Alright now to start with how things materialized to this trip I'd say everything started in the mind of this brave young man called Hari Karanam(may be young is not the correct word to be used),anyway that is not important.What is important is Hari was determined to make this team trip a reality and hence did anything and everything to frame up things in order.From calling up various resorts and negotiating with them on the rates to convincing people to be a part of this exotic trip to doing lot of weird stuff was a part of Hari's curriculum in the last two weeks(I would not talk about it here).This trip was supposed to be complex because there were four teams which were supposed to come down namely SL(Semantic Layer),MDS(Meta Data Services) ,DF Development(comprising of me,myself and my boss Indeevar) and DF QA.The first three teams are under Jayanth and the last one is under Makesh.It became a hard task to come up with a date when most of the team members would be in a comfortable position but our ironman Hari did not retreat.He dealt with this momentary crisis with rigor and forced everybody to come down to this trip(heard he even resorted to blackmail or something but that is another flying rumour) :) .Anyway much to everyone's surprise every thing fell in place.
Hari came up with a date after rigorous consultation with veterans namely Nanda sir,Daya sir(ok veteran and sir would not apply to him as he is our yo guy driving the youth brigade in BOBJ :)).It was decided we would all pack our bags and leave for the trip on the 9th.Everything went on smooth after that and soon it was 9th.People were excited to the extent of conducting meetings for deciding pick up points,what-to-carry-what-not-to-carry conversations.The foremost task according to Daya the youth icon was to carry booze as much as we could get our hands on.After a set of serious discussions with veterans namely Hari we decided two full bottles of booze would do justice.The crucial task of arranging the booze was laid on my shoulders supporting my tiny frame(alright now thats for you guys to decide if the word to be used should be tiny or hefty).I left no stone unturned and bought a full premium Blenders Pride whisky along with a full bottle of Smirnoff vodka.
I was supposed to catch up with the crowd at outer ring road and I was assured the bus would arrive within a 30 minute drive.Apparently I became the subject of hatred among the auto rickshaw guys as I consistently turned them down one after the other when they took me for some potential passenger and salivated only to realize I was waiting for a bus which could never be late as per grandmaster Hari.Anyway soon the bus came after a small wait of 30 more minutes and Hari blamed the entire thing on the sudden rains:)The journey started and we picked up people from different stops including famous people like Ranga sir who walks by the name 'ferocious Ranga'(it is said that Ranga sir in a game of table tennis can smash the ball even when the ball is at a distance of 1 inch from the floor,but mind you that is a jungle legend:)).Anup and Daya were also picked up along with our very own answer to Hollywood's Sean Connery-Santosh the cool macha(it is heard that any latest piece of gadgetery or clothes can never escape his eyes).On our way we picked up Ramya(the brave) and Ramya(the kind) ,(heard they are planning a venture just like Mahindra and Mahindra,but nothing is clear:)),Akhila SAP's secret singing sensation who has been instructed to sing at decibel levels not easily perceived by human ear but sometimes she out of compassion delivers a line or two which we can perceive much to the bliss of our mind and ears. We even had Geeta mam who was to us Demetra the Greek goddess of food.She had single handedly arranged for every ounce of snack we consumed.The best part of the bus journey was we got instant access to Breezers and it was fun to booze and fall asleep.Now if I am not missing out on the other members I'd say except the people mentioned above the other guys who were equally important as the rest are Lokesh,Om Prakash,Satish(Ranga Sir's right hand,operates from a secret cubicle in development block B1,most of the times is invisible:D),Hemant bade bhai(big brother) who was all set to get India a name in the Guiness book of world records by being the biggest smoker on planet earth until he got married and India lost another major chance of making it big in the global scenario,Shweta(the adventurer),Nanda mam,Basab sir-our very own answer to Canada's Russel Peter's known all across BOBJ for his witty remarks at the nick of time,Nanda mam,Subarna(my elder sister as designated by BOBJ since we share the same surname SAHA,because of which most of the times she has to come down to my cubicle to check her mails(ok that would be exaggerative but chalta hain yaar:)),Prashant(our veteran photographer),Kunal(The Himalayan ghost-known to surpass the length and breadth of the Himalayan ranges through sheer will and determination not easily seen in humans),Gautam(The snore king-a landmine explosion would fade under Gautam's snore,forgive me if the comparisons sound a little too much,my english aint that great) and last but not the least our very own managers Makesh and Jayanth who made this trip possible(kudos to their efforts).Alright so I guess this was the entire list of people in the trip.
We reached Roti Kallu at 6 something after a bumpy ride.The resort had 3 cottages and a dormitory along with a dining hut.Two cottages were immediately given to our women colleagues and the third cottage was predominantly reserved by Ranga Sir along with Sathish,Makesh and Om Prakash.The rest of the guys moved on to the dormitory which was huge and had lot of beds-big enough to accommodate all of us.We stretched ourselves for a while till our young goons suggested we play volley ball.Soon we had our hands on the volleyballs which resembled footballs.After a short stint at volleyball we had our breakfast which was yummy and geared ourselves up for trekking a mountain.Never did we realize that that was the beginning of all miseries existing on the face of earth.I forgot to mention characters we saw in Roti kallu like four dogs which we named Kalia as it was jet black in color,Langdu which had a limp in its leg,bachhu the puppy and mumma,bachhus mother.These dogs followed us wherever we went right from the mountain top to climbing it down far more efficiently.I forgot to mention the last character which we named Shakal who was actually the owner of the resort,we gave him this name as he was bald and fit enough to be a villain in any upcoming Bollywood flick.He used to climb up the mountains almost every day which sounded really hypothetical to us initially but in the course of the trip we swallowed it completely when we witnessed his hyper energetic levels.
All of us were completely devastated during that wild climb atop the mountain at some 4100 feet.Girls had to face a lot of issues along with smokers like bade bhai and me who almost had our lungs in our mouths by the end of this trekking trip.Daya and Anup were the inseperable and the most agile pair that was there in our entire group.With Anup it was observed that he had hidden talents when it came to climbing mountains and down.He manouvered like a panther with his super chappals and made it to the top at a time when most of us were busy licking our wounds much much down at a level I can't reveal as it might directly expose how vulnerable we are despite of trying to look fit:)In the journey Anup and Daya were named Karan and Arjun based on a popular Bollywood hit of the 90s and I became their self proclaimed ma(I did not know that destiny awaited a big surprise related to me naming them Karan,Arjun and me becoming Ma :D).I cursed them in the entire journey as they were moving faster than me and I could not do a crap about it.The dogs as obvious were the winners as they I believe reached the mountain top along with Shakal faster than anybody of us could think.Puppy was the weakest who had to take the refuge of Nanda sirs glucose which was charitably distributed to all those worthless people like me who had almost lost it while making it to the top.The strongest among us was remarkably Ranga sir who was challenging himself at every steep climb as long as we were climbing the mountains.He inspired many a heroes that day excluding me(with my fat body I no longer fall in that category).once we were atop the mountain stretch and the photo sessions were religiously completed we started climbing down.I must mention that it was an amazing view at the top with lush green mountains all across with a patch of forests at the top.The air was clean,pollution free which our lungs immediately started repelling as they are used to the nice and polluted Banglorean air filled with carbon monoxide:) Then while climbing it down we had a hard time as our gentle feet are so used to escalators that it was an insult to us that we were being made to go down without one.We traversed down the hill along with Shakal and just as most of us reached down we saw Ranga sir trying to help out people who were having trouble coming down,just as our eyes were about to fill with tears on this display of Ranga Sir's compassion,we discovered that actually all those people were helping out Ranga sir who it seems had lost all ferocity just like a teeth less tiger:) and his right hand was out of breath :D
After coming down the mountain and after a sumptuous lunch we made a short trip to a nearby waterfall and basked in the glory of the ice cold water.Almost all of us including our managers Jayanth and Makesh were game to taking a shower under the waterfall,the enthusiasm was unparalleled and we achieved this Goliath task without any issues except for a couple of minor injuries including Jayanths handcut.Santosh macha too jumped into the waters after several bouts of persuasion.In this cacophony it was discovered that we had three National geographic photographers in us much to everyone's surprise-I wish to introduce our young photography sensations Akhila,Ramya and Bhagya who instead of getting their feet wet in the ice cold water and wasting precious time much to the loss of mankind were busy occupied with capturing the intricacies of nature with their digicams so if in a few years you might see any one of them getting a Noble I am sure you would not be surprised:)
After the waterfall stint we came back got all cleaned up and sat for the booze session.The youngsters along with veterans started playing volleyball to make full use of the time they had in our hands.In the meanwhile the boozers like Hemant bade bhai,Jayanth,Lokesh Basab da and me started with our booze session and soon it became the talk of the town that we deliberately started with the booze session as Chhota Chetan aka Hari had clearly identified our ulterior motives of finishing everything up before the yankess could actually wrap up the match.We could see Ranga sir was more interested in swinging but before that he wanted to do a stress test so he sent his right hand which came out of it's secret location in Development block B1 and started performing all sorts of tests,much to Ranga sirs satisfaction and pleasure when he actually swung and experienced bliss and as they say the right hand never fails Anyway Daya joined us later and started consuming vodka as fast as Sprite.Now comes the real drama-the biggest event that happened in Roti Kallu.After getting completely sloshed Daya was able to recall his previous birth where Anup was his brother Karan and he was Arjun and I was his Ma played by thespian actor Rakhi in Karan Arjun.He went along shouting this everywhere and then when I was almost about to doze off he stopped me saying how can a Ma be so cruel hearted as to leave her son crying and doze off.He even picked up a fight with Karan and the next thing we know Karan disappeared some place in the resort and was not to be seen until the next morning.He then came back and avenged himself upon me and Chhota Chetan(Hari).Chhota Chetan got a little confused when he found himself to be either Daya's father/my husband or his big brother/y eldest son as per Daya's untold account of his previous birth.Anyway everything eventually ends in good and Daya's dramatic discourse ended in puke and that too loads of it.Nothing substantial happened overnight except for a slight assassination attempt on poor Kunal(our Himalaya putra) who was sound sleep much to his horror when he found Daya has fallen asleep right on top of him in his inebriated condition and he was scared to the level that the next morning Kunal was found at a completely unexpected bed.He recalled the horror he had to face last night and was next to being speechless:)Next morning Daya had forgotten every episode of what happened last night due to short term memory loss that he suffers from and he did not even try to write up stuff on his body like Aamir Khan did in Ghajini:D Anyway raat gayi baat gayi,we all forgot our miseries and the next day rolled in pretty smooth and we started for Bangalore after a short stint at a fort in Sakleshpur which almost took the crap out of most of us as it was a big climb.
The last of the journey was spent in dancing and singing in the bus while we reached Bangalore.Special vote of thanks to Hari for his significant contribution in showing us those brilliant moves as a snake dancer and
a belly dancer-I am sure he'd give Madhuri Dixit Nene a run for her money if she ever came back to Bollywood again.I also wish to appreciate the sporting attitude exhibited by our managers much to the level of shaking a leg or two with us in the bus.Besides everyone had a gala time dancing and rejoicing our way back to Bangalore.I fee this is the trip of a lifetime and in my thirty mediocre years of existence I haven't had as much fun as I had in Roti Kallu.Again apologies for anything stupid I might have expressed but read between lines and you would find my account meaningful but cannot term it as an exact disclaimer.Please share your views with me.
