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!