Rain, Rain, Where are you?

The small kids must have been singing "Rain Rain go away" quite a lot during last one month. For the first time in so many years, I am witnessing a dry month of June. With KRS is having water just enough to last for another 15 days or so, with power enough to supply for next 10 days, situation is gloomy.

Call it global warming, call it nature's fury, but looks to me like hard days ahead in this year for Indians :-( We can expect chain reactions now, with lower crops, increased commodity prices, dispute over cauvery river water sharing etc etc. All these are not new, but if it does not rain NOW, these issues could become really severe :-(

But not everyone is complaining about rains. Take for example BBMP(Bangalore Munciple). Usually they get all the attention for all wrong reasons during these months. Well, for once, BBMP has taken some proactive action in anticipation of rainy season :-) I am not sure if "proactive" is the correct word, as they started cleaning the storm water drains in late June. Luckily for them, it did not rain during or before that. So, when it really rains (hopefully today onwards :-) ), the BBMP work will be put to test.

I am really missing those heavy rains which I enjoy watching from our balcony, reading some nice books with a hot cup of tea and some hot "bhajji/bonda" to go alongwith it. When will I experience it again? Rain, Rain, where are you?

Colorless Men?

Are men color blind? Or just that men don't appreciate the range of colors?

All these questions came to my mind, when I had a confrontation with Poorvi on one particular color. She was happily painting other day. She had to paint one portion of a drawing with Pink (I guess) :-) But she had painted it black. I was little surprised how can Poorvi be such color blind. When I checked with her, why didn't she paint that portion in Pink, she said, she does not have that color in her color box :-( I was more surprised and checked her color box. Indeed there was pink color.

But Poorvi had her own explanation. First of all, it was supposed to be a maroon color that she had to paint. But that "pinkish" color she has in her box is "magenta". So she decided to go with black. I could not further argue with her and decided to change the subject of discussion :-)

Sometime back, there was a mail that men can understand only 16 colors. I really wonder, if 16 is little bit exaggerated? Leave alone distinguishing the colors, I probably do not know the names of 16 different colors :-( We all know (by name) 7 VIBGYOR colors, add to that black and white. I cannot count more than 9 colors.

White and Black are the most easiest ones, with some effort Green and Blue can be distinguished (relating to Pakistan and Indian cricket uniforms). Anything Grey is black. Any other color should be either red or yellow or orange (thanks to traffic lights). :-) Peach and melon can only ring the bell as fruits than anything else. Violets and Indigos are left for a wild guess. Any other colors?

Michael Jackson: The Dancing King

(A tribute to a great dancer of our times)

As usual, I woke up today around 6:30 AM and switched on the TV. 9X-M or other music channel is a kind of wake-up alarm for Poorvi. So, it is my habit that I switch on the TV and by the time I get ready, Poorvi would have woken up watching the TV. Today was no different, but it was a breaking news to begin the day :-( I was shocked to see the news report on sudden demise of MJ :-(

Just when he was trying to make a mother of all comebacks, with 50 odd stage performances planned in UK next month, this happened :-(

Inarguably he was the best dancer of our times. Moonwalk dance was a craze in those days. There are so many people who imitated him (Prabhudeva for example), but only few people managed to meet his standards in dancing. His videos were a treat to watch, with many futuristic and fairy themes :-)

It is sad that he is no more :-( We are now left with only his memories of great songs and some stupendous dance steps. Although there were many allegations against him at different times of his life, it did not stop any of us admiring him as God of Pop music. Truly a once-a-generation sensation.

RIP MJ.

To "B" or not to "b"

"B"elieve me or not, whole of last weekend, I was wondering about "B". No, it was not about Big-B, not even about Bachcha B, nor it was about the "Bee" which had stung Poorvi sometime back. I was in fact helping Poorvi to write her homework !! She was suppose to write both Mummy "B" and baby "b" around 20 times. Uh, I never thought "B" is such a complicated character !!!

First of all, Poorvi had given up all hopes that she can ever write "B". She had a special disliking for this alphabet. So, I really had to motivate that "B" is a very nice character :-) After that, I tried all tactics, putting dots and asking her to join the dots, holding her hands and make her write, try to bribe her with some goodies if she wrote even a single "B" on her own etc. Each of these tactics helped, but not to that extent where she could finish all her homework.

Patience is the key. "B" patient, I said to myself. It helped to some extent. No point in getting frustrated. Each of those frustration used to demotivate Poorvi further, taking some more story telling, pampering from my side to get her back on track to write. So, I used to waste more time, if I lost patience :-)

Secondly, give enough breaks. At one point, she just had to write four more "B"s to finish her homework, but somehow Poorvi was in no mood to write. I was just pushing her to write those B's, before taking a break. But no, each of those B's used to take hell lot of time and with absolute no resemblance to any of the alphabets I know of. One more lesson learnt. :-) Longer the breaks, faster the writing and it is more accurate.

Uh, at the end of two days, when she wrote all her "B's", I felt like a king, having achieved a great victory. Already the next weekend is approaching, I am getting ready for the war :-) Let me "C" what is in store.

A curious case of Ramanath Iyer

On last Friday evening around 9:30 PM, I was just coming back to my apartment. As I was just walking in, I saw one elderly person (in his late 50's) and a girl standing in front of our apartment with some luggage. I was little puzzled, when that gentleman started calling me. I thought he wanted to know some address, but the case was different.

He introduced himself as "Ramanath Iyer" and narrated a story. It seems, he works in Emirates and settled in Chandigarh. His wife passed away recently and he had gone to Rameshwaram (alongwith his daughter) to perform the last rites of his wife. On the way back, they lost a baggage which had money and all other important belongings. They came in search of a relative in Bangalore to get some help, but unfortunately that relative no longer stayed here. It seems, his daughter had some exam (he was telling something about NASA exam) on Monday, so, he wanted some "financial help" in reaching his hometown - Chandigarh. I don't think this kind of story is new to any of us. We have met many such people on the road, asking for some help. I have always neglected them, but for some reason, looking at the father-daughter duo, I somehow felt bit too moved to ignore them. He was speaking good Hindi, English and Tamil. Looked very decent. Little confused, I called some of my friends in the apartment to join me and talk to Ramanath Iyer to evaluate if he is genuinely in trouble.

Friends came, talked to Ramanath Iyer. Same story was narrated in different languages. It was difficult for us to either neglect him or get convinced. We tried to ask many questions, but sometimes, you feel bad to interrogate so much on a person who is already shattered. :-(

Benefit of doubt, we decided to help him. Collected around 2000 Rs, handed over to him and sent the father-daughter duo in an auto to the railway station. Mr. Ramanath Iyer has taken one of our address and has promised to refund the money as soon as he reaches Chandigarh.

Whole night I was thinking, if we were duped? Was he in a real need? Anyways, we will come to know about this in few days, if Ramanath Iyer contacts us or not.

Having lost our air tickets and other valuables (like camera, bangle) once, I exactly know how it feels to be "money less" in an alien place. Anyway, I consider this Ramanth Iyer case as "closed" now, unless Ramanath Iyer is genuine and contacts us to refund the money :-)

Just a side talk..

Last week, I had gone to a dentist and waiting for the doctor to turn up. Doctor said, he is held up in some traffic and will take 30 minutes to reach the place. There was one more person in the clinic waiting for the doctor. With absolutely nothing else to do till doctor turns up, we started conversing with each other. These places gives a wonderful opportunity to have a side talk on current affairs :-) You will get ample of these kind of talks if you go to Jayanagar 4th block, sitting next to senior citizens' adda (just opposite to Ganesha fruit juice). It is an experience by itself :-)

So, we started discussing (not surprisingly) about traffic problems in Bangalore and how Bangaloreans blame each and everything on traffic :-) You get late to office, blame on traffic. Get late to wedding, blame it on traffic. So, now we have an alibi to justify the delays in our day-to-day life, irrespective of the traffic. How true, am sure you would have experienced the same, sometime or the other.

Our discussions also turned towards "misuse of mobile technology", as people give wrong places while they are in a totally different part of the city. Gentleman was suggesting that mobiles should display the location of the "caller" to know the truth :-) How true !!!

Still there was no sign of doctor. We had to continue with some more discussion on hot topic. What else can be better than "terrorism"? We vented our anger against the government (what else can we do?) that some of the terrorists are just kept in the jail for a long time and the trial goes on forever. It is an utter waste of citizen's money to keep feeding these terrorists in the jail. We were about to kill all those terrorists with our words, but by then the doctor came in. So, we had to stop our conversation there and move on with business.

It was a nice Saturday morning side-talk with a total stranger for about 30 minutes. I just enjoyed it, what other better way to kill time?