Lumuhuku

So how do you plan to spend a Sunday, which is just 3 days away from India-Pakistan semi-final?

Though I have no clue about your plans, a friend and I decided to visit India-Pakistan border!!

Now, that was an exaggeration.

So coming back to realities – Both of us wanted to take a long drive away from the routine life. And for this very reason, we zeroed onto Barmer, Rajasthan].

On a Saturday, we drove around 350 Kms from our starting point to reach Barmer. On checking into a hotel and enquiring about the places to visit in Barmer, the reply which we got was not pleasant at all. To my horror and my friend’s disgust*, the receptionist told that Barmer was no tourist destination and there was nothing to see here.

[* - as it was my idea to drive into the Thar]

Though I had checked it on internet and I very well knew that there was not much here apart from disputed oil fields (Cairn-ONGC-Vedanta fame), I remembered having seen pics of border & railroads closeby. At this juncture, a friend AA, powered by Google  ;-)  informed that there is a place called Munabao in Barmer, which is very-very close to the border.

With nothing better to visit, we decided to go to Munabao the next day. All we had with us were the following tools –

1. A list of towns + map of the state
2. My friend’s mini monster*

Journey was totally ‘sand’alacious and full of dust. We just kept on ticking one checkpoint after the other as we passed it.

The only continuous reminder of we being a part of civilization was the railway track, which led to Pakistan.

We eventually did make it to the border. Unluckily, BSF did not ‘officially’ allow photography. But, as usual, there were alternatives…

And finally, the picture that said it all…

You Are At Last Indian Railway Station

As I have already mentioned, the heat was hellish. We did take a temperature-gauge with us and what it told was beyond belief

50 degree Celsius!

And if you see closely, our gauge had been designed to measure temperature upto 50 degrees Celsius only. So I am not sure whether the temperature was exactly 50 degrees or higher…

Being a bit statistically inclined, I realized later that we had driven a total of 1012 Kms in 31 hours! A year back we had done a biking trip to Jaisalmer and had done around 1200 Kms in 72 hours.

So this was one hell of an improvement

As of now, we have another trip being pre-planned. But I better keep it under wraps

A friend and I were having lunch in office. Our table only had space for two people to sit on opposite ends. And because of no special reason whatsoever, 4 glasses were kept on the table. Two being used by us and two were left unused.

At this, a colleague, who worked in finance dept. and seated on another table (without glasses), picked up one from our table and teased my friend –

“You are a mechanical engineer, and therefore, maintaining spare capacities.”

My friend got the joke and agreed to the fact.

At this, the Finance guy went ahead and added that it is bad to keep inventories as they are liabilities.

Another one from instrumentation dept. added that, we need to maintain ‘bypass lines & safety valves’ for unforeseen situations.

I am involved with SAP for most of my 8 hours in office & hence enlightened everyone with – “It is all about ‘over-delivery tolerance(s)’.”

So here, in the middle of a simple lunch, a spare glass was christened as following –

• Spare capacity
• Liability
• Bypass Line
• Safety Valve
• Over-delivery-Tolerance

Just imagine what would have happened if people from HR, Electrical & Planning depts. would have joined us for lunch?