10 pictures taken in the past one year that sum up my love for travel

I agree the title of the post is extremely Buzzfeed-ish but I just couldn't resist posting this. Here are a bunch of pictures taken by family and friends over the past 12 months that remind me of one word: "Wanderlust"!

July, 2015

"Everyone is traveling": Every family member of my friend Roshini was traveling at that time and hence she was overcome by the desire to do so herself. I was dragged along as travel companion to one of the nearest Indonesian islands to Singapore. Even though we had a tryst with Bintan only for the weekend, we had quite a lot of rather "interesting" experiences.

September, 2015

Retard: My folks and I traveled to Spain and Portugal for a fortnight in Autumn of 2015. This picture is taken in Salamanca, a Celtic city in Spain full of castles, towers and churches. You can see my dad annoyed  at my cliched jumpshot pose walking away in the background.

Seagull be like whaaaaat: In the coastal town of Cascais, Portugal just after I tried to sneak in to a hotel restaurant to relieve myself in their loo but eventually had to use the public restroom for 1 Euro.

December, 2015

West Bengal

Amidst the Kopibaari: The first leg of my trip to India was to my hometown, Siliguri after two years. This is not too far from the town in field next to where my parents recently bought a plot of land.

Rey and the haystack: My sis-in-law wanted a picture on a haystack to generate a picture with that "rustic feel" of rural North Bengal. I followed suit, my brother obliged. In the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, Dooars is rich in tea plantations, wildlife, simple people and good food.

Rajasthan

 

Shady business: In Jaswant Thada, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Sabiha's iPhone took better pictures than my Powershot camera. This is one of the only comparable pictures from my camera to her super-bright iPhone pictures. Let's just say I was mildly green out of envy in the Blue City.

Tip of the sand dune: This picture is one of the happiest. A bunch of Banjara women approached us and started singing and dancing amidst the sand dunes of Jaisalmer. The one who is forcing me to dance in the picture was sort of scary with blue eyeliner on her lips demanding more tip than what we gave her later on.

January. 2016

Pose a million times: Was in Bangalore for Spoorthy's wedding which is evident from the Henna on my hands which was yet to darken. Had to check out the much talked about Nandi Hills and Felix made it possible, both the trip and the photograph. Of course, Pauline and Fabien were good company as well.

March, 2016

Creepy cutout: This is on top of the tallest hotel in Bangkok, Baiyoke Sky Hotel. Who better to go to Bangkok with for Thai food and shopping than my mom who shares my love and taste for both!

May, 2016

Birds of paradise: Carey Island, less than 60 km away from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is a birdwatcher's paradise and popular among fishermen. I had gone there for the long weekend in May this year.

Until next travel plan execution!

How clean energy and women empowerment go hand-in-hand

Like most, I was ignorant until recently about the term clean energy. Being an electrical engineer and researching in the field of electricity via renewable sources, it only occurred to me recently that when people speak of clean energy, they usually refer to electricity and water. They often forget that a large part of the world: mainly south/ southeast-Asia and Africa struggle with clean COOKING energy. The poor and the rural often rely on wood, coal, crop residues or animal excreta for fueling their cook stove. This may lead to health ailments and birth defects of progeny. Recently during a talk at the institute I work in, on being asked why such hazardous practices have not been reformed yet, the speaker simply replied, "Because most of the users of such cook stoves are women!"

Even though the middle class and above has seen tremendous improvement in gender equality, it is yet to make its mark in politics. Due to a minority of women in the political field, there is hardly anyone to advocate for women in the poor/rural population who spend most of their time/energy collecting polluting fuels for their cook stove and cooking on them. There are lot of promises by the politicians on "power for all", lower rates for electricity and alerts to consumers in case of load shedding. Similarly, there are campaigns and voluntary work on education for all. But there are hardly any articles written on a certain village achieving clean cooking technology or the government providing subsidy for cleaner but more expensive cooking fuels to the poor.

There are exceptions of course. Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves is targeting not only to achieve less polluting technologies for cook stoves but taking initiatives to train women and help them participate in national awareness campaigns in South Asia and parts of Africa. It is also working towards building capacity for enterprises and providing financial support to women entrepreneurs self-employed in clean cooking technology. Closer to home, i.e. India, the Surya Stove by Nishant Bioenergy runs on powdered biomass such as sawdust and has an automated fuel feeding and ash cleaning system. Project Surya is targeting the use of biofuels and solar energy for improved cooking stoves and exploring if rewarding women directly with funds from carbon markets will help in wide adoption of the stove. A startup called BioLite based in New York is using smart wood-fuel stoves to produce enough heat to cook food as well as convert the remaining to electricity. One of my colleagues has his own charcoal and non-charcoal briquettes enterprise producing fuel for room heating, water boiling and even large-scale cooking. (Visit: Namuna Biomass Homepage). They use agricultural and forest residues for briquette production. To produce charcoal, they create local enterprises consisting of poor families and purchase loose charcoal from them to make it densified. The enterprise is also training locals to convert invasive weed (Banmara) into fuel. Likewise, there are several other organizations/ individuals who are attempting to improve the clean cooking technology industry and involving more women in doing so.

The above is not based on extensive research but based on results fueled by my curiosity on why women play such an important role in clean energy. Despite people's best efforts, clean cooking energy and women empowerment have a long way to go. Until then, all we can do is make people aware of the perils of open stove cooking and hope that the government will pay a bit more attention to it as well.

Keine Ahnung!

Menschen (people) ask me why I am learning German. I want to say "Keine Ahnung!" which LITERALLY means "No idea!". But all I manage to say is something as feeble as, "I love Germany and Germans. I love the DFB: Miroslav Klose is my celebrity crush for 10 years." And then they chant the most stereotypical chant, "Life's too short to learn German."

To some extent I agree. For the ongoing 3 months, my Saturdays are mostly wasted panicking about the huge pile of German homework I have left to complete before the early evening class. I cannot just fly off for the weekend to see my parents or go travelling as I have made a commitment, an expensive one at that: hence I LITERALLY can't afford to miss a class. I spend a considerable amount of time wondering why a pair of spectacles is feminine and a pen is masculine while a notebook is gender neutral; why some words are so long that they incite hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia in me; why they have the same word for tomorrow and morning and the capitalization of the first letter makes a difference; why adjectives change form based on which part of the sentence they are used in.

It is true. German is a confusing language, but so are other languages. For example, Hindi too has genders for inanimate objects, Vietnamese and Tamil are pretty difficult to pronounce, Bengali has a lot of O's compared to A's. Mandarin has tens of thousands of characters, etc. Despite these challenges, each language is powerful and beautiful in its own way and requires time, patience, appreciation and inquisition. Here are some reasons for which I would like to be fluent in German:

1) It gives me the same satisfaction to hear someone speak in German as it gives when I see the waiter bring food to my table. Imagine how fantastisch it would be to understand what the person is saying as well!

<3 p="">2) I have probably liked the Facebook pages of all the footballers in the German national team. Imagine how wunderbar it would be to read what they post (I mean I more or less get it already!) and feel pride in deciphering every word of it. :D

3) Germany has a big name in academia and a big name in renewable energy. Some day, one day, near future or far, maybe just maybe I would want to study/ work there. Enough said!

4) German literary figures and musicians are world class. Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Kafka all hail from Germany. The simple motivational quote in Deutsche, "Alles wird gut." brightens my foggy day. All will be good. I came across Franz Kafka's quote the other day: "Liebe ist, daß du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle", which means "In this love, you are like a knife with which I explore myself". Hence, both in depth and simplicity, German literature has caught my attention.

5) Oktoberfest. My first tryst with beer was at an Oktoberfest celebration in university. I was not a big fan then, nor am I a big fan now of the pot-belly inducing cornflakesey flavored alcohol, but it definitely gave me the courage to try something new and I haven't ceased to try since (no I am not talking exclusively about alcohol).

Although this is just the beginning, and has been just the beginning for quite a long time, 10 years from now, I will probably be teaching other people how to speak in German. Sweet dreams are made of little things like these, even if I have miles to go before I sleep. 

Ten Terribly Tiny Tales - Part 3

Dust
'Bibliophile' she called herself,
while she binge-watched YouTube videos,
and her Kindle accumulated rust,
and her books accumulated dust.

Children
Crossing paths, they inadvertently glanced at each other,
Quickly looked away, each heading their way,
Both thought, "We were best friends when we were children."

Sugar
"You seem chirpy today", suggested his co-worker.
Devoid of an explanation, he smiled harder.
After all, you don't need a reason to be happy,
All you need is a sugar rush.

Mend
The cobbler studied her favorite pink shoes and exclaimed,
"You'd rather buy a new one than mend it."
Disappointed, she recalled having bought it with her first salary,
Like people, some materialistic treasures cannot be replaced.

Colon
Sinful desserts? Meaty extravaganzas?
Greasy snacks? Spicy condiments? Mid-meal munch-ons?
Her heart says YES, but her colon says NO!

National
Their dietary choices: regional,
Their music preferences: cultural,
Their belief on God: communal,
Their sports team: national.

Survival
"Why does the cuckoo drop its eggs on other birds' nests?", asked the student.
"It'd rather have her young ones learn survival on their own", answered the teacher,
Missing her son who was in boarding school.

Hum
As he played his guitar on the verandah,
He heard a distant hum,
Little did he know that two years down the line,
The hummer would be his companion for life.

Exile
Not only does Ram return from exile,
The sweets come back too.
The diabetic's eyes light up then,
Just like the streets during the impending Diwali.

Cover
"Chivalry isn't dead, is it?",
said the boy on their first date, as he offered to cover for both.
"Vanity isn't dead, is it?",
said the girl, as she paid him her share.

A cliched post on 5 things that I learnt in 2014

1. Maturity:
Sensitiveness towards trivial issues, expectations, attachments thrown down the drain; this year has definitely made me majestically more mature. Credit goes to people for whom this line by Owl Cities makes perfect sense: "With friends like these, who needs an enemy?"
After all, nobody owes you, nobody owns you and vice versa (except family, of course).

2. Teaching kids:
People who say "those who can't do, teach" are morons. They say so without experience. It's a challenge to introduce people who don't speak a single common word as you to something, anything new. We almost lost our patience when we had to teach children from rural Laos English but some dancing and singing did help. So it was all work and all play! But the end results were wonderful, especially when I saw this kid chanting "How are you? I am fine." in English as he did somersaults on the playground.

3. Indian food is the best (says everyone):
Earlier, whenever I used to go out, I used to strictly avoid Indian food. Who wants to eat routine Indian stuff when they are dining in a restaurant, right? But apparently, no amount of pizzas and pastas, burgers and steaks, satays and sushis, noodles and dumplings are going to satiate you like a plate of chicken malai tikka and a bowl of rasmalai does. During my internship in a Germany-based company too I was pleasantly surprised to see the Germans queue up almost everyday at the Indian stall. Bharat Mata ki Jai!

4. How to complete your Masters like a pro:
Juuuuust kidding! I struggled more than ever during my Master's course but as they say, there is light at the end of a tunnel and every dark cloud has a silver lining. I graduated with average grades, gained plenty of technical knowledge and experience from the power engineering course, a service learning trip to Laos thereafter and an internship before landing into my first job as a researcher.

5. Definition of broke:
All this while I have ignored the internet definition of  'broke': "when you have too much month left at the end of your money." Now I truly know what 'broke' means.

Now that 2014 is almost over, I've lost no weight (gained some, in fact), hardly traveled, saved no money and most definitely haven't found love (nor have I searched this year :P ). But one thing is for sure: I've learnt a million things, the above 5 being the most significant. 

Ten Terribly Tiny Tales- Part 2

'Home'
Where is home?
It's where you were born.
It's where you now live.
It's where your forefathers have built a house.
WRONG WRONG ALL WRONG,
It's where your Mom is.

'Truth'
He completes the source code in a jiffy,
He has blue eyes,
He plays football,
He is chivalrous,
But the Truth?
He is a poor substitute.

'Friends'
Adults, yet mentality of infants,
Didn't speak a word to each other,
For two whole years,
But somebody had to give in, right?
After all, they were friends.

'Fate'
Small town boy, with a good eye, then,
World renowned photographer now,
"What's the secret of your success?" they ask.
He smiles and says with unwavering humility, "Fate!"

'Dawn'
Will it ever dawn on you?
That filth is not outside, but within,
That you're not as perfect as you think you are,
That you have no enemies but are intensely disliked by your friends,
Well I think it's time, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

'Mirror'
'Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who's the fairest of them all?', asked MJ.
The mirror replied, 'You racist! Don't you know?
 It doesn't matter if you're black or white.'

'Night'
She said, "The night is dark and full of terror."
He said, "The night is young and full of splendor."
A nuptial bond, a house and two children is what they shared.
But a common interest, never ever!

'Beautiful'
That day will be your happiest,
When a man you love doesn't say,
"You look beautiful."
But, "you are beautiful."
Even the thought made Gita blush for one straight hour.

'Spirit'
"Oh holy spirit, come and enter the coin",
they chanted as they placed their fingers on the Ouija board,
Little did they know, that they were entering their doom,
And the spirit wasn't holy.

'Lipstick'
Mom told her,
"Isn't it high time to be just a little lady-like?
Let me buy you some red lipstick."
She casually mumbled,
"But all I want is a red hockey stick."

Vapid

Of all the sorts of OCDs I suffer from terminally, the obsession with a particular word over a period of time is most affecting me of late. I get on everyone's nerves (and even my own) using the same word time and again, sometimes in every sentence, and even though, it's excessively annoying, people laugh a tad bit at this addiction. I'm still getting over the word 'dubious'. You see, it describes everything around me and happening to me often - my thesis results, my job prospects, the food I eat, my relations with friends, the glances that I get sometimes from random people in public places are currently at an extremely 'dubious' state. Holy molly, I love the word 'random'. Random people. Random songs. Random curry puffs. Random babies. You do realize that I'm randomly adding the adjective 'random' in front of random words.

Be that as it may, my current obsession is with the word 'vapid'. The dictionary defines it as dull, uninteresting, bland, insipid, etc. But can you really define what's vapid or who's vapid? Can you really put a label on what's interesting and what isn't? E.g. this post might be extremely vapid to many but quite the opposite to the others. Vapidness lies in the minds of the beholder really! How do you define an interesting person? Some may feel it's a person who likes to travel the world, who prefers an adrenaline rush during an adventure sport to a cup of coffee with a friend on a Sunday. But the very same things might be consider as a cover-up for having a boring personality. Ok, maybe I have a vapid personality then ;). Some may feel partying hard, bowling, getting sloshed are the ultimate ways to be deemed non-vapid. Some might prefer an interesting conversation or a good book to that. Most individuals might find geeks vapid. But they don't do vapid things, they do interesting things in a vapid circumstance or environment. There also is a myth that those who are unique are actually interesting. However, being different is not always being interesting. Take Luna Lovegood for example: excessively weird and excessively vapid. So next time you generalize the term vapid, think again. Loquacious extroverts can also be extremely vapid and so can incisive introverts. It all depends on your perspective.