Saturday 27 August 2011

Hot Water

My latest companion, P.G. Wodehouse's Hot Water. Not too much a fast paced novel, but guaranteed for keeping you occupied. Kinda bored with the adventurous novels these days. Too much of adventure sucks, in my opinion. Hoping for some new plot in the 'Laughing Gas' which is in my hands now after 'Hot Water'. Got to know what it is from its preface, yet to start reading it in a stretch and hope it impresses me this time too. I dream of owning all his books one day, and wish someone gifts me this collection, too ;).

Monday 22 August 2011

My favourite Deccan Chronicle

An avid reader of Deccan Chronicle, quite fascinated by its new look and its inspirational words of the Sunday Chronicle, is the latest me. To track down the jumble quiz most of the days and to spot the six differences in a complexly resembling pair of pictures actually keeps me high every morning. These are simple tricks to keep your profile high, I discovered recently. Along with that, last few days have run with me immersed in the most adventurous 'If tomorrow comes' by Sidney Sheldon. All these years a thought had prevailed that Sydney Sheldon's writings are not of my 'type', so I never volunteered to try it. Tied by the boredom that usually follows after a hectic and tiresome preparation for exam, I found myself with the book which kept me completely occupied for two days and I loved Tracy Whitney's adventures. It must have taken the author much of an effort for such creativity, not to mention his vocabulary skills.

Was quite surprised coming to know of the fact that a burning candle has millions of diamond nano particles in its flames but one could not extract diamond from it as it is converted into some carbon chemical in less than a fraction of a second. This now comes to a conclusion that, sadly, this information won't quench the diamond thirst that now arises. However, as mentioned in the column, this knowledge would change the way we would look at the flames of the candle, forever. Yesterday when the power was off at night, I could see the nano particles flaming at my home too :P.

Read an interview with the intellectual NRN and it has motivated me. It is astonishing to hear when he says that he never got a first rank at school and the highest one he got was the second. He also speaks of his yardsticks for happiness, dreams and why he didn't build a 27 storeyed mansion which any successful businessman of a gaint company would have dreamt of. It is time that we stopped running behind ranks, grades et all and focus much on creating better human values, a better society.

Wednesday 17 August 2011

La langue française - On a funnier note

Divide the world into two genres, classify them into masculine and feminine, now permute and combine with singular and plural. Voila, you are ready with the language - French. Mind you, there is no rule as to what forms a masculine or feminine. Something on it that arose from my brain resembling the famous Mark Twain's writing on German: French is one short of German in not having the gender neute, which will proably make the learners raise their eyebrows, if not making them happy. Back to the note on la francaise, a man is a masculine but a woman is feminine. Well, this is not a great discovery which any species in the earth will know, until you read what follows next. A man turns feminine when he is referred as a person (une personne). Along with that, he/she has the head which is feminine (la tete), a masculine nose (le nez) and a similar reasonless gender classification for the whole rest of the anatomy. And in the case of feminine, feminisme is masculine! Now no patience lies in me to explain the rest, nor do I have much knowledge . What I happened to write is only 0.000000..1% of what the language is all about. Things like these make me wonder who would have had such a cerebral structure, interest and time to create rules for a language on these lines. Inspite of all these contradictions, this language is a poetic one requiring a calculative mind and a good memory to become fluent at, as well as to discover a new world. A definite and enjoyable learning for those who do not get discouraged. 

Friday 12 August 2011

Good old(?) childhood memories

There are days when you hear a song at radio at your desk, mobile or even on the roadside and you keep humming it through out the day. There have also been times when some song suddenly creeps into your mind with no reason. And trying to look from where it entered into your mind leaves you perplexed. There is one such a song that has been getting spilled from my mouth for almost a complete day or two. The number I am talking about is one from the doordarshan era, the title song of the renowned serial 'Shaktimaan'. There is no peculiar reason for why I loved the song and I can remember few lines of it even now.
While I hum the song I am dragged to the fantastic days of my childhood which was worrilesss, a period of dreams and hopes even during most of the hardships, to add to it. Though I was not an ardent follower of television or cinema (and yes, even at present!), I watched the drama as and when I could and I am a fan of the hilarious Gangadhar. I have patted myself to be lucky for having got a sheet of Shaktimaan lables, which I stuck to my notebooks with all happiness in the world. I can recall profoundly my peeping into kitchen from outside its window during ads, while my lovable mom made the delicious appalam. The soul in me sought the best out of everything and was totally carefree, whilst persuing what it wanted. And the same soul still lives on.
The dreams of the soul have altered now, but its spirit still prevails as youthful as it was then. I am one of the kind to be blessed in finding pleasure in the simplest of things and believe that simplicity is the root to happiness. I dare doing what my heart says, success and failure never matter. It is a dark path that I am traveling, but I am sure to overcome the obstacles and reach where I want to be, in near future. If there is light at the end of the tunnel, I hope to reach it, here and also at the 'other' side. Eventually, I hope to find who I am.

Thursday 11 August 2011