Another big fat punjabi wedding ... (contd.)

.... contd.

The Cook: How can there be a wedding without a cook. In my opinion, food is one of the most important ingredient of a Punjabi wedding. You can let Ambrika add another digit to their debt clock but you cannot and I mean absolutely not serve mediocre food at home to the guests. To hell with the bride and groom, if the food is not good, it was not a good wedding. So, my parents called a special cook all the way from Ludhiana on someone's recommendation. And I think it was my favorite part of the wedding. They were a team of 3 with one being the head cook, one helper and one server. It was top quality food with minimum spices and oil yet high on taste and nutrition. To my amazement the cook one evening even made Pakoras with Tomato!! I consider myself a big foodie and critique but I had never heard, seen or eaten Tomato Pakoras in my life. And trust me, they were out of the world!! I could not even resist the Ghiya (Bottle gourd) dish he made on the reception night for himself and his team. So, instead of having dinner with everyone at the Reception hall, I already had it before leaving home.

The Guests: Discussing anything about a Desi wedding is incomplete without talking about the guests and their peculiarities. I felt that the arrival/departure plan of the guests change more often than the weather in England. Arriving unannounced or cancelling plans to come without informing to make the person standing at the airport/train-station go mad after hearing the cancellation news is I guess normal practices at weddings. One peculiar case was that of a relative coming unannounced by car from Shimla at 2 a.m. in the night before the wedding day. It was unbelievable to see my parents standing outside the house at 3 a.m. in the morning with temperature around 2-3 degrees to receive them and to arrange for their bed while the Baraat was to leave at 9 a.m. the same morning !! Atithi Devo Bhava, I guess !!

 The Ending: As the famous saying goes, all is well that ends well. And so was the wedding !! Everything went well, the guests left with their share of sweets and gifts and no major disaster happened which my mom was worrying about all through the wedding. Now, my mom is a person who goes to bed early and gets up early. It is hard for her to stay awake after 9:30 in the night. My father has Arthritis problem in his legs and was very close to getting operated before the wedding but avoided it. Even in such condition, I could not believe the energy and enthusiasm my parents showed during the wedding. It seemed like they were a someone else during those days. No matter what the work was, it was done. They did everything. I felt a little ashamed of myself that I can never imagine myself working so hard for my kids wedding. My sister was nothing less than an Event Manager herself and contributed all her energy and time for the wedding. Everything from selecting the cards to preparing the itinerary to checking the decoration to selecting the wedding dress for me was done by her. I feel humbled seeing my family work so hard to make my wedding a success. No matter what words I say or what gifts I give them or whatever I do for them, there is nothing and absolutely nothing with which I can thank them. I wish and pray that God continue to shower His grace on them with a long and healthy life.

Although, I am a very simple person and wanted a simple wedding for myself with just few and selected members of our family and friends to attend it, I could not say no to the desires of my parents who wanted it to be a grand event. I am not a person in favor of extravagance or things like that but it was just to show respect to my parents that I agreed to do it their way.


P.S: I am sure many of you must have experienced such thing before but for me, it was the first wedding I attended in the last 8 years. And it happened to be my own wedding :) 

Another big fat punjabi wedding ...

Writing anything about a Punjabi wedding would sound cliche´d. Doing everything over-the-top from food to dresses to dancing, to the overall madness. I am sure anyone reading this post would have experienced at least one Punjabi wedding in his/her life or at least read/heard about it. So, let me not bore you with the general stuff. I will try to stick only to the specific event around my D-Day. Although I have always tried to follow the rule of not writing anything from my personal life here but then I have to also respect what George Bernard Shaw once said, "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules". So, let me pen down some incidents which might bring back memories when I read them here 10-20 years from now.

The Prelude: I reached India many days before my religious marriage ceremony so that I could do a court marriage to apply for my wife's visa in advance. There is not much twist in the story as there was in my back. A couple of weeks before leaving for India, I had a slip-disc problem. So, I reached India with pain in my back and my leg. I went to the doctor the next day after landing and he advised me not to bend and sit crossed leg on the floor. As soon as I heard that, I chuckled. And there was an "Yeah right !!" expression in my head. Imagine a wedding without bending to touch the feet of the million of uncle and aunties who would come to greet the newly wed. And a religious wedding without sitting crossed leg? Are you kidding me? Asking the priest to change that part would be like asking Mr. Ahmadinejad to close down his nuclear program. The doctor advised to take precautions.

The Invitations: The preparations started with the distribution of invitation cards. I personally feel that this is the toughest part among all preparations. Making the list, not forgetting anyone, to personally go and invite everyone even though you have not met them for ages and even though they live in the remotest part of your city. A personal visit is a MUST! One night, during the card distribution phase, lying in the bed with a bottle of hot water under my back to ease my back pain, I felt so amused comparing the contrast of life and culture between India and Germany. To visit anyone at his place in Germany would require an appointment to be made well in advance and not just banging into their house at any time of the day as in India. Even after invitation lists being made well in advance, sorted out according to the various regions of the city, according to preference in delivery, it took like forever to distribute them.

The Dresses: One of the things with which I am most amazed in my life is that why my dad has a single cupboard of clothes compared to the three which my mom has, not to mention. An almost similar experience I had with women during wedding. My mom, aunts, sisters, cousins all had a different dress for each meal at least for the last 2 days of the wedding! I am pretty okay with that but even though all of them knew 3 months in advance about the wedding, still most of them were still going for trials till the last moment.On top of that there was enough drama with the tailors. Some of the dresses were not made up to the expectations of the women. There was a lot of crying and moaning. New dresses were then ordered 3 days before the wedding. Aunt from Ambrika calling my Mom at 2 a.m. IST 4 days before the wedding and giving her measurements to order dresses for her, Cousin from Ambrika coming hours before the Shagan ceremony and 5 people going with him to sort out all his dresses for each event of the wedding. I mean, it was complete madness on the dresses front!    

More to come in the next post .....

Heck of a Weekend !

I live a very moderate kind of life. Nothing like live-life-king-size and I like it that way. My friend circle also consist of such like minded people. So, usually there is nothing dramatic happening around me. Of course, my level of understanding people is constantly declining which lead to surprises every now and then but still it is not close to what happened last weekend.

A friend of mine living in the same town as me called on Saturday morning (last week) and asked if I could drive him immediately to the town of Regensburg which is around 500 kms from our city. He didn't had a driving license and taking a train or flight would take more time. A friend of his had taken about 100 paracetamol tablets in batches of 50 in a span of 10 minutes, the night before (reasons not known). He was now in the hospital struggling for his life. As soon as I heard that, frankly speaking I was at loss of words and also emotions. I felt like laughing at this since I believed such things only happened in Bollywood. So, I asked my friend if he was kidding. Hearing the seriousness in his tone, I quickly realized that things were pretty nasty. The guy was seriously struggling for life since his liver was failing and needed a transplant. Kidney was next in line.

Without loosing any time, I packed some clothes, picked up my friend from his place and off we were to Regensburg. I had met this guy previously on one or two occasions before at some get-together parties. So, I vaguely knew who he was. The mood on the way was tensed. There was hardly any talking except preparing ourselves for the worst. At times, we were trying to narrow down the reasons which could have made him take such drastic steps. He came from a well off family, is the only son, had a decent education and job. So, we could not make out any logical reasons behind his actions. In the end, we gave up and concentrated our energies on what was about to come next.

The scene when we arrived at the hospital was pretty crazy. The guy was in ICU and really struggling to survive. He was in so much pain that he even told us it would have been easier to die than to end up like this. We tried our best to console him and stayed by his side all the time before the doctors asked us to leave. We kept in constant touch with his parents who did not even had a passport back in India. Usually, I am a person strictly against the idea of 'jugaad' but this was one of the few times when I did not cared what means I was using to get his parents here. The only target was to get them here asap. No useful contacts were left unexploited. They arrived on Wednesday but the two days on Sunday and Monday were really crucial.

There is some sort of a liver value which under normal conditions is around 70. It was running at 14 for this guy on Saturday evening and still dropping. By early Sunday morning it dropped to 7. He was already on the list of donated liver recipients but by Sunday he was moved at the top of the list under the most critical situation. His kidneys were also failing to process the liquid intake and was close to be put on a dialysis machine. There were several other patients also in the same ICU. Two were on ventilators, one was lying with his chest still half open for the surgeries to be carried next, one was completely yellow in color and was in dialysis. There was one time when I myself was about to throw up seeing all this. I don't think I have ever seen such disturbing images with my own eyes except on TV and I always thought I had a strong stomach to see everything. That situation was proving me wrong.

Saturday and Sunday went hard, real hard. I think it was one of the longest weekends I ever had in my life. The doctors tried to gave him blood plasma but somehow his body rejected it. He got all red and developed allergies. Doctors had to counter their actions by giving some other medicines. There was always that machine used to give shock to the chest ready by his bedside. Due to the partially working kidneys, the water in his body kept pushing up to the lungs and he had trouble breathing. He was constantly having hiccups. But miraculously on Monday afternoon, things started to change. His values started to stabilize. Suddenly, there was a chance of recovery. There was time when we thought we almost lost the guy. But he was lucky. Destiny had planned something else for him. He was still in a critical situation but was recovering steadily.

Finally, his parents arrived on Wednesday and it was a tough sight for them as well. It was good that they did not saw him two days back. We took a sigh of relief and handed over the son to his parents. We were happy that we handing him over in relatively better shape. I am not sure how we would have faced the parents in case something bad happened. Anyways, we made sure the parents knew their way around and how to commute between the hospital and their apartment since me and my friend had planned to return to our city the next day.

Before returning on Thursday, we went to say him goodbyes. I could not hold myself back when he took our hands and said please don't go. Stay ! We consoled him, cracked a couple of jokes to lift his spirits and then left. We were dead tired on our way back but still the feeling of relief that all ended well was constantly providing us the energy. Finally, it was all over. A heck of a weekend !     

Betrayal

There are two kinds of lunatics, insane and crazy people existing in this world. People, whose thought processes drops down below the common understanding of normal, regular people are one such kind. Another kind are those whose thought processes far exceeds the logic and morality of common people. Since in both the cases, an average person with an average intellect cease to understand both the kinds, he easily labels them as lunatics. Somewhere around 900 AD, lived a man called Mansoor Al-Hallaj who was a Mystic and a Sufi poet/writer from a region of Persia which is now modern day Iraq. He belonged to the latter category of the two kinds who was sentenced to death by the then existing king for blasphemy.

He had a better and higher understanding of the almighty but his ways of expressing himself were not in line with the understanding of common people of his time including his king. His thoughts were above the standards existing then. He was a devout Muslim and knew the Quran by heart. His simple life and words of virtues influenced many people, thus creating many followers for him. In moments of ecstasy, trance and meditation he used to chant, Anal Haq meaning 'I am the truth'. He started making enemies among people who translated this as him saying, 'I am God'. He used to say there is no difference between me and God. We are one and the same thing. For this he was charged with blasphemy and sentenced to death. What no one understood was that by saying 'I am God' he actually was too humble to acknowledge his own existence in front of God. By saying that 'I am a follower and servant of God' creates two existence, 'I' and 'God' but he was so humble that he completely denied his own existence, that he is nothing, null, zero for 'Him'. What exists is only God and nothing else. Decades later, Rumi presented a beautiful understanding of this concept in one of his works.

I dont know if I was clear above but let me explain taking an example. Most of us know the famous Pythagoras Theorem, i.e. In a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. If a,b,c are sides of a triangle and c is the hypotenuse, then

a² + b² = c²

Now, if Mr. Pythagoras would have simply given the above equation without actually deriving it or proving it, everyone would have called him a lunatic. Therefore, for the understanding and realization of common man, he had to give a derivation proving the left side of the equation is equal to the right side of equation. Mansoor's case was similar but the problem was that he directly gave the end result to the people in a state of trance without actually proving it. He did not considered important to explain his experience with each and everyone.

There exist many different versions of his ending. Some say he was hanged, some say he was cut into pieces and some say he was stoned to death. It is not important what happened but there was an interesting incident that happened then which I once read about.

He had a good friend named Shivli (not sure about the name). They were good friends and Shivli understood him completely, about what he meant through his experiences and was very close to him. They shared a common understanding on spiritual matters which was a base of their friendship. Now the king ordered the punishment of stoning to death for Mansoor. The day was decided and everyone gathered with stones in their hands to throw at Mansoor. Now, Shivli was in a huge dilemma. If he did not threw a stone at him, he would be considered his accomplice in crime and might have to face the same punishment. On the other hand, if he threw a stone at him it would be against the ethics of friendship and denying what he meant was correct. Finally, the stoning started and to everyone's surprise Mansoor started laughing with each stone he received. Even with blood spurting out of his body he kept laughing and was happy in his trance that the people are making it easier for him to meet his God. Now Shivli, in this moment of half denial, took a rose flower half heartdley and threw at Mansoor just in order to fit in the crowd. But with the soft hit of the flower, Mansoor screamed with excruciating pain. Shivli was flabbergasted seeing his reaction. He politely asked Mansoor that why did you screamed when I hit you with a soft, delicate flower ? You were laughing with joy when stones were hurled at you by others. Why such a different attitude towards me ? Mansoor, in throes of utter pain replied to Shivli that I considered 'you' a friend. I thought that at least 'you' would understand me. At least 'you' were also of the same school of thought like me. At least 'you' understood the meaning of God and his existence. I was laughing at people hurling stones at me because I considered them ignorant. But you betrayed me by throwing that flower. That flower has caused thousand times more pain to me than those stones.

Last weekend, a friend of mine left me with a similar pain. When the trust you have build up in someone is betrayed you feel that pain. 

   

The Visit

My recent visit to the US was quite a memorable one, not just professionally but also on the personal front. I was in Washington DC for work and had planned to visit my friend in New York before returning back to Germany. I have been to DC before and frankly speaking it is a pretty dull city for my taste. Of course, it has all those great museums and memorials etc but overall I had always expected more from the capital city of Ambreeka. This time I ended up visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The most interesting part was for some exhibits, they had the original ones, like the first airplane from the Wright Brothers etc. Other than that, our free time near the DC area was mainly spent on shopping. After DC, I went to NY to visit my friend for the weekend. Frankly speaking, I was quite blown over by this city. As soon as I came out of the Bus terminal in downtown NY, I was greeted with a sudden gust of stink, total chaos, loud noises, people everywhere. I think I was not ready for it so it was like a filmy moment for me. After seeing all that for a few seconds, I went back inside the terminal building to actually digest and accept whole experience. It would say, it was pretty intimidating :)

Since, I had heard stories of people being looted by NY city parking, I decided to give back my rental car in DC and use other modes of transport. I wanted to have a taste of US buses and trains. Being grown up watching Hollywood movies, I had seen a lot of those Greyhound buses so decided to take one from DC to NY. Of course there were other better options available but I had always been fascinated to see those tin-can shaped buses in old Hollywood movies. I personally believe that Greyhound for buses and Amtrak for trains is quite iconic for US alternate modes of transport. So, for my return NY to DC, I had booked Amtrak for the same reason even though it was three times more expensive than bus. I could never figure out why such a big difference. I did not faced any problems using both of them but for me personally speaking Amtrak was a big turn off. Maybe, I was expecting more from them specially after using the ICE trains in Germany. I think there is absolutely no comparison between both of them. ICE is like Porche and Amtrak like Fiat Padmini of trains.

Anyways, this post is not about DC or NY but the time spent with my friends. I am sure most of you know more about those places more than me. So these two pics would be more than enough.

The Capitol in the background:

The Statue of Liberty in the background:

So, finally the meetup ....

Friend 1: I think this trip was sprinkled with coincidences. In the first week while attending the conference, I went online on gtalk during one of the breaks and found my friend I was planning to meet at the weekend online. Just casually, he asked where was my conference hotel and to our surprise, my friend's office was just on the street behind the hotel. We laughed and decided to meet for lunch the same day. I was meeting this guy after about 8 years but talking to him did not felt like we were meeting after such a long time. It was just like starting from where we left. We were in the same batch at our engineering college. He was also my floor mate in the hostel. Unfortunately, he had to go to Chicago for work the next day but I had planned to spend a day with him after he returned. On his return, he took me to meet some of his friends which ended up in a great party in the end. I think we hardly slept that night.

Friend 2: This one was special and again a big coincidence. After the conference I moved to another hotel for work the next week. After talking to this friend on phone, we found out that his house was at 5 minute walking distance from my hotel. We met the same evening and he took me out for dinner with his wife. I was meeting this friend after 20 years !! I know how crazy it sounds but its really true. We studied together till Class 4 and then his father moved to another country. We kept in touch with each other through postal letters. Yes, those were not the days of emails or facebooks. He then moved to another country and we lost touch. We again got in touch with each other when he came back to India. And then he moved to US and since then it was only through chat and emails. I dont know or why but we somehow always kept in touch. It was a great moment catching up with him again. Again, never did we felt any awkwardness or we were out of topics to talk about. Even his wife was surprised how we kept in touch for so long and she also never felt out of place participating in our conversations. They, then took me to their house after dinner and we all had tea. Being a tea lover, it was like charging my batteries after a long break from desi tea in US. We talked and talked and finally he dropped me at my hotel at around 2 am. Next day in the evening, again he was at my hotel to pick me up for dinner and they insisted that till the time I was there, I must have dinner with them. I was really taken aback at all the warmth. It was an awesome feeling.

Friend 3: After 2 weeks in DC, I went for the last weekend to NY to meet my friend there. I was meeting him after 12 years. We did our schooling together and then went on to do engineering from different colleges. I had been in touch with him also via emails and chat. Although from the same town, we did not met so often since we never had vacations on common time. Anyways, he met me in the evening and took me to his place in NJ. The next two days he tried to give me a NY tour but we ended up talking more than seeing the places. It is usually the case with me that I tend to see less at a place where I know people than where I am a total stranger. But no complaints, I still managed to see a major part of NY in those 2 days. Fortunately or unfortunately his wife was also on vacation in India, so he also had a lot of free time to spend with me. Again, it was a great meetup and I was totally overwhelmed at his hospitality. The last night in NY, we went to dinner at a posh looking place and here is the view from near the hotel, the NY skyline.

The next day, I took the Amtrak to Washington to take my flight back to Germany. On the way, I kept thinking why did my friends met me with such joy and warmth ? After all these years gone, they could have simply ignored me or said they were busy with their stuff. And then I asked myself, what if they would have come to Germany to visit me, would "I" have ignored them .... and then I got my answer !! :)

The Guilt Trip

The Walmart of the World. This is what I call Ambreeka. In particular, for people living in Europe, it is a heaven for shopping. Each of my US trips always ends up with a shopping weekend. Normally, I am not a big fan of shopping and buy stuff as and when needed. But looking at the prices in US, I feel like it is a crime if I don’t buy stuff at the offered prices because how low can you go. Anything below this level would be like asking the products for free. I have even seen advertisements on some Travel agents’ shop in Germany offering cheap tickets for US just for shopping.

So last weekend, I was all high on shopping. At one point of time, I had to really stop myself to pause and take a deep breath to actually realize what was going on. All this is good but after the shopping spree, I always end up with a hangover. A hangover of guilt. I am never able to convince myself that I really needed all that stuff. I mean my life was also going fine without buying all those things. I hope I get over such feelings.

I always wonder on my US trips, how tough would it be for people living in the US to maintain good health after the watching their eating habits and their retail stores. One must definitely take extraordinary steps to stay healthy with the number of fast food joints that are available. It always surprises me how the stores in US sell juices, drinks, eateries etc all in jumbo packs. I always have a tough time finding a single can of cola or juice to buy at stores.

On this trip, I also made it a point to meet as many friends as possible living on the east coast. I was completely overwhelmed after meeting a friend of mine after about 20 years. It amazes me how we kept in touch over all these years without even meeting. And the way my friend me just blew me away. He and his wife met me with such warmth that I cannot describe. Never did it felt that we were meeting after so long. It was definitely a memorable meetup.

I also plan to meet some more friends this weekend before returning back and I am over exciting thinking about it. I hope I have more to write about it next week :)

The Priest

After coming back from India, things had been insanely hectic. Too many things had been going in parallel and it made me think one day whether I am even thinking what I am doing or just behaving like a robot finishing all the work on the to-do-list one by one. But a friend gave me a surprise and I could not help but share it on the blog.

A friend of mine from India has decided to join a missionary and lead a life of a celibate as a priest. This might not sound like a big deal to many but let me share some background information of the guy. He is from Kerala, from a Christian family, successfully completed his Engineering in Computer Science in India. Then worked for a big Chinese communication company in China for several years and finally came to Germany to pursue his Masters Degree in the same subject. After completing his Masters, he even worked for a renowned Research establishment here for about an year. But just recently he broke this news to us that he is quitting his job and moving back to India to join a missionary somewhere in the east.

I was not much surprised to hear that since I know he is a pretty devoted guy. No matter what but he never used to miss the evening mass at the church. There are only a few people I know who are as down to earth, well balanced, caring, unbiased and honest as him. I had always admired how he lives such a simple life without the influence of any new age menaces. So this decision of his made me respect him even more. But it also made me think about a lot of things.

It might be easy for him but from my perspective it is a pretty tough step to take for many reasons. We live in a world far from ideal where new temptations are added everyday around us. Now to live around these lollipops like a BMWs, iPhones, Tag Heuers etc, knowing that they exist yet denying them completely even knowing that you have the ability to earn and afford them, needs nerves of steel. I have personally seen a couple of people living a simple life often criticizing such things but eventually succumbing to the temptations. I don’t blame them.

Among the 5 major vices mentioned in ancient Indian literature called kaam (lust), krodh (anger) , lobh (greed), moh (attachment), ahankaar (ego), I believe winning over kaam is the toughest. A prime example from Indian mythology is Vishvamitra. Even a man of his intellect and dedication could not save himself and fell for kaam. No matter how much we deny or shy away from it, it is one of the universal truths of life.

To live a celibate life with minimum needs and serving others definitely deserves my admiration. So when someone tells me he is going to live such a life, I say more power to him. 

Tomorrow, I am flying again to Washington DC for work for 2 weeks and again feeling anxious like last time as discussed here :)

Friendship for sale

A friend of mine recently wrote in his update on Facebook "451 to 300 .... cleaning friendlist". I felt quite amused to see such a message. It looked very mechanical to me, totally devoid of any emotions. Have these social media platforms diluted the essence of friendship? Firstly, I have never understood how people so casually add everyone in their FB friend list, even those they might have seen once in a party and then later claim that they need privacy. I never understood why would you write something on such a platform which you might need to hide from a particular set people? In that case how can you really call them friends? I agree to the fact that many people would claim that it is a social media platform where not everyone is actually a "friend". It is more like a tool to interact with many people whom you might have met or know. 

But I had always felt very uncomfortable to use the word "friend" so casually and cheaply. A friend for me is a person you trust blindly, who is there for you (and you for him) through thick and thin of life and a lot more. So, personally I never understood this hierarchy in friendship. In this sense, I would say the Germans have a more efficient way of addressing people. There is a word in their vocabulary called "Bekannter" which they use often for acquaintances, for people they know but are not really friends. So, a Bekannter is not actually a friend. From humanity or social point of view it might not be morally fitting but works pretty good in the practical world.

Then just recently there was this Airtel advertisement doing rounds on the internet with the title "har ek friend zaroori hota hai". It was an amusing ad but it left a bit of bad taste in the end. Maybe I am thinking too much or either I did not got the ad correctly. The way it portrayed friendship was not top of the line in my opinion. I felt that it showed that friends are just like amenities in life or more so like utilities just for "use", for different kind of uses. Does that mean anyone who can offer you a service of any kind is your friend ? Some people might argue that what the ad was meant in good spirit and not what I have made out of it but I think otherwise.

It could be that I am old school and that the meaning of friendship has changed over the years. But I guess I am still stuck in the world of film Dosti (1964) where the meaning of friendship between Ramu and Mohan are in stark contrast with what I see these days amongst the new generation. There was emotion, sacrifice, others before self feelings and not just using people as commodities and then calling them friends. In less than 50 years, I guess we have mutated our behavior so much that there is no chance or scope of going back.

It could be that I might face some backlash for such thoughts but if not on my blog then where :) 

An evening in Paris

Neither is this post about the Shammi Kapoor film nor does it have anything to do with the Woody Allen film. This post is about my first trip to Paris about 6 years back. Ever since, Paris had cast a kind of spell on me that I never leave an opportunity to visit it. A visit almost every year since then is a proof of that spell. I don't know why but I never get tired going to that city. It somehow has a magnetic effect on me. The most memorable trip for me was my first and this post is about the last evening of that trip we spent there.

Three months after arriving in Germany for the first time back in 2004, my friends planned a trip to Switzerland. Being new in a foreign land whose currency rate was 1:58 with the Indian rupee, my conscience did not allowed me to go on such a trip. I was a fresh graduate with little experience about real life so did not knew how priceless can be such trips. It is only later in life I understood that one should never miss a chance to travel as a student because once a person starts working, even though he might have money, he might not have the time or the company to travel. So, my advice to students always is to explore the world as much as possible as long as you don't have to take loan to travel.

So, after missing the Swiss trip I realized that this time will not come again so when another group of friends made a plan to visit Paris, I was all game for it. The plan was to stay at a friend's place in Paris who was doing his PhD at that time. As students, we anyways did not mind sleeping on the floor at a friend's place. So, five of us booked tickets and took our sleeping bags along to visit Paris. Our host was a generous guy and took good care of us. He took time out of his busy schedule to guide us through Paris. He was quite busy with work so he could not accompany us everywhere.

Now, our host was a guy with a big heart but absolutely zero cooking skills. So, he was quite pleased to have Indian food with us whenever we used to make in his kitchen. On the last evening of our 5 day stay, it was raining cats and dogs. I guess Indra Devta had planned this night to be a memorable one for us. Since it was raining, we planned to stay at home. Out of nowhere, our host in a very humble and pitiful tone said, "It has been more than a year since I visited India. I really miss the food. How great it would be if in this weather we had samosas". Another friend of mine looked at me and I knew what he wanted to say. We said lets have samosas for dinner tonight. Our host's eyes glittered like a diamond but he asked from where would they come from? We said, we will make them here. It was a crazy plan but everyone got excited and started putting in their part in making samosas. Boiling and peeling potatoes, making the dough, arranging for oil etc. Eventually, the plan was coming out good. One of the guys then came with another wish. He said, we are in Paris but we still did not had wine together. We must taste it. Although it was more like an excuse to get drunk but immediately two of us ran to down the street to fetch a couple of wine bottles. So the menu was made, samosas with wine. I know it does not sound really classy but as students it was more about the fun, the excitement, the life than anything else. Now the last hurdle was to arrange so many glasses for wine. Our host did not had enough glasses or cups for all of us leave alone wine glasses. So, some of us came up with another innovative way. There were some empty jam bottles. The guys cleaned it and had their wine in it. It was insane. I know but sometimes it is only such weird and crazy evenings which are left to remember the rest of our lives. I wonder if those guys would do the same today given that they are now working at high ranking jobs.