The Quintessential Outsider

… have been quite eventful, and I can see that some of you have been curious to know about my IIM results. So first things first, I got final calls from L I K and a waitlist in A. It was disappointing, but I guess I’ll just try to make the best of what I get.

And now about where have I been. Exactly 15 days ago, I was in the middle of an eventful ‘last day’ at office. All through that evening, I kept checking pagalguy for any updates on exactly what time the results would come. I finally slept thinking that they wouldn’t come until morning, but was woken up by a friend around 1 am who told me that IIMB had declared its results. I checked the site immediately, and after seeing the reject, it was some time before I could sleep again.

The next morning, I was supposed to leave for Delhi. I had already made this plan in advance, and decided not to change it even after discovering that the result would come on the same day. Around 10 am, when I was ready to leave, I saw that the IIMC result had been declared, and that I hadn’t made it there too. So, in an extremely disturbed state of mind, I left to catch my train. I was told about the other results on the phone, which were somewhat of a relief. However, I forgot to charge my cellphone and activate roaming on it, so it went off shortly after the train left Mumbai.

Anyway, I reached Delhi the next day, and just outside the station, I bought a local prepaid SIM, but it was not activated. I reached my friend’s house in Gurgaon, but could not open the door (he had told me how to open it in his absence). Finally, he had to come from office to let me in. After having a bath at his place, I went to the nearest Vodafone store and asked them to activate my local prepaid number and roaming on the Mumbai number, but only the former happened after about an hour (so the dealer I bought the SIM from was probably useless or a rogue). I managed to activate roaming on my Mumbai number only after 3 days.

Anyway, the next morning, I left with some friends to Nainital for the weekend. We hired a Scorpio and left around 8 in the morning, and reached Nainital by 5 that evening. 

This was a restaurant a few kms before Haldwani, on the way to Nainital. By the time we reached Nainital, looked at hotels and finally settled into one, it was dark, so we could just go around for a walk on the Mall Road. The next morning, we went boating in Naini Lake, from where we took this pic:

And we also went up the Ropeway to Snow View, from where the Nanda Devi and other peaks can usually be seen, but were hidden by clouds that day. We took this pic of the entire lake from the ropeway:

We came back to Delhi late on Sunday night. On Monday morning, I left for Rajasthan to meet my cousins, starting with Jaipur. We only went out at night to some places within the city, so I did not go to Amber Fort etc. On Wednesday, I reached Ajmer, and went with my uncle to the famous dargah.

I was a little surprised to find that inspite of being a Muslim religious place, many rituals followed out there are similar to those in Hindu temples.

From Ajmer, I headed to Alwar. I passed Sariska on the way, and although I didn’t get to see any tigers, there were a few peacocks and nilgai by the road. And it had been raining in those parts for a few days before I reached there. I did not expect to see much in Alwar itself, but my aunt took me to an old palace which is now a museum.

On Friday, 9th May, I headed back to Gurgaon. The weekend was spent going around Delhi, and on Monday morning, I flew back to Mumbai. Here are some pics I took at the Red Fort:

There are lots of other pics, but all of them have my friends, relatives, my girlfriend or me grinning, so I cannot put them up here.

Anyway, a summary of the trip: I traveled a few hundred kilometres every day on 9 days out of 12 from 1st to 12th May. I traveled by train (from Mumbai to Delhi as well as the Delhi Metro), airplane, bus, car, autorickshaw (the usual ones as well as the shared tempos), cyclerickshaw, and if you include local trips in Nainital, then by boat and cable-car as well. One of my relatives said that my traveling resembled that of an ‘election campaign’.

So that, besides my natural laziness, explains why I took three days after coming back to write this post. I want to write more on other topics as well, but I’ll keep that for later. Right now, I am just keeping my fingers crossed for the big A.

My apologies to Gurcharan Das for lifting the title of his book, but as you will see, I have used it in another context. I had found this cool thing recently, where you can indicate on a map the states you have been to in India. I tried it & here is the result:- Actually, this is if I count the states that I have passed through on train journeys. If I count only those states where I have stayed somewhere for a few days, then the result looks like this:-

My father being in the Railways, we could travel for free anywhere on the Indian Railways (with some limitations), & as you can see, we made good use of this. For the last 4-5 years though, we haven’t gone to any new place. Now that I think of it, there are still so many places left. Besides a lot of the eastern part of India, I have not yet been to Goa, the islands (Lakshadweep and A&N), Kashmir (we just visited Jammu), or the western part of Gujarat (I have just been to Ahmedabad & Vadodara).
There is a lot still to be explored, not just in geographical terms, but in many other ways. For example, I came to know a lot of stuff about the Indian Railways through my practical training this summer, inspite of my father having been in the Railways all along. Technicalities apart, you can check out some of this interesting stuff here. Also, when Lath & I set the India Quiz at MI two years back, or even now, once in a while, I come across something or the other, & India still manages to amaze me.
Now I hope the context for the title of this post is clear.