Traffic Jam!

 Traffic jam is the truth today. Wherever you are, in the city, on the outskirts, traffic jams are the norm. In a city like Pune, at any point of time, morning to evening, this midnight to next midnight, every second, each minute, there is a terrible traffic jam.

Why is it so? Well, there are varied vehicles, countless cars, autocratic autowallahs, two-wheelers twisting and turning on the road, loathsome lorries, and bicycles. At times, you may even get to see a bullock-cart and a horse-driven baggi.

Well, why such many and any vehicles? The culprit is the EMI. People juggle money thus, and show off. Every family hence has at least two two-wheelers and two cars. When the number of newer vehicles thus explodes every day, any number of flyovers would not be enough.

The public transport possibly could be efficient, clean, and on time. May be, then many may use it and thus would reduce the chaos. Similarly, as in the international metro cities, there should be a very heavy toll when it cones to the major city centers. People would not take out cars then! 

Never know though! Everybody cribs about the petrol prices, and yet the city bursts at seams with vehicles!The traffic jams are, moreover, due to the lack of civic sense. The drivers must follow traffic rules, and jump neither the signal nor the lanes!

Well, roads are narrow, and just building fly-overs may not be a solution. The metro train with a chain of autos with fixed fare could ease a bit of some road rage, I suppose. Is not there a need to limit the number of vehicles? Would that solve the huge chaos at Hinjewadi, and beyond, that is, on the express way where the weekend traffic jam is the norm.

You never know though! Remember that terrible traffic jam at the Everest!?! Hope sense prevails!

Pratima@Terrible are the traffic woes!

 

Laugh awhile!

 At times, that total and horrible injustice called life simply gets on nerves. In such situations, which better solution than jokes? Hence here are a few. Not silly, for sure! 'Coz they are good ones, eh, puns!

1) It is already January 6. How time flies! Much faster than supersonic jets. Hence this one!

What did grandfather clock say to the AI-smart wristwatch? 

Hour you doing?

2)Why are snails slow? 

Their house is their backpack.

3) Which is the smartest insect?

The spelling bee! For sure!

4)Whenever there is a tide, the ocean is super friendly. Why?

Waves, eh!

5) This is the last one, but a good one indeed.

What did the right eye say to the left?

Between the two of us, there IS something that smells!

Pratima@ When Life is a croak/What is better than a joke!?! /So Smile, laugh, guffaw/he he hu hu ho ha!

Vision

 One of the batches whom I taught Spanish had seven students who were visually impaired. That batch truly helped me a lot in multiple ways. This was circa 2015. The internet hence was not actually bursting then with oral/aural apps for the visually impaired. 

The only access they had to the language was via my voice. Yet their learning of the language and their preparedness for the course final exam, both were way too far better than the so-called 'norm'al students with their uppity attitude. One of the visually impaired student literally remembered the entire book, page by page, line by line just by listening to me attentively. Indeed i learnt a lot from him!

Once while I was teaching them the colours through the passport as the text input, one of the girls asked me if eyes at all have colours. I got goosebumps listening to that question, and I still do. Such sensitisation to, and unique answers to, the plight of the visually impaired actually began with the vision the Braille script got in to their lives.

Before this 'vision'ary gift entered their lives, the blind as they would be crudely called (one of my students told me that they would be asked such crude questions as, while eating,  how they would find their mouth to put food in to it!!!), led very difficult lives. Often considered a curse even by their near and dear ones, their lives were burdensome.

Before the advent of the apps, it was the Braille script that made their lives worthy. Louis Braille, who invented it, knew the plight of the tribe himself, blinded as he was by a freak accident in his early teens. His re-search of the script, named after him, literally brought light in to their lives.

More than the white cane associated with the visually impaired as a symbol of concern, it was the genuinely 'vision'ary Braille script that led to the enabling of this group of the differently abled. Hence the celebration of the Braille day every January 4, his birth anniversary, because the touch-n-feel script he initiated truly led very many from darkness to light. Indeed he gave many, both the visually impaired and the so-called 'norm'al, the real 'vision'!

Pratima@ What matters more is the vision, not mere sight!

Yen

 Yen! The very word reminds us of Japan. 'Yen' is the currency of Japan. To my mind, however, the other meanings of 'yen' represent Japan truly. 'Yen' means strong desire, propensity, urge, craving for something. 

Japan, in my opinion, has a yen for resilience, a quality I respect and admire truly. Look at Japan. The very first three days of the New Year brought colossal calamity after  terrible disaster for Japan and the Japanese. First the earthquake, next the mini-tsunami, followed by a sortie plane hitting a jumbo with almost four hundred passengers, who escaped unharmed unscathed despite the burning inferno.

Did you look at the houses? Very few collapsed like a pack of cards. People were calm. As if it is a daily normal activity! Simply great resilience! How do the Japanese, apparently a fast aging population,  manage overcoming catastrophes calmly?

I suppose it is their yen for Zen. That is the philosophical base.  In real lived lives, moreover, right from childhood, they are trained for  earthquake readiness. Most households have a special earthquake kit in place. The buildings have to be built as per the earthquake resistant mode and parameters. Stringent laws are strictly followed, without any corrupt hanky-panky. 

No wonder, despite such a huge  catastrophe, the yen as a currency never loses its creditworthiness. The Japanese yen for Zen may have helped them overcome Hiroshima-Nagasaki. Yet the tragic event apparently added to their innate resilience as well. No wonder, this country, perched up the dreaded Ring of Fire, repeatedly rises like the phoenix from totally burnt-out ashes!

Pratima@ Let us learn from Japan this Phoenix yen every which way!

Patient

 Oh, the very title of our blog makes you wince? In the very first week, on just the third day of the New Year, why the reference to illness, hospital, that awful odour that permeates a hospital which is a mix of the floor cleaner, medicines, blood, pus, and so on? Is that your question?

Well, do not worry. We are not at all using the word 'patient' as a noun. We are using it as an adjective. If the word 'patient' as a noun is all that is worrisome, as an adjective, it is all that is positive. That is the beauty of English, both the change in a word, as a part of speech, and the change that thus takes place at the level of meaning.

Well, right now, I do not want to bore you with discussions of syntax and semantics. Let us know, let us understand why patient as an adjective sounds good. Indeed a patient individual is a person who is tolerant, calm, composed, forbearing and uncomplaining.

Now certain vocations need you to be patient. Yes, I am referring to parents, and next, teachers. Both know that change never happens overnight. Revolution is actually evolution, is what they both know. 

That brings us back to the New Year. Yes, the New Year Resolutions! You want them to flourish, and not fizzle out. Be patient. Take baby steps. You may falter a little. Do not give up. Be patient! You would realise you have started to change, slowly, may be, but surely! Revolution is evolution!

Pratima@ If you change, they say, the way you look at things, the things you look at change. For  the better, let me add!

Hell hath no fury!

 Indeed hell hath no fury like Mother Nature in her worst moods. The very first day of 2024 was greeted with Mother Nature's foul frame of mind. What a huge tantrum she threw! Yes, I am referring to the 7.5 Richter earthquake that hit Central-Western Japan.

A number of videos which I saw showed the massive power of the huge earthquake. In some unidentified office, the wall clock was dancing wildly on the wall, and its very frame was re-shaping itself in such a way that would have shamed Dali's, or any surrealist artist's, melting clock!

It was a shallow earthquake with an epicenter in the sea . A tsunami would be inevitable. Hope the waves do not rise sky high. Why, some two hundred kilometers away in Tokyo, the tremors were felt. The walls built to save towns from the sea water are no use in such cases.

In one of the close-ups in one such video, I saw the retreating water in those typical tsunami formations. Hope the tsunami waves are not terribly high. Remember the 2004 tsunami that hit Southern India? Horror it was indeed!

Yet another whim of Mamma Nature that I saw this evening was the Ventura County being pummelled by surf that billowed up to two meters! The Pacific is anyways the deepest of all the oceans. Its rogue waves were truly a terror to see.

Well, despite our forays in to the space, we are helpless like tawdry tin toys when Mother Nature chooses to turn nasty. Be it the water or the wind or the sky, fearsome they are in their fury. Terror these  "panch mahabhoota" are whose absolute power  Aai often talked of.  It must have hurt her heart a lot to constantly remember that her favourite most child sailed across such dicey conditions. A mother after all!

Pratima@ Let us learn to respect the "call of the Nature" (literally, not figuratively, please), wild and weird are its echoes! Lesson No.1 reiterated by  Day No.1 of 2024!

Yet again a new beginning!

 2024 has formally dawned. Crackers are bursting, lighting up the emerging new year. Here is hoping the entire 2024 would be equally illuminated.

Yet again begins a new year. Yet again resumes the eternal game of dreams that hopefully would be a fulfilled treasure. Sure they would be, as enlightened efforts encourage their effulgence.

In India, as across almost the whole world, there are going to be decisive elections which are sure to charge up the ambience, both before and after the voting. Yes, as I noted in my December 1 blog, there would the Paris Olympics, with some AI inputs as it takes place in Paris exactly a century later. Many such unusual events await us in the year that has just unfolded!

Let there be peace, let there be no war this year. Let the wars begun in 2023 finish fast. Let peace reign 'coz peace alone brings in prosperity.  Let peace and prudence prevail! Let each note of this new song be full of peace, set to the rhythm of joy!

Pratima@ Each new beginning brings in new fulfilments and new responsibilities!