As I began to listen to his calm rendition of the problem statement, I could see myself talking through him, for a moment it seemed as if the Satan is asking me this question through him and I need to solve it (or resolve it) myself. I pinched myself to check whether I had more Rum than necessary. May be, I am going with some kind of visualization disorder but it was not as bad. After surveying, discreetly, I fell back on my drama skills to ensure that I am signed-in. I didn’t need to read and listen this question too well because it was as much true to my situation as him. It could have been a reverse case as well where the narrator becomes the protagonist. He carried on, ensuring that he gives me enough context, which I never needed, ensuring that he doesn’t hurry up, which I never needed, ensuring that he throws enough pauses so that I can assimilate, which I never needed. My mind started to work out the response and I completely tuned out.

By the time he finished, I had meticulously thought of a brilliant response, almost akin to a standing ovation piece. With growing confidence, I was in no hurry to let my secret beans out, I knew before hand that I have got something in my arsenal which can not be challenged. So with a great display of serene and insightful state, I quietly continued to finish more Rum while my over active mind was iteratively going through the response and was refining it with each round. I had done almost 5 rehearsals before I got a chance to put my performance and boy what a performance it was.

With great articulation, in a single stroke of mastery, I spit out words of wisdom one after the another. After winning him by a brilliant demonstration of philosophical garbage, I paraphrased the fundamental value of life and how one needs to get out of situation like these by focusing on basic things around relationships and so on. In no time, I concluded my great gyan and we were out of the mess.

The truth is that whatever I said is what I believe ideally one can do (including myself) but those were not at all practical day-to-day suggestions that could really make a real difference (w/ or w/o the dark sweet drink). If it was so easy, I would have solved it (or resolved it) myself.

I still think that my response makes a lot of sense but I have not been able to live them myself. Instead, Should you just tell your friends that , dude I am in the same boat.

Cheers !!

Where

View Larger Map

Infrastructure

It was a short visit and I did’t get to do a thorough recci but here are some pics and information.

As you get in, you see a small amphi-theatre kind of setup, pretty interesting. I do not remember seeing something like this in an pre/junior school. As you get in, you hit into reception which resembles more like a hotel reception than a school reception.

The reception area has a couple of activity toys for kids.

Then we went to the room where the ‘Story Telling’ event was to happen. Its a fairly large hall, can seat 50 people comfortably, about 25 feet X 40 feet, just a guess. The decor was kid-friendly and seating was on floor with cushions flaunting animals and other cartoon characters.

Right on the back of this hall is a elongated, long but small play-area. It has few rides, good enough for a batch of 15-20 students to be busy but very small, overall. Kids usually love to run so may be they would have planned a bigger patch for rides etc.

From the back rides area, you take a round turn and enter the building from the other side. Good decent open space. On both sides are two other rooms, named ‘Blue Room’ and ‘Green Room’. As you cross them, you are again in the aisle connecting the main reception and the ‘Story Telling Room’. There are two office spaces as well, one of them proudly displaying a MacBook

The loo looked good and they provide day boarding for non-Prakriti students as well. 5K a months, provides lunch and evening snack. Good deal. You can more info at their website – http://prakriti.org.in/ . I had a brief chat with someone who seemed to be as somebody running the school. I was told that they have opened in May 2011 only. They do have a lot of experience in running educational institutes and been running couple of schools, Bharti Public School (I think so), for last 30 years or so.

They do a lot of activity workshops around music, art, sculpting etc. I am sure you can find all the details at the website.

Back to story telling session. It was well attended. Here’s the mktg copy we got and it has details about the Author.

Vinita was very very impressive and parents seemed equally engrossed. If it happens again, I would recommend that you take your kids.

Then we had a session for parents which was useful and insightful. Young parents had lot of queries.

Vinita Krishna has written many books and it seems that she is part of ‘Khaas Kitab Foundation’. There were books there which one could buy. I looked around to find one, more so since I could get it autographed by the Author herself. Didn’t find a compelling enough. They were very good but seemed a better fit for younger kids.

My 6 year old had a good time. Hope above info is useful for some of you. Till then, observe and improvise.

Coming back to this one.

Venue – The Park, Cannaught Place
Dates – Sep 17, 18, 2011

‘The Park’ is very centrally located so that is good. More importantly, you get a valet service and that is a big big plus since you do not have to get into any parking hassle. Here is the location map.

View Hotel in Delhi, The Park New Delhi in a larger map

It was hosted in a medium size banquet hall at first floor. There was a reception desk and ‘Kingdom of Dreams’ was giving away a ticket to their bollywood nautanki jangoora every couple of hours.

There are some sofas to relax and to plan your holiday options once you had to chance to get in and look at various offerings.

As you enter the hall, you see a very big stall by ‘Cox and Kings’. They had enough people to attend to, small round tables and polite and intelligent staff to answer your travel queries.

HT Destinations Sep 2011

HT Destinations Sep 2011

HT Destinations Sep 2011

There were about 10-12 holiday package providers in all and since it was a little early in the day, there was not much rush.

Apart from Cox and Kings, there were some of the Delhi based players like Dewan Holidays, Thomas Cook and few others.

From the state level tourism bodies, I could only find ‘MP Tourism’. Being a great fan of MP and MP Tourism, I stopped by and picked up a jungle package and was surprised to see a figure or INR 18,950. When I enquired about the details, it was a 3 nights all inclusive package for one person. That didn’t seem right and the gentleman who was manning the booth didn’t see well informed so we moved on.

HT Destinations Sep 2011

HT Destinations Sep 2011

We spent some time at ‘Cox and Kings’ and they were offering a INR 1K discount if you book there but overall I didn’t see any great discounts/packages being offered there, or something special which you do not see at their websites. Also the number of players were small. I am hoping that in future, they are able to have a bigger one so that one can find some surprise destinations (in India, outside India) which one is not usually familiar with. In its current avatar, 1 hour would be enough to cover all of it.

HT Destinations Sep 2011

If you have an immediate travel plan and have a destination in mind, say in next one month or so, and are looking at comparing three-four providers and are willing to make a decision then ‘HT Destinations’ would be helpful, else there was not much.

I would try to visit the next installment and report back on how it is evolving. If you want me to look for a specific thing, do leave a comment.

If you have missed this one, then do not worry because there was not much to miss.

Our editor, Vibha caught up with him over email and then I had a hearty chat with him on a long distance phone. I could sense that Manish loves good conversations. I was reluctant to not eat his entire night but we did end up spending enough time talking about traveling, how our views about travel is changing as a larger society, how what you write makes a difference to the bigger issue of self well-being and so on.

The below interview may not do complete justice to what we discussed but this is my best attempt at capturing our conversation in words.

Interview

Ghumakkar: Tell us about yourself. Who is Manish?
Manish : As a netizen I am a blogger who wants to express his passion for music & travel through blogging. In professional life I am a technocrat doing consultancy for Steel Authority of India Ltd in the area of thermal & energy engineering. I am based out of Ranchi, the beautiful capital city of Jharkhand.

Ghumakkar: All of your writing at Ghumakkar is in Hindi. What inspires you?
Manish : Hindi is my mother tongue & I feel I can best express myself in this language. Moreover 5 years ago when I started blogging in Hindi & English simultaneously it was Hindi which gave me instant recognition on the net. Its love of my readers & passion for my hobbies which keeps me going.

Ghumakkar – What about Hindi blogging and travel logs.
Manish – I am glad you asked this question. I have been very active in Hindi blogging and I read a lot of them. Since I have a deep interest in Music, Literature and Travel, I also read a lot of English blogs. You would be surprised to know that in case of travel, there are so many, simply so many, of English blogs where as it is not the case with Hindi. There are not many Hindi blogs of repute on travel. Travel writing is still not considered a prime ticket item in hindi blogsphere. There are thousands of blogs in Hindi where as a very few of them are on travel.

Ghumakkar – Traveling is gradually beginning to a part of lifestyle. The acceptance of travel amid larger section is growing. Your thoughts.
Manish : I would answer this question from two angles.

The first one is about understanding the social structure. I think, traveling has been there all the while. Our parents were traveling, if not more than what we travel but they were traveling. For Middle class or lower middle class, travel is a luxury. They can not afford this luxury multiple times a year so the travel becomes rare and when it happens, it is for a focused reason, most likely a pilgrimage. Almost very little of it happens on leisure. But if you look at upper middle class (say you and me), they considers this as a necessity. For them its a tool of education, something they would want to experience and plan for. When they budget things, they would keep aside some money for this activity. You would be surprised to know that even a non-metro like Ranchi sees a lot of international travel.

The other way is to look at from the angle of community. Bengalis and Gujaratis alway travel, whatever strata they are in. For them, it has to happen whereas if you look at MP/Bihar/UP belt, it is not as common. I think tourism Deptt needs to make things accessible in terms of money. It needs to happen at a wider level so that more travel can happen.

Ghumakkar: How long have you been travelling now? And what keeps you motivated?
Manish : Pardon !
Traveling do not need any motivation . Motivation is required when something becomes a chore or burden. On the contrary just planning for a new journey I get so excited. And to answer to the first part of your question right from the childhood days due to my father who also has similar passion.

Ghumakkar : What kind of places do you like to travel to?
Manish : I am not religiously inclined. So apart from religious places I love to go to any place which is naturally beautiful or has a great history. Some of my favourite locations are Havelock Island at Andamaan, Munnar Hills in Kerala, Gurudongmar in North Sikkim & Old Havelis of Jaisalmer.

Ghumakkar : What are your travel plans for the rest of 2011?
Frankly speaking nothing is final yet but North East, Uttarakhand, & Lahoul spiti are on my radar.

Section 2 – Ghumakkar and You

Ghumakkar: How did you come across Ghumakkar?
Manish : Because of Nandan ! His repeated comments on my travel post compelled me to join Ghumakkar . To tell you more, I have been reading Ghumakkar once in a while and decided to write some of my travel tales here, but it was not possible to write it in Hindi so I kept away. This did not deter Nandan and as soon as Hindi support was added, he pulled me there.

Ghumakkar: You have been with Ghumakkar for more than 2 years now. How has your experience been with Ghumakkar so far?
Manish : Well it is becoming more diverse more active community day by day. The spectrum of writing is really really wide. On one hand we have authors like Ram Dhall, who is simple a great delight to read. At times, I read his story with so much focus that I almost remember them word-by-word for many months. We have a lot of bikers, lot of young enthusiasts. It has been fun.

Ghumakkar: You have already published 12 stories at Ghumakkar. What keeps you with Ghumakkar?
Manish : Ghumakkar is a nice platform to reach out to other travel enthusiast. Initially I was not sure on writing in Hindi on a predominantly English web site. But gradually I found out that a sizable chunk of Ghumakkar readers are also interested in travelogue written in Hindi also. Infact Ghumakkar has shown the way to other web sites by starting bilingual travel platform,

Ghumakkar : Any personal favorites at Ghumakkar, the ones you do not miss to read.
Manish – That is a tricky one. Everyone really writes well at Ghumakkar but since you asked my personal favorite is Ram Dhall Sahib. He is simply superb. Manish Khamesra, Aurojit, Arvind Padmanabhan and Devasmita come to my mind and then there are few more which I am not able to recollect but in general the quality of writing at Ghumakkar is really high.

Ghumakkar: Do you have something to say to your fellow Ghumakkars?
I love reading a story when I can really get into the journey and feel like being with the writer. The interesting details of what someone did, why someone did that is much more enjoyable then reading plain data which one can find at so many travel websites. When I write a story, I do not focus much on information part. While information is definitely going to very helpful but frankly that is not what would make my story unique or difference. My suggestion to fellow Ghumakkars would be to take us on ride and not give too much of general information which any traveler can get from anywhere. If you share those little nuggest, those sweet nothing, I can tell you that your story would be much more appreciated.

Ghumakkar : Finally, what is one thing Ghumakkar should do ?
Manish : You are already doing a fab job but one thing which we should do as a community is having ‘meetups’. Do ‘Ghumakkar Meets’, ‘Ghumakkar Meets’ and ‘Ghumakkar Meets’. . There are few other things which we can do like having a thematic photo contest and someone can put a post including the best ten shots.

Thank you Manish for your time and responses which you sent via email and talking to Nandan. I would remember this conversation for a long time and I hope to do something for having at least one Ghumakkar meet sometime soon.

Readers – If you liked reading, leave a comment and I would update Manish. Also feel free to tell me on who you would want to read and know more in coming months.

So there we were, three of us, chatting over soda-pops at Haldiram’s. It was delightful and I at least didn’t feel any strangeness while chatting with Mahesh. To me, it seemed as if I have known him for ever. His warmth won us over before we could beging to talk.

Some excerpts

Q – How did you find out about Ghumakkar ? Tell us about life after Ghumakkar.

A – I make an annual pilgrimage to Doon during my kid’s summer vacations, since my in-laws are there. Every time, we try to plan for a quick excursion to a place which is not too far from Dehradoon. It was about two years back, i.e. 2009 and I was looking for some info about Lansdowne. I could find lot of sites which had basic information and mostly mentored by travel agents and tour operators. And while searching, I came across Ghumakkar and probably read this beautiful piece by Kumkum.

http://www.ghumakkar.com/2007/12/04/lansdowne-walk-and-simply-walk/

I tremendously liked the idea and after my trip, I wrote my first story at Ghumakkar which was on Lansdowne. You can read that story by clicking here – http://www.ghumakkar.com/2009/06/21/dehradun-lansdowne-gurgaon/

After that, there was no looking back. I think Ghumakkar greatly helps one to understand and know so much of the world around. Its fascinating to read about so many of these personal travel experiences. At my workplace, people call me a ‘Ghumakkar’. Off late I have got some health issues to take care of and that driving/walking long distances has not been easy but the urge to travel has only increased. I am now referred as ‘walking Ghumakkar encyclopedia’ in the matters of travel by my co-workers. That seems like a great compliment to carry.

Q - Thoughts about our monthly Newsletters. As you know, we do two newsletter every month. One on 15th of every month which goes far and wide and another at the end of month, just for the closely-knit community of Ghumakkar Authors. Has these been helpful to you ? What we can report/cover in these newsletters to make them useful ?

A – It is a great idea. The most notable is the ‘Featured Story’ since I may not had time to read everything and getting a quick reference helps a lot. I guess it should cover more of , what I call as, ‘Highlights of the Month’ ala Sapthakiki program of yesteryear Doordarshan days. If one can get a good concise glimpse of everything then there is this 2nd chance to not miss what just happened over last 30 days.

I know that these newsletters are getting archived as well and one can access older editions to catchup.

Q – Thoughts around Photo-blogs.
A – I think just having a photo blog is not very useful for the community. Unless there is enough text to explain the context, where exactly this place is, what season, which year and so on, a photo by itself doesn’t give much. There are many sites where one can find photos but then you can not make a travel decision just by looking at the photo. We should find a way to support these photos-blogs with real experiences.

In between we also talked about on what Mahesh has been doing in his work life, how it feels to be involved in super high end Medical diagnostics tools world where a single microscope may cost in excess of INR 1 Crore. His love for Gurgaon where he now lives and his annual travel to Doon and then further.

It was a very enriching and extremely rewarding experience for me (and I am guessing for Vibha as well) and we parted on the note that next meet needs to be with more people. We decided to make our first attempt at Ghumakkar living in Noida/GZB/Indirapuram/Delhi part of NCR so if you stay at one of the places and would want to sign-up, leave a comment.

Thank you Mahesh.