when i wrote the last article about the small riot that was avoided last week i had no idea there is something to follow. But the worst has visted bangalore and we are in front of our pcs browsing through websites trying to find out information about the place we live in which has been visted by blasts few hours back.
The whole idea is three out of seven blasts has happened not more than half kilometers from where a stay and i am in office totally cut off from the place thinking about what would be the situation when i reach at home, if i reach there soon enough. I expect whole area will be crawling of police force by now.
I have no idea why and how the blasts were made although most of them happened near my place only. When i return from office today i would probably make some idea what happened in that place, but i will keep writing about the next few days for sure as this would be an experience how you recover from such an incident. The last news in channels is about the closing down of those areas, so i am concerned how will i reach home.
The terror and shock has finally come down on bangalore. I wont say it was unexpected as after what happened in jaipur and hyderabad it was just a matter of time. Whoever is doing this is getting away and we have yet no knowledge of what happened in jaipur and hyderabad. So it is unnecessary to say we would ever be able to know what happened in our peaceful neighbourhood.
And as follows the pattern of bomb blasts i do not think anything more will happen for today or in next few days except occasional news burst from our friendly news channels about number of death and injuries and who is suspected. But nothing really is going to happen atleast we can be realistic about it.
We were hearing about in auspicious ness of fridays and its impacts and now about retaliation. The spices will add up and rumours will continue. Visit my blogs for the next update and rumours happening around my place.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
walked across the border
i never imagined whats going to happen next when i got down from the Bus half asleep for the Visa clearance. The sequence that followed could have been the most disastrous day of my life soon to be converted into most hilarious mistake i ever did.
This is how my experience of walking across the border started , before that it was supposed to be a pleasure trip to another country. This is first time for me when you cross a country by Bus and journey is just for 8-9 hours maximum. But then i would guarantee only few of our IT friends will experience these kind of situations. How many times You cross border having lost everything you possess only to pray to god that the guards posted at the next country's check post only allow you in.
Okay, the country i am speaking of is Malaysia to Singapore. Me and my friend took the bus around 9PM that day. We were supposed to cross Malaysia border around 4AM in the morning. DO not expect any trouble with the travel plan , i have a friend already in Singapore so i decided to carry minimal Cash.
The dilemma however when i boarded the Bus was what happens if a fell asleep during the Visa check, do not blame or ridicule me, i have these nightmarish thinking before everything i do new. I expect the whole thing to go wrong. But still i did not apprehend this.
We reached Johor(the border check post of Malaysia-Singapore) around 5.30AM. Although i was awake and was expecting this , i still found myself and my partner to be the last person in the queue for Visa.
Then everything started to go wrong, we had a argument with the desk clerk over the missing document which i was supposed to safe keep when i reached Malaysia. We realized that this document was necessary( Believe me before that i have twice came to India for Family reasons and nobody at airport bothered inquire about that).
That cost us around 20 minutes and finally the Guy surrendered and stamped our Visa.
I thought the problem was over for good and i learnt my Lesson. Never missplace a single travel document( the comic part is lesson is never learnt, i still missplace a lot of things). When i got out of the office we had shock of our life waiting for us. The bus driver had abondened us at check post and gone missing.
Now what do we do , do we go Back to KualaLumpur which i just left 7 hours back. Will the Singapore check post allow us in when they see us walking across the bridge on the border without anything. Will we be suspected of anything criminal? Possibilities were galore but then we decided to not to loose our valuables in the bus and go on across the border on foot and face the situation.
The mind was playing games with us and head was heavy having not slept well. Usually my waking up time is 9AM or later :-). We were crossing bridge, border to be more precise. The sky was loosing its darkness. The wonderful scenery around me meant nothing to me. Cars and Buses from both sides were zooming pass us. I was thinking somebody will give us a lift, but no. It was around 1 Km walk i suppose, do not remember exactly, but the this kind of start to new day had left all bad taste in my mouth.
We finally reached the the border post and saw police all around. Everybody gazing at us or so did we think. I do not know, the fear makes mind to see things differently. We walked to one of them , explained our problem more like disaster. He talked to another guy , then he talked to another. It went on for something around 15-20 minutes. finally good lord they allowed us in for custom checking, good thing i forgot the only lucky factor we had was passports were still with us. This one you could guess because it started sue to the missing document in our passport.
Once we got in there the next big problem was to clear customs, we spent another hou there answering all sorts of questions as we did not have a lot of cash and we were no carrying anything. Basically everything we had was in the bus.
But the best thing in these places are the people although were asking lot of questions, but they were not unfriendly.
Finally around 7AM we landed in Singapore after crossing the border, the place was called woodland. No guess for imagining our next step, straight to bus stand.
when we reached the bus stand the driver was gone and the bus was locked. The day can not get any worse. What we will do now. Without that we were helpless.
But that's not important . After the sun came into horizon , the problems seemed kind of melting on our faces. My friend reached there to save us, and his house owner was govt employee. After that things were looking good.
the next two days made us forget the disaster we started or so i thought. After 1 and half years its is till green in my mind. Trust me i do not remember a lot of things.
This is how my experience of walking across the border started , before that it was supposed to be a pleasure trip to another country. This is first time for me when you cross a country by Bus and journey is just for 8-9 hours maximum. But then i would guarantee only few of our IT friends will experience these kind of situations. How many times You cross border having lost everything you possess only to pray to god that the guards posted at the next country's check post only allow you in.
Okay, the country i am speaking of is Malaysia to Singapore. Me and my friend took the bus around 9PM that day. We were supposed to cross Malaysia border around 4AM in the morning. DO not expect any trouble with the travel plan , i have a friend already in Singapore so i decided to carry minimal Cash.
The dilemma however when i boarded the Bus was what happens if a fell asleep during the Visa check, do not blame or ridicule me, i have these nightmarish thinking before everything i do new. I expect the whole thing to go wrong. But still i did not apprehend this.
We reached Johor(the border check post of Malaysia-Singapore) around 5.30AM. Although i was awake and was expecting this , i still found myself and my partner to be the last person in the queue for Visa.
Then everything started to go wrong, we had a argument with the desk clerk over the missing document which i was supposed to safe keep when i reached Malaysia. We realized that this document was necessary( Believe me before that i have twice came to India for Family reasons and nobody at airport bothered inquire about that).
That cost us around 20 minutes and finally the Guy surrendered and stamped our Visa.
I thought the problem was over for good and i learnt my Lesson. Never missplace a single travel document( the comic part is lesson is never learnt, i still missplace a lot of things). When i got out of the office we had shock of our life waiting for us. The bus driver had abondened us at check post and gone missing.
Now what do we do , do we go Back to KualaLumpur which i just left 7 hours back. Will the Singapore check post allow us in when they see us walking across the bridge on the border without anything. Will we be suspected of anything criminal? Possibilities were galore but then we decided to not to loose our valuables in the bus and go on across the border on foot and face the situation.
The mind was playing games with us and head was heavy having not slept well. Usually my waking up time is 9AM or later :-). We were crossing bridge, border to be more precise. The sky was loosing its darkness. The wonderful scenery around me meant nothing to me. Cars and Buses from both sides were zooming pass us. I was thinking somebody will give us a lift, but no. It was around 1 Km walk i suppose, do not remember exactly, but the this kind of start to new day had left all bad taste in my mouth.
We finally reached the the border post and saw police all around. Everybody gazing at us or so did we think. I do not know, the fear makes mind to see things differently. We walked to one of them , explained our problem more like disaster. He talked to another guy , then he talked to another. It went on for something around 15-20 minutes. finally good lord they allowed us in for custom checking, good thing i forgot the only lucky factor we had was passports were still with us. This one you could guess because it started sue to the missing document in our passport.
Once we got in there the next big problem was to clear customs, we spent another hou there answering all sorts of questions as we did not have a lot of cash and we were no carrying anything. Basically everything we had was in the bus.
But the best thing in these places are the people although were asking lot of questions, but they were not unfriendly.
Finally around 7AM we landed in Singapore after crossing the border, the place was called woodland. No guess for imagining our next step, straight to bus stand.
when we reached the bus stand the driver was gone and the bus was locked. The day can not get any worse. What we will do now. Without that we were helpless.
But that's not important . After the sun came into horizon , the problems seemed kind of melting on our faces. My friend reached there to save us, and his house owner was govt employee. After that things were looking good.
the next two days made us forget the disaster we started or so i thought. After 1 and half years its is till green in my mind. Trust me i do not remember a lot of things.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Bravo Bangalore
Today is an extra ordinary day. The storm was just blown away by the brave and good people of this city.
I have been thinking about starting to write something since i created this account. I have a lot of feelings and opinions about nearly everything that happens around me. But still i found myself contradicting to my own views because suddenly it seems that every god damn thing in this world has its own place.
So i thought what happened yesterday should not be forgotten and may this place will remind me and the readers there is still good left in this world.
Being an Indian you will never get enough of communal violence, its the mother of all hells this country has ever seen through out the years. Being an democratic country with all most all religious groups residing here kind of makes every countrymen proud in the whole world. And the most beautiful thing is all of these groups have nearly gone through all kind of difficult times and still holding on. And its not over yet.
Yesterday around 4 PM we heard another such storm coming. There was communal violence reported in a certain areas of the city, you know after Bombay and Gujurat places having these type incidents are not safest place. But Miracles do happen. The humanity is still alive.
By evening everything was as calm as ever. The city is not only the best place to be in India but the people and culture here are really something to be appreciated. We Indian are so different from each other but still there are lot of other things that makes us so closely knit to each other.
The Love-Hate relationship is unique. Anyway back to yesterday's incident seems after few disruptions, protests and little bit of violence the good people were on the street to stop the incoming storm of hatred. the bonds became stronger and stronger and miscreants were gone. The questions were answered and trust ruled again.
We as a country are maturing and we are learning to live with harmony with differences poles apart. The whole world sees us as economically developing country but i see this as a country still learning and developing on human intellectual.
I have been thinking about starting to write something since i created this account. I have a lot of feelings and opinions about nearly everything that happens around me. But still i found myself contradicting to my own views because suddenly it seems that every god damn thing in this world has its own place.
So i thought what happened yesterday should not be forgotten and may this place will remind me and the readers there is still good left in this world.
Being an Indian you will never get enough of communal violence, its the mother of all hells this country has ever seen through out the years. Being an democratic country with all most all religious groups residing here kind of makes every countrymen proud in the whole world. And the most beautiful thing is all of these groups have nearly gone through all kind of difficult times and still holding on. And its not over yet.
Yesterday around 4 PM we heard another such storm coming. There was communal violence reported in a certain areas of the city, you know after Bombay and Gujurat places having these type incidents are not safest place. But Miracles do happen. The humanity is still alive.
By evening everything was as calm as ever. The city is not only the best place to be in India but the people and culture here are really something to be appreciated. We Indian are so different from each other but still there are lot of other things that makes us so closely knit to each other.
The Love-Hate relationship is unique. Anyway back to yesterday's incident seems after few disruptions, protests and little bit of violence the good people were on the street to stop the incoming storm of hatred. the bonds became stronger and stronger and miscreants were gone. The questions were answered and trust ruled again.
We as a country are maturing and we are learning to live with harmony with differences poles apart. The whole world sees us as economically developing country but i see this as a country still learning and developing on human intellectual.
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