February.....In retrospect

I was in Chandigarh for 15 days during the start of February'07 for work. Visiting vendors, doing audits, cost negotiations, reviewing plans to develop new products with my team members at our HP plant, etall.....the usual stuff. I got to see a lot of countryside in HP, traveling to all the supplier's in the nook and corner, literally!, of Himachal. And, also do a lot of introspection (something that I'm never going to put on this blog)

I also had lots of tandoori and chicken in all its other avtaars. I also found out that no one can make tandoori chicken as good as a 'paaji' does on the roadside dhaba outside Chandigarh (I was always under the impression that the best tandoori chicken is served in Blue Nile, a Irani hotel in Pune). I forgot the name of the dhaba though. Maybe nextime I go there, I'll check it out.

Incidentally, my interview with Warwick also took place then. If the interviewer had known of my dress code during the interview, he would had not approved of it (I was roaming in the hotel lobby in my boxer shorts and a t-shirt, fielding questions on my experience, my ambitions, etc. To top this, all my MBA acceptances came through during this same period too!

To celebrate this, Renjith, our guy in HP had an idea of showing us around and so I got an opportunity to go to Shimla, Amritsar, and most importantly Wagah border. And you gotta believe me, its a place to go to atleast once in a lifetime.

Shimla was fun (Then, I didn't think of it as fun as I had to get up early in the morning to leave) to go to. We went to Kufri, where it snowed when I came back to Mysore! Talk about bad luck! We also roamed around in the Shimla market. There were a couple of firsts for me here, I rode a yak! I never knew this animal could be so mild mannered. I also rode a horse, here rode should be interpreted as riding a horse at speed, with wind in my hair, a sword to my waist, and a gun in my hand. Well OK, it wasn't entirely like this but I did ride a horse at speed!

The next day we went to Rock Garden in Chandigarh. Initially I thought it was a waste of time, but some of the stuff there is really good. You need to look twice, or sometimes more than twice, to make out that its made out of rock and not real trees or animals.

Then we left for Amritsar. Here, Jalianwalah Baug was a striking place. I saw couple of old women, tears in their eyes, touching the wall where bullet marks are still visible. The mood around was quite somber. About 500mtrs from Jalianwala Baug is the holiest place in the world for the Sikhs, The Golden Temple. When we went in it was around 14:00hrs, with the temple shinning in all its splendour. Its a magnificent place made of marble with gold plates covering the base marble structure. After spending an hour there we hurried, for two reasons one we wanted to reach Wagah border, and second, but more importantly we all were hungry. It was election season there and Navjot Singh Siddhu's constituency (thats one part of Amritsar) was flodded with his life size, and king kong size posters pointing fingers in all known and unknown directions.

After having a nice and fulfilling lunch, again comprising of chicken, we left for Wagah border. Its about 40kms from Amritsar. It was a great sight to watch, our soldiers facing the Pakistani guards, the door closing, the flags being brought down at sundown. It was a great sight and a really patriotic one too. I had a flood of emotions when I was there, so I'll be putting up a separate blog on that. Till then, check out my photos on this trip at --> http://in.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/i_yogesh81/album?.dir=/3783scd&.src=ph&.tok=ph9XDUGBgGuYCgMq

Till next time...So long!