frustration sketches

This is an old concept we had in first few days of NID. I don't remember who named it so, but when we used to get frustrated while trying something worth showing someone, we used to do thes frustration sketches. The idea was to take your frustration out on paper, sketch (if you could call it that) with all the possible negative energy (!) and thinking of pencil as sword most of the time! The joy of showing the outcome (or merely of having finished the pencil or torn the paper etc) could help to get over the frustration! At least it was supposed to work like this :)Talked about this to poorva yesterday and today I felt I needed to do that for myself. The quality of these sketches is not so much enjoyable, may be because of 'not enough level of frustration' or may be because they look unnecessarily clean because of the 'hardware' (wacom tablet) used! :)nice exercise though! :)

Viramgaman

"Little more than 60km from Ahmedabad, there is this place Viramgam, an ancient town with fortification having five entrance gates. Munsar Tank, the finest example of civic architecture, is located on the western edge of the town. This is one of the largest man-made tanks in Gujarat, dating from the 11th (or 12th?) century. The tank epitomizes the fusion of hydraulic engineering and architectural aesthetic values of Minaldevi, who patronized the construction of this tank. The architectural style is similar to the Sahastralinga Talav of Patan. The shape of the tank is not a perfect rectangle, but like a Conch or Gomukh. Originaly there were 520 shrines on the bank of Munsar Tank, out of which 360 survive. Most of them are Shiva Shrines, along with a few Vaishnava Shrines. These shrines are typical of the early Chalukya architectural style. Each Shiva Shrine has 3 niches housing images of Mahakaal, Bhairava and Natesh. Two large twin temples, located in the middle of the south side, are also of great tourist interest. "
OK, what you all read above is taken from the great internet! So even I was quite eager to visit this munsar tank since a long time and finally managed to do so on 15th Aug 09. What me and sid got to experience can be best described as the pic below!

I mean, can you imagine the feeling of witnessing a dog peeing on the sexiest bike available and that too owned by you! But thats characteristic of this place! The carvings, sculptures, architecture is really good as described on the internet, especially the bigger twin temples with that layered wavy roof. We didn't count the number of small temples around the tank, not just because they were too many but because, to move around the place we had to be extremely cautious... some part of the place was functional as open-to-air public toilet of Viramgam! Sid and I was quite happy that the two girls, Pogo and Poorva refused to join us at last minute! But apart from the Munsar tank the trip was very nice, thanks to the extremely ride friendly weather and good road throught the ride! Even Sid was happy to ride whole 60km in one stretch which I never expected! :) ( may be because he was not riding his oldy goldy TVS victor but my Yamaha FZ... yes sadly the bike in the pic above!) The experience of riding on confusing narrow lanes of Viramgam was interesting, and so was the discovery of Sid's capability of conversing with buffaloes! We managed to enjoy. :)

For some good pictures visit my album on Orkut, and sid wil paste a link to facebook album in the comments, with some more interesting insights I guess.

(above pic is clicked by my 'dear friend' sid when I was on phone. Don't know whom to 'thank/blame', sid or the dog! both found the golden mean of their own passions)

My 10,000 km on Yamaha FZ 16 :)

4th Nov 2008 - 4th Aug 2009.
9 months 10,000 km Rs 10,000 of petrol!
everyday morning trips to office. :)
Dholka, Thol lake, Indroda nature park, Adalaj, Hathisinh temple, few aimless night rides. :)
photography (sadly I haven't clicked her enough properly, still searching for the dream model ;)
Top speed ride to Gandhinagar for Tabala concert.
one frightening oily skid recovery, :o
Please don't cut trees, they fall on bikes costing Rs. 3000 :(
my favourite slow turns, one crazy hairpin leaving NID parking challenging maximum lean angles. ;)
little tyre burnouts, hard front braking and clutchless gear-shifts (but still no stopies!) :(
everyday fast overtakes from Neharu circle to Shivaranjani bridge ;)
some of them causing my heart to beat as hard as enfield.
my pillion riders (almost everyone I wanted to be) ...... ;)
my dream pillion riders (menaka if not keira knightley) hehehehe ;)
Waiting for winter again, Modhera, Nal sarovar, Munsar tank still on plan only... :(
still planning for new paint scheme, performance kit, silencer etc
wish Vijay, Akash, sanjeev were around for unplanned trips... :(
Anyway now that I know her quite well, should take the experience few steps up ;)

Following is a video of my trip with Poorva on the never-ending thorny road (?) around Thol lake. The lack of road is quite visible, but it was a very amazing experience to ride to go nowhere....

Go UNLIMITED

Read a book after a long time. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Really very inspiring as I was told! It is a story which makes you realize there is atleast one Jonathan Livingston Seagull inside you. Once you recognize him, rest of the story is yours! It says set aside whatever limits you. Know no limits, or you won't be able to go beyond! While answering to Jonathan's question about heaven, Chinag says,"No Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment you touch the perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits!"
Then there is one more interesting thought about what works. "Well, of course it works. It always works when you know what you are doing!"
And it's easy. The flock will help you realize you are not part of them, you just have to go beyond and realize that you are not even a bone and feather seagull. You are a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all!
Go UNLIMITED!.....
(thank you Poorva for the book :)

Thol Lake revisited.....

The first thing to notice was.... it was a completely different place this time!!!

Just compare two pics of the same tree shot on 23rd Nov 2008 with its highly interesting reflection and the one shot today on 26th Jan 2009 with bikes parked around it!!! For most of the initial time we spent there, I kept on telling Poorva how and how much the difference is and then realized that I should just enjoy seeing what we can, at that moment!

The interesting part of this visit was a lonnnnnnnggg walk 'inside' the lake (obvisiously not covered by water now!!!!) in an attempt to reach the other end of lake! But the small pack of Poorva's biscuits couldn't energise us so much! ;) And sadly we couldn't go far enough from the loud firangee music played by gujju families talking and eating..... wherever we went.

The last part of this trip was also quite nice, since as I had wished last time, we rode to the other side of entrance... around 4km.... again in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the other end!!! :) The ride on 4 feet wide kachcha road surrounded by thorny shrubs was quite interesting. We did discover a nice place there with 2-3 small boats, cool breeze (and gujju famiies having food). Poorva didn't seem to have any problem with these people talking so much... as she was quite busy clicking her favourite subject..... kids playing!... :)

At the end of the day... there is still so much to be seen at Thol lake!!!!

(this is the link to my last visit post)

crowd at 'adalaj ni wowwww'

Sid being out of station, I am not supposed to explore any new place (supposedly DHOLKA) this sunday! I took this opportunity to go to 'Adalaj ni vav' (stepwell, some 27 km from NID) which almost everyone in ahmedabad has already seen.
Surprisingly this was quite a big and wrong assumption of mine. During the 3 hrs we (Purva and I) spent there today morning around 150 school kids and 30 other gujaratis visited the place. At one time the place looked (and sounded) so crowded that I immediately escaped to the ground level from bottom-most level for fresh air. (after some time I found Purva climbing up with a very very sad face, the reason being ' there was a very nice (small) boy in the crowd whom she tried to photograph under the sunlight from main opening of well, but his teacher just took him away with her. I quietly listened to this atleast 4 times on our way back! so the boy must be really NICE!!!)
Anyway, this place being so popular and very much photographed already, I am just posting few random and hopefully strange photographs here.

(and don't miss the photograph with a horse sculpted in a row of elephants may be because there was no enough space for one more elephant!!! )

(CLICK to enlarge)