2 Great Holi Celebrations

3 Years back : The final year of BE and a semester of celebrations. Then how could holi would not have celebrated ? But I was unaware of the few hours that were to coming, when I woke up that day. I got a call from one of the friend saying be ready, we will be coming to your place in some time and then we will proceed to the next friend’s home.

The tiny muscels of the brain started moving and the exercise gave me an image of what might be coming. A gang was coming to my place and it was time to get prepared for lots of colors. So though I knew it wouldn’t help much, but still started  applying the defence against the color weapon. The immediate cover I could think of was oil and I turned the protect mode on by applying it to body and hair.

In some time the door bell rang and I saw few familar faces, all colored as expected and they asked me to come out of house with some water. I went out and saw a whole team ready to attack me and I was the only prey who was not colored yet. The entire apartment gathered on the roof to see the action movie displayed on the road. One of the friend had come with a cloth to remove the oil before applying the color. It took 5 minutes and 15 persons to convert a human look into devil one. Now I was just one of them.

But this was just begining, we headed towards another friends house having a lawn inside. And along with some snacks a water pipe was also offered .  Then the second round of colors started and the water was being poured in the centre of lawn creating a lot of mud. The guys started pulling everyone to the centre, laid him there and started jumping around him. The mud bath along with grass strenghened the devil look. Finally everyone was exhaused and time had come for rest. We rested in the lawn for some time and retured towards home for a nightmare of removing the color.

1 Year Back : Another final year of college and this time into my M.Tech in IIIT-H. A place which has given me numrous great memories and Holi was one such day. The excitement was more, fun was more, group was bigger, the place was bigger, celebrations was bigger and so were the troubles coming ahead.

The venue for holi was kept at football ground. ‘Thandai’ and ‘Pakode’ were offered as snacks at one stall and colors and water drums were kept at the ground. We started from hostel and the phase one was played with Gulal. Oh by the way I forgot to mention, we had decided that we will play holi gracefully, which was next to impossible in college and see in some time how it turned out .

As soon as we reached ground, we saw hundreds of students all colored. Some were running behind others to get them colored, some with a water pipe in their hands, some throwing their friends in water drum. We also rushed towards the place where colors were kept and next phase was started with coloring each other. There were lot of people to color and all were looking so differnent due to color.

After some group photographs, I could sense a wave of danger which was going to torn apart our thought of graceful holi. And finally the expected thing was starte and the shirts were being torn apart turning our tshirts into something which even a begger wont wear. The water pipe was then used to attack everyone and everyone also needed it to get rid of some of color. Then we all headed towards cofffe shop in the same state, drank some cold drinks in a hot sunny day and headed towards our hostels to remove the multi layered color from our skins.

Thank you so much all of you who were at these two holis which gave me these two wonderful memories, I would never forget. Today I think about the two worst holi in terms of so called ‘simplicity of playing’  but the best in terms of fun. Miss you all and a very happy holi to you and your loved ones. Also holi wishes to everyone not in this ‘elite’ holi group

Visit to Ajmer

Visit to Ajmer has always been exicting and why not, I have my maternal uncle staying there. My recent visit was 2 months back and I missed out writing about it at that time. But as they “It’s never too late”, so today I picked up the pen (it’s a metaphor now ), and started recalling the memories.

That was the time of Urs festival and so it was very crowded in certain areas of city. Hence I limited my visit to only certain areas of city and still it was wonderful. Ajmer has 5-6 famous spots which include Pushkar, Bajrangadh, Sai Mandir, Dargah and a Jain mandir. Though all of the above places are religious places, still they are equally a tourist spot for variuos reasons.

But before that let me introduce u to my lovely cousins. My brother Chinmay  who like every other kid is fond of cricket, movies, computer games but very affectionate. My sister Amruta who is very sweet, affectionate like her brother and a great dancer. I learnt a few dance steps from her and couldn’t reach anywhere near her perfection.

Ajmer is surrounded by Aravali hill and u will get a nice view  in the morning and evening in any direction u look .  The first place to visit was Saibaba temple which was very nearby my uncle’s home. The temple is very big and built entirely out of marble. When we entered the temple, aarti was going on and it was a wonderful experience there.

Next day we visited Bajrangadh which is a famous temple of Hanumanji. The temple is at some height and u need to climb around 200 steps to reach there. You can see majority of Ajmer from the top. There is a lake near by called Anna Sagar and a garden to take rest. This makes the place a nice picnic spot.

The third evening we went to a newly built Jain temple. It had a very big statue of Mahaveer and the temple was very well maintained. It had a huge garden nearby and architecture of the temple was very unique. The place again was like a picnic spot too with greenry all around

Visit to Ajmer was enjoyable for the fun with my maternal uncle’s family, the great food I had for 3 days, the company of the kids that made me a kid and for the memories that always stays with me.