Nostalgia that flooded in through the curtains...

It must have been nearly 7 years ago..
That was the last time i heard that delightful sound.. the last time i enjoyed watching the lantern swaying gently.. faint and flickering..

Today, an hour before sunrise, as i opened the window facing the street.. the world greeted me with a curiously familiar swish of morning breeze..

The streetlights were out.. In the darkness, I could barely make out where the front gate stood.. It had been raining all night.. The scent of paala flowers still lingered on in the frigid morning air.. Then, it happened again..

The breeze, as if gathering the scent and sweet chillness into a bouquet, rollicked in through the window..brushing the curtains away.. and tried again to make me remember.. as it caressed my face and broke away.. withering the bouquet along.. shredding the scent and chillness upon me... and along with it - a memory..
it was dé⋅jà vu all over again..

It was on a day, exactly like this, that i saw it and heard it for the last time.. I remembered.. Every morning, an hour before sunrise, a bullock-cart would trudge along the street..

The clitter-clatter of footsteps, the melodious percussion of the cartwheels going around, and the tinkering of the bells that adorned the beasts' neck..
suspended below the cart near the front, there would be a lantern burning out its wick, showing the way.. dancing to the rhythm of the cart shuffling along..

A gentle portrayal of the pace of a calm, contended lifestyle on the one hand.. a luxury-entertainment for an urban brat like me, on the other.. something i may never be able to afford again..

As i wallowed myself into nostalgia, several such recollections fleeted by..
the squirrels that came running for the promised handful of groundnuts every morning.. mynas that chirped and tweeted about the day's agenda.. and the debonair spinach vendor ringing his bicycle bell, gliding by.. occasionally, one could hear a cuckoo perform from a tree branch, and sight eagles sitting atop the Arts College building, scanning the skies..

They're all fading away.. melting into oblivion.. I fear that the next generation would, perhaps, never get to enjoy these titillating little experiences at all..

I picked up the day's newspaper.. On the supplement, the headline appeared to scoff at my thoughts..
"Mobile, TV are Life Enhancers" - Ajay Puri, Director & CEO - DTH, Bharti Airtel

No wonder! sigh!

Tagged!

With people moving on from one form of social networking to another, i guess Blogal Warming has been brought down a lot.. The urge to put up something new on one's blog is fading away, added to the fact that life is tightening its screws everyday.. (hey, that rhymed!)

Shanky (happynuts) has tagged me.. and i signed in into my blogger dashboard after nearly 20 days! Thanks for the tag, pal :)
Here goes..

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?

My eyes..they give my wisdom away.. :P

2. How much cash do you have in your wallet right now?

Around 100 bucks (with some emergency cash stowed away in an inner flap!)

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?

er.. i simply don't know why 'Al Gore' had to pop up in my head! (Going green, i guess..sigh!)

4. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?

Jiya Jale - Fluid (flute)

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?

Sumesh aircel

6. What are you wearing right now?

the usual

7. Do you label yourself?

er..Non-labeller (wait a minute, isn't that another label??)

9. Bright or Dark Room?

Depends on the weather without and the mood within

10. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?

Shanky: A very cool person, smiles all the time. Sunny and positive! :)

11. What does your watch look like?

I have a Casio digital for daily use (been keeping good time for 9 yrs)..and a silver Swiscardin for occasions

12. What were you doing at midnight last night?

Taking a stroll on the terrace..watching the finale of the Diwali fireworks!

13. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?

"God bless SpongeBob SquarePants!"
-Abhinav Dasgupta

14. What’s a word that you say a lot?

'actually' !!

15. Who told you he/she loved you last? (Please exclude spouse, family, children)

My music sir, who taught me carnatic music while i was at school. He's 80+. His affection spoke these words when i'd gone to pay my respects on the day of Vijayadasami :)

16. Last furry thing you touched

Er..can't remember..no pets at home..do soft toys count?

17. Favorite age you have been so far?

13-15. Ah! the good old school days!

18. What was the last thing you said to someone?

"Speed petrol for 100Rs."

19. The last song you listened to?

'Primavera' by Ludovico Einaudi...bliss!!

20. Where did you live in 1987?

Ah.. Previous birth, eh? let me see..i bet i was an emperor penguin in Antarctica!

21. Are you jealous of anyone?

Siddharth Vinayak Patankar. The guy who hosts the Car & Bike show, NDTV.

22. Is anyone jealous of you?

I don't think so. No green-eyed monster looking at me!

23. Name three things that you have on you at all times

A handkerchief, my watch..and of late, my glasses..

24. What’s your favorite town/city?

Any city with a lot of culture and greenery.

25. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?

Two months back, to the NTSE office. The dumbos sitting in the aforementioned office are the sole reason why Redtapism exists on earth.

26. Can you change the oil on a car?

Yes

27. Your first love/big crush: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?

They don't manufacture RD350's nowadays. Heard one zoom past my house last week. She had disappeared b4 i got to the window :(

28. Does anything hurt on your body right now?

No, I'm as fit as a fiddle.

29. What is your current desktop picture?

One among the 900-odd scenic photos from my Webshots Desktop collection. Pic changes every 15 mins. (Current pic)

30. Have you been burnt by love?

Yes, in the sense, i've been burnt many times by realising that i don't give as much love as i receive.

Whew! that was quite a set.. relatively easier than other sets of questions we people usually see :P
Thanks to shanky again for the tag! I'd like to tag unnithan, rinz and n5!

Refer Textbook, Page XYZ

Nowadays in college, free hours are hard to come by.. All of a sudden, students have become attendance-lovers too.. Proxies have lost their appeal.. Strange thing to happen in a final year-engineering class, u would say.. Gladdening development for the dept., but strange nevertheless..

Well, teachers are part of this conspiracy too.. They engage every single class, to the point of overdoing it.. The overdoing part refers to keeping the students "engaged/busy" even if the teacher is on leave!!.. Inspired, no doubt, by a routine trick used to handle notorious kids in primary school.. under the pretext of SUPW or the likes of it..

Surprised? Don't be.. After-all, there are some cheap tricks that do work on a bunch of 21 year-olds! Cheap, but effective.. 'Make them an offer they can't refuse!'

Allow me to narrate how and why.. One day, we came to know that one of our teachers was on leave.. So, we were anticipating a free-hour in the middle of the day.. one which brings out a lovely colour in everyone.. which unhooks, relieves and liberates.. One which gives u that extra kick that makes all the difference!

So, as I was saying, this teacher was on leave.. but she had other plans up her sleeve and wouldn't spare us the arrows.. Perhaps she dreaded the thought of sixty odd 21-year olds wantonly roaming about the campus, up to no good.. So, she racked her brains.. The devil pulled the levers for her in the background.. An idea clicked in her head.. and voila! We were to take an open-book test in her absence.. What an idea, sirjee!

Apart from the fact that open-book tests are one of the most boring activities in life, I just can't understand their philosophy.. I mean, we are given a few standard, direct questions.. the answers are Right There in the textbook.. All we really need to do is to look at the contents page, locate the topic and start the mechanical process commonly known as copying/writing..

This wasn't all.. the open-book test was invigilated! Wtf?? I guess, these are the kind of situations that lead to new terms being coined.. like 'Ethical Copying'!! This also meant that another teacher had lost her free hour to this futile, pointless exercise.. Devil's own handiwork, no doubt.. What we have here is a lose-lose strategy..

The ponderer that i am, i took a casual glance around the class.. "Wow! Sixty odd 21-year olds, who would be involved in the process of Nation-Building in a year from now..perfunctorily replicating answers directly from a capsule-size textbook onto a piece of paper, motivated only by the promise of being awarded sessional marks, or rather, threatened by the opposite!"

Some exchanged textbooks. Some discussed. Some wrote with a vengeance. Some others sharpened their pencils and took position, complete with ruler and eraser. Some looked around the class just like I did. It was like a 'Who's the fastest photocopier machine contest'. Such a machine, as u must already know, is not designed to absorb/understand the content to be copied.

The invigilator looked lost. Her face revealed her plight.. one doesn't have to be very creative to think of what all one can do if a 1-hour break is on the offing..Well, at least the H.O.D would be pleased to know that such a ritual went off well.. and our teacher would be smug and smiling by now..

Pointless, about sums it up. I'm not going to be known as 'The Father of Ethical Copying' either.

After the 'test':
21-yr old #1: How was the test?
21-yr old #2: Sh*t man! Didn't get time to do the numerical..
#1: oh! Luckily, i got that one.. messed up the diagrams though..
#2: really? i used scale and pencil.. we'll get marks for neat diagrams..
#1: u serious? i'm in deep sh*t then.. will lose 'x' marks..
#2: that's just 'y' marks from ur sessionals and 'z' on ur gpa..
(blah.. blah.. blah..)

And then, there are people who never learn.. despite the metaphorical open-book laid out in front of them..

(Disclaimer: The test actually took place, but the conversation did not. Any resemblance, in full or part, to the conversation is purely co-incidental. My sincere apologies..and heartfelt sympathies!)

News u need to know about the news

Familiar Fact: Indian megaserials are over dramatized.

Some critics believe that no other kind of TV show on earth can match up to these sobfests, leave alone surpass them..especially in parameters like ridiculousness, depression inducing ability and outright stupidity..

These critics are obviously wrong.. Perhaps they're not acquainted with our news shows!!

News shows are what people used to call news programmes earlier.. where first they flashed the top stories of the day, and went on to report facts and events..
Today, news shows are structured almost in the same manner.. Only that u have inferences, judgements and extended editions instead..

In news programmes, the reporter was the politer one, though the people being interviewed had the freedom to be crass and unrefined in their speech..
Whereas, in news shows, the reporter/ presenter speaks the loudest.. with the power of media freedom bestowed upon him, he believes he has the right to interrupt and provoke, to be vitriolic and acerbic, to taunt and insult.. while the ones being interviewed need to do their bit of talking adroitly.. the tone, the language and the degree of euphemism hold their voices down..

Worse, news shows are usually politically biased, and almost always iconoclastic..

When there's little news to be reported, mountains are made out of molehills..
When there's a lot of news to be reported, they prioritize the stories as per their interests, as per the viewership anticipated, as per the degree of controversy involved in the issue, as per how much the issue can be spiced up further..

When there's bad news to be reported, they reprocess and enrich the facts.. sending disturbing signals all over the place..
When there's good news to be reported, it'll be flashed around in spaces like 'Defining Moments', '1-minute roundup' etc, if the story is lucky enough..

These news shows breed on controversies, crimes, accidents and disasters.. The rhetoric is negative, and worse than reality..

The extremely powerful and the extremely powerless are the only ones who matter.. The common man gets into the show occasionally by way of street opinions on issues that may have little to do with his life..
Even sports news hasn't been spared. More about the controversy. Less about the sport.

Looks like the news shows are a flourishing industry.. their belief-system is somewhat simple.. keep people glued to the show.. bombard them with morbid, macabre images of the world.. remind them that they're not safe.. that humanity is degrading.. and that no government is doing anything about it..

The new face in business- Demagogy

Backseat Philosophy: - from a new angle!

God bless the chap who came up with the whole idea of 'Thought Experiments'!!

Well, u surely know the deal about Ordinary Experiments.. these could be anything ranging from test-tube acrobatics in a chemistry lab, to jumping off from a flying jet..
In the former, if u fail in the first try.. worry not!.. for there's always a second chance..
as for the latter, our jet-jumping hero, well.. here's an idea - if u want to test gravity, please, oh please, use a simple pendulum!! :P

What I'm trying to say is.. when u do an experiment, u r most likely calling for trouble.. Look at what happened to Ramalinga Raju.. in an abortive attempt to emulate Gandhiji, perhaps, he came up with 'The Story of My Experiments with Satyam'!! poor soul.. :D

These abominable things called experiments come with a free package of risks.. I shudder to think of the effects of an experiment gone wrong.. I'm no heart patient, but the prospect of the danger that lurks behind it certainly gives me the creeps, the jitters, the quivers and the shivers! (listed in alphabetical order)..


Which is precisely why, I'm all for doing Thought Experiments.. its simple.. all u need to do is..plonk on a chair and start thinking out ur experiments.. believe me, Thought Experiments work! Did u know that some of the greatest theories in modern physics were formed based on Thought experiments? Come on now, did u actually think Galileo Galilei dropped those balls from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa?? No..it was a thought-experiment!!
No risks involved.. u need not actually perform the expts.. and the conclusions u form help u to get ahead in life.. u might even win a Nobel..who can tell???

I take it that u must be familiar with motorbikes and how one rides on them.. the sitting position is what i'm alluding to.. Take the pillion rider's sitting position.. (as the subject of our Thought Experiment).. Usually, in an Indian scenario, a male pillion perches on the back seat.. with his legs on either side of the bike.. and in most cases, a female pillion sits facing one side of the bike completely..

U may also agree..that it's very important for us human beings.. to examine life from different 'angles'..to look at life from different 'points of view'.. Now, this is not so difficult a business to go about, is it? for eg., if u are a man, and u literally want a different view on life.. du'uh!! just take the female pillion position on a bike!!

I performed this very TE the other day.. My bike was parked outside.. It was night time.. I strolled out into the yard for a bit of breeze, wondering what i could do to view life from a new angle (!?!).. that was when this sudden whim of a Thought Experiment struck me.. I climbed on my bike, crawled over to the pillion's seat.. and sat facing one side completely.. assuming the female pillion position..
and then.. i looked around..

A nameless fear gripped me.. the whole world looked eerie and obtuse (or was it reflex?)!! This position endowed me with a momentary insecurity.. I sat there, looking like a 4-year old child who'd accidentally climbed a tree..and didn't know how to get down.. My head whirled, and i reluctantly imagined how traveling like this would be like..

When I regained my balance, I said to myself- 'Wow! so this is how women travel on bikes.. I empathise with them'.. and accordingly, i spent some time empathising with them..
Now u tell me.. how can u feel safe & secure when u know that:
a) u r travelling sideways on a 2-wheeler the whole way
b) u can't lean forward/backward if ur back aches..gotta sit absolutely still
c) u don't have anything 'real' to grab on to
d) when ur bike overtakes an autorickshaw, u can watch the rickshaw guy sulking/swearing away
e) city buses with disgusting/pointed horns chase u like tigers that go after deer
f) u can never actually say how many potholes lie on the road ahead, and be prepared for the shocks
g) u have a 210 degree view of the chaos and mayhem that is urban indian traffic!'



Whew! These Thought Experiments sure do give u a deep insight into life...See? A mere thought experiment helped me foresee an experience.. and understand the plight of a million pillion women.. The experiment itself, if performed in real time, would have been nothing short of disastrous..

P.S:
** The stuff abt Ramalinga Raju is from a cartoon published in The Hindu.. ahem! I give credit wherever credit is due
**I was still shivering 5 minutes after i dismounted from the pillion seat :P
**@ the picture on the right.. both of them are recipients of Bravery Awards of international repute..

For I've lost my Friend.. I've lost my way..

Dark clouds swept down on my mind..
Strangling my cheer, with a smile unkind..
They thundered and menaced on my bleeding heart..
They hurled on my sorrow, dart after dart..

Trudging through the mist- thick, chill and blind..
I cared nought for what lay 'head or behind..
For Fate stabbed my heart with a cruel knife..
Plundering me of a Friend & joy in life..

O pain & agony! Stop thy wicked play!
For I've lost my Friend.. I've lost my way..

Amidst tears and sobs, I rendered them my tale..
and lo! The clouds wept, and away went the gale!!

The Sun then emerged with a gleam in his eyes,
a smile on his lips, healing all malaise..
Heralding his wake, the burgeoning vale,
unfurled its beauty to the fullest scale!

Flowers blossomed forth and scented the air..
Trees danced in the breeze without a care..
Rivulets and creeks gurgled down the dale..
Birds sang & bees buzzed, adorning the vale..

I beheld this portrait of Nature's bliss..
But beneath I felt something amiss!
This new-found joy had filled my soul,
Yet I had none with whom to share this bowl..

I felt alone, even in a place so charming..
I felt forlorn, in this heaven enchanting..

My joy and my sorrow battled one another..
I stood helpless, for my friend wasn't hither..

Of what use is a joy that one can't share???
Of what use is sorrow that none's ears can bear??

The dark clouds swept down on me again!!
The vale too sparkled to humour me, in vain!!

Tawa wars!!!

The world is changing..
I can feel it in the wind.. I can smell it in the air..
The sweet smell that wafts by.. flirts with my nostrils..
Yes.. the time has come..
It is now that I must make haste.. I must act quickly..

Like a warrior drawing his sword, i raised the ladle..
i shoved it underneath the dosa..
and before the flame of the stove blackened the underside.. i swiftly flipped the dosa.. and tossed it back on the tawa..
triumphantly, i withdrew my ladle..
Thus, Dosa side-A was saved..

i admired my work.. enchanted, i beheld the golden-brown glow of the wafery crispness..
then, i looked up the chimney.. and raised my hands in thanksgiving..
'Thank you, Roy Plunkett (of Kinetic Chemicals).. Had it not been for you, we'd never have had the delight of using Non-stick Cookware!!'

Seriously, non-stick tawas 'rock'..( dosa-'kallu'..hehe)!!.. they're coated with teflon.. which means.. no matter how little ghee/oil/butter u add to the tawa, ur food does not stick on to it.. so, u can save on calories n stuff too.. wow!!
Hey.. isn't it quite ironical... that inspite of the Teflon Revolution... cookery-show-aunties are so fat these days??

Anyway, that being a side-issue.. i thought i'd discuss it later.. during breakfast, perhaps.. "who's fat and who's not" has always been a favourite topic since our non-stick arrived..
And as i waited for the flames to add their finishing touches to Dosa side-B, i turned my thoughts down memory lane..

It was 8 years ago.. i stood in the kitchen with a ladle in my hand.. my head held high.. (bcos i was trying to smell and assess whether the underside was blackening!!..).. suddenly, the dosa started behaving in a very odd manner.. it coughed and spluttered.. being a helpless 12 year old boy, i ran to fetch my mother.. she came and took over..

armed with the ladle, both of us struggled to pull the dosa away from the tawa.. it was a tug-of-war between the flames and us.. Fire was claiming the underside for itself.. and we started de-plastering it in every possible way.. (The tawa was a non-Non-stick type!!)

But alas!.. the dosa had stuck on blindly.. it was a battle that we lost.. tawas can be very demanding when they grow old.. so we put our foot down, and decided to do away with the monster.. We ordered a brand new non-stick tawa which serves us to this day..

I looked at the non-stick tawa beaming with pride..
But Shock! Horror! Disbelief!! My flashback had come with a price...
Fire was back with an evil grin... to reclaim Dosa side-B!!!