Traveblog#1 Manali

Manali, is a dream.
Atleast, it seems to me like that. I mean, it has clouds rolling down the mountains encasing pretty much everything. It has ridiculously good looking people, red-topped wooden cottages, cobbled streets, mist-covered pines....oh I could go on.
At a time where other places in India are roasting at a scorching 48 degs, Manali shivers at 2 degs.
And it's summer.
You come to know that it's summer in Manali when the locals roam around wearing flimsy shirts with no warm clothes on and you stand there in 7 layers of sweater, covered with a shawl and wearing two monkey-caps looking like a badly dressed terrorist. The people are polite and agree to everything you say (hanji hanji, okay hai ji, han han ho jayegaji), they even snigger very very politely when you drink large cups of tea in succession and shiver like a mobile set on vibration mode.
The scenery has thousands of roses, every color and shade imaginable, apple trees, snow-capped mountains, and a lot of hotels doing a passable imitation of Scottish Castles. The scenery is so colorful, so vibrant,  such mesmerizing mix of pine forests melting into mist, that it looks Photoshopped.
The streets are lined with thrift stores selling an ensemble of Himachali scarves and shawls, trinkets, colorful jwellery, usual hillstation stuff.
Driving here is a novice's worst nightmare. The roads, slippery with the rain are steep and have random blind turns. To add to that they are size zero and seem to mysteriously widen just enough to let a car and a bus simultaneously pass through. And if you don't find that challenging enough,  there are the occasional yaks (yes, yaks) standing right in the middle of a traffic snarl and not giving a single fuck.
You enjoy all that nonetheless, 'coz you are too busy pretending you're in a Yash Chopra dreamland. One can see a lot of couples on honeymoon,  and rightly so since Manali is something out of a 'once upon a time' fairytale awakening the romantic in you and giving rise to  a lot of passionate poets writing terrible poetry that later becomes a part of Google's sheron-shayari page results.
Seriously, it's an ideal place to come with your special someone and be a part of the quintessential DDLJ-ish Bollywood romance.
But what to do if you,  like me, are resolutely single and stuck in an dream-like, unimaginably romantic haven?
Sit down at the local dhaba, eat steaming hot butter-filled daal makhani with roti, and have a quarter of Old Monk warming you to your fingertips, sit back and just....enjoy.

The Quintessential Love Story

My love life sucks.

I wish I could say that.
Weird? Well not so much since the prerequisite for saying THAT is the existence of a love life in the first place. A criteria that I most certainly do NOT fulfil.

Mostly when I have a lot of free time (never) or have been assigned something exceptionally boring (always), I like to speculate (procrastinate). I am sure I cannot be the only one obsessing over my love life. There are millions of other kindred souls out there.
But I would stick to homeground and would like to illustrate the romance life-cycle of a typical middle-class Indian girl with a reasonable amount of imagination and too much free time.

Stage 1: Yash Chopra and the works.
Age: 11-12
Subject drools over Raj/Rohit/Rahul ,the NRI, romancing Anjali/Tina/Pooja, the bubbly childhood friend-now-turned-lover against the lush greens and pristine white of snow-capped mountains in Switzerland.

Stage 2: "You like him no?"
Age: 13-16

Subject takes part in regular obsessive discussions with other similar subjects about the 'options' available (adolescent boys with pimply faces). Subject chooses an 'option' who is the closest approximation to the 'Raj' inside her head (mostly,  a badly copied hairstyle,  but I digress)
Having made the choice,  subject daydreams ad nauseam about  hypothetical romantic situations inspired from mills and boons and some more crappy bollywood movies. These daydreams ofcourse star the subject and her chosen 'option'.

Stage 3: The Valentine's Day Paradox
Age: 16-17

Subject,  being a part of a bold and liberated society, decides to take matters in her own hand and let her chosen one know about her feelings.
This is ofcourse done by hiding behind walls, stalking and starting creepily at her chosen target in the weeks leading up to the Valentine's Day.
On the said day, the subject dresses up well, and hopes that the chosen boy would telepathically come to know about the subject's feelings and subsequently take the necessary action of asking her out through gifting a Cadbury chocolate.

Stage 4: To louuve or not to louuve
Age: 17-18

Case 1: Mission Accomplished
This state of ecstasy is experienced by the subject if on V-Day, everything goes indeed, as planned. 
In this stage the subject and the target make a steady progress supported by elements like McDonald's,  PVR and sometimes some  eels-in-the-desert kissing.

Case 2: Mission Aborted
Most common scenario,  in this stage subject retreats into a hibernating period consisting mostly of junk-food groups and a steady dosage of cheesy sitcoms peppered by regular telling offs from parent subjects.  Side effects include Subject bloating like a balloon and looking like a reject from The-Blair-Witch-Project.

Stage 5: Final Destination
Age: 23-25

Subject has reached a max maturity level and is considered a marriagable subject.
In this stage, the subject has a useless degree,  a job she doesn't like and a negative love-life ( case in point: stage 4 case 2)

Stage 6: The End
Age: 26-forever

Go back to stage 1.
Repeat all.

Thank You.

I Spik Gud Anglis.

Admit it. Indians are obsessed with English.
I am not talking about the metros where speaking English is a way of life. No sir.
 I am referring to the places which have a rising middle class, yet are stuck in a limbo between a humble town and a sassy city. They generally have innocuous names like 'Shahpur' or maybe 'Almora'. They also have a unique mix of culture which is trying to get into a cosmopolitan mould, yet stubbornly remains 'small town' at heart.
So what do you get as result? You get 'Subhash Mall-Ladies and Gents Castume' and 'Anand Fasin House'.
You also find that English is still a novelty and those who speak it well are looked upon with a reverence bordering on worship.  This lays down a fertile ground for seedy English classes that claim a 100% success rate of making you fluent in just 24 hours. People here, like anywhere else, have big dreams of going to 'Umricca' (America, for the uninitiated) and to do so they would have to clear the seemingly insurmountable obstacle -GRE.
GRE or Graduate Record Examination is the test any individual wishing to study in any country other than UK must clear. It is basically a test consisting of 7th standard Math and some really mind-boggling English.
So, a flourishing market of GRE COACHING -FAST AND SUPERB crops up everywhere having thousands of hopeful enrolling in them. Some students claim that coaching helped them get a decent score while others state vehemently that coaching is waste of money better employed elsewhere.
On closer look, amidst the chaotic whirl of conflicting views, one finds that the problem really is the language itself.
Every major language in the world like French, German, Russian operates within a set of rules. If you get such and such combination of letters, then you only pronounce it in a such and such manner. But this isn't so with English. It works on the rule that you make up your own rules as you go about speaking, reading or writing it. Over centuries, this language has developed so many convoluted logic and intricate
rules of appropriation that it is indeed, utterly baffling for those unfamiliar with it.
I rather pride myself in having a fairly good command over the language; but the English sections in the GRE test had even me reeling in confusion with its long, jargon filled passages, never-before used vocabulary and complex sentences. So, as I did the classic 'inky-pinky-ponky' with multiple choice vocab questions, I wondered what the less fortunate's were doing about that? I have no idea. Maybe they mug up the 3500 odd words in the flash cards, or maybe they just guess. Whatever works man, whatever works. Having lived in many small towns, I have experienced first hand, the wonder and sheer desire to speak fluent English. The ability is a milestone of sorts, sometimes doubling as a redeeming point of an otherwise worthless groom ("kaam nahi karta toh kya hua, humara beta bahut achhi angrezi bolta hai! Beta...Angrezi bol ke dikhao zara!!), it will also help you bargain in shops, help you make the local hooligans cower, get a job and so on and so forth. From your neighbourhood Khanna, patel, and Arora aunties to the Thelewala outside the colony gates, everyone finds their own way to learn this language. Some watch popular Hollywood movies and speak in annoying fake accents, some go the 'Rapidex' way. (The holy grail of English to Hindi translations and vice versa) but the heart warming thing is how sincerely they try. So, I suppose, English indeed, is a superpower. And with great power, comes the great responsibility of using the keyboard for writing coherent, articulate, grammatically correct sentences and not using your butt '2 typ lyk dis'.