I recently came across this photograph under the above title in some blog, which I don't remember now. However, it is definitely worth a look. Apologies to the guy from whose blog I had saved the picture, and apologies to the concerned airlines if this photograph is a fake.
Btw, if you are as sharp as Rupert Baxter, and have observed the abrupt lull in the posting frequency in the past 8 days, and have started suspecting that something fishy was going on - fear not - I had gone for short holiday to Ooty and Kunnoor with my family.
The trip was wonderful. The thing I liked the most was the temperature out there. I am a person made for cold weather - I melt and stink and feel drowsy and lethargic and totally demotivated in the hot and humid climates of Bombay and Calicut (Mumbai and Kozhikode, if you are of the unneccessarily puritanically psuedo patriotic type). However, cold weather brings back the joie the vivre which hot weather so nastily puts cold water on. My appetite increases, and for a change I can eat heartily because I know that the food will all be digested in that nice cold weather. I don't sweat at all, I feel pepped up all through the day, lethargy follows the path of the dodo and my otherwise sluggish temperament takes a back seat as I am always on the qui vive (expecting adventures to befall me ?).
Of course, no good thing is complete with a few irritations and hitches here and there. We had this story in our Bal Bharti (SSC guys will be feeling nostalgic, no doubt) about a King who is wandering in the jungle on a hunting expedition, and as he is wandering about, thirsty, in search of water, he come across a hut. A fair, beautiful, and as we come to know later, wise maiden (They are always fair and good-looking, aren't they ?) comes out, and the King requests her for something to drink. She gives him a bowl full of some thirst-quenching liquid, but sprinkles pepper all over the surface. Instead of being able to gulp the liquid down in one shot, the King has to sip the liquid carefully, by blowing away the pepper every time. He compliments her on the tasty liquid, and adds that it would have been tastier but for the pepper. Then she gives all sorts of wise fundae as to how the value of the liquid increased because of the pepper that came in the way. True, no doubt.
So, here's a brief take on a few of the irritations that made me appreciate the simple joys of life and made the trip so memorable.
1. The Bombay airport that resembles CST
You think you have attained some exclusivity by travelling by air. No, you are wrong. People throng there like the dickens - and the government will simply not increase the number of seats, so you have to stand in the lounge. The electronic board that notifies you about the status of various flights is malfunctioning, so the airport staff members move around like heralds, shouting out the flights that require security check.
2. The shameless and oversmart lady
The announcement says that people for xyz flight, please head to Gate No. 5. Everybody hurriedly gets up and a long queue gets formed. As we are approaching the gate, we see a family approaching the gate at right angles to us. This contingent is headed by the shameless lady, and consists of her husband, an ayah, a healthy and fit pair of grandparents, and one baby in the pram. They just butt into the queue and walk through the foyer. The cheek ! (I don't see any reason why they couldn't stand in the queue - the pram is no excuse, because it was a foldable pram.)
3. The crammed up space deficient airplane
We are not the Japanese. The average Indian male's height is 5'8". And these guys can just about fit in. What about the guys who are more than 6 feet tall ? What about those poor bastards like me who are a full 6'4" ? I can understand it if I am not able to sit in taxis and buses. No problemo. But, this is an aeroplane, for Christ's sake - and just because we are travelling economy doesn't mean you should be so inconsiderate.
4. Flop visit no.1
We decide to visit the Ooty lake. 4 of us cram into a rickshaw and for 30 Rs. we are taken from the hotel to the lake. One look and I know we shouldn't have come. The crowd there resembled the Chaturshringi mela in Pune. Still, we decide to take the plunge and head towards the boat-ride ticket counter. Bluuaahk. Someone vomits, and some of the vomit falls on my father's shoes. We regroup, and unanimously decide to head back to the beautiful confines of the hotel. This time however, the rickshawallahs have the upper hand and we are forced to pay 50 bucks for 2 rickshaws for the 4 of us. Nice.
5. Flop visit no.2
Everyone recommends that we go and visit Madhumalai sanctuary. 1.5 hours laters, after battling the heat, bumps and dust of a parched landscape we arrive at the sanctuary. Me and my dad walk up to the ticket counter. It's a big mess there. There is a huge queue. People are jumping the queue here and there, everybody is looking confused, the policeman there who doesn't know either hindi or english is shouting something in gobbledegook, people are waving arms, other people are just standing there in clumps, a group of goras is standing in the centre all confused and dazed and I getting this sinking feeling in my stomach. An obliging man tells me that I will have to go to the counter and take a token - after about an hour or so, they will call my number and then I have to go and buy the tickets. But what about the queue, I asked ? Oh, he says, those are the people who have a token and who are crowding there despite being told to come only when their number is called. I take the token, but the whole mess has just put me off. I take a look at the first of the buses that are leaving for the tour. Horrible. Green in colour, all ramshackle and rickety, cramped up and uncomfortable, God ! No glass, no curtain, no cushions - just hard wood and metal. Again, the great minds have a hasty conference, and after 15 minutes of intelligent debating and thoughtful reasoning, the decision to return to the hotel is taken. Our driver ofcourse, iss flabbergasted - he tries his best to convince us to stay and take the ride, but falls silent when I ask him whether there is any confirmation that we would see tigers or lions or even elephants. But you can see deer, he says, a while later. Anyway, back to the hotel we go.
And yes, my parents did stop on the way and drink some filter kaapi which they said was excellent - so the trip wasn't exactly wasted.
6. The trip from Ooty to Kunnoor
I wonder whether all these politicians, who travel around in a fleet of government vehicles and make the police barricade the traffic for hours even before they are supposed to pass through a given road, realise how much they inconvenience the general public. I suppose, even if they did know, they wouldn't care. Fine, I say, let the politicians have their way, they have to run the country I suppose. But what about all the altu-phaltu posts like the Governor ? I mean what does the Governor do ? Rather, considering the amount of tax-payer's money spent on him and on maintaining his lifestyle (what with the bungalow and amenities and servants and cars and petrol and plane travel), is it really commensurate with his contribution to the country ? God only knows, as Bharat Dabholkar says.
The reason I am asking this is because Ooty and Kunnoor are barely 40 minutes away - a mad driver can do it in half an hour. However, unfortunately for us, the governor of TN chose to pass through our very route - and traffic came to a standstill. Believe me, I have been through some really horrible traffic jams, at Lonavla on the old Bombay-Pune highway, and in Bombay itself. However, the traffic jam that we passed on the opposite side really took the cake. The thin, 2 track, potholed, winding, steep and uphill roads all joined forces to make it really miserable for the guys coming towards Ooty. Luckily, our side of the traffic kept flowing smoothly with only intermittant bottlenecks, but the other guys had a horrible time. Then, heaven opened it's floodgates and all the rain came cascading on our luggage atop the car. So, we had to step out and take the bags on our laps.
To make matters worse, our driver was a weird fellow who just irritated the hell out of all of us, without intending to, of course. This guy, when his car slowed down, (in this case, as I told you, we had to stop every now then), would shift the gear to neutral and then back to first, again to neutral then to first - even if the car slowed down for just a second or two. I really wonder who taught him driving. As if that was not enough, he used to leave such long gaps between himself and the next car - without exaggerating, 5 more cars could have fitted in between. And all this on a slow moving bottlenecked road. The shocking thing was, all the drivers there were doing this. We could make out that the opposing side had a 2-3 kilometre long traffic jam, yet, every other vehicle was leaving such long gaps on the opposite side, and making no effort to cover it too. Out here, you have bumper-to-bumper traffic, and if you leave a gap, people will openly swear at you and fill the gap up. It seems weird that this should cause irritation, but it did - and we all felt it. As my mom put it, we felt like taking a stick or a spur and prodding that guy. Go... ! At one point, this guy actually got out of the car, (as we were waiting in the jam) and started chatting with a car driver stuck in the jam in the opposite direction. Our line started moving - but this guy showed no inclination for getting into the car. I had to wave and shout before he ambled over and leisurely got going.
Lessons -
1. Home Sweet Home.
2. If and when you become very rich, make sure you buy and maintain a holiday home in some easily accessible (read very close to the airport) hill station with average temperatures in summer of about 18 degree celsius.
3. The traffic jams of Bombay are nothing compared to that of Kunnoor.
4. The weather of Bombay sucks more than ever.
5. Appreciate the taxi drivers in Bombay for how fast they (try to) drive.
Certain articles are supposed to be objective news, while others are opinions. I guess it is well-known that the media has subtle ways of showing what it feels about a particular person, celebrity or otherwise, even in articles that are meant to be objective.
We face, on a regular basis, carefully worded descriptions which can mislead us, or interviews from which sentences are dropped or quoted only partially. If you want see the full power of misquotation and misconstrueing, see the 2nd episode in the first season of That 70s Show, titled Eric's Birthday. Kelso is the protagonist in this case, and somewhere into the 8th minute ... well, I recommend you see it for yourselves. Today, however, I came to know of another way in which, we the gullible audience, can be unknowingy pushed into a particular direction without knowing it.
While browsing through the newspaper, I came across some article on Ramadoss, and the photograph of this accompanying the article was what set me thinking. It looked like some journalist had spent hours poring through various photographs to find the one in which Ramadoss had the weirdest facial expression - in this case, it was even more weird than the expression which the character played by Ranveer Shourey (have I got the spelling right ?) in Bheja Fry. Or maybe some photographer with infinte patience, lightening speed and a sadistic sense of humour waited for the correct moment, and handed it over to the aforementioned journalist. Or maybe, I'm just conjuring crazy conspiracies in my head - it was just a coincidence. "Just a coincidence" - I can imagine Seinfeld telling this to good old paranoic George. George repeats it to reassure himself, but he actually doesn't believe so. I can't believe this too, for one has to be blind to ignore it. I wonder what that journalist had against poor Ramadoss -oh ! Maybe it is because of the banning of smoking and the whole freedom of expression thing. Toohey would be proud of this guy !
I also remembered the case of a certain Perreira - the photograph accompanying any news item on him is usually the same - with him looking in a very arrogant and angry and callous way at some point in space. Now, suppose, just suppose, hypothetically, that this Perreira fellow is actually a nice, sensitive fellow and by some horrible godforsaken twist of fate, he got embroiled in whatever happened. In that case, thanks to the way the photograph has been taken - maybe that expression fell on his face for just a split second - will definitely affect the way the public takes a personal opinion on him, won't it ? Anyway, I think I have been watching too much of George and Seinfeld.
I need a break !
I suffer from a strange disease. I hereby christen it NIDS.
I can't go to sleep if I stay awake past around 8.30 in the night, unless I take extreme efforts to do so. Even if I haven't slept the previous, not a wink, I still can't go to bed if cross that 8-8.30 line. And much to my irritation, however much sleep I've had cannot prevent me from falling asleep any time during the day. By day, I mean the period between 8.30 in the morning, (when the sun-rays lose their innocence), till about 5.30 in evening (when they regain it). During this 'sun-time', all I have to do to fall asleep is lie down on the bed. Everything falls in place, and before I know it, I nod off to sleep. Nothing can come in between me and my sleep during this time, no noise, no heat, no mosquitoes, nothing ! But falling asleep at night - Hercules will probably cry if he is assigned this Sisyphean task of putting me off to sleep every night, and Atlas will definitely shrug.
You cannot imagine to what extent of preparation I go to, to achieve the target of sleeping at night. I set alarms for every half hour starting from 4.00 am. I enqueue about a 100 odd songs in wmp (who knows how much time I might be awake ?). I stare at the fan in the hope that my eyes will get tired and droop off. I multipy 2 and 3 digit numbers in the hope that my brain will tire out - counting sheep was hopeless, as I discovered many years ago. Most importantly, I try not to sleep at all during the day. But this I discovered, is a very very tough thing to do.
When I'm at home, around 9.30-ish in the morning, the bai comes for jhaadu-pochha, thus separating me from the computer. Having nothing to do till she finishes the cleaning, I loll about here and there, and eventually end up in the embryonic position, as snug as a bug in a rug (as Wodehouse has said), on our sofa. If I somehow muster up enough willpower to avoid this temptation, the postprandial period arrives, bringing with it a full stomach and an afternoon dullness (which only our college professors can match), which are stronger than most sedatives. And don't forget, the afternoon last for a full 4 hours - one lapse, one small blip in my willpower radar, and drowsiness swarms over me in a jiffy. There's my mobile on the bed, a few magazines strewn here and there, my watch lying under the pillow, the chaddar flowing among all this debris like a sinuous river, a water bottle here, and my head phones there - all that be damned. My body falls limp over all this, my legs half falling over, and moments later I'm but a dead log.
At college (where I stay in a hostel), it is no different. Going to college and sitting in class ranks first in the survey listing "Natural Sedatives". I don't think I need to explain how tough it is keep awake, my parents understand it, my friends also succumb to it, it is universally acknowledged. If you need more details on what goes on in class, check this out. And going to bed early - people keep knocking at that very moment when I am either contemplating going to bed, or when I have just gone to bed. Like this moron, who kept knocking on my door for around 10 mins even though the lights in the room were switched off. (I know it was 10 mins because I woke up at the first knock, and waited for a full 9 mins for him to go away, but pertinacious jackass that he was, I knew he would keep knocking, and hence I finally opened the door. Turns out, he was some first year. I use the words moron and jackass with certainty because I saw his face in the light later, and he definitely was one. Long haired friend of mine, if you ever do read this, you know whom I'm talking about.)
Aaah ! It is approaching 11.35 pm - come what may, I have to lie down in bed. Readers, please pray that I may fall asleep !
I came across this in some arbitrary blog I was going through, and thought it was worth sharing.
To commemorate her 69th birthday on October 1, actress/vocalist, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP. One of the musical numbers she performed was "My Favorite Things" from the legendary movie "Sound Of Music". Here are the lyrics she used :
Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Cadillac's and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favorite things.
When the pipes leak, when the bones creak,
When the knees go bad, I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.
Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Back pains, confused brains, and but keep on winnin'
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',
And we won't mention our short shrunken frames,
When we remember our favorite things.
When the joints ache, when the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,
Then I remember the great life I've had,
And then I don't feel so bad.
(Ms. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd that lasted over four minutes and repeated encores.)
Somewhere in the middle of last semester, a video titled "The Future of Computing" popped up on our hostel LAN. Obviously some one had downloaded it from YouTube - and on searching I did find it there. The stuff shown is mind-blowing and even a gadget-centric person like me had never imagined something as wonderful as this. Incidentally, this is my first video-blog-post . . . symbolic, don't you think ?
One of the earliest applicants of this technology is Apple, in their maiden mobile phone effort - the Apple iPhone. If you haven't already seen the amazing features in the iPhone, take a look at this clip :
Makes you go "Ooooh!", doesn't it ?
You know Himesh is successful when
. . . you start singing 'Afsana banaa ke bhool na jaana' out of the blue for no rhyme (in my case 'with no rhyme' too) or reason
. . . a pink-floyd-is-god friend of yours who listens to nothing other than modern and classic rock starts crooning 'Ek baar aaja aaja aaja aaja aajaaa' and then curses himself for that
. . . you flip through 9 straight tv channels only to find that all of them are playing Himesh songs
. . . all six radio buttons in your car stereo set are playing the same Himesh song and you are forced to manually select Vividh Bharti
As with many people of my generation, I do a majority of my reading online. Some of my regular stops are rediff.com, economictimes.indiatimes.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com, nytimes.com, newyorker.com, and of course wikipedia. Google.com itself qualifies as a stop, because that is the portal to many avenues. In fact, recently, as part of coursework, we had to submit a summary of any relevant and recent research paper. As I was scouring through a few of these papers, (pdfs obviously, and incidentally obtained through Google scholar) searching for a suitable and preferably easy one, I came across something funny. As you might know, every research paper has a section called 'References' at the end. One such paper had a similarly listing, and somewhere down the line was 'google.com'. Now, isn't that strange !
As I was saying, I read a lot online. Of late, I've started observing that I suffer from a new-age malady, the opens-too-many-tabs-at-the-same-time syndrome. Ever since Mozilla Firefox introduced tabs (which IE soon introduced too), there no longer is the cumbersome problem of having too many windows clustering the taskbar. Whenever there is a link to some new articles or information, I can very conveniently open it immediately in a new tab, as opposed to coming to that place later on.
Because of this, I tend to sometimes leave the original article unread and go on to read the offshoot. I also maniacally keep opening multiple tabs whenever I see newer links, which I feel might be worth a read. So much so that my Internet Explorer has crashed a few times. So now I limit myself to about 15 odd tabs. Opening so many tabs is still alright if I am going to read all what I have opened. But no ! Nowadays, I tire easily, and after some time I start feeling crushed under my own enthusiasm. Neither do I have the energy to read all the open stuff, nor do I have the heart to close it. So I have started hibernating my comp now, with all the tabs and the windows in minimized state. This continues for days on end. Whenever I want to check my mail or read some fresh news, I open a window anew, with tabs anew. It is the same old story. The stuff piles up, till one day the browser or the OS crashes. This actually is a relief for me because I know I never would have read all that stuff.
Strange malady, this is. It is time some doctor came up with a latin name for it.
It was 5.21 pm in the evening. My tuition class was over. I trooped out, weary and tired. My parents were going to pick me up at 5.30, so I had to wait until then. I stood by the roadside, at the usual spot. The sun had just set, and the colour in the sky was that wonderful mix of azure and orange that makes you feel wistful for no reason. There was a gentle breeze blowing, the kind that generally blows at 5.30 in the evening. My eyes were tired due to concentrating in class for such a long time and my face muscles were twitching in a tired sort of a way. The breeze was ruffling my hair the way a grandmother would fondle her grandchild. It was surreal. I watched the cars whizzing by, with black smoky trails following most of them. The murmur of the traffic, the occasional blaring of horns and the sounds of the few odd birds in the sky could be heard in the backdrop. As I said before, it was surreal.
The approaching road that would bring my parents' car had an undulating path. I stared at the point from where the cars were emerging one by one, like Ursula Andress from the sea. It was the same pattern. First, I would see the tires and the number plate. Then, slowly, the windshield would appear and simultaneously the tires would disappear as the car crossed the curve. And then the whole car. I kept looking at the same spot waiting for the car to arrive. It was 5.30 now, yet, no car. I kept looking at the cars. An Esteem, then a Zen, then 2 motorcycles, then an Ikon, then a rickshaw. I looked at the wrist watch again. It was 5.40 now. I reverted my gaze to the horizon of the road. Then, far in the distance, I saw it. Even though I could not see the inhabitants or the number plate, I recognized the car. I straightened my frame, all 6 feet 3 inches of it, and raised my arm to signal where I was. My eyes were fixed on the car, as it manoeuvred itself through the traffic, changing lanes so that it could come to where I was standing. I dropped my hand and took a step forward onto the road in anticipation. Suddenly, a rickshaw came to a screeching halt and stopped right in my face. I looked at it closely - it was a Garuda, a shared rickshaw. Ah ! Some idiotic passenger must have felt the need to get down immediately. I started walking around the rickshaw to go and sit in my car which was waiting just behind. As I was passing the side, I turned to the rickshawalla to give him an angry look. To my surprise, he was looking at me expectantly. I wondered to myself, what now ? You stop in my path and expect me to apologize ? I looked at the passengers. There was one girl, 2 ladies and 1 man, and all of them were looking at my expectantly too. Expecting me to do what, I wondered again. Then I realized that no one had got off the rickshaw. There was this moment, when I was looking at them and they were looking at me.
Then, I neatly stepped around the rickshaw in a dignified manner, sat down in the car, looked at my father and said, "Hmm. Lets go !"
One day, as I sat
Sad and lonely and without a friend,
A voice came to me saying
"Cheer up,
Things could be worse".
So I cheered up,
And sure enough,
Things got worse.
(Rudyard Kipling)
