4 days of living a dream I've wanted to live

A welcome break, a sweet victory, a sense of awe - that pretty much sums up the 4 days of the pilgrimage that Iam about to describe.12 of us set out from Mumbai to take part in one of the biggest festival melas that draws a huge crowd year after year, from all parts of India and aboroad.I spent the night of 24th Nov,2005 on a wonderfully entertaining train journey which witnessed even me,the Goddess of deep slumber, sleep for just two hours in all.After alighting at the station, we were very warmly received by our hosts,Sappy and Sunny who had come all the way from the temple to the railway station at 5am just to welcome us!A smooth ride on this chill morning through some of the best Indian roads I've seen, took us to our destination.One look at the marvel and we immediately understood why it was called an architectural wonder!What lay before us were huge lawns, carpetting an extremely vast expanse of land on which several well-spaced brick-finish blocks were carefully stacked like Lego building blocks.Following Sunny through what seemed to me like an interesting cave-like structure, we arrived at another huge lawn, which made me wonder whether this was laid out with an intention of turning it into a cricket or a football stadium some day!Some of us in the pack of 12, were so awe-struck at the sight of such beautiful architecture and landscaping that we clicked as many as 600 snaps in all, of this marvellous wonder! After completing our check-in formalities, we were ushered into our lodging rooms.Although seven of us were herded into a room meant for one, not once did we feel the discomfort during our entire stay there because we never really got to spend more than 2-3 hours a day, sleeping in the small crammed room.


The mela then began in full swing, with a zillion interesting events packed into every hour of the day.Every single hour of sleep we skipped was worth it.Even though we spent no more than 2 hours sleeping on each of those 3-4 nights, every moment was truly worth it. While some of these events tickled one's grey cells a lot, some others were studded with the most distinguished speakers dishing out immensely insightful and inspirational talks to the swarming crowd that had thronged the place.My team won the third prize in one such event and I very narrowly missed a victory in another :( An Australian team breezed their way to the first place, while the host team stood second.The mela hogged a lot of media attention as well and I, along with two of my friends were on air on NDTV for a while :) The mela also included a traditional Dandiya night.It was a pretty sight to watch even the foreigners donning traidtional Indian ghagra cholis, learning Dandiya steps from the home crowd and dancing away to glory.We were so smitten by the place, the crowd, the food - just about every thing, that we bunked some of the talks scheduled on our last day there and went around the huge premises clicking snaps instead!The inmates of this place, that deserves all the reverence it invokes in me for a lot of reasons, were a rare combination of smart+witty+down-to-earth: the kind of company I've been craving for ever since I left home.

Now let me stop beating around the bush and try being a little less cryptic.The TEMPLE in question is IIMA, the PILGRIMAGE is our recent trip to IIMA, the MELA is IIMA's fest 'Confluence',the distinguished speakers included Mr.Chandrababu Naidu,Mr.Mukesh Ambani,Mr.Vijay Mallya,Mr.Santosh Desai with his interesting ad-workshop and many more.

The first thing I had noticed at the station where Sappy was there to welcome us, was this line written on their batch T-shirt "IIMA - Don't you wish you were here?".Ahem ahem...If only dreams and wishes were horses that were gifted with wings Sappy, I'd've been your classmate now!Iam happy that I got to live a long-time dream, atleast for 4 fleeting days.Thanks so much for everthing.It's now time to return from dreamland back to a world where reality bites and I pray that March 2007 comes by asap.Amen!