Afwaah!
Himess Bhai!
Whenever I think of movies, there are a few characters I just cannot miss thinking about… Some of my favorites from the world of Hindi Cinema…
Prem Pratap Patiyaale Wala from Wo Saat Din
Ram Prasad Dashrath Prasad Sharma from Golmal
Soorma Bhopali from Sholey
Miss Chamko from Chashmebaddor
Jai from Sholey
Angrezon ke Zamane ka Jailer from Sholey
Sukumar from Chupke Chupke
Babu Rao from Hera Pheri
Subhodh and Sameer from Dil Chahta Hai
Daljit or DJ from Rang De Basanti
Ashok from Angoor
Som Mangal Budh Guru from Satte Pe Satta
Ashok, Vinod, Tarneja, Ahuja from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron
Crime master Gogo, and Amar Prem from Andaz Apna Apna
I am sure that is not all… if you remember any other scenes, please do share the links and I would put them up here!
and I started my day rather dull than with a sunshiny mood…
Wanted to complain and crib about the winter still being here and no spring or summer to be seen anywhere…
but decided to tweak the thoughts a bit and instead of complaining, looked at some pictures of the years that have gone by and what spring/summer brings !
so right now I am not complaining, not cribbing, but waiting for the spring to arrive !!! I have a whole lot to look forward to…
So here is a glimpse of what is going to happen… I promise it will… believe me or wait and watch 🙂
If the last few years were so beautiful, there is no way this one is going to be any less ! waiting !!!
and talking of Spring… do go through this link for some absolutely delightful photographs.
After a few days, the man tells the kids, “This recession’s really putting a big dent in my income. From now on, I’ll only be able to pay you 50 cents to beat on the cans.” The noisemakers are displeased, but they accept his offer.
A few days later, the retiree approaches them again. “Look,” he says, “I haven’t received my Social Security check yet, so I’m not going to be able to pay more than 25 cents. Will that be OK?”
“A freakin’ quarter?” the drum leader exclaims. “If you think we’re going to waste our time beating these cans around for a quarter, you’re nuts. We quit.”This was a joke that I got some days back on a RSS feed, but I did not laugh after reading this but it got me thinking instead…
The moment we take away fun from what we do and start doing things for returns, the entire perception changes… now the effort is usually defined by the returns we are getting out of it and not by how much we enjoy doing it !!!
When I put myself into this position, I see myself doing most of the things because I enjoy doing them and not because I want some returns to come from them… having said that I really like the returns too in forms of money or attention or praise, but the bottom line is that how much I enjoy doing it, does not change !
I hope to continue living this way !
I wanted to wake up early today to go out and see the sunrise, but I logged on to gmail, and while was talking to a few friends got late for the sunrise…
Still went out and had fun walking around !!!
Brought back a few good pictures, some very nice smiles, a few good morning wishes, a lot of fresh air in my lungs, and loads of soul satisfying happiness !!!
Some more photographs to follow later… till then enjoy life !
I should, however, mention a few names here specifically…
I had only thought of going to Sankalp and giving away the Stationary etc to the kids there… discussed the thought with Arobindo and our conversation resulted in the day turning into a Painting Competition for the kids where they could use the stuff we take for them… Thanks Bro for your support…
It would have stayed a painting competition, if I had not seen a framed painting made by a small kid at my friend’s place… I was at Nidhi’s place one day and that’s when I saw the painting… I think AP had bought it for her from an NGO, and that moment a bulb was switched on in my mind… I had more to do than just organise the painting competition… Nidhi, if it was not you, we would not have a single rupee in our kitty today!!! Cannot thank you enough really!!!
Bindiya was told about this thought, and she loved it… We figured out a few things over a few calls and organised the entire event… Kalpana ji from Sankalp was always more than keen in helping us out with whatever we required. I love it the way Bindiya (also read ASK) lets me take complete ownership of what I want to do and also give me the freedom to do it my way!!! Thanks Bindiya for everything!!!
Tushar and my cousin Ashish was both excited when I asked them to join me that day!!!
Not many people knew about the initiative except Me, Aro, Bindiya, Nidhi, Tushar, Ashish (my cousin) the team at Moradabad and Sharanya, whose excitement and loads of ideas she shared acted as a Catalyst to the entire thought process…
And once we were back from the Painting Competition, almost everyone I know in this big blog world helped the way they thought was appropriate… some came forward to take one of the painting, some encouraged me with very kind words, and some mentioned it on their pages to ensure more people knew about the initiative !!! And I also need to mention that my Hughes Gang rocks!!! For many reasons and one of them is the quick response that I got from Aseem, Subbu, Aro, and Naveen to buy the paintings…. Overall a great experience this was and needless to say, a very successful one to thanks to a lot of people!!!
Now something about what I have been doing for a while, other than trying to sell paintings 🙂
The last weekends have been so different from each other yet very fulfilling…
The last Sunday was spent in silence… I did not speak much the entire day was almost locked (with an open door though) in my room… Watched movies (Juno and the Bucket List), read a book or may be more than one, went through the Calvin and Hobbes Tushar had given me for my birthday (A very welcome change from the travel books he gifts me all the time 🙂
It rained last week… Did you get out to enjoy it? I took a bath in the rain twice last week 🙂
This weekend I was on a talking mode 🙂 was trying to make up for the silence that started last Sunday I guess 🙂 the weekend started a few hours early with a long drive to meet Ruchi, handed over the painting to her, drove to haldiram, got stuck in a two way truck and trailer traffic on a single lane service road (for about 5 minutes after we were already 25 minutes into the jam, I had a feeling that we might stay stuck there for a few more hours, but thankfully the jam cleared and we were out of it in like 35 odd minutes)…
Friday night at Arobindo’S place, with one more lad from the Hughes gang… laughter and bakar bakar bakar bakar and more bakar… Poor Raj was the target of most of the jokes while I and Arobindo laughed our asses!!!
Saturday started early and ended pretty late (Only on Sunday by 0200 hrs) and it included watching The Gods must be crazy part 1 and 2, having a late breakfast, not feeling like getting up from the beds till like 1400 hrs, taking the metro to Mandi House and not getting the tickets for a play I wanted to watch (GhasiRam Kotwal)… taking a wrong bus to CP from Mandi House, walking towards CP and singing songs fairly loudly on the road with Subbu, searching for Nirula’s and finding it eventually after having a nice pan at Odeon, having the Make your own triple sundae at Nirula’s with a scoop each of Black Currant, Mango Mania and Tutti Fruity, having the mango milk at Cavenders, going back to Dwarka in the Metro, singing songs, learning some English from Subbu, meeting a few more friends from Hughes at Aro’s place and bakar bakar bakar bakar bakar till post midnight !!!! Phew!!! Long day eh!
Sunday was again a lazy day with the highlight being the English play Indian in the Bronz… and interesting subject but not really presented in the best of the ways… I revived a lot of good memories from the past of the various technical things that I had learnt about one act plays and how we used to implement most of them… I wish I can contribute to a theatre group soon… Maybe once I have shifted base to Delhi, I would… Not sure if Bindiya also had the same opinion about the play, but she made a nice single word remark that the play was interesting!!! Let’s buy that opinion for now 🙂 Had to wait a good 20 minutes before we got a seat in the Bengali Sweet house before having our dinner of Chole Bhature, the Pao Bhaji and the lovely Kulfi Faluda!!! A quick drive back home and a few more discussions on how I can contribute more to ASK and various other initiatives in the organisation!!! We did discuss about some websites that talk about one can contribute to the society as well… I am going to write about them too in future once I have gone through the sites in detail!!!
Too long a post eh!!!
Never mind 🙂 If you have managed to read it fully, congratulations, or if just jumped to the last line, well 🙂 I think you missed a lot 🙂
Have fun, God Bless!!!
Oh and guess what, I have this small water pot in my balcony, which I fill with water every few days… sometime last week I there was this Pigeon who visited visited the waterhole of sorts… There was not much water there, but I guess enough to keep him there for a good 15-20 minutes and there was something in there that he was eating too… I guess he had brought it himself !!! Check the pictures below 🙂 It was nice !!! very !!!
We four were going to Sankalp, Moradabad… The same place I had visited in Feb’07… and wrote about it HERE!
Me and Aro had been discussing this trip for a while now, and last week when I realised that my travel plans were still very unclear I decided to go to Sankalp and do what was long due… So a few phone calls over the week, some bit of planning and we were all set… Roped in Ashu and Tushar as well… so we were four of us who were traveling to Sankalp and organise the painting competition…
The weather was good, the roads were good too wit a few exceptions… It did rain almost throughout the drive and at times it was too heavy to drive as well, however with one pit stop just about 10 kms after Gajraula (Reliance A1 Food Plaza) we reached Sankalp around 0800 hrs…
I discussed the plan with Kalpana and Santosh who take care of the centre and we were all set to start the painting competition around 1030 hrs… The main centre has 100+ students and it was difficult to involve everyone in the competition, so we decided that we would let the teachers select some students from all the classes and have about 40 students participate…
We started on time around 1045 hrs and the kids finished their work around 1215 hours…
Post this we played “Stuart Little” (Hindi Version) for all the kids… (We had arranged for a LCD Projector, a laptop, the speakers and the DVD last night)… It was an amazing feeling to hear the kids laugh together and react to various scenes in the movie… One of the best experiences that I personally had EVER… So much so that I don’t have enough words to write about the entire event!!! Now there was something for the kids after the movie too… We had prepared some questions from the movie, and the kids who answer those questions right were to get prizes…
Once we finished the movie, we distributed the prizes for the Painting Competition and followed by the overwhelming question answer round!!!
We had asked everyone to first raise a hand and then we would pick who answers the question 🙂 but as you might have already guessed for 100% of the questions everyone first answered the question and then raised their hands 🙂 by the end of it we had exhausted all our questions and had to make a few set with our own knowledge of the movie 🙂 it was fun…
One question we asked was the name of Stuart Little’s father… Well no one knew the answer, but one boy very confidently stood up and said “Daddy” 🙂 I even asked the duration of the movie 🙂 when we did not know what to ask 🙂 and kids answered that too without raising any hands 🙂 too bad it did not have a prize 🙂
Did I forget to mention that Gupta ji (The caretaker at the centre) also arranged for some Aalu, Pyaaz, and Palak Pakodas for us and the Chatney with Raw Mango and fresh Mint was just too good to resist… Don’t know if I was eating the Pakodas with the Chatney or the Chatney with the Pakodas 🙂
Once we were done at the Centre we moved around in the Community to get a first hand feel of the workshops…
Did not even realise how the time flew by and it was already 1645 hours when we started back for Delhi!!! All in All a wonderful day, an experience which words cannot express, and a feeling of satisfaction…
We have brought back the winning entries from the painting competition and the plan is to sell them with support from Online friends, and people we can reach via other mediums too… In one of my next posts I am going to post the paintings and if you are interested in buying one of them please do write to me @ prashantbhardwaj@gmail.com. I am currently in the process of finding out a place where I can get them framed for a decent price.
More about Sankalp:
Sankalp is an initiative of ASK (ASKINDIA.ORG) which aims at providing educating to the children who are involved in Child Labour in Moradabad… An initiative that is not 500+ children strong and going strong with its committed workforce… The teachers for the schools also come from the local community itself, and hence help the educated local women as well.
You can read more about Sankalp, ASK and my previous visit by clicking the following links:
Sankalp on ASK Website (The page also has a few photo essays that I did the last time I visited Sankalp)
My earlier visit to Sankalp (http://rightmore.blogspot.com/2007/02/ask-me-how.html)
and I get my share of adventure today…
One of my house mates forgot his keys inside the room and the room got locked… and he is on the first floor… and these were the spare keys because he left his spare keys at home when he went there this Christmas… situations i tell you 🙂
Thankfully his window was open.. and all we could do was to climb up to the window, get inside the room through that 1ft by 3 ft window and open the room !!!
So here is what we did….
Picked up the ladder from the backyard 🙂 it was just there 🙂
first he tried climbing… but I am not sure if he was used to climbing up these ladders so it starting shaking bad… so I volunteered to do the Cat Rescue ACT 🙂 climbed up the ladder.. opened the window full… and tried to get in…
now imagine this… an almost six footer, managing himself on the 4 inch space on the bar outside the window, trying to get inside through that 1*3 ft space… not easy… i just could not get in… so the next best option !!! get the keys out… i managed to see where the keys were.. but I could not reach them through the window… what a dilemma…
So got a few pipes and rods to somehow pull that key chain towards myself and finally managed it after 15 minutes of struggle…
Yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….
Tshirt
Pyjama
hawai chappal
sard hawa
aur ek 10 ft oonchi khirki
kya situation hai 😀
I ROCK 😀 !!!
This weekend was a good weekend… I managed to spend a lot of time with myself… was at Abhi’s place, but still I did not see him almost the entire day… was kinda locked inside his room and kept thinking, taking a few pictures, or being just there… and then almost killed myself laughing while watching a TV Program…
It was nice… specially after being followed by a party at Strawberry Moons, a club on the Regent Street… Abhishek, me and one of his friends from Manderin were there at the club till like 0200 hrs… it was fun… might write about that sometime too…
As of now… I guess some pictures to cheer a usual dull Monday up should be a good idea 😀 Have a great week ahead everyone…
God Bless !!!
And this is some more of ME 🙂 have fun !!! Oh and thats a real mustache 😀 I was being clicked for my portfolio 😀 by Abhi !!!
Thanks Abhi for letting me be ME.. in silence in alone in company.. thanks Bhai…
Another thought is that Basanti was a trained dancer… she was supposed to dance to get all the film fees…
Plus we think that she felt that Gabbar could bring her a better future then veeru, because of his power, resources, and his ability to get crowds… either by choice or by force…
And Gabbar also knew that she could dance her ass out… he had checked the babe out in a marriage where “wo Bahut Jor Naachi Thi…”
There is so much about Sholey that can be talked about over and over again…
Abhi chalta hoon…
Gotta drive to Dharamshaala….
Adios…