#Atozchallenge 2017 H for head

M gave me H for Head.

For now, i am breaking my own, thinking about what to pen down for this post.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the Queen of Hearts or the Red Queen played by Helena Boham Carter in the Tim Burton  movie Alice in Wonderland. The antagonist has an obnoxiously huge head and goes "Off with his head" at the drop of a hat.

Head can refer to that part of our body, nicely perched upon our torso, where our gray cells reside and define who we are. It can be a verb as well. Whatever we do in life, we need to often stop and retrospect where we are heading!

We are surrounded by and sometimes we ourselves are, people acting as heads - heads of companies,  institutions,  organizations, families - the heads of these heads have many a mind boggling decision to make!

During our trip to Shimla, our hotel lounge had numerous stuffed heads of animals - hunters trophies!  Hunting for sport is something i totally disagree wth. What fun can one have in killing a helpless animal! That too using guns and other weapons against which nature's fiercest claws and fangs stand helpless.

Then we have these headlines that news channels keep throwing at us all day long. Nowadays they are breaking the news so much that we no longer have headlines. Only head circles.  It keeps going round and round and round! We need to be a little headstrong to not let all of the negativity to affect us.

That reminds me of headaches. They can be intolerable whether real or used as a figure of speech.

I remember reading a folklore about Tenali Raman,  a historical court jester and poet in India.  It seems once Goddess Kaali (a Hindu Goddess)  appeared in front of him displaying  all her hundred heads.  On seeing her,  he starts shaking with laughter.  Angered by this, she demands an explanation.  He says " A bout of flu and runny nose with a single head is too much for me to bear. I am just wondering how it would be if you catch a cold in all your heads! " 

Let me stop at this before the head starts spinning any further.... Mine and yours!

#AtoZChallenge 2017 G for - Goat, Grass, Green and Greece

On our way to my son's art class yesterday, I asked the kids for words beginning with G. M gave me a barrage of words. My son suggested Greece.

One adage I like, and believe in, is The grass is always greener on the other side.
We often look at people and situations different from our own, and assume that its all rosy and nice. But life would not even be half as interesting as it is now, without all these problems and challenges we face on a day to day basis. Like its being told to us time and again, through whatsapp, facebook and twitter posts - Every person is fighting his own battles. Every situation has its negative sides as well.

That reminds me of a story I read as a kid. An old man goes to a shop and buys sun glasses for himself. Green seems to give his tired eyes the much required coolness. He returns home and remembers that he has to feed the goat. He rakes up some grass from the barn which his pet refuses to eat as it has dried up a bit. After some thought, the old man removes his sunglasses and puts them on the goat . Whoa! The grass is now green and the animal starts munching away happily.

Now I am planning a rapid fire of sorts with what all comes to my mind when  I think of the words Greek and Greece

• The Greek civilization of course and all my history teachers. 
• Greek Gods and men with chiseled bodies getting compared to these folks
• All the Greek God based Hollywood movies - the clashes and wraths of the Titans
• The story of the Trojan war and Menelaus, Helen, Paris and Hector. The movie Troy
• Pythagoras and Archimedes and all the other G(r)eeks with high functioning brains who concocted all those theorems that we had to painstakingly prove in Maths exams through Higher Secondary School.                                                             
• Alpha, Beta,Gamma, kappa, delta, psi and all the other Greek alphabet letters, modern science is generously using
• Greek yoghurt
• Greek salad - I love that
• The Olympics and Athens
• References to earliest form of democracy 
• αββµ∆∏βα∆∆ - Now that sounds like Greek to me!

#AtoZChallenge 2017 - F for ....? (Flash fiction)

He had always been under an assumption that his neighborhood was a very safe place.Everyone seemed friendly and nice. Until two days ago.

The screams of that unfortunate man still echoed in his ears. That bloody sight had tormented him with nightmares and they would stay with him for life. He was sure.

Instinctively he turned around. There he was - That murderer. How could he forget that face! He was coming towards him or rather in his direction. He was menacingly advancing, and yes, he could see his weapons too! May be he would not harm him. Or would he? What would he get injuring someone diminutive like him? For that matter he had never gotten in his way. Even that day, he had been a mute spectator to his horrific act.

His heartbeat seemed louder than any other noise he had ever heard before.

 The shark moved past the small fish and the latter breathed a sigh of relief.M gave me F for fish.

#AtoZChallenge 2017 E for Egg

M continues to surprise me. I was expecting E for elephant as that is what she always says. I think she suspects Amma's daily questioning her with just one letter has some sinister purpose. She said e for egg.

I come from a family of vegetarians and eggs were also a strict no-no at home. But as a kid, and in my teens, I have tasted eggs in different forms outside of our home. These were rare occurrences though but I did like the taste.

When I went to the US on a deployment from my company, I was pretty excited. It was the first time I was visiting a foreign country. I was going to be staying on my own, in an apartment, with my own kitchen.Strictly speaking I was not on my own, I was moving into an apartment one of my colleagues had been staying alone in. I was looking forward to becoming a queen in culinary art. The fact that I had never had to cook on my own before, seemed quite trivial. My mom had taught me quite a bit and so my cooking skills were quite beyond boiling water and making instant noodles.

With eggs though I had zero experience. Zero experience with microwave too. Here was a machine that had transformed lives with its capabilities and it could do wonders for me.

It was day two after i set my foot on American soil.My flatmate was sleeping. In fact, it being a Sunday, except for the jet lagged me , the whole city was sleeping. I decided to make breakfast for myself and wanted to boil an egg.

My dumb head told me - You had boiled carrots the day before on the microwave and it could boil your egg too! I happily placed my egg inside, set the timer and waited - plate , cutlery , salt , pepper all awaiting the neat oval boiled end result. 

Bang! My roommate was jolted out of a peaceful slumber in the wee hours of a weekend morning.(It was still dark if I remember correctly) 

The egg burst and you can imagine what a mess it would have caused. The fragments were all over the insides of the oven - gooey, sticky, smelly! The cleaning that I had to do, the smell, the wrath of the poor girl who had to wake up before the best thing happened in an early morning dream...Phew!!! 

Now I don't take eggs except for the unavoidable piece of cake at a birthday party. Hence me and my microwave oven are safe :D

#AtoZChallenge 2017 D for Dog

M went for the usual word for D. D for dog.

At first, I thought I would write about some experiences with dogs(I don't have a dog) like

• the neighbor's German Shepherd that had bitten my little brother, or 
• the two cute pugs that I see every Friday evening being walked by a lady here, or
• the abandoned friendly dog in my neighborhood, that hated white cars, and would chase them with a terrible ferocity totally different from his usual soft, loving nature.

There have quite a few posts for A,B and C on dogs these past three days. I thought I would brush my memory and meander through my not-from-my-real-life dog memories, as in,  from fiction and on screen.

I have always been a fan of mystery stories. Enid Blyton's Famous Five Series were a childhood favorite. It is about the sleuthing adventures of four children and a dog called Timothy, Timmy for short, who means the world to his owner, the tomboyish Georgina, George for short.

Marley & Me is a book I thoroughly enjoyed. "Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog"  is the caption of the book and it describes the experiences of the author and his family with Marley, an extremely destructive and impulsive labrador. I have seen the movie too, starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Anniston but as all book lovers would usually vouch for - The movie was good but the book was definitely better. The episode where Marley swallows a gold necklace, and the steps the couple take for its recovery is hilarious.

I love Harry Potter and all the 7 books in the series. (Well, I liked the first few better than the more violent concluding parts). There is this huge three headed dog Fluffy, that guards the philosopher's stone and falls asleep on listening to the music from a flute. This one, I think the movie makers did a great job bringing it alive on screen.

101 Dalmatians was a movie we thoroughly enjoyed watching as a family - I mean my parents, my brother, and me.Like any other kid who watched the movie, I hated Cruella de Vil played very artistically by Glenn Close. In fact, except for places like the poles, where humans have no choice but to depend on animal hides to keep themselves warm, I detest the concept of killing animals for their fur.

 The mobile company Hutch(now Vodafone) launched a new series of commercials in India a few years ago featuring an adorable pug and a little kid with the tag line "Wherever you go our network follows". They became so popular that people started referring to the breed as "Hutch dog".

I have watched quite a few cartoon episodes of Garfield, the cat, with my son. John's dog Odie, a friendly yellow dog is usually taken for a ride and bossed around by cunning Garfield. There is one episode where the latter gets him to  do some tricks at a dog show, and is desperate to win by hook or crook, as the prize is a huge plate of his favorite lasagna.

I am an ardent fan of Tamil movie superstar Rajinikanth, and the poster for the movie Baasha where he sits next to a great Dane  is too good and shouts out "Power". This part , I mean this fan craze -  its difficult for many to fathom, especially for those who don't speak Tamil or are not his fans. hi hi hi ...

Do share your non-real dog memories from books and movies in the comments section below.

#AtoZChallenge 2017 - C for Cup

I asked the little one C for? I was now geared up for the likes of cranberry and crocodile and catapult. She kept it simple. Went for C for Cup.

My morning cup of hot coffee just went into my system and is doing its wonderful job of rejuvenating my being. Caffeine is bad, I hear you. We Tamilians always have our coffee with milk and so its 80% milk. Healthy Coffee :)

That reminds me of the tea shops at Ooty and Kodaikanal - hill stations and popular tourist spots in TamilNadu. In a misty weather, with a few drops of rain here and there, the mere sight of these tea peddlers and their carts can lift ones soul. The steam coming from the boiling water in the cart floats away and blends with the whiteness in the air and when the cup touches the lip for the first sip(I am getting poetic now) of that tea, its pure bliss. The smell of the tea, a little bit of ginger and some green cardamom is heavenly. Someone would be selling hot corn on the cob nearby and that aroma seeps into your being too.

As a kid I used to love pouring the tea into a saucer, holding it with both hands and slurping it with that bubbling noise. (A little repulsive to my polished being now of course but fun then ). Who uses saucers these days? I wonder!

Then there are all the cups associated with the sporting world. FIFA World Cup, Cricket World Cup and the like. When India first one the cricket world cup, I was two years old and when it won again the second time, my son was two years old. A simple sweet coincidence in life to smile about.

That takes me to a TV serial I watched as a kid. A girl from a poor family is a good athlete and wins a trophy in her school and takes it home happily. The next morning she finds her drunkard father using it as a cup for his morning fill of alcohol and is totally shattered. Alcohol addiction is a serious problem especially in the lower rung of the social ladder. Almost every house help who has worked for my mother or mother-in-law has told us stories of torment due to their drunkard spouses. All the money these men earn is totally spent on alcohol forcing these women to toil in different homes to meet their daily needs. Worse is when their money is also snatched by these addicts for satiating their thirsts. It saddens me when movies spread wrong messages about alcohol being a kind of medicine that helps you forget all disappointments and failures in life. Hope society keeps changing for the better.

#AtoZchallenge 2017 - B for Brachiosaurus

I used to be on my school basketball team. When
I was entering Class VIII, we relocated to a new town and I shifted schools.The coaches at the new place saw me on the first day and their hopes of the next year's championship went sky high. For I was quite tall, and to all appearance, was an ideal fit to be the next Michael Jordan of district basketball. ( I don't know any famous names other than that and definitely no female ones. So for now we have to live with that comparison).Soon they saw I was the personification of the running skills of a tortoise and gracefulness of a panda attempting to tight rope walk combined.

Well well well! I started off like that the day i wrote my "A" post assuming my little ones word for B would definitely be ball. We all know B is for Ball. But when i asked her B for? -  She went silent for a second, rolled her eyes , gave a deep thought and then went ba ba ba (They teach her phonics in nursery) "Brachiosaurus".

Whhhhattt?B..b...ba..brachiosaurus??? Someone did warn me in the comments.

Image Credit:London looks on Flickr

The first time I learnt about dinosaurs was when Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park got released in India. It was the talk of the town. Watching it became a mandatory thing to be done.People were like ...Have you paid the bills? Have you taken your daily medication? Have you watched Jurassic Park? I was just entering my teens then. Now my children's vocabulary includes Brachiosaurus,triceratops, ankylosaurus, parasaurolophus and...Thats all my impoverished brain can recollect!

Brachiosauruses were supposed to be huge dinosaurs that had longer forelegs than hind legs and  were herbivores. Name any dinosaur movie. The first dinosaur kind to grace the screens would be these timid creatures , silently munching the leaves and letting things be at peace. This kind of sets the perfect scenario for the entry of the ferocious lot like the bellowing, destructive T-Rex.

In the movie Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs , a pregnant Ellie slides down the back of a brachiosaurus with a Zippie Zippie Zoom, with Manny at her heels asking her not to dare to do another one of those. Being a huge mammoth, he has a slight arrogance about his size, until he encounters these gigantic reptiles and goes "I feel so small!". A lesson to be learnt there. We may think we are the best but you never know!

I wonder what would actually happen if in real, mankind manages to recreate live dinosaurs.

• There would be an amusement park with a "Slide on a brachiosaurus back" ride.
• Bungee Jumping could be done from its head to the ground too.
• Instead of an elevator people could use tamed brachiosauruses to reach different storeys in buildings.That would save a lot of energy.
• If one needs to take aerial shots of some place we just need to get on top of a brachiosaurus's head. No need of cranes or helicopters.
• Imagine having a brachiosaurus for a pet! I am sure some totally pampered children of millionaire business tycoons would want one, that their fathers would happily oblige. Father-child photos with a smiling brachiosaurus would appear in top magazines. 

This is a brachiosaurus song my kids love singing along. I love the tune too.

Can you think of possible things that might happen if we had real brachiosauruses on earth today?