night lights

Have you taken time to notice lights? What is about lights? While strolling in the night time, watching the lights surrounding you. The hazy yellow light from a distance street lamp, dull white light from a near by shop, the head light and tail light of a passing by cars. Some funky bikes have fancy colored led lights, bright blue, green, red blinking together. Then the faithful traffic lights, mercury lamps, stadium lights, lights, lights and more lights.

One interesting facts about these lights is the way they kindle one's past life. Some of the lights brings me strange feelings inside me. They transport to a distance past, to a distance place. A place where we had been on a night, where there was a similar light glowing as a witness. A dim light from a distance carries a dimness, sadness of its own - just as a dieing star emitting out its last portion of energy.

ok, let me save this blog before the lights goes off due to frequent power cuts.

Job you dont like

Let us say, you work for a company. As part of the job, you are asked to withdraw money from the bank. You collected the money in a suitcase and on the way back to your company. Now, all of a sudden, you got an enlightenment. You understood that you are working for a wrong company or a wrong cause!! You decide to quit.

Question here is, what do you do with the suitcase? Option 1: go back to the bank and deposit money to the company's account. Option 2: reach ur company, hand over the money to your manager and resign officially. Option 3: What if you decide to quit immediately upon enlightenment? How about leaving the suitcase on the middle of the road and going to your home?

The last option is what my wife did. She doesnt know what is wrong about that option.

Green sapling in drought condition

Just wondering what long term effect will inadequate resource on a young plant result into. Will the tree grow tough and strong against any environmental fluctuations or the tree will be weak and powerless on external factors? Guess there might be few more details and factors influencing the above case. For example, how much resource constrain is placed on the sapling? Is it about to die? What is the benchmark to compare against or in other words, what is the right tree growing conditions?

Would be interesting if there is a study in this line.

Morning walk

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.

the perception

While going through tough times, it helps a lot to have a positive mind set. If we bury ourself with all sort of negativity energies like anger, depression, repeated thought pattern, emotional break-down, worries etc, we are doing more harm to our mind and complicating the situation.

Instead, a positive frame of mind pushes us out of the situation fast. Winning or losing the situation depends on the strategy and many other factors. But having the right attitude acts as a shield to protect ourself from negatives. It helps to come over from sore heart and recover fast to normality.

Any more thoughts?

Magical eraser feasible

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.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22187/

The Transport office saga continues

The officer asked me to come and collect the letter for the followup from City A. However the concerned officer was not in the office when I went there. That was a lucky thing to happen, as they skipped the letter part. Now they dont need the letter from city A!! I had to carry the paper from one building to another. There was a small record verification in the other building. Not sure how they managed to store info in a slim register. After few signatures, rubber stamps there, I came back to first building. Submitted the documents. I have to go there in 15 days to see if things are done. I cant check the status through phone or through agents. My physical presence is wanted.

Hopefully I dont have to go there further on.

How sprinkler works?

For those who are interested to know the working mechanism of a water spraying sprinkler. You might have seen this in the gardens where these sprinklers keep rotating and water plants in its surrounding.

The last pic has the close-up shot. There is a central axis holding the apparatus (the axis is protruding in the top as a small white pyramid). Two nozzles are provided to throw out water. (The nozzles have bolts and the main nozzle can be seen with the inscription '27'). Above the nozzle is a strange spoon like structure; this lever is attached to the axis and allowed to rotate around the axis. The lever is bound by a spring.

Ok, let us check them in action. Water flows with considerable pressure from the bottom of the tube and comes out through the nozzles. The main nozzle, which is the bigger one, does the important task. While pumping out the water, water splashes on the edge of the lever. As per the design, the water force makes the lever move away in anti-clock direction. Due to the coiled spring, the lever is pushed back its original position. When the lever comes back, it hits the frame of the nozzle .. making the nozzle structure to move clock wise. This completes one particular angular motion. Again the water is sprayed on the lever, again the lever winds back and springs forward .. this continues to make the sprinkler rotate.

It is amazing to see it in action.

Magical eraser

What if our brain memory is erasable. If we can opt for selective cleansing. For example, all my experience of being in a beach are removed. Now my visit to a beach would be very fresh and new. The first time experience in a beach would be relived. That would be awesome.

People may use it to clear off their traumatic experiences. That is a double edged sword, with advantage and disadvantage. The issue is to loose such experience and being vulnerable to go through again.

The spider web

Usually when we clean the cob web, the spiders used to reconstruct within few days. This time it is a long due and still the house is clean. Upon reflecting, the truth unearthed. My wife had gone to her mom's home on a long vacation. So, no cooking, no food spillage, nothing in the waste bin. The house flies and other small insects should have migrated to better food source. And hence the spider had also wound its silk carpet to elsewhere.

Quiet interesting to note how these small creature observe the environment, adapt to the changes and base themselves to the food source.

yErTram

yErTram is a method/tool for retrieving water from well. While writing the post "Chain of thoughts", I googled for this word and failed to find a description. Even a picture was not available. So, I asked my art master to help with providing a sketch.

A huge stone path is placed upon the center of the well. It would form a narrow path for a person to walk over the well. At one side of the path is a fulcrum setup which holds a hefty wooden beam. The extreme end of the beam is tied with rocks for balancing purpose. The other end is connected to a stick with a bucket. The stick and the bucket go into the well for collecting water. The person has to hold the empty bucket, keep pulling down the stick so that the wooden beam comes down towards the well. Once the bucket reaches the water level, the bucket is filled with water and the stick is drawn upwards. During this process, the person would have to walk from the outer edge of the well towards the center (walk on the stone path) and walk back after collecting the water.

Ellu juice

While being in a village, thought of having a cool drink. While checking the availability, I was puzzled by the menu item 'ellu juice'. There was a language barrier too, and the server couldn't explain more than that ('ellu juice' is something made out of 'ellu'). Out of curiosity, I asked for the same. What I got is sesame milk juice! Never had or heard about this before. It was quite tasty.

In the wild

Got the possession of the farm. On the first day evening, I moved in with my wife. The sun was setting slowly and so we were settling down. The electrical work ought to be worked out. Hence we had to pour kerosene in the newly bought kerosene lamp and lit it before the sunset. With the lights up, we found a clean spot (as clean as possible) for making our bed. It was inside a small room. We closed the window so that creatures from outside dont join us. As we didnt have anything to do around 6.30pm, we had our dinner. It was a nice candle light dinner, tasted like bread with jam. We promised to have lots of singing, playing jokes and talking everything under the sun (beyond as well). After talking about everything, at 7.30pm we felt sleepy. After putting off the lights, the room was pitch dark. It was so dark that closing the eyes or opening them didnt matter. Once in a while my wife switched on the torch and scanned the walls, roof to check any unwanted visitors.

Thunder, wind and rain

It was a quite afternoon, calm and bright. All of a sudden heavy wind was flowing in the area. Followed were thunder, lighting and rain. The rain was thrashing around with fury and wind fueled the beatings. It was a dramatic scene to watch from the balcony. It was as though waves of water was cleansing the landscape.

Chain of thoughts

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.

Green peas masala

Couple of days before, we finally made up of our mind to prepare green peas masala at home. Here are the steps we followed.

• Peel and chop onions, small one are tastier. I assume the onion amount should be as much as the vegetable we add.
• Fry onion in oil. Make it to golden yellow.
• Add ginger garlic paste, garam masala, pepper or chilli powder. Keep stirring.
• With the brownish paste in the pan, add green peas.
  Let the peas be fried in oil first.
• For richness, grind some cashews in water. Add this paste to the peas mixture. Add some more water.
• Instead of cashew paste, tomato or coconut milk will also be good. None of the above is also an alternate option.
• With added water, close the pan for few minutues. Make sure all ingridents mix up well.
• Serve hot with chappathi or parota or dosa or lemon rice etc.
  
  

catalyst

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!

To buy or not to buy

A purchaser's dilemma. Particularly when the stake is high and the buy is ornamental. Many comments, speculations to digest from different walks of people. Is the price high? Are clean hands involved in the deal? How much to rely on the seller? Will the ROI be satisfactory, whatever may be the expected returns be?

Guess we will have to keep moving with timely decision. Just enjoy the positive effects and correct any mistakes.

Back to yoga

After almost an year, I am restarted yoga practice. It is quite difficult and muscle flexibility ought to be regained. Quite good to do and body feels light.

Reflected on the reason for dropping out of a regular practice. Guess it is lack of concentration while doing alone. Mind gets drifted away into its own world of thoughts. Getting back to exercise, that too in the early hours of the day, is difficult. I used to convince myself that if I had some company for yoga or I joined any yoga institute, then I would be able to do better.

This time I had decided to keep doing on my own and focus on the task at hand.

Tactics of the leaves

While watering the plants, a cool insight of the plants came upon. The leaves starts from the stem and raises up in a slanting manner. They form v shaped pattern through out the stem. Having a flat structure, instead of v shape, might be more efficient to capture sun light. The advantage of v shape showed up while watering the plant. Water falling on the leaves rushed towards the stem and finally close to the root. Had it been a flat arrangement, water from the leaves might have splashed away from the root to the ground instead of towards the stem.

May be the plants have to form a strategic positioning for maximizing sunlight as well as rain water.