Stalactites,Stalagmites, Catfishes & Spotted bass;-)

I know the title doesn't make any sense - like my previous weekends !! Most of my weekends were wasted either worrying abt some escalations of that week or worrying abt meeting preps for the coming week ... The worst scenario being @ the receiving end when you clearly know that you donot have direct control over the situation , but that is called team work ;backing up your team eventhough that means you being christened a "bad boy " ;-)

Lets get to the fun part - I wanted to enjoy the outdoors this long weekend , as most of the times I was dungeoning in my single bedroom apartment..So Sunday morning we (two married couples + myself an odd man out) drove to a place called crystal caves - its abt 1:30 hr drive from our place.. We had a tour of the cave and the story in short - a brother-pair accidentally discovered its existence in 1881 and then later it was commercialized by a OOB-thinking entrepreuner in 1941.. The cave has three levels and is well maintained (obviously its in private hands and a money-maker) and they provide a guided tour for 10 bucks.. The cave must have been real scary when the Vanasse Bros hit it first , its real scary without the lights even now.. There are three levels in the cave and an artificial water body adds glamor to the aesthetics.. We had the unique experience of experiencing 100% darkness , no light whatsoever and if you think you do see something thats just ur brain doing a mental mapping (coz for us to see we got to have light reflected). Then we had a unique experience of seeing the stalactites and stalagmites - used to be always confusing during my geography study days - the guide gave a hint : stalactites - they hang 'tight' from the roof & stalagmites - they 'might' reach the roof ;-) smart aint it !! If I had visited it before may be cud've added a couple more marks in my geo exams ...Then there were bats and it was a real batty experience .. not the vampire ones of course these were less than the size of ma thumb for height ...batliputs ;-)
Then we moved on to our best thing - eating , there was food - biriyani, chappathi , egg curry and my own prawn tandoor. We heated them on the stove we carried and to top it we had good wine and some beer . We still had around 6 hours and how can we waste sometime off our lovely life ? we made our move towards our second destination the St.Croix river - we rented out a boat that served as our home for the next 4 hours , bought some minnows as bait for some river fishing - believe me those minnows were big enuf to be fried and eaten ;-)
We had our luck in fishing like 8 catfishes and a spotted bass ..we also had a small thunderstorm pass us when we anchored midway in the river - the boat swayed at varied angles but it held good .. late at nite we had some thai dinner ..
The fishes had to wait till the next day to find their spots in our bellies - marinated & fried.My friends and me had a fun time in my balcony with music and some champagne along with the roasted fish...

One of my friends had rightly pointed out that my "blog is never complete without description of food ", the reason being all good things that are happening to me mostly revolve around food - whose fault is that ;-) I am a complete socialist when it comes to food , and believe me all the vegeterians owe me big time for keeping the food chain intact ...

Smile Manufacturers - "no artificial flavors"

I had a couple of tiresome weeks at work >> really long days tiring me up mentally , so planned to chill out the weekend .. so part of the plan i watched the movie 'motorcycle diaries'.. am a fan of Che , there was a part in the movie that touched me the most when Che swims across the river dividing the leper colony and the doctor's quarters to celebrate his birthday along with the lepers.. That was really a great thing to do as Che was asthmatic and the river water was very cold to venture, except for the True Smiles there was no other 'return on investment' ..

They are the true smile manufacturers - the others in the list who come to my mind and little knowledge are Baba Amte, Mother Teresa etc. I am a stern believer that if you can extract the real smiles out of people around you - you have done something great and it always brings a genuine 70mm on ur face too ....

One more instance when i've seen that real smile was when myself and my close friend made a trip to pondy. We had reserved a hut styled room alongside the seashore for a a couple of nights .We enquired what the taxi fare must be and it was around 1500 - 2K bucks for up and down - we thot we can put that use at some good place in pondy. The mrng we packd our bags and just hopped into an mtc bus to pondy - 22 bucks each with a movie for free ;-) and lots of passengers for free-looking and commenting .. We reached pondy in abt 3 hours - around 830ish.. checked into our hut alongside the shore..it had a mini fridge - we didnt dare take anything out of it coz the small water bottle (ironically named himalaya) had a sticker on it "saying loud - I would cost u 70 bucks" (now i got the naming convention being followed).We then wanted to walk by the beach ,but my friend and we being nature lovers didnt want the resort's barrier to stop our morning walk - so we planned to jump the wall and have a free stroll>>>
Call it destiny or balancing the food chain - while enjoying da waves and walking we came across a group of local fishermen , huddled together and picking out fishes from their net - their overnight catch !! My eyes popped out and my friend could sense that all - we sat there and as i am a lover of crab , asked them to pack some crabs for me. I paid 100 bucks and they had about half a bucket of fresh caught crab for me - and trust me they pickd the best ones. You end up paying more than double of it for about 1/20 of the quantity - now i know what supply chain means .. ;-) Then i started a convo abt how i wanted to taste them right now but handicapped for a kitchen etc etc., they were so happy to help us out - come back in an hour we shall have it ready - golden words of the moment !! We left the beach - took an auto - bought a bottle of bacardi white - at chennai we cud've ended up with green label or bagpiper >> and returned back after an hour. I still remember the smiles and gleam on their faces when we returned and positioned ourselves in their sheds by the shore - far more comfy and lovable than our 1500 per nite cabin. We had a great meal - fresh crabs cooked in local ground spices . hmm i donno how much i ate - but again its for balancing the food chain as many guys dont take crab - think of a situation if crabs were not eaten find crabs walking sideways all over our roads - not good right ;-) thank me !!! Got new friends in pandian , bhoomi etc etc. We spent a gr8 amount of time talking - their worries were mainly abt their children growing up and their education. So the next time we went we had taken some books along for them ... the smiles on their faces were instantaneous - the 100% genuine smiles .... We took back three things 'lotsaa satisfaction' , 'tons of genuine smile memories' & a promise of spending a night in the catamaran with open skies and sea below with lots of crabs and us between
One thing for sure - a genuine smile doesnt just involve ur lips - it needs support from ur eyes too; same thing holds good for a genuine kiss tooooooooooooooooooooo .. the meaning of the word genuine is left out for ur judgement !!!