Madras Trip!!!
Wow..
thats the only word which I comes to my mind when I think about my Naada Vaibhavam trip.. I'm not going to write about the Naada Vaibhavam again but just trying to relive the whole of trip through this post..
It has been one week since I came back to Bangalore but still all the events are very much afresh.. all the bonds which were made in that trip seem to be very strong.. may be thats the greatness of belonging!!
Firstly, let me give a brief introduction about the team.. the team consists of 45 crazy, weird and cranky people(i'm one of them :))..
A teenager who spends 90% of his day either on facebook or thinking about facebook..
A girl who completed engg. but looks like a high school child.. (I bet she eats only once a week!)
A Doctor who looks everything in terms of scientists and enzymes.
A Kannadiga who claims to have known only English movies(but cant recognize few latest movies though :))
A couple of ice cool organizers who seems to have lost the nerve of anger sometime in their early teens.. and also who are courteous enough to take us to the great Egmore Museum :)
A stylish photographer who roams whole of Madras with a powerless camera( you are right! this is me :()
Many people who dont know their names, yeah! they sat in seats booked on someone else's name.
This is only a sample of people and others are evenly crazy..
the journey began at 6:30Am and we were eagerly awaiting the friends who are going to board the at cantt. because they have the break fast bags :P once they came in dynamic people like Aditi, Anusha etc prepared nice break fast for us and lazy bums like me shamelessly had stomach full of it..Once we finished break fast we went to even more important thing called "playing".. as its a big team we resorted to "Dumb Charades".. and as always we had many fights on "you opened your lip", "you have shown the alphabets" etc etc and once we got tired of fights/arguments/discussions we did gurupuja chanting..
Gurupuja chanting is a sacred mantras to express our gratitude to all the masters of past/present/future.. it is not confined to one religion/sect/country..
by the time we had finished gurupuja chanting/Om Namah Shivaya/kriya, we had come to senses and want to plan the two days we have in Madras.. Now, here is the best is the part, none of the organizers know much about Chennai but still we have decided to see certain places.. so we called the local don sorry local teacher called "KK".. KK means the one and only "Karpagavalli" (My teacher).. after talking to her we were even more confused and that confusion prevailed untill we got down in Chennai Central Station.. once we got down we have to deal with the immediate problem called "Hunger".. some argued we should go out and eat; some countered we should eat and go out. After few rounds of round platform conferences we decided to have our lunch in Station itself and go out.. believe me, the food was below par given the name of Saravana Bhavan and even sad thing is the way they tried to exploit the passengers.. I lost respect about the Saravana Bhavan with this experience..
After lunch we went to Egmore Museum, thanks to the local volunteer Appu who guided us well to that place and Man, let me not talk about the Auto wallahs of Chennai.. Horrible fails miserably to describe them.. In the museum though many folks didnt liked it. I felt glad for two reasons:
1. Shakuntala: A great painting of Raja Ravi Varma
2. There is a proper rest room :)
After that we went straight away to our Tiruvanmayur( venue of satsang) by bus and feel sad about guys like Jaideep as they had to stand all the 1.5 hrs of journey.. the satsang was super cool as usual and we met Guruji also over there..
After the satsang the real drama started, all of us want to go to beach, eat in a famous, busy restaurant, catch the local bus on time and yet dont want to walk fast :) I recalled that the wedding baarat would have been much faster than us.. finally, some went to beach ,some had food in good restaurant and some could catch the bus on time.. personally I played in water then went to my stay which is called the "Chennai Youth Ashram".. the reason being its a big 4BHK house and around 7-8 people officially stay in it.. and unofficially the count varies b/n 15-25..
Next day I went to beach again to see the sunrise.. for me sunrise is the best source of motivation..and at sea its like icing the cake..it was so touching that I just sat on my knees and stored all the moments carefully in my memory.. that was wow!! I had tears in my eyes as the only sentence I could remember was the poem of Sastry garu which goes like "గుటకపడని అగ్గి ఉండ సాగరాలనీదుకుంటు తూరుపింట తేలుతుందిరా!!" If I look back, I cherish more of such small incidents/moments than the so called bigger achievements..
Without having any break fast, me and four others from youth ashram went to IIT Madras as there was a function we had to attend.. After that we went to KK's house for lunch.. God, that happens to be one of the best food I ever had.. I dont know when was the last time I honked the way i did it then.. May be thats because of the affection with which the food was prepared.. Thanks a million to KK & Aunty!!
about KK's house, its a typical old modeled south Indian house.. fA veranda to start with, followed by a hall which leads into a place to store groceries on one side and place for God's idols on the other side.. and finally the kitchen.. the bath rooms were outside the main house as the source of water was a well..for a moment I went back to my childhood where we used to have a similar house in our village..
In the evening we had the big thing called Naada Vaibhavam.. I'm not writing anything about it as my earlier post was about it in detail..
After that I reached to youth ashram and next day attended Mahakriya.. As it happened to be Pravin's bday we went to the Kapaleswara Temple at Mylapur.. I liked that temple a lot.. rich in architechture and have a big pond infront of it.. only me,pravin and ramana went there as others preferred to have lunch by then..
After lunch, we gave the token gifts which we bought for KK,Prasanna, Vinod and Suman.. though no amount of thanks would suffice their priceless efforts for this tour, that gifts are all we could find :(
then the return journey started, this is even more exciting.. we played 20 quetsions, Dumb Charades and some slept at this time.. later we had one of the best satsangs I ever attended.. whole of the train was rocked by the satsang.. people were looking at us as if we are aliens.. someone was saying "all are around 25 but see what they are singing".. Lolz..
Let me write down names of all the people attended.. ( as far as I remember)
1. two people named Anusha
2. two people named Anitha
3. Anjana
4. Akash
5. Ananth
6. Aditi
oh God, how many "A" starting names
7. Shailendra
It has been one week since I came back to Bangalore but still all the events are very much afresh.. all the bonds which were made in that trip seem to be very strong.. may be thats the greatness of belonging!!
Firstly, let me give a brief introduction about the team.. the team consists of 45 crazy, weird and cranky people(i'm one of them :))..
A teenager who spends 90% of his day either on facebook or thinking about facebook..
A girl who completed engg. but looks like a high school child.. (I bet she eats only once a week!)
A Doctor who looks everything in terms of scientists and enzymes.
A Kannadiga who claims to have known only English movies(but cant recognize few latest movies though :))
A couple of ice cool organizers who seems to have lost the nerve of anger sometime in their early teens.. and also who are courteous enough to take us to the great Egmore Museum :)
A stylish photographer who roams whole of Madras with a powerless camera( you are right! this is me :()
Many people who dont know their names, yeah! they sat in seats booked on someone else's name.
This is only a sample of people and others are evenly crazy..
the journey began at 6:30Am and we were eagerly awaiting the friends who are going to board the at cantt. because they have the break fast bags :P once they came in dynamic people like Aditi, Anusha etc prepared nice break fast for us and lazy bums like me shamelessly had stomach full of it..Once we finished break fast we went to even more important thing called "playing".. as its a big team we resorted to "Dumb Charades".. and as always we had many fights on "you opened your lip", "you have shown the alphabets" etc etc and once we got tired of fights/arguments/discussions we did gurupuja chanting..
Gurupuja chanting is a sacred mantras to express our gratitude to all the masters of past/present/future.. it is not confined to one religion/sect/country..
by the time we had finished gurupuja chanting/Om Namah Shivaya/kriya, we had come to senses and want to plan the two days we have in Madras.. Now, here is the best is the part, none of the organizers know much about Chennai but still we have decided to see certain places.. so we called the local don sorry local teacher called "KK".. KK means the one and only "Karpagavalli" (My teacher).. after talking to her we were even more confused and that confusion prevailed untill we got down in Chennai Central Station.. once we got down we have to deal with the immediate problem called "Hunger".. some argued we should go out and eat; some countered we should eat and go out. After few rounds of round platform conferences we decided to have our lunch in Station itself and go out.. believe me, the food was below par given the name of Saravana Bhavan and even sad thing is the way they tried to exploit the passengers.. I lost respect about the Saravana Bhavan with this experience..
After lunch we went to Egmore Museum, thanks to the local volunteer Appu who guided us well to that place and Man, let me not talk about the Auto wallahs of Chennai.. Horrible fails miserably to describe them.. In the museum though many folks didnt liked it. I felt glad for two reasons:
1. Shakuntala: A great painting of Raja Ravi Varma
2. There is a proper rest room :)
After that we went straight away to our Tiruvanmayur( venue of satsang) by bus and feel sad about guys like Jaideep as they had to stand all the 1.5 hrs of journey.. the satsang was super cool as usual and we met Guruji also over there..
After the satsang the real drama started, all of us want to go to beach, eat in a famous, busy restaurant, catch the local bus on time and yet dont want to walk fast :) I recalled that the wedding baarat would have been much faster than us.. finally, some went to beach ,some had food in good restaurant and some could catch the bus on time.. personally I played in water then went to my stay which is called the "Chennai Youth Ashram".. the reason being its a big 4BHK house and around 7-8 people officially stay in it.. and unofficially the count varies b/n 15-25..
Next day I went to beach again to see the sunrise.. for me sunrise is the best source of motivation..and at sea its like icing the cake..it was so touching that I just sat on my knees and stored all the moments carefully in my memory.. that was wow!! I had tears in my eyes as the only sentence I could remember was the poem of Sastry garu which goes like "గుటకపడని అగ్గి ఉండ సాగరాలనీదుకుంటు తూరుపింట తేలుతుందిరా!!" If I look back, I cherish more of such small incidents/moments than the so called bigger achievements..
Without having any break fast, me and four others from youth ashram went to IIT Madras as there was a function we had to attend.. After that we went to KK's house for lunch.. God, that happens to be one of the best food I ever had.. I dont know when was the last time I honked the way i did it then.. May be thats because of the affection with which the food was prepared.. Thanks a million to KK & Aunty!!
about KK's house, its a typical old modeled south Indian house.. fA veranda to start with, followed by a hall which leads into a place to store groceries on one side and place for God's idols on the other side.. and finally the kitchen.. the bath rooms were outside the main house as the source of water was a well..for a moment I went back to my childhood where we used to have a similar house in our village..
In the evening we had the big thing called Naada Vaibhavam.. I'm not writing anything about it as my earlier post was about it in detail..
After that I reached to youth ashram and next day attended Mahakriya.. As it happened to be Pravin's bday we went to the Kapaleswara Temple at Mylapur.. I liked that temple a lot.. rich in architechture and have a big pond infront of it.. only me,pravin and ramana went there as others preferred to have lunch by then..
After lunch, we gave the token gifts which we bought for KK,Prasanna, Vinod and Suman.. though no amount of thanks would suffice their priceless efforts for this tour, that gifts are all we could find :(
then the return journey started, this is even more exciting.. we played 20 quetsions, Dumb Charades and some slept at this time.. later we had one of the best satsangs I ever attended.. whole of the train was rocked by the satsang.. people were looking at us as if we are aliens.. someone was saying "all are around 25 but see what they are singing".. Lolz..
Let me write down names of all the people attended.. ( as far as I remember)
1. two people named Anusha
2. two people named Anitha
3. Anjana
4. Akash
5. Ananth
6. Aditi
oh God, how many "A" starting names
7. Shailendra
8. Jaideep
9. Rohit
10. Rohan
11. Vinod
12. Manshi
13. Udaya
14. Ramana
15. Yashasvini
16. Prithvi
17. Suman
18. Pravin
19. Jaideep
20. Swathi
21. Mahesh
22. Sahana
23. Srikanth
24. Sudarshan
25. Gopal
26. Karthik (Me)
sorry, seems I missed a lot of names.. Anyways, thanks everybody for coming and making the trip wonderful.. Lets have a sankalapa that we will make more of such trips.. It was so nice so nice that I felt bad when I got down at KR Puram.. wish it would extend a little more, I only wish!!
Above all, Thanks to Guruji for choosing us into this path. I know we are blessed and my faith increased further more with this..
Sarvejana Sukhinobhavantu
-Karthik
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