Testimonial wars

Well u may have heard of World wars and Cola wars as well, here's a new kind of war, “Testimonial war”. The battleground for these wars is Orkut, for those who are unaware of it, it is a website meant for social networking. Off late people in our insti have got bitten by the Orkut bug and a large chunk of the student population here spends at least 2 hours daily on it, figures may be as high as 10-12 hours a day for extremists.

It has many features through which you can tell people about your interests and browse their interests as well. But there’s one feature which provides you with the facility of telling your friends what you think about them- by writing testimonials for them. Of course the receptor has the right to permit or deny any particular testimonial from appearing on his page, which can be viewed by public.

Now most of the testimonials are sweet types, using all those good words for you, like you are excellent in such and such field, you are a gem of a person or the one most common among girls: “she’s a perfect combination of brain and beauty” (how phoney!!). But there are others who write sarcastic testimonials for you, using sentences with double meaning, disclosing ailing truths about you, and mocking at certain weird statements made by you accidentally or “logically” (in some cases). These are people who know you a bit too well, people from your inner circle. This is where the “Testimonial wars” originate from, I mean, it’s ok for people in a closed circle to know and laugh at certain things about you, but sharing such information in public, nah… it’s the worst thing to do, isn’t it?? When some friend of yours writes such ailing (not necessarily true always) words, it makes your blood boil, and you seek vengeance. The older way “khoon ka badla khoon se, testimonial ka badla testimonial se” seems as the best thing to do. This is when you are waist deep into a “Testimonial war”, but you don’t stop with this, you feel a new zeal to write testimonials for each one who laughed after reading your testimonial, you begin with a hit list and proceed from one friend to another, to ruin his’/her’s public image, now you are neck deep into it. And it’s not only you, all your friends are doing the same, now you all can laugh on each other, its anyway better than you being the only laughable matter, isn’t it??

And there is one unsaid rule (like that of Omerta) that sees that the war goes on, no one denies/deletes the testimonial written by others, the punishment is severe-- your scrap book will be flooded by scraps mocking at you.

I have just entered one such fierce battle recently, and am having some great time with it. It began in the usual way, someone wrote one for me and then I did the same in revenge, have just completed another one, this time a sort of sweet one, for a friend of mine “begged” me to write at least some good words for him after I wrote an excellent one for him. “yaar bandiyan kya sochengi, kuchh to izzat rakh” was his appeal….. granted.

ek kavita - meri disha

click on the image for a better, readable view.

The Guide

After a lot of discussion (and googling of course) we finalized Harishchandragarh as our trekking destination. It's a common trekking place near Mumbai and one can easily find 2-3 trekking groups there on any given Sunday, especially during this time of the year. Some websites suggested that taking a guide from the village at the base of the hill, khireswar, would be a good idea, I anyway decided against it, trek is all about adventure afterall. After a 2.5 hour long journey (by bus) from Kalyan we reached Khubi-phata, this was the place from where we had to walk about 4 kms to reach Khireswar- from where the actual trek would begin.

While on our way to Khireswar a pet bitch joined us somewhere in between, she was quite a friendly animal but somehow we felt quite irritated when she kept walking with us for more than a kilometer. I don’t find it comfortable to use "it" for animals so I've used she/her at appropriate places.
We tried to shoo her away several times by throwing pebbles at her, but she wont go back, she'd go somewhere temporarily, but return back in some time. Even when we halted in khireswar for some snacks, excellent poha and tea with high sugar content :), she accompanied us in the hotel (actually the verandah of a house), even there we tried to shoo her away but she kept running round the table and finally we gave up.
As we proceeded for the trek she kept coming with us. Now the route to the top of the mountain, where there were some ancient caves and temples, was marked on the rocks but was difficult to keep track of. This bitch really helped us by going on the right path wherever there were two or more paths to choose from.
When we reached some height we decided to have some snacks and then carry on our journey, this was a somewhat rocky patch and we barely had enough space to sit there. As soon as we opened our biscuit packets, some monkeys came out of the blue to snatch it from us, and believe me, given our position we had no way to run from there or drive the monkeys away. But again our “Guide” came to our rescue and shooed all the monkeys away. She kept barking until all the monkeys left the place, that was when we developed real likeness for her (very selfish, right?).
She went the whole distance with us, it took us around four hours to reach the peak and all the time she walked at our pace, waiting for us wherever we took a break. She even accompanied us downwards and also went with us all the way to the bus stand. All of us had the same question in our mind, does she do this on a daily basis, just for some biscuits?? Or was this an exception?? I can’t somehow agree to the biscuit theory. Do you?