The Bookseller of Kabul

I was wondering why do we read a particular book-fiction, non-fiction doesn't matter. I was just wondering why do we read it?

So i thought we read some because someone suggests us that particular novel or we like its review or a movie based on the book makes us read it.

All the above reasons are all right in their place. But the interesting reads are the novels which we choose to read or buy just because we like its title!

I find this particular reason interesting because its like taking a gamble because if the author is new to you, you wouldn't know his style of writing and all. Most of the times i pick up books whose names interest me and then i read their summary.

'The Kite Runner' and 'Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini were two such amazing books that i read just because i liked their titles. And then any book about Afghanistan's culture, its people, their life interests me.

Currently i am reading 'The Bookseller of Kabul' by Asne Seierstad. She is a Norwegian journalist.

The book is about a bookseller named Sultan and his family. How the Taliban era, the Soviet era and the Mujahideen era affect his business. The pains he takes and the pains he inflicts upon his family for the love of selling books.

The book also talks about the suffering of Afghan women. Their life actually their life in a burkaa. How families treat women as some exchange ornament whom they can exchange for few thousand Afganis to an old widow with 10 children.

The book talks about Sultans sons who have been forced to quit school and join the family business of book selling.

It is a compelling read and involves the reader into it which according to me is the sign of a good book.

So i recommend this book to you all. I rate it 6/10.

Colors of Kerala-By Ajit Gajre

The journey gave us happiness, not the destinations!

On 23 february 2010, I realized why Kerala is called 'Gods own
country'. The most important things that struck me while our stay in
Kerala were the simple living high thinking people, everyone right
from the waiter at a small tea shop to the manager of a big hotel have
the same sincerity towards their work, the people give you respect,
the state is exceptionally clean, almost everyone there can speak
English, the people are trustworthy, they don't cheat foreigners when
they shop, They absolutely love their culture, you go to any shop and
you will be given a splendid service.
The things I loved about Kerala were the elephants at Guruvayur temple
and everything about the Guruvayur temple is huge like the elephants.
They say heaven is for understanding your life on Earth and when I
entered the temple I had a feeling that after death the heaven will be
like Guruvayur and i will be a worker in the temple serving the
devotees. Some of the other things I loved were the use of wood in
homes and hotels, the spice gardens, the tea gardens at Munnar, the
boating and cycling experience, the walk through the outskirts of
Munnar, the coffee, the numerous fish-surmai, tuna, paplette, black
fish that we had, the typical Kerala style roti, the local markets,
churches, the sunrises and the sunsets seen from the top of the tea
gardens, the periyar lake boating and the wildlife there, Sonia and
Lea - the German girls I met at the cruise, the loving nature of the
people, the serenity of the nature at allapi, the boat houses, the
way manoj, our bus driver and his cleaner got me dressed in a lungi!


If god gives me a chance I would love to buy a small home at lake side
and stay with these simple and content people!

Some of the memorable moments of our tour will be the way I got
freaked out at the local temple of Tekkadi because of the firecracker
and the way a foreign lady laughed at me, the sight of the elephant
eating just the leaves leaving the rest, the interior wooden design of
the Westwood hotel and ofcourse the wonderful time we all had
together- the jokes, the songs, the journey...it's like every part of
it has some unforgettable and beautiful memoirs which have been carved
in our hearts by this place, it's culture, it's people and their
cuisine!
I have learnt a lot from this place and I would make it a point to
visit kerala atleast once in two years.

I think everyone of us no matter who we are always crave for peace and
I think peace has to gained one piece at a time. I just found a litle
piece of my peace in Kerala and it will always make this place special
for me!

There are some places that make you fall in love with them the first
time you see them. 'The Oven' was for us such a place. It is on the
corner of a crossroad near Marine Drive at Cochin. The place is fully
air conditioned and beautifully decorated. There were beautiful
paintings on the walls. They serve numerous pizzas, burgers,
pasteries, milkshakes, juices, sweets and loads of other delicacies.
We went there three times in a day! In just a single day The Oven
became so familiar to all of us. The best thing about the place is
that the rates are very reasonable and the ambience is just awesome.
The service is superb. And the coffee, well what to say it's just so
perfect!
We all had a really good time there, we took pictures, fooled around,
tried different food and most importantly we enjoyed ourselves at that
place. When we left the place in the night, we knew we were going to
miss this place a lot and as I am writing this I am craving for their
filter coffee!


The last event of our tour was the cruise at Cochin. We cruised for
two hours and enjoyed the experience thoroughly, though some of were
so tired that they slept on the cruise itself!
We saw the oil refinery of the Bharat Petroleum, The Taj, the Indian
Navy warships and the fishermen along with kingfishers, seagulls and
eagles trying to catch the fish.
We had set for cruise at 4 pm and around 6 pm we were amazed by the
beauty of the sunset. It was perfect orange and the reflection of it
in the water enhanced it's beauty further...truely it was a sight
worth watching.
The whole scene of the sunset made me realize how insignificant our
existence is in this humangous universe and yet we are so worried and
self occupied by our little problems...we have forgot to live and are
only busy in running behind things that don't matter much in life.
While returning I saw a fisherman who was returning back to the dock,
he was alone in his small boat, he was washing his boat with a bucket
roped to the railing, and while he was doing so I was observing him
and I just couldn't miss how affectionately he was washing his small
boat.

While returning to the cochin railway station we had a blast in the
bus. We danced as if we were going to die the next day! We also gave a
"salaami" to our bus driver and the cleaner.
The last two hours that we spent in Cochin were amazing. I finally ate
vegetarian food after like 5 days! We all gathered at the bridge near
the dock where our loving Baba had set up a "sabhaa". We talked about
the wonderful time we all had together. And finally our photographs
have gone to about 50GB! it's going to take a hell lot of time to edit
those.


We reached Pune station at 4:45 am. All were exhausted and were sleepy.
But in the end it was the journey that gav us the happiness and not
the destinations!

1411

emaN-Game

Shakespeare said, "Whats in a name?" but the irony is he wrote his name under it!

Our college starts at 9:00am and ends at 4:15pm. And being Engg. students we sleep late and wake up later! Almost 60% of our class is always late, most of us barely manage to even bath so you can imagine the rest. So somehow we make it to the class by 9:15 to 9:30am. (My worst timing till date is 9:37am). The teachers are also used to it and have given up on us. But in all this early morning rush we forget or skip the most important meal of the day a.k.a breakfast! We Engg. students are known to "manage" things really well, no wonder 70% of us end up doing MBA! OK so my point is we somehow manage to survive the first two lectures from 9 to 11am but the last 15 mins seem like eternity, but then we start warming the thoughts of a hot steamy coffee, frappe and numerous iced teas and not to forget the veg puffs that we get at the Nescafe outlet at the Cultural Center(CC). And this is the story of not only our class but the whole college. So at 11:00 am hundreds of us rush to the petite 10 * 12 ft Nescafe outlet. Often we are left at 11:05am so we barely have 10 mins to walk all the way to the CC, "fight" to get our order and make it back to the class.

To make things worse even some other colleges in our campus have their short recess between 11-11:15am. The Nescafe has 3 staff to serve hundreds of us. The scene at the Nescafe around 11:07 am is like this: people are throwing money at those 3 guys, shouting their orders at the top of their voice, often pulling their shirt in a rude manner and it doesn't end at that we give 100 rs. bill for a coffee worth 7 rs. so those 3 guys have to do the math as well!

This semester i have been lucky as i always got the Frappe in time but for the past couple of weeks all my efforts went in vain. Usually the small boy used to attend me but these past 2 weeks even he was ignoring my order!

I was wondering what was wrong with him? Or was something wrong with me!

Then it hit me......

I went to the small boy whom usually all call by the name Chotu. I asked, "What is your name?". With a big proud smile on his face he replied, "Naresh."

The next day, as usual, the lecture got over at 11:05am , i was at CC by 11:07am, the rush was full on, people were shouting, tearing those 3 guys apart, i somehow made my way to the counter, Chotu was close. I asked(with a smile on my face),"Naresh, can you please give me a Frappe?"

What happened then was that Naresh ignored all the others, smiled back at me and got me a Frappe!

I got my answer. From that day onwards till now i have never failed to get my Frappe. I get Frappes for my friends Alok and Vishal as well!

Dale Carnegie has said, "Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest & most important sound in any language."

And i read somewhere that, "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop."

I have improvised it, "A man without a smiling face must not go to a shop!"

And if you are wondering about the title, its NAME-GAME!

What Road Are You?

What do Mumbai, Pune, B'lore and Delhi have in common?

-M. G. Rd.!

Everyone of us has favourites. A favorite perfume, book, song, ice-cream. How about a favourite road? Do you have one?

I think everyone of us has a favourite road. A road that is familiar to us, a road we can relate to, a road on which we like talking with ourselves when walking alone, a road which we know inside out!

When i was in school i was the road from my home to the bus stop in Mhaisal(my native place). I used to love walking on that road. I used to leave home at 6:00 am and reach the bus stop by 6:10 am. I used to enjoy those 10 mins. I even remember the stones i used to purposely step on while walking. I still remember those!
So i was wondering what makes these roads so special?

Now-a-days i am the Fergusson College Road (F. C. Rd.). It is literally at a stones throw from my place. So when i get bored or have nothing to do i just go and walk.
Whenever i walk on it i always feel that there is something "young" about F. C.
Goodluck is the place where youngsters enjoy eating, Vaishali and Roopali are favourites among the senior citizens. The Chaitanya Parathas are awesome. There is CCD and Barista for coffee(I prefer Goodluck for coffee!). Manmeet is famous for its 'Chaat'. There is Subway and now recently Venky's have opened a take away chicken outlet. Theres Yana for sizzlers, Haka for Chinese. If you want to shop you will find every brand you want on F. C.

Come weekends and F. C. will be packed. It has a festive mood on weekends. Especially the winter evenings make it even more enjoyable. Me and my friends enjoy playing pool at 147. Its so much fun!

So what road are you? Leave a comment.....

Express yourself!

Ever wondered why Airtel is so popular in India?

I think the reason behind that is the way they 'express themselves' and that's what their punchline says 'Express yourself'! Look at their brand ambassadors SRK and A R Rahman. One is the Badshaah and the other is a maestro when it comes to expressing themselves. No wonder we all love to see the Airtel ads. They are full of expressions!

Sometimes i feel jealous of artists, babies, musicians, sportsmans and of course Airtel because they can express themselves so well! Artists can bring out their emotions through paintings, acting, singing, dancing and loads of other such things; babies can cry, laugh and scream and get what they want. How well Sachin Tendulkar expresses himself through his batting skills. They are so lucky...

Well what about the hoi polloi? How can we 'The aam aadmi' or 'The mango people' express ourselves? Rather why don't we express ourselves?

An Albanian proverb says "A tailless dog cannot express his joy". And that is so true. Are our tails cut too? Or have we forgotten that we humans also have a "tail" for expressing ourselves?

I have some friends whose tragic love stories came to an end even before beginning. The reason being they couldn't express themselves to the girl they loved. And of course i have a group of friends who expressed themselves, but in a wrong way and got slapped!

The importance of expressing oneself need not be explained. If we look at the worlds most successful people, we can be sure of one thing they all have in common and that is their power to express themselves or their product to the world. Rocket Sing could create the Rocket Sales Coop. because he was good at convincing people through his power of expression. No wonder such a simple quality can be so important for success.

The big question:

Why don't we express ourselves? or why do we fail to express ourselves? I've come across some people who can't or who are not so good at expressing themselves. Most of them are shy, some are of reserved nature, some have ego problems. Their can be so many reasons.

What if we don't express ourselves? What can go wrong? Well a lot can go wrong! Most probably people can get misunderstood(Happens a lot with me!), a guy won't be able to express his love to a girl!. Eventually we will end up becoming someone who always wants to become like someone and never be that someone just because we couldn't express!

So people, if you feel like complimenting someone, proposing someone, thanking someone, criticising someone just do it! Don't think what the other person will think when you express yourself rather think what he won't feel if you don't express yourselves, right?

And why did i write this blog? Well theres this saying about some bloggers...Those who can...do, those who can't...blog!