The DHR - 2

At the fourth station on the 88 kilometre journey, this board caught my eye:

Observe the curious mishmash of imperial and metric units.

The DHR

These kids live beside the tracks of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Every day, twice a day, they see the train pass by. And still they wave.

And me? In our journey from NJP to Darjeeling, I passed at least twenty such groups of kids. And each time, I waved back.

People are strange.

I also think we (i.e. mankind) will outgrow our fascination for fast cars, planes and rockets before we outgrow our fascination for trains.

That’s me in the picture, aged eight months. Evidently, the fascination is not of recent origin.

A Proposed Jus Cogens Norm

Pictured above is the valley of the Relli river, 16 kilometres from Kalimpong. Unspoilt natural vista? Not really.

Here’s the same scene, shot from halfway up the mountain.

They are constructing a coffee shop, toilets and—this is what really kills me—a swimming pool. Tourism development, they call it.

Sometimes I think evolution is making us stupider.

I also think there should be a jus cogens norm against vandalising landscape.

What’s Up

We in the Magazine Committee, NUJS are developing The NUJS Blogs—a set of blogs showcasing life (for want of a better word) in college. (Don’t look for the blogs right now because they are still in an unfinished state. I’ll put them on my blogroll once they are formally inaugurated.)

The blog which carries extra-curricular news is called “What’s Up”. The Word document on my computer where all the posts are stored is likewise called “What’sUp”. With the extension, the filename reads What’sUp.doc. How cool is that?

Of Exhilarating Experiences

The pipe which drains the urinals on the third floor has started leaking into our toilet on the second floor. At all times of the day, small groups of boys may be seen staring in fascination at the urine dripping from the ceiling, saying “Eewww!” “Gro-o-o-oss!” and emitting other expressions of delight. Also, if you pee in the third floor urinal, sprint down two flights of stairs into the second floor toilet, and stand at the correct spot, and if you have timed it just right, you will have the rare treat of having peed on your own head.

In other news, I have come round to the view that this world has few greater pleasures to offer than riding down the E.M. Bypass on a cold December night on the footboard of an empty ST-6 driven by a lunatic driver. I did it yesterday, and I may still be seen grinning foolishly from time to time.

Evolution of MS Word spellcheck

Word 2002:

Word 2003:

Word 2007:
See? No squiggly red line!

I wonder how it feels...

…to have fans aged sixteen to sixty, and co-musicians half your age. To open in Calcutta when most—who am I kidding? all—major bands give us a miss. To set 2300 people clapping to the beat of a J. S. Bach chart topper written 300 years ago. To joke about how “I may not be as pretty as Anoushka, but I do jump around a bit more.” To introduce a glockenspiel on stage and mischievously call it “a heavy metal instrument”. To switch from flute to parlor guitar to harmonica to tambourine and back again to flute, all in the course of the same song. To never be too old to rock ’n’ roll.

I wonder how it feels, to be Mr. Ian Anderson.

And in case you’re still wondering: Yes, I went to the concert.

The Telegraph: Monday, 24 November 2008

The Fine Print column, which always makes for interesting reading, informs me that Wishroom Shop, a Japanese online lingerie retailer, is selling bras and panties for cross-dressing men. I wanted to find out how and why men’s panties would be different from women’s panties, but a visit to their product page did not help.

The following section from an interview with N.R. Narayana Murthy caught my eye:

Favourite gadget? “I have the latest iPod, the latest mobile phone, the latest MP4 player, MP3 player.”
Favourite holiday? “I don’t go on holiday at all. On an average, I am traveling 20-22 days a month outside India, and the remaining seven-eight days in India I am very busy from morning to night.”

The International School of Business, Kolkata ran an advertisement which featured the following immortal line: “Why the World’s biggest Corporates are hunting Leaders?”
If I were a leader, I’d be running for cover right about now.

Note: Yes, I know the time of post is 2.01 a.m., 25 November, so the post is technically about yesterday’s newspaper. But we have football practice (also known as Rahul Varghese’s boot camp) in the morning, so I get time to read the paper only after dinner.