Love can be blind but not foolish plus other mumbo jumbo!

Just when the winter is freezing things up, it appears that some thoughts in my brain decided to thaw itself in here! For those that follow my blogs, a warm welcome back!

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It was certainly some fall cleaning at my office desk and I proceed to find out there is something packed in a nice neat cover and labeled as if it were a gift. Not the one that has been a recipient of many wrapped gifts, I knew something was not right. But nonetheless, as always, curiosity (s)kills the cat you see!

So - there I go, with my decision to quickly peel off what looked like a gift wrap from the outside. And viola! It was not one, not two, but THREE packs of Lindt Lindor truffles!!! Was I in heaven?! I don't know! When it is chocolates, everything else has to come later! I swiftly open up the pack and before the wink of an eye, one milk truffle is already down my throat. There were still 12 more pieces to go in just this box. But this is the blue box. There was a red one too! Variety, they say, is the spice of life - or in my case, the chocolate of life! 

With a gleeful grin from side to side on my face and thanking the fact that there is visibly none that were around at that hour to share this with as well, I decide to open the red box. And when doing so, I accidentally flipped it to the wrong side and what did i see? Absolute fun! This box clearly indicated "Best by Jun 2017". And it was clearly dark and bold faced marking that cannot escape one's eye!

Yikes! I immediately look at the other box I opened up and noticed that one was supposedly good until Mar 2017! :D Anyway, I was just plain happy that my alimentary canal didn't particularly despise me for this and I escaped unhurt.  That was some learning for sure - love can be blind but not foolish! 

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It appears that somewhere down the road with the advent of social media, the discourse across the globe with access to the media is also getting extremely digitized (I would hate using the term polarized, though that's what it is precisely getting to be!) You find swathes of people who are in need of identifying themselves and also out to mark others into an all or nothing bucket! I mean, you are either a right wing or a liberal. You are either communist or a capitalist! 

To me, this seems to be losing a remarkable sense of balance that a human mind is capable of! And strange though as it seems, the levels of education seems to have no bearing on this kind of thought processes whatsoever. Ah, but do I care? I would probably just continue reading both sides of the world as I always do and carry on :D

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I am no movie buff. And unless someone drags me by the collar into one, I am kind of unlikely to get talked into watching full blown movies for even a complete 2 hours. But there was one day when it all had to be completely different - and this one, was post a nice round of cycling that I had with my group of friends at the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. 

Having done with a lot of physical exercise, it was time for some rest and relaxation. And one of us in the group decided it was best to do so watching a movie in the theaters. And given the physical condition of myself at that hour, it was decided that nothing other than a recliner seating would be deemed acceptable! Thus we wound up in the UA Oxford Valley @ Langhorne, watching the Bladerunner 2049! 

I wouldn't discredit the movie so much for the first half hour or so! It was fairly tolerable. But then came a point where one decided to completely turn in and sleep in the recliner chair, another was leaning up and trying level best not to snore (that's yours truly!), another one tried taking a break despite a knee injury from the bicycle ride in the afternoon - only to return and find the scene hadn't pretty much moved at all and literally the same two people were on the screen from the point of break to the point of return and probably stating the same dialogue as well. And the person who recommended the movie to the group? Oh well.. the poor chap was trying to bite his fingers and move himself to the edge of the seat and stay attentive and tuned while getting visibly sucked into the boredom of what Bladerunner landed up to be!

Now, there was suddenly something that I realized... the movie name, in hindsight, had its fair share of warning I must say! After all, it had "blade" in it :D

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The case to "digest" the "Digest"

I still do not recall when exactly was the first time I laid my hands on the monthly magazine running for closer to about a one hundred pages (or even lesser that it at times), measuring roughly the size of an average adult palm and having a richly illustrated "half front" cover being published out of several countries in English language.  If you hadn't managed to get the name by now, I am alluding to the "The Reader's Digest".

The Readers' Digest is a one of its kind publication in that most of the contribution to the magazine comes from the most valuable source – its readers! That’s like you or I writing about literally anything – the mundane, the exclusive trip that you might have had to the geographic poles, scientific facts that you know about climatic changes and marking down what you see and interpret from it – what not!

So, I had the worst experience with using a particular call centre line. I just decide to just write up a foul one pager and send it out to the editors and see if they would be supporting the tirade against it – NO. That’s not what its contents are meant to be either.  Its honestly a very tough job in keeping the balance on what gets to be shunned and what gets to be retained for a publication – specially if you have your readers and not the journalists being your major contributors for the content.

How is this handled? I do not know an answer to that honestly. But I am able to kind of decipher some pattern based on the continuous reading I have done – mostly during my travel because this is a light hearted, light weight book that can be fit in neatly just about anywhere you like – in your shirt pockets too if you are adventurous enough!

Here are a few things I have managed to observe with the setup of the magazine itself – the first section is some kind of a quiz section (normally a word power one) whose answers are available elsewhere down the road in another page.  There is a definitely a section for the humor in uniform. And of course, there is always the general humor section too. The key thing being the same trademark of the content as well – they are all reader contributions! There are of course, the iconic caricatures / cartoons. Usually, there is one article that is an adventure. Another one would be scientific. Yet another involving travel. All hold the same rule – contribution from the readers is the primary piece. Political writing is something I have often observed, is more of a passing reference than mainstream content.  

School Musings - Ida Scudder - II

It was a late morning hour. Mrs.Prema was trying to teach us a word or two in English. The catch was, for most words, she had to draw the respective object on the blackboard using a white chalk piece. Chalk pieces were the most prized possessions of the teachers and students equally back then. I still remember the sawdust packed boxes in which they used to arrive

Alright, so - what's the big deal? Well, the word she used for the letter "c" was "crow"! Now, talk of drawing a crow using a white chalk on a blackboard and explaining to kids like myself as to why the white lines are there on a crow that is supposed to be "black"! :)

We indeed gave her some tough time! But one of the things that all the students asked from the subsequent teachers who came to teach was to leave the crow intact on the board as-is! Mrs.Prema came later in time for another session only to find how much her class had actually liked the crow on the board!

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I am notorious for being late to school. Definitely had to be late by a minimum of 5 minutes or so. I could have any explanation for that - from a puncture on my cycle tyre to my sister walking slower than myself..!

Enter Mrs.Sophy's Moral Science class in my III grade. And right during the 1st period. I am trying to stand at the door, being late by at least a good 15 minutes. Give it another 15 minutes and the class would've almost been over.  Not the one with a richest vocabulary for that age within the class, I faced this puzzling question as she asked me "Why aren't you punctual?"

I still remember throwing a puzzled look at her. I just didn't know what that word meant. Then, the moral science class, of course, took a shift to become a very brief session in English. Mudassar Mallick, my classmate, managed to pull off an answer and responded - "Its being on time"!

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விடை  தருக - meaning, give answers. This is how the question paper used to be for our தமிழ் examinations. So, in the III grade - and probably even before that, one of the things that was marked out to us was to ensure the section names, number and headers on our answer sheets match up with the ones on the question papers as well. Usually, our teachers were pretty kind and lenient with us jumbling the answering sequence. This meant more often than not, I would've answered question 1 followed by question 3 followed by question 7 etc. 

Alright, so what's the deal with a language paper of all things? Well... just that in lieu of marking up விடை தருக, I have marked up several times as "வடை தருக". Mrs.Dixcy Rani would, while distributing the answer sheets in the class, jocularly quip at me (and several other students too) asking if she was running a canteen to give us all a வடை - which is a popular south indian snack :)

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So, this happened when we were listening to our Geography teacher Mrs.Nirmala Natarajan... She was explaining about the uses of the alternate sources of energy and as to how it can be leveraged to reduce the impact of the greenhouse effect and global warming - YES, we did have those sessions back in the 90s as well - more as serious sessions in a classroom discussion than debates in television as it is today. 

The concept of "gobar" gas was being explained. And she was talking through how cow dung can be used to prepare this gas and then kind of get funneled to homes. When this was being spoken, I threw a very surprised face and as if reacting to someone that had just farted, pulled myself back in the seat as well. Seeing my reaction obviously because the cow dung was mentioned, she quipped, "Ravi, the gas is what makes it to your home eventually. Not the dung!"

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This was during my 6th grade. The very first period was "FREE". And wow! What a way to begin the day - or so we thought until one of the substitution teachers came in and said, "With the upcoming sports day, we need to clean up the school ground. Therefore, the class should head to the ground to help with this activity". As always, a bunch of folks preferred to play in the field. Another bunch choosing to walk around. Another bunch sincerely proceeding with the de-weeding activities.

There are some weeds that we have always been warned about. And the clear cut instruction was not to go near them. However, as always, curiosity was to take the better of us and many of us decided to go and check out every other plant that was around. Result? Itching sensation in the skin for many of the kids. If you forward this to the current scenario, even in an Indian context, I wouldn't know what could this be resulting in!

We enter the next class / session. It was a science class to be handled by Mrs.Yashodara Jeyapaul. With several of us getting an itching in our hands from handling of the weeds, there was a visible commotion that slowly started to set in. Seeing this happen even before any of us could be up and running with our notebooks / textbooks, she quietly enquired us all - "What did you folks do?" We answered to her about the exercise in de-weeding. Promptly, she sent the class representative to the school canteen and asked him to get some common salt. She then put the pack in her desk. Asked everyone that felt extremely itchy to come and take some salt and gently rub it up in the affected area. And voila! It WORKED! 

Of course, all this didn't happen without a good 30 minutes of her period having to pass away. She was left with the last 10 minutes. Not being enough time to handle a regular science class, she told - "Children, your lesson in science for the day is uses of salt!" We all cheered - partly amused, partly astonished. 

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