Whew!!

Victoria, originally uploaded by Pranay Rao.

As a kid this carriage would have had me tugging at my dad's hand so that he would get me in for a ride. As a teenager, I would have gone up to the owner and told him a thing or two about about animal rights. As an adult, It seemed like this nice little thing to capture before it becomes extinct.

This is the famed victoria, which used to be quite a big deal in Mumbai too, till it was banned. Kolkata, the only city with the maximum modes of transport known to man of course has the Victoria. One problem though is that the original Victoria is quite rare to find nowadays. It's been replaced by these gawdy silver carriages.

Anyway the highlight of my trip was this visit to Teej. The food was quite OK. In fact nothing like the Rajasthani fare in Jaipur. It was a highlight because Teej is just next to my head office and from the year of my induction, I've been planning with my friends/colleagues (who kept changing) to go there. In the end it was a thing that I had to do. Something lke photographing the Gateway of India at dawn.

BTW the past few weeks were super hectic. Weekends have been get together time. Caught up with some of the AUTs (Management trainees) who had joined with me, then went to Hyderabad for some project where of course I had Paradise Biryani and bought this nice Chetan Bhagat book called Two states. I always justified reading the first book '5point someone' saying that I was supportingan IIM alumnus. That book was brilliant. 'One Night..' was decent., '3 mistakes' was too full of incidents but 2 states is positively hillarious. It drags a bit at the end but it is so relateable.

My 2 sales stints have been at Jammu and Karnataka, quite the opposites in terms of culture. In Jammu, sales would go up just on the basis of an emotional pep talk. In the south, there's much more rationality involved.

Anyway came back from Hyd to Mysore where we had a branch meet. Fared well in the bowling contest, sucked in the go Karting and hit the only 6 of the match in cricket. All in all good fun. Thanks to God, Karnataka has done some terrific achievements which were all celebrated.

Kooks was here for the weekend which meant general life discussions at 3 in the night and then after a scrumptous lunch at French loaf on Sunday headed to Kolkata which is where this post began.

BTW on the last day in Kol (was there for 4 days) had some nice cheese samosas at Nahoum, which lead to saree shopping abely guided by Tina and then rounded off with a good dinner at Mocambos. Tried this cocktail called Rum Collins which is a white rum + scotch combi with lime and some sugar in it. Somwhat close to a daquiri but much smoother. Infact, the taste had everyone on the table ordering it.

Came back yesterday first flight where I also had the cmpany of Neha and a couple of other PP people who were heading out for a leadership program. Thanks to the odd time and a very cold flight with no blanket courtesy a Jet airways scam called Jet Konnect, I had this terrible headache all of yesterday. All the office lemon tea really didn't help make it better.

Today is Saturday and I am hoping for a quiter weekend, which won't happen and probably some soccer on Sunday.

Life is taking me places again. It is still exciting in a very different way.

Luv,
Pranay

P.S.: Had a couple more comments about my new found maturity. Could it be true??