Playing Cricket when the temperature hovers around 10 degrees celcius is something new that i have experienced . When the cold breeze blows over the ground, bodies are benumbed and limbs freeze. Response time increases and the ball hits your hand like a stone. Within the sweater, the body curls upto itself, otherwise nimble feet are glued to the soil, the fielders jog behind a hurrying ball.
All said, i enjoy this more than playing in the intense sun, which beats you with its red hot rays and suck every drop of the body fluid. It is a different experience, worth the struggle.

I read Five Point Someone authored by Chetan Bhagat. Small & simple story, WELL TOLD. It is the narration that stands out more than anything else. The lucid yet piquant style of the author succeeds in etching the characters and the plot in the reader's mind. Right through the simple narrative the writer guides an undercurrent of hilarity and sarcasm aimed at the IIT education system and self important professors. A student of any college can empathise with the characters and would have themselves had an experience of surviving amongst characters as described in the novel. It would also serve as a reminiscent of those college days where one would have grappled with the tough choice of whether to enjoy the freedom of life or labour for better academic scores.
Heard that the author has published another novel titled "One night at the call centre." I need to grab it.

To the surreal world of Gods, Men and Demons ..
I read Homer's "Odyssey" retold by Geraldine McCaughrean last night.
It is not always so easy to carry oneself around in the real world. Especially when you have to work with an application that at times shows you a wait screen while fetching the data from what seems to be a database placed outside the milky way. Click on a button and then stare into the monitor in anticipation of a "never seen before" error, a wait that makes you express all the emotions from curiosity through anxiety through agony through hopelessness. Finally the UI draws itself out, bringing tears of joy in your eyes ! Boo Hoo :-( .
If that was real, then i wanted to have a taste of the surreal, a walk through the wildest imaginations of men, through a world of demons and wild beasts. I hopped on to the ship of Odysseus, returning from Troy and was dragged into a tumultuos world inhabited by One eyed giants, a floating kingdom whose ruler had trapped the ocean winds in a bag followed by a travel through the world of the dead, screaming dragons and wrathful gods.
Aaaaha, there is no better antidote to a dry day that a fantasy.

How true is truth ?

I just finished reading Bill Clinton's MY LIFE (Early Years) . Every Autobiography claims to be a soul searching memoir in which the person gives a first hand account of the incidents in which he had been a party. And whenever the writer attempts to finally come out in an uncreased, unstained white robe, iam amused. Do people always tell the truth in their autobiographies ? :-) Or do they tell what they want others to think is the truth. Anyway, it would be my fault if i buy a biography expecting nothing but truth in it. Mr. Clinton has not mentioned about any Machiavellian tactic that he had ever used. He has not mentioned about ever intentionally harming or deceiving anyone. Such a confession coming from a person who has been immersed in the turbulence of American politics all his life, puts me in a quandary.
I have also read elsewhere that there have been claims of Mahatma Gandhi dropping several contentious issues from his autobiography. Now let me grab a copy of Mein Kampf. If everyone claims to be fair, why is history replete with stories of deceit and cruelty ?
Well, may be two rights pulling in different directions call eachother "wrong" ! If every act can be justified by some theory, there are no wrongs per se. It is an absorbing activity to read autobiographies and then regurgitate them. When a person's life that spans several decades is laid down on a few hundred sheets of paper, they should naturally thrum with wisdom. Wisdom that was passed on to him by men before him, Wisdom gained through painstaking experiences, Wisdom that would be the beacon if one ever stands at the same cross roads. And they are laid down before the readers who can reflect on them and think of wiser ways to deal with a situation or learn the wiser way from the pages.

And Miles to go before I Sleep :
Of late, I have been pondering over the course of my life. On a personal front Iam quite near to achieving whatever I had been dreaming of during my boyhood days. This leaves me in a peculiar stage in my life where my mind grapples with an unprecedented aimlessness which led me to do an introspection and ponder over what all I should do before it is time to bid farewell to this life. To be honest I never had real "Long" Term objectives in my life. I mean "Objectives" which are different from dreams and are accompanied by a desperate craving for them. The short term objective that I had in my mind is "almost" accomplished. God willing, things should all be hunky- dory in another year. What do I do then ? As a result of my ruminations during the silent long walks that I have been taking during the last couple of days, I have been able to enumerate several things that I need to accomplish in my personal and profesional life before I die. With due respect to life and acknowledging the fact that the almighty might call me back any moment, let me list a few things that i would like to achieve in the years ahead,(by the way, the terms God and Almighty that i have used here have nothing to do with any religion or school of thought. My beliefs are complex, unorthodox, private and are not confined to the boundaries set by both religion and rationality.)


So here I go,

Sailing : To some of the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Cross desert Safari : Cross the Thar desert on a camel.
Play Squash (not really keen any more)
Learn Judo (I have learned elementary Karate)
Visit Tibet and spend a couple of days in a Buddhist monastery
Trek in the Himalayas. (Done: Tungnath, Chandrasila, Devariya Tal)
Visit Kashmir/Ladakh,
Experience Weightlessness.
Study at one of the best Business Schools in the World (Done. Completed my MBA from National University of Singapore))
Teach mathematics in Elementary school, High School and College
Write a book on Mathematics.
Learn to Speak, read and Write in a foreign language (other than English)
Take a Rollercoaster ride. (Done : Six Flags, New York)
See a volcano
Learn to play Chenda and Idakka.
Ride a horse.
See penguins in the wild.
Watch Whales. (Done. Boston, MA, October 2010)
Parasail (Done. Key West, FL, Nov 2010)
Travel in a helicopter
Go to Historicon (Done : July 2007 and July 2010)
Play a wargame with complete model set. (Done : SWA and Historicon 2007 and 2010)
Visit the Taj mahal (Done: July 2017)
Visit the Grand Canyon.
Visit Rome
Visit Wayanad (My wife loves Wayanad :-) )
Row along the backwaters of Kerala on a small wooden boat.
Visit Sikkim and Meghalaya.
Visit Coorg.
Trace my roots as back in time as possible.(In progress: Went as far as 1870s on my father' s side)
Visit the cellular jail in Andamans.
Get a Phd in History. Be exceptionally well-read in History. Specialize in the history of Travancore.
Run a marathon for a cause.
Have a short stint as a National Geographic Reporter. Go on a National Geographic Expedition.
Have a rich personal library (In progress: It is big and growing) Go white water rafting
Try ocean kayaking. (Done. Key West, FL, Nov 2010)
Jet Ski (Done. Key West, FL, Nov 2010)Go on a tour to Australia and New Zealand.
Shave my head .
Visit Jallianwalah Bagh, Fort Sumter and Gettysburg.
Write a travelogue.
Sponsor an underprivileged kid all the way from kindergarten through college.
Establish or Work for an orphanage.(Done. Actively Supporting Sukritham Girls Home from 2015 onwards; Set up their library with over 200 books; supporting the Org financially)
Live in a very remote Indian village for a week.(Done, Sari village in the mountains of Rudraprayag, Uttarkhand, Himalayas
Visit New York on a new year's eve.  (not keen any more :-) )
Possess a huge collection of Folk stories from all over the globe.
Have a beautiful garden (Done: Fruit Garden and Spacious Garden at India home)
Talk on radio (I have participated and won a prize in a quiz conducted and aired by All India Radio in 1995)
Address a gathering of over 1000 people. (I have addressed a gathering of around 100).
Learn to meditate deep.

Well, now this makes me feel that life ahead is all packed with fun and adventure and great things to do. From a state of aimlessness I have moved on and now I see a long road ahead with milestones by the sides, stretching as far as my eyes can see.

Ripley's haunted house : I still wonder how that guys floats there !

Pirates of the Caribbean :-). By the way, couple of months back i stumbled on this treasure trove of Pirate stories.

Do you know what this is? It is called "Sea Dragon". I was not aware that such a species existed. Among Sea Dragons, like Sea horses, it is the male that gives birth.

Thats a shark approaching me.I wonder what it would feel swimming above what would have been "fine delicacies" had the wall of glass given way. Nah, i don't think it would have even looked my way thanks to all the heavy weight men and women around me.

I sat for a long time, in front of this thick wall of glass that separated me from these colourful fishes at Ripley's Aquarium. There was a board which explained that millions of years ago, in the place of what we call Tennessee now, was a shallow ocean and how the smoky mountains came up when the African plate collided with the North American plate. I stayed there transfixed, wondering about life, evolution ..et al :-)