Author Archives: nandanjha

Swarna Jayanti Park - Indirapuram, NCR - A Photo Essay

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The new satellite townships of Delhi are not known for planning real large/huge city-parks. Most of the energy is gone towards planning the residential apartments, commercial complexes and then whatever little space is left, small parks get thrown in. There is one right in front of my house but its not really a city park, something which is usually very big and have different areas for walking, playing, recreation etc. So when we came to know about Swarna Jayanti Park, we decided to make a visit.

Location - Here’s google map. Its interactive and you can open it in a new window and search a way from your home/office.


View Swarna Jayanti Park in a larger map

The one called ‘GDA Park’ in the map is the one I mentioned above as something which is right next to my house.
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Ghumakkar - 5 steps towards writing your FIRST story

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Sometime back, I wrote a post on ‘Write a Story at Ghumakkar’ and it was found helpful. As we dug more about the need and the feedback, we realized that the post is a little advanced for a newbie. By the time, folks write a couple of stories they tend to then follow the stuff in the post and that was definitely not our intention. We wanted to write a post for newbies.

So here’s a fresh re-attempt (that sounds like an oxymoron) and there is an emphasis on ‘First Story’ part. Read on and let me know whether this makes sense and I would update it based on what I hear back.

5 Steps towards writing your FIRST story at Ghumakkar

1. Visit Ghumakkar and click on ‘Register’, just under the top photo.


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Ghumakkar - Map your destinations

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When writing a new story, now you can put a ‘marker on a map’ for the destination you visited. This has been requested for a while and though we tried various options viz. adding google map code, having a ‘Map View’ page etc, none of them were really easy solutions. It seems that our search for an elegant solution for ‘mapping my destination’ has yielded something which would work for our needs.

Here’s step by step guide.

1. Go to Dashboard -> Posts -> Add New for a new story. OR to Dashboard -> Posts -> Edit for an existing story.
2. Scroll down to bottom of the screen and you would see following.
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Ghumakkar - Time your travel-posts right !!

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Has it ever happened to you that right after you published your story, a new one slided in , almost in no time. The temptation of seeing your work in print is hard to resist. Ghumakkar displays stories on its home page based on time of publishing, so a recent story would be featured on top, though we have enough feedback to suggest that we should let Ghumakkar editors control the top of the shelf space. While internally we debate more on this, here’s a small step-by-step which might work, if all of us try to follow this.

Essentially, what you can do is that you can ‘schedule’ your posts to a future date. A small calendar would help you to quickly scan for ‘free dates’ (it sounds like an oxymoron, free dates) and if you (and everyone else) pick a date which is not already taken, then your story would get top-of-the-shelf for probably one full day.

1. After you are done with writing, take a look at the calendar. This is on your right.

2. This calendar shows you the dates in green, these are the days on which a post is already scheduled. Do not pick them. Once you find a date, then instead of clicking ‘publish’ button, click ‘Edit’ adjacent to ‘Publish Immediately’. Choose a future day and time. In the below example, I chose June 02, 2010 at 0600 hrs.

3. As you press OK, you would notice that [Publish] button has changed to [Schedule]. Click it.

The calendar is just an added convenience, the feature to schedule your stories was there all the time. The Calendar helps you quickly scan the ‘free dates’. One other way to look at currently scheduled stories is to click at ‘Scheduled’ after you are in ‘Posts’ views/

A post could be one of the following viz Published, Scheduled, Drafts, Trash.


Click on image above to see it in big size

You should be able to look at currently scheduled posts by clicking on ‘Scheduled’.

Typically Ghumakkar doesn’t get more than one post every day, so if we all choose a free day, we get more time at the top of the page. And if you do not find anything scheduled for today and the last story is been there for at least a day, go for instant Nirvana and click [Publish]

Shantaram By Gregory David Roberts - Book Review (5/5)

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The big tome was gifted to my wife by someone about 3 years back. I think it came in 2005 and I finally picked it up from the top shelf of my wall clinging shelf-mesh-cum-library last month. Its 900+ pages and I am not a big fan of such heavy books, being a lazy reader I often take few life-times to finish one but of all the gambles I have taken in picking fat books (including ‘Zen and the art..’) I have been always able to finish.

So I finished this a while back and waited for couple of weeks to settle my oozed-out wonder-stuck eyes, gives some rest to my often-excited lower left pump and sort of let-it-sink before I attempt to write a quick review. Often the initial excitement dies down to a more informed insight and time makes you better.

My overall rating for the book is 5/5, after a long time. The last one I guess was ‘The Kite Runner’. Here’s a short scoop

Its based on Robert’s own life in Mumbai, an Australian fugitive who is on a run and finds Mumbai interesting enough to hang-on. Its not an auto-biography but its a fact based fiction , now that sounds like a lawyer-lingo. Well, the protagonist is the author himself and he goes through his life in Mumbai as an expat, as a slum-dweller, as a mafia and finally finding himself amid Mujahideens. The plot is brilliant and characters are juicy and full and David ensures that the narration is engaging, novel but at the same time full with thrill.

The book is a Philosophical fiction by someone who takes us into those areas where a bulk of us have no access viz. Jhoparpatthis (slums), Black Markets / Mafia, Jails, Drugs and what not. Its a great read for academic purposes since it deals with today’s world and while it would have its own share of writer’s creativity , the details around Arthur Road Jail, Durgs, Cold Turkey are something which doesn’t look far from reality. And mind you, the book is not about the main character, Lindsay aka Lin Baba aka Lin Bhai but it gives equal justice to all the others and doesn’t make it into a self soul-search saga. Too many things happen all the time and all the characters go through a lot of transformations, in the end it almost reads like a suspense thriller where you would want to know, what would happen now.

There is a plan to make a movie where Johnny Depp is going to play the lead role, directed by Mira. The latest plan for release is 2011. For more than few times, I felt like doing a movie playing Lin and after some deliberation with myself, I settled for Nazeer.

Here’s the wiki link and there is also a official website here.

Shantaram is the 2nd of a quartret which David has planned but I dont think other 3 ever made it or made it so far.

The book is also greatly recommended for folks who are looking beyond thrilling-engaging-edgy reads, some of the lines are exceptional.

I know with 900+ pages, it may sound thick but read it for ‘Character Building’ and one which you would enjoy unlike the traditional ‘Character Building’ activities. If you read the book, I would be delighted to read your views about the book in the comments section. I am hoping that if you chose to read this after my recommendation, I didn’t let you down.

I just finished ‘Outliers’ by Malcom Gladwell and that review should happen shortly.