Revisiting Italia 90 World Cup

by Subhadip Mukherjee, posted in Random Thoughts

Revisiting Italia 90 (9)

The phone rings quite late in the night and my father picks up the call. After a brief exchange, he calls me to receive the call as it was my friend from school on the line. “Remember to bring Maradona tomorrow I have your Frank Rijkaard,” said the voice on the phone. I was overjoyed finally my set gets completed. In case you are wondering what I am talking about then it’s nothing but Football Card that we are planning to exchange over the phone.

It was the year 1990 and the FIFA World Cup was about to start in Italy and all my classmates were busy collecting football cards which one would get after buying a bubble gum which was rightly named World Cup Bubble Gum. Things became such crazy that shops started running out of World Cup Bubble Gums and the ones that still did were not getting sold as the shops did not have any new football cards with them.

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Managing A Job & My Passion for Travelling

by Subhadip Mukherjee, posted in Random Thoughts

Managing Job and Passion for Travelling (7)

“So you are now an avid traveler, you must be a millionaire now” this is what I get to hear all the time from my friends. They keep following me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and last but not the least my blog. They keep enquiring about my next destination and many of them have actually chosen a destination for their vacation after reading my blogs. And for some, I have to even prepare a personalized itinerary.

What people especially friends fail to realize is that I have a full-time job, my wife also has a full-time job and we have an eight-year-old school going daughter. We are just like any other average middle-class Indian family with things to take care off. We have to pay electricity bills, monthly food expenses, pay the maids and not to forget the massive school expenditures. Keeping all these in mind I also have also purchased life insurance policies just to be sure that there is a fixed back up.

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Harsil The Real Switzerland of India

by Subhadip Mukherjee, posted in Travelogues, Uttarakhand

Harsil The Real Switzerland of India (51)

I have traveled to many hill stations around India and there is a common saying that all the locals keep telling us that the village is better than “Switzerland” when it snows in the winter. I have heard this some many times that I have actually started ignoring this whenever I am traveling to hill stations. So when I was traveling in the Bloggers Bus along with six other bloggers from around the country on a trip organized by Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board in coordination with GMVN (Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam Limited) I was not expecting something different when I was told that this Harsil is the real “Switzerland of India”.

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A Dream Called Raithal

by Subhadip Mukherjee, posted in Travelogues, Uttarakhand

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It was a never-ending bus journey we had traveled for more than five hours and were yet to reach our final destination. As I looked out the window of the bus all that I could see were large shadows of mountains against an equally dark moonless sky. Only some blinking stars were always following our bus as if to accompany us on our journey across Uttarakhand. The dark winding hill roads were only illuminated by the headlight of the bus and I could see a signboard with the words “Raithal – 0 Kilometers”. I looked at my watch and the time was 11.30 PM and by then the entire village had gone to bed as is the norms in the hills.

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A Trip to Trevi Fountain with My Family

by Subhadip Mukherjee, posted in Europe, Italy

Trevi Fountain with Family (24)

I was around six or seven do not remember the age but what I do remember was my birthday celebration that year. Many of my cousins had come and it was a gift galore. I was not much of a reader of books instead loved people reading my books and that particular year one of my grandfather (uncle to my father) who was a teacher gifted me a small hardbound book. I still remember the book cover it was light blue in color with a photograph of a puppet wearing a red outfit and what stood out was that the puppet had a long nose. It was Pinocchio that was gifted to me that year and it was my grandmother who read out the story to me.

Being the naughty child that I was my grandmother reminded me that I would have a similar fate if I kept lying about my various mischievous activities. I kept skipping through the pages to read the paragraph where Pinocchio’s nose starts growing longer as he keeps lying.

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