song of the road

Things with mom are cool now. We are back to communicating freely and no more tension for now. She has given in to this decision of mine. When two people live together, there definitely would be some conflict some times. Hopefully the future conflicts will remain to that level. The problem is we hardly ever fight about small things.

Fortunately food is going all right. Lots of fruit and for most part less fatty food. Today I didn’t even have my low calorie chocolate bar.

I have got a mild cold and my TOM. Yeah, pineapple! Need to ask mom to get one.  Couldn’t go to gym today. Hopefully will go in a few days. Need to pick up on the exercising.

Brushed up my resume today after long procastination. Will also need to go and submit my passport application. There are some more chores pending. Also tons of work pending for my projects at office. Hopefully I will catch up this week. Because if things go right, I would go to Calcutta for a couple of days.

The plan is for me to go on Sunday morning and reach there by afternoon. My brother will take the afternoon flight from Bombay and come there in the evening. We have some work to do there. Then we will be back to Bangalore on late Tuesday evening. My brother will stay here for the rest of the week and leave for Bombay on Sunday evening. He has some things to do in preparation for his marriage next month. It will be good fun to go out of Bangalore even for a couple of days plus my brother’s visit is always fun.

I will buy material for my brother’s suit which he will wear on the marriage day and give it to the tailor for stitching. When he is down here next time, I will get the tailor to make the final finishing touches. I am also planning to buy some gold and pearl jewellery for his fiancee as a marriage present. Also would be partly financing the honeymoon as another present. I am also planning on giving them a wedding night suite on a 5 star hotel here so that they can have champagne and roses and all that. But they are not too keen on that one. I am to give that money for honeymoon fund.

His marriage will have a couple of ceremonies (decided after a lot of negotiations). We will have a small quite civil ceremony here with the marriage registrar coming down to the marriage hall. We will have a small party afterwards with our friends. T’s parents will be here too. Then they will leave for Calcutta and T’s parents are organizing another small religious ceremony there. There will also be a party there. Many of my brother’s friends who are in Calcutta would join there. Then the best part. They will go to Manali and Ladakh for honeymoon. Both of these are in North India and are lovely places on the Himalayas. But Ladakh is seriously beautiful.

Ladakh is in the Indian state Jammu & Kashmir which perhaps is more famous or rather notorious for being a major bone of contention between India and Pakistan. We recently had a war with Pakistan which is also known as Kargil war. Kargil is a district in Ladakh.  The politics on Kashmir is brutal. The terrorism there is killing at least 10 people daily. There is major military presence from India and Pakistan and there is a LOC. It is horrible. Folks there are suffering as hell. Anyway, forget the politics. They are going to Leh which is also in Ladakh and on the Tibet border which is relatively peaceful. One of the Mughal emperors (they ruled India till before the British started their rule) said about J&K - If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.

Ladakh is the highest plateau of the Indian state of Kashmir with much of it being over 3,000 m (9,800 ft). It spans the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges and the upper Indus River valley. Once you reach there, you are required to rest for a day to acclimatize with the thin air. They are going to drive up the Manali Leh highway which perhaps is one of the world’s best scenic route. A photo of a lake here. I don’t know when I would get to go there.