Tell me...

How do you translate lajja into English? Shame? Embarassment? Coyness? Shyness? They're all close, but not quite the thing.

Lajja is one of those things which, without intending to sound be discriminatory in any way, is probably a characteristic found in Asian women. I really doubt that any, say for example American woman would ever experience the feeling of lajja.

Legend has it that the demons Shambu and Nishambu were once given a boon that no man could kill them. As a result, as demons are prone to do, they went on a rampage and started killing pretty much everyone they came across. The Devas, as they are prone to do, went into a panic. Luckily for them, they managed to find a loophole. You see, the boon said no man could kill them. So what did the Gods do? They went to the Goddess Durga and asked her to do something about the situation.

That was when Goddess Kali was born from Durga's forehead as Kal Bhoi Nashini to save heaven and earth from the demons. After killing the demons, however, she lost control (and I have no idea why) and started killing anyone who came her way. So this time, the Gods went to her husband, Lord Shiv to ask him to stop her. He went and lay down in the forest she was walking in. While walking around in a rage, she stepped on his chest, and suddenly came to her senses. Realizing she had stepped on her husband, she stuck out her tongue in lajja.

So tell me, how do you translate lajja into English?

Cheers!

Now this is the kind of news I'd like to read. Not tripe about where the sindoor used at the wedding of the decade came from, thank you.

Why can't women in India be encouraged to take classes like this?

Good ole' inflation

So back in the Dark Ages when I was a little kid, losing a tooth was a very big deal because it meant the Tooth Fairy would be visiting me to leave a five-rupee coin under my pillow. I've always loved those coins for some reason.

A friend told me some time back about how she always buys a gift for her 7-year-old son when he loses his tooth. Recently, however, when he lost a tooth rather late in the evening, giving her no time to go buy a gift, she simply left 200 rupees under his pillow.

Well whaddaya know. Inflation hit the Tooth Fairy too.

Serendipity

Yahoo's headline at the moment is about a newlywed couple who met when the chap decided to SMS a random number floating in his head. I'll bet if Hollywood made a movie about it, it would become one of my favourites. Especially if John Cusack played the lead role.
Apparently,

A British man has met and married a 22-year-old woman after, by his own account, dreaming of her phone number and then sending her a text message.
David Brown, 24, says he woke up one morning after a night out with friends with a telephone number constantly running through his head. He decided to contact it, sending a message saying "Did I meet you last night?."
Random recipient Michelle Kitson was confused and wary at first but decided to reply and the two began exchanging messages. Eventually they met and fell in love.
"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson told the Daily Mail newspaper. "My mum and dad kept saying 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it."
After a long courtship, the oddly matched couple -- he's six foot seven inches tall and she's five foot four -- have just returned from their honeymoon in the Indian resort of Goa.
A love-struck Brown said: "I've no idea how I ended up with her number in my head -- it's only a few digits different from mine."

That's... sweet. Maybe I should try it.

Why and wherefore

I sometimes wonder why I blog. I mean, I know I have a vast readership which just waits breathlessly for whatever pearls of wisdom I might spout next, but apart from that, why do I blog?

I have things to say, which I know very few people within my friend circle would enjoy listening to during random conversations. So I say them here.

Still, not all my thoughts get expressed. I start many a blog entries, only to discard them midway, either because I decide they're not worthy enough to get an entire entry dedicated to them, or I find myself unable to express them adequately enough.

My blog posts have also changed in nature over time. From venting spleen about my personal life, to cribbing about the ways of the world, to simple talking nonsense in the recent past, I'm growing more and more dissatisfied with my blog. Yet, I don't see myself giving it up anytime soon, because it is an outlet for me, an outlet I can't let go of, not yet at least.

Someone on hearing that I blog once pointed me towards her friend's blog, which put in words the best reason I've ever come across for blogging, and probably the answer to my original question. He says that blogging is perfect for those who don't like to sing when other people are around, but who have always wanted to sing in an auditorium.

Maybe that is why I blog. I have opinions. I may not be entirely comfortable expressing those opinions to other people, but I have them nevertheless and I wish to express them. Ergo, I blog.

PS: You see that little thing at the bottom of my sidebar? The one with the numbers? Now that not only tells me where you're from, but also how often you're visiting my blog. So leave some comments, why don'tcha? :)

A cure for Hypochondriasis

According to Roald Dahl in his book Boy, to check if you have appendicitis, when experiencing acute pains, you need to press the left side of your abdomen where the appendix is located. If it's soft, all's well. If it's hard, however, it probably means you're in for a tough time.

The other day, however, a friend, getting increasingly exasperated with my moans and groans, showed me another trick. When experiencing the aforementioned acute pains, try lifting your right leg. If you can, all's well! Because if you really do have appendicitis, the pain would be so bad that you wouldn't be able to lift your leg!

Didja know that now?!?

Of course, for actual diagnosis, you could probably use one of these methods...!

Fleeting moments in time...

I heard a beautiful analogy today (well, yesterday). Which I am now going to make a hash of as I clumsily attempt to explain it to you.

You know that dumroo Lord Shiva holds in his hand? Apparently, it is representative of time. One side of the dumroo represents the past, while the other represents the future. The string in the centre with something at either end indicates the present.

So what happens is, when you shake the dumroo, the things at either end of the string hit the two sides and make beats, right? That, my friends, is indicative of the present's relationship with the past and the future. What it indicates (and which was the whole point of the class discussion that led to this being mentioned) is that just as the string connects with the two sides only fleetingly, the present has a very minor relationship with the past and the future. Bottom line is, live in the present and don't worry so much about what has gone by or what will come.

You know, that sounded so much nicer when my professor told us about it.

Hmm...

So Water lost out at the Oscars. Not really a surprise, considering India's past record.

But why, oh why, did Leonardo DiCaprio not win?!?

On another tangent, I didn't see the whole show, just bits and pieces towards the beginning, but the presentation by Abigail Breslin and Will Smith's son was definitely one of the cutest I've seen in a long time!

Of talking dogs and high school diplomas...

Have the Indian news channels completely lost their marbles? This afternoon, NDTV 24x7 had a feature about the dogs of mumbai, which I might have continued to watch if they hadn't started interviewing street dogs, complete with some precocious kid doing the voice-over for the dog.
Then now, just an hour or so back, I stared fascinatedly for all of thirty seconds as Star News went on with their appeal to the viewers to cast their votes on whether or not they think it was right or not of some girl to have jilted her fiancé on the day of their wedding in favour of her true love!!!
This is news these days. Sheesh.

Amidst all the trash on Indian televsion these days, there are a few not so popular shows, usually telecast on weekend nights, which, while not be pathbreaking in any way, are rather sweet and fun to watch occasionally. I don't watch them regularly, but come across them at times while flipping channels.
The other day, one of these shows, which is based in a small moholla, had a rather interesting track. An old lady, whose grandchildren are grown and on the verge of leaving home, decided to try and fulfill one of the long-cherished dreams: to give her Matriculation exam. Having got married at the age of 16, just a month before her Class X Boards, she had always dreamt of giving the exams, but never got the oppurtunity. Till the point I continued to watch, she had received her admit card and was trying to convince her husband to allow her to sit for the exams.
About a year ago, a friend of mine had mentioned how her mother never got to go to college and was now expressing the desire to pursue further education. We told her about places like IGNOU but I don't think she ever followed it through.
There are probably so many people in India who had to leave their studies prematurely for various reasons, be it marriage, or lack of funds, or simply their parents thinking it was unnecessary for them to continue. In the USA, they night classes for those who want to finish their high school graduation; India doesn't have a system like that. Yes, we have distance learning and correspondence courses at the higher levels; institutes like IGNOU and DU enable people to pursue their graduation or even post-graduation at later stages in life. But what happens to those who want to do their basic schooling? Give their Matriculation exams? They can give these exams as open candidates of course, but I do wish there was some kind of system where these people could also attend classes if they so chose.
Of course, while I'm at it, I also wish the whole freaking education system in India would change, but that's another story altogether.

Update: (04/03/07)
I watched the latest episode of that show last night, and apparently after a great deal of resistance the Man of the House decided to support his wife in her decision to take her Matriculation exams at the age of 55 or something. The last scene showed him waiting for her to come out after her first exam with nariyal ka paani in his hand. How sweet! :)

The problem with Wikipedia

...is this.
You're telling me. I went there yesterday to look some stuff for a repost I have to write; I landed up on a page about a goddess I'd been meaning to read up on for some time!

Personally, I have my suspicions about Wikipedia. You do a search on any freaking topic in the universe, and the Wikipedia page will be there in the top five results. So I wonder if they've actually done something to make it turn out that way.
We all know it can be done. I mean, people fixed their blogs in a way so that if you typed in "miserable failure" in Google and clicked on the "I'm feeling lucky" button, you would get George W. Bush's biography in the White House website. Earlier this year, Google decided to step in and fix it so that if you try it now, you get this article instead!!!
My point is, like the BBC article says, it apparently doesn't need too many people to make a particular website top the searches. So what's to stop the Wikipedia crowd from doing so?
The only loophole that I can see in my latest conspiracy theory is this: that's an awful lot of articles they'd have to sit and fix !!!

The other problem that Wikipedia might occasionally have is its accuracy. Since pretty much anyone and everyone can create and/or edit articles there, you really don't know how accurate someof the stuff there is. I'm sure they have a staff to try and keep an eye on stuff, but when you have a site on pretty much everything open to pretty much the whole world for editing, I'm pretty darn sure there are going to be occassions incorrect stuff gets published.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia is still the first place I head to whenever I need to look up something!!!

Update:
I have no idea if it's a coincidence or irony or what, but ever since I wrote this entry, Wikipedia hasn't featured in the top ten results of 90% of the searches I've done. Talk about freaky! (25/02/07)