Journal Entries: Chopta-Rishikesh Trip

29/03/2015:

3:57 pm:

I am on train to Delhi. I am with a group of friends, everybody is sharing their experiences. I haven’t heard a story as interesting as the one which Divyanshu (Henceforth referred to as DC) has been telling! Such a mind-boggling experience, with all the drama! I secretly wish I had such a misadventure to tell stories about. But I am glad that I don’t have any!

30/03/2015:

2:29 am:

Damn this McAloo Tikki! I should never have eaten two. I knew I wouldn’t be able to digest them! Now I am sick. I have a full journey ahead and I just puked. Oh man! I don’t know how I am going to face the winding roads in the morning! At least I have one thing off my bucket list- vomiting on a train!

I cannot sleep. There are too many mosquitoes here and I think it is raining outside. I think I have a good reason to believe that this trip is ruined for me. I am not feeling good, we won’t be able to go trekking in the rain, nor will we be able to enjoy rafting. Let’s see what happens.

10:20 am:

We reached Haridwar in the morning. I think the train was late by an hour or so...maybe because of the rains! It was still raining when we got there. We have booked a 12 seater traveler (mini bus) and everybody is asleep. We had a good breakfast. I didn’t eat anything, as I am not sure how my stomach would react to these winding roads, especially after last night’s puking incident. I think Akhilesh has eaten more than he needed as he himself said that two parathas were more than enough. I hope he does not fall sick. Everybody else on the bus seems fine. DC, DTH, GPD, Plashi, Arnav, Aman, Chandak…They are having a good sleep. I am wide awake. I am dosing off, but the winding roads are not letting me. Every half a minute, there is a turn.   

11:18 am:

And just when I was about to go into a deep sleep, the bus stopped. Akhilesh has fallen sick. We still have six to eight hours to go and I think I am going to follow Akhilesh in an hour or three! I better get some sleep.

4:45pm:

We have reached ‘Ukhimath’. We are going to stay the night here. This seems like a small village. The accommodation is cheap here. It is nice that we decided to stop. I need to rest!

11:00 pm:

We had a good dinner. We met a trekker who informed us that there is too much ice up there and if it continues to rain, we better abandon the trek. He also taught us some tricks of the trade such as double wrapping polythene bags underneath and on our socks so that the legs don’t get wet by the snow. He said hand gloves are must. So we purchased gloves. The guy has scared the hell out of us when he told us some story of a guy who slipped. He said he didn’t have a metal stick to save him. And all the time I was thinking, ‘Man! I don’t want to die out there!’

Tomorrow is going to be adventurous. We hope to come across some snow. I have never trekked in snow before. I just hope that tomorrow it doesn’t rain.

31/03/2015:

7:03 am:

Today is a good day. There is not a trace of rainy clouds in the skies. I am able to see the Himalayas from the balcony. Hell! I am surrounded by Himalayan Mountains. The view from the balcony is so serene that I feel hypnotized. It feels as if I am in a company of something truly beautiful as well as dangerous.

8:00 am:

We are already late. We should have left earlier. The driver says that the weather changes after 12O’clock. It will take us another hour and a half to reach Chopta.

9:20 am:

We just stopped at a small village named ‘Baniyakund’ to have some breakfast and rent the snow boots.

Now in 10-15 minutes, we’ll reach Chopta.

9:53 am:

Finally, the trek begins!

8:30 pm:

I enjoyed a lot on that trek. We couldn’t reach the top because the weather suddenly turned from sunny to cloudy, even the guides who were with other groups shouted that we should go back. At one point of time, we weren't able to see the upper part because those clouds surrounded us. We thought if professional people are scared then there is something wrong! ‘The winter is coming!’

Anyways, I met a German guy who seemed like an interesting character. While we were making our climb, he was going downhill. We briefly interacted with him.

He asked us, “Is this your first time in the mountains?”

I answered, “Snow trekking for the first time. What about you?”

“I was born in the mountains!” Said he and down he went on a steep slide.

That conversation was pretty interesting, I thought.

We are currently staying at ‘Rudra Prayag’. There is Ganga (Ganges) flowing behind us. I am finding the constant roaring of the river to be somehow pleasing and so is us being surrounded by the mountains. Tomorrow morning, we leave for Rishikesh. Actually, there is a camp at about 30 kms from Rishikesh. We are going to stay there and then we are going to cover the rest of the distance by river. I am pretty excited about rafting. Let us see! I better sleep now.

01/04/2015:

11:20 pm:

We are staying at a camp. We enjoyed today. I think today was the least hectic day of the trip so far. We reached the camp at around 12:00 O’clock. We had lunch. Some of us took a bath in the Ganges and boy was that water icy! We also played volleyball in the afternoon.

While enjoying evening snacks, DC, GPD, Palshi, DTH, Arnav and I had an interesting discussion on parallels of North Korea and the novel 1984. I also told about the interesting documentary that I had seen which described how people from East Germany came up with ingenious ideas to cross the Berlin wall. We decided that when we get back to campus, we’ll study more about North Korea and its moral policies, for it seemed intriguing to us.

We then proceeded to play the game ‘Mafia’ in the light of two lanterns. The atmosphere was perfect. There were 9 of us, there was a tent above our heads, two lanterns were the only source of light there and the Ganges flowing in the background…That ‘Mafia’ will indeed remain memorable.

The weather has not disturbed the fun till now. Let us hope that it will be a sunny day tomorrow, for I want to enjoy rafting to its fullest.

02/03/2015:

3:13 pm:

Life, to me is made of two crucial parts: people worth being with and the experiences that we go through.

4:25 pm:

Rafting was indeed fun! I liked every second of it. Had I died out there, I would not have regretted it. But, at the same time, I was not planning on dying, because there is so much for me to learn.

4:30 pm:

Do not forget to blog this in its original format! Lets try out how this looks…Journal entries!

5:13 pm:

This picnic was one of the best experiences of my life so far. Not only because of the people, but the experiences I had have made it worth remembering. I did snow trekking, camping and river rafting for the first time in my life. I got to know new people. I also realized a few things about me. First, I do not like McAloo Tikki. Second, I realized that although I am nothing but a dust speck as compared to the scale of this Universe, I matter to some people: my parents and some of my friends. I came to know that I exist!

When I was floating in the Ganges, there was a moment when I was not connected to anything. I was just going with the flow. In that moment, I realized that the things that we run after in our lives are so trivial. Life is more than that. 

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Some snaps from the trip: Photos by Arnav Jain: (except for some of them)

   

TIFR-CAM Experience: Day 3 and 4

The last day of the conference opened with a talk by O. Pironneau. He is one of the greatest researchers in the field of numerics. He is also one of the developers of FreeFem++, the open source software that we used to run our simulations. His lecture was on how to model blood flow through arteries using computational fluid dynamics.  It was mainly about how to model fluid structure interaction using Finite Element Method. It was an amazing lecture. Frankly, he is a big-shot in the field. There were many great minds that were sitting there in that room. There were people from TIFR, IISc and IITs who are great researchers. Some of them had even taught SJM, e.g. Dr G.D.V. Gowda! There were PhD advisors of my mathematics teacher Dr Sangeeta (Dr A.K. Pani and Dr Neela Nataraj). And then, there was Pironneau. And in front of this crowd, Ruchir and I were going to present our work! It was indeed terrifying. But then, I thought about Feynman and all my worries went away!

There is a chapter in Feynman’s biography, “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character. The chapter is titled ‘Monster Minds’. In that chapter, Feynman talks about his first seminar. He was going to give his first seminar in front of Pauli, Neumann and Einstein! He too was terrified, but as he went to the stage and started talking about his work and Physics, it didn’t matter to him as to whom he was addressing! The story is such an interesting one that I always think, if Feynman could survive in front of that crowd, I can survive anywhere! Feynman has made such a great impact on my lifestyle that I can only say that I decided to pursue my interests because of his stories. Simply speaking, he is my superhero and if I were to meet Feynman I would go to him and say, “Thank You!”

So, there I was, getting ready to give a talk about my undergraduate thesis in front of these ‘monster minds’! I was not scared at all. All I had to do was to explain them what I had done so far.

Our talk was scheduled at 5 O’clock. SJM gave a nice introduction about Group theoretic techniques that we had implemented. Then I talked about Turing patterns and the numerical simulations. Finally, Ruchir concluded the talk. Everyone there liked our presentation and people were really interested to know more about our work. After the talk, some professor congratulated me for the talk and said it was an interesting investigation. I thanked him for the encouragement. I later came to know that he was also a big-shot from IISc and had taught SJM when he was a student. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name. Pironneau told us to complete the remaining task and he would be interested to see our results.

So, everything went great! But there is still work that needs to be done and I am planning to do it after mid-February, once I am done with the entrance exams.

On 20^th Decemeber, Abhishek was going to leave Bangalore. Ruchir and I dropped him to his bus stop and three of us also had dinner there. It was a rooftop restaurant with traditional Andhra food. Abhishek and I had shared a nice chicken dish while Ruchir went for sea food. It was indeed delicious and most importantly, not too spicy. At 10 pm or so, Ruchir and I returned to TIFR-CAM. SJM had already gone in the evening after our presentation. He was going to participate in midnight marathon which was going to be held that night. For the record, I must confess that SJM is really energetic. Remember that he had stayed up till 3 O’clock, attended the whole conference and then that guy was going to run 22 kilometers the same night and all this was without any rest.

The next day, 21^st of December was the last day of my Bangalore trip. Ruchir went to meet one of his relatives who live in Bangalore, while I went on to meet my BITS seniors. I first went to JNCASR and met Anupam, our martial arts captain. He was the one who taught me many things about martial arts. He is currently doing Research Assistantship at JNCASR. We roamed around the campus and drank coffee. He had some exam and had to leave.

After that, I went to NCBS to meet Shilpa, one my seniors who is doing her undergraduate thesis there. I also met Tejas Pande there. We all had lunch together. One thing is for sure, NCBS has nice food! One of their friends, Elsa, who is also a Research Assistant there, joined us.  After lunch, we went to sports complex. While Tejas played foosball, Shilpa, Elsa and I played carom. Tejas also joined us after some time. It was indeed fun.

Then catching a shuttle for IISc, I was supposed to get down at Mekhari circle. But I didn’t know where to get off, so I asked the guy sitting next to me to tell me when to get off. We got to talking and that guy turned out to be pretty cool. He had no hurry to apply for PhD. He said, “I am still discovering my love for the subject. Getting a PhD and getting a job as soon as possible is typical thinking. That doesn’t work with me.” Actually, what he was saying made a lot of sense.

He also told me about a device that he had made to measure carbon dioxide. He had reached to the conclusion that, Carbon dioxide in atmosphere of Bangalore is more than double the amount of that if someone exhales in your mouth. As we were talking about the pollution, I talked about the Kumbh Mela and about the saints that visit my hometown, Nasik and pollute the river. To this, his reply was some of the Sadhus are not phony. So I asked him, “How do you know? I think all of them pollute the river.” To my surprise, he knew that because he had wandered around with those Sadhus for a couple of months and also had smoked with them! He was an interesting character.

He told me where to get off and where to go. I reached the Bangalore City Junction well before time. While I was waiting for my train, I met a flock of Buddhist monks who were travelling to Hubli, a city in Karnataka.

I came back home on 22^nd morning and hence ended my trip to Bangalore. 

TIFR-CAM Experience: Day 1 and 2

Recently, I along with my thesis advisor and mentor Dr Sai Jagan Mohan sir (henceforth referred by his popular acronym, SJM) and one of my closest friends Ruchir Dwivedi gave a conference talk at TIFR-CAM, Bangalore. This post is the crux of all the experiences I had in that amazing city.

‘Conference on Computational PDE, Finite Element Meet 2014’ was to begin on 18^th of December 2014. I reached Bangalore on 17^th of December. Since we had submitted our work late, the organizers were unable to accommodate us inside the campus. But fortunately, my mentor’s sister lives in Bangalore. So he had arranged for Ruchir and me to stay at his sister’s place.

I reached Bangalore around 11:30 am. I was completely new to the city. The majestic or formally the Kempegauda bus stand is right in front of the Bangalore city junction railway station. I had no idea how to reach the given address. On top of that, I have no hint about how to interpret Kannada, the vernacular of Karnataka. But most of the people understand Hindi and English and they were helpful. I found the enquiry counter easily and the lady there told me how to reach my destination. I took a bus from there to the house of SJM’s sister. It took me a couple of hours to reach there through the insanely clumsy traffic of Bangalore.

When I reached there, my mentor’s sister, along with her husband was gone out of station for some professional meeting. But SJM’s mother was there and she let me in.

SJM and Ruchir’s flight from New Delhi was delayed due to the fog in the atmosphere. They almost took an extra hour to reach Bangalore. Before they arrived, I must confess I felt a little awkward. But it was refreshing to talk to Sir’s mother. I also talked to her grandchildren. Luckily, there was a Rubik’s cube and they didn’t know how to solve it. So I taught them how to solve a Rubik’s cube.

I must confess a fun-fact. Well, it is slightly embarrassing but the truth is that I learned Rubik’s cube just to impress girls. I know it is stupid, but that was the only motivation for me to continue learning it! I thought it looks cool and I learnt it simply to get admiration from the opposite sex! And so far, I haven’t impressed a single girl with it! Personally, I would have never learned those algorithms and because of the fact that I haven’t been able to impress any girl with it, I sometimes feel it was a waste of time.

But that day, when I completed the cube, I could see that small boy looking curiously at the cube, for he thought it was incredibly cool! And that is how my knowledge of how to solve Rubik’s cube helped me, to get over the initial awkwardness with some stranger.

Once Sir and Ruchir arrived, we went for a walk and talked about various subjects. Mainly, we talked about the city. We went to a nearby mall in the evening and while going there, we were talking about the Finite Element Method. A car almost hit my mentor, for he was lost in the conversation! In the evening, his sister and her husband came back from Mysore and we chatted for a while. They are nice people. SJM’s sister told us stories about sir from their childhood, how he used to help her in her studies and how she used to hate those study sessions! All in all, it was fun!

The next day, we got up early in the morning at 6:00 and using city buses, we managed to reach TIFR-CAM at around 8:10 am. We had a breakfast and registration there and the conference started at 9:00 am as planned. There were talks by mathematicians, engineers and PhD Students from all over the country. The students were predominantly from TIFR or IISc Bangalore. Some of the talks were really nice, where some were too advanced for me. One my friends from BITS Pilani, Abhishek Kumar was also attending the conference. We met a lot of amazing people and more or less everyone there was nice enough to talk to us, the undergraduate students! The food was great and the conference was going as planned. Our presentation was last on the last day of the conference. So we had enough time. Ruchir and I also got accommodation there at TIFR and the organizers were helpful to us.

At the end of the first day, once the conference ended at 5:30 pm, four of us, Sir, Ruchir, Abhishek and I caught a shuttle to IISc Bangalore. We were going there to meet one of our seniors from BITS Pilani, Rohit Varghese. I hadn’t met him before, but he seemed like a cool guy. He had a car with him. We talked about many different subjects. We went to Subway Sandwich just outside IISc and then went to Corner House. Corner House is a famous chain of ice-cream shops in Bangalore and they have this special dish which they title: ‘Death by Chocolate’! SJM challenged me to eat one full bowl of ‘death by chocolate’ and I accepted the challenge. But then, Rohit intervened and warned me about it, for it is humongous to eat, especially when you are not hungry. So Abhishek stepped up. Together, we finished that whole bowl of ‘Death by Chocolate’ and boy was I in for stomach pain! Rohit dropped us somewhere near Hebbal, the central location from where buses go all over the city. We got a bus to SJM’s sister’s house and hence ended the first day of the conference.

TIFR-CAM

Abhishek and I (I don't know what we were talking about! Ruchir is such a weird guy, he didn't even tell us that he was taking a pic! 

Death by Chocolate!

On the second day, we acquired our allotted room which was room no. 311 at TIFR-CAM. The second day was also good. Last year Abhishek and I had done a study project in mathematics department under the guidance of a new professor Dr Sangeeta Yadav. On the second day, we attended a lecture by her PhD advisor! It was indeed a good feeling to see him referring to her publications!

SJM stayed in our room on 19^th December as we had not yet prepared our presentation. We had some slides here and there, and I had all the codes with me, but that needed to be arranged in a proper manner. We had already decided that we were not going to be vague about any of our statements in the presentation. As we were presenting in front of a crowd full of mathematicians, we had to be crisp in the statements that we were going to make. We had divided our work in subparts. SJM was handling the part of presentation related to Group Theory. Ruchir and I were handling the part related to numerical implementation in FreeFem++ and MATLAB.  It took us 2 O’clock in the morning to finish with the presentation. SJM stayed for up for one more hour in order to compile everything in nice format. 

Once

Recently, I saw the movie ‘Once’ and I have to confess it is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is an unusual love story of a guy and an immigrant girl from Czech Republic.

The plot is set in Dublin. The movie has a certain flow to it. A poor, immigrant, pianist girl likes the songs of a street guitarist. They get to talking and he wants to hear her play. What follows is a beautiful series of songs that they write, compose and record in the upcoming week.

These songs tell us a story. They slowly unravel their own love lives while simultaneously give us the feeling that he is falling for her and she is in love with him.

There is one scene in movie where the guy asks the girl whether she loves her husband. She replies to him in Czech, “No. I love you.” The guy doesn’t understand a word of what she says and even in the movie, we don’t have any translation for that dialogue. The subject ends there. There is this unusual kind of unspoken love that has starting to flourish between them and we can feel that.

But the other factors in their lives make their coming together impossible or to the very least, cumbersome. Deep down, both of them know this fact.

The ending of the movie is what makes this movie great. It couldn’t have been any better. I am not giving up the ending here, but it makes sense. I found the ending moving. It tells us no matter what, life goes on! 

I also liked the sound tracks, especially the song ‘Falling Slowly’. As Marketa Irglova said in her Oscar acceptance speech about this song, ‘This song is written to give hope!’    

The optimism fills the movie. We have to cherish the moments when we are with the people whom we love/like. It also has an underlying sad tone that the time we have got is finite. But the optimistic side ensures us that finite time is enough!

The interplay of the deepest human emotions that has been captured through songs makes this movie amazing! I am glad I came across this movie. 

Weekend at Pondicherry: Part 2

The next day was touristy. We visited the markets of Pondicherry. We visited Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville. In Auroville, I found the food there is preposterous in price. I couldn’t help but notice the stereotyping of Indian culture. There are shops that sell exotic incense sticks and handmade soaps. The spices, the khadi shirts with ancient scripts such as ‘Om’ written on them with the aroma of perfumes added to it. I felt sad when I saw foreigners buying those things in the little ‘bamboo baskets’. I don’t know if they were really made of bamboo or just plastic coated. But it felt superficial. I felt sad that people visiting India will carry this stereotypical image of spices, aromas and khadi with them when they go back. Those people  might never see the real India. Then they will write about their trip to India and the spiritual uplifting they felt because of this trip. Finally, some guy in India will read it and think if someone with white skin is saying this, he/she must be right. And then he/ she will go to such places to seek spiritual peace. This is what British Rule has done to us. Indian people still think of white skin as something to seek . They think white is good. They want to mimic the British view of Indians. The beauty products in India advertise the skin becoming fair when you use such and such product. This is one of the side effects of British Raj. Our conception of beauty has significantly changed. And the western world is still not ready to accept that Indian people do not travel on elephants! There are two images of India in the western world that I know of. Most of the people think that we come from some exotic place, we travel on elephants and our food is spicy. Many think that we live in a shit hole, are corrupt and seriously need help. I reject both of them. And on top of this, what creeps me out more is Indian people behaving the same way around foreigners. I think we have lost our self esteem because of 300 years of rule under the British Empire. Anyway, I did not like the Auroville and this is my personal opinion.

The only things that I admired about Auroville were the concept and the architecture. The architecture is awesome and the concept is beautiful. It is a city for all races, cultures and people from all over the world who want to seek self realization. I liked the idea of having a piece of land somewhere on the planet where people who are ready to take effort on their own selves are welcome! 

 

Matrimandir, Auroville

Taken at Auroville

The central tree, Auroville

 

We also visited ‘the Pondicherry Museum’. It is a small ancient building where certain French governor used to live. His villa has been now modified/ transformed into a museum. There, we saw many paintings of French as well as Indian rulers. How many people would have lived there? They would have travelled from France to India. Not that I support some foreign power ruling over India, but try to see the picture from their side.

It also had ancient scriptures from the eras of Chola and Pallava dynasties. The statues of Nataraja, Krishna and the dancing lady accompanied the statues of Narcissus, Cupid and Psyche. It was the confluence of the cultures. I love such things.

The museum also had the remains of Arikamedu Greek settlement. It was mesmerizing for me. Museums have always attracted me. The Arikamedu remains brought me back to my childhood. When I first learnt about the lost civilizations of Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Egypt and Babylon, I was so fascinated that I decided to become a historian or an archeologist. I gave up on that because later in my life, science fascinated me more. But I still like to read about lost civilizations. A small piece of some pottery can tell you so many things about the culture of those people is a fascinating fact in itself. The remains of these civilizations are not just broken pots and incomprehensible drawings. They are telling us a story. They are the legends of the lost people. Anyway, I enjoyed the visit to museum.

Ruchir wanted to buy a set of chocolates for one of his friends. So, we did a lot of chocolate hunting. In the afternoon, we ate at some café where he tried some French food. In the evening, we ended our journey by drinking coffee and eating chocolates.

We then handed our bike back and went to Chennai to resume our summer internship. The adventures and the mass delusions that I experienced were unique. I also saw the two sides of India. In French quarters, you will have all the cleanliness and order and a lane or two after that, you will see big amount of trash on the boulevard. I cannot change it. But I can at least document my feelings about the current situation! Indian people need to develop a backbone and we need to break our stereotypes. What else can I say? This was an awesome experience after all!

French Quarters 1

French Quarters 2

French Quarters 3

GPS!

Coffee: Perfect way to end the trip to Pondi!

Weekend at Pondicherry: Part 1

(I wrote this article sometime during last summer. I am posting it on the blog now.)

Last weekend, I visited Pondicherry. It is just a three to three and half hour bus ride from Chennai.

I had Ruchir Dwivedi with me as my traveling companion. He was also the planner and the manager! I had no idea how we were going to go, where we were going to stay…He did all the planning. So all I had to do was accompany him.

We left Chennai from Madhya Kailash (nearest stop from IIT Madras, where I am currently doing an internship) at around 9:30 in the morning. The bus was almost full and we had to sit in the driver’s cabin on the cover of the engine!

There are two problems associated with sitting on the engine-cover in the driver’s cabin. One, the honking of bus horn which may cross 40-45 decibels at times and second, it is incredibly hot! The only soothing thing was the Bay of Bengal which we could see as we traveled along that fabulous road. At 1:00 pm, we got off the bus at ECR circle. There is an YHI (Youth Hostels Association of India) hostel two-two and a half kilometers from there. We were going to be there in Pondicherry on Sunday too. We had to accommodate ourselves somewhere. So Ruchir had already found out about the Hostel and as he is YHI member, we were also going to get some discount! We took an auto and went to the youth hostel. As it turned out they were not allowed to give any discounts to anyone but students! We already had our BITS id cards with us. And we got ourselves a place to stay for the night for just 100 rupees. It was too good a deal. Though they were not able to provide us separate room as such, they made all the arrangements in a spare hall. It was good. We were up from 6 O’clock in the morning and I had slept late on the Friday night. (I was watching Seinfeld!) Also, the Sun had come up and as it is well known, Pondicherry is humid. That is why we decided to take rest for the afternoon.

Oh, what a nice sleep it was! In the meanwhile, I also charged my phone as we were going to need a lot of battery if we were going to use GPS. At quarter to five or so, we came to main town which is two kilometers away from where we were staying. Next task was to hire a bike.

We searched for a good bike and ended up renting a ‘Vespa’. It was costlier than that of an old, ragged ‘Activa’, but it was worth it. Our Vespa was a yellow colored beauty with rounded mirrors. For some reason, that gave us a classic feel. The next important task was to fill the tank with petrol, as fuel does not come under the renting deal. For two days, two and a half liters of fuel are more than enough to roam around in Pondicherry. Once we had the vehicle in a ready-to-go state, we started ambling.

It was already five O’clock in the evening so we decided to go to the Pondicherry beach. On our way, we came across the Government Park of Pondicherry. We roamed around there for a while, saw some monuments and observed people taking selfies. I don’t like casual selfies that people take when they go to a mall or when they visit some tourist place. It is not as if you are on top of the Everest, people! Come on! I will write about it sometime in the near future. There was some information written under the Park Monument, but it was in Tamil and French, neither of these languages can I comprehend. So, that was it as far as the park was concerned.

Just in front of the park, there is the famous Pondicherry Beach. It is not a sand beach. It is rocky. The road alongside the beach bears an apt name: ‘beach road’. There is a magnificent statue of Mahatma Gandhi with eight pillars surrounding the statue. The pillars have been brought there from the fort of Gingee. There are also Ambedkar memorial and French war memorials on the other side of the road.

We roamed around the beach road for a while and once the hunger called for food, we decided to go to famous ‘Le Cafe’.  Ruchir told me that in the times of the French rule, the building was a post office. Now it has been renewed as a restaurant. It has got an amazing view of beach and the food was great too. It is not cheap though. Well, nothing comes for free on this planet.

After a rejuvenating break at 'Le Cafe', we resumed our roaming-around activities. We met some local Police with their interesting, red, French hats. I clicked a picture or two of a stranger couple who wanted me to take a photo of them. Ruchir was on roll with his camera.  He clicked some awesome pictures that evening. Here are some of them.

It was 8:30 pm or so and we were already hungry. Ruchir wanted to try some sea food. So we went to some French restaurant which was famous for its sea food. I, on the other hand am not a fan of non vegetarian food. Though I have tried chicken tandoorie and some variants of chicken, I have not finished a whole plate till date. I had never tried sea food before as I have some issues with the stink and by issues, I mean serious, honest disgust or at the very least, nausea. So I tend to steer clear of sea food. But that day, when we went in that restaurant, all my expected nausea was not there. I do not know how I didn't feel that peculiar unwanted disgust about sea food. Maybe because there were no stinky-fish smells or for some other reasons, I was completely normal around all that sea food. To my own surprise, I tried fried prawns and I liked it.

Once the dinner was over, we had nothing else to do except to go back to our lodge. It was already 11O’clock in the night and it would have been logical to go back. But instead, we decided to go to Paradise beach which is almost 15 km away from Pondicherry. It was thrilling, being spontaneous. But it was also going to be one of the unforgettable experiences ever.

We took out our Vespa and started our journey for the Paradise beach. I had GPS on my phone and that was going to be our pathfinder. We decided that I would drive while going there and Ruchir would drive while coming back.

I have never been to Pondicherry before and I thought this so called Paradise beach would be a crowded place. But, owing to an odd timing of 11:30 pm, it was just a long beach with some fishermen sleeping in their huts. Ruchir and I parked our scooter and went on. I sat on the deck of one of the canoes that were standing there on shore. Ruchir went along with his camera.

It was nice there. There was no noise, no crowd. It was like a private beach!

I was sitting on the deck of canoe, enjoying the placid environment around me. The tides were making periodic splashing on the shore and the sky was clean. In such situations of beauty, everyone starts thinking about life and so did I. I was thinking about all the beautiful things that have happened to me in my life so far. I remembered something that someone once said to me and I had no idea whatsoever that within next ten minutes I would be driving away from that beach just to get the hell out of there.

In fact, while I was thinking about life, I was also trying to absorb what was around me. It was too tender a feeling! But when I gazed around, I saw a flickering light to the far right of me. It was interesting. What was that light? Was someone there? Soon, as I concentrated hard enough on that light, I could see two, maybe three silhouettes. One of them was holding the source of that light. It might have been a mobile phone. But the shadowy figures were too far from me. My feeling of romantic thoughts went down and was overtaken by the feeling of adventure in a moment. There was something going on out there. I wanted to know. So I turned around to take Ruchir with me for investigation only to find him talking to a local fisherman.

I went there and asked Ruchir to come with me. I did not want to mention the silhouettes and the light in the presence of the fisherman, but I wanted Ruchir to know that there is something suspicious going on there. I don’t exactly remember how I managed to convince him but Ruchir tried to say goodbye to the fisherman in order to take a walk along the beach. And the fisherman suddenly changed his attitude. He told us not to go in the far right and quote, “There are big dogs”. That was obviously a lie and we knew in an instant that we were in trouble. The fisherman seemed to know about the thing that was going on and was keen on not to let us go there. The fisherman or the guy posing as a fisherman then started asking us to drink with him a couple of beers. When we said we are not interested, he asked us some money for a beer and some smoke. There were many loopholes in his story. He was not conveying what he wanted to tell us, as he only knew some words in English and none of us could understand Tamil. The only thing that he conveyed properly was that there was some danger involved in going to the far end of the beach. On top of that, Ruchir had a high resolution camera in his hands. He must have thought of Ruchir as a journalist or a reporter or at the very least, an overenthusiastic tourist.

Meanwhile, the shadowy figures that were there had disappeared on one of the canoes. While we were talking to the fisherman, I was constantly trying to look whatever I could look for. I don’t know why but I was getting a hunch that there was something wrong with that beach. In the end, at around 12:00 O’clock, we decided to run away when we could as if situation arrived; no one else in the world knew that we were on the Paradise beach. I guess he must had been on strict instructions about not to let anyone go there. What if there was some illegal activity such as drug trafficking going on? What if the dark figures that might have caught us with a big camera were actually some mafia gang? More probably, it might have been a newlywed couple celebrating a romantic honeymoon on a clean beach, but the fisherman was somehow involved. He had his interests in not letting us go there. Anyways, because we were only two people with no one else knowing our whereabouts, we decided to get out instead of being stupid and investigating. I accelerated our scooter so hard that we almost slipped in the beach sand. The fisherman was still with us. Once we got out, Ruchir was constantly asking questions about the silhouettes. I told him the story and how it all implied us getting in trouble.

Finally, when we reached a crowded town nearby, we changed seats. Ruchir was driving and I was holding the GPS now. I don’t know what happened to GPS, but we lost our way. After a lot of encircling to the same area and going through many odd lanes we reached Pondicherry at around 12:35 am. Finding our hostel was another task that was remaining. It took us 15 more minutes to reach there and while going there, a dog chased us as good as it could. Finally, we reached YHI hostel at 1O’clock in the morning only to find it locked. We had to wake the watchman up and listen to him about coming in before 12O’clock. After all the listening, he took us in and thus ended the first day in Pondicherry.