I had given up on finding my old school in the concrete jungle, but a local resident and employee of the host organization here in Ranchi, blessed me with his local knowledge. He knew the location of the hillock which has a water tank on top. I realized I can still see my school and I ventured out. He took me near the hillock, in front of a very big nice looking school, St. Francis High School. He was sure that this had to be my school, but I knew I was not that lucky to have studied in schools like these. But I could still see the hillock and the water tank on top, our favorite place for having lunch around 23 years ago.

I wanted to go there again on the hilltop and somehow I found a way to go there and on the way I could see a almost dilapidated building and here I was. That’s my school, I shouted. Rajkiya Krit Madhya Vidyalaya, Harmu – 12. Suddenly those faint memories became vivid. I could remember the place I used to stand for morning prayers and the school gate and numerous incidents related. School gate has to be a common factor in most of the incidents. I jumped the wall to go inside the campus (once inside I realized there were numerous ways, and surely not intended ones, to get inside the campus, the surrounding wall was broken at many places) and saw menu of the food served under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan painted on  the wall. Hmm, we never used to get any food. :(

I pulled out my cam, wanted to capture these moments of relived, realized nostalgia. Great feeling to there. If I look back on my school days, the biggest complaint (apart from not being able to study in any ‘decent’ schools) is my fathers job forcing frequent school changes for me, that means I could never have those childhood friends. All gone. No trails.

@Ranchi – Remembering Golden Childhood Days.

I am at Ranchi, almost after 23 years. I was so excited to visit this place, to see my school and go to those places which were slowly getting eroded from my memory. But the menace of ‘Naxalism’ has completely ruined my enthusiasm. We cannot go to remote villages and surely not in Cars as they attract extra attention, and one local naxalite expert told me that in election time Naxals do not think before bashing any outside face. Their policy.. first bash them up.. we will see the other issues later.

Though Ranchi city seems quite peaceful, I ventured out on bike to find my childhood school and all I know about that school is that there used to be a small hillock near the school and at top of that hillock there was a water tank. I called my mother to get more info, she told that the school was near a Hanuman temple in Harmu. We drove in and around Harmu and were able to locate almost 4-5 temples but the hillock was nowhere. That means there is no way to get to my school. New constructions and other developments have made this place completely different from the image of this place I have in mind.

So came back to guesthouse, disappointed and full of thoughts. Naxalism, Development, Urbanization etc.. My plan to take a road trip to Daltonganj, Garhwa and Ranka is now cancelled. I wanted to use this weekend for that. It would have been an experience to visit these places but the fear of Naxalites and poor connectivity to these places have left me with no options. Probably I will dare again, after the elections when the naxal activities subside.

I have a unique respect for this town called Ranchi, it provided my father a job, a job which made all the difference to my life otherwise I would have been another Bihari lad searching for a Rs. 4000 per month job in Asam or Punjab or Mumbai.

A lot happened in last few days, my office was shifted from Nungambakkam to Anna Salai, I got my evaluation done and finished a number of reports and presentation.

In between, I talked to another to be rebel (only time will confirm it) and I must say enjoyed talking to this person. We talked, argued, planned, bored each other and provided some fodder to our brain and ruminated over seemingly stupid issues.

Now tomorrow morning I am flying to Ranchi and would be spending a couple of days there and then would head back home for a couple days.

And those who wants to know what happened in my annual appraisal, I did well.. probably extremely well.. ya.. compared to others. Hard work and professionalism pays. :)

Wondered over what kind of haircut I should sport and though I wanted to go for the long hairs but I realized my limited ‘resources’ and went for short ..very short hair cut. Useless though. No body gives a damn to your haircut unless you paint your red or blue or red with blue stripes……

Sometime you get a lot of work done in a very small time if everything goes well and this time everything went well. We finished all our FGDs, field visits and meeting and decided to return to Bhubneshwar to do the writing part. And after 6 hours of drive we came back.

It is 11 pm and I am yet to start on the final phase of writing and I do not see how much time I will get tomorrow to do this.

@ Phulbani, Orissa

Yesterday, I arrived at Bhubneswar at 3 pm and utilized rest of the day by visiting Dhaulagiri and eat street. And both were fabulous. For that matter, even the flight from Delhi to Bhubneshwar was quite an experience, I  was surrounded by many Congress politicians or wanna be politicians from Orissa and they created a mini-parliament there in the flight itself.

The visit Dhaula Giri was memorable, I visited the place where Kalinga War was fought and some Buddhist temples made by Ashoka after the war. Probably I will write a separate blog on that.

Today, we drove 300 kms to reach to this place. And as soon as we reached here, we headed to visit a village and conducted some focus group discussion. (Another thing which deserves a separate post).

There is something which is eating me. I do not know what to do and I do not want to think about it.

Yesterday, I decided to make someone happy and I was successful. Spreading happiness is great, though most of the time it has some adverse impact on somebody else's happiness.

From Monday onwards I am in Orissa for a few days, again for the fieldwork. This is my first visit to the state which is often used in the same line with my state to highlight chronic poverty and poor growth in Indian state. After Orissa, there is another field visit and I am super excited about it. I am going to Jharkhand and going to those places which form very pleasant but faint memories of my early childhood.

I tried to re-collect some details of my friends and search for those names on several social networking websites without any luck. Though to my surprise, I could search some details on Election Commission's website (http://www.eci.gov.in) through electoral search.The search function is full of bugs and painstakingly slow but finally it threw out the results. It would be great if they can improve the site and search results from voter database can give more information.

It rained today. Imagine, being on a hilltop surrounded by tea plantations and witnessing rain. These are the few moments when you repent being single. Luckily the beauty of Munnar hills engulfed me before I start thinking about other things.

I am in county resort and though it is quite a big name but facilities here are at max C grade. :(. You cannot get almost 90 percent items they have on menu (why the hell they have all the items if they do not serve them..) and they charge 35% extra for room service. WTF.

Got a mail from boss.. indicating not very bright chances of a big hike. :(. Market Down. Recession. Hmm.. Just read the news.. AIG is planning to pay bonus to its employees.. nice. Bailout to Bonus.

@ Munnar in Kerala.

10. 40 AM

After a painful night, this morning seems beautiful. I was completely restless last night, headache, fever and a dual between brain and heart. Cannot get more painful.

Yesterday, I met a couple of my batch mates, one of them is an employee of Satyam. We discussed about the greed of human being and how it leads to downfall. It was strange. As none of us were free of greed and we were discussing like the higher, uncorrupted souls. This friend of mine is a bit out of place, has too much idealism which makes him very difficult to flourish in this spineless society.

There are a couple of things I am concerned about. Somebody is trying to penetrate my guard, I am feeling uneasy. Need to take evasive action.

On a different level, I looked at some writing samples of a student (who has applied for a post at my organization), every paragraph was copied from web.

. 5.00 PM

Made some resolutions and if I stick by them, thing should fall in place. Anyway feeling better. Just one question, how simplicity is such a rarity?

In Hotel Silver Park, Hyderabad.

I have been trying in vain to control my thoughts and channelize them to the task at my hand. Result. Headache. Probably a lot of introspection is also responsible to some extent.

Some questions are mercilessly stinging me and there is no salve to soothe my pain or any way to get rid of these questions. The suppressed madness in me is on the verge of coming to the fore, if this happen, will it purge me and make me sane.

This makes me very uneasy.

Could not update yesterday. It was really hectic. We travelled by car from Shimoga to Bangluru and caught early morning flight to Hyderabad. Bangalore airport is really nice place to spend some time at. Flight was a bit late so we have to wait for half an hour. We tried using the power points available in the boarding area, none of them worked. So gave up the idea of finishing some work in my waiting time. Laptop battery was almost drained. Need to carry a 9 cell laptop battery.

We reached Hyderabad and immediately rushed to meeting and then we came to know that we are visiting a place (Chintapally) 90kms away from Hyderabad for overnight stay and we were so tired by the time we finished our day that we slept like log.

Today, we started in morning from Chintapally and had discussion over a number of topics on the way. And this continued in our meeting in evening which went up to 4 hours. All chances of seeing Hyderabad’s famous monuments gone. Probably we will do it tomorrow.

Heading off to Banglore just now.. 6 hours long road trip .. in night and an early morning flight to Hyderabad. And loads of work to be done before 11th of this month.. :(

The day was nice overall. Some patch ups.. some cajoling.. and some convictions..

As usual today was also a day to visit different ‘Base of Pyramid’ consumers and strive for some insight. This has been the routine for almost more than last 3 months.

Meanwhile after a day long field visit, came to hotel and the calender on sidebar of my Windows Vista OS reminded me importance of this date. Yes, today is Women’s Day. Though i do not believe in this concept of Women’s Day why only one day??), yet I sent a few emails to all the women who come to my mind when I talk of women day. A very short mail, no body only subject.  Woman..Body.. Subject..  three interesting and enigmatic words.

Still in Shimoga, probably one more day. Then to some other town. Working on a number of deadlines. A number of presentations to be made. I think today is going to be another day when I would not know whether I should wish people good night or good morning  while going to bed.

It has been a pain to track my schedule of last few months, so I decided to resort to daily blogging/micro-blogging to capture this phase of my life. And this is the first post..

You know the biggest problem I face for daily post to have a title for the post, now I am not going to waste time on thinking about a right title, if it does not come automatically it is going to be the journal style entry. The whole idea is to record some of my daily thoughts and nothing else. :)

Last few days I spent in coffee plantations Chikmaglore visiting coffee plantations (and some beautiful waterfalls as well) and it was really a wonderful experience (not to mention that we had a nice home stay at Naturecraft homestay). And now I am at Shimoga meeting some ‘energy efficient cookstove’s distributors and retailers. If I recall correctly this is my second visit to this place though the first chance to stay overnight.

I updated my orkut status and twitter status from my mobile phone about my location and within a few minutes got call from one of my friends. The call solved the immediate problem of finding about a decent hotel to stay in Shimoga, it was her area. And she was happy to guide us. Though could not check into the hotel she recommended due to non-availability of rooms. :(. Finally managed to get into a hotel. A hotel which does not allow non-veg food, drinks and playing cards in rooms. Thank god I am not fond of any of these.

Last night I watched The Oxford Murders and discovered Ludwig Wittgenstein. Googled and discovered too many interesting stuff. Mathematics and Philosophy always fascinated me and they fascinated me more if they are in same sentence.