Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Me and Mannheim

I am Parth Shah... born 4th June 1984... 7.55 am... 60 kg... 5'7"... numbers attached to me.. 78 and 51...

Mannheim is located in Germany... 49°29′20″N 8°28′9″E... 97m above sea level... 0049-621...

all this detail is for the number lovers who would like to strain their mind to develop some interesting results to explain the following...!

I have been to Mannheim 4 times... in this fashion...


First time it was in Nov 2006... I was staying in Darmstadt at that time. We had a planned a trip to Paris. Got the tickets really cheap... 68 bucks to and fro... it was a group booking for 6 ppl. the tickets came through post... i suggested we shoul keep all the tickets together... some agreed others didnt.. so some of the tickets were at one of my friend other were individually distributed... i was under the "wrong" impression that my ticket is with him as i saw 2-3 tickets on his desk... at the time of departure i asked him about the ticket... he thought i was joking and replied positively...

at the time of boarding the bus we found the catch... yes tooooo late! had to take a cab... run home... search the ticket... and rush to Mannheim as it was the next stop... it was a 45 minute journey... 5 tense english speaking passengers in a bus with a very tense german driver knowing a few english words... similar case in the cab but with better ratio... i reached there before they leave... and was welcomed by a long cheer... happy to reach Mannheim for the first time... with a dent of 105 Euro for taxi and additional 10-20 on phone during the ride...


Second time, it was Apr 2007... this time it was a visit to Hockenheim, Germany. yes the F1 German GP destination... from there we went to Schwetzingen, which has a beautiful palace and more beautiful garden... and on our way back we decided to go via Mannheim! reached there by bus and then we were to take a train... we reached just on time... ran to the platform to see the train leaving 2 minutes earlier than the departure time...

We had a good one hour before the next train... they have good market on the train station only... we shopped... there is a nice Egyptian shop there... and not to miss the train again reached the platform 5-10 minutes earlier... we sat there, chatting, laughing for all those 10 minutes... the train didnt show up... then we heard an announcement that the train leaving from some other platform is the one we wanted to board!! waited for one more hour... bought the few things we didnt for the first time due to their high cost... and came back home two hours late...


Third time, it was in Apr 2010... 3 years later! I was traveling from Cologne (Ger) to Lausanne (Sui)... bought the tickets an hour ago at Cologne station and moved around for sometime... i was aware of both that i was going thru Mannheim and the two cases above... so was a bit more careful... my Cologne-Mannheim train got late for 10 minutes which in turn would make me miss my Mannheim-Basel train for which i had 5 min connection time... so i went to the help desk... germans are very good people as i have said many times... and their systems, as long as there is no chaos, works in perfect harmony... the guy there changed my Cologne-Mannheim connection from an IC to an ICE... Inter City to the famous German Inter City Express...

this ICE took a faster and probably shorter route and made me reach Mannheim an hour before my otherwise scheduled time... amazing isnt it? the sad side, i missed the beautiful scenic curves of river Rhine... :( anyways, so now i had one full hour at the Mannheim station in place of 5 minutes! so, i remembered the old time and shopped from the egyptian shop! how could i have escaped Mannheim in 5 minutes?! :)


Fourth time, again in Apr 2010... on my way back from Basel (Sui) to Frankfurt airport... it was kind of a reverse journey... i had a ICE till Mannheim and from there another to FRA... as there was Mannheim again, i took the second last train for the day to, you know, have a backup! i was a victim of the volcanic ash cloud and after spending a forced, expensive vacation in Switzerland, didnt want to miss the flight... so till Heidelberg, 12 minutes to Mannheim everything was in perfect order... and then my aura entered the Mannheim infected area... we had an announcement that we, those who wanted to go to Frankfurt airport should go and contact service point... as we disembarked the train, i found that our train is 180 minutes late and so is the next train... that is 3 hours at Mannheim, with the shoppes closed!

but you know what i said about the germans... they dont let you down just like that... at the help desk we were 24 ppl from that train... and everyone wanted to reach FRA as soon as possible... so the fellow there arranged cabs for us... first cab with capacity of 8... and 10 ppl went out for that... second again for 8 and we 7 went out for it as the rest were in a group of two or more... as we reached the cab, there were already 2 left out passengers from the first cab were sitting there... so out of 9, 8 took the seats... and yes as it was in Mannheim, i was the one left out... i waited till the cab rolled out... and then i went to the next cab, a sedan, which had two couples as the occupants.. thought of not disturbing them...

so went to the help desk again... and to my surprise, the fellow was setting the shutters down... i went to him as he was talking to another guy... found out that fourth cab with three passengers had already left... and also they wont arrange a cab for a single person as the cost would be higher... of course Mannheim-FRA would be no less than 50-60 km... more than 120-130 bucks for sure and that too as per 2007 rates! but before the thoughts can reach any further the person talking to this help desk guy came to rescue... he was from the same train and wanted to go to Wiesbaden... which of course is quite close to FRA... so we took a shared taxi to Wiesbaden via FRA... and thus left Mannheim in a taxi... this time the driver was Pakistani and knew Hindi as well as German... had good talk with the german guy as well... and reached Frankfurt airport in time as well...


so, till now four visits... a taxi drive in 2006 to another in 2010... i think there is something strange or rather i would say fishy about these trips... will find out... ya, am looking forward to another Mannheim trip sometime! :)

and if you find something interesting... do let me know... am curious.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Encounter with a cool cobra...

A very odd thing happened today... I dont want to believe it... but it seems to work that way...

I work at a very beautiful place, a factory which is surrounded by farms for more than one km in every direction... it is a place we try to live and work in harmony with its other non-human habitants. Yes, as we have opted to work between farms, some of there's natural natives have come to live between us... that includes many insects, reptiles, birds, and animals...

Right now one of my half built shed has more than 12 honey combs all around its roof structure... other shed has another 3-4... and honey bees of those combs feel free to fill the space of my sheds... it is a nice experience moving around the black and yellow flies... they keep on dropping some yellow thing all around but they sting only occasionally.

There are butterflies and a lot other varieties of flying objects... at times they make it difficult to even work in the evenings when it is dark outside and you want to work in light... they keep on jumping and flying around you to distract you like a bunch of 'Apsaras' (celestial damsel from the heaven')...

And then there are cows and buffalo, sheep and goats who are daily visitors... they work as our grass cutters... The ground overflows with frogs every monsoon.. to feel the air with soothing draun draun... Snakes are found in some scrap or some unused corners often... but they dont harm anyone... pigeons have their permanent home on our trusses and purlins... and they do a very nice job in keeping our metal sections white... and yellow sometimes and they make spots!

But this has become a routine I guess... we dont notice many of the things now! but a very strange thing happen today and actually that is what I wanted to talk about...

We have just started to build some quarters in the back corner for the workers. The contractor's workers started digging the place for the foundation from yesterday. And today morning while they were working, they found a black cobra in their working space... they stopped the work for some time and the snake went to a nearby bushes... they started working again and soon after the cobra came back near them... it came and sit where they had to dig. Again they took a halt.

They started the work again after the lunch and again the same thing happened. It came from a different direction and sit just where they were working... it was not in mood to harm anyone but probably wanted to keep its territory I guess. One of our workers clapped after it and forced it to go away... and the work started again for sometime till it was interrupted by the same cause in the same fashion. Forth time in the day.

Generally, snakes are afraid of humans as humans are of them. And so, snakes generally try to run away from the humans... but this one had some different thoughts. We heard about it and went there to find the exact story. And then the story started becoming more interesting... more human than snake... one of the workers said that the snake is actually guarding the area as a security guard. It may be either coz of the ancestors of the farmers who farmed this land for years. Some other said that it might be guarding some buried treasure...

While we were busy running our thoughts all around in the snake holes... the snake came out to say "tum log mujhe bahar dhundh rahe ho aur main tumhara yahan intezar kar raha hoon..."! It had only its head out of the bushes and it was doing its usual tongue out and in thing... I went closer and it stopped doing it... it stayed there... fearless but anxious... and it kept on staring... it was an odd feeling... facing a cobra merely 5 feet away... both looking at each other... aware of each other's existence... waiting for the other to take the first step... forward or backward... it beat me in the movement... it went back to the bushes... this sounds more like a heroic story in some comic book but then that is the reason I am writing about it...

Most of the people agreed with the opinion of the first worker and many said they have seen such things... snakes guarding land... and subsequently it was decided that we get some dry coconut, fire a lamp and do some small worship near that area and then start working. And we did that!

The snake did not show up after that...! may be cause of the dark... it wasnt much dark for a couple of hours though... but I dont want to be convince that easily that it did not come back coz of that lamp and coconut... I am not much convince that it was actually guarding the land due to xyz reason... snakes are not that intelligent I believe... but they also would have Einstein and Newton... I am anxious to see what happens tomorrow... will write if something notable would happen...

Later, I had a talk with the farmer next plot... who has that border common with us... and who spends most of his time in that corner to watch for his farm. According to him the snake lives there for many years now... it has come across the farmer's family many times but havent harmed anyone till date... and it has prevented falling a tree in the past... like it came and sit at the base of the trunk of the tree every time people came to cut it... they cut the tree eventually though...

I am excited to find the cobra do some wonders tomorrow... I'm keeping my fingers cross to find either a genius cobra or a cool cobra...

Friday, October 9, 2009

બાળ સ્મિત બન્યું છે તરુણ હાસ્ય આજ શમણું

બે ગુલાબી વળાંક ને વચ્ચે જન્મી શ્વેત એક રેખા,
જાણે વિલંબિત વરસાદે વેગાયમાન ખળખળ ઝરણું...
હોઠના ખૂણા કંડારતાં, ઊભરતા ગાલના એ ખંજન,
કોઇ બાળ સ્મિત બન્યું છે તરુણ હાસ્ય આજ શમણું...

ઈદના આ ચાંદને સોળે કળાએ નિખારતા,
નાજુક, નિર્દોષ, નિર્મળ, ચંચળ, કોમળ, શીતળ, કે ગહન,
પારદર્શી, નિઃશબ્દ, દિવ્ય, આતુર, અનુરાગી, અલંકારી,
મધુર, મોહક ને માદક ચિતરતાં, મલકતાં બે નયન...

નવપલ્લવિત એ કળીને ફૂલોની સુગંધે મહેકાવતા,
ગાલની લાલાશ, નાકની સીધ ને લહેરાતી લટના વળ...
કુદરતી એ અજાયબીમાં માનવરંગે પ્રાણ પૂરતાં,
કપાળે ટીલડી, હોઠે લાલી, કાને બાલી ને આંખે કાજળ...

બોલે એ ભાષા, આશા, ઉમંગ, ધગશ કે લાગણીની,
સ્નેહ, આસ્થા, મહાત્વાકાંક્ષા, હિંમત, યૌવન કે મમતાની...
લખે એ લિપિ, સાથ-સહકાર, ગીત-સંગીત ને આચાર-વિચારની,
પ્રકાશ, પ્રેરણા, પ્રગતિ, જાગૃતિ, સત્ય, વિશ્વાસ ને ક્ષમતાની...

નિત નવા જીવનશૃંગ ઓળંગવાને પ્રેરક છે એ,
તારા અંતરે આનંદ ને મુખે મલકાટનું સર્જક છે એ...
અલૌકિક કોઇ અવિસ્મરણીય 'પૃથક્' પલ છે એ,
જાણે પાવન પ્રણયની પ્રથમ પ્રતીતિનો પ્રભાવ છે એ...

Friday, October 2, 2009

જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

લખું ભૂંસું અને ફરી લખું, ચઢું પડું ને ફરી ચઢું,
હસું, દોડું, રમું, કૂદું, ઊડું, શીખું, જીવું; કારણ, આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

મારે ખૂંદી વળવું છે આખું આ વિશ્વ
,
ને જાણી લેવું છે કોઇ અદભૂત રહસ્ય... આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

બની દીવાસાળી પ્રગટાવવી છે કોઇક જ્યોત,
પણ રાખ થઉં બીડીની ટોચે દેતા ધીમું મોત... આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

બની પંખી વિહરવું છે
અપાર-અગાધ ગગનમાં,
બાજનજરે સમાવવો છે આ વિશ્વાલેખ નયનમાં... આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

ડગ માંડું નિરંતર અથાક પરિશ્રમના પંથે,
ના ચડું ભ્રમે આદિ મિથ્યાજ્ઞાન વ્યાપક ગ્રંથે... આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

'પૃથક્' વિચારક જ નહિ વિચારપ્રેરક બનું હું,
જાગું, જગાડું ને ઉન્નતિનો નૈતિક માર્ગ ચીંધું હું... આ જીવન અમૂલ્ય છે...

Sunday, August 23, 2009

I am in Love...

I love myself...

I love my name...
I love the way I write it...
I love my isometric drawing of my name...
I love my nicknames... especially pt...

I love my hands...
I love the cross connected line pattern on my palms...
I love my eyes...
I love my hair...
I love my feet...
I love the wallpaper of my cell... which is a pic of my bare feet...

I love my smile...
I love my expressions when I avoid words...
I love my weird ways to tackle weird situations...
I love my taste for music... for movies...
I love my snaps and whistles along the songs...
I love my thirst for good coffee...

I love my driving...
I love my driving when I'm angry...
I love my driving when I'm happy...
I love my singing while driving...
I love my ignorance about things not on the road...

I love my need for friends...
I love my patience while choosing my friends...
I love my friends...
I love the nicknames I have for them...
I love people who love me...
I love the way I love them...
I love the gifts I choose for my loved ones...
I love my time while picking the gifts for them...

I love to spend time with me...
I love my thoughts...
I love my ways to express my thoughts...
I love my life...
I love my spirit... my approach to life...
I love my vision...

I love to do my work...
I love my efforts to do it better...
I love my colleagues who do their part well...
I love my ability to value ability in human...

I love to write "shift+i" for myself...
I love to keep on adding new lines to this post...

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Approach to Life...

I think there are four ways by which an individual can live his life... He can be one of these four guys..

Let it be!

The let it be! guy is one who lives like a living puppet. He doesn't give any inputs to his surroundings neither he receives anything from it... He is a guy who acts as per commanded... he doesn't think for himself or for any one else... He let the things go the way they are going whether they are good or bad... right or wrong... He sees things but doesn't react to them. He is a guy in mental coma.

Crybaby

The crybaby guy is a whining element. He finds the world a place under the influence of some dark magic or evil forces... He finds negative points in everything and complains about it all the time... but he doesn't act to correct what he thinks is wrong. He talks and talks and talks... but wouldn't step forward to do what he preaches... He is a limitless source of negative energy... a pessimistic approach to everything good or bad...

Fighter

The fighter guy is a warrior... He is a resistance to the evil to take over the world... He is the change that drives the world forward... He is the reason of human existence and human progress on the earth... He is an intellectual who observes the things... judges them based on the logical tests... reaches a reasoned conclusion about it... and executes the necessary to achieve desired results... He clears the road so that his fellow mates can reach further and further...

Manipulator

The manipulator guy is a mass controlling element. He is the one who goes after power... He wants to rule... He wants others to act on his command... talk what he thinks... depend on his mercy... He finds ways to interfere in other people's life... makes it miserable so that they stop thinking and start following... he can make or break the world on short period, but on long run he would ruin it as he demotes free thinking...

Think... which one fits you better?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The Dynamics of Winning

I have had hard time for last few weeks... nothing was going right anywhere and everyday I was fighting not to get depressed. This is one thought that came to my mind...

I was driving home from the factory. One more of my experiment didnt yield the expected results. was feeling low... was thinking that i am loosing here...

its a big word... loosing... then i thought, loosing is a dynamic state and not static. lost would be static coz then there wouldnt be any fight to be fought. then i thought, as Newton said, a body remains in its dynamic or static state unless acted upon by an external force. now this force can be in either direction and the final effect on the body would be as if only the resultant force is acting on it. and this resultant force is a vector sum... sum of all the external forces considering their intensity as well as their direction...

so from a loosing condition i can force it into the winning condition which again is a dynamic state and then further i can go and win... now won is not a static state coz as soon as you win, there are many more bettles you would like to jump in. so, winning never ends...

and in a few moments i was up again...
determined to fight again the next day...
determined to win...