The Conflict Within

Many a times, our self created image of an ideal personality responds to the external world, as opposed to what the true self wants to say. We unknowingly completely ignore our true self. The more the difference between these two, more is this behavior demonstrated. This makes a person restless from within and reasons difficult to find. One personality responds with personality defined by environment/society, which has to a good extent the element of fear, whereas, the true self who is hidden deep within respond with freedom, whenever it does.

For example, you may hear people saying many a times that "I never hide anything, I'm an honest person", whereas such a person doesn't exist in India generally, because of the environment we're in. It's taught to us that we should be honest but we culturally don't even promote if the truth comes out as-is, like somebody's desire to become a barber. The freedom of expressing this desire has such a strong implicit opposition, that once won’t dare say it. A barber may earn 50,000 or even more a month but that’s not something that someone should do in the country of talented engineers, doctors, MBAs, CAs and what-nots.

Another interesting example is of the lover boys saying - "I love her, not for the physical pleasure, but because of the way she is, like understanding, simple, traditional and what not", now that's another famous conflicting fact, because Indian society creates an ideal inside us which doesn't promote physical pleasure, whereas the desire is so strong within, results only create conflicts, sometimes even fatal. A friend of mine gave a good analogy here – In US, “I like you” or not even that can get you what you are looking for, whereas in India you have to say the three magic words and then make a lot of effort even after that. :-)

The root I believe lies in upbringing of a person, which in turn depends on the environmental circumstances or the society. It depends a lot on how much a society promotes freedom as opposed to fear. I’ve seen only two cultures and on the scale of conflicts within, the bar is considerably low in US, as compared to India, and that's where I draw these conclusions from. In India-like societies, you are made to believe that the decisions made for you on your behalf by somebody are for your good. A certain things, a few idols always come as a package.

To bridge the gap between the ideal and the self, a lot of introspection is required. Talking to self, be honest and to not fool our-self are some ways I can think of. We do need a society that promotes freedom, “how” is the problem.

From the examples above, one thing that may also come to your mind is the incentive or “Fayda” which lets a person represent the self differently. The difference there though is that of a conscious decision versus unknown decision. A person can think of incentive even while being completely ignorant of the personality he is exhibiting.

What do societies do differently that promote freedom? I think that if things are liberal since inception, it’s easier to promote freedom as opposed to drive a reform later. Changing mindset of billions take much more than starting a society of few thousands. For us, it’s a huge mindset change, methods for which are not straightforward. Got any idea to drive the reform or is there even a need?

Deriving Price

Here is a small conversation between me and a friend of mine on derivation of price.
H to A:
Price determination is primarily based upon:
- How much the customer is willing to pay (Value)
- How much the optimization will save customer, which in turn boils down to how much customer is willing to pay (Value)
- Adding the profit margin on top of the real cost (Cost)
Between Value and Cost, I feel that if things were Cost based, those will be more logical than emotional and would reduce the financial mess today to a great extent. This is a very primitive 5-minute though that occurred to me. What do you think?
A to H:
I don't know if there is any specific perspective to this discussion/idea. But my best guess is this is a random thought.

You are right - about value and cost. Price is (generally, but not always) in between these two extremes.

I tend to incline towards your thinking that cost-based pricing (as against value-based) will produce less trouble - but I don't entirely agree with it. Two reasons:

a. value based is not illogical. The cost of a plate of vada-paav is probably 1.5 Rs, even with decent margin of say 100% profit, vendor may price it at 3 Rs. But if it's only one vada pav in market, and two hungry people - howz vendor going to choose whom to sell? The only answer apart from 'checking who is more hungry' is first come first serve. But that seems more illogical than value based. The more hungry is most likely to have more value and most likely pay more.

b. The cost and value based discussion about price is not complete in itself. Demand and Supply play a very crucial role. This is rational economic discussion. Some of the goods - at certain time period - are in excess supply or short supply. Onions when we were in college touched 40rs/kg. Cost was definitely not more than a single digit number. Value- again I never felt it gave me more value to eat a 40 rs kg onion. But the demand was normal, while supply was almost vanished - price ballooned.

H to A:
Yeah, this was random.

On Value, picking the Vada Pao example, it may not be necessary that the person who is hungrier will end up paying more. A poor person also has the right to be hungry. People pay more because there are no other options.

At first thought, First come first serve sounds better than inflation of price based on demand, at least the person who came first planned for it and reflects the need. It may not be the best solution though.

Price inflation based on demand is a way of giving privileges to the rich, who in turn may have grown rich with same fundamentals of price inflation based on demand. If there were better way to measure the “need” as opposed to someone’s ability to pay higher, the society would be a different.

The basis for paying higher than cost+profit comes from different kind of emotions:
- I want to possess what is rare and I’ll pay whatever it takes
- I want to have it before someone else
- I should be the first one to get it

There is nothing wrong in having such emotions, we all have it and hence we do pay inflated prices. The price inflation model I believe works well with the so called “tamasik” aspect of a human being, which is pretty dominant in this “Yug”.

From 2009 to 2010...

Since more than a month before beginning of 2010, Pulak has been talking about plans to celebrate beginning of 2010 at a place away from civilization in the lap of nature. As usual, we didn't plan until Abhinav, Pulak and I got on a 15 minutes call on 28th Dec and decided to go to Sandhan Valley for camping. We discussed other alternatives like Tarkarli, some tiger sanctury, Rayling plateau etc. Bachelor for this long weekend, Pulak had to welcome 2010 without Ashka's physical presence. "Five point somestuff" left on bikes on 31st - Abhivan, Pulak, Abhishek, Fati and I.

Our resources including human were 4 male, 1 female, 2 owned and 1 borrowed bike, 2 tents, 2 sleeping mats, 2 large and 3 small rucksacks. Rucksacks had our food and clothing related stuff and the extras. With an mutual agreement on starting the ride at 9 am on 31st, we didn't actually gather and leave together until 11 am. Fati was my companion and we of course had the best bike of the 3. It was a 200 CC Pulsar with relatively comfortable seats, only 10K kms on it and I touched my highest speed on a bike - 120 kmph for a couple of seconds. Abhishek was sitting behind the slow rider - Abhinav. Abhinav had recently bought a bike, which Pulak was riding and this was probably his first long ride on a national highway. For the sake of Einstein (relativity) and Newton (relative speed), in the first 75 minutes, he was more than 25 minutes behind me. When I read Nashik - 37 km, he read 73. Pulak was the "hammal", carrying all the weight in two rucksacks and two light weight sleeping mats.

We had our lunch at Siddhu da Dhaba, a small place 40 km en route. Main diversions to remember on our route were at villages named Gothi, Bhandardara and Ghatghar. From Ghatghar, we had to do a survey of perfect spot to camp. It was around 5:15 PM when Pulak stopped the bike roadside and said that this is a right spot and we should stay here. My instant reaction was negative because I had a fixed destination in mind. However, we stopped and surveyed the place. After going a couple 100 feet further, Pulak saw something that he wanted Abhinav and me to see. There was a nice little isloated island, connected by land via a small strip. It was a perfect spot as our bikes and us would not be visible from roadside. With Fati around, safety was our major deciding criterion. Mumbai alone consumed from than a million litres of alcohol; there of course were lot of drunk people supposed to be driving the roads of country.

We checked with an old man who was out on a walk with his bull, who advised us not to stay there and suggested a place few minutes down the road. However, we were not happy with the advise as he didn't sound authentic. At that moment however, we decided to validate what he suggested.

Within 100 metres of that place, we met Nandu who gave us a positive advise. He suggested us to stay on another similar island on the other side close to his hut. He also offered us shelter in his house, food and taking care of our vehicles. We found isolation and he offered us security; there was nothing more to ask for. Everybody made a U-turn and parked the motorbikes. In a straight line of sight from the road, we could see Nandu's hut, few fields, a narrow passage that had opened up recently, the island where we stayed and the Bhandardara lake. To Fati's excitement, it wasn't a long hike either. Its nice to be back home. I wouldn't have dared to camp outside a designated campsite in US.

Nandu's kids came running to us in excitement and made inquiries. Their father explained that we were camping overnight. Nandu told me that the hamlet's name was Murshet, whcih was approximately 160 kms from my house in Navi Mumbai. There weren't more than 2-3 huts in the area and those too were scattered. India's population density for once seemed to be miscalculated.

After a quick survey, we decided to put the tent on the farther flat end at around 10 meters from water. By the time we reached there, it was time for Sun to go to bed and for us to take pictures. Sunset behind the mountains and over the lake was one of the few panoramic views that we captured. After sunset, we started putting the tents, while enjoying the different shades of sky, mountains and water. It was also a a full moon night or at least close. There was also a eclipse between 10:35 PM and approx 1 AM, visible only 7% from where we were.

Sun was gone, tents were set and we were not running behind time. Hunger was the call of body. Abhishek was the junior most enginner and our resident cook as well. Fati always get VIP treatment on such trips and more this this time because of her eye infection! Abhishek has this quality of observing the likings of people and remembering them as well. He started playing favorite songs for each one of us one by one. In the meantime, he also set up his kitchen and made "Bhel" and "Chai" for evening snacks. He called the Bhel with some Bihari name that I don't remember. He had also collected wood from Nandu to cook the dinner, breakfast and lunch. Wind and Water remixed the music and gave all of us our first few refreshing moments of solitude! Moon was so bright that we didn't need any light to roam around. Moon's reflection in water was another reward for the place we accidenatlly chose. With a full moon, 5 of us on a lonely island, great music playing and fire buring on the side, water and wind talking a different language, it was a perfect night!

After evening snack, it was time to prepare dinner. We all contributed one way or the other by igniting the fire, washing the utensils, filling water bottles from the lake, keeping the fire alive, preparing the dough for "baati", cooking the "Daal" or entertaining others after a few sips of "Old Monk". Our rest of the evening passed in discussions, preparing dinner, drinking and eating. Dal-Baati didn't turn out to be the best but it certainly tasted great in that environment.

Of the two tents, Fati got the preference and hence I also got the master bedroom tent with open toilet all around the tents. The only difference was that we were wearing extra, unlike a normal night in Ghanosli flat. Fati was wearing a jeans, a of socks, a t-shirt, a thin jacket and then a thick warm jacket , a warm hat and a scarf. She did take off the goggles while sleeping.
I was also wearing warm track pants that I bought in the Us for skiing, a pair of socks, a full sleeve T-shirt, a warm sweat shirt, a muffler and a hat. Apart from the thin base of tent, we had a thin carpet and a sleeping bag as your bed. We had a common single-person blanket to make it more romantic with all those clothes on. Nature was testing our resistance against desires! I'm not sure what apart from snoring was going on in the other tent. Boys said that they had a great night, with lot of sleeping space at hand. We weren't cold but the thin tent cover made a lot of noise with the wind entire night, which did cause frequent interruptions in my sleep. Fati slept indisturbed by all voices of nature.

It was before sunrise of first day of new year that I started Pulak and Abhinav chatting outside. Pulak of course was making every attempt to not only wake us up, but also get us out of the tent to enjoy the sunrise beauty. Three of us in order (Abhishek, Fati and I) didn't care much about what nature had to offer so early in the morning. We just needed 5 minutes sleep that lasted 2 hours for Abhishek. I came out of tent soon after 7, next came Fati and then Abhishek at around 9, that too with a bad headache.

Pulak always need to be busy, so he made the morning fire for making tea and breakfast. While he was doing that, Fati and I ate the leftover desert (Churma) from last night. Abhinav and I also did some good photography. Many Indians don't get the nature call until their intestines get some tea; Fati is no one of those million. This camping was different as Fati's potty had never seen rocks before. Yeah, it was a sort of world record! She did it finally! I remember the first camp where we were out from Friday night until Sunday night in Oct 2006, before coming to US. There she would pee once a day and no poop for 2 days in a row. Amazing capacity, isn't it? It takes a different wheat flour in daily meal for 23 years to reach that level and I still haven't figured out where my in-laws got that flour from. I've diluted that effect in 3.5 years though and hence this "on-the-rocks" potty experience! We all (men) also went pooping but it was no adventure for us. I actually needed few sandwiches and a egg-cheese bhurji to make the required pressure, but the golden yellow made me very happy after the rounds.

While all this was happening, Abhishek also woke up and took charge of kitchen. He made remaining sandwiches and very good egg-cheese bhurji. With filled stomach, Pulak and Abhinav went to the other side of lake to take some pictures of our campsite. Abhishek gave me a good massage with Navratna oil, usually used to keep your head cool. Soon after that, I took a power nap, which Abhishek told me was 30 minutes but I didnt even remember. We also had a set of walkie-talkie with us, another gadget that Pulak was fascinated about and desperately wanted to use it and test its range. after they got to the other side, they asked us to go places over the island to get pictures. I also took some jumping-jack pitures for Pulak and Abhinav from the our side. Post photography, three of us went back to campsite and then I gave Abhishek a good massage, I hope. While I was doing that, a fisherman was passing by in his boat, whom I called to inquire about a short boat ride. After some negotiation, he agreed to take 5 of us on annother side of the lake, from where our tents were not even visible in straight line of sight. We all tried our hands on the traditional paddles with no luck in paddling even 5 meters towards desired direction. The old man got happy when Fati took the paddling seat. He really smiled and tried to teach her as well. I've some pictures to prove this. Men are Men, age doesn't matter. When I asked the fisherman about safety of our campsite from thieves, he said - "He Mubai nai. Ikde koni kai lenar nahi", i.e. This is not Mumbai, nobody is going to steal here. What a reputation these big cities have got.

After getting to the other side, we decided to do some diving photography. You may have guessed by now who jumped first. Or course, the only frog - Pulak. Boat was his diving board. The only other diver was me and I launched myself form boat too. Since boat was not still, both of us didn't get good thrust and landed flat on water and came out with a burning chest. I later found a better spot on the other side to dive from a stome, hardly a feet or two above water level. I got two perfect dive pictures from there and felt proud of owning a Nikon D90; the pictures won't be as good otherwise. Pulak remained a frog from there as well. After our dive photography, we started back towards our abode and when we were just 20 meters away, Pulak's inner frog jumped again, getting him a great frogy picture in the air. In this jump, he tore his vest apart and gave a macho pose as he was walking from water towards land.

After getting back to the island, Abhishek and Abhinav took a few dips in water close to the shore, which was also bluish-green and clean. Clock was showing 2 and after our swim session, it was natural for stomach to cry. We warmed the left over dal-baati from dinner and really relished the food. All of us wanted a nap afterwards but then it would be dark before we could leave and Abhinav had to do house hunting the next day. He is getting married on Feb 9, 2010. It took us a decent half hour to do the dishes, wrap the tents and our sacks. We left the island in same physical state as we had came but in our minds, we felt some ownership for that piece of land! We stopped at Nandu's hut for a "Chaach". He was expecting some money and we certainly wanted to give. Abhinav and I were on same page to not raise expectations of villagers and offered only 100 ruppees. Nandu of course insisted on more and rest of the group gave expressions in his favor, but we stayed firm. I was giving explanations and Abhinav was signalling us to leave! It was not about our capacity but keeping other hikers in mind and setting the expectations right.

Everything until now was great but we needed some adventure to ensure that "Nazar na lage". The heavy motorbike that I was riding didn't start and we were parked on grassland at least 200 meters from road and it was not a easy task to push-start the bike. This bike was supposed to start with push button which doesn't work and luckily enough, there was no kick. Thanks to designers of Bajaj Pulsar 200! The only way to start the bike was to push it to 10 kmph and then put it in gear. To our stupidity, we realized after 15 minutes of pushing the bike that there is a start engine button which was off and I wasn't aware of it. Finally we all started back towards home. I got some cool pictures of highest mountain range in state over setting sun. Pulak was taking us to show some windmills but it got late and the road was bad too, so we u-turned.

On the way, we ate dinner at a Dhaba opposite to Shahpur railway station, which wasn't as good. On our way back, we were all riding together until 50 kms before Mumbai. I then drove the powerful bike to its capacity and made to home sooner. I Slept from around midninght until 2:30 PM next day. Fati was still sleeping until 7:15 PM, not AM. I was supposed to get pictures taken from Abhinav's camera but till this date (Jan 14), I'm awaiting for Pulak to give those to me.

We were not running for anything and had no time targets. For once, we were at leisure on our mini island in Murshet! It indeed was a good start for the year.

History of History

One thing I've learnt about history is that there is no single truth. Passed through many hands and flowing past ages has in a sense deteriorated or created multiple versions of history. Be it related to the battle of Alexander and Porus or existence of kings like Ram and Krishna.

There are many factors contributing to this. It depends a lot on the way history has been passed to us. It has flown through centuries in form of stories with addition of human element in every generation it passed through. There is the truth, then there is perception of the story teller and then there is a way the listener understands it and pass it on. What could happen to the fact after it passes through this path doesn't need an explanation.

Many a times, facts are changed or suppressed for the reasons of faith, purity, fear and many such factors. These historical versions are then referred as controversies, but there is always a widely accepted fact promoted by the book. People also sometimes create controversies just to make a difference or the way they feel about the fact.

Religions also has a major part to play in this disturbance. Invasions have caused most harm to history by destroying the documents and pieces of art. Just because the ancient documents preached something that the invader's religion didn't promote was considered false and a threat at the same time. That shows the weakness of the religion and also demonstrates how to
finish something from roots.

As I mentioned that there is no single truth and it's very much evident from examples around, the best approach towards all these versions is to listen to all the and either try to create your version of truth or just make a note of all the versions and confuse others for fun. ;-)

Where did time go?

In the list of most popular one-liners, "I didn't had time" would not be too far in ranks. It is commonly heard from many people surrounding you including friends, relatives, colleagues etc. I sometimes ask people about where did their time go and get just a smile in reply. Sometimes its genuine but most of the times I think its because

1) We ignore - Complete a boring training; Cleaning the store room; Calling distant relatives once in a while

2) We forget and then we lie - Calling a friend or relative on a birthday; Something we promised and didn't do

3) We lie to ourselves - When we say to our self that I'm really very busy. ;-)

4) We never prioritize - Writing about an incident that impacted you; Taking backup of your hard drive; Taking family out for a picnic

Many a times we leave small things for later instead of addressing those at the moment. I've realized that we can bring down the number of occasions when we have to say "I didn't had time" just by finishing those little tasks then and there. If something's left for later, there is a good chance that it'll be sitting somewhere low in your "To Do List" or you'll never get back to it. Those who manage it well are wasting their time reading this article. :)

Other way of handling the not-so-important but need-to-be-handled tasks is to pick a few on a daily basis and give them a fixed amount of time. Here you need to remember what is to be done, for which you need to maintain a "To Do List". Its important that the list is kept up-to date. This article is my example of implementing what I've wrote here.:)

Religion, I beleive probably came into existence more for social instead of spiritual purposes. In acnient times, it probabaly was more to organize the society by advertising the supuernatual (spiritual) methods that caused ethical fear. Except for the fact that fundamental reasons for its creation may have changed, at least for the educated society, today also it continues to fulfill the social purpose. Human awareness has acheived a level where they accept the supreme power but the rules set in name of religion are more of a person or group's choice of picturing a religion and not directly from the creator.

Even with the subconscious awareness of the fact that the religious rules have mostly nothing to do with attachment with God, people continue to be part of a religion. Religion today in one way can be defined as a logical nation with no geographical boundary. Most activities in our daily lives doesn't reflect religious guidelines, but the feeling of religion gains strength and comes in foreground mostly when something happens against it. It becomes a kind of patriotism whenever there is some danger to it. Be it a riot, some media statement from a religious leader, a action of some film actor or some activity by a businessman, people all of a sudden would start defending the religion that they never followed and just carried from birth
as their last name. Although negative, it's a social cause as it makes you a person of one kind.

Religion is also a means to social networking these days. People would generally ask last names to confirm the religion and then try to find links. People from same religion tend to group together relatively easily. As it's said, it sometimes become a deciding factor in case of a tie.

Religious festivals at most places are celbrated in a very tradiitional way. Even though most people don't understand the significance of most rituals in religious festivals or even if they do their is no relevance to it, festivals are today good means to get families together once in a while. Another social contribution.

It also provide means to decrease the head count on face of earth. People can easily make issues out of how is the God worshipped in one religion and kill each other for these differences. God never told me the way of worship but I guess it was personally told to all those on the streets fighting over it. How does it matter if you worship a idol or you don't, whether one sect wear clothes and one doesn't, whether one just believe in God and one in messenger of God. Nobody knows nothing about what the reality is, but many don't miss the chance to fight over the issue that doesnt exist. That's somehow linked with frustration in roots.

I keep wondering how has any religion or its rules has helped any person acheive anything in life? As I see, it's just the faith that keeps a person going, be it in a stone, in a person, in a power or in it's self.

First Skiing experience - 22 Dec 2007

Deb, a friend of mine says – “You can either sit back home and watch the snow or get out and enjoy in it.” During last winter, I was not very aware about the things to do during winters in US. My travelling and outgoing experiences started getting better only by the start of summers.

Sachin, one of my best buddies from college had recently moved from Wisconsin to Rhode Island. We’re now just two and a half hours away. The last time we met was almost a year ago on the weekend next to when I had just reached US. At that time, he drove down alone from Wisconsin to New Jersey to meet me. That’s the way he is, switching the borders of genius and insanity. :-)

After he got down in Rhode Island, we were obviously to meet on the next weekend available to both of us, which came out to be the long weekend of Christmas (Dec 22-25). I was coming back from Baltimore and was about to cross New York City when I got Sachin’s phone call about confirmation for the coming weekend. Not only me, he was also driving and was actually coming back after skiing. Although we had agreed upon it when we planned to meet the first time that we’ll go skiing when we meet, I refused as I was running low on finances and it was going to cost $150-200. To give up is not Sachin and since I knew it, I agreed to go after 2-3 refusals. Finally, on the Friday of 21, he called me to reconfirm the program, which I thought he had forgot, as both of us didn’t talk the whole week. My car was with the mechanic for an expensive repair, so I asked him to come down and he was fine with that. Only after he got there, I wished he would not have drove down with his 1994 Nissan Sentra that already had 200,000 miles on it. He drove it down 1000 miles from Wisconsin to Rhode Island. Anyways, he made it and we finally met after a year and 2 weeks. With the car repair, I now wanted even less to go skiing. Money does matter. :-)

I thought that events like skiing need a lot of planning and reservations, but it turned out to be just like going for a picnic, at least until you really start doing it. He was here only until Sunday evening and we decided on Friday night to go skiing on Saturday evening. First awkward thing he mentioned was to go ski in night and I tried not to give him a shocked expression. Cheaper tickets and getting away from sun’s reflection on ice in daytime were reasons good enough to explain his point. Fati also had an appointment related to her job in the morning, which also supported the idea of night skiing. We kept talking until 3-4 AM the Friday night. Sachin got up relatively early the next morning and did some research on ski areas in Connecticut. We did some cost distance analysis and finalized the Mt Southington ski area in Southington, which was less than an hour away and was costing us $58 per head including the first time free sessions for Fati and I.

For skiing, you basically pay for two things, the lift pass and the ski rentals. Lift pass is to use the lift to go up to the top of hill from where you come down skiing. Secondly, people like us pay the rent for skiing equipments. Skiing equipment consist of a pair of shoes that are heavy enough to make elephants uncomfortable and strong enough to fix a fractured leg; a pair of skis that are flat, thin and long plastic platforms to fit those shoes for people from Jupiter and are used to for speed and balance and a pair of pole sticks which are never used, especially initially.

In our package, we had free lessons for an hour and a half. Before we could find instructor, Sachin taught us basics, who is already an expert from my perspective. Wearing the skis was the easiest part and everything after that was a challenge. During little practice after lessons from Sachin, I was continuously loosing balance and falling down, which was both enjoyable and physically hurting. I once started slipping down a small slope with direction of my skis such that my legs got wide stretched and I fell down with my skis still on. It took me a while to find a way to get rid of the skis and straighten my legs. This was probably my longest and most strenuous stretching in my whole life and that was just the start.

After some confusion about the place where we were supposed to meet, we finally met the instructor 30 minutes later than the scheduled time. She took us up to a little slope where our formal lessons started. First few minutes were to explain the structure of ski (mostly flat with sharp edges) and it’s use. Fati was not even able to get herself on the skis because of the snow stuck to the bottom of her shoe and it took a lot of overall energy of our instructor Sandy to clean that off multiple times in that one hour.

Stopping and turning are the most important things that you should at least theoretically know before starting the practical. Forming a pizza slice shape using your skis with the tip of slice in front of you and forming a sitting posture by putting pressure on your thighs and hips were the easy ways we were told to remember how to stop and turn. The instructions were simple to learn and understand, but falling down was still our favorite method to stop as soon as the speed or imbalance scared us. The very important thing that we later realized out of this was to give away the fear of speed and stay balanced at whatever speed. You just have to keep saying to yourself that the speed can be controlled well using technique.

With skis on, it was hard to stand still. Ski was kind of my master and I slave. Ski would start moving me all of a sudden without my consent. The only way to stop being a slave was either to enjoy being it and keep doing what ski want you to or resist and hurt yourself by rolling in the snow. For a long time, I was just resisting, which didn’t work well and I learnt it the hard way. It took instructor a good effort and time (~30 minutes) to get us to stop without falling. Even after knowing the technique, using gravity and making close contact with snow was my favorite.

By the time we were finally able to successfully stop ourselves at lower speeds, we were only left with 5 minutes to learn the turning part. It’s anyways logically important to maintain balance and control speed, but another importance for me to learn it was to avoid collisions with others. The learning part was only for me, not for others and they would definitely not appreciate the idea of being hit by some 80 kilo rolling piece of mass. Turning was only slightly different from stopping. Instead of applying pressure on both skis, you just do it on the one depending on direction you want to turn. To turn right, you put pressure on left one and vice-versa. In crux, stopping and turning is all about putting pressure in right amount and posture.

During our sessions, Sachin was checking on us every 15 minutes. He was waiting to take us to the hilltop for the real fun of the day. The time finally came at 8:30 PM after an hour of instructor-led and half an hour of Sachin-led training. After an hour and a half, I was little confident about stopping but not turning.

Now was the time to start using the lift pass. That’s also a unique experience in itself. The lifts keep circling continuously up and down the small hill. The lift is like a trolley that can sit two people and what we generally refer in India as “Udan Khatola”. To get on a lift, you’ve to synchronize yourself with the lift movement. As soon as a lift leaves the boarding station, you start moving forward to catch the next one and this has to be done with your skis on. Next step is to bend yourself so that you can get on the next lift, which doesn’t actually stop. You just have to catch a running lift, as we do in India with trains and buses. It looks and sounds crazy but it works very well and the speeds are pretty slow to hurt anyone. Also, the lift stops in case of any problem there is always an attendant to help. This part was well explained and demonstrated by Sachin already, so I did fine. What came as a surprise, rather shock was to get down at the top of hill. I assumed that there would be somebody on the other end too, which of course was a bad assumption. You have to get down on your own with your skis on and that too on a slope. I once thought of going back down in the same lift, which I realized after getting down, was not an option. I finally thought of the worst case scenario and said to myself that if the ski try to master again, just resist and fall down. That might hurt a little bit, but was a good option at that time. All this happened in less than 10 seconds. To my surprise, I got down fine and was also able to stop myself within 20 feet. After I stood still, I saw the stop stick at the turning point of the lift from where it started going back down. If you couldn’t get down, your legs will definitely hit that stick and that stops the trolley for some time good enough for a person to get down.

Looking at our small hill from bottom to top didn’t look as scary as it seemed from top. Although I was a little confident on my braking skills now, I had not tried it on steep parts where speed would be much higher. Two things that kept my spirits high were:
This is simple and there is no way I’m going home without going from top to bottom successfully, without falling.
If so many people here could do it, there is no way I can’t

I started from almost very top of the hill, where I fell down a couple times without even getting a start. Finally, when I started my first descent, the speed got so high that I got scared and lost balance and demonstrated some out of control aerobatic stunts. That happened at least 2-3 times on the steep parts of that simplest hill in the ski-area. I finally decided to walk down halfway and then start from there, where also I kept failing and falling. I somehow finally reached the bottom after falling N number of times and walking down the hill at steep areas. That was definitely not a motivating start.

With all twists and turns that my body went through, it was definitely not at its best now, but whenever the thought of being physically unfit came to my mind, the devil inside me would say – “Yeah, that’s a nice excuse of not doing it, you loser”. Sachin did the same job too. But as I said earlier, there were two things that kept me going. Once I reached bottom of the hill, I now decided to go up walking halfway and ski from there. This also didn’t work well for sometime, but the rate of failure was getting lower as I was not doing the steep parts. After doing that a couple times successfully, I decided to start over from top again. I was getting better but not where I wanted to be. In next two attempts, I earned more pain for at the cost of controlling myself better. The cycle repeated thrice.

It was not until my fourth attempt that I was finally able to make it from top to bottom in one go. The speed was high enough to have all my hairs aligned with the wind. That very moment when I stopped at the base was triumphant and gave me a sense of achievement. It reminded me the day when I was first able to ride a bike by myself. “Yes, I did it” were my first words and those were very much visible in my physical action too. I realized in a moment that the body movement with the feeling was not a good idea. At least my skis didn’t like it and I stumbled, but somehow managed to stand still. That was at 9:35 PM and our pass was to expire at 10:00 PM. In those 25 minutes, I did it again four times and in my final attempt, I was able to control my direction as well. I stopped very near to where I wanted to. Not only was it fun, it was a new thing that I learnt, it was thrilling, adventurous and needless to say triumphant. As I’m writing the experience two days later, I still feel it in most parts of my body. :-)

The part I missed was to take pictures for which I’ll go back to some ski area some time soon. I’ll hopefully do few steeper hills this time with better control on myself.