sale sale Single Ladka!!! Sale Sale!!!

One of my very very dear friends J, is SINGLE, and is looking for a valentine's day date! He mentioned that to me in the morning today and I vouched to put this issue up somewhere... my best somewhere happens to be Chai ki Dukaan!

The guy is very smart, good looking, soft spoken, a brilliant photographer and an entrepreneur with a smile worth millions and a heart of Gold! and Single! and available!

If you know someone in Bangalore, who would like to go out on a blind date, please do leave a note here! I hope my friend is reading the post and the comments!

Mother to Many!

So you have any kids?

No!

Planning for any?

No!

Can you have any?

Yes!

Still not planning?

No!

Why? Do both of you agree?

Yes, with our own reasons! He has his own, I have mine!

Hmm! And your reason is?

If I have a kid, I will probably spend everything that I earn on him/her... not that I earn too much but whatever it is it would be spent on that one child. Now if I do not have a kid of my own, I can probably use that li'il money to raise more kids outside my own family. The mouths are already here, the kids are already here... I did not bring them to this world! but they are here. I rather use my money to raise them!

Hmm...

Re-Connect-ed

My source of english music in school till class 10th
The best moonwalker that I know and a huge MJ fan
Amazing writer and poet as I remember
A super intelligent student
and one of my closest friends EVER

Sandeep!!!

and I connect with him after quite a few years of no conversations!!!
I have to say that it has to be one of the best things that have happened to me this year!

And this when I was talking about him regularly to another very close friend of mine!!! I guess while I was talking about him, time and space was making him look for me! Makes my belief in the fact that there are no coincidences, a lot more stronger!!!

I feel that the best thing about connecting with childhood friends is that there is no judging happening... it's absolutely easy to accept that friend the way (s)he is, mostly because you tend to remember all that you can from the yesteryears, and what that person is "now" is of little importance... you tend to rely mostly on the years when you have grown together instead of being close friends because of you liking something about the person! There is a lot that I have to write about the times Sandy and I used to be a two member gang, but sometime later! I am smiling non-stop right now thinking about my good ol' school days right now!!!


Sandeep, if you are reading this! Thank you bro! I can't tell you how happy I am!

First of the amazing weekends - Minneapolis this time!

I had this amazing weekend, but before I write about it, I am going to put up things from the last amazing weekend I had... I am going to make a record of sorts of living up weekends as the fall is coming to town this year... so here we go about the last one...

This current weekend, it will be up here soon!!!

It was a new weekend !!!

and full of new experiences... from the 1409 apartment overlooking a beautiful Minnesota Sunset which I went to first in July'08 to the same apartment in August'09, its been quite a journey...

The first time I was quiet, in a new place, new city, with new people... and this time around as well

It seemed like a new place, with some new people, and new vibes in the environment...

From a close knit group of friends, to couple, and husbands and wives, and girlfriend and boyfriend, I guess this has been a nice ride for the entire gang... Lakhan and Sapna are seeing each other and spend a lot of time together over weekends... Deepak's wife Prakati is finally in town, and he has shifted out of 1409 and now is in his own apartment, Pritam has a lovely firang girlfriend Tracy and she has moved in to 1409 temporarily as well... all in all, this was like a set of threads which were overlapped with each other, drifting apart with distinct points which connect each other...

or lets put it this way, its something like big bang theory... forces internal and external make you move away, but still not loose the contact, an invisible force, like gravity keeps you around each other, moving around in your own orbits but with paths crossing time and again!!!

Its a nice journey :) What has not changed in this year is my status though :D we were watching a movie yesterday, Enemy at the Gates, and it was kind of funny to see Deepak and his wife on the sofa, Pritam and Tracy on my left, and Lakhan and Sapna on my right... I had to say this loud that the couples had taken all the corner seats, and were not really there in the theatre to watch the movie :P it was fun! It was a rather serious scene on the screen but we all laughed out at this!

Now that this transformation study and analysis is done, I can move to my regular way of narrating the sequence of events as it happened!

Greyhound is a bus service that is more expensive than the much cheaper Megabus, and provides a few attractions over it too... better leg room, a big waiting area/bus station, attendants to manage everything and so on and so forth, but Megabus is a low cost, no overheads model and it works very well for a lot of people... For some reason, the Greyhound here on the Milwaukee/Chicago/GreenBay/Minneapolis route has a high percentage of African-Americans (no offence to anyone, just an observation)... the attendants at the counters, the bus drivers, and MOST of the travellers! vs. Megabus where its completely the opposite!

Left Milwaukee Friday evening and reached Minneapolis around 1 in the night! I love seeing the Minneapolis downtown approaching for some reason! The lights at the downtown, my femiliarity with the place and having some friends there makes it feel like home!

Met Tracy and Pritam, went home... had some food and chatting the rest of the night away before sleeping around 4 in the morning... The original plan was to go for a shoot, but we went to Deepak's place instead! Beautiful apartment, and looked so much like home! This is where "women" are way way way ahead of men! keeping a house like home! Tracy has cleaned up 1409 beautifully, and Deepak's place also looks like a home! He has recently bought a Epson Movie Mate Projector and we watched "School of Rock"... i love the movie anyway, and watching it on a projected screen was a lovely experience! Lakhan and Sapna reached later in the day and we spent the rest of evening talking... Everyone now seems to have an iphone in the US and this gang is not far away... Pritam had one 2G (which I have now because he got the 3Gs), Sapna and Deepak also got a 3Gs! I tried confusing Sapna's iPhone's compass and succeeded in about 15 minutes... rotated it so many times that it forgot which direction north was in! funny fone!

We finally got ready to get out the apartment around 8ish, went back to downtown and then took cabs to one of our favorite bars in uptown called the Chino Latino... it has the best Cocktails that I know of, some of them being Vodktajito (this is served with a sugarcane slice), X-rated, Mango Martini, Kamasutra Mama, Mexican three-way, and some Brazilian crap (that Pritam likes). And yes, all of these are cocktails, before you let your imaginative horses run wild!!!

Back to the apartment and talking and more till 3 again before we went off to sleep...

Sunday was another lazy day... Tracy made some mouthwatering Pancakes and French Toast for brunch (well, if you wake up at 9 and stay in bed till 12, you get only brunch)... we then went to get some Veg Biryani from Kabobs, and then to return a few DVDs to Blockbuster, where I went crazy buying a few that I wanted to have, and then to Deepak's place and finally to Sapna's apartment... it was around 4 that we reached there, had food! Lakhan makes amazing food! and started watching Enemy at the Gates, only this time, it was the projector, and some bose speakers to provide the much needed clarity to the war movie!

It was a hard stop for me and Pritam at 1945 hours for me to catch the bus, which I did only to say bye bye to the city that welcomed me to USA, and makes it feel much better than it really is!

Too much of text eh !!! If you managed to read it this far, kudos !!!! Time for the photographs now....

The movie mate result !!!!

Tracy, Myself and Pritam went down to the play area and took some pictures !

Deepak and Prakati...

French toast, Pancakes and syrup... Tracy ROCKS!!!!

Just a li'il bit of reaching out :)

It cannot get better than ThumsUp!!! Ever!

Lakhan, Sapna and view from Sapna's apartment's patio!

Tracy!

And me! Aro says I am fat !!!Thanks Pritam for taking this one!

for the lack of a better word, lets be friends!

I find it hard to digest that some people have "good friends" too many too soon... you know someone for a month and (s)he is a good friend, and then there is one more and one more... I mean how many good friends can one have?

I think this word is being used a lot and without much meaning to it these days... too bad!

I can count my good friends on my fingers, and my friends, well, maybe twice on my fingers... anyone else, and no offence please, is someone that I know or someone who knows me through Chai ki Dukaan, or my flickr page, or through someone I know through chai ki dukaan or my flickr page, or through someone who I know through someone... but com'on!!! friends? its takes something to be called a friend or to be a friend! is it not? or I am just plain stupid?

For me 1 incident, or a couple of them between two people do not make or break friends... its takes time! and something more than the verbal or written or visual to be a friend of someone... a connection that makes you open up and share, and it HAS to be two way!

and I see on blogs and comments and other places, sentences like I love you all, thank you friends, and all that... I find it crazy!

On second thoughts, what is a different word for friend? Are there more words like it which can be used? Is it offensive to admit that you do not treat someone as a friend, but just as someone you know? I personally feel its ok, I would know my place and space and if I don't I should...

Maybe I am just going crazy! well! never mind!

And the winner is....

For those you do not know what this post is about, read this and then this.

So I made chits with all the 15 names as you see below :)


Folded them properly, and made sure there I did not have a clue of which chit had what name....



Decided that there should be more than 1 winner, so picked up 3 instead... and here are the results !!!!



Congratulations Teekhi Mirchi, Subbu and Geet...

So now the three of you can choose a picture each from the Holland post, and write to me at prashantbhardwaj[at]gmail[dot]com with the picture details, and the address you'd like me to ship the photograph to !!!

Thanks people for participating :) and apologies to those whose names did not come up in the draw this time! come up with ideas to have your names in the winner's list and we will do something similar in June :)

छिछोरगर्दी फुल टाइम ! (Chhichhorgardi Phull Time !)

With the music of Gulal, there is one more song that has been added to the list of my favorites... the ones where you need atleast space for 3 people, have a gamcha in your neck, your lower lip between your teeth, and dance like there is no tomorrow :)

राणाजी म्हारे गुस्से में आये, आइसो बल खाए,
अगिया बरसाए, घबराए म्हारो चैन

जैसे दूर देस के टावर में घुस जाये एरोप्लेन
जैसे सरेआम इराक में जाकर बस गए अंकल सैम

Actually two songs :) the other one is

बीड़ा दूजी थाली का लगे बड़ा मसालेदार
मन बोले चक मक हाए चक मक हाए चक मक हाए चक मक चक मक चक मक

खाई तो मचल गई रे ओ कजरारी नार
मन बोले चक मक हाए चक मक हाए चक मक हाए चक मक चक मक चक मक

The simplicity in lyrics and music is something that bowls me over EVERY single time with such songs... Thank you Rekha Bhardwaj for rendering it in a way that it touches the heart!

Thanks Geet for the post on Gulal... Good music and some very strong lyrics! I am looking forward to the movie as well...


Oh and talking about the title... here is the last video from my trip to Minneapolis... the gang enjoying with Billo Rani !



The best part is that Papa also likes this song a lot and there is no time when he listens to this song and we do not put it on a repeat :)

Another random thought, I need to prepare a list of songs for my bachelor party, whenever that happens :D

If you are not able to see the embedded video, click here to see it on youtube.

You might also want to see some photographs of these guys HERE.

Sasural Genda Phool in Minneapolis

Here is another one of the many conversations from the Minneapolis trip !! Suman Vaddi , on my right is a flat mate with Pritam, Lakhan and Deepak... He was not too sure of the meaning of Sasural Genda Phool song and I decided to share the details with him... looks like it was more funny than it seemed to be at moment... I enjoyed looking at this video !!!

oh and I managed to watch the movie as well over this weekend. I was dissapointed to be honest... very weak transition of scenes, not sure if the title has much to do with the movie, strange inclusion of songs, and mostly below average use of the brilliant set of actors...
- Vijay Raaz (Inspector Chaudhary; very bad dialogues... someone really needs to know how the Delhi Police guys in Delhi talk, specially the ones from Haryana) and
- Divya Dutta (another useless attempt at trying to have an accent); there was an uncomfortable pause in her sentences...
- Another big dissapoint was the role given to Atul Kulkarni... he is such a brilliant actor and he given the character of "gober" !!! unbelievable !

For all I know, this movie could have been named Ghaziabad -8 or Lucknow 12 or Kanpur 21 or Bhopal 44 or Kala Bandar if not anything else !

But don't take my word for it... watch the movie... It would still show you a "few" glimpses of the beautiful walled city !

Oh, and apologies for a bad video quality of the embedded video.. it was the darker corner of the room where we guys were sitting and chatting... If the above video does not work for you, here is the link for YouTube.

(a)Roundtrip in two days !

I had aimed for a good weekend, and I hit the bull's eye if not anything else :)


So Friday night i took the bus to Minneapolis and reached around midnight...


Happy Valentine's day had started :)



On Saturday all we could do was hit on the dartboard instead of some hot girls around, because it was kind of snowing and very cold...


But the sky opened up, and it was bright outside... Pritam was excited about the shoot I had promised him of his new car !


No, not the one above... its the one below :) The one above was just parked where we were shooting...

What yummy tires his SUV has... Tires and the lights are the first thing that I like to notice in any vehicle and if they are not attractive, I am usually not going to give the car a second look... and Pritam's Nissan is a nice mean beast !!!


We went around driving for a sunset point and reached the Medicine Lake instead... Realized that this was our chance to drive on ICE and without much deliberation took the car on the lake as well... Now this was some crazy experience... driving on the frozen lake....

Waiting till sunset there and then headed back home.... The evening saw some lovely Indian music with an overdose of Delhi 6 numbers, specially Gainda Phool and ended with a lot of RD Burman music... not to mention the repeat of Umrao Jaan songs over and over again... so finally slept around 0300 hrs after finishing the conversation quote for the night...



The next morning... 0830 hrs and some hot ginger tea thanks to Deepak woke me and the rest of the gang up !!!!


Suman still did not want to get up and he just got up and went into a different room to catch up on his sleep :)

While the rest of the gang was getting ready, I took a few pictures of the customary roses to mark the Valentine's day celebrations :)



The day was sunny and nicely warm !

So we decided to go out for a short drive around Minneapolis...

Went to the Minnehaha Park...


and saw the frozen waterfall @ the Minnehaha park...


The stairs that would take you to the bottom of the fall were closed and that saved us some time... so me and Pritam decided to take Golu, Lakhan and Sapna to the Medicine Frozen lake....

This time around, there were more people on the lake, and ICE fishing was at its full swing...


Lakhan got adventurous and decided to take some rest on his makeshift ICE bed...


The rest of the people were more intelligent, and had small cabins which they we spending time in...


And then we tried another game... sit on the pillow push ! but this did not work well... either our subject (Pritam in this case) was too heavy for the pillow to slide on ice, or the ice was not that frictionless... anyway, before we came out of the lake, we decided to do some wheelies and Pritam did take some nice complete turns in the car... very very interesting... i am sure they would have looked more interesting from outside !!!

With not much time left, we then rushed to Perkins to have lunch... i love Perkins by the way... the Granny Omlette (without any meat) and the Pancakes with honey are the best combo !!! mmmmmmmmmmm....

With just about 30 minutes left for my bus, we rushed to the downtown stand...

Took the bus at 1530 hrs from Minneapolis and was back home around 2200 hrs....


And did I mention that during these two days, we managed to take some crazy interesting portraits too !!! enjoy :)


Like I had said in my earlier post... Had a very refreshing weekend... Frozen lake, Frozen Waterfall, Umrao Jaan, Ginger Tea, Crazy Face Making Photo Session, Hunt for a Pineapple Cake, were just some of the few things that happened, not to mention the non stop talking !!!