On Top Of The World...

Ganesh festival is one of my favorites, every year it gives me a life time experience and memories. This year was also not an exception J This year I mate few really interesting personalities, most of us were not knowing them till 19 May, 2012 – successful summit of Mt. Everest.

Two young boys, Prasad Joshi and Ganesh More came to our colony, to show us the short film on Giripremi's Mt.Everest expedition. It was an informal get together sort of session and we were free to ask anything to them. Boys stood up on the stage, and whole environment got filled up with a well deserved, big round of applause. The film started and none of us could say a single word in between. Expressions on our faces were enough to express our feelings and reactions. We were witnessing one of the most difficult expeditions; with our brave mountaineers and real heroes of the film J Every sec. in the film was full of Himalayan beauty and challenges. Expressions on the faces of two new friends were telling us much more than the film. Those huge, beautiful, snow covered, dangerous mountains have witnessed the bravery of our young friends. Film explained us the total journey, right from the idea of this expedition till the Mt. Everest summit, the highest point on earth. Team was preparing for this big challenge emotionally, mentally, physically and financially for last couple of years. While mentioning this, team also thanked every one for their direct and indirect support.

The film ended up with lots of questions and curiosities in our minds. But I swear, no one could utter a word for 10- 15 min. It was so stunning. Then Prasad started sharing the experiences they had at Pune, Delhi, Base camp etc. and we also started shooting our questions to him :P We could see the happiness in his eyes when he told us that, he was the first amongst their team to step on to the Mt. Everest. We could feel the pain in his voice, when he was telling us that few of his team mates could not summit, due to some technical problems. We asked him silly questions as well like What you used to eat and drink during this? How is culture at Mt. Everest? How you managed to cope up with emotional balance? I asked Prasad, we know Mt. Everest as the highest point, but is it a peek? I mean can more than one person stand on Everest at a time? I know its one of the silly questions but he answered it as we can stand in a group as well, but due to rush it’s not possible. The answers created few more questions, obviously how THERE can a rush? But yes, every year a lot of many people try to summit the Mt. Everest, but only few gets succeeded and one of such brave man was standing with us J.

Prasad told us, during their journey form camp I to Mt. Everest, every team member was accompanied by a Sherpa, each of them were frequent visitor to Mt. Everest. There is a Sherpa, who have visited Mt. Everest 22 times :O :O :O .We also got know that, when teams from other countries try to summit, they have few professional videographers and cameramen in the team, who actually prepares the video and present it for the rest of world, but with our Indian team, no cameraman was there, whole shooting and photos are taken by team member.  The treasury of experiences was unlimited and time was running too fast. Finally we promised for another get together and winded up the show.

I returned home, but could not sleep; all the pictures were coming in front of my eyes, one by one. My heart was Congratulating the Giripremi Team and all direct and indirect supports. Big Thanks to the whole Team, for creating such a wonderful film and taking us with you; on top of the world…!!!

日本語 - Japanese Part II

Country of Rising Sun – Japan, and We… Japanese learners landed to the Indian City of Rising Sun… Kolkata… The sun makes this city to get up really too early… almost at 4 am. The day we landed to Kolkata was Dashera… Most important and last day of Durga Puja. We were having 2 days to settle down in this new city. Almost all of us were first time visitors to Kolkata and were very curious about the city, people and the Bengali culture.

We joined our company in Kolkata, and Japanese gave us another shock. We got to know that our company was tracking our Japanese performance from the very first day and we were performing horribly. HR person was scolding us like anything, and we could not even look into his eyes, Bengali anger u know... That raised an alarm in our minds. Company appointed a Japanese teacher for us and this time she was actually from Japan :)  Simultaneously our company training started as well.

To start with, our Japanese teacher decided to know about our Japanese knowledge and she was surprised and happy with us. Coz Japanese is a really tough language and she knew it very well.  On every alternate day, another Japanese batch from Kolkata used to join us. OMG…!!! They were so fast… Were so good at Japanese. Teacher used to ask a question and they used to throw the answer out of their mouth. Literally, before the teacher finishes the question, they used to start shouting like any thing…Few of us use to join them in shouting, that’s just our voice and no answer :P Japanese teacher used to get scared of that voice :) Kolkata batch was master of grammar, vocabs and most imp listening. Soon, teacher found out the lacking point in our batch and started focusing on those areas. Now we were also serious, few - because this became prestige issue for our batch and few – after all it was a question of money that we paid for.

We had no other option but to study, at home as well. Here thanks to my friends. We used to study together, found out few tricks to remember the vocabs, used to explain grammar to each other. Listening was the real challenge, as we could never used to get single word from the conversion. Bit well in the vocab and grammar sections and we started studying for listening. We copied the CDs for conversions and used to listen them at home. Now here, first and the only rule – No laughing... toughest part of Japanese learning :P

Days passed with our studies and finally we came to our home location for the Japanese Exam. We reached exam hall and found people with lot of excitement. Exam ended and we took a deep breath of relief. Thankfully no one asked us about exam :) we returned back to Kolkata to finish up with our technical training and then realized the fun we had with Japanese… To our’s and other’s surprise we scored exceptionally well in the exam : D :D

Japanese not only taught us a new language and culture but so many other things… Gave us new friends, new city, new experience, new abilities, new environment, new opportunities, new challenges… list is unending … 

Country of rising sun, shared few rays with us to make our lives more beautiful…ありがとうございます 日本語 ... Thanks a lot Japanese... :) :)