The Sun’s on our side!

Today we Hindus celebrate the movement of the Sun towards the northern hemisphere. It’s a sunny day as well, and i am feeling bright and chirpy…

The Un-job state

I’m beginning to enjoy this state. Makes me learn to optimize my respources, seek stuff that simple and down-to-earth. It’s giving me time to read, to visit friends and to go on long walks. I’m enjoying a label-free world- no name tag to weigh me down. I’m reinventing myself- and what better way than to re-open my blog and get in touch with myself? A journal to jot down everything I feel, see and learn. The Un-job state- is a break from the  biz-buzz.

I went through fear, disbelief, panic, boredom. But now I’m cool. Life is a journey- it has its stops- and one must learn to put up one’s feet and rest a bit. Rather than thinking of the Unjob state as a raging storm, let’ s learn to look at it as a lake in the landscape where we sit and drink calm, soothing water out of our cupped palms. It’s only when we regain our energy that we can attract our new avatar…

When the going gets tough…

(Image from the web)

The tough start thinking of alternatives. The queues in Bangalore petrol bunks are meandering and the wait for fueling up is bothersome. Which is why I thought that a recent post from this blog made a lot of sense. Scroll down a bit and check out the table on biofuels…

Go Green Workshop in Bangalore

It’s been sometime since I’ve blogged- caught up with work and other stuff! But hey I’m on the moment I got time!

Here’s something happening in our area (at a park near Sandeepani school, Sanjaynagar, Bangalore). Some of us from the Art of Living Foundation have got together to plan out a ‘Go Green Workshop’ for kids on Sunday morning (June 29). Most of these green get-together happen in centrally located Lal Bagh, and it is often difficult for parents who live far off to tow their kids to the event. So we thought, hey, why not have some fun filled and learning moments in our own backyard?

We’ve planned painting, a quiz on environment/ecology, passing the ‘ideas’ basket as the key themes to the workshop. The rest will be a surprise! We also have goodies to go around…hmm.

If any among you live close by, do drop in and help us manage the kids (who knows, it might be the other way round!!)

Oh, and by the way, GG Mascot says ‘Hello’ to you!

GG’s been lovingly crafted with thermocol, loads of newspaper clippings, paint, post-its and what not. He’s going to go even more green on Sunday, when we display him at the park!

When green giants start to disappear

Image from http://www.flickr.com

Caught on this site: Shirakami forest, a UNECSO World Heritage site in Japan, would be affected by global warming. What a pity!

Image from Wikipedia

It is said that this vast forest land could vanish by the turn of the century due to global warming. Scientists warn that if greenhouse gas emissions remain at the current level, global warming will increase the damage caused by storm surges and cause torrential rain to fall more often.

The Shirakami Mountains are home to one of the world’s largest beech forests. However, these forests will decrease by 97.1 percent between 2031 and 2050 and vanish entirely after 2081, the study said, because the trees will be unable to adapt to the increase in temperature fast enough…

Grin and ‘bear’ it!

They were caught red-handed (or pawed!) on this  blog. Spending a few bear, er, bare moments at the playground!

Maybe lil’ Jimmy can learn a few tricks from mama and papa bears! All he seems to do is sleep-wall(k) back home!

I guess either way, it’s paws and play!!

Brown paper packages tied up with strings…

Seth Godin’s latest blog entry made a lot of sense- in fact, I thought he packaged it rather well.

These days, I find tea packaged rather well, in India. You find the oddest of flavors- like the one i had yesterday, green tea with chamomile. in a glossy package. The team of sprightly tea bags had a few wooden sticks for company- they served as stirrers. But God forbid if you drop the box- you will find yourself bending double in retrieving them! Some tea packets have these tiny read-me text artistically packaged a booklet with a few glossy pages. It’ll probably give you info which you know already like the benefits of tea drinking and how to drink tea in the first place. But it’s all the more fun to buy a tea box with a kit of such odd souvenirs. Who knows, they might even add a tea cup or two, in the box soon!

How do you pick a pot of peppery pickle off a plane?

And manage to keep your fingers free of the hot red lava that emerges from within? In Andhra Pradesh, packaging pickles for wannabe NRIs is being an industry in itself. Years ago, I hauled a pot o’ pickle for mom and dad who live in the US. I was utterly dismayed when I opened the suitcase with the bottle and found it had leaked onto my clothes! Now all you need to do before hopping onto the plane, is to take your pickle to the nearest packaging joint in town. They shrink, wrap, polish the package like its fate is literally sealed within the wraps. Comes out like the Gucci brand of mango pickle.

Innovation is the in thing in packaging. Companies often call it ‘brandizing’. Marketing gurus sometimes say ‘USP’ (not to be mistaken for ESP which is also being packaged these days). Moms are packaged into ‘Mother’s Day ‘. Yep, packaging is in, packing is out.

Sometimes sadly enough, the earth’s package comes undone to give rise to earthquakes. Easy does it with natural wrappers. Don’t forget what dad taught you about global warming.

Ah, but some packages are by far the cutest and need no further innovation…

Pics from the web

On neural Buddhism and a never-ending debate

Pic from web

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times which throws light on the debate between the believers and the ones that don’t. Are the scales shifting towards the Omnipresent? And what is Neural Buddhism?

For a few Zen-sational moments in the super-conscious realm, it’s worth a read….

Uncle Suri’s books

I chanced upon seeing this blog post when I thought about the short story I had written some time back. I too, for one started reading books from a rather young age. One of my first influences on reading was Uncle Suri. Read the story, and you will know for yourself.

Uncle Suri’s books

It was one of those melancholy moments in life, when the sun begins to flirt mindlessly with the gray clouds on the horizon. When the rain would sooner or later start pelting down in torrents, playing spoilsport to a bright and busy day.

I looked out of the window for the umpteenth time, and grimaced as the trees in the yard began to sway wildly, joining in this merry-making among the Elements.

As these muddied puddles grew magically into wholesome watery masses, my mind went sailing along into the depths of Time.

To a grey-tiled house surrounded by tall coconut trees and paddy fields. With a front porch over which the hot sea air blew relentlessly, cooled only by the stunning black-stoned floor. In the middle of the paddy fields was a tiny shed.

It was in this small shed that uncle Suri would sit for long hours, almost always with a book in hand. Uncle Suri was my mother’s only brother, a gentle, peace-loving man, whose only love in life seemed to be a passion for books. Keats, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Wodehouse, he had known them all in his fanciful pastime.

Grandfather wanted uncle Suri to become a doctor and follow the long-standing tradition of doctors in the family. But uncle Suri was determined to never wield the stethoscope. Not for him those pills and prescriptions.

Instead, uncle Suri decided to become an employee in a government office. In this position, he laboriously squinted at files in the daytime and found solace in his beloved books at night.

So deeply engrossed was uncle Suri in his books of yore, that he would often turn a deaf ear to grandmother’s chides. ‘Suri, her only son, took no interest in daily affairs of running a household’ she’d mutter to an inquisitive neighbor. ‘Suri, her only son, refused a career as a doctor but chose to remain a clerk in a hot and sweltry office’.

Uncle Suri’s only response to grandmother’s words was a deep silence that seemed to resonate through the quaint wooden furniture in the room. Smiling to himself, he would pass a hand over his bald pate and turn yet another page of his book.

Then one day, grandmother’s sisters were heard whispering, ‘Suri is getting himself a beautiful bride’. Uncle Suri married aunt Lakshmi in a simple ceremony.

Aunt Lakshmi adored her husband, and would cook all his favorite meals, iron all his clothes. Her gentle nature won her a position next only to uncle Suri’s books. And that was a grand honor in itself, for aunt.

Days went by and uncle Suri continued to thrive in this idyllic world around him. Where father, mother, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews were all woven in a lovely gossamer fabric set aside as a backdrop. Time took a pause, like a weary traveler seeking the shade of a magnificent tree.

Then, one day, aunty started to complain of a strange pain in the chest.

“It must be something you have eaten” mumbled uncle Suri, not once looking up from the open pages of “Macbeth”.

Days passed on, but aunty’s chest pains stubbornly persisted. On the eighth day, uncle finally shut the masterpiece and walked into grandfather’s room. Grandfather lost no time in admitting aunty to the hospital, where she was ushered into a large room smelling of disinfectant. We were allowed occasionally to visit aunt, and hold her tiny pale hand for just a while.

When visitors came pouring into our house inquiring of aunt’s health, Uncle Suri would mumble “it must definitely have been something she had eaten”. Soon after, he would potter off to the bookshelf and hungrily feast on the book-lined shelf.

Aunty died that summer, leaving behind a big void that could never be filled. Like an empty box of chocolates with only the lingering aroma of what it had once held within.

Uncle Suri lived on with the Macbeths and Miss Marples decorating the moth-eaten pages of dusty books, quite oblivious to the fact that his children had grown up. Grandfather had even arranged for the marriage of uncle Suri’s daughter. All along, Uncle Suri was a silent bystander to all these developments, unfettered by such ‘momentary diversions’, for there was more to life than sons and daughters. After all, there were books and even more glorious books.

Months ago, the news got around that uncle Suri was suffering from cancer. Some of us visited uncle, in his tiny room, surrounded by book-lined shelves.

As the cancer grew, he read less and less. When the doctor gently broke the news of his health, uncle merely shrugged and said “I have no cancer young man. The cancer is in the minds of people, of politicians, of crooks and of evil men…”

Uncle left this mortal world with a smile on his face. After all, he was finally going to the land of great poets and writers who had helped him on his journey through this mundane world of human beings and humdrum happenings…