Karbala-Najaf tour

The tour was aimed to visit religious places in Iraq in the cities of Karbala and Najaf as below:

1 - Imam Hussain a.s. Holy Shrine - Karbala
2 - Maoulana Abbas ibn Ali holy Shrine - Karbala
3 - Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Holy Shrine - Najaf
4 - Kufa Masjid  - Kufa

Day - 1 - Arrived at Najaf airport. Traveled to Karbala by bus. Did Ziyarat of Imam Hussain A.S, and Moulana Abbas ibn Ali.

Imam Hussain a.s. Holy Shrine - Karbala

Moulana Abbas ibn Ali Holy Shrine - Karbala

Day - 2 - Did Ziyarat of Ibrahim and Muhammed, sons of Muslim bin Aqeel at a place called Musaib, 40 kilometers away from Karbala.

Group Selfie at Musaib.

Ziyarat - Muhhamed & Ibrahim, Sons of Muslim bin Aqeel.- Musaib.

Day -3 - Went for ziyarats in and around Karbala. 

1 - Farm house (wadi) of Imam Jaffar us sadiq. 

2 - Khaima gah - A place where tents of the family of Imam Hussain a.s. were put up at the time of Battle of Karbala. 

3 - Zaineb tekri - A place from where Zaineb a.s (sister of Imam Hussain a.s.) saw the shahadat of Imam Hussain a.s. 

4 - Hurr ibn Yazeed Shrine. Hurr was one of the first martyrs in the battle of Karbala who was on the side of Imam Hussain a.s. 

Khaima gah - Karbala

Zaineb Tekri - Karbala

Hurr ibn yazeed Shrine - near Karbala.

Day - 4 - Traveled to Najaf Al Ashraf from Karbala. Did ziyarat of  Moulana Ali ibn abi Talib.

Holy Shrine of Moulana Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Day - 5 -  Did ziyarat of Hur and Saleh Nabi, Rasheed al hajree and mesam ut tamman. and then visited Kufa masjid for evening Namaaz. 

 Hurr and Saleh Nabi Ziyarat - Najaf 

Rushaid al Hajree ziyarat near Najaf.

Masjid al-kufa  - Kufa

 Day - 6 - Did ziyarat at Moulana Kumail shrine and visited place called Hannana, where Imam Ali's Janaza had passed from and due to which the trees of dates were bent down to show respect and mourning. After martyrdom of Imam Hussain a.s. , it is known that his head was kept at this place and due to which the trees of dates were dried out.

Masjid al-kufa 

Masjid al-kufa  

Masjid al-kufa gate -Baab Asghabaan 

(known after the miracle Imam Ali showed when the snake(asghabaan) entered Masjid through this door(baab) and had conversation with Imam Ali to solve difficulties faced by it)

Day - 7 - Did Ziyarat of Imam Ali and left for airport in the afternoon for the return flight to Mumbai. 

Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib holy shrine entrance - Najaf

Few more pictures of the trip --- 

@ Terminal T2 - CSI airport Mumbai. 

Iraqi man walks by, outside Zaineb Tekri - Karbala 

A replica of mashqi(water bag) outside Moulana Abbas ibn Ali holy Shrine - Karbala

(In the memory of his martyrdom which came when he was carrying water to quench thirst of his family members )

Tea at a restaurant - Najaf

Selfie outside Imam Hussain A.S. holy Shrine. 

@ Imam Hussain a.s. Holy Shrine - Karbala

@ Moulana Abbas ibn Ali holy Shrine - Karbala

Julus (Procession) outside Imam Hussain holy shrine - Karbala

Janaza(Coffin) being brought to pass through Imam Hussain & Moulana Abbas holy shrine, before burial - Karbala

Kabristan (cemetery/graveyard) at Najaf called Wadi-us-Salaam. It is known to be the largest and one of the oldest graveyard in the world, which has around 5 million bodies buried.

Traffic Police Patrol on the street- Najaf

Najaf Al Ashraf Airport - Najaf

Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai ?

One of the best poetries I have come across in recent years is the one from film Zindagi na milegi dobara; written by Javed Akhtar.

Jab jab dard ka baadal chaya
Jab ghum ka saya lehraya
Jab aansoo palkon tak aya

Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraya
Humne dil ko yeh samjhaya
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai

Duniya mein yunhi hota hai
Yeh jo gehre sannate hain
Waqt ne sabko hi baante hain

Thoda ghum hai sabka qissa
Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa
Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai
Har pal ek naya mausam hai

Kyun tu aise pal khota hai
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai....

Chand alfaaz

A collection of poetries / shayaris..


Uljhan hai ke naadani bhali, ya hai samjhdari behtar?
Aankhein jab khuli, kaee chehre azeez na rahe.. -- k.s.


Mere marne ka gham kisiko ho na ho..
tanhai zaroor royegi, ke mera saathi mar gaya....  -- unknown.


Bhatakti hai hawas, sone ki dukaano me...
Gharibi kaan chhidwati hain, tinka daaldeti hain....   -- Munawwar Rana


bohot keemti hain Tahurbe, yeh zindagi me badi seekh de jate hain,
azeez hain mujhe woh log, jo tohfe me Tajurbe diya karte hain. -- k.s. 

My Choice :P

*~*~*~ My Choice - An Employee's Version  ~*~*~* 

My Job, My Project, My Salary.... My Choice..!

To wear cargo, jeans or T-shirts I like at office... my choice
To follow office dress code or not... my choice

To work  at  project location  ...
To work at some other location  ...

Or to work from home  ...my choice

To come at office in shift timings..

To come at office on regular timings..

To come at office on weekdays or weekends or both ...my choice

Don't be upset if I come late to office...

Don't be fool, if I stay back late in office.. my choice

Technology, Project or Organizations can be changed... 

My Love for my salary cannot..  Understand that..

To spend more time at cafeteria or office gym...

To spend more time at library or desk...  my choice

Your Mind is a cage.. let it be..

I am not your slave... let me be me...

To offer foreign business travel opportunity...  your choice..

To accept the offer or not... my choice

Meetings, seminars, conferences, workshops... They are real waste of time..

To attend or not to attend them.... my choice

I am an employee, free to choose my work life..  This ( big...... pause) is My Choice.

---------------------------->

Original Video based on which this parody is created- Deepika Padukone – "My Choice" 

DISCLAIMER - Not meant to hurt anyone's emotions/sentiments. A work of parody/humor.

Parody - नामंजूर

This is my attempt to write a parody of four lines of a Marathi Song written by Sandeep Khare 

Original song Lines---

जपत किनारा शीड सोडणे - नामंजूर !
अन्‌ वार्‍याची वाट पाहणे - नामंजूर !
मी ठरवावी दिशा वाहत्या पाण्याची
येईल त्या लाटेवर डुलणे - नामंजूर !


Parody lines---

वाहतुकीचे नियम पाळणे नामंजूर !
अन side साठी wait करणे नामंजूर !

मी ठरवावी गति माझ्या वाहनाची  !
दुसर्या गाडीच्या मागे चालणे नामंजूर !

Parody based on traffic condition on roads in Pune....

P.S. - Sorry to those who do not understand Marathi. :(

my first memory of writing

This is the poem (prayer) written by me when I was 9 years old. Very interesting to know how my thoughts reflected in this composition and I could manage to put words in good rhyme too. :)
            

                    

Changing Times..

I want to write this blog post to pen down my experience of changing work culture in the Indian (IT) Industry.  8 years back I joined a french multinational IT company based out of Mumbai , India. My experience about the culture, work environment and overall employee satisfaction was very good. Employees used to get good salary hikes, lot of benefits, high value rewards for their good work and organizations used to make lot of effort to keep employees happy.

Then came the economic crisis in 2007-2008 and Indian Organizations reacted in a very Desperate way to deal with the situation. A lot of Organizations increased their daily working hours from 8 to 9 without giving any extra compensation for this additional 5 Hrs/week. Forced employees who were not assigned to a project to go on a sabbatical leaves. This fever of cutting down expenses rose to an extent where organizations were not ready to leave a single opportunity to save a rupee and started cutting down even smallest of expenses like coffee machines, office stationary, office courier, etc etc. Like this is going to fill up for the thousands of dollars of business they were loosing.

This did not even stop here and recently few organizations started Tracking the time of their employees not by their daily In and Out punch but by actually monitoring the access doors installed in the various places like production area, cafeteria etc. So this has come down to doubting the integrity of their own employees where they generate reports about how much time an employee was at his desk or in cafeteria, or somewhere else in the campus. I assume they have left places like washrooms :) where they don't track the time spent! Not heard about it yet but if it goes like this the day is not far when this will be a reality.

Organizations market themselves by putting tag line about how "people matter" to them or how they are "driven by values" and on the other hand  they doubt the integrity of their own employees by tracking the time spent by them in the office premises and questioning their integrity. One organization I know mandates employees to be on the production area for 9 Hrs/day. That means if you want to take a lunch break or tea break it doesn't count in your time spent in office and either you fill it up or face consequences.

In my opinion this is just a failure of the Management of any organization to deal with economic crisis and just because they are the policy makers, they have tried to find an easy (more of a stupid) way of dealing with the situation. Target of becoming leaner, cost effective is going to be there. Always. But dealing with it by implementing cheap policies like these is not going to help for sure.

It is a high time to have some kind of a regulation by government or any sort of labor law to come into picture soon.