When we think about farmland, most of us would get the picture of a landlord in pure white and white traditional dress, holding an umbrella and supervising scores of workers in the field. Gone are those good old days. Now workers had migrated towards city for better job, in whatever betterment that is.
The current landlords are different. They wear dirty khaki clothes, may be bare chested and plough in the muddy field. Farm operations are labour consuming, requires lots of man power. In order to resolve the issue, the land owners team up. They form a group of about 5 and combined effort. They usually meet once in a week, put their effort in one of their land. Round robin method is attempted.
Synergy wins.
Like all kids, Varsha kicks, cries and smiles.
Like all fathers, I feel her kicks, cries and smiles are unique and special.
Today I thought of going out for a stroll. Didn't want to go for the long route, instead walked into near by area. That is the place I had been many times. It is a road winding down in the hilly area into a bunch of houses and a temple. Usually we go to the temple and return back. Never seen anything further. This morning I found that the road was cleared further after the temple. There was a road.
Walking through the road, I found many more houses that side, which were out of sight earlier. Further I went into the woods. Saw a group of peacocks, some six of them. Quiet a near sighting. While watching the peacocks, someone else was standing by and watching. It was a mongoose! When I saw it ran away.
A thrilling way to start the day.
Looks like Science is in the right path towards human imagination. Whatever we could think about, technology pounce on that and makes it possible.
The selective memory erasure I blogged about is feasible, it seems.
The revenge of the nomad
Chapter 3. Retreat
Ramraj slowly healed out of the trauma. Took months for him to move around. All emotional feelings had died away from him. He became analytical and view his life from different perspective. He realized someone with muscle power is going to dominate. At the same time, he can sharpen his intellect to overcome the physical forces.
With that in mind, he schemed a master plan. As a first step, he wanted to eliminate Mr Rao's right hand, Das. Das is the brain of Mr Rao. Rao consults him for all activities and executes his task thru Das.
Ramraj started to observe Das's routine. Instead of trying to bring down Das by himself, Ramraj was passing the information to Rao's arch-rival. Weak moments of Das were studied and on a chosen day, men surrounded Das to hack him down.
The arch-rival, Mr Valliesh, was happy to hear about this. As per his estimate, Mr Rao would soon fall apart from his business empire.
Mr Rao was also analyzing the events. He happen to know that Ramraj had helped Valliesh.
Ramraj expecting trouble, travelled to a far place.
End of chapter 3 out of 7.
To be continued.
The revenge of the nomad
Chapter 2. The land shark
Cacophony Rao is the villain of the story. He got his title for his loud and shrill voice. People are fearful to face his screaming shout more than his violent behavior. His family owns enormous wealth. In fact, most of Vijapura city belongs to them. Among multiple business they do, they are famous for real estate. Mr Rao make profit out of layouting land and selling for a margin. He also pockets out of forgery and threatening people to transfer their land. Our hero, Ramaraj, had bought a site from Mr Rao. After five years, this particular layout had appreciated a lot. Mr Rao couldn't digest the fact that his layout is no more with him and it is valued high. He started with usual way of bringing muscle power and trying to retrieve the land back from the purchasers. He was willing to pay them back the money they had given 5 years back.
Obviously site owners were unhappy. They protested, without much use. Many gave off the site fearing the consequences. Few people like Ramdas were trying to save their valuable. They can never acquire a site as the land price had raised up beyond reach. Their only chance is to hold on to what they have.
In order to clear off the problem, Mr Rao applied the ultimate weapon. He choose one of the protesters and made a hit. Alas, it happened to be Ramraj. Ten or fifteen gundaas came to Ramraj house in the mid night. They smashed opened the house and hit the couples with heavy iron and sticks. The attack went on for 30 minutes and both suffered a major injury. Neighbours dare not to intervene, they called for the police after the tough guys left the place.
Seethalakshmi couldnt bear the beatings and she breath her last on the way to hospital. Ramraj had to be administered in the hospital for months and slowly his body parts recovered.
Did police took action? Nope, Mr Rao took care of the matter through money. Beyond that his brother, Karan Rao, is an influential politician. None of the government bodies function beyond Karan's power, atleast in the Vijayapura vicinity.
(Pepper climber as shown in the above image. Pepper grows as a bunch of tiny tots. Seen in the right hand side of the image)
Opposite to our house is quite an interesting house. It is occupied by five mallu girls. Quite a time pass to watch them together on their terrace or strolling in the front yard with their mobile and occasionally meeting in the streets.
Apart from the mundane task of watching these college girls, I made another observation. Their dress. Not only when they are wearing, but also when they are dried up in the cloth line. The dress colors are similar on most of the days. Indicating that the girls have been wearing same color on the previous day or so. It is as thou they decide earlier on what to wear. Or it could be subconsciously the roommates synced up in some ways and picked the dress with same color shade. I would equate this concept to "menstrual cycle synchronization" when girls stay together.
Whatever it is, definitely worth doing a research on this topic. If anyone is on it, I can volunteer to provide vital data for the project.
Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and a greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while its brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding.
ok, after chasing for the real Insurance policy benefitors , I found a clue. When we have some work to be done and we reach out a government employee or a distant relative or anyone, they help us out of the request. After that, they start with, "sir, my wife is a policy agent, why dont you buy an insurance policy". It is quite difficult to out right refuse the offer as we just got a free service through them. We will have to find an escape route like saying that we got policy previous month or so.
Anyway, I think these kind of social pressures are making the policy industry to thrive. And obviously the immediate benefitors are the agents.
When my wife was about to enter the house, I thought of playing a childish prank - to hold the door tightly from inside that she will be puzzled with the door not opening in spite of unlocking. When such thought came in, suddenly something flashed from my young age. Of someone holding my bicycle from behind and I was surprised that my pedaling was vain. Now I tried recollecting the face of that person. Oh, I remembered. I used to go to a public garden at early morning. In those days, gents went to different gardens on a daily basis. That were our bath points. We had well in the center of the garden. Drawing water from well require good muscle and stamina. Bigger men can do themselves and fill their tub with water they need. A boy like me would have to depend on a gardener. He would fill the tub, which would need 3 buckets of drawings from the well. For a day, I will have to give 10paise, on a monthly basis to was decided to be Rs 2.
Ok, that is the man who found be on the road, someday and held my bicycle.
Interesting to note the thoughts we keep jumping from somewhere to anywhere. To think about the money value, the good old social life style, the equipments we used, etc etc.
Oh, I didn't trick my wife by jamming the door; partially got lost in my own world and other partial was due to the insight into after effects when my wife successfully opens the doors and find me the culprit.
Couple of days before, we finally made up of our mind to prepare green peas masala at home. Here are the steps we followed.
We tried maintaining personal expense using different tools and techniques. Started with a fancy spreadsheet, then a website, moved on to traditional paper book, a pocket sized one etc. Nope, none helped us to stay on track. After couple of days, laziness pulled us away from these equipments.
While thinking about an ideal expense maintainer, here is what I wish to have. A box kept inside the house, close to the entrance. I can drop any receipt of different shape and texture. The box equipped with ocr will grab those pieces of papers, analyze them and find the expense to be entered. A calculator size panel in the side of the box would beep out the number it found. I can alter the number within 15 seconds, or else that number will be entered in a registered. The receipt will be filled neatly inside the box.
Blue toothed box will sync up with my computer on a daily basis. QED.
The purchase did happen, along with some kind of drama which happens in these kind of deals. At one stage, the seller and the buyer slightly withdrew from the interest of making the transaction happen. When the two parties were about retire, the middlemen swung into action. They rescued the spirit. Brought in required parameters and convinced the parties to move ahead. Quite interesting experience. Till the last moment we didn't know if we will be buying!
What if the text editors we use are transparent? Or transparentable? This occurred to be when I had to switch between different window, refer info at various source and come back to the editor to continue composing. Instead, if I have transparency, I will have focus on very few lines close to the current line I am editing. This patch of visible lines should be draggable/movable. Remaining area of the screen will be displaying the windows that are at the background. I can refer or even cut n paste from any of the available screen. With a snap of key or click, I should switch from transparent mode to opaque. Would be cool.
While interacting with American colleagues, one of the confusing factor is the date format. Desis are used with dd/mm/yy and Americans insist on mm/dd/yy. Upon pondering on this conflict, interesting things surfaced. It is not only date format, there are many things Americans wanted to move off from British traditions. Here is a short list.
road side
Brits ride to the left side. Anyone following that convention will find it tough on American roads that drive on the right hand side. Car steering is also position in appropriate side of the car.
switch on/off
Simple light bulb switch. Do we pull the knob bottom to top or top to bottom for turning it on? Depends on the country.
Culture
Britons and I guess most of the European countries adhered strict hierarchical order in the society. The working place too followed such bureaucratic structure. Americans bent such rigid model and practice somewhat loose hierarchy.
Language
The formal British English had to give way to American slangish language.
Considering these factors, looks like such drastic change were taken upon themselves to symbolize their freedom from a former colony. They want to show their difference.
May be top to bottom writings of Chinese, right to left of Arabs could have originated out of similar identity establishment.
In a volunteer mailing group, a small ripple will create a big wave of mails and an ultimate splash. One definite rocker is 'switch off lights' and 'save tissue papers'. What creative suggestions come out of these simple topics .. people get very unconventional and emotional about their ideas.
Recently such mail thread started with simple suggestions like:
Put some posters about power saving.
Encourage taking stairs as opposed to elevators.
Turn off lights in huddle rooms/conference rooms.
An engineer's response:
We are the engineers, we need to think of some innovative power saving
measures !/What if there is sensing device at the entry of pantry as in one enters,
lights ON... and //as soon as one exists, lights OFF !! ( depending on the total number of
heads entered MINUS//total number of heads exited ) = 0 Implementation of this would cost intial
investment but would//save lots of power & power bills later.../
Someone started cribbing :
I do not see this poster idea is working, there are
posters just near the tissue paper in the toilets but people still use the
tissue paper. To my surprise even people stand and read this poster and use the
tissue paper as if the content is in French.
If we dont want people to use tissue, dont keep there! simple.
Followup ideas ...
On a related note, the quality of the tissue paper can be
improved.
Can someone tell this environmentalist that quality paper => cutting more trees
There were other suggestions like volunteers calling employees and advising them on tissue usage. People were going further to trace the origin of tissue, wondered if great grandfather and beyond used tissues etc.
What idle brain can do!
Never thought a mono color could give striking effect. Color image always brings multi-color to our mind.
Here is the drawing I did recently.
Let us see if we reach there before hitting a total economic break down or a severe loss of population through political conflicts.
