convocation pix

(From left to right) Rajni, Vineet, Vartika, Santosh, Raj, Nishi, Me, Disha, Rajesh, Manish, Vikas, Vallabh, Anjali

This is one of the convocation pix.

Pushkar & Ajmer tour with Papa

Papa at Ajmer shareef dargah

I got a chance to visit Pushkar and Ajmer-Shreef with my papa. He was in Jaipur to see me. I had carried my digital camera with me, but forgot to take the cell. Unfortunately, cell was not available in shops at Pushkar. While returning, in Ajmer, I remembered that I was carrying camera in my mobile phone also. I took the advantage and clicked some pictures.
It was my second visit to Pushkar. First time I was there with my classmates, sent for an educational trip from my institute - IICD, Jaipur. This time, it was a completely different experience. Pushkar is half an hour distance from Ajmer. Buses run frequently from bus terminus. There is no any rail service to Pushkar. Pushkar is surrounded by hills, so buses go up to the hill and then go down to reach there.
Pundits (god men) were after new entrant to have a good catch from the bus stand itself. A pundit in his 20's were also after us and finally we had to give up. He promised us to show all temples in the Pushkar. But something else was in his mind.
God Bramha has only one temple in the world i.e. at Pushkar. There too, he is not getting offered prayers. All these emotional atyachar because his wife had cursed him so. His wife had got angry because he had made another girl sit beside him on the occasion of a yagya, where only wife has right to sit. He had done it due to a misunderstanding created by no other than his own son Narad. This is the story of god Bramha and his temple. This story was narrated by our pundit.
The Pushkar Sarovar (pond) is surrounded by 32 ghats (shores). Now-a-days, there is little water in the sarovar. The pundit took us at one ghat which had some water and told us to offer pooja at the sarovar. As we were two ( I and papa), so he took help of another pundit. Both of them made us offer pooja and had a thousand rupees as dakshina (fee). Right after the pooja, they told that they can not go with us any further, and we might have our way to the temple on our own.

Having such an experience at Pushkar, we were coutious at Ajmer dargah shareef. On the way to dargah we heard that khadims used to behave in the same way as pundits do at Pushkar. We had to walk about half kilometer to reach dargah shareef as vehicles are not allowed there. I bought a hanky to cover my head. Papa had already one. Before entering, we bought flowers, sweets, agarbatti (incense sticks) and a chaadar (sheet). No sooner than we had entered the dargah, a khadim followed us, offered us his service and without waiting for our consent, started acting as our guide.
Inside the dargah, there were so many khadims. They had surrounded the tomb in a way that no body could reach there. There were shouting and calling people to go near them. Once you reach there, they would touch you with a jhaaroo (broom) kind of thing on your head as a symbol of blessing of Kwaza. They ask money in return. Even Rs 10.00 would do. All of them were shouting and trying to attract the "customers". Meanwhile, our self appointed guide lost track of us and when we were out of dargah, he was not seen anywhere.
Right out of dargah, we got a rickshaw fortunately (The same rickshaw is seen in the picture). He took us to the railway station, where we got a train and reach home (Jaipur) by 8:30.
At Pushkar, we were amazed to see the number of foreigners staying there. I still don't know the correct reason behind it, maybe because it is important archaeological point of view or maybe something else. I will try to find out in my next visit.

Convocation Sep 2009

UG Dean Mr Yunus Khimani with his wife Ms Molina Khimani - a photographer with times of India - on the day of convocation

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It was great delight for all of us that after a long time ( some of the seniors had to wait unusual long) our convocation took place. We met and enjoyed our time.

On this occasion we missed CVS badly. I wonder why he was not invited.