English Vinglish

One of the techniques used for memorization is association. Recently when Fernando Alonso won the European Grand Prix, the first thing that came to my mind was a friend of mine who is a die-hard Alonso fan. I had associated Alonso to my friend to help memorizing about Alonso.
I then found out that its the same with English words as well. Most of the english words I know, I can relate that word to something or some incident. Here are some interesting ones.

Swashbuckling : I still vividly remember that day when Shahid Afridi demolished India at Kanpur and the next day's local daily 'Patrika' faithfully reported the incident when this word attracted me. The 15 year old me decided to flash the word in school which was warmly received by my friends and was made a sensation by one of my more eloquent friend at the school assembly.

Obnoxious : The Hayden-Bhajji incident during the infamous 2007 Down Under visit.

Meander : Class 9 Geography, Sulekha ma'm explaining the course of Ganges

Shimmy : Renee Zellweger's interview in Reader's Digest had a picture of her dancing and the caption read: Zellweger shimmies down the ramp in 'Chicago'

Counterpane : This is a word my younger sister taught me, and the ego in me couldn't bear the fact that she had outdone me. Thus I remembered the word though recently when I asked her, she had forgotten the word and the incident. (SheldonCooper Grin)

Complacency : Learned this word on that unusual day at church when I wasn't sleeping during the sermon.

Hex : I remember this word coz this landed me in the staff room after one of my classmates mistook the word for another similar sounding word while I was shouting it in the class. I was shouting out of excitement in the word's resemblance with 'sex'.

That Moment of Indiscretion

The giant leap that Neil Armstrong took somewhere sometime has been described has one of the most influential and inspirational act that changed the whole course of mankind. Leaps have been in news ever since right from Silas'(Who's this?) dwarf leaps in his backyard to Yelena Isinbayeva's pole-vault leaps.Yes, leaps have come a long way before I decided to take that fateful leap.

Boarded on the NorthEast express, I had known right from the beginning that it doesn't have a stop at Naini Jn(the nearest station to my home, I had reservation up to the next station from which I'll have to take an auto back). So I had figured out that I will have to get off the train when it stops for signal somewhere near Naini. As the train passed through places that started looking familiar to me, I got my backpack and moved on to the door. Just then the train stopped. Now I had to decide whether to get off or wait to make sure this is the right place. By the time I could make a decision-given as lazy as I am my brain has to deal with a great amount of inertia- the train started honking and moving again. So I waited to see a platform approaching. And lo, its Naini.

Now(to my amusement later) my decision taking abilities had warmed up and was ready. So, I decided in a split second to jump off the train to the platform, thinking of all those days back in Kerala where I used to jump off  near the overhead bridge just to avoid all the walking through the platform. And it turned out that all my velocity gauging capabilities had gone in for a short hibernation after the 'nice and pleasant' Biharian summer day I spent in the train.
After the leap came the fall, and with the fall came the skin peel. And the explanation I came up with at home was a simple statement. "No pain, No gain" 

Supposed IIT visit

Here was a I, a mediocre engineering student with no real enthusiasm towards studies or innovation an average engineer is required to have, standing a chance to visit an IIT, the undoubted holy grail for a prospective engineer. The fact that it was IIT Guwahati, a relatively new one in the remotest of places in India, never dampened my spirits. But with all the furor about how the IIT standards would be compromised with a combined entrance exams, I had added reasons to be excited to get a first hand experience of the so called 'high standards'. With all excitement, geared up was I for an almighty entry when Indian Railways decided to play spoilsport. The NorthEast Frontier Railway is definitely not the best railway zone I have traveled in, in my extensive travelling career (huge lol), but in my long career ranging from the highs of Himalayas to the lows of Keralean backwater treats have I never faced such a situation when a train abruptly decided to take a halt, a rather long halt, which in the end amounted up to almost 7hrs.

Yes SEVEN freaking hours it was. Swearing at the coming-soon monsoon for being late was the only respite in the once lonely but now bubbling AlipurDuar Junction other than wishing to borrow the genes of those women in Thar desert who walk kilometers for water or even their whole nervous system. Wonder how do they cope! So stuck in a station in a bogie with a broken ac and bad ventilation, it was a 127 hour like 7 hour ordeal.
In short, with AlipurDuar Junction all my pre-trip excitement waned. BUT it was in that very same station that I had that proud moment when I put my 2 year old niece to sleep on my shoulder for the first time or was it that she decided to sleep there after weighing all other options in the station. Anyway, I was so over the moon that I ran through the platform to find that elusive i-cream guy and bought one for her twin sister!
PROUD UNCLE that i am! And so, the supposed grand IIT visit turned out to be just another holiday trip with a twist in the tail which will make way for another post.

The Overheat Tank

A recent UN survey revealed that at the present rate, the world as we know now wouldn't sustain human life due to acute shortage of water. They say all this would happen within the next 50-60 years. I have been facing my share of this water shortage in recent days.The water table in India has been reducing at an alarming rate in recent years due to numerous illegal activities, boring being one of them. The borewell (don't know whether the digging was legal) at my house standing at around 150ft deep has been struggling to give me good quality water for some time now. Its been around 6 months since the color of the water turned from slight yellow to the present acid stinking brownish-yellow. All water related appliances from the overhead tank to the water purifier has been bearing the brunt of this cobra-sting like water. All of my plastic buckets, no matter what their color was, had developed a brownish dark yellow lining.The candles in the aquaguard too has got a very dark muddish creamy layer on its surface which calls for a weekly cleaning.

Yes, the tank too had its walls lined yellow and had a pile of a mixture of sand, mud, among other things ranging from small stones to screws&nuts on its base. Now touching anything kept in the sun all day long on a hot summer day of late May is nothing short of daredevilry. Its the same about the overhead tank. So me and my sister had planned to clean it early in the morning when the temperatures would be the lowest. We had plans to go to bed as early as possible so as to get up at around 4 am, a schedule we are not accustomed to. Right then came the bad news, water in the tank has gotten over, so the do-it-now order came from mama and we as obedient as we are pulled our lazy arses up to the terrace to do the most demanding job in over past 2 months of my life. Climbing up to the platform we slowly lifted the lid on tank, and just when I was going to poke my head into the tank's mouth, to take a initial surveying look of the tank, out came a cloud of vapor so hot that I could feel it from the sight of it. Terrifying was the idea of actually getting into the over heated tank clean it. Being the elder one, I had the 'privilege' to order my sister to take the frightening jump-in, having papa's instruction that people with small structure should only get in the tank helping my cause. Rest is her's story to tell form the boiling left-over water  to her bucket-filling sweat.

All I learned was that next time I visit home, I would make sure its in winters. Cold is so me!

Movies Galore

Its a unearthly feeling to be 'stuck' at home. Not that I'm an outdoor-guy just that I can be as indolent in this baking hot summer as in cozy winters. Now one thing that needs the least of movements is movie watching and that is exactly what I have been doing over the past one whole month. After some prolonged sit-in-your-easychair-watch-movie sessions, I have slowly started appreciating the aesthetic value of movies. From the minute details in the screenplay to greater nuances of story telling.

In this period I saw a lot of crap and some great pieces of art.

Hugo: Just for its art value

12 Angry Men: Henry Fonda's antics

One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest: Jack Nicholson's smile and for the character Billy

Usual Suspect: Keyser Soze turnaround

Kahaani: Bob Biswas

Paan Singh Tomar: Run Tomar Run

SuMmEr TiMeS

#getting up to see 6am mornings, when the fan isn't working and the air conditioner is blown.
#when you open the fridge and smell those ripe, yellow mangoes!

#bollywood comes up with songs like 'pareshan'

#driving around the town in a 1960 model Rajdoot with your dad's shades from the 80's

#singing at the top of your voice sitting on the top tier of the kitchen cabinets

#watermelons and oiled rotis with milk
#those spanish sports commentary, from the 2 min long gooooaaaaaaaaaal scream in soccer to the 'oy oy oy' remark after every winner Federer scored in Madrid (btw its so easy to spot the tennis ball in the blue clay than the red clay in rome or roland garros)
#sweat behind the knees after 10 minutes of pranayama in Lotus position

                             summers are beautiful.. at least in its own ways!!

Seventy Five

75, that's the number of days I have as vacations but unfortunately 75 isn't the number of yards from which Suarez scored.
Yes, it has been a football crazy month or so with so much happening that it just wonders me why just enough happens to fill the third sports page of the Times of India.(courtesy Seinfeld).
There are a lot of things I started noticing about soccer like the person called Arjen Robben. There is no one in the whole football fraternity who wears his jersey tighter than Robben and add to that those yellow boots.#sogay
And again 75 would be the micro-millimeters from the goal did Petr Cech pull out a wonder save. Damn him, Liverpool end up with just a Mickey Mouse cup this season. 

Resolutions

Around the first week of any new year, there is this big fuss about ' new year resolutions' with anyone you meet springing up that vital question. And now here we are into the second month of the D-year, the year when the Mayans decided they were too lazy to go any further. I tried analyzing the probable situations I would end up in had I taken some.
 If my new year resolution was not to sleep during lectures, I would have kept it for the first week coz I didn't enter the classes. Had I entered I would have comfortably slept in the front bench. Even worse, I continue sleeping during sermons in the church :-(
  If my new year resolution was to brush my teeth twice daily, it would have been an utter failure. Leave alone twice, brushing even once on the second day of the year was not-happening with me soundly asleep on the upper berth. And it hasn't happened for atleast 10 days in the latest update. Orbit and other mints are spoiling my attempts to brush daily.
  Had my new year resolution been to wash my clothes at least once a week, should say it took a heavy beating. Here I am into the second month with the same pair of denims.
  If my new year resolution was to study daily it would have been the only thing I would have done daily except sleeping and eating. The only other thing I have done daily during the first month is download atleast 2 songs on average.

On a positive note, I have been successful in getting up from sleep early (7am). I have been doing this for the second consective week. Some say, doing the same this for 16 days regularly will become a habit. But a lazy saturday is all I need.