Heathrow to Atlanta and Further to Arkansas

I do not really have any substantial excuse for why I did not write this post earlier. But today since I am in my part-time writer mode again, I decided to do it soon. One never knows when I turn back to my non-writing lazy persona , lolz😂😂😂.

So the next morning I woke up early at around 6 am , wanted to cherish and enjoy the English morning and watch Brit shows for a while. Did I tell you , that I started writing the prequel to this post while sitting on the bed thinking about the journey. Nope. As most of you know , yours truly was not able to finish her job and had to rush towards the airport.

source:giphy

I packed my hand rucksack , booked a cab ( well the people in Mariott did that for me 😁😁) and reached Heathrow again.

Here’s what you should know the London black cabs are more expensive than other cabs.

Back to airport , since both of my check-in baggages were already moved I just had to go through security, whiiiichhh ….. was not a piece of cake. Common it’s Heathrow I am talking about guys , one of the busiest airports of the world. They had strict restrictions against bottles more than 100ml , deodorants and other stuff ( threw my deodorants 😢😢). I had a different experience while boarding the flight this time because 90% of the passengers were American and British and only few Indians or Asians. The feeling of going far away from home had slowly started to seep in. My co-passenger was a very kind American , who offered to help me anytime I needed him , while being here in the US.

It was a long 8.5 hours flight and as soon as the flight landed , we all moved through the immigration area. This was my third time during the journey , so I knew which documents to pull out and not to feel very nervous. Point -to-be-noted “not very nervous” I was still N.E.R.V.O.U.S. , who would not be standing in front of the Border and Homeland Security. Well, I went through it eventually. The officer was very polite, he asked me the purpose of visit, checked my I-20, VISA and I was asked to move forward. The baggage collection centre was completely thronged with passengers. I was one of the last passengers to get my bags , so imagine this girl who is on her first international trip to US and her bags take almost 20 minutes to come down. I would panic if it would be a few more minutes late, already having taken a round of the baggage collection belt 😂😂😂😂.

source: gfycat.com

The best part though is about to begin , as soon as I start moving with my bags one of cops stopped me and asked me to follow him. I do that and once we are in his office, he informed me that he would check my bags . I was fine with that ….externally, had to maintain the calm facade . Unfortunately I had an uneaten apple from Heathrow and he picked on that, cops and their way of suspection. After he was done I started walking in search of terminal I ,my flight was scheduled there. My baggages were already taken care of land crew members , but I could not find a way to go to the terminal. There were these stairs people were walking through downwards and found that the terminals were all connected through subways . Once in the proper terminal, I moved around for a bit and then started dozing .

The long journey did take a toll on me. For the next few hours I kept myself awake through coffee, but once I was aboard the flight to Arkansas, sleep took over.

source:K.I.D.

I do not remember anything about the journey, besides it was late at night by the time we reached XNA.

This is where my journey ended , but literally it just began.

NOTE: For those of you , who has not read my previous post on this topic, the link is https://meloheartsite.wordpress.com/2019/08/24/delhi-to-heathrow-london-a-first-timers-experience/ .

Life so far is doing good for me and I hope all of you are well.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

copyright meloheart

Delhi to Heathrow, London – A first timer’s experience

I haven’t been writing for a while now, my fault completely. Actually I have been preparing for my travel to Arkansas.

Yes, guys you read it right. So here I am just going to write about my experience of the whole journey, it is going to be in three parts.

My flight to Heathrow was at around 12:20 pm which for some reason got delayed by ten more minutes.

Let me start from the beginning. I am not going to tell you regarding my bathroom habits,No. We had called a cab earlier just to be in time , so by 9:20 am I was there standing with my papa in Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3, laden with 3 heavy bags we were moving towards the gate. Mind you I got an approval of two 23kg check ins and a 10kg hand luggage. And like any other first timer I filled all of them to the brim. Once in the queue towards the Gate , I was pretty nervous . Lots of incidents related to passengers being not allowed to board were hovering over my head. Fortunately nothing happened and I got to check in. Though once in the immigration queue I got a look over by the officer who checked my I-20 and gave me a pass.

Source- ndtv.com

Now, I just had to wait in the duty free area and my stomach was growling loud enough for a nearby passenger to turn his head. I wasn’t carrying a huge cash with me, so all I could do was look out for subway. I love their wraps besides they come in cheap. After food business got settled I moved towards the boarding where we had to wait for like 15 minutes before boarding.

As a child my ears had the tendency to ache in an insomniac way during flight hours. So me travelling via air wasn’t taken lightly by my father. He was too worried , really tensed, to the extant of waiting in the airport until the flight took off. Besides it was the first time his only daughter was travelling international with previous experience.

Source- self

Once seated I noticed that my co-passenger is a Spanish girl. I really enjoyed my flight journey with her. We exchanged lots of anecdotes and stories. It was wonderful, I didn’t want the flight to end. The main reason was something else though. My flight landed there at around 5:35 pm , but the next flight would be next day at 12:50 pm. So I would have to stay in the airport, as I was travelling without a transit VISA.

The immigration queue in Heathrow was a huge one as all international passengers were lined up together. God, I already missed India. When my turn finally came to face the officer, he stared at my face and asked about my next flight . I told him it would be next day. He then granted me a One day transit VISA and told me to immediately book a hotel room. I was naturally overjoyed. Ah! what plans I would have designed had I known it could be possible, probably travel towards London. But it was not to be. I was tired , had to get a new sim from the airport only with 20 pounds.

By the time I was able to get into the hotel it was 9:20pm approximately and I couldn’t fall asleep until mid night. My biological sleeping clock had been disturbed and it was just the beginning dear friends. If calculated in Indian time , I was awake from 6:30 am to 3am the next day without any wink of sleep. Yet I was there in Hounslow and the hotel room had a beautiful view. I could stand there for hours watching the double Decker buses pass by and the wonderful English houses had it not been for my tired eyes.

Source: A bit of drizzle there in Heathrow

P.S.- The most difficult thing during this part of the journey was to carry an almost 9.5kg ruck sack on my back. I am only 5 feet weighing less 49kgs. It made me loony bins at times ,lol.

I apologize to all of my readers, for not posting it earlier and I know that the content could be made brighter using pictures. But the ones I have can hardly be recognized ,with a phone as bad as that it was not easy.

Anatomy Courses in Andhra Pradesh

Life after high looked bleary for me. I did know that science was what would be my future, but the subjects and the colleges were baffling . Fresh out of high school, I was an architecture aspirant but later due to various reasons it turned into a foggy dream.

Without any proper idea about the upcoming subjects, I was more focused on the traditional branches of Biology. This is something I would like most of you to avoid, which is one of the main concentration of this post and the ones impending. Every post will include a subject, the colleges and institutions where it is available in a particular state of India and various other details.

Let us start with Anatomy courses in Andhra Pradesh. There are five institutions in total offering the course

• GVP Institute of Health Care and Medical Technology , Vishakhapatnam

Source- gvpmc.in

This college was established in the year 2008 and they only have MBBS courses approved by the Government. It has been affiliated under Dr NTR University of Health Sciences. They offer Anatomy as part of their MBBS course.

• Narayana Medical College, Nellore

Source- narayanamedicalcollege

Established in 2006, the college is private and has been affiliated under Dr NTR University of Health Sciences. They offer variety of Anatomy courses for UG and PG level- B.sc , MBBS, BPT, BDS, B.Sc Nursing, General Nursing, DMLT, DMIT, Diploma in Anaesthesia, MD, MDS and M.Sc.

• Sri. Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences

Source- collegedunia

It is an autonomous university established in 1995 and is situated in Tirupati. They offer MBBS course in Anatomy.

• Santhiram Medical College

Source- Edufever

A college recognized by Medical Council of India and Govt. of India and has been affiliated to Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences. It was established in the year 2005. They offer MBBS and MD course in Anatomy.

• Chalmeda Anandrao Institute of Medical Science, Bommakal

Source- Collegedunia

It was established in 2003 and run by Arihant Educational Society. They offer MD course in Anatomy. It has been approved by Medical Council of India.

For all these course you must remember to start checking their website from the beginning of March to be extra cautious. These are once in a life-time chances. Not everyone has the capability to wait a year and apply later. So better safe then be sorry about it.

Adam’s Eve

What am I? A woman or a simple element-

Society makes me feel like an element,

They don’t see, they leer,

I feel their eyes crawling up on my arms,

They know how to make me scream;

Laugh has been long forgotten,

I don’t even know, if it’s right or wrong,

Generations of staring down,

Now this is the rule, we follow it

But is it right?

Independence Day

I was wondering whether to start with something like happy independence day. If you ask me , “are you happy?” I can definitely reply with a yes. Not an issue really. But the real question is -IS IT MY INDEPENDENCE DAY? The answer my dear friends will be NO.

My nation became independent on this day from the British. An important question which should itch your mind is “Are you happy about your nation”? Again I can answer that with a monosyllable NO .

The Government seems too happy to have made electricity accessible to the remotest villages of the country. A happy news YES , should I clap my hands NO. The above mentioned statement may be true, but they did not see to it, whether electricity is properly being supplied to the every area of the region, it being village or city. Let me speak for my city Guwahati, claiming itself to be a metro city , swift flowing electricity is like breathing in and out of air. Power cuts are so frequent that at times, it turns out to be power cut per 30 minutes. I really don’t know what is the issue with the electricity board “Do the consumers not pay their bills”? or ” Does the board have contradictory issues with zonal power grids”? During every elections the representatives have a common resolution ” After the upcoming ballots electricity will be 24/7 amenity for this region”. Did it ever happen NO, mind you we don’t always let the same party win. Yet all of them seem to have a problem of ‘Short term memory loss’.

Women of the nation are still not categorised as humans. We still have the tag of products, whether we are old or middle aged, young adults, teenagers or infants. 70% of Indian men still haven’t added the word ‘No’ in their dictionary. In many of the Indian communities love marriages are still taboo words but RAPE is not. Well they don’t consider it rape actually. According to them it is either disciplining the girl , his wife or having his way with a girl he likes who might have rejected him. Society accepts that because he is a MAN . In India if you are man, it means you are God and you have legit powers to do anything to your partner, your cousins, your mother-in- law ; anyone who is not a direct blood relative. And the hilarious situation is if you ask them why they did it , their first reaction would be ” Man did I do something wrong?” ,after further enquiry which is talking high because most of the cases don’t reach the office of authority , much less do they see judiciary. And if they somehow reach the police station, they try instilling good amount of fear in the poor girl’s (considering she is alive till then, which is rare) head that she opts out of the whole issue. Acid attacks and other domestic abuse cases are getting so popular now a days, sometimes I feel public lynching these criminals to death is a better option than the judicial punishment of death. Why give someone an easy death , when he or she doesn’t understand an easy word called NO.

With these tortures which includes – foeticide, domestic abuse, acid attacks, rapes, the number of females in few of the North Indian states are at stake. So the men might be in a virtual idea that they will be able to reproduce without women or probably get pregnant, which is not a bad option given the progress of science.

I guess I got a lot of pent up emotions, bringing to you best social who live to serve the citizens by protecting them – Government bureaucrats, the Police Department and other departments of executive. The Government should start a policy of salary increment in every 3-4 months because most of the people working in these departments seem to be totally in adverse condition , even may be below poverty line. Though they collect their salary every month from the Government, yet they live on bribery from common citizens. There is a deeper sentimental issue that we overlook, the people who work in these high raised Government buildings had to get their jobs by bribing the senior officers, so why will they not collect what is theirs. Traffic officers get the best choice here, theirs is like completing targets of Insurance officers , here the difference is the Government didn’t set up any target and it doesn’t have any recorded issues about their collected commission. Till the end of their tenure they should be able to collect the full amount that they paid. Government salary though might be helpful to run a family, yet when it comes to collecting the deposited money in the seniors table they will have to get it from other citizens. A man has to live his life common, stop thinking and start bribing.

The Government fears China might launch a war to gain Arunachal , Pakistan may take away Kashmir; but they forget about the society which is so abysmal as to bombard its own people.

I am really proud to be celebrating independence day of the nation where politics is the national game, and corruption is the Popular People’s Choice Award.

I am thankful to all those people who took the pain to go through this long unadroitic article of mine.

Happy Independence Day everyone.

Stalkers Alert

This post is very different from my usual ones. The present situation in India (I have no idea about other countries) is such that most men and even boys think that social media.networks are all dating sites.

The process begins with them sending friend requests and the girls who are unaware of such problems accepting it. Facebook is the most common one,instagram getting the runner ups cup. It might begin with hello and then next sentence being said. “I like you”. Here things start getting interesting because the guy doesn’t even know the girl and he already likes and she might reply “Ok”. If it’s an ok guys please understand that she is not interested, instead you keep on sending her messages until she finally blocks you.

Instagram the next best app to search for would be girlfriends has the same facility . Even in this app the guys may be blocked out.

If she likes you she will surely talk to you, don’t rile her up. The women of our society are already enough demoralised to be even more terrified by your mental abuse.

Changing education system

Early education system in India was mainly based on religious texts there were famous universities like Taxila, Nalanda which provided courses on a number of subjects like Science, Literature, Religious studies,Logic,Astronomy etc. There were schools where the children would get education under a guru and he/she would have to stay in in the Gurukul(school) throughout his learning years. Among the tribes of the country there were dormitories ,some of them were separate for boys and girls and others included coed studies. Sanskrit was a common subject everywhere. Many women scholars were also present during this stage of the education system, Gargi, Maitreyi, Ghosha, to name a few.

With the advent of Muslim invaders the country saw its proportion to new schools called Madrassa where Islamic religious scripts were taught along with subjects like Arabic, Persian logic which were influenced by Middle East countries. Students from Afghanistan and various other neighbouring countries came to pursue their education here in India. This was the time when women were slowly deprived of their right to education. And then during 1600s the Europeans invaded our country , people got access to new Christian missionary schools and colleges.

This system prevails till date. In some of the states there are more English schools than vernacular medium schools. I think the reason behind this is our Government, it never takes the proper initiative to run Government schools properly. There are very few teachers in those schools. The case turns even more interesting when you come to know that the kids who study here don’t even appear exams to pass out from one standard to the other. Now if you ask why is it so? The only reason that I can provide you with is the Government wants a 100% literate society and to do that children must attend school.This can only happen when they find it easy. The scheme designers don’t concentrate on making the syllabus interesting rather they make it easy. This is the condition in Government schools.
Whereas in Private schools the children are given such huge syllabus that most of the time they are seen running with their bags on, even on holidays some of the private tutors take classes so as to complete their course. Here completion of course is important whether the student gets his head in it or not is not minded.
Same is the case with colleges where in some of the universities the admission process takes place much before the result of the previous standard has been declared. So sometimes you come to you failed in the previous class just after the admission process for the next class or standard is over. All the money spent goes to a waste, that too for nothing. Even after lots of complaints have been filed against this system none takes heed in the affairs. When such a system has been prevailing for long how can you expect the country to develop.  Development is possible if the system is modified, but that would be done in a decade or not can’t be assumed.

Holi-A festival of colors

Calling this festival simply as the festival of colors is not enough it’s the festival of unity in diversity. It is enjoyed by individuals of different regions of the nation.

There are many mythological stories associated with this festival.The most famous ones are that of lord Krishna and Radha and that of Prahallad and Hiranyakashap.

According to the first legend lord Krishna used to spray colors on the gopis while he was in Vrindavan. That’s why on the purnima before holi people worship lord krishna first and then they put colors on him.This is called Dol purnima.  The color is called Abeer, is put on his feet as a way of seeking the lord’s blessings.

The second legend is a bit different it is said that Prahallad, a devotee of Lord Vishnu was the son of a devil Hiranyakashyap.The devil in order to kill his son for praying the lord called his sister Holika. She had the blessings of lord Brahma and would not die even if she sat on fire.This get interesting when she sits with prahallad on the fire and gets herself burnt instead of him.  From that day onwards people in some of the regions burn holika before the day of playing holi.

But these traditions are not followed nowadays. Youngsters start playing holi much before holika is burnt or much before dol purnima. For their personal enjoyment they have stopped following the traditions and customs.

Holi also has great biological significance since march and april are the months when people are more likely to get sick with skin diseases like chicken pox and other such diseases the colors of holi are said to keep such diseases off of us. Again during this people are more lazy than ever because of the change in season from winter to summer, the activities of the festival makes them work out their drowsiness.

People also clean their homes during holi making it more hygienic.

Now let’s move to the food section thandaai and bhang are one of the famous drinks of holi. Drinking it does make the people little drowsy but not drunk. They are naturally made beverages. Thandaai is basically prepared using milk,water, sugar, almond,poppy seed,fennel , fresh rose petal and cardamom powder. To go with it you may add 2-3 optional ingredients.  Bhang is prepared using Marijuana leaves,milk,sugar
,water,almond, clove, cardamom, ginger, rose water, Cinnamon etc.
Gujia, Papri, Dahi Valle are some other favored delicacies of Holi.

Gujia

Holi is played in different regions in different ways one of the most famous is the lath mar holi of Barsana region of India.It takes place days before actual holi, the man of Barsana visit Nandgaon region and sing provocative songs, the women of the village then act as if they are provoked and playfully beat the man with lathis   who in turn protect themselves with shields and all this take place near the radha rani festival. Thousands of tourists witness this festival every year.

Lath mar holi

In mathura holi continues for at least 16 days.
But in the major cities of the country this festival has taken a total different turn . Holi is organized by different clubs there people play holi using balloons, pichkari and abeer. The cultural importance is almost lost. Boys and girls drink thandaai and bhang and get themselves drunk totally. Lots of accidents also take place during this festival.One of the most recent one in which 5 people were fatally killed due to their own mistake took place last year.Girls are molested every year during this festival , since the faces are covered with colors so guys take it as  a chance to have their ways with us.
So girls be careful these two days about whom to trust. Don’t go into the sweet talks, be aware. And all of my fellow bloggers a very HAPPY HOLI to all of you.