Am I ready to blog about “What I DIDN'T Like About My Childhood”?

My initial reaction: I just cannot remember anything that I did not like during my childhood days. I have so many pleasant memories but to think of unpleasant ones, it is really difficult. My wife always tells me that during arguments I try to evade the subject saying that I don’t remember things and that I put on an act of forgetfulness. Well, I hope that the amount of time that I am spending to write this post should convince her that I do forget quickly about unpleasant things.

I was stuck about what childhood stood for. I had to Google it and I found that the term childhood can be used till the age of 18 in most of the countries.

What did I not like about my early childhood? Maybe studying, though I don’t remember crying about having to go to school. I may not have liked my father teaching me as he was impatient compared to my mother when it came to teaching maths, though it was only once. I distinctly remember during my adolescent age that I never liked to lose in sports (cricket, table tennis, shuttle and carom) and I did not like it when my father encouraged my elder brother when we were playing against each other.

I was really stuck at this place for quite some time, actually a few hours, wondering what I did not like during my childhood, that I could not even sleep or rest.

I then had a great idea. I asked my father what I did not like during my childhood and his immediate response was you did not like to eat bitter gourd, did not like to work in his small garden and did not like to exercise or do yoga early in the morning. My mother’s response was that I hated to wear tie and tuck my shirt neatly and go to school. That the moment I came out of the school, I would remove the tie and untuck my shirt, and that I did not like to dance in front of relatives even though I had learnt how to.

And believe it or not, even today I don’t like any of these things. I guess I have not changed much over the years.

I really thank the admins for this topic. It made me realise the childhood that God has given me. The things that I have not liked are so petty. It may sound philosophical but I think this post has made me look back at my life and appreciate what everybody around has done for me or not done to me to make me feel so nice about my childhood. Thank you, whenmysoupcamealive for this topic.

Am I ready to blog on “He was so transparent that …?

Our 52-week project admins came up with this week’s theme, “He was transparent that …..” and suggested that we write an article using that sentence. My initial reaction about this topic was that it could be male bashing as one of the fellow members pointed out but I have been observing that many of them are based on love. And here is my transparent story.

He was so transparent that it was very difficult to find fault with him. He had built his name around transparency and he thought of it as a weapon to deal with people. His transparency and simplicity would always endear him to everybody. Faculty and students could always come with their problems both personal and professional to him and he would listen patiently and try to help them. He learnt over the years that listening to their problems with sympathy would always create empathy between them.

This transparency gave him the freedom to think, to shout at them, to chide them and to mend them. And it gave him a lot of confidence, though it could be misplaced in this selfish world that we live among.

And he always thought, Oh My God, is it necessary to be nice in this selfish world where people would call him at the middle of the night and complain that there was no power in the hostel, the warden call in the night and tell him that a student had drunk a mosquito repellant because he had not prepared for the next day’s class test, a faculty call and cry that she was abused by the parents in the middle of the night since she had scolded their ward and the student had threatened to commit suicide, a single parent committed suicide because her son was not studying properly in spite of her poverty.

And because he was so transparent, it showed on him. Listening to their problems, thinking about them always, trying to solve them, and trying to understand how they would react led to a deterioration in his health.

Was this transparency necessary in the first place?

People Watching

Am I ready to blog about people watching?
It is Sunday today and the last date is Tuesday. So I thought to myself, I better be ready to blog about people watching and write impromptu. I hope you enjoy it.
I initially got confused with the title, People Watching. Is it people watching me or me watching people do curious things? And I thought of writing about both.

People watching me
There was once a girl in her late teens commenting about me when I was in my first job that ‘there goes the PM Chandrasekhar’. I used to wear a vest like the one he used to wear. I was really taken aback. This was in Brindavan Gardens and my colleagues, a couple of women staff members who overheard the comment, were also taken aback about this unknown girl pulling my leg.

Me watching people
Yesterday I went to Yelagiri hills for a retreat for a day. And as I was walking with a camera hanging around my neck along the pathway around the lake looking at the trees, the boat rides and clicking some photographs of the spouse, and nature, there was a couple sitting with a 4-year-old. That kid seeing me immediately said, “Ammi, look, there is a photographer with a camera,” and the mother was pacifying him, “No, he is not a photographer. He is only a private photographer.” I was quite amused about the kid’s enthusiasm that he could get a photo of his and the dejection when he knew about me.

I have had the great opportunity of watching students doing different things. I stand at the gate and watch them come into the college and when they are late and repeat offenders, the way they avoid my gaze is very fascinating. Some of them even start running as soon as they near me, to avoid any comments/ scolding from me. And the excuses they come up with, when they take leave or have been on long leave, have always been enlightening.

On one occasion a parent told me that his son had told him that the Principal (I) would not allow him into the campus if he did not have a laptop of his own and the father bought him one taking a big loan and that kid was using the laptop to watch movies in the hostel!

I have also observed how students write during their exams. When I am on my rounds and go near them, the way the students try to cover their answer papers if they are not writing well has always made me smile inwardly.

And then I remember one of my grandfathers commenting when a batsman got out in a test match we were both watching together in Chennai about 25 years ago, “He must be shot for playing so recklessly!” So animated was he that I can’t forget him after all these years.

Just Some Nonsense

Am I ready to blog about Nonsense? I guess I am. And happy to do that too!

What is there to think if I have to write about Nonsense? If it has to make sense, I might have to think and write. And as usual, I googled up to understand what Nonsense meant and found that it means:
“Nonsense is a communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system that lacks any coherent meaning. Sometimes in ordinary usage, nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or ridiculous”.
I thought of writing about nonsense which lacks any coherent meaning and anecdotes which sound sensible to some and ridiculous to some.

I have had great fortune on two counts. One, to be working as a teacher, actually a lecturer in an Engineering discipline for almost 25 years, even as I was in college, and another, a wife who keeps telling me that the standard of my English knowledge is pathetic and it has steadily been coming down. I have always been arguing with her that my language suffers because of the environment in which I work, that as I am surrounded by students whose medium of instruction is not English, it might reflect in my language. This rebuttal from me would always get a dismissive retort from her: “What Nonsense!”  But, I think it is sensible. When you are surrounded by intellectuals, it will definitely rub off on you. It’s the same way reverse osmosis works.  As a fellow member pointed out, this is sensible nonsense.  

Another anecdote: A friend of mine once rushed to the railway station to see his sibling off who was going home as he was sick. Since he was late to the station, he rushed to the platform in a hurry to see his brother before the train took off. Unfortunately, he could not meet his brother as the train had already left. In a hurry to meet his sick brother, my friend had forgotten to buy the platform ticket. And as it always happens, he was caught by the railway officials. My friend paid the fine and got back home but would often worry that the railway officials would somehow trouble him for the mistake later on, and my uncle retorted, “What Nonsense, why will the officials trouble you?” This nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or being ridiculous.

And then on another occasion, in the class, I was asking students what a water pump was, the different types - they had actually studied about all these in the previous semesters and I was chiding them for not studying properly. And as I was asking them about the pumps they use in their houses, and when his turn came, one of the students came up with this brilliant answer, We don’t have a pump in our house, we have only a motor. “What Nonsense!” I retorted. And this is nonsense due to ignorance.

And for the grand finale, I have for you some nonsense which lacks any coherent meaning. I have evaluated so many papers in my life and have come up with some ridiculous answers, some really gibberish. There was once a student who had written pages about water in the different rivers of India when the question was about the specific weight and viscosity of the fluid. Krishna, Godavari, Brahmaputra, all their waters had different weights and viscosities, according to him.

There was one paper I evaluated in which the student had written an entire booklet and I could not find a way to give him even one mark. Real nonsense bordering on gibberish.

Some quotes from the innumerable answer papers I have evaluated and the nonsense they contain.

• Reactivity principle: The energy converrtion system and variable process of energy functional of the maintainable of the pressure of source of the energy is values of the producted in the process is called as Reactivity.

• Why is compounding necessary in steam turbine?  The compounding necessary in steam turbine are   The necessary compound are contancted, turning blades and and abort valve.

• What is a simple jet propulsion system? The simple jet propulsion system is defined as the   used for the jet propulsion system. This is the important process for the jet proplustion. This is used to the jet propulsion. This is called as the simple Jet propulsion system.

• Dalton’s atomic theory: The energy of atomic values need to pressure and energy contained them the measurement at the provided to factors of the atomic at station of variable values of the energy.

 
 If only Dalton was alive!

And to remain sensible after all this!

A Pound of Flesh

Am I ready to blog about this week’s theme, ‘A Pound of Flesh’!

       Well, I am not very confident, but here goes! I googled what a pound of flesh is. I also browsed through some of the posts of our group.
      I have been thinking of an anecdote to write about or post one of my thousands of photographs, some of which would qualify for this week’s theme.

I wanted to understand what a pound of flesh stood for, and picked up a few of the meanings:
_ A payment or punishment that involves suffering and sacrifice on the part of the person being punished.
_ A pound of flesh is a figurative way of referring to a harsh demand or spiteful penalty — the consequences of defaulting on a desperate bargain.
_ If someone demands their pound of flesh, they make someone give them something that they owe them, although they do not need it and it will cause problems for the other person.

And as I was thinking hard about these three, I recollected an incident based on the third quote.

I thought of something which was very sad and marked one of the toughest moments of my life. 
I had a junior colleague working with me who, unfortunately, was nasty to the students. He was very rude and I had even advised him about how he must be careful in dealing with situations because everyday is not our day, whatever be our status or position. The students were getting sick of him. When something untoward happened in the campus, they took it upon them to bash him up, took their pound of flesh and landed him in the hospital injured grievously.

The moral of the story, never stretch your limits. Someday you may be consumed in them.

Color Garnet- Theme for 2nd Week

Am I ready to blog about the color garnet, the theme for 2nd week? I guess the answer is Yes in my mind and so here it is!

Before I start, A Happy Sankranthi / Pongal to all the readers of this post. I am now on a four and a half day holiday for the festival and I had planned to do this post during this break.

Yesterday, I was telling  my father-in-law that I had also started a blog and he said, "Good but where do you get the time from, to do that?" After getting into this 52-week project, I guess you will all be the inspiration that I need and the time will be created by itself.

I started off by googling what is a garnet ? And came up with a lot of information about garnets and that they are a group of silicate glassy minerals and have been used as gemstones and abrasives. Garnet is the birthstone for the month of  January and a happy birthday to all of you born in January. From their physical properties, I found that garnets are found in many colors including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, violet, pink and colorless.

The rarest of these is the blue garnet, the colour which is my niece Gundu Pilla's favourite. From the time she was a kid, she would always say, she loved the colour blue. I really wanted to post a garnet in blue. I had a wonderful photo of the blue sky with an airplane in it, which I shot sitting in a plane and as I saw another plane overtake me at a very high altitude. But the hitch was whether the blue conformed to the blue of the garnet. I also thought of a shot of the sea, another vast blue expanse. I have wonderful photographs of the sea. Unfortunately they are all safely tucked away in a DVD lying in my office and I could not use them.

I saw a lot of images of the color of the garnet and found many resemblances of all these in day-to-day life, like food, fruits, flowers, sandals, cars, cell phone covers. And I narrowed down to pomegranate seeds, derived from the Greek word Granatum, which some of our friends on The Fifty-2 Weeks of 2013 Project have used. Flowers have also been used. I also thought of using photographs of the sunset or sunrise in orange shades, which is actually my cover photo on my Facebook account. I thought of an yellow garnet, the photograph of an illuminated cave wall in the Belum caves near Banaganapalle in Andhra Pradesh which is the second largest cave in the Indian subcontinent.

And finally settled on this. Pomegranates and gemstones, both of which I borrowed from my wife for the shot.

 And as I was arranging them, I thought of a small game and I want you to guess how many stones are there in the photo. All the right answers get a chocolate each, maybe in the color of the Garnet.

 Thanks Sra and Aparna for the theme.

On New Year Resolutions

             I have never had any resolutions till now, least of all for New Year. I have always taken life as it comes, not worrying about tomorrow, be it when I was in school or today. New Year to me meant just another day. There were years when I would just go off to sleep before midnight and not worry about the dawn of the New Year. And in college, we did not even have a holiday for New Year. So the celebrations were much muted because we would go to college on the 1^st. And maybe that was the reason why New Year resolutions were not so special to me. I still think that for resolutions to be made, you don’t need to wait for any special day.

            Anyway what is a New Year Resolution? A resolution that almost 88% of the people who make fail as per Wikipedia. And what are these resolutions? Improve physical well-being, avoid junk food, Exercise more, eat properly, Give up smoking or drinking, brush your teeth twice a day and drive properly. Things which should normally be done and are not done!  

           And by the way, this year my wife has made some resolutions for me, small things which may be completed in a few days time. Setting up a blog for myself and trying to utilize my time more effectively has been one of her resolutions for a long time. Hoping that her next set of resolutions for me will be only for the 2014 New Year’s Eve.