Climate is Culture...absolutely right Mr. Suraiya

Finally, it rained today. Maybe just to fulfill some obligation of monsoon season. It only rains when it rains hard. I won’t mind clothes not drying or power supply going phut or the killing humidity afterwards. Anything for rain-on-dry earth smell and ear-shattering sounds of lightning.
Just, some days, let it rain with the sole purpose of drenching earth, objects, people.

Jug Suraiya’s column appears every Sunday in the Times of India.This Sunday it was about how climates of regions define their cultures. Don’t you get easily irritated during hot summers? We all do. Maybe in a city like Delhi, we have extreme mood swings matching extreme climates. And we blamed it all on MBA workload...huh!

So much so for rain. For all we know, we might wake up to bright sun shining upon us.
Here is a beautiful description by poet Munir Niazi to remember some rainfall we are lucky enough to receive.

Aah! Ye baaraani raat ( Oh! This rainy night)
Minh, havaa, tufaan, raqs-e-saayeqaat ( Rain, wind, storm and dance of lightning)
Shash-jahat par tiirgii uma.Dii huii ( Darkness in every direction)
Ek sannate mein bazm-e-hadasaat ( In a flash of calm, there is a feast of incidents)
Aur meri khidaki ke niche ( Beneath my window...)
Kanpate pedon ke paat ( ...Around the shivering trees)
Chaar suu aavaara hain ( ...Everywhere there are...)
Bhuule bisare vaaqayaat ( ...some forgotten old incidents/memories)
Jhakkadon ke shor mein ( Still...in so much noise...)
Jaane kitanii duur se (... and from such a far distance...)
Sun rahaa huun teri baat ( I am listening to your voice.)

I am gonna wear a helmet though...

I like reading Dilbert. Though the humour is subtle and mostly American-corporate-life centric, you can’t say that it does not make you smile once in a while.
Few days ago, I came across this strip. Earlier, I was a bit apprehensive when I decided to go in for marketing major.
Now, I think I won’t have much trouble getting a job.

Hopeless Haiku

No Sundays off
Life is a grind
And IB isn’t all ha ha hee hee (anymore)

On the way back...

On the way to Delhi, we stopped at Midway and bought imli. Small brown imli balls wrapped like toffees. Just put them in the mouth and they melt into a tangy-sweet-salty taste. Every molecule on your tongue gets a vibrant shake. We hogged on imli balls in the car. I ate a lot of them today and am still going on. I just don’t want that taste to go away from my mouth.

On the way back, the weather suddenly turned awesome. Rain and Breeze. Eighty km/hr. Long smooth road. Green and brown till the horizon. For a while, I wished car wasn’t air-conditioned and I could stick my neck out of the window. I made people roll down their windows and aahh... the feeling of breathlessness when too much air rushes to your face is absolutely great.

This couplet from poet Jan Nissar Akhtar popped in my mind...

fursat-e-kaar faqat chaar ghadi hai yaaro
ye na socho ke abhii umr padi hai yaaro

{Translation: The period of leisure/relaxation is quite short-lived. Don’t let go of this moment thinking you have whole life ahead [to relax]. }

So, Imli plus beautiful drive plus racking a carefree mind for couplets...
Life is quite simple some days...isn't it?

The most Planned -Unplanned Trip

This Planned-Unplanned Trip isn’t a misnomer. It is a reality we lived for the past fortnight. After making elaborate plans to go to Shimla, then Amritsar, then Agra, half of us didn’t know where we would ultimately spend the next two days. Most of us were not sure of going, most of us backed out or tried backing out (including me) but few of us ultimately went.

Why was this trip so elaborately planned?

There was a long weekend ahead and we had nothing much to do. We thought of getting away from Delhi. Since we don’t have much to do even when classes are running, we started making plans. And Oh Boy! Did we plan! We considered each and every destination in India that we could go to. We almost went to Shimla and Amritsar and Agra before finally landing at Jaipur. We might have considered going to the moon too if transport wasn’t such a problem. Don’t worry; we will definitely consider getting into Planning Commission.

Who all went?

The headcount varied everyday
Some said yes and then said no
I want to go. Wait! I want to stay.
And few who planned did not go.

Finally, there were seven of us including me.

How did we go?

There was a big comfortable Innova, a driver (who turned out to be very dominating) and lots of absolutely free bright sunshine (which fell on me regardless of where I sat in the car).

What did we do?

We took off from Delhi at around nine-thirty. We stopped at Haldiram’s( the biggest Haldiram’s I have seen till date) for breakfast.

We reached Jaipur at around two. The entire city looks the same—Brick-red and pink with white designs. We spent the first three hours looking for the hotel. Every single affordable hotel in the city was booked. The ones we wanted to stay in didn’t let us in. We had to consider sleeping in the car or going back to Delhi. Lady Luck smiled and we finally stayed in a damn shady hotel which had half-naked men roaming around.

We all desperately wanted to eat at Niros. We went there at six in the evening and they refused to serve us lunch. Have snacks or leave. We had faced enough humiliation for one day. We left and ate at McDonald’s. We were so hungry that we ate for nearly a grand.

We then went to Choki Dani – a place not to be missed by anyone visiting Jaipur. It was like a mini Rajasthani village – camels running around, traditional dancers, giant wheels, so many things to eat and many others to do. I had a gala time there.

Next day, we went to the City Palace and roamed around in the market. Not to mention we went and had lunch at Niros. The food was awesome. No one was really interested in sightseeing so we saw places like Hawa Mahal, Jal Mahal, Amer Fort, etc. from outside.

We wanted to go to Neemrana but the dominating driver refused to take us there. We left for Delhi at around four. Since the next day was Independence Day, we obviously have to reach our homes by midnight and remain shut in them. Terrorism makes the concept of independence ironical, I guess. We reached hostel at around nine-thirty.

Overall, a short and relaxing trip. Good food to eat, a long beautiful drive, nice people to hang around with, a lot of sunshine and some welcome rain, some new experiences and many take-away memories.
I am tempted to say priceless but it was for two grands.

Book Review-2: HOMGKGWAGAL

The Review:

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life is the book you might like if you are:
1.Around 16-19 years of age
2.Have an acute desire to know what American teenaged girls like to wear(or why they don’t like to wear much)
3.Want to live an acronym-planned life

The book is about Opal Mehta, a sixteen year old NRI girl whose family’s ambition is to see her at Harvard. She is a super-geeky-A+ student...but has never been kissed, never got drunk; never put up a wild act, wears lousy clothes...in short...she doesn’t have a life. The Dean at Harvard tells her to go get a life because Harvard simply does not accept such fun-deficient people (luckily, the admission criteria at IMI weren’t this stringent).
So, Opal and her parents set on a revised “How to Get Opal in Harvard” mission. How they do it is some stuff most teenagers will want their parents to emulate. To tell whether Opal ultimately goes to Harvard will be spoiling the fun for those of you who want to read it. The Bottom-line is a very predictable and therefore, quite boring book.

Some of you may say I am quite hard on Kaavya Vishwanathan(author) for she is only seventeen. I would not be if, a decade ago, had I not read “The Room on the Roof” by Ruskin Bond. He wrote this book when he too was seventeen. The book struck a chord in me which HOMGKGWAGAL fails to do by miles.
Or maybe I am too old for this book.

Rating:

4/10

Why I read this book?

This book was initially quite hyped and later went off the shelves because it attracted a lot of plagiarism-controversy. I wanted to know whether the book was worth the attention it received.

Next read:

The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

Group work: There is Pepsi on my laptop...

This has to be written because if it wasn’t so chaotic, it would have been hilarious.

Day: Sunday
Time: 2:30 AM
Working on: An IB presentation due in about 12 hours
People present: Me, DK, SW are on bed. VG and SK are on chairs. We have finally settled down to work after bouts of chatting, orkutting, eating, etc.
(I mostly use initials of names to protect identities. As if there is a need for it. And as if that works.)
SW is working on my laptop (if it is possible to love an object...then I absolutely love my laptop).
Mistake #1: I ask for Pepsi. DK hands me a 2 liter- almost- full bottle.
Mistake #2: I, obviously hold the bottle in such a way that soon enough, Pepsi is on my laptop (OMG! PEPSI ON MY LAPTOP—time for me to freak out!), on the bed and not to forget, on SW

The following happens simultaneously.I jump up (imagine me doing that) and start shouting “Oh! My laptop!” innumerable times. DK starts insisting that she handed me the bottle the right way. SW is obviously very pissed because 1) She is drenched in Pepsi 2) People are paying more attention to the laptop than to her
SK and VG are so amused that they start rolling with laughter on their chairs.

There is so loud a decibel-burst in the room that we start getting messages from people living in far-away blocks telling us to stop making noise.

So, the scene after is tissues all over the room, a lot of talcum powder on mattresses, bed sheets on floor, and a lonely bottle of Pepsi standing in the corner( Of course we punish it because it is the culprit).
That we finally finished our ppt twelve hours later must be now quite believable.

PS: My laptop survived. So did SW.