Hyperbole

Not about sensibilities but more about silliness and it's related consequences. Yesterday morning while cycling along Kathauta lake I came across a Durga Puja pandal near the pump station, which was being taken down. Like a hero (or an idiot) I cycled through it and almost at the end of the pandal the right brake of my cycle got stuck in a white curtain. The bike turned right with a jerk and I found myself flying in the air. It all felt as if it was happening in slow motion. Somehow, instinctively, I had the sense to roll over on my back, duck my head and break the roll with my palms to break the momentum of the fall. I got up as soon as my roll got to a stop. I was a bit shaken and mildly bruised. Gave myself a once over, picked the bike and got back on the road. I realised that my right palm was bleeding a bit once I got moving on the cycle. Was contemplating whether to proceed with the cycling or go back home and dress my wounds when my thought went towards the cell I use to

The other day I was called to the Principal office to enquire about a written complaint submitted by an intern about her batchmate. The guy when he turned up for questioning was pretty chilled out about the whole thing. Was smiling in-between and had a cavalier attitude about the proceeding.  He had threatened the complainant that he will strip her and will pull her tongue out. He felt it was a minor thing and an unnecessary fuss is being created about it. It was only when I shouted at him in the end that he was able to grasp the seriousness of the situation. We submitted the report after enquiring from the rest of the batch and the facts tallied with the one written in the complain. Now today when he was given the formal letter from the Principal office that he came to me. He was all repentant and crying today. What amazed me was the way his thought process worked. For one he imagined himself to be the victim. He quoted about another Professor who had been chucked out for sexual m

In most of the fairy tales 3 wishes are granted for a good deed. It's a pretty standard ploy. Not 2 or 4 or 10. Just 3. I had a similar experience a couple of days back though unfortunately no one told me that my wishes were about to come true. First one was about shoes. I had been passively obsessing over getting a new pair for Alex's morning walk after the older one seemed to be on their last leg (no pun intended). 3 pairs had bitten the dust in as less as 9 months. I had fond memories of the my white school PT sneakers. They were from "Power" and with their thick canvas cover and a tough rubber soul were practically indestructible. I was thinking where would I be able to get them and if they were still available. Well anyway, moving on, we went to Spencers later in the day and there, right in front were similar sneakers, that too in blue colour and on a 70% discount!!! In the second wish, I had been after John Wick - Chapter 3 since it was released a month bac

This is a story from long, long ago. Ok its not that long ago. Maybe over a month or max a couple of months old. But it played almost like a fairy tale, hence the opening line of this blog. There I was on a pleasant morning walking along with Alex on our regular perambulation, when I came across something shiny in the huge sand heap alongside a house under construction. I poked with the stick I carry along to check the source of shininess and along slid out a round silvery thing as the one in the pic. Initially I thought it was a 1 rupee coin but on closer inspection it turned out to be a plain, round, silvery disk. Out of curiosity I poked the stick in the sand and a couple of disks fell out. Now I was mildly intrigued. I kept on poking the sand and more and more disks slid out. By the end I had around 8-9 at hand. Once the discs stopped appearing I was lost as what to do with them. So as a prank I thought of spreading them at a distance from each other on the roa

I had the most amazing dream last night 😀 I had joined MDS again and that to in Oral Pathology 😁 We were 4 Pgs in the new batch and there were 2 girls and a guy other than me. They of course were much much younger. Our head was a South Indian and he had called us to his place that evening and had told us to get a bag (something similar to a large grocery bag) along. Maybe he had some notes or books to give, I don't know and he didn't specify why. Now the interesting part is that before I could go there, the head of NHSRC, Rajni Ma'am met me on the way and told me to come along with her 😳 Rajni Ma'am is kind of a Dean or the director of the place where I have joined to do my Pg in so I am not that worried about being late to my HoD. Plus I don't have the bag either as I was stopped on my way to the market by Ma'am. She took me to a classroom kind of place where there were 2 lady teachers already sitting. We sat across the table and she said that Anil sho

I dreamt almost the same dream on two different nights. This has never happened before and made me wonder. There was nothing much about the dream except for the fact that it was very realistic. In the first one we had bought a house somewhere else in Lucknow. It was a busy street and somewhere in old city. I am not sure about the city, but it was somewhere in the north. There was an ECG or ultrasound clinic next to the house which I realised on the way out. The clinic opens up on the road. This was two nights back. Today in the morning I dreamt about it again and this time I had a daughter and a son. I had gone to the house and we had yet to shift in. It was a single storeyed house with a driveway. I was talking to my daughter about the house and was asking her how many bathrooms there were, she said I think one and I thought we need to make another one before we shift. The dreams were ordinary and pretty mundane but the continuity and the realistic part made me wonder. Past life r

She had bright, big, shiny eyes. Maybe 2-3 months old. We used to meet almost every morning when Alex and I went for our walk. She was a bit weary of Alex in the beginning but got over her fear with time. With me she was always in a mood for a chat and I talked her up, teased her whenever we met. Her coat was a mix of black and brown with a white patch here and there. She was small, with cute drooping ears. Must have had a daschund somewhere in her ancestors. I had contemplated adopting her a couple of weeks back but with the upcoming summer break I postponed it. Met her today morning around 6:30 and she was in good spirits and walked behind us for a bit. I came back on the reverse loop of the walk after hardly 10-15 mins and I saw what seemed like a bundle of cloth in the middle of the road where we had met. She was no more. It broke my heart. Such is life and such is fate. She might not have a name, but she will never be forgotten.

 "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." Last night while dropping Indira mausi to her home, she was reminiscing about her youngest sister who died of breast cancer in her early 20s. This was around 5 decades ago. Vijay mausa was posted in Jammu then. She said that she never dreams, but the night Tunnu mausi passed away she got up with a start when she saw a sheet covered body lying on the floor in her dream. The next morning mausi got a call from Lucknow about the death of her sister the previous night. Till the time she hadn't seen Tunnu mausi in her dream she wasn't even aware that in Hindus they keep the dead on the floor, she said. My aunt had been sent back from Bombay to Lucknow after the doctors realised that the cancer had spread. Every 15 days she used to get medicines for her cancer from Tata Memorial Hospital. The time when she passed away the postal department had gone on strike and the medicines weren't delivered. There used

Last night I was in the house of my birth. My maternal grandparents home in Lucknow. It has been sold and demolished now and a new house had come in its place which also has been demolished. Something new might be coming up there. In my dream the original house had been reconstructed in just as it was all those years back. My grandparents were not there but the house more or less stood as it had then. The walls now were cream instead of white. The few changes that I noticed were that there was a wall between the drawing   and dining room now with a door leading to it, the window facing the school in the last bedroom was not there and there was a passage from the gallery to my Nani's prayer room next to the front bedroom. There was a lush green grass on the front and the side of the house. Some doctor was planning to buy it for 21 or 22 crores and turn it into a nursing home in my dream and I was wondering if I could occupy it and prevent the sale. Kirti was there and sh

I met a young girl, standing at the McDs takeaway selling bubble maker. Started chatting with her after buying a bubble maker while waiting for our order. She must have been around 6-7 years old but was not sure and said that she was 4. Very sharp and lively with bright eyes and beautiful teeth. I asked her about studies (she didn't), timings (9 to 1), family (her mom and sister also did the same thing and father was a bus driver, or so she said), residence (near Amity university) and how much she earns in a day (she had 5 bubble makers and had sold 2, in which she reminded that one was bought by me!). What charmed me was not the conversation, which the way I have put it, sounds pretty mundane, but her spunk and joie-de-vivre were a sight to behold ! I even went to the extent of asking Jai, my son, if we could adopt her :) I regretted not ordering anything for her from the counter so gave her our pack of French fries when they were delivered at the take out. She looked at them

The perfect journey jumped out of story books and became a real thing on 25th of February of the year Two thousand and nineteen, in other words this Monday. The cab was available at 4:45 a.m. The driver was just adjacent and knew exactly where to come. He got there at the boarding point before I could get there. He didn't speak a word. We got to the terminal well in time. I got the shortest line entering the T1 airport terminal at Delhi. The luggage drop queue was short and fast I had my boarding card and the luggage checked in within blink of an eye. Got the shortest queue of a couple of people, while the other queue appeared a mile long at the security check. Just breezed in for frisking For once my baggage wasn't opened up and enquired about at the x-ray. Got a surprise 25% discount for the take away at Starbucks! Boarding had started by the time I reached down. Was the last passenger on the bus to.the aircraft and it moved just as I got in. Was the first to b

The title may sound similar to good hair day but the similarity ends there. Eggs constitute a major part of my breakfast and they invariably a part in some form.  I follow the same routine to make them but the results can vary according to conditions still unknown to me. Some days they turn out picture perfect and then there are days like today. I made 3 today. All the 3 different and all the 3 screwed up. First one was for Alex which was both over and under cooked at the same time. Then it was for Jai which stuck to the pan despite my taking all precautions. The omelette was supposed to be fluffy but it ended up being a crossover between an omelette and a scrambled. I was last on the list and I fell back upon my "could-not-go-wrong" recipe of single half fry. It bombed. The egg stuck to the pan, the yolk was running all over the plate - different egg, different style, different pan.  Same result.  It was just not my day.

3 things defined yesterday i.e. 19th of February 2019, a Tuesday. Raman's B'day. All the three traveling from the past to the present. First was the thing about the fish. I was gifted an aquarium around 7-8 years back by Bro Joshi. It was a rather small one but as I was new to hobby it sufficed. I experimented with a lot of fish, starting from the ubiquitous gold fish and finally ended with tinfoil which are a very hardy.and dependable variety of carp. I have had carp now for over 6 years now. Yesterday the last of my first lot of tinfoil was all groggy and *grey*. It was swimming upside down in the morning and scaring the hell out of other fish plus looking super creepy. I tried to revive it by putting the antimicrobial medicine in the tank in the morning and left things to fate. Second was the thing about the car. I took the old nano after quite a while to college. There was a slight drizzle just before college and as always I was just running on time. I was a bit fast whe

The sky smoke grey The leaves sad and stale The air putrid with a tinge of smog The thin veneer of dust everywhere And then it happens... The light drizzle The night drizzle The much awaited rain And the world changes... The morning so fresh The roads so wet The trees so bright The Earth smiles yet again!

This was in August last year, so just a re-cap of something which fascinates me I finally heard the cry. The cry of a peacock early in the morning. Last year when I had started cycling there used to be this peacock who used to sit on the roof of one particular house and cry out in the mornings every day. It used to elate me a lot. This year I had been hunting for peacocks without any luck. The other day I could hear a couple of them near Malhour railway station but couldn't see them as there was a thick overgrowth all around. Today while cycling I could hear the cry and went back in search of it. It was sitting on the edge of the roof of one of the houses with its long tail hanging down like Rapunzel's tresses and in its full splendor. I do have a thing for peacocks.  They have been a part of some of my memorable moments of the past. The pet peacock of my cousin in the mountains, he was a forest officer so could wiggle around rules. The peacock would go out during day

This was an incident which happened in July last year, but it left an impact on me (plus was a learning experience of sorts) and hence is worth repeating here. Today in the morning while on my cycle run, I came across a lovely sight. I had just gone ahead of Malhour station on a cemented village road running parallel to the train tracks, the sky was overcast with a fine misty rain falling. From a distance I could see two girls on their way to the school on a small bicycle, and along side was a big dog keeping pace with them. It was a white dog with light brown patches, almost as tall as Alex and just trotting along with the girls. My heart swelled with emotions and it reminded me of Hachi as well Aslan, the lion in Narnia. A dog protecting his "family" and escorting them all the way to school. So I passed them and proceeded ahead. After a short distance the road came to an abrupt end and there was a muddy, wet dirt path ahead. I turned back to go to Malhour stati

I am in some kind of dream bonanza nowadays. Yesterday it was Everest, today it was a train journey up North. I am traveling by Shaheed express to somewhere in Punjab. Quite a lot of college staff is there along and maybe it is some kind of conference. I see the Principal of the college on an upper berth and Oral Medicine head in the same booth. We all are traveling by normal 3 tier coach with open windows and grill. I wake up in the morning and the view outside the window is amazing with a red horizon, the sun about to rise, lush green fields and sparkling water bodies zipping past. I get off at Amritsar and go for a stroll along the platform as it being a major station I expect the train to stay for awhile. I step out of the station and go up to a point from where I get a good view of the rural countryside. I slowly walk back to the train. The train has left! I look around for it frantically and then I see the station board and realise its Amritsar Cantonment railway station and

Last night I climbed up to Everest! It was literally at night when I finally managed to scale it. But I am getting ahead of myself. The dream starts midway while the four of us (Radhika, 2 middle aged, white, blonde women and myself) are midway through the trek. Though its supposed to be Nepal the scenery is pretty much like Kashmir. I guess my sub-concious being not very familiar with the topography around Everest went into default mode and switched it with the one it was familiar with. We stay a night at Sonamarg and there is an instance when the sun rays of the setting sun can be seen all golden through the snow laden branches of coniferous trees. I am trying to click its photo through my cell but am not getting a good angle. So the golden meadows thing kind of comes true. One of the American girls (the shorter and plumper one) gets all dizzy and sick so we plan to take a detour through Pahalgam and plan to get her checked there. Due to the inadvertent delay at Pahalgam hospi