Review : Lahiri Resorts

 

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5. Staff could have been more friendly though we had no complaints. A little bit overpriced though in sync with all other such resorts. Selling point is reach-ability from the city and the swimming pools. food is alright. Good kids' play area.

Lahiri is one of the very few resorts which is very reachable (at least from my side of the time). The ring roads and the radial roads (all curiously named after the same person - Jawahar Lal Nehru by some co incidence which is helped by continuous congress rule in this state) make sure that even if the distance is increased, it is very pleasant to drive. Our designated driver (which takes on the role of wife and mother when she is not driving) was so happy to cross the three digit barrier, that too near shouting distance from the city. She maneuvered our old rickety chariot very well and ensured that we hit the desired location within fifty minutes of confirmation of the booking. Our main criterion was that this should be the high light of kids' one week vacation. Because of this the target was ( as always, though because of some solid reason this time) kids' having fun. And with that perspective it went pretty well, though not completely according to plan, you will know as you read on. After the heavenly ride on the outer ring road and some non entirely unlike Holmes investigation about the directions after we got off the ring road, we reached the desired location. with all the diversions because of our decision to not ask for directions and to take the most risky roads, it measured nearly fifty kilometres. First activity was the room selection. As usual we request them to give us a royal tour of all the possible accommodations.

Here it involved following options:

Deluxe room (like any other hotel room), queen's room - which is almost the same size of the deluxe room with a sit out thrown in.

King's room - this has an independent and private entrance and a balcony stout overlooking the lazy river(my guess is that the size is same as the queen's room)

Emperor's room: This we did not get a chance to see. As we as well as the staff figured out that it will be completely off the budget and did not explore further.

One of the most interesting thing that happened was that the elder one ( also known for his aversion from water more than a water-jug deep) suddenly took to water. This resort also was the most ideal place for it. I mean if it could have happened any where near Hyderabad, this would be the place for it. And that brings me to the best selling point of this resort. The piece de resistance if you would of this resort is its swimming pool. This is basically according the me and my family and what fit us best. You may have your views :).

They have a fantastic pool with trees bending over clean blue waters. The pool is shaped so that it gets some aesthetic elegance, at least from my point of view. Kids have their shallow pool connected to the main pool, apart from that there is also a gentle slope where you can watch your kids and let them take the learning part of swimming on. As this was the first time both my kids were in the water and the elder one was just getting used to it whereas the younger one is too young to understand swimming, we took it slow and never left the kids' pool. The elder one tried a dive and took in good dose of water. According to the way I was taught swimming, this is the real start of any learning.

Once you are in and out of water twice, gulping good quantity in the process, you really know what water is. You understand it as well as respect it. You know the joys as well as the dangers that lurk. I do not think he got it all ,but hopefully it would have registered some where in his sub conscious for sure. We spend most of our time there swimming, either in the water slides or in the pool. The other attractions of the resort contain a good kids' playing area, a treetop (more or less so) restaurant still under construction and spacious artificial river where we can use some pedal boats and a hanging bridge on top of this river.

We had a small trouble with the room service where the water was not hot during rush hours. but I think after staying for so much time in water, the last thing you want is another bath :). Though this irked missus cum driver a lot as she did not swim at all. In the end, it was a wonderful getaway which I think is enough to put a good punctuation mark to kids's Ugadi holidays :)

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest

This is how I felt while writing this. So beware

    

This is a queer book that has got me thinking and really has got my goat. This breaks all the stereotypes. The success lies in the fact that it bares all the facts of life in plain black and white. It also shows the real nature of success and taboos that the society builds around it.
It is in fact a stark book, a tragedy where the hero is killed by the narrator before the narrator runs away from the asylum. But the writing is so powerful that you keep on agreeing that that's how it should have ended.
This is a very well put allegory where the writer never ever comes out and explains his points. But it really hits the centre of the soul. It is an effort the portray the struggle between the independent spirit of a man and the decadent ever present system that are fighting. Man is just a conduit for the spirit to rage its battle. This particular man has given his spirit on to a number of other inmates and now what is left of him is just an imitation. A man is alive by what he has done and what he could do. McMurphy is killed because in his vegetable stage, he can not be used as a victory symbol by the system.

Let me start where it all begins, the story is told by a Red Indian who is son of a very powerful Indian chief. The Adobe Indians are made to lose their way of life. They live their live by spear fishing on the falls from rickety scaffoldings. But the government wants to build a dam and pays them handsomely. But the question is how much is the cost of a man, of his way of life. The chief denies all this but then he is brow bitten by the whole system in to accepting this deal. The money ensures that the Indians have stopped being the men they were. The narrator feels the person growing in size when ever he sees the spirit living with in him. This makes more sense than the actual feeling. In fact I was feeling pretty nutty myself when I was reading this :)

So all his life the narrator has been looked at as an outsider and ignored. This is when he grows depressed and acts as a dumb and deaf, starts hallucinating. The ward is full of other social rejects and most of the cases they are there not because they have some serious psychiatric problem but they are there because they were week and were defeated by the society and were forced to accept their defeat and still exist.
The society is represented by the strict nurse who lords it over every one, including the doctor. She is very good and ensuring that every one complies and she rules her kingdom ruthlessly. The problem is that her kingdom is based on fear and compliance. The depressed patients are further pushed in to more depression and need the therapy more and more. She ensures that people are more and more dependant on her rather than on each other. Even the group therapy sessions are turned in to a game of self loathing and finger pointing.

In such a situation comes in McMurphy will full of independent spirit and going forward he wins the hearts of the people by openly rebelling against the rule of the nurse. The nurse tries to get him to tow the line.
McMurphy tries different things to get the people understand the meaning of freedom and laughter and pleasure. He gets them on a fishing expedition, gets to change the television timings,gets the restrictions on cigarettes revoked. Gets in to fist fights with the ward boys, breaks the glass of the watch station and ensures that it remains broken.
But the nurse keeps coming back. He tries to get her humanness and fallibility out in the open. He is given repeated shock treatment and is made to suffer physically. But he rises to challenge again and again.
It all goes out of hand when he brings some whores to the dorm and they spend the whole night revelling. At the end, the nurse catches them and tries her old formula of attacking a man's self esteem. She manages to trouble on of the weaklings so much that he commits suicide. McMurphy assaults her and show that he can make her human by showing her fear.
From this point onward, the establishment has a winning streak. Though the spirit is kindled in the folks and a good number of them move out of the hospital, unafraid of the real world.
They perform lobotomy and McMurphy and turn him into a vegetable state. The Indian denies the system the final victory though by killing him by suffocating him with a pillow. He then runs away, wild again in the open in the element his people so revered.
He plans to visit the place where the Adobe Indians are again building the scaffolding around the wall of the dam, trying to fight the system, trying to live their live the way they want to, despite all odds. Even if it may look mindless to others, this is what they want to do, as this is their way of life!!!

Next steps. If you are not impressed enough about the book, I urge you to watch the movie (same name as the book). Though the book is more haunting, the movie with Jack Nicholson is fantastic.

If you are more interested in the actual facts: here they are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(film)

The world bids adieu to anon …

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fy6yz/51_hours_left_to_live/

Continuing with the somehow uncomfortable subject of death, here is another.

This person, after undergoing all the pains and indignities of suffering from an incurable cancer, decides to go for a well deserved death with dignity.

From the exchanges, looks like he’s lost almost everything while fighting for survival. The medicines and procedures have bought nothing but pain.

He takes his chances going public and the internet responds. They take him in his fold and brighten his end. The most moving part is where across the globe they explain the surroundings and make him travel the whole globe.

Here is a man, who does not have money,health or even time to do any of these things, but he bids farewell to a bunch of strangers who give him more than his own life has given him.

Talk about being a global village, this is actually a global family !!

Eulogy to a stranger

 

Dear stranger,

we have never talked before. Neither do I know your name. I did see you but you would definitely have not seen me. I saw your perfectly clean shiny bike, your perfectly ironed shirt neatly tucked in to your trousers. Even the death throes did not hide the fact that you did most of the things very well and perfectly. Even the way the accident opened your head was almost clinical. The newly laid black tar road spotless under you.

 

The city bus parked half-hazardly just a few feet from your body made it clear whose fault it really was.

 

You must have been a caring son, a loving father and an understanding husband, a trusted friend and a smiling stranger. All that brought to the end by one mistake. I do not want to say that the end was unnecessary and tragic. It is just Karma and it happened because it was supposed to happen this way.

What else is life but a dewdrop within a dewdrop, a dream within a dream? And you might have dreamt well. At least my religious belief says that death is not a full stop. It is merely a reset and you get a chance to do every thing all over again and again. What did yours say?

I definitely imagine your near ones’ uncontrollable grief. No words can describe or comfort them, at least I do not have those words. so you are the only one I can address. Because you would have already gone to the next step in your life and all this would not matter much to you. Does it?

I think there is only one way to know, and I will know when I will know. There is still time for that. There is still time I dream this dream within dream.

My unseen, unmet friend. Adieu. Well lived and all the best for the next turn. Let’s hope we meet in these cycles again. Would we remember then?

Who knows?