jayantiblogshere

Horn Not ok please  ( Buri Nazar wale tera muh kaala …) An entire generation if not a couple of generations in India have grown up mildly wondering what ‘Horn ok please’ meant.  Along with Buri nazar wale tera muh kaala   Translated in the literal sense it means 'Hey you with evil intent... your face is black' Sounds like poor translation. Actually it means - hey if you're thinking about messing around with me, well.... bad for you because if you do so, you'll be in trouble.  So much machoism packed in just six words.   Buri nazar wale tera muh kaala We knew what is meant in the literal sense, but it is the context that eludes many. Never mind, some things are better left untranslated. Written not in the Devanagari ( Hindi) script   but in the Anglo Saxon ( English) script India’s truck manufacturers have always maintained a standard. As the massive macho beast of Trucks traverse through the hinter...

Sometime in July this year, my google notification popped up and asked me to click on the link showcasing the photos of this day, ten years ago.    Intrigued… I click on the link and traverse down the memory lane. 04 th of July 2008 …   It all began the previous day over an innocent remark about some article on that day’s tabloid about the happenings at Wimbledon.    With exams drawing to a close we had a little breather and were thinking of chilling out. Feeni, m y classmate from Pakistan suggested we give it a go. As students on shoe string we thought the tickets would be expensive . Wimbledon in my mind was also associated with a place where the high and mighty of the corporate worlds and the socialite’s hob-nob while they watch the Tennis matches as well. One of our friends educated us. While it was a place where the who’s who possessed season tickets year on year to watch the best of matches at the center court, everyday, there were tic...

Before I eventually quit my day job, I would spend many months day dreaming and drawing up a wish list of where I wanted to travel and what I wanted to hoard up as part of my travel gear.   Stuck in peak hour traffic on the Outer ring road I would drool over the huge billboards from Decathlon and Wildcraft with backpacks and travel gears sported by chic models with unbelievably flat bellies.  ‘Mera number … kub aayega…’ I would say to myself and sigh, as the private bus behind me would honk and wake me from my day dreaming slumber . But like they say… be careful what you wish for, because wishes can come true. And here I was, just a few days to go before my stint in that cubicle jungle would come to an end.   I knew there were no more of those fat paychecks coming into my bank account for a long time now. The income and expenditure had to be tightly balanced.   Whatever indulgences with money had to be made, it had to be made right then. M...

Life on the slow track... season 2 Watching the rain drops fall on the leaves …   Following the butterfly as it sucks the nectar out of the flower   Jumping into the river and swimming   upstream against the river… Bearing the weight of the waterfall as it falls over your head and shoulders before it hits the rock boulder      Flying over the Arabian sea skirting the Konkan and Malabar coastline ... Hopping pandals to watch the Ganpathi a day before they went down under this  year... Bending yourself backwards for the yet another fifteen seconds that feels like eternity…   Reflecting about yourself in the reflections of the mountain in the still waters… Watching the sunrise on a cloudy overcast sky as the world  slowly wakes up to yet another  dawn Sipping a cup of hot frothy milky tea as you watch the drizzle tu...

The date sheet calendar at Anila teacher's house on the street next to Aaranmula Pathasarathy temple shows 15th august 2018. That was the day the River Pampa breached the banks and the floods drowned the possessions of the rich and the poor alike.  A couple of hours before the overflowing dam's shutters were opened up, the army picked people up on rescue boats and transported them to the first floor of the municipal school and to other safe locations. Soon the water levels would breach the first floor of the school building as well the police and everyone would flee to the terrace waiting for choppers to rescue them.  Their houses were submerged. Apparently from atop the helicopters, even the massive Aramula temple was submerged    Their houses, humble as well as the not so humble were nowhere to be seen.   In it were passports,progress reports, marksheets, title deeds , school homework, wedding albums. Winter clothes. mattresses an...