Afresh

The blog template has been changed and so has the header. The header is from a photo of my wall which now boasts of a bunch of greeting cards I’ve received from school till date.

Elephant Obsession

Until a few days back, I thought it was an innocent fascination but now, I am afraid, there’s more to it.

For ages, Kerala, the land I was brought up in, has been associated with iconic characteristics like the Mallu accent, the coconuts, the fish fascination and the like, all of which have promoted nothing but friendly banter. I would not give any of them a second thought but now, something strong seems to be lurking behind all the usual clichés. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Elephant Obsession.

What I intend to focus on is not the in-your-face type of usage but the less observed. One of the first times I have encountered this obsession is in one of Tharoor’s articles where he explains the power of India as a large democracy with quite a serious tone but finishes on a lighter note addressing it as an elephant. In fact, the elephant seems to find its way quite effortlessly into many of his articles, oftentimes in the title itself, like The Elephant’s Choices, Can the Elephant Dance with the Dragon?, or even a book title, The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone.

However, let me not delve too much on Tharoor for he has had more than his share of news space as it is. When Chairman-ISRO, Mr. Radhakrishnan, a Mallu of course, released an official press release regarding the launch of a GSLV rocket, he took this Elephant Obsession to a whole new level. According to him, the increase of the launch capacity to four tones holds the equivalent meaning of carrying an adult elephant to 25000 kilometers above the Earth.

Why elephant?

The Walk

With a head held high,

You walk and walk and walk.

Not even a sigh

While you walk and walk and walk.

You bump into a wall;

On and on, you walk and walk and walk.

You’re not so tall,

Yet, you walk and walk and walk.

Another wall there and one more here;

Still, you walk and walk and walk.

Dismissing it as an aberration, mere;

You continue to walk and walk and walk.

Yet another similar one hits you hard;

But you walk and walk and walk.

The invisible walls seem a hazard,

Unmindful, you walk and walk and walk.

And then the next one hits,

Numbing you from toe to top.

Shattered into a million bits,

You stop.

The Saturday Post

Today, at lunch hour, I was weighing the pros and cons of waking up at 9 am on a lazy Saturday and wondering what to do since then till lunch with that of waking up just before lunch. I’ve always liked weekends whether they were spent having fun outdoors or doing work indoors. Besides, I like the Poha they serve for breakfast at the mess on Saturdays and I doubt I’d get it elsewhere in Chennai. Anyway, the point is that I’d woken up early and I didn’t know what to do. I could work on my BTP, but that’s religiously reserved for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for Tuesday is my weekly BTP update day.

My fellow lunch-eaters found it odd that in spite of having time at hand; I wasn’t churning out a blog post a day. It’s simple really. My blog posts are usually descriptions of queer or interesting incidents that happen in my day to day life. And since I don’t seem to have any of those up my sleeve, I can’t think of what to write. So then they ask me to write about placements and all that? This is simple too really. For over four months now, I have been the object of quite some trip on that front. Ever since I made it to the shortlist, new words like Miss. Consultant, pun intended, have been coined by many a considerate friend. A few isolated heated debates saw me using the occasional personal pronoun for BCG and this has led to quite some teasing over coffee and such. So, I don’t really need to encourage anyone by blogging about placements and interviews now. So here’s a modest update.

I’m doing three courses this semester in three different departments, not including my major or minor department, thanks to which I can firstly say that a lot of Nernst potentials are being maintained in your head right now, secondly, declare that I can put money in one country’s bank and borrow from another bank in such a way that mathematically spells profit, and thirdly, wonder why there is a geometric period in Greek history. My BTP is the center of my weekly agenda as of now, for I work two days leading up to it and hit restaurants for three nights after which brings us to Saturday morning when I cannot seem to think of what to do.