Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Sunrise over Kanchenjunga - Cellphone captures

Conducting a workshop then travelling from Kalimpong to Darjeeling and then working on the report and sleeping late night and then waking up 3 hrs later at 3:30 a.m. on a cold chilly November morning to travel to Tiger hill to catch the sunrise (Oh! and I missed out bathing in the icy water) . It does sound painful ... but it was worth it and I must thank the wonderful Bishop Lepcha for making all the arrangements for the visit! You have to see it to believe why the pain didnt matter once I reached there ...

Finally atop Tiger Hill ! And there's something faintly visible out there



Gradually getting brighter ...

Didnt realize there were so many out there ...

Sunrise happening on the other end ...

Could hardly tell if it was a mountain or just another cloud

All that snow gradually getting brighter with diffused sunrays hitting it

More people gather in ... and hawkers selling coffee

Hands getting numb but have to wait for that view everyone's waiting to catch ...

Now that's pretty ... but that's not it

Now look at what's happening to the skies ...

The sun rises and gold starts flowing from the peak

a bit more gold ...

Quite some gold ....

And my numb fingers can drop off now ... I have had the glimpse of gold  that many people staying in Darjeeling haven't

A Heap of Gold for everyone to salivate ...

Not just the 3rd highest peak ... its probably the prettiest one too

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Key to happiness ...

Its been such a long time since I opened this site that I thought they might have declared my page dead  and wiped it off by now. Fortunately they haven't !!!

Its been a tough time out there - work, depression and more work - some depression associated with work and some with other events in life and then getting involved in more work to mask the depression.  This whole cycle of events had so taken over my life that I forgot about all those small things that kept that smile on my face that everyone associates me with. Small things like humming a song that I love or catching up with a friend or just sitting down to write like I am today to let it all out. I believe I had gone into some cocoon in the last few months dissociating me from the virtual presence of happy moments around me.

The key to happiness, as I believe, is that we deal with the things that make us unhappy taking a concrete decision as early as possible on how to go about it, delivering on the decision taken, accepting the results of the decision and moving forward without any lingering thoughts of all that happened. Increase the amplitude on all those small things that make you happy and life seems like a flowery smooth ride. Its a constant battle between your imagination and the reality but you have to walk that tight rope in between them if you want to stick to that smile even in worrying times. If you fall from the rope towards reality, you have to face it in its crudest form and bear the mangling but if you fall towards imagination, you will land on flowers. The key though is to not walk deeper into the flowery woods unless you want to freak out everyone around you or get called insane or "whacko" or "bonkers" or whatever they call people like that where you stay.

Remember the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man" that was out a couple of years back? Everything was flowery for him when he staid positive by saying "Yes" to everything and things changed the moment he started saying "No". Saying "Yes" dissociated him from reality and the masking thus made him unpredictable and happy. The problem with masking your unhappiness is that you never deal with what is causing it - you let them linger and just seek for momentary happiness but the thing about unhappy circumstances is that they have a habit of coming back and striking you on your face, jolting you out of your imaginary world. All these days of masking had made me some sort of a freak who was unusually happy sometimes and unusually angry whenever I was getting shaken back to reality. Fortunately, since I stuck to myself and avoided long duration company all these days, no one really noticed it to start saying that I've gone cuckoo. I would've put myself in an asylum had I been staying with the different me in the last few months; all those nervous giggling would have freaked me out. I think I was acting somewhat like Dr. Asthana from Munna Bhai MBBS everytime he would get stressed out. (Oh come on! Its just one bollywood reference in the whole page so dont make a big deal about how crappy my writing skills are. You know I can't do without those references.)

Anyway speaking of bollywood, A. R. Rehman is back in the news with If I rise from 127 hours (I've got to watch that movie !). This one's with Dido (Remember 'Here with me' from the TV series 'Roswell' ? Apparently its from her album 'No Angel') and the song's been nominated for the Oscars. Notice the way they enunciate the lyrics - its hardly understandable. I had to do a search on the lyrics to convince myself that they were speaking english (although the first few words of each stanza are decipherable). But I guess that's exactly what makes the song such a different experience along with the liberal use of the instrument - harpejji. The song has won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Song and Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Song and has been nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song, Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Song, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Song, and Satellite Award for Best Original Song

Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report