A Fun Trip on '27th June 09'

That Friday morning I was engrossed in fixing my real player....my phone rang; I noticed Asma’s name flashing on it. I picked up the call and blankly said “Hello didi,wassup?? ” from the other end she responded enthusiastically “we are finally going tomorrow didi, Amarnath had shortlisted some places, you gotta come and finalize “.Her call took away my whole attention from real player and I eagerly waited for the clock to tick to 4:30PM. At 4:20PM I reached office, I turned on my laptop quickly, checked my mails and remedy(thank God there was no new ticket),I rushed to Amarnath’s workstation. Amarnath said he had shortlisted two plans after considering the metrics- distance, food availability and expense of course –it was month end after all. Plan:A- was Sangam & Mekedatu , Plan:B- was Raganathitu bird sanctuary and Manchinbele dam . Plan A didn’t fascinate me as I have already been to sangam so I voted for plan B and so, did Amarnath and Sid, and Asma is too sweet to say no to me ever

My shift was till late night 2:30 that day but my adrenalin level was too high to say no to start off at 7:30AM the next morning. I was all set to leave at 7:30AM but these guys followed Indian standard time and reached 30mins late at my place. I quickly got inside the car. Amarnath was in the driving seat, he was playing some Kumar Sanu’s Bengali Song (rather Sanu da’s song as per Sid). Sid was at his comical best like always, applying sec 377 on me and Asma. In some time his attention got diverted from sec 377 , to the Sanu da’s songs and his hilarious commentary on the Bengali lyrics didn’t take much time to force Amarnath to put on some good hindi songs. By this time we were already some 40kms away from Bangalore . Now little hunger was bothering us. Amarnath parked his black WagonR in front of a south India restaurant. That restaurant had large area on its backward. The special attraction of that place was a old turkey which was loitering around . My silly self didn’t miss the chance to pose with the turkey and made Asma pose too.

From there Amarnath drove to Ranganathittu, bird sanctuary. Its is small island in the bank of river Kauveri. The parking place and the gardens around it was pretty well maintained. After entering the sanctuary we sat near the river chit chatted a little, pulled each other legs, clicked few pics. We were able to see colony of bats though the zoom lens of the camera on far off trees from there. As we marched further in we discovered a small bridge, on looking down from it, into the water, we noticed a huge aquatic snake swallowing a frog, it was like watching animal planet live. Then on further going inside the sanctuary we notice a tree house kind of place, I got the temptation to climb to the top instantly, Asma was putting her best effort to stop me but atlast I won, Sid convinced Asma and we all climbed on it, the multitude of beautiful birds we could see from there was astonishing. We spend some time there. Amarnath was busy shooting the beautiful birds and I captured some stills. Now it was time for row boating, we went into the middle of water, we could see the birds and colony of the bats from unbelievable close quarters now , we saw huge crocodiles basking on the rocks just couple of feet away from our boat. These ferocious creature looked lifeless and didn’t seem to have any intention of attacking. Sid’s metaphor to these crocodiles were our managers who have capabilities but prefer being lazy.

After coming out of the Sanctuary we had a quick lunch and drove toward Manchinbele Dam which is basically a reservoir built across the river Arkavathi. Now it was drizzling a little so Amarnath had to slow down his driving. On the way we passed via Ram Nagar , we saw the huge rocks on which Gabbar sat and yelled at Kalia “kitney admi the re” in Sholey. Before reaching the dam the road for few kms was pathetic and Amarnath had to display his expertise in driving department to take us till the destination. The rain had stopped now. On reaching the place we sensed a tranquil atmosphere. The place had a weird stunning beauty of its own. I captured few still moments in my camera again. Asma and me went and dipped our hand in the water and played for sometime. Then we sat on the grass there and had funny, silly, casual conversation . I felt a child like happiness far off from chaos of daily adult life. Time passed quickly and it was 6:30pm ,time to start our journey to Bangalore.

I reached home at 9:00PM and was expecting some sweet dreams for sure that night. But suddenly I heard my nokia theme alarm ringing loud, I wake up and realized it was Sunday morning, hell lot of house hold work was pending. So, I was compelled to push myself back into orbit of daily routine.