The girl in green

I hate summers in Durban. Not that I enjoy the cold rainy winters either. But now that it is summer, the sun rises irritatingly bright and shiny at 5.15 am. The curtains I have in my apartment are not opaque enough to let this not bother my peaceful slumber. Anyway, today, as most days, I pretend to sleep for another hour or so.
At around 6.00am the whine of my alarm woke me up in jolt. Finally I woke up and decided to give my running another try after almost a month.
I try to warm up a bit in the lift, while the people leaving for work at 6.30 am (!) smile at me.  I hit the road with a little bit of brisk walking. The last few weeks with good food at a workshop and loads of ice-cream (mixed with Amarula :) ) was definitely not a good diet for me! Anyway, I start jogging in a while and after 2.5 kms I get severe calf spasms. Luckily, I was not far from Wilks park so I crawled on my favorite bench to catch my breath and sooth my calves. Incidentally this is my usual spot to rest a bit before a deadly steep climb.
Today, the park was empty, maybe the heat was too much. Or maybe since its a Monday morning, people are at work at 7.00 am and only jobless people like me are trying to enjoy nature while soothing the sore calves.
I did see the little girl in green playing with dry leaves beside the swings. While browsing on my mobile, from the corner of my eyes, did see her moving across the park towards me. She came and sat beside me, we said hi to each other and I carried on my browsing. After a minute or so, she muttered something. So I stopped my incessant obsession with my mobile and turned to talk to her. She asked me again, 'Do you have some clothes?'. I thought maybe I didn't hear clearly, so she repeated it for the 3rd time. Then, to my shock,  I realized that there was blood on many parts of her body. I asked her what was wrong, and then while rubbing her tears, she told me that she was an orphan and had ran away from home, where she was beaten up everyday by her aunt.
There were bad bruises on her hands, neck and the blood from the recent wounds in the night before was still fresh. I had no idea how to help her, so I thought maybe I can speak to the security and ask them to take her to her house or any other place which might be safe for her. Unfortunately, the security was nowhere to be found.
I was clueless to what I should do next. I tried to speak to her more, and although she was not happy about it, she agreed to go back home and talk to her neighbors about it. I took her to my apartment and gave her some money, some old clothes and shoes. Her eyes brightened up when I offered her some food. And then she left.
I stood on my balcony trying to catch the last glimpse of that little girl in green.
Situations like this baffle me; what am I supposed to do? Was it a bad idea to let her go back to her hell house? But otherwise what should I have done? Should I have contacted some children shelter to take care of her? I hardly know the city myself, it would have been really difficult to do so I guess. A little ashamed of myself, choosing the easy way in this situation... 

Butterfly Effect and the Mirror of Erised

Why is my life so full of confusion? Why cant I be sure of so many things in life? Its not that I seriously regret my major decisions in life but I am highly curious to know what would have happened if I had taken the other road. Maybe I would have become a better person with a better life but might not have come across all the wonderful people and incidents whom I cherish. Who is to decide which would have been better? But just think about it, wouldn't it be so cool, that you can tweak some of the initial conditions in your past so that you can see yourself as you are in the Mirror of Erised?
Wishful thinking! Now back to work :)

cal 9 1752

If you type cal in linux terminal, it prints the calendar of the current month.

For fun type

cal 9 1752

It will print


From the linux man pages of cal - The Gregorian Reformation is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on the 3rd of September. By this time, most countries had recognized there formation(although a few did not recognize it until the early 1900's.) Ten days following that date were eliminated by the reformation, so the calendar for that month is a bit unusual.

Why Are Some People More Angry Than Others?

I have always been referred to as a short tempered person. The biggest problem is I know that very well but can also provide justification for my actions, at least in most of the cases :D

Most so called studies claim that people like me have low tolerance level for frustration.
Now, why does that happen? It might be genetic/physiological; some children are born irritable, touchy, and easily angered. It seems that family background does also play a role; a chaotic home environment does not nurture true growth of any emotion. Being exposed to people who resort to anger to win over others, gives a child a wrong idea.
Providing a superfluous lifestyle where every demand of the child is met with, hardly gives a sense of adaptability and resorting to what is available. A minute discourse in the normal turn of events thus infuriates such a person.
Society claims anger is one word short of danger, but never teaches one to handle this perfectly normal human emotion constructively.

Now, what if I tell you that none of the above arguments would work for me. I was not born irritable. I was not raised in a disruptive family. My working mother even with her mother-in-law being a total jerk, never let me feel the pain or suffering she had to go through balancing work and family. I was mostly taken care of by my aunt, before she got married and left for her new home. My father never let me understand that with even my mother working, there was a time when they had to worry about how to take care of the next month finances. Its true I lived my life superfluously; a Rs. 15 Dairy Milk every month from my grandfather, travelling to nice places using my parents' bank LTC/LFC and dinner at a fancy restaurant on my parents anniversary were the things which I looked forward to the most. So, I had an enjoyable and comfortable childhood in my middle class family.
When it comes to adaptability, being a single child however didn't hinder me in anyway. I had a lot of cousins and thanks to them, being selfish was not an option :)

So, what went wrong? Actually, I gained this title soon after I stepped out of my teens. Of course, my teenage years had its natural toll of differences between mother and daughter on what to and not to do/wear/behave/say/expect and so on. This occasional nonsense was totally normal. But now, I considered myself to be a grown up, and just wanted people to treat me that way. A famous incident when my anger almost stopped a college performance by two of my very good friends. I still get to hear how hot headed I behaved. But no one asked me why I behaved that way, instead they just assumed that is how I am, irrational and impulsive. They never got the idea that circumstances can build up and a small push to a frail guy away from your body can cause him to lose balance. Don't worry, I didn't push him off the roof ;)
Later on, with more studies and pressure, I didn't have time to get angry. It was not that there were lack of incidents to irritate me, but I simply kept my cool.
The disadvantage of being a girl in a science environment is that to be social you have to hear continuous stream of sexual innuendos even if you don't want to. The good thing was, my adaptivity and high tolerance level made me immune to all these rants and helped me to enjoy the humour instead of taking offense. Now, this high tolerance that I boast of, is of course highly relative !
To whom one can be tolerant to? I am tolerant to people whom I respect, whom I can trust to a certain level even with all their shortcomings. However, there is a separate class of people to whom I show tolerance of a different kind, they are people whose opinion does not really matter to me. So I don't waste my energy arguing to convince stubborn people to open their minds.
However, why do I loose my cool with my friends, the person I used to love and my parents? Is it because that I expected them to understand me, expected them to believe in me and to trust me more than they can trust others? My parents are the more sensible of the lot, they understand my stress in my career and how I cannot settle down in life. My so called friends, always criticized me about having a fit of rage, a person who blows things out of proportion. But what they never saw were the circumstances which could have led to what they call a drastic outburst of emotion. I have been advised by a well read person that I should go for psychiatrist treatment. But why on earth, should I pay someone to tell me what any normal person without a degree in psychology can? Is it really so hard to find a person who instead of instigating the anger when someone is already irritated can actually calm the latter?
Anyways, too much of rambling after almost 2 years. Keeping a control on the anger issue, not very hard with the absence of such instigating people around me :)

Murud Janjira Fortress

A nice place to visit, Murud-Janjira Fortress is considered to be one of the five Unconquerable Fortresses in Human History according to this.
More details can be found here.

QR

Interesting thing I came across.
The Quick Response matrix code is currently the most popular type of two dimensional bar-code used in Japan.
This is the QR image of my name, generated using this link.

Alopi Devi

I had a chance to visit a small temple 'Alopi Devi Mandir' near Sangam at Allahabad. Surprisingly this temple does not have an idol; else a small wooden carriage is worshipped. I got curious & asked some localities about it.

According to legends this place was a huge forest years back & was a den for bands of dreaded robbers. Although being of criminal mentalities, they worshipped some form of the goddess Kali to protect them from the forces of nature. Their targets usually were rich zamindars' returning after tax collection from villages under their surveillance and marriage processions. It so happened once that during one such marriage procession of the daughter of a rich & respectable ruler of some native princely state (I couldn't remember the names), these robbers attacked the group, killed all the men and stole the gold and other riches. Then their eyes fell on the 'Palki' (Palanquin) - the carriage; but to their bewilderment the bride seemed to have vanished. They believed that the goddess had shown them her power through this amazing way of protecting the young girl by making her vanish (in sanskrit alopi means vanished). Before any curse befalls them they switched careers :). They took the the 'Palki' to their den and started worshipping the carriage as their goddess. Years after some zamindar built a temple around it & that is what stands today.

Some people as well as some Internet links however give different opinions. After the death of goddess Sati, her husband Lord Shiva had turned a little cranky due to grief and carried her body on his shoulders. To relieve him from his agony, Lord Vishnu used his 'Chakra' on the dead body of goddess Sati resulting in various body parts dropping at various points on the earth. It is believed that the last part dropped near this place thus resulting in 'Alop' (vanishing).

Although I am very much spiritual in my own way, I am hardly religious; I don't mind doubting Hindu religious mythology. To me the second opinion however fails to explain why a 'Palki' or carriage is worshipped. Hence the 1st legend sounds much more plausible and more down to earth ! Besides it reminds me of the stories I used to enjoy during my childhood days, especially Bankim Chandra's 'Devi Chaudhurani'.