A Heart Of Heritage

Sometime before I saw photographs of my friend Keyur Chauhan who went on heritage tour of Ahmedabad by walk. After seeing his photographs I felt really bad from inside because when I asked question to myself that what I know about history of Ahmedabad and heritage places around it then I got answer NOTHING, especially when Ahmedabad is my home town 😦 .  So I decided that I will explore as many heritage places as possible whenever I go to Ahmedabad.

Adalaj village, around 15-20 KM away from Ahmedabad.  Recently I visited this village because of Step Well located here, which is only step-well in India which is having two Well inside.   This step-well was built around 1498 by RUDA, wife of Veer Singh, Chief of Vaghela Pariwar. A step-well is also surrounded by one small beautiful garden.

Everyday many people visits this place which is really good thing. During this visit I met one foreigner lady.  She asked me one interesting question:  why these people are so busy while clicking of their portrait only? I looked at her; she is around 50 year’s old woman. I couldn’t able to give answer instantly because I knew why she is asking this question (or might be I was constructing English statement in mind to reply 🙂  )

Then I asked: Where are you from?

She said:  USA

I said: Is USA having any such Step-Well?

She said: Yes, but not as beautiful.

I said:  So this is the answer of your question. She was surprised and said: What?

I said: Yes, its human nature, we always appreciate and wants thing in life which we don’t have.  We have been so busy while running behind our own unclear goal that we have almost forgotten what we have. Today these people are not appreciating as much as they supposed to be, but tomorrow when sand of future will cover these heritage places then these people might spend thousands of dollars to see Step-Well in USA.

As soon as I completed my statement, one school group came to see step-well and started having fun over there.  I couldn’t able to continue talk with that lady. I was just thinking I hope she will not go back to USA after my answer 🙂 .

I have intentionally selected this photograph to post on blog because seriously a heart of heritage places is really in full of darkness.  Sometime only ray of hope is coming from sun during day time, Archeology Survey of India (AIS) is doing fair job, but it’s not enough.  Especially awareness and importance of such places should be known by people.

Date: 1st May 2011

A Butterfly Effect

Few months before I saw one movie called “A Chaos Theory”.  A Chaos Theory is “ The flapping of a single butterfly’s wing today produces a tiny change in atmosphere, turn into  tornado over a period of time at somewhere else”, and this effect is called A Butterfly Effect . You do not believe right? , or you might have started thinking what the hell Deepak is talking about. But it’s absolutely true. This theory is also applied to our life as well. Irrespective of sensitivity of decision, whatever decision we take in life decides our future.  Your every tiny step is actually a brick of your future home.  I don’t believe there is GOD BHRAMA who has already written our future in one long book 🙂 . It’s WE who make our future.

I have personally experienced it in my life many times. When I look back I am realizing it more. Let me give you one small example. After completing engineering,  Me and My friend Prashant were working in TCS as consultant and earning 6000 rs per month as we both couldn’t able to clear MNC interview 🙂 . One day there was a walk-in of Persistent System in Ahmedabad for 2+ experience people. Friday evening I got this news and I told Prashant that we should try to attend this walk-in. But problem was we both had only 4 months experience, so we were not sure whether we should go there or not as walking was only for 2+ experience people.  Actually primary reason was we both are crazy about cricket, we both took part in TCS inter BU cricket tournament and tournament was also going to start on the day when walk-in was scheduled 🙂 . Next day we were still in doubt, we had long chat over phone and at last we put big stone over our cricket love and decided to take chance. Guess what… we tried and we were selected 🙂 .  I told so many friends about this and some friends also tried but HR didn’t allow them to appear in Interview. I still don’t know actual reason why HR allowed Me and Prashant and didn’t allow others.  I must say Persistent System has played very critical role in my professional career; however I left persistent around one year before 🙂 .  Yep I have already said Persistent has taught me Professionalism so I had to use it 🙂 . That’s why I also believe your decision and attitude comes before your talent. I still don’t think I was talented enough to get selected in Persistent  System at that time and even not sure about today 🙂 .

I caught this Unpredictable beauty in Sinhgadh , If you want to read my Sinhgadh long drive trip then you can read here “Give me some sunsine...”.  I am calling unpredictable beauty because it’s really not easy to predict what would be butterfly’s next move. But I was lucky on that day; I could able to click only once and got this shot. I didn’t want to post this photograph as I wasn’t able catch whole butterfly but still I like this photograph, and this my blog so I can post whatever I want 🙂 .

Date: 4th April 2011

A Laxman Bhau

Pusad, 500-600 KM away from Pune. I recently visited this place to attend my roommate Anup’s marriage. Best thing about that marriage was: It was intercast marriage. My happiness was double because first, my friend was going to marry and second, it was intercast marriage. I think, slowly India is going matured and coming out from this bullshit such as religion and cast.  Another important thing was Marathi boy was going to marry to Hindi girl, its sound interesting in Maharashtra right? 🙂 . My one more friend Ashwini who is from UP and also going to marry Marathi girl on 6^th Feb  2011 🙂 . Congratulation and Best wishes to Ashwini, Sorry dude I couldn’t able to attend your marriage. Seriously I am not responsible, Please talk to Pranab and Pankil 🙂 .  Ashwini and Anup: You both have to be proud on yourself , You people are going to create new generation of India who will be always thankful to you in future, specially your children 🙂 .

Laxman Bhau, A person who is in this photograph is Laxman Bhau.  I saw him first time when he came to room where I was staying to give hot water. I noticed that he didn’t speak much, only doing thing which was asking. Later I came to know that he is taking care of land on behalf of Anup’s father and farming there.  It’s obvious that all family members are supposed to busy in marriage and this rule is also applied to Laxman Bhau. He was busy all the time and doing something here and there whenever I saw him.

At the end of the day, first time I saw Laman Bhau who was seating idle and relax outside home and burning garbage. But He was cool and taking rest, but again not saying anything and lost within himself.  That moment was so stunning that I couldn’t restrict myself to take his photograph.  I took only one shot and I was sure that I got a kind of shot I was looking.

Many things I like about this photograph:  wrinkles on this face were saying how much experienced he is having, dressing style is showing from where he is belonging, he is seated like typical village person used to seat.  Especially he is reminding me of my grandfather who was crazy about me, He loved me so much that many of my relatives called him as my actual mother 🙂 . My grandfather was having similar dressing and seating style. I am extremely Sorry… grand paa, when you were in need, I couldn’t help you because I was nothing. Today when I am something but you are not in this world anymore 😦 .  A biggest regret I am having is I couldn’t able to tell him that I become first engineer of his whole family 😦 , but really thank you very much ‘Bapa’ for your love and blessing you gave me …. You will be always my HERO 🙂 . I would like to dedicate this photograph to my Grandfather “Sendhabhai Parmar”, Yeh his name is bit different 🙂 .

Date: 6^th Feb 2011

The Ray of Hope

To be continued…( Please read post “Just keep walking” first )

As I said before, we lost Rajgadh track and reached the place where we couldn’t go further. Now we started looking around to find actual track. When we couldn’t find anything then we realized that we can only find actual way if we go back. But we thought lest shout for help, if anyone will hear our voice then we may not need to go back because we even didn’t know from which point we lost track. So we started shouting for help.  After shouting couple of minute someone responded, we looked around but couldn’t find direction from where voice was coming. When we looked up where we saw one village man standing on top of hill and we were looking to him from the bottom of that hill. We again asked him for help, then he said this Hill is not easy to climb, to find actual path we had to go back.

At first moment we all started going back, but then we all looked at each other and cruel spark lighten in our eyes.  We all decided that lets climb hill instead of going back. We thought we can easily climb as it was not so big. Initially we started climbing hill easily without any problem because half part of that hill was almost flat. But when we completed that half part we reached at very dangerous part of that hill. This section was having 60 angle straight climbing, even though we took chance.  We couldn’t find anything to hold but we were still climbing by transferring our weight in front using our leg.  By using this technique, speed and woodland shoes I reached to top of the hill 🙂 . I waited for sometime but other friends are still there where I saw last time. They couldn’t move one step because they were struggling to find something to hold. One friend find one stone to hold but unfortunately it was came out and started rolling towards valley of Rajgad. All three friends were looking rolling stone with scary smile, stone was directly fall into valley of Rajgad, and somewhere they started thinking whether they will be managed to come out from this situation or not. I couldn’t see properly what is happening there because of sniff slop. At last they managed to come out, I don’t know how they did it, but did it. When all friends reached on top of the hill, we all started shouting with anger.  We enjoyed this victory moment by having fruitee and clicked many snaps of that place 🙂 . We entered into Rajgad via “Chor Darwaja”. Padmavati Machi is main place of the fort. The Padmavati temple, lake and two houses on the machi are important places to watch for. The temple is very old and the only place to rest for the trekkers.

This photograph is one of the entry gates of Padmavati lake. I like this photograph because it is giving me feeling of keep hoping all the time. I didn’t want to post this photograph but i thought its good to start new year with hope 🙂 .  In any condition we should be hopeful.  A hope which gives us reason to live. So let’s start this new year with hope….. Hoping to be happy… Hoping to be remained positive and hoping to be accomplished our dreams …. 🙂

Happy New Year!!!

Date: 03/01/2011

Just Keep Walking…

I love to travel, visit different location and know different culture. Since when I came to Pune I have been fall in love with trekking. Trekking is amazing thing to do. It feels so good when we climb from one obstacle to another and at last win over mountain. It’s giving us feeling like we have conquered big fort or country. I think, we can compare trekking with life. We do same thing in life as we do in trekking and outcome is also same. At Last what we get? … Silence and Peace … 🙂

Rajgadh, 45-50 KM away from Pune. This is the best and the dangerous trekking place I have experienced so far.  Few months before I went to Rajgadh on bike for trekking with friends [Prashant, Pranab, Viru and Atish].  By the time when we reached to Rajgadh it was around 12 pm. We parked our bikes at one parking stand and purchased wafers, fruitee and drinking water from one small stall before trekking.  Just when we started trekking my friend Pranab told us “we have to reach Rajgadh before 2  pm”. Pranab was in full confidence, adrenaline was running fast in his every vein and he was repeating that statement after every 10 minutes 🙂 .  We told him “Cool down dude, we will, take it easy”.  We had just trekked around half hour and Atish dropped his sword. He said I am tired and can’t go further.  We tried to convince him that you can do it. But he had already made his mind.  He went back to Pune and we again started our journey. But Pranab was still in full form and he again repeated his statement “We have to reach Rajgadh before 2 pm”, we all gave him big smile 🙂 .

Because influence of Adrenaline and Pranab’s the motivation statement, we lost 🙂 . Yeh… Really…  And that we came to know when we reached at the dead end.  After whatever happened is a history and BIG story. I will tell later whenever I will publish any photograph from Rajgadh trip, because I will have to write two-three pages 🙂 .

I caught this photograph during this journey. I wanted to frame such photograph and that’s why I was walking behind friends. I do believe we should enjoy only journey instead of thinking much about outcome. Normally whenever we achieve something we start planning to achieve something else. But we forget to enjoy journey. A journey which teach us so much.  So friends … Just Keep Walking… and …enjoy journey first… 🙂

One of my gujarati Gazal’s Sher which I wrote long back:

ફરે રાખ્યો અજાણી શોધમાં વરસો – વરસ  ત્યારે,
પડી ખબર મુંજને છેલ્લે, રસ્તોજ મજલ ખરી, દોસ્તો,

Date: 12/12/2010

The Last Day

Hiqh Quality Photograph: Click Here…

Few months back I had a long weekend. So I had been to my home town ahmedabad. It was around 4 pm when I was watching a documentry program about Gandhiji on T.V. After watching the program I went to kitchen to drink some water. Suddenly I realized something shocking: I had not visited Sabarmati Ashram so far :(, even though I have been living in Ahmedabad from last 15 years. Forget about Ahmedabad I had never been out side Gujarat until I became 24 years old except for a couple of tours. Another shocking part was that my house is just around 2 km away from Sabarmati Ashram :(. Thats it… I decided to visit Ashram that day only. I took my camera and decided to go Ashram by walk.

Sabarmati Ashram is located at bank of Sabarmati river , Its quite obvious :), We dont need to pay anything to visit Ashram, its free. This is something I liked being gujarati :). When I entered the Ashram, I saw a photo galary on the left hand side which is newly constructed, and actual old Ashram is on the right hand side where we can see Gandhiji’s house, Kashturba’s house (Gandhiji’s Wife), Vinoba bhave’s house and couple of more people’s house whose name I have forgotten. Photo galary is actually a kind of biography about Gandhiji. There is one small garden and one Gandhiji statue is located just beside Photo galary. Another amazing thing about Sabarmati Ashram is you will feel pin drop silence, no noise. even though so many people visit Ashram every day, this is might be because people would be influenced by Gandhij as soon as they enters into Ashram :). I spent around 1.30 hours in Ashram, by the time i decided to go home it was around 6:30.

While coming from Sabarmati Ashram to my house we have to cross one bridge which is newly constructed couple of years back. When i reached to that bridge i looked towards sky. Sky was cloudy and redish because of sunset that happended just 1-2 min before. Whole picture was so beautiful and at same time bit scary. I felt like someone had blasted nuclear bomb and world was going to end that day. I took many photographs over there, and above one is one of them. Thats why i have named this photograph “The Last Day”.

Date: 6th December, 2010

The Foot Print

Date: 26^th September 2010, around 6:30 am

Location: Diveagar , Maharashtra, India

Diveagar, around 200 km from Pune, located in the Konkan region of Maharashtra  has a small beach .  I visited this small beautiful beach with friends recently.  We reached the beach at evening around 5:30 pm, I had planned to take some photographs of the sunset, but unfortunately I couldn’t as I was busy playing volleyball and doing MASTI in water 🙂 . So I decided to catch the sunrise of next day.

Next day I woke up early at 4 am, this time I didn’t want to miss the sight of the sun at the horizon of the beach. I was so desperate and excited to catch the sun that it didn’t strike me that sunset and sunrise both never happen at same place :), and that we realized when we (Me, Vijay, Anjali and Neha) were going to beach :).  Anyway I was not in the mood of giving up; I thought that it would be magnificent to catch the first ray of the sun fall upon the sand and the water.  It was around 5:30 when we reached to beach, but because of moonlight it was bright enough for us to see everything. There was no one at the beach, apart from gang of dogs. We could see fish boat light in sea. As light was not enough to catch photographs, we decided to find some place and take rest.

When the first ray of the sun hit the beach we were enthralled. One part of the beach had magenta/cyan tone on the sand, I asked one of my friends (Anjali and Neha) to make some foot print for me on the sand.  I took many photographs with different composition. But I found this diagonal composition most appealing.

Give me some sunshine… Give me some rain…

Date : 22^nd September 2010,  around 2 pm.

Location: Shinhgadh, Maharashtra, India.

I had holiday because of Ganesh Chaturthi , So I planned to go out with some friends (Me, Prashant, Shailja, Sejal and Shweta) for long drive. Sinhgadh is very ideal location for long drive as it is just 30km away from Pune and located on Hill.  Last time I went to Sinhgadh for trekking, but this time we went directly to Sinhgadh on bike by road. Sinhgadh is very big Shivajj’s fort, last time when I visited I did not go to every spot of this fort due to lack of time. But today we decided that we will find every corner of this fort. There is one corner of Sinhgadh where we can see whole Pune and Khadakwasala dam together. It was awesome place. We sit there and had a Gup-Sup for long time. During this period we took many pictures in group and did many experiments with photography.  I caught this shot using timer, I would say luckily. 🙂

When I saw this photograph after coming back to home, first line came into my mind was “Give me some sunshine… Give me some rain…  Give me some another chance, wanna grownup once again…  :)”

The Paul Octopus

It was Saturday afternoon; rain had been falling since 5 days. I was having “Gup-Sup” with a roommate (Who says only girls talks a lot 🙂 ). But was getting bored, so I decided to go out and try catching something on camera. Rain was still falling, so I collected required things before leaving room such as dry towel, umbrella (Yes purchased new one just to take snaps in rain 🙂 ), water proof bag, a small dry towel for my specs :), rain coat and obviously camera. My room mate Anup told me that there is a beautiful and big garden called “P.L.Desphande Garden” on Sinhgadh road. So I decided to visit that garden (This is one of the best garden I have seen in Pune, really good place to visit).

When I reached the garden, it’s gate was closed. I saw a small window in the gate; I peeped into it and tried to check whether someone was inside. I saw a woman who was sitting inside a wooden cabin. I waved my hand from the small window, she came near to the gate. I asked permission to enter into the garden, but she replied in marathi “Tu Kontya Jagaat Aahe?” (From which world you are coming? 🙂 ) And showed her wrist watch to me.  Then I realized that, I had gone there at wrong time. But I requested her to talk to any senior person. She said “Me Sahi Vyakti Nahi Aahe…” (I am not right person) and raised her hand towards one office while opening the gate and asked me to go there and take permission.

When I reached the office it was closed. 2-3 labor workers were digging land near the office and I also saw one guy in clean white kurta. I approached him and asked him that I want to take some photographs in rain, don’t know why but he got angry, may be because labors were not doing work properly or what. He said , we cannot allow you to enter in the garden during this time as maintenance work is also going. I tried to convince him many times but he was not reluctant to budge. At last, I decided to go back and started walking towards the exit gate 😦 , suddenly he called me and said, ok you can take photograph but don’t spend more than 15 min. I gave him a big smile and said, “Promise, Only 15 mins” (It is a different thing that I spent more than one hour 🙂 ).

…And here I met “The Paul Octopus” . . .

Mr. Shy

One Saturday I woke up too late. When I saw outside the window, I felt rain had fallen sometime before. But I got disappointed when I checked time; it was 9 am because mostly all gardens get closed by 10 am. But I thought lets go somewhere and try to find something. After taking breakfast I asked my roommates about new gardens in Pune as I had already visited many gardens which are located around my room. But they didn’t have anything in their mind. Yet I took my camera and kicked my bike with hope 🙂 . I had reached “Matre Bridge” cross road and was waiting for green signal. Suddenly I saw one garden gate which is just near to “Matre Bridge” cross road. I took right and U-turn to reach the garden. But As expected garden was going to close. I asked permission to gatekeeper for only 10 min. don’t know why but gatekeeper gave very weird smile and said yes. I ran into the garden to find something. After searching a lot I found one yellow flower hidden behind many leaves. I just moved away eaves from that flower and my face got happy as I saw many drops on that flower. Drops didn’t evaporate because of those leaves. I took many snaps; above one is one of them,   so… Meet Mr. Shy 🙂