A Journey...

My first day at my new college...
27/07/2009


So here I am... at my new college...my new home for the next two years and how am I feeling? Well obviously not at all ‘at home’. I had to face some minor problems today, not just carrying my entire heave luggage to my room at the third floor all by myself but also sleeping on a bed without mattress. Let me not get into the details but the biggest problem I faced today was my father’s accommodation. Here I was thinking that it won’t b any problem but as it turned out even after my mailing and calling the authorities many times, there was still no room reserved for my father. Anyway, finally he got a room at 9 pm and the day was settled. Now I am sitting in my room feeling lonely. No girl of my class has come and I am all alone on the whole floor. I am missing Mumbai and Pune and Hyderabad. The cities and the love they have showered upon me. Well I hated Hyderabad at first but now I wish I were there. Anyway, I tried to get in touch with my friends thru internet but as I haven’t registered as a student yet, I couldn’t log in to the network which required a username and password. Anyway here I am writing this post. Just for you people to know that life is like that. We have to leave aside everything to progress in life. Friends are important but sometimes they can’t be involved in everything you do. Mom once told me, “Life’s like a train journey, some people board the train with you and you talk and get close to them. You share a wonderful journey and some beautiful memories with them. But what you must not forget is that they have to get off the train at some station. And with just memories left, you have to continue your journey. This way make friends but just remember that you have to continue the journey of your life even if your friends are not with you”. So here I am...at my new college...proceeding forward without my friends...all alone...waiting for new passengers to board the train...because this is called life...

a radio show worked...

From past few days i have been depressed... i dont know why.. may be due to the lost of goal.. You must be thinking what i am talking about. Well as I had mentioned in my past posts, i wrote the GATE exam and qualified it with good score.. and now I have got admission into a very prestigious college the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior. But instead of being happy, I am sad. Not because I didnt want this college but because I dont have anything to do now. I was pretty busy with the admission process. But now its over and there's still time for the classes to begin. and I cant figure out a single way to keep me busy. I am in a new city and have no friends here to hang out with. plus all my friends are so busy in their jobs and other things that i hardly talk to them over phone or so. well i am not writing this post cos i want to talk about my problems..this post is about the solution to my peoblem.. the magical solution i found yesterday evening.
I was listening to a show on radio yesterday evening (as i do every evening).. and suddenly i tuned to this channel (which I always felt was the most depressing one with really bad choice of songs)..to my surprise there was a good radio jockey talking on air and i decided to listen. she was telling a stroy abt a king who had faced some problems and consulted a priest. the priest gave him a note and told him to read it when he faced some problem next time. he told him that the note had magical capability and should not be read or even opened if the king wasn't in some danger or problem. the king obeyed the priest and took the note as a blessing and kept it in his pocket always.. one day the king was out hunting in a jungle when suddenly he got lost and found himself in the territory of the enemy. suddenly he heard a troop of soliders of enemy comming in his direction. he climbed up a tree to hide himself.. suddenly he remembered the note. he took it out of his pocket and read it.. it said "this too shall pass"...
as i heard the story, i felt as if it was meant to b heard by me and many people like me who were in bad phases of life. what magical words "this too shall pass". just to remind us that life is not going to be this way always. its just a phase and will pass soon.
i learnt a major lesson in life thru this one sentence.life is always changing and due to this it sometimes leads us into bad phases where we feel we are stuck forever and we are never going to come out. but what we must remember is that it will be okey in the end. we will come out of this part of life. all we need is to believe and have patience.cos in the end nothing lasts forever.. in the end we have to recollect our energy and be ready to enter a new phase...
i am much relaxed now..all i needed was a line to make me feel better.. watching funny movies ddnt work.. studying ddnt work and what worked was a show in radio..cos of a story and just one magical line "this too shall pass.."... cos this is called life...

trip to harihareshwar cntd...

DAY Two:

7 am, hotel room, shrivardhan:
i lazily open my eyes to see the time...oh my God!! its already 8 am...we were supposed to wake up at 5 to see the sunrise on the shrivardhan beach..and we are still in bed...i call up the guys in the nxt room and as supposed they are sleeping as well..anyway we plan to meet for the breakfast downstairs in one hour...


9 am , shrivardhan beach:

(click on the pics for a larger view)











finally we are here...on the first beach..it looks so beautiful..its not crowded like the beaches in goa..it looks like a long spread of water just for us..we didnt hav any difficulty in finding the beach..it was 10 mins walkable distance from our hotel room.. and plus the cute girls going to school in shrivardhan told us the way... the beach looks so amazing... large shore.. silent boats floating to catch fishes..i soo miss my camera.. as we are enjoying cool breeze a stranger comes by and starts talking to us..he invites us to see his beach house and the whale skeleton kept there.. we are ammazed from the idea of seeing real whale bones.and go to the beach house..its really a beautiful place with all the tree houses and all.we hav a look at the place ask for charges so that we can plan and stay there in our nxt trip..and they ahve the whale bones..just the tail part but its too big...one can imagine how big a real whale is by just looking at its tail...only the tail is more than 5 feet long...










10.30 am, tahsildaar office, shrivardhan: we are leaving the shrivardhan beach and going towards harihareshwar...the more famous beach... we come to know that it takes one hour to reach harihareshwar in six seater rikshaw...so we get to the place where we can get the rikshaw which would take us to the final destination...



12 noon, harihareshwar: we are at harihareshwar finally...sitting in a local restaurant, waiting for our lunch to be served... although we had a heavy breakfast (of my favourite upma) but still the journey was tiring amd we are hungry already..we decide to have lunch and then move towards the beach... finally our orders come...as my frnds are from orrissa basically so they are more delighted to have the sea fish (i dnt know the exactly which one..they all are same for me...)..and i hav to compromise with veg thali...still the food tastes amazing..there is no btter feeling than going to a village and having the local food...



12.30 pm, harihareshwar beach :







wow..a beach with cemented shore?? this is something i hav never seen... the sea is at the foot of harihareshwar hills...and its deep...right from the piont where water touches the hill foot...so for safty it has been made from concrete...we sit near the water and talk..abuot the world and us and the world and us again...and enjoy the cool water sprinkles..and sometimes the waves are big enough to reach you and wet u all over..(as happened to my friend)..there is an old man sitting near the beach with huge coconuts...not big but huge!! they are three times the size of a normal one... this beach is a little bit crowded cos its more popular..but then its different ...different than all the other beaches i hav seen...its like some divine energy is holding us to be near it..not to leave..ever.....LEAVE!!!! oh my GOD!! what is the time?? we hav to catch a bus and return back...but first why dont we have a "naryal paani"... ;)



2 pm, harihareshwar: we are in a rikshaw again leaving harihareshwar and taking the memories with us..we hav to catch a bus at shrivardhan and reach pune before night...




3.30 pm: we are in the bus for pune..and mentally m still at shrivardhan- harihareshwar.. what a trip..what beautiful beaches...m mind in wandering in the shrivardhan lanes..and the harihareshwar restaurant and near the naryal paani wala...
i wish i had more time to spend there and enjoy the nature... its so strange how human beings love nature and cant live without it..but still chose to live far from it..in the city where all u can see is human faces in the crowd... why cant we live near the mother nature??? but then if we did we wouldnt admire it as much...



10 pm, pune: i reach my other friend's house to spend the night with her...and the trip comes to an end like every good thing does...cos other good things have to fill old one's place...bye harihareshwar..i'll come back again...

trip to harihareshwar

Imagine a place where the heights meet the depths...the mountain meets the sea...yes, a place where all you can see, feel and experience is 'Nature’. By my good luck, I got a chance to visit such a place last weekend...Hari-hareshwar...a beautiful beach and this beach was much more beautiful than the popular beaches of Goa. I thought why not share the experience. Let me start from the start.

Day one:

Place: dadar station, Mumbai, 8.30am

I am ready with my bag-pack to travel. No it’s not to harihareshwar…that’s not even among the rarest of my ideas...I am travelling to Pune, where I have to meet my friends to spend my weekend with. My exam of GATE has finished a few days ago and I m free, after months of studies, for some gala time with my friends. As the train leaves I decide to log into the messenger on my cell for a small chit chat before the cell looses network. And I see a friend online who has just arrived at pune station. We decide to meet up at the station itself before we move on to visit our other friends.

After three hours of journey I reach Pune station at 11.30am and see my friend waiting for me. We decide to take a few of other friends with us and travel to some place away from the city. After searching for getaways near pune the place Harihareshwar, 180 km from pune, is decided…

Place: swargate bus-stand, Pune 2.30pm

After lunch at famous chaitanya’s parathas at FC road, without loosing any more time I and a few friends have arrived at swargate, where we’d be getting a local bus to take us to Mangaun. We have got not much money and just the names of major stops ‘mangaun’ and ‘shrivardhan’ to start our journey with. We board the bus and the conductor tells us that we’d reach mangaun in approximately 3 hours…the bus is full of local villagers and we talk to some small girls about their lives.

Place: mangaun bus-stand, Mangaun 7pm

We have just arrived at mangaun. The journey to mangaun was good without many stops in between. One of the major stop was Mulshi Lake, which is also one of the major tourist spots near pune. After talking to the local people and a few bus drivers we came to know that we have to take another bus from here to Shrivardhan (one of my friends has major difficulty remembering this name and I suggest him to remember the name Govardhan which has much importance in Hindu mythology.) We also come to know that we won’t be able to get any bus service from shrivardhan to harihareshwar and will have to rely on local transport for that. After waiting for almost one hour we finally spot a bus to shrivardhan and with much difficulty fighting crowd we finally board the bus and get a place to sit. The journey from Mangaun to Shrivardhan is roughly of one and a half hour long.

Place: Shrivardhan bus-stand, Shrivardhan 9.30 pm

As we get down the bus we figure out that our timings were wrong and we are running late. Shrivardhan being a small village, we can’t get anything to go to harihareshwar until dawn. So the only option left for us was to find a nice place to rest and spend the night and start early morning for harihareshwar. But as it was a small village we had much difficulty in finding a proper accommodation for the night. After walking for about half an hour and the guys rejecting many motels (because of girls’ safety and bla bla) we finally reach a recommended place and take rooms for the night.

As for what happened the next day just wait a little more as my next post will be on day two which is the last day of the journey and where I get to see two most beautiful beaches of harihareshwar and shrivardhan.

10 Ways to Catch a Liar

Experts have 10 tips that can let you know if someone isn't telling you the whole truth.

J.J. Newberry was a trained federal agent, skilled in the art of deception detection. So when a witness to a shooting sat in front of him and tried to tell him that when she heard gunshots she didn't look, she just ran -- he knew she was lying. How did Newberry reach this conclusion? The answer is by recognizing telltale signs that a person isn't being honest, like inconsistencies in a story, behavior that's different from a person's norm, or too much detail in an explanation. While using these signs to catch a liar takes extensive training and practice, it's no longer only for authorities like Newberry. Now, the average person can become adept at identifying dishonesty, and it's not as hard as you might think. Experts tell WebMD the top 10 ways to let the truth be known.

Tip No. 1: Inconsistencies "When you want to know if someone is lying, look for inconsistencies in what they are saying," says Newberry, who was a federal agent for 30 years and a police officer for five. When the woman he was questioning said she ran and hid after hearing gunshots -without looking -- Newberry saw the inconsistency immediately. "There was something that just didn't fit," says Newberry. "She heard gunshots but she didn't look? I knew that was inconsistent with how a person would respond to a situation like that." So when she wasn't paying attention, he banged on the table. She looked right at him. "When a person hears a noise, it's a natural reaction to look toward it," Newberry tells WebMD. "I knew she heard those gunshots, looked in the direction from which they came, saw the shooter, and then ran." Sure enough, he was right. "Her story was just illogical," says Newberry. "And that's what you should look for when you're talking to someone who isn't being truthful. Are there inconsistencies that just don't fit?"

Tip No. 2: Ask the Unexpected "About 4% of people are accomplished liars and they can do it well," says Newberry. "But because there are no Pinocchio responses to a lie, you have to catch them in it." Sir Walter Scott put it best: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" But how can you a catch a person in his own web of lies? "Watch them carefully," says Newberry. "And then when they don't expect it, ask them one question that they are not prepared to answer to trip them up."

Tip No. 3: Gauge Against a Baseline "One of the most important indicators of dishonesty is changes in behavior," says Maureen O'Sullivan, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco. "You want to pay attention to someone who is generally anxious, but now looks calm. Or, someone who is generally calm but now looks anxious." The trick, explains O'Sullivan, is to gauge their behavior against a baseline. Is a person's behavior falling away from how they would normally act? If it is, that could mean that something is up.

Tip No. 4: Look for Insincere Emotions "Most people can't fake smile," says O'Sullivan. "The timing will be wrong, it will be held too long, or it will be blended with other things. Maybe it will be a combination of an angry face with a smile; you can tell because their lips are smaller and less full than in a sincere smile." These fake emotions are a good indicator that something has gone afoul.

Tip No. 5: Pay Attention to Gut Reactions "People say, 'Oh, it was a gut reaction or women's intuition,' but what I think they are picking up on are the deviations of true emotions," O'Sullivan tells WebMD. While an average person might not know what it is he's seeing when he thinks someone isn't being honest and attribute his suspicion to instinct, a scientist would be able to pinpoint it exactly -- which leads us to tip no. 6.

Tip No. 6: Watch for Microexpressions When Joe Schmo has a gut feeling, Paul Ekman, a renowned expert in lie detection, sees microexpressions.  "A microexpression is a very brief expression, usually about a 25th of a second, that is always a concealed emotion," says Ekman, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco. So when a person is acting happy, but in actuality is really upset about something, for instance, his true emotion will be revealed in a subconscious flash of anger on his face. Whether the concealed emotion is fear, anger, happiness, or jealousy, that feeling will appear on the face in the blink of an eye. The trick is to see it. "Almost everyone -- 99% of those we've tested in about 10,000 people -- won't see them," says Ekman. "But it can be taught." In fact, in less than an hour, the average person can learn to see microexpressions.

Tip No. 7: Look for Contradictions "The general rule is anything that a person does with their voice or their gesture that doesn't fit the words they are saying can indicate a lie," says Ekman. "For example, this is going to sound amazing, but it is true. Sometimes when people are lying and saying, 'Yes, she's the one that took the money,' they will without knowing it make a slight head shake 'no.' That's a gesture and it completely contradicts what they're saying in words." These contradictions, explains Ekman, can be between the voice and the words, the gesture and the voice, the gesture and the words, or the face and the words. "It's some aspect of demeanor that is contradicting another aspect," Ekman tells WebMD.

Tip No. 8: A Sense of Unease "When someone isn't making eye contact and that's against how they normally act, it can mean they're not being honest," says Jenn Berman, PhD, a psychologist in private practice. "They look away, they're sweating, they look uneasy ... anything that isn't normal and indicates anxiety."

Tip No. 9: Too Much Detail "When you say to someone, 'Oh, where were you?' and they say, 'I went to the store and I needed to get eggs and milk and sugar and I almost hit a dog so I had to go slow,' and on and on, they're giving you too much detail," says Berman. Too much detail could mean they've put a lot of thought into how they're going to get out of a situation and they've crafted a complicated lie as a solution.

Tip No. 10: Don't Ignore the Truth "It's more important to recognize when someone is telling the truth than telling a lie because people can look like they're lying but be telling truth," says Newberry. While it sounds confusing, finding the truth buried under a lie can sometimes help find the answer to an important question: Why is a person lying? These 10 truth tips, experts agree, all help detect deception. What they don't do is tell you why a person is lying and what the lie means. "Microexpressions don't tell you the reason," says Ekman. "They just tell you what the concealed emotion is and that there is an emotion being concealed." When you think someone is lying, you have to either know the person well enough to understand why he or she might lie, or be a people expert. "You can see a microexpression, but you have to have more social-emotional intelligence on people to use it accurately," says O'Sullivan. "You have to be a good judge of people to understand what it means."

 Extra Tip: Be Trusting "In general we have a choice about which stance we take in life," says Ekman. "If we take a suspicious stance life is not going to be too pleasant, but we won't get misled very often. If we take a trusting stance, life is going to be a lot more pleasant but sometimes we are going to be taken in. As a parent or a friend, you're much better off being trusting rather than looking for lies all the time."