Reason to Smile :)

Reason to Smile: It is this time of the year when all of us come together to celebrate Ganesh festival. One of the most sort after festival that it is, ignites tremendous amount of zeal and enthusiasm among the people of Maharashtra specially. Else, the festival is recognized globally merely for its authenticity and the energies it generates among Indians. A bunch of friends started to Pune and decided to hop for Ganesh blessings overnight. This indeed becomes one of those night-outs where all of us are more excited to seek the blessings than just have fun during the trip. One mid night halt at Mac Donalds for a bite and we were off to Shaniwar Wada for Ganesh Darshan. The Michael Schumacher that we saw in Prasad (he & his car - Oh boy!), was enough to make us reach early on there. We slogged out a lot for Parking his car and headed for our final destination. From 11.30 PM to 3.30 AM, it was a rollar coaster 'walk' to each and every Pandal (5 major ones) with immense...

 Reason to Smile: It is that time of the year when long weekends are celebrated like crazy :P So while we are always the last minute planners, why should we miss the fun of not making optimum utilization of resources available :P Hence there we are on the roads with our bags on our shoulders and totally not knowing where to wander !! This was the result of one whats app message from a partner in crime saying "Let's go somewhere. I can't sit at home for 3 days :P" "Chal" is my obvious reply and within an hour we were all set to go... Somewhere! LOL :D Cut to the time we got hooked on to our phones to check if we can shortlist some weekend getaways and most importantly get the stay or hotel bookings. The long weekend at this juncture became a challenge naturally. Most good places were booked and the others were selling it off for a bomb! After a struggle of about an hour more on this, we still could not succeed on finalizing some place or resort. We d...

Reason to Smile:  We all have friends whom we categorize in some ways by now. College friends, train friends, school friends, colony friends, Facebook friends, childhood friends, etc. But some friends are just "special" They are the ones who are always there to give you so many reasons to smile, laugh, enjoy and celebrate!  They are the ones who make you laugh so hard that your stomach aches and your head hurts !! And it is unbelievable how silly we can get in presence  of each other that we are not left sane even to judge how insane and crazy we can get!!  Thank you my gems for giving me such extraordinary memories !! Prasad, Mayuri, Rajith, Hemant, Manish, Ambica, Kalyani, Asmit - Love you loads!! # SpecialFriends   # Crazy   # DedicatedWeekend   # QualityTime   # LoveYouGuys   # BSE   # KinaraDhaba   # Breezer   # MidnightMarineDrive

Reason to Smile: When you treat yourself kindly and respect the uniqueness of everything that surrounds you, you will be giving this world an amazing gift.... YOU! Words are surely not enough for the place I visited over the weekend. I have been to many monsoon treks and recuperated capturing several waterfalls pictures in Sahyadris. But what I often miss is being completely drenched by them. I love bathing and taking those huge bumps of falls hitting hard on my head, back and shoulders! It is an unbelievable feeling to be there. It is not just a feeling of some massage on your body but for me its a mind set out totally free and completely void of inhibitions! Yes, we found one such waterfall this time. All thanks to my dear friends Rajjo and Sandy who just got enough bored to set out for an outing that did not just got us stress free but also ensured that it sets us apart from the places most people choose for an outing :) We honestly did not know or plan anything. We just kn...

Reason to Smile: Bless Today: It Will Never Come Again! My Moto in My Life :) It's fine to work towards your future goals, but don't forget that today will never come again. You have only twenty-four hours to enjoy it. We tend to ignore this fact royally as if we were to live a thousand years more. Life has its own twists and turns and who better than me to experience this. But if I keep cribbing about all the sad part or the situations I did not have any control on, I am missing out on what's happening right now. It is indeed rightly said that Life is what happens to you, when you are busy looking at something else! It has not been so often these days since a couple of months that I stepped out for a weekend trip either. So when some friends called in for a weekend getaway to Dahanu, I surely got excited. Not that I needed any kinda break, but I surely did not see what is coming my way! Fun unlimited :) It is unbelievable how things just fell into place for this tr...

Reason to Smile: I haven't been visiting this page much now-a-days. Not because I don't have reasons but because I haven't got much to share or write about. I had lots on my mind to recuperate. Lots on my self to work on. Lots to think, re-think, re-work and succumb. But being home since many months has surely made me super lazy :P Needless to mention, I have not done anything. Just been keeping my facebook profile active with my outdoor posts, treats, and  many more friendly retreats. That's about it. I have experimented on myself though in the days that can literally get me down - Psychologically. I did feel exhausted too. But I took hold of something that made me get a trip to Pune. The Aga Khan Palace is something that I have always wanted to visit. Heard it was very beautiful and serene, located at the rear end of the city. Very isolated and not so huge that it was, it is truly one of the peaceful places that has been indeed well maintained. The localites don...

Reason to Smile: Some relief and some peace of mind after a long time.  15 th April 2017 All set to define what this so called ‘phase’ is, I am here to write anything and everything that comes to my mind, body, heart and soul. These days all I am advised is to pen down all my thoughts and feelings by those friends who think I write well. They have read those two stories I had written earlier and were also published on akkarbakkar.com Here’s something I would like to present from my desk once again. Not that I was ready for this one but the kind of response I realized I gathered on my latest story (nearly 7200 likes on facebook, more than 100 shares and comments), I thought there is surely no harm in being better on this. Also this seems to be a good space when I literally have all the time in the world for such activities. ‘I don’t want to go home.’ said a very small crying girl inside me. I was totally tired of doing the daily chores of passing each day with a...

Reason to Smile: Holi, the festival of colours to celebrate eternal and divine love is usually spent with family and friends across India. People literally paint you with different colours and one can't deny! This time it fell on an extended weekend so some of us who don't like to play the crazy way decided to push off some place where we remain isolated and no one will then bother us. So a few of us who do not play Holi the dirty way skipped the beat of the occasion and wandered off to Malshej Ghats. Hemant fueled up his car and all of us just jumped off to the evergreen idea of Camping at Malshej. Rohan joined us on his bike ride and that's how our journey began. We literally drove off biding adieu to the city ! What happened next is another level of an event full of surprises again.. We reached Malshej and hunted for the base till late evening. By 7.30 pm we set up our tents and were ready to prepare food. Ritu, Me and Hemant got on to the traditional kitchen with ves...

Reason to Smile: I got to lead a bunch of students from IIT Bombay - 92 of them ! Riders On Rolls - a group by IIT students had organised this camping and this response was from the campus itself. Two big buses, all notorious chaps and we were on the move ! The spot we chose was not the same as other groups and riders go for usually - Arthur Lake. We strecthed ourselves a little ahead about 25 kms and were amazed at the beauty of Samrad Village where the most wonderful trek is popular for - Sandhan Valley. The entire Bhandardhara range, for people who dont know, has a marvellous circumference of Ratangad, Sandhan, Alang-Madan-Kulang Forts, Ghatghar and many small trek points covered around us. I was surely up for a surprise when we located this spot right below Alang Trek ! One could just possibly lift our eyes a bit a see that majestic plateau as if I could stretch my hand and touch its base. Obviously it just looked that close :) The setting up of 35 Tents, distribution of near...

Reason to Smile: One more article on Linkedin that perhaps has been inspiring to many. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lifetime-job-after-retirement-neha-mehta?published=t I met a lady aged 72, lean body, average height, small face with a few teeth outside ready to walk the talk attitude, as strong as a rock. She entered an office me and my friend were a part of. As I stare to notice her more keenly, she unapologetic-ally pulls the chair, sits there confidently as if it was no ones business, looks at us and there is a pause. An awkward silence prevailed. Years later, one of us spoke "Hello Madam. Are you here to meet Niraj?" She gathered all her courage, leaned forward and a soft voice uttered with an extremely bright smile "Yes" We had organized a meeting with her on the partnerships on a business model proposed to her. She had come to discuss terms and commercial aspects. A perfect Gujarati that she was, questioned us on everything that can go wrong and t...

Reason to Smile: It is for the first time with this festival that all the 9 days were under my kitty to take a plunge on. Usually it is not common for people to check out the Kala Ghoda Art Festival that comes every February of the year hosted by the Hindustan Times Media (9 day event- first weekend to the second weekend of Feb) with such huge and long art / event schedules to be attended all days. It is this excitement of being able to attend any show at the right time without having worried about deep pockets and office timings to be met, that I chose to visit Irish House for all the stand up comedy acts by the event. Artists like Anirban Das Gupta on how lazy can people be in Kolkotta, Siddharth Dudeja on how capitalism is the cancer to our society, Abhishek Upamanyu on how he assumed he would be killed by his dad, Sourabh Pant on how he stands by his son for all odds, Kunal Kamra on why he would like to sleep all day, Neville Barucha on who would want to marry him, Jiya Sethi on...

Reason to Smile: One more story I wrote of an episode that changed one life completely !! From my desk: Manas and Roli (name changed) were whatsapp friends. I happen to be common friend between them. I know both of them personally very well and have known their personalities a tad bit better than their school friends or so called close / best friends. I have been with them for around more than a decade now. Thanks to the virtual world of FB and whats app, they both got connected through me. So, this story is about two distinct individuals who had never met before. However, one incident happened and their lives changed for good. They apparently landed up being best of friends after that day ! Roli is in her mid thirties but timid, born and brought up in a typical middle class family, aspires to be a writer and wants to make it big in the industry. Manas, on the other hand, is a simple, decent yet a broadminded man who had no qualms about admitting that he had a bad marriage ea...

Reason to Smile: I read some beautiful lines somewhere floating on my inbox one morning - Don’t allow the negative things in your life to discount the positive ones. Don’t let a bad day or month or year make you feel like you have a bad life. Instead of focusing on everything that’s going wrong, start holding onto all of the things that are going right. You may be struggling, but there is still so much to keep fighting for — there is still so much more to life than this pain. And if you keep picking yourself back up and pushing forward, no matter how difficult things are, you will discover it. Maybe not  tomorrow   or next week or a year from now, but someday soon, things will get better. Someday soon, you will find freedom from this darkness. And when you do, you’ll look back on these days and wonder how you could have doubted your resilience. You’ll look back and marvel at how something as small as refusing to give up could transform your life in such a substantial way. ...