Return of the monsoon

 

The dance, the battle continued…

 

The Mahabarata, apart from the Bhagvad Gita, the 18 day war and the history of India, in my eyes is importantly a natural phenomena, showcased as a battle between Sun and the Storm. Karna (son of Surya)representing Sun and Arjuna (Son of Indra) representing Storm. The Storm emerging victorious after the long battle at the end of the day. The storm or Arjuna was also quoted and mentioned as ‘symbol of fertility’. Similar to rain being the agent bringing fertility to earth. 

 

In a book Sakvithi Ravana (first published in 1988) Ahubudhu says that Ravana reigned over Sri Lanka from 2554 to 2517 BC. He quotes Ravanavaliya to say that Ravana belonged to the "Sun race" as Ra signifies the sun and vana signifies generation.

 

If that is the case, we can take the logic one step ahead and call Rama as again the Storm, Ravana as Sun and Sita being the Earth, The abduction resulting in a parched earth or bereaved Sita. And the Storm/Rain/Rama freeing her and making her fertile.

 

In India, the ‘North-east monsoon’ or ‘Retreating monsoon’ brings such Storm and rain over the Sun with thunder and lightning.

 

The monsoon returns with such pomp of beautiful evenings with fireworks and prompted me to write this following piece of prose. I started it as a poem, but soon it became a prose.

 

Twilight came to an abrupt end as the November sun made way. The war broke out yet once again, Sun and Storm, the usual rivals.. Wind acted like a tormenting weapon, unleashing the wrath far and wide. The Lightning splashed magic changing every droplet into a pearl. Water became arrows of fire and the Earth danced to its tune. Its a union of sorts, She became fertile by his fury, getting ready to bloom. Sun had lost the long battle, saying adieu, he embarked. The earth was storm’s, to be devoured, to be rampaged, to be loved, to be owned. The Earth held him from behind, her clutches running deep. Her sparkling eyes were the stage, and his gaze set the rhythm.

 

The dance, the battle continued…

 

-S

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What do I do..?!?

 

I am 25 years and 6 months old..! What has that got to do with anything..? You may ask.!

 

I don’t seem to be my real age. I know it feels a bit on the line of bragging. But its not, No, no don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love the fact that I look younger. However, what is insulting is sudden questioning from strangers. Well I have taken insults.

 

So, yesterday,  I met a probable ~12year old at the Tracks where I do my morning runs. He was warm and friendly and I extended the same rapport. So we had some casual talk. Towards the end, after my stretches and all, I was getting off to home. A final round of conversation occurred as follows, (I guess he wanted to know about me only towards the end).

Boy: So, What are you studying…?

{That is a usual question,  I should say, thinking that I might be doing my UG}

Me: I am done studying, my kid.

Boy: Oh, So are you in College..??

{Oops..!! blow, I seriously doubt whether he thought I was in High school.}

Me: Well, NO!, all that is over too..!!

Boy: Oh, So are you working..??

{I was like, may be a yes to any of the question from him will end the questionnaire.}

Me: Yea {A quick one}

Boy: Oh! where..?

(Ding.! I didn’t wanna lie then..)

Me: Well, I am actually looking for a job..!!

Boy: Oh..Ok!

I was actually laughing towards the end of it and he ran away from there waving goodbye. Sigh,

-S

P.S: Three weeks before, I was under serious scrutiny whether I was old enough for marriage..! Damn, those old people.

P.S 2: Well. I am still in a dream after my beautiful “Monsoon wedding” to write anything about it , well that dream is over when I met that boy..!

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Memories

 

“So subtle, yet so powerful,

so past, yet so present,

so vague, yet so distinct,

so delicate, yet so intense,

so evident, yet so elusive…”

 

Memories are strange… It is one of the concepts in metaphysical reality or lets call it a metaphysical quality which creates  ‘a priori’.

I write this blog or any blog post recollecting from my memories ‘bit by bit’, ‘piece by piece’.. slowly and steadily from the fragments of information collected and existing in my brain.

In between my imagination, memory and sometimes déjà vu like state, somewhere in the time warp, I also exist.

Well, reminds me of a Ramana Maharishi quote

“Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.”

I wonder where does that picture in an eccentric’s head, on a chemically imbalanced head, on an Amnesia patient’s head.

 

Let’s spread the word about how fragile our memory is…

World Alzheimer’s day is on September 21.

-S

End of 8 months.

 

Distance to go for 2011kms: ~1443kms

Monthly average required: ~361kms

Daily avg. required: 11.61kms

Distance run: ~557kms (343miles)

Well, My dismal performance continues..

Read my tragic story of August in This Post.

 

In 4 days, I am going to get married. So, the distance will only plummet from there on. Hopefully not.

I am not going to change my target further down and humiliate me further. So I will rather gracefully accept defeat on the 31st of Dec.(Well not without a fight for sure.)

Even now, the average requirement is 11k (around 7miles.)

Once I start scaling huge mileage in terms of marathon distances, I can bring that down. Let us see how the eventful September is going to go. I have got one more evening in August. Well, I am going to run..!! Hell yeah..

Bye bye world.. See you next time..

 

Wish me “Happy married ‘running’ life”

 

-San

Sinus.. How I killed it..

 

In the first week of august, I went on a 8day Road trip, the posts about those are under the label Travelogues. The interesting part was that I came back rich obviously with experiences, pictures, nostalgia with friends, great food and last but not the least a sinus infection. This post is a development from there.

 

It was the first ever sinus infection in my life. I have heard about it in BVB, Friends who had longer lasting sinus. Sounding from their nostrils, I had no idea of the difficulty until it struck me. It sucks, believe me. So, after 3 days, I couldn’t stand it any longer, I went to an ENT specialist, he prescribed 4 medicines(an assortment of tablets and capsules, Dolo is the only one I recognized and I can recall) and a nasal spray. I was groggy, drowsy and to add up, was also sterile to even jerk off. I hate medicines. Enough said.

 

So, after ~3 days of administered medicine and a total of 6 days of struggle with sinus, it was not going out of my way and may be just got worse.  I was impatient, tempered that I couldn’t get out and run. . So, came the natural-organic way of treatment.

 

Only 3 stuff was required for me to get alright and get going.(I was doing 1 & 3 earlier too though..)

1. Hot water for steaming
2. Saline water for nasal injection
3. Lots of fluids in your body.

 

It doesn’t matter what you put in the hot water for steaming, there are assortments of stuff(Turmeric, Vicks, Basil, eucalyptus etc.) you can put. However the hero is the saline water, it was told by my dad which I didn’t give my ear until then.

All you need is to suck in the saline water inside and spray it into your nose inserting the end through the nostril. It will give way to all the clogged up garbage up from your face. Do it for two days and I was like a jumping jack. It threw away all the garbage, I was surprised myself. But, But, But let me remind you that you need to have gallons of fluid inside your body to facilitate a fast recovery.

I hope it helps someone just like it did for me.

Though, during the infection, I could blog quite a lot resulting in about half a dozen blogs , my reading and running got hit, as reading made my head hurt. But during the later stage, I got my reading groove back. Also, this increased reading was somehow helping me go into a cocoon. Shutting out the world. .

 

Well, my running has also resumed but my muscles were weakened so it was in dire straits. But its picking up like a horse with horns. . Buhaha.. <Maniacal laugh>

 

-San

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A simple Independence-day pledge..!!

 

1. No claims of how developed we are.
2. No cynicism of how much he we have to march forward.
3. No blaming system or politicians.
4. No criticism on our media.
5. No hatred towards our neighbors.
6. No making of Tricolor as Facebook picture
7. No watching movies like Border or likewise
8. No clamor for death penalty for Kasab
9. No more lengthy blogs on what independence means..!
10. A simple message through the following pic.

Thanks.

Well.. The hero strikes back..

Read the last post about the beginning of “HERO’'

“Heroes are out there to ward of evil, heroes are out there to teach us something, heroes are out there to set example. “

-These lines are more suited to movies like Singham. Well, this post is about what to do “When you involve in a small car accident in rural India””

The aftermath of a small car accident in India is generally UGLY, there is this huge rancor of shouts, cursing, cussing and very often these utter profanity will lead to physical handling. There is no shortage of onlookers during these times.. Well, I have seen innocent people in an accident scene getting beaten by these idiotic onlookers.

The case is very similar in Rural India, whether you have hit a dog, a goat, a chicken, let alone a human being. Mostly, the blame is on the costly car, (times when I think Ayn Rand is right),  Well, anyways my first advice to you all is to drive safe, there is absolutely no substitute to that. However, just in case, if you land up in a skirmish, the following paragraphs might save you.

So, we (ME, Naveen and Bala) left Chennai to a small village named Pappireddipatti, We were beyond Jolarpet and moving towards Tirupattur, It was afternoon and we had plans for lunch at his estate with organic chicken dishes and Biriyani cooked by Naveen’s mom, then in few seconds a Tata Ace crossed white line and passed in a flicker dangerously close and it struck us and went. We had no clue of what happened, so we parked the car and were checking out the damage.

-->Remember it was a big SUV, and it had a fancy Registration number from the neighboring state of Kerala.

<~Drama starts~>

Two guys(A and B aged ~30) came in a motorbike and said to us “Just don’t say anything, we will handle this”, almost on their tail, another motorbike came, with 3 men on it. Apparently, the driver of the ‘Tata ace’ was among them. Since it was rural, the crowd swelling up was limited, Meanwhile, the verbal war was on. The 2 guys were talking for us, and the other 3 on opp. side. For the first five minutes, We 3 had no clue as what was happening, We thought, the ‘Tata Ace’ might have hit the motorbike or something, the verbal war started to move to profanities. One guy from the opp. side had his blood boiling and wanted to settle everything with his tongue.  So our Hero interrupted and was like “let’s go to the police station and talk it over there”. The Ace driver was making frantic phone calls and was mentioning that he had an accident and he is hurt.(Over the phone, it would sound totally different)  Soon after, Naveen left with those 2guys (A &B) to Tirupattur police station, Me and Bala stood outside our locked SUV. More bikes started coming in, probably due to phone calls and the Tata ace had also arrived. We had an idea of reality by then.

The side mirror of both the vehicles had a collision, the SUV had a swiveling mirror so, it was intact without the slightest scratch, the Tata Ace’s side mirror broke as it was solid and the glass pieces from the mirror hit the driver without hurting him.

Soon, the bunch of ~10guys who had come was talking to us, we(Me and Bala) told them, “this is what happened and the verbal war was getting worse and we didn’t want any trouble, also that people will try to blame the expensive vehicle and especially with a different state registration, so that is why we went to the police station.” The bunch of people replied, that we had gone to the wrong police station, as it was in the limits of Jolarpet and not Tirupattur, and that they had no problem or complaints and they all left also adding that A &B might be fraudulent people and they are on your side to get some money. They fled from the scene after that.{As far as I think, they(opp.side left thinking that they are not going to reap any easy money from us}

Now, me and Bala were in a fix, since Naveen was in Police station, and we had no business staying there,  we made a call to Naveen and asked him to get out of there and that the whole “situation” in here got dissolved. We left the scene too, and Naveen informed us that the moment we had called, the Police station at Tirupattur was going to inform Jolarpet. And he stopped the police and came out of the station and thanked A&B.

It was an incident of no consequence yet there was so much confusion.

There were people (Tata Ace and gang) trying to make some easy money.

A verbal onslaught with those rural people will only result in you getting badly beaten (3 lean youngsters)

Go to a police station when you start sensing rot and make sure that you tell the police that the opposing people were badly behaving and you need protection.

________________XX_______________XX____________

The day before, we were saying no to bribe to a policeman and today we went for their help. Actually, it’s not that we are against policemen, It is the rotten few which disgraces the entire police lot.

Wait a minute, Wait a minute, may be there is some big rot in the Police department in our country.

The Telegraph link

Seems like 5 died and 100s fainted during running a 10K race, they had to complete only in 90 minutes, I finish 10K in 45minutes. Sheesh..!! Disgrace, next time when in trouble with Police, I am gonna run. I say.

Anyways, I went dog hungry to Naveen’s place with our 45 minutes of entertainment  and let me tell you, Me turning out to be a total vegetarian just got slowed down.

Thank you aunty.

-San