Fantastic Five

Train: it fascinates me every time I see it. Never have I got a full view in a single instance, it’s an engineering marvel. I am unable to distinctly define which one of these I like the most, is it the sound of speeding train or is it the wind blowing through window or is it the relative pace at which we move or the prospect of meeting new people and interacting or the thrill of starting your holiday or meeting the family back home or may be all of these. I will write a separate post on my recent train episodes.

Elephant: have you watched this animal closely? It never stands still or even sits. It always active shakes the legs, sways the trunk or swaps the ears which is kind of cute. From my childhood like every other child I have a great liking and a small fear at the sight of this animal. No other animal can replace it in my mind.

Night sky: one thing that is new every night. Yes the night sky is a good way to spend time thinking about god and his creation. The stars which twinkle like a smile, beautiful face like moon and the dark back background. The blackness of nothingness, the empty space that prevails everywhere and the mind boggling vastness makes me feel how simple yet intricate this world is. Just try to picture it in your mind and you will stand confused and fall asleep soon.

Beach: no words could explain my love for beach, it makes people forget everything and enjoy themselves. The waves which comes on and on! What else could a better place to understand nature and its secrets? Waves make you feel light and sand makes you feel very young. How often I have played in beach sand as time pass by without any worries and even without worrying about time. Being from Chennai I like the marina beach, worlds second longest beach, very much.

Child: “How to name it?” the state of happiness you attain just by watching a child. Their inept activeness, sweetness of their smile and naughtiness in their eyes cannot be found anywhere else. My heart goes with them………….

september 24th ..............................

Indians for a long time to come would remember this date for winning the twenty20 world cup. I too would like to remember this date for my life time but for entirely different reason. I finished my masters (unofficially) on the same date.
I had planned to present my practicum on 24th sep at 2 p.m. without knowing that the twenty20 final was on the same day in the morning. I would have certainly postponed my defense had I known it before. Believe me I didn’t know that India and Pakistan played a league match, when I was seriously writing my report until one of my friends said we won the match by bowl out.
Rest in the next………………..

journey

I travelled from Shreveport, LA to Chicago. I travelled in a small flight with just 32 seats. The flight attendant was serving good but looking normal not an air hostess stuff anyway it was comfortable for 2 hours flight. The flight was one hour late so I had to rush up in Chicago with just one and a half hour for the next flight. I made it to the gate in 20 mins. The flight wasn’t comfortable because I was seated in the middle of a five seater with guys on both sides. I was talking with the guy next to me for an hour but then he started listening to music and that’s the end. I asked for asian vegetarian food but what I got was just cheese and biscuit. I arrived in London an hour early. I went through customs check to board my connecting flight but to my astonishment they said I can carry only one carry-in bag. So I had to check in the other bag I was carrying with me all along. The immigration queue was very long but It did move fast and I went to a lady called Maheswari. I was happy that I will not have any problem since I saw the name to sound very much Indian but I was bombarded with unnecessary questions and It went for 20 mins before she finally said that I am good to go. I came to the gulf airlines counter to put my baggage in where I was informed about the cancellation of my flight. I was irritated to the core when that guy took more than 45 mins to arrange a hotel room and other necessary things for me to stay in London. I had to stay in London for 10 hours, the hotel was good and sandwich was awesome. I slept for some time and started back to the airport. I had to board a jet airways flight to Bombay and from there I had to go to Chennai. I was happy that I will travel in an Indian crowd as expected I talked with a guy from Bombay for quite some hours even before boarding the flight. We asked for side by side seats and I felt comfortable travelling with him. I was all along cursing myself and gulf-airways for the change of plans, myself for opting to a cheap trip and gulf-airways for cancelling the flight. Jet airways started a bit late about an hour (IST). I am not able to describe in words the happiness I felt at seeing the flight in that good a condition against my own prejudiced thought about jet airways. The air hostesses were young, good looking and in a way smart which made the window a distant object. They were all along serving some juice, so one or other was moving all the time. I even went around the plane just to have a look. At last I came to Bombay, the customs check went on and she asked for some money which I denied. The international airport wasn’t that inviting but the domestic airport was so good that I couldn’t believe my eyes. The flight from Bombay to Chennai was smooth and my parents and relatives were there to receive me…….

I wish i could have coffee with her!!

I am not whining about having coffee with my imaginary GF in Chennai, INDIA where I will be moving in the next few weeks to be exact on 19th of May. The newspaper heading as you are doing now made me think of a variety of things and situations within the span of a minute, before my browser could open the hidden secret. But to my bad luck the heading wasn’t related anyway to my thoughts and even if I ever had coffee with that one girl in my life that would never make the headlines. By the way I will be going to my home town, Chennai just 16 days from now. I will be staying there for three months, a very long vacation but the time as I know will melt like ice in hot sun even before I could just recap what I have done all these days. I will be spending time with my family after a brief gap of 21 months. The first time I have been out for months together all on my own.
Right now I am back to working a bit everyday which I hope will make my final project and reading “midnight’s children by Salman Rushdie”. I have gone through 100 pages which makes one fifth of the book all along I was cursing this guy for writing the book in Hinglish, mixture of Hindi and English but at last I came to grips with this guy’s way of writing which I would say is a bit different and only Indians can relate to book. As he says it in the preface it is like a history book written in bollywood style narration which makes the next scene a simple guess without any difficulty, all along feeding with me with historical facts which I would have never listened from the best of teachers. Hope to complete this book soon and planning a post on lines of this book very soon.

Till then signing off
sankar

Borifying week

I stared blankly at a white wall for about 45 minutes that was less boring than what I have gone through the whole week. I have always enjoyed being all alone, reading books, watching tv and working by the side of it. But whole through the last week I was at the peak of frustration doing nothing. I have been through 6 hours of monotonous lecture while in B.E.; I would have loved that better than last week. Even an hour long bus travel, which I hate the most, would have been thrilling. I assume walking in a desert, just watching hot sand to the end of my eye’s limit, searching may be for water and landing up in a mirage would have been more interesting. I have even enjoyed the two months when I was bed ridden due to typhoid. It would have been a rich experience to just copy text from some book to a notebook which I did for years in my school in the name of homework or better reading what I have just written, the toughest job of all. This week is one hell of a week in my borifying past and hope it will be the best in that category for the rest of my life. Borifying, a term coined to make you feel the height of my emptiness this week.

This week I have not moved an inch ahead and to say frankly I have moved backwards doubting myself a bit. I know with my faith in god and self, I will move forward quickly and confidently.

Reservation kindles flashback

“Reservation is not meant for historic wrong doings but to bring up the poor” quoted from Arun Shorie’s book. I am not going to write about my views on that bill as most of you by now know the reason behind these things.

The wheel turns back, with a lot of colors mixing and we go back to flashback…………….

The day was Monday, I went to school lazily whining all along about the first history hour. It was a bit unusual to have a history hour as the first hour on any day especially Monday but most of us liked the way the teacher went through the subject, so we actually kinda liked it (if u believe so…). Social studies had three parts history, geography and civics. The best among the worst was civics because everybody could view their opinions. On that class, the teacher was speaking about human rights, civil laws and caste system. She was saying about caste system in India. She used to go in lengths about the kind of treatment given to untouchables and their equality rights given in the constitution. On that particular day, she talked about the reservation in colleges and government jobs. As usual she was justifying the reservation policies by saying that the upper class Hindu people treated them very badly for centuries in the past.

Suddenly I stood up, she stopped her lecture and turned toward s me and asked what’s my problem. I was half sleeping and suddenly standing with all my friends laughing thinking that I was up from Sunday night sleep. But I was kind of framing a question in my mind and hesitantly said it to the teacher. She couldn’t understand it fully but I could see the expressions in her face which made me think twice about asking that question again. But I had to ask her, at least to make myself clear about the system.

“if my grandfather had killed somebody will the court punish me now?”

Few of my friends started laughing, but I asked again the same question at last the teacher understood the connection and said it is not for the mistakes made by your ancestors but to bring up the underprivileged and give them a fair chance and for the next 10 mins she was lecturing about the system which went into my deaf ears.

My head starts spinning and I come back to the present….

The statement by arun shorie made me think of this incident.