Trek to Dzongri....

"Every dark cloud has a silver lining.". I can' t remember when I first read this idiom . It was lying in some dark corner of my brain , unexperienced and unused but this year , recession provided me the necessary impetus to unravel the mystery of this idiom.

As the dark clouds of Recession loomed over the economy and everybody was fighting to survive in the storm of jobcuts , I got a much needed "forced" break for a week to rejuvenate myself.I wasn't able to classify these leaves as a boon or a bane as it was a week of LEAVE without PAY .

Due to some undisclosed reasons , I decided to take these leaves as a boon and travel to some unexplored parts of North-east India where I could find some new culture to see , some new food to eat and obviously some new places to visit.

I got the company of Mithlesh , Raghav and Gaurav on this adventure trip and our group of "four wise men" departed to explore Sikkim. We decided to trek to Goecha La but once again the dark clouds, this time that of weather loomed over us and curtailed our 7 day trek to 4 and restricted us to Dzongri only.

Oh ! Oh! Oh! hold on... the clouds had a silver lining too....For long I had dreaded to trek in snow but this time I trekked for hours in snow. God !! that was fantastic...Can you feel it?....white balls of snow falling from sky...the temperature dipping....the trek geting lost in snow.....the WHITE vegetation welcoming us.....no traces of any human for iles.....the low levels of oxygen making us uncomfortable....if I had to survive I had to go to base of Dzongri ....the meeting place of man and nature.......I told myself once agin ....Come on buddy....just do it...you can't quit after coming so far...and then the fat man decided to trudge ahead in snow.....silently admiring the beauty of nature.....

It snowed and snowed and snowed. It was the toughest and the longest night of my entire life. With the invisible sun setting at barely 3 in the afternoon , the bad weather forced us to pack ourselves in our sleeping bags hoping to see one another the next morning. The relentless icy winds threatened to blow our trekkers hut. Mithlesh's frustation was evident when he woke up at 11 in the night and almost
screamed " Abhi 11 hi baje hain , subah kab hogi".

But "subah hui mamu " but sincerely , I haven't seen such a muggy morning in my entire life. It started to snow again at 8 in the so called morning. Once again , I ran out of luck when I needed it the most ;the view of the snow clad peaks were obstructed by snowfall ; I could literally see the mighty peaks bidding us adieu from behind the clouds and snow. Unfortunately, the weather had won the game.

I have no regrets to come back from Dzongri because i lived some of the finest moments of my entire life.Probably , i am looking forward to forced leave in second quarter.

The language that is called French

Yes, after aeons I have started learning french. For a long time , I was thinking of learning French but given the hectic nature of my job or probably my time mismanagement, I couldn't pursue it. Recession, yes recession ,came as a saviour. The work load decreased and my working days reduced from six-seven to 5 days a week and there was no requirement of slogging till 7 or eight in evening. Yes and yes , I was alive yet again.I heard life calling me.....

I enrolled myself at the Alliance Francaise de Delhi last month (march 2009) for pursuing A1 level course in French. Initially, I was very sckeptical about the Institue as the method of communication and teaching is French with no English allowed there .The teachers would reply in French even if you question in English but being the the most authentic and popular place for learning french, I decided to go ahead with it.

The first two weeks were quite eventful.For the first time in my life, I empathized with nursery children who start learning English.I can now confess that it is a difficult task to learn a new language. As one has poor vocabulary in beginning,it is almost impossible to decipher what is being asked. The only answers that one has are oui madame ( yes mam ) and non madame ( no mam ).To compound one's problems , French has masculine and feminine form of adjectives as well as articles , so the problems of using correct verbs with correct gender of adjectives and articles is a bit tricky , atleast for beginners .As a result , funny instances arise in classes.
Ha ha ha ....but don't laugh on anybody as you may land in same position the next time but honestly it feels great to be in nursey again; to relive your life.

Almost five weeks have passed ( in which I bunked two weeks for a trek) and I can say that I am not absolutely zero in French now , I can atleast figure out the parts of speech in French. Yeah....it's better to understand the sentence than to reproduce sounds like monkeys. I have a test on 10May for A1 level ...lets see what happens ....