(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…

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!

Image from 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…

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!!

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

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….

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…

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If you thought that a run-of-the-( tread)mill is a tough ‘un to navigate, then just look at this contraption which obviously must’ve belonged to our forefathers!!

Old-time gym equipment (see blog)

The contraption in the picture above is called Zander’s mechanical horse, although I don’t really see the resemblance between machine and quadriped! Do you?

Pic from web

But I guess the idea wasn’t so much to create a resemblance, in the design. If you take a closer look at the picture of the man and his equipment, you will find that when he switches on the equipment, all the pulleys and wheels will work towards running a vibrator across his abdominal muscles and this will be the same effect as the one that he would experience when he is riding a horse. So, in essence, the same muscles are exercised. Och, but still, would it ever be the same as riding a real horse?

As a kid, I really loved bouncing on the trampoline, since it was so, um, aerobic! My skinny bean-pole frame would be practically catapulted by the machine, straight into the air!!

Conceptualized by a couple of gym trainers back in the year 1935, the word ‘trampoline’ is taken from a Spanish term ‘el trampolin’ which means ‘ diving board’.

Pic from flickr.com

Give kids a trampoline and a hosepipe with running water and watch the fun! Along with exercise, they would be working on their laughter muscles as well! Don’t see much of that in our gyms these days, do we?

]]> http://kmanju.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/gymming-back-to-the-past/feed/ 0 manju http://kmanju.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/kids-day-out/ http://kmanju.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/kids-day-out/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 05:13:17 +0000 manju http://kmanju.wordpress.com/?p=81 ]]>

It was clearly a day for the bubble-gummers! Yesterday, VMware celebrated ‘bring-your-kids-to-office’ day. Dozens of tiny tots pottered in with their kiddy bags in tow. They stared unabashedly at the walls decorated with colorful balloons and streamers. Chomping sandwiches and cake, they walked all along the corridors taking in their parents’ office. They posed for cameras and prattled incessantly to anyone who would just listen. They scribbled on whiteboards and skated freely on the smooth flooring. The merry-making continued well into the afternoon, when they were whisked off home by their exhausted parents. Here are some pics captured while the party was on full-swing.

It’s All smiles for me!

Pic from the web

One year at school, we were asked to make a patchwork doll for Sister Wilcox, who was our school Principal. We all loved Sr Wilcox for she was so gentle and loving. Her English classes were superb, and we loved her British accent. To top it all, she gave us fair turns to play out our favorite Shakespearean actors during her classes.

So when we were told to get her a gift, we thought of all the stuff we could buy at the store. But never did we imagine that our teacher would ask us to make a rag doll!! The doll was to be around two feet in height. We set to work as fast as we could.

Anuja said she had lots of old clothes with nice Rajasthani patterns. She would bring a pile of clothes from home. Some of us who were not too keen on needlework opted to sort out the clothes and choose the best patterns. Santosh was good at stitching, so we persuaded her pick her team to use the sewing machines in the needlework room. Mamta said she and her friends would cut bits as Santosh’s team sewed them on.

Soon we had a rectangular shaped patch’d up bits of cloth which we would use as the doll’s gown. But what about the doll? Ah, we had clearly forgotten all about Ms Daisy Dee!

The work was really an uphill task, we realized, as we cut two strips of white muslin cloth in the shape of a doll. Then we stitched them together, leaving a hole to stuff cotton. Once the doll was plumped up into shape with cotton, we stiched on the eyes, nose and a nice large smile. Golden wool was served as her hair and we had to stitch each thread on painstakingly. And blue buttons did nicely as her eyes. Finally, we managed to stitch a blouse and the patchwork gown to match. We wrapped her up on gauze paper and put her in a box. Sister Wilcox really loved it, and smiled at us in her usual shy manner. We smiled back, but were mostly hoping that there would be no further needlework for the next year at least.

If making a patchwork doll were so difficult, imagine patching up a gas station to make a ‘recycle’ statement! To take a generous ‘patch’ of story which first came out in treehugger.com, New Yorker Jennifer March took up this project by inviting kids from all over the world to take part in selling the ‘recycling’ idea by covering an old gas station in Syracuse (N.Y) with colorful patches. Pieces of motif’ed cloth, crocheted patches, knitted scarves, silk screens, collage fibers were all used to make the pretty picture. All it takes is a wee bit o’ cloth and a whole lot o’ will.