Those of you who knew that I've been in Denmark for two weeks might ask whats so special about one particular Friday. It is very special for guys like me who hardly go out to see the real world instead of watching the world from a camera's eye ( I guess you all know how obsessed I'm with the movies ). Even though I've been here in Dublin for almost 17 months, I can't remember any real thing I encountered which excites me more than watching a movie except a trip to Wiklow mountains two months back ( which needs a separate post .. I'll soon work on that as well ). Some times I always questioning myself ' what exactly I'm here on the earth for'. Well, till date NO ANSWER . But this is a special day for me definitely . Before talking about that let me bring some thing else which leads to the excitement on that day...
Denmark is geographically very close to Germany, which is well known for its discipline and time management. You can see the same thing with danish people also. If they say the excursion bus will leave at 1.30 pm, that's it, you need to be there before 1.30 or you got to miss the bus. You could be a big guy anywhere else but for the bus driver you are just a lazy crap after 1.30. The first time I've seen even the city bus is as trusty as a clock. You will see the bus at exact time at each and every small stop. You can plan your journey as perfect as the word perfect. When we reached the hotel (on 17th of Aug) Post-Pub, where most of us ( 100 in total at three hotels) stayed during the School they gave room keys according to our name. In our respective rooms everybody got an envelop which contains all the information we needed, our name batch, an USB device, Tivoli excursion ticket, and a well organized time table for the 14 days of the School plus 10 lunch tickets. Believe or not I never read those instructions until my return flight taken off from Copenhagen where I've nothing to do kill my time except reading this stuff to get some relief from my co-passenger's snoring background score. There comes the surprise, it just looks like a dairy of events what I've gone through during the Summer School days. I tell you why it is that surprising. I've been to Italy just 4 months before this where you see otherside of perfection ( that deserves another post which might be a bit funny .. leave it for time being) . Anybody who got this great oppurtunity to visit south Italy will easily imagine my situation. So this is how the whole school went on. The interesting things during the school are well paced lectures, healthy&tasty lunches , uncontrollable cakes during the Tea breaks and not but not least the rainy excursion day. The excursion day is filled with three events. 1.) A visit to danish space musium, 3D movie about astrology etc ... stuff, 2.) A small tour to main places in copenhagen by walk and a 1 hour Ferry tour on the see which covers all greatest monuments( this is what they said, I can't understand why they are gr8 ) and 3.) Evening entertainment and dinner at Tivoli (ammusement park, this is the oldest amusement park in whole europe , well known for all europeans.. Its a BIG dream for all the kids , so for me). It reminds me our SUKOON, so I played all the shooting games(as I did in HCU , rajesh vayavur must remember some thing regarding this) which are supposed to be for kids and lost all of them to kids. All the day the RAIN also enjoyed with us with out a single break.
So thats how the School finished on 29th Aug at 4pm, The Friday.. There comes my big moments... As usually I came home and switched on my laptop to finish out the last two movies I've left with. My friend chaitanya came to me and expressed his enthusiasm to vist a place called Christiania, The Free City. This place is known as the most visited self governing place, which located at the heart of Copenhagen. If you want to learn about this place just google for it, you will see plenty of blogs,wiki page and a own website christiyania.org. People use to go there to buy all illegeal stuff like drugs etc.. The first word I said when my friend asked me to join with them was an obvious 'NO'. There seems to be nothing I can find there from the description given in wiki, so i said 'this place is never for me'. Then he said ' its neither for me, but just to experience such place in reality'. Me ' I've seen such scenes in plenty of movies, if you want I've 150GB of movies which contains places sranger than that' . He said 'but they are from camera's eye, you will not see the rest of the things what really are which for some reason the cameraman does not like to shoot'. That seems to be a convincing argument from him so after some hesitating moments I joined them. There is a danish guy with us to guide through. So we went there. At the entrance we saw a welcome board saying' Welcome to Christiania' , so we entered. On the otherside of that board (from christiania's side), its saying 'welcome to EU' . So christiania is not only isolated from Denmark also from european union. This immediatly remainds me our hyderabad issue during 50s , probably that would have been the situation with a self governing hyderabad isolated from rest of India if our Patel's heroic occupation never happened. Christiania is all about 85 acres only. I can't understand why those people leading such a pathetic lifestyle.. They are worst than a flood affected places in our india, the shoping areas are nowhere compatable to any existing places in the world as per my knowledge. Especially the living style, which nobody in the modern world dreams. They are 200 years behind rest of the Europe. Their community is too strong to fight with the denmark govt. in any kind of crisis which affects their individuality. Only 850 people with great unity sustains from all sorts of attacks from the rest of the world. Thats very amazing thing, but the flip side is they are fighting for what?, there is no other motive behind their isolation except that they want to be different from rest and want to fallow their own system. Besides there is a well organized, civilized world which always promises a lot of fascinating things. But they don't want that. I given a lot of thought on it and finally asked my friend ' why are they living like this' . The answer is very simple ' Its by choice, they want to live like that, '. Yes he answered , not only that question but also lots of others which I never think of before that ( may be he is unintensional ) . Yes I'm the one who is worrying about them, but they are never. They are enjoying it. There is no harm for outsiders from them, they just live like the way they want. Then I started thinking about me. Do I really living my life?. Well, still can't answer as I failed before. Then I starded counting how many times I restricted my self doing things which I some how wanted to. Aaah! they are too many to count without a calculater. Since I can't change every thing in my life, I decided to impose certain new things to my life which might give a little pleasure to the regular boaring ( I guess I've used this word so many times by now, which explains how boaring its really is) life. Then the danish guy wanted to goto the famous pub in copenhagen. Since I never been to any Pub, I want to give it a try and see whats there for me. The entrance fee is 80 krones (11 Euros) which seems expensive than a movie ticket in Dublin. Everybody else is also hesitating to buy it , but I don't know what drives me to do that , I'm the first to buy the ticket and rest fallowed me. They have stamped on my right hand wrist and given an empty glass with which I can have unlimited beer. Now I decided to taste the beer first time in my life. When we went to the cabin some thing dragged me back and I asked for some soft drink instead of beer. They said I need to pay for any thing else except the beer. So I paid for a lemonade and also took my portion of beer. When we sat on the table, still the hesitation. There comes another friend venkat, he asked me ' why are you hesitating, Is this your first time to drink alcohol ?'. I said 'yes'. Then venkat given me a valuble suggestion ' so you are infront of the barrier, you will be there until you taste the first sip, then every thing will change , you will fall on the other side of the barrier and will taste evarything else. Its you who have to decide. I would really encourage you if its a good thing. Unfortuanately its not. We all started at an age where one want to taste everything, but now you are in a age to think what is right or wrong. So choice is yours'. Then I started searching for my choice from my own life. I found it and handled my glass of beer to Venkat. Then onwards he was drinking with two glasses. So I wasted 80 krones for nothing . Just looking at my friends I felt jealous that I'm not able to get enough out of my 80 krones. Then there started two girls dancing on the dancing floor, they are a bit fatty and their dance seems to be very funny, a chinese guy ( I would say some asian) joined them with the funniest movements I ever seen in any movie. I've got a kind of confidence. The reason might be its a new place for me and I'll be leaving copenhagen the next day. And I decided to dance . Here worth to mention is I never danced at our DJ parties in HCU. I've some bathroom steps with me and I'm not sure whether I can make them again there . So I went to toilet and tried to recollect best among my toilet steps and came back. So I asked all my friends to escort me to the dancing floor. My advantege there is none of them know any dance. So I started slowly with dil chahata hai step, the one with kicking the air with your fist and jumping simultaneously. Then some people over there who are struggling to make any kind of move started fallowing me. Thats it I started dancing at 11.30 and stopped at 2.30 with two lemonade breaks. I have to say one thing from my heart ' I never think that I can dance like that before and never ever enjoyed more than that'. There comes the end of my great Friday. But I've got a new eye to look the same thing from a different perspective. The next day we went for Hamlet castle where the Shakespear's great story 'HAMLET' originally happened. Now then my story happened at 'CHRISTIANIA'...
ps: sorry for the long post. I skipped too many things to make it short. In the picture, I stood on a old crocodile.
4 comments:
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Maan! Thats awesome. It has been a pleasure to reading this blog. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Look at the English he has used, thats very impressive. I think most of have improved our English if not anything else (poor physics!!). Sometimes, I question myself what have I achieved in the past 20 months being away from India and the answer is there are hardly any moments which I can recollect of or which have left a long lasting impression on my brain. Thats because I always quantify my happyness with the past. But at the same time we got an opportunity to see the world from a different prospective. I could see the change (positive) in our way of perceiving the world.
Like most of us I was hesitant to visit new places and interact with new people. It seems that it is the basic psychology of Indians to be happy with what they have, though we lack many things. But things have changed slowely with the time. After all it was a big cultural shock for most of us. I transitioned from a state of 'no questioning' to 'questioning and finding a sensible answer'. That is a big achievment for myself. There are plenty of things which we have learnt but are not aware of it.
Well, sorry guys I have been a bit wayward. Lets come to the point. Here are few things which I liked about this blog
i) Me ‘ I’ve seen such scenes in plenty of movies, if you want I’ve 150GB of movies which contains places sranger than that’ . He said ‘but they are from camera’s eye, you will not see the rest of the things what really are which for some reason the cameraman does not like to shoot’.
This is an awesome statement from that guy and it is so true.
ii) Since I never been to any Pub, I want to give it a try and see whats there for me. The entrance fee is 80 krones (11 Euros) which seems expensive than a movie ticket in Dublin.
Here we can know what Sankar is all about. Most often we compare things in terms of something which we are fond of. Some people (Like sunny and me) would have said, "I can get a pack of beer."
And there is Venkat's words which sound very ordinary but they have lot of meaning in it.
Well guys I can go on and on and find things which I want to, in this blog.
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Shankar,
It is awesome, a good reality experiance. I liked one stament from the text is "so you are infront of the barrier, you will be there until you taste the first sip, then every thing will change , you will fall on the other side of the barrier and will taste evarything else. Its you who have to decide. I would really encourage you if its a good thing. Unfortuanately its not. We all started at an age where one want to taste everything, but now you are in a age to think what is right or wrong. So choice is yours’. Then I started searching for my choice from my own life. I found it and handled my glass of beer to Venkat"
Keep it up and as an novel you wrote
regards
Bheem
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@sunny,
Thanks for describing my post more elegant than it is originally... May be my first beer is still awaiting for me... lets wait for that... your nonplus will be cleared once you click on the image so that you can see the maximized version...
@srikant,
'Like most of us I was hesitant to visit new places and interact with new people. It seems that it is the basic psychology of Indians to be happy with what they have, though we lack many things.'... absolutely true... We can learn only when we want to.... My message is if you are happy with what you have got, no problem... but how do you know the things you never dare to see will make you happy or not unless you sense them...
I can remember a while ago you are the one who called me ' movie maniac ' or some thing like that.. again here .......
@Nag,
You have much flexibility than we to go further... You still in India where every thing changing with you... The people you around are much like you so you can always join with them to the excitement.. Here we need to mold ourselves to cope up with the existing environment... Hope you feel what i mean...
That was really wonderful! More wonderful was your language. That really left me gawking! Awesome! stupendous! incredible! I almost felt like reading few pages from a novel. Hey friendz doesn't this proves how beautiful is learning and keep learning more things at every step of your life. When a perfect language blends with a creative thinking, it always takes the shape like is shown by shankar above. Absolutely elegant. I have known him, atleast in speaking English, from nothing to heading to perfection.
I just want to convey to our friends(ofcourse, I learnt it too) to come out of that regular routine and try something different. The regular ones may be interesting, I agree, but there more beautiful things are awaiting your recognition. Give them a try. Obviously when you don't try something new, your first response would be "nothing new here, what's up there?"
Good one Sankar. But a bit nonplused if that "old crocodile" is a living being or non-living. And I would have really appreciated had you downed the peg full beer into ur stomach. B'cos I believe you agree it is always good to enjoy everything, unless that impulse is harmful for the rest of your life.
TIP OF THE DAY: Beer(mind u , little) is good for kidneys.
Cheerssssssss friends