42. Of Turmeric and Neem

-The Last Phase of chicken pox: The good-news is, you are finally allowed to take a bath, but before heaving a sigh of relief, the bad news is, you are not allowed to use soap!!! Apparently, that comes as a part of the ‘Neem and Turmeric’ treatment!

It’s not one of the pleasantest experiences, I’ll tell you….and Neem-leaf paste is definitely not the ‘fragrantest’ substitute for soap either. Neither is it, for shampoo. Yea, the paste is even applied on the hair. And getting these infinite tiny bits of leaves out of your hair is no easy task, due to which, once the hair gets dried, you’ll look as though you had just been in a hurricane, while passing through a Neem-forest! Add to this, all your clothes get freely dyed bright yellow!

Today is the last day of my CP vacs, and boy! am I glad to get back to normalcy. Now I’ve got a new friend who’ll stay with me for life –Varcy, aka Varcilla Zoster Virus(lurking somewhere inside of me….)

and also the CP memories –the days survived on

fluid diet, the taste of Aciclovir tablets, the fragrance of burning myrrh, the Neem, the Turmeric, the Love, the Care…

41. A Tribute to BLAH!

-->

Do you know what tops the list of the world's ten most overrated things? Do you know what’s the world’s longest book/novel(which apparently contains the world’s longest word, sentence, poem and drama!Woah!!!)? Do you know the next gen name for ‘BLOG’, which is likely to replace the term ‘BLOG’ in the near future? Do you know, what is the most searched topic for a book, in the Amazon.com?

.....Well….It’s all Blah! Won’t believe me? There you go!(click the link)

PS: Lachoo, that was an appetizing treat to me! Would make up for your never-ending leg-pulling

40. CHICKEN POX- for a STRESSED SOUL!

Red itchy rashes of fluid filled blisters, high fever, unbearable body aches, nausea, loss of appetite, flu-like symptoms…all these loom large in the mind, by the very mention of the term chicken pox(CP)…don’t they?

So when the possibility of a chicken pox first struck me, these fears crept in,and I was scared shit, dreading the days ahead… Little did I know what was in store for me though! As soon as I was positively diagnosed CP, the scardy cats in the hostel didn’t allow me to stay there a moment longer, and hence I was soon expatriated from the hostel. And…..

……And well, nothing happened! Oh yea! I did suffer for the first two days…I had this extremely bad body ache+ joint ache+ head ache which can be described as just excruciating. But other than that none of the afore-mentioned fears were actually realized. A few small harmless spots appeared here and there(thankfully none on my face and hands!), which scaled off after around a week. No itch; no pain; and no yucky fluid-filled blisters….Nothing really happened, and this even made some of my friends ask me to double check if it really is CP!

Therefore I came to the conclusion that God allowed this CP just to give a break to this ‘stressed’ soul. Now, I really am having a good time at home –having gladly missed the interim exams, and being pampered by my parents and grand-parents, and of course friends too who despite of their busy acads, find time to check often whether I’m doing alright,!! Thanks a looot guys

Nevertheless, I have my rants too…. I have been robbed off my rights to take a proper bath for the past 1 week. Imagine having to resort to taking hot-water sponge bath in this sweltering heat!! And I still am subjected to isolation of sorts, and am not allowed to roam around the house( my parents haven’t had CP yet!). Hmph!.....maybe it’s time I get back to normal and head back to college.
Sheesh! I hate to think of the loads of work awaiting me there!!

39. An uncanny way out!

Those of you who had read my previous post, didn’t you feel that I needed a break (well atleast I did…infact I was yearning for one), and looks like even God did. And so did I receive my break that was rightly due. Two whole weeks free from classes, assignments and deadlines of what-so-ever form. Two blissful weeks at home, where I can sleep round the clock, oblivious to all the cares in the world; hog on, as and when and what I want; watch ‘n’ number of movies in the lappy;……the list goes on. The only hitch being that, I have to do all this in isolation(Ah!as if I care!). Yea, certain maladies can come in handy at times. Chicken pox rox!

38. Stressed!

-->

Alright! Maybe I had talked a li'l too much in the last post. Was vaunting away to glory that I was having the time of my life, and all was well and blissful so much so that life seemed to be a bed of roses...Well nothing could be as contrary to it, as was proved by the last few weeks or rather the whole month...Sessionals, lab tests, assignment, submissions, project work, drawing, seminars all kept coming in one by one ceaselessly!!!Man, S6 is hectic. Period.

Miniproject work(mipro) is literally eating away the whole of our time, including the weekends. Even a single set of experiments often leaves us completely drained of all our energy and thoroughly exhausted, rendering us useless for the rest of the day! Add to the physical exhaustion, we get mentally exhausted too, as we are supposed to come up with certain numerical models, wherein we concoct some relation between seemingly unrelated stuff….And imagine, if added to that comes financial exhaustion too!!! Yea, we break this 250 ml borosil measuring jar in the SM lab, and the next day saw us hunting the shops for a similar jar ….Yea, and that caused our pockets to weigh less by 505 bucks. But every cloud has a silver lining…and so did this. I had been searching for a flower vase to keep my money plant …A Fanta bottle was acting as its makeshift home, and there comes this black cloud! On extricating the silver lining, I made a beautiful home for my plant, that has a ‘techy’ edge to it…yea a ‘calibrated measuring vase’!(Those stones are also the souvenirs from civil lab;)

....Howdy?

The mipro even robbed me of my Valentines’ day. Spent the whole day in the lab grr...!@$@!%Oh btw..Nikhil had gifted me this bouquent of white roses through his Valentine’s day post. Thankzzz!! atleast something to mark the day!

Anyways…looking forward, I can see only even more hectic days, as the next set of sessioanls are just round the corner. Added to that we have our interim mipro evaluation coming up soon…As though my hands are not yet full, I have the responsibility to keep updating the ragam blog too –which I have royally neglected so far…my Muse isn’t helping either.(Keep visiting the ragam blog for updates and try to make it for the event!)

37. Thus far...This way...

Nearly half a month into the new-year…hmm…and so far, it has been not all that bad. Classes haven’t really started in full swing yet, and assignments haven’t started piling up.(Thanks to the Muharam holiday which came on the right day, we saved ourselves from a drawing class + submission of 3 drawings next week. )Have been running around for a mini-project topic past two weeks; and voila, our project guide came up with this really nice project on ‘Liquefaction’(er… I dun have much idea about it as of now, but atleast those who know,testify that it’s a really ‘stud’ topic) Great weekend coming up ahead –a two-day class trip to Idukki(dam),Thekkadi and Athirapalli!yay!

And there was a pleasant surprise for me in the blogosphere as well! I have been awarded as the best blogger of the year by the CEO of the blospot… Okay, I know, that went a li’l overboard. But seriously, I did get something of the sort…I got a ‘200% awesome blogger’ credit…all thanks to Nikhil(MM) who seems to have been on an awarding spree right at the beginging of the year(superb way to start the year MM, …thanks a ton…)….


Anyways dunno whether it was due to this, or out of no reason at all, I’m in this writing mood these days. Boring classes are becoming my blogging classes now.…Hopefully I'll be able to blog more frequently(fingers crossed!) So thanks again MM…and apologies for taking this long to come up with this post(you know my close alliance with laziness…I am infact surprised that you didn’t give me the lazy blogger award instead )

36. A prayer for 2009

-->

Dear God, thank you for the year 2008 you gave us,

Wherein we had moments of joy n laughter amidst sorrow n fear.

Thank you for all the good and the seemingly bad

That had transpired during the past one year.

Let the new year be one that will dispel

All feelings of hatred among humanity;

So that, there will be no more attacks

Against the Hindu, Muslim or Christian community.

Let the new year be one which will witness

People rising above petty divisions,

Based on caste, creed and class so that,

There won’t be any more Gujjar agitations.

Let the new year be one in which the political parties

Do for the nation, something utile;

Rather than engage themselves

In petty fights and strikes futile.

Let the new year be such that there won’t be

Any suicide attacks on the Indian embassies;

Or any terrorist-strikes at the Indian heritage hotels,

Which aggravates man’s agonies.

Let the new year be one in which the countries

Cease to fight over a piece of land,

Which leads to nothing but,

Shattering man’s peace of mind.

Let the new year be one in which the players

Stop hitting and slapping each other,

Instead focus more on hitting the ball,

Sending it to a four or a sixer.

Let the new year be one that will bring

Happy tidings to the world economy.

So that people won’t find themselves

Thrown out of their jobs, abruptly.

Instead Lord, give mankind

A new vision and a mission,

That will enable us to broaden our horizon

And use our potential to send more space missions.

Let the year bring forth more Adigas

To enrich our casket of literature,

And more Bindras and Parvathys

On the world stage to venture.

Let the new year behold India –

An emerging super power;

Whom the US takes pride in calling its ‘staunchest ally’,

And the EU states her, its ‘strategic partner.’

Above all dear Lord, help us to stand

Together as one –both men and women;

And enable us to see your glory,

Each moment of the year! Amen.

Author’s note: I wanted to write a new-year post(well that was one week before)…and I started writing a post(prose), however it ended as a 'poem'. This is my second attempt at writing a poem. (Must be inspired by reading too much of CRAZY poems!!!for some reason or the other she never publishes her poems in her blog.sad!)

35. 30 years down the lane….

Yay! vacation again after a long sem! But that also implies 3 weeks of utter joblessness!! As usual, hardly had the holidays started, when boredom started settling in. With no jobless sibling or friends to hang out with, I was once again confronted with nothing but boring, uninteresting days to look forward to(sigh!)

Therefore I wasn’t surprised when dad announced one dull morning that the next day he had his 30th reunion of his civil ’78 batch.(yaawwn…) Dad assured us that we would have an awesome experience, and to top it all he said that there would be a Gazzal concert. Go(yaaaawn…)sh Noooo! And now I should go there and listen to those old songs composed ages before I was born?And what am I going to do there among the dozens of 50+ old people?

Having exhausted my reserves of excuses for not going out along with my parents, I was forced to tag along for the reunion. The food at the 5-star hotel being the only thing to look forward to…

I deliberately delayed my folks so that we would have to spend only less time there. But on reaching there, we found that people had just started flocking in. I was elated to see one of my college-mates there. Apparently my dad and her mom were classmates, now working in the same firm. But soon I realized that even 2 college-girls can run out of topics to speak.

We had the intro session first –one by one, each alumnus had to introduce themselves and their spouse and children, starting with my dad! Half way through the session, it was heartening to learn that all of them were in respectable positions and were well placed in their life. However I was surprised to note that more than 95% of them had their children in the same field (UG, PG, or employed in some software/core firms). Only a few of them had children who pursued medical field, and there were 2 law students as well. That’s all!! Does this country produce only engineers and doctors? Are people oblivious of the scores of other opportunities around? Has the outlook of both the parent and the child been narrowed down to this extent? …or do the children by nature inherit their parents’ taste? (I know, that includes me as well…and I frankly admit that, I still am not sure whether engineering is really my thing!)

The session was however punctuated with slap-stick humour, which they cracked at each other every now and then. The ‘gen gap’ dint prevent us ‘new age folks’ from roaring with laughter along with the people of the 70’s. I never really thought I could laugh at the jokes of my dad’s gen. Damn! I wish my mom had studied in the same college too…could have heard some of their classified stories

The concert wasn’t all that boring either… Gradually my mind drifted to my 30 yrs down the lane…How would it be like? This reunion started by paying homage to 2 of their batch mates who were taken from this world in a span of 30 years.…We’ll definitely have that part, because hardly 3 yrs into the course, and we’ve already lost 2 of our batch mates……..Coming to the brighter side…How many of the ‘college-couples’ will remain couples for life? Will our old pranks which we played on each other be remembered then? Will our children too, have the narrow vision which confines them to the engg/med field?…Wont we let them venture and explore the world of fashion, literature, art and philosophy? Will our children say the same thing about us as we do? Will our current hip songs which we consider with high regards be dumped and labeled as ‘BORING’ by the next gen? Little surprise in that, even if they do…cos that’s how it has been, that’s how it is now, that’s how it will be.

Or wham! Will nothing sort of this ever happen? Will we be too busy with our own selfish lives and be shrouded from the outside world, that we wouldn’t even be able to chip in enough time for such reunions?

To all 3rd yrs…....Four years of fun and joyful college life comes to an end next year. There after no silly jokes in the middle of classes, no stupid fights, no sleeping in the class, no roaming about in the campus …so friends, forget the little fights and misunderstandings and enjoy the next 3 sems! We came with the fear of not knowing anybody …but we will go with tears after knowing everybody…that’s college life

PS:This post was written a few weeks back when vacations started. Now at the fag end of the holidays, I quite regret what I had said about the vacations, for soon I will be longing for those blissful boring days once the sem starts