants and playing those small games which includes shooting, putting rings on some articles and what not. Thing which we enjoyed the most was riding on elephant. Credit goes to the huge crowd. We waited for almost an hour before riding on his back and then we saw turning of an elephant into an horse. Mahavat managed to do that. We felt like we will fall off any moment. After this ride I felt as if I am wearing off a shirt which I have taken outside from a ghada(earthen pot). Thanks to our nostalgic punjabi female's hands on my shirt to protect herself. My shirt was crying to keep itself free from those wrinkles but could not do so.

Oh I forgot to mention that before this we had a maalish session. Those rajasthani were doing an awesome job. Second female from our group also went ahead for that experience with me. A cute foreigner was also there for the same. All guys around that area were feeling envious of those rajasthani guys. I am sure that some of them may have decided to pursue a career in massage after that show.

After this we proceeded towards other area of chokhi dhani complex which was called by them as village, jungle and gufa(cave). That cave had an statue of a ascetic who faced severe difficulty in maintaining his austerity. These girls started playing Menaka and Urvashi with his statue. I wonder what they may have done had Vishwamitra himself be present there.

After this came the scary surprise for these girls. We were into tribal area and those guys were awesome in doing their job. These two ladies felt like they will be attacked and beaten to death when he scared them.

After all this fun we proceeded towards dinner. At that table we were missing Kumbhkaran. They had hell lot of items and magnanimous gesture of serving food. These guys for sure knew how to do homicide. Finally first day end with a wonderful experience and pleasant memories. We came back to our hotel. How can I forget our driver. He had all the qualities which doesn't fit onto a driver and most prominent of that was forgetting the roads. He did a wonderful job on our whole trip and made sure that we enjoy his stereo system to the fullest.

Second day started now. We went to Aamer fort first. That place was wonderful. What I can't forget is that they had a signboard which said that fort had 99 toilets. The peculiarity of those toilets was that 2 or 3 of them were together. I started imagining the early morning gossips of queens while relieving them(just as we see in old villages where people go to farm and talk about everything while doing this. A strange idea just struck me. Generally we ask someone for coffee when we want to discuss something. Imagine how would you feel if someone asks you to go to toilet to discuss something. Looks weird..eh!!;)). So this quila was also a great experience. We had lots of foreigners over there and we managed to get ourselves clicked from one of them always. For once we managed to get ourselves clicked from a potential momentary lover of one of the girl in group. That guy was chasing us from a long time and I took advantage of that.:D

Somewhere in between we visited city palace has all the arms and ammunition of that time. It was a great experience. We clicked at those places where we were not supposed to do so. Finally from Aamer we moved towards Jaigarh where they have put the biggest canon of the world. That canon was of 50 tonnes and have been used only once and that too for testing purpose only. We were done with these places.

How can I forget out beautiful journey to discover ghosts. One lady from our group had a talk to her younger brother who is quite fond of haunted places. We came across Bhangarh. This place was discovered by Discovery Channel and considered to be one of 10 most haunted places of the world. This place is protected from Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)but those guys also didn't dare to open an office in its campus. It is said that this place is cursed and whoever goes there after dark will not come back. A story goes which says that this place has spirits of a king, queen, a female servant and one black monkey. That place was scary for sure but the journey to that place is unforgettable. This lady has watched Ramsay brother a lot for sure in her childhood. She told us too many stories about that place and we also started believing in ghosts in that short span of 2 hours(journey time to that place). Funniest part of this was reading Hanuman Chalisa loudly before entering that place. The other female member had some internal problem by this time. She started to leak more than what she had taken in the whole day. Ghost did have some effect for sure. This place had all the building without a roof and temples without any statue of god/goddess. I managed to scare our Ramsay Lover by putting her behind a bar at the temple. I think I listened to one of the most thrilling voice in my life at that time. That place had banyan trees of strange shapes and hell lot of black monkeys. We were able to hear strange voices of a number of animals. This Ramsay lady started making some more stories. There was a place with good amount of ashes. This lady assumed that the place was by some Tantrik for his tantrasadhna. On top of this she managed to see some worn out clothes and she made a story that tantrik must be killing some men nights. Well she finally managed to scare all of us a bit and we did not have enough courage left to be there till sunset. We left that place back to see Jaipur and it's magnificent Rajmandir theatre. These new multiplexes in metros should learn from that place. I think you may not have noticed one thing. this trip had 4 persons and I have written only about me and two females. There was one more guy who manages to enjoy in what others do. Actually he was missing one bakra on our trip. Rest of the story be better kept with all those who had gone to that trip. After this one beautiful journey had probably come to an end. We had dinner and then a long way back to Delhi for everyday worries and politics which we face. One more incident was there which is worth mentioning. Our benchmark driver had a bottle by his side which was actually shampoo dissolved in water for cleaning purpose. Yours truly was so lost in talks that he had a big gulp of that water. We surely know one more use of shampoo now. For next half an hour I felt like something is stirring in my neck and cleaning all things. After that I saw bodies lying on the back seat without any movement. No, they were not ghosts, they were these guys lost in their sleep. I had to keep my eyes open and talk to that folk all silly things like Xylo is better, 4 wheel drive and what not to keep him alive. Actually we all had our office next day and we couldn't afford to miss that. Now we were back to square one. We were back to all those problems which we left 2 days back But as someone has rightly said,"Everything is ok in the end. If it's not ok. it's not the end". All of us are waiting for that Happys Endings.

Science without a religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

This famous line by Albert Einstein has been a point of discussion since long. The primary reason for the debate between science and religion is that people see them as incompatible. However I personally feel that science and religion can operate in different realms. "Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions e.g. “How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?” But it is inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions e.g. “Why is there a universe at all?” These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with.

According to surveys some of history's greatest scientific minds, including Albert Einstein, were convinced there is intelligent life behind the universe. Today many scientists say there is no conflict between their faith and their work.

Moreover, only one out of four Americans believes life on earth today has evolved through natural selection as explained by Charles Darwin. Just under half of all Americans believe the natural world was created in its present form by God in six days as described in Genesis. They believe, incredibly, that the earth is only a few thousand years old. According to the creationist view, God produced humans fully formed, with no previous related species.

Even if we believe in Darwin’s theory we don’t have any proof that evolution is not God's tool? Darwin never said anything about God. The belief in god further strengthens when we face calamities like Tsunami. We are afraid of nature’s forces because we have faced dire consequences in the past and we attribute this to God because we don’t have any explanation. .

Apart from this we have many other questions which can only be answered by the belief in existence of god. Some of these questions can be: Who set the Sun in its location? Who set our planet earth at an appropriate distance from the Sun? Who tuned our body systems to the temperature, pressure and oxygen concentration on planet earth? Who adjusted our body systems to function in tune with the sun and the moon?

Somewhere along the process of the so called civilization, we have ceased to contemplate on the awe and splendor of creation with a sense of wonder. We have no time to stand and stare at the stars. We have no time to reflect on the amazing planning and anticipation in creation. Consider the unique inimitable pump, the human heart. All the ingredients necessary for the human heart were anticipated and provided in the design of the heart of the fish which appeared about 500 million years before man appeared. Is this a coincidence? Isn't it proof of anticipation and planning by a supreme intellect? We are thrilled by fireworks at festivals. But did the Big Bang explode without any planning? What were the ingredients for the Bang? Who lit the Big Bang? Who grouped the billions of stars into millions of galaxies?

There is, of course, no way to prove religious faith scientifically but neither can we deny the existence of god. This statement is true in its sense and we should put our energy in other constructive things which can prove fruitful to the society and human beings as a whole. Together we can make this planet a better place to live for all of us.