The Olfactory sensors

I really feel strange how different types of smell(we used to call it this way whether it was a good scent or a bad smell :)) gets associated with different types of memories.
The very simple biscuit by Parle or Brittania takes me back to school days where we used to wait ever so eagerly for the 2 biscuits that we received during our recess. The smell still so fresh but the days so long gone. Mary was the old lady who used to bring those bisucits to all the classes - hope she is still around. We never thanked her during those days but today when i remember her i thank her silently.

When the season moves from winter to summer in between comes the days when you see all the leaves on the ground and the trees standing tall and barren. The smell of these times triggers the fear of exams. Still i get those fluttering butterflies in my stomach. Still it brings back memories of how unfinished my lessons were and we used to rote the lessons in the very last moment - stranger still is, i remember those roted lessons to this day.

Even today when i buy a new book i turn the pages and first smell it - it takes me back to times when we joined a new class and brandished our new books from our overloaded bags.If you have a book from that era try going through the pages and smelling it once - you will go back to the same room, same bench of the same class.

When i go for a stroll in the wintry night today the scent of fresh dew on the grass transports me to the lanes of our colony where we grew up as a child.That childhood and that colony seems to be so out of this present world. I really wonder was that in this life or another....

The incense sticks have their own story to tell - it used to be the smell that you woke up to in the mornings - mother - the greatest of all the Gods - would have already started her puja for well being of her kids. This used to be the start of her day of unending chores - i wonder how we got everything ready at the right time - be it tiffin box for school, be it the well washed and well ironed school dress, be it the snacks in the evening. I really wonder how could she do everything sigle-handedly whole day for so many years unerringly and untiringly.

I really thank our Maker for weaving such an intricate connection between the smell and the memories - especially because both entities are intangible but still they evoke so powerfull emotions in the human mind.

The HUM...

The story goes back a long way - about the time when I was 6 or 7 years old. My father used to drop me to school on the ATLAS cycle that he had. I used to sit in front - on the cycle rod with my two legs on two sides and feets resting on the front mud gaurd. Strange scene if you think about it now but it was norm those days. And i used to be so happy riding that way - the school scare all forgotten. The school was about a couple of kilometers from our home and it was a ride with up and low gradients both. But what always keeps coming back to my mind about all this is - my father used to hum all the way to school. It was not any particular song as such, it was just a hum and he would do that only at that time of day - when he was taking me to school. He was not into music in any way so i am sure that it was not a song - i used to think that i would give anything to know what that hum was....Now i do not think of deciphering it any more - because i think i know what it was ......
Change to another time and another era.......
I am new to fatherhood - got an 8 month old angel. When he cries or when he is scared i hold him close to myself and instantaneously start "humming" away his fears. And i know that i am not singing anything in particular - i am just soothing him and allaying his fears and apprehensions.
That's the reason i have stopped trying to decipher the hum of my father because i think i have inherited the same 'hum' from him.

...gone to humans

Today's newspaper mentioned in small print - 720 sq km of ice sheet broken off from the antarctic and gone into the sea.
It is strange that nobody bothers about the havoc being caused by the global warming - everyone thinks it is alien to them and so nobody gives it a damn. But damned will be they, when the effect accumulates and will be given back as "earnings" in compound interest. Nature is the biggest banker - it gives everything in kind - good for good and bad for bad.
We have been already getting the Level 5 tornadoes and typhoons, earthquakes measuring 8-9 on richter scale, highest tsunamis of the known times. What else one needs to experience before they know that they have been doing something wrong. But no - everybody is just closing their eyes and going on with their big bad carbon footprints.
Well to know the effects we can just go take a peek outside - this is summer season now, May has just started and the temperature is to soaring unimaginable 47-48 degrees centigrade.

So beware humans you have been scouring the heart of mother earth for thousands of year now - well how long one can tolerate.

There was a time when it was said" the state of affairs is going to dogs" but now i dare say " the state of affairs is going to humans" and still the meaning remains same.


http://www.livescience.com/environment/090429-total-carbon.html

parallel universe

Theory of Parallel Universe. Strange as it may seem - i really feel great about this theory - just imagine there would be a person just like you somewhere out there in the Universe - who would be just doing what you are doing now, he would be going through the same highs and troughs of life as you are, he would be calculating and deliberating about his future just as you are. It really gives a great sense of relief - that your hardships are shared, your dilemmas are shared as well.It is strange to imagine that there is someone outhere who is a clone of your's not just in body but in mind and destiny as well.

Then and now

We used to have a life before we turned (or should i say metamorphosed) into software engineers. That life used to be a blast - now too it is a blast but of an entirely different kind.( will come to the current blast later!!!).Life before - we knew what was happening in the outside world. We knew changes in weather, changes in city/town horizon - every change in the area around us was noted with so much happiness and intensity. When it rained we used to say - great ....and the next moment we used to be out there getting drenched to our hearts content. With the summer came the lassi season and even without money we used to see the first day first show of any new movie. As if the movie won't survive if we didn't see....Just can't recount all those moments here just now....it is as if a humbling shower of emotions has engulfed me ......that's why switching back to present....Now i am a SW engineer. I don't know which season is going on. I need to look out of the office window to see and feel the season. I don't get wet anymore - most of the time i do not know that it’s raining outside...and even if i knew i don't think the deadlines would allow me to go there and enjoy the rains. I come in the morning and go in the night. Haven't seen a sunset or sunrise in ages. Sleeping brings a lot of dreams which tears away the bits and bytes (pun intended!!)of mind - only one thought uppermost even in the subconscious mind - about meeting the deadlines and solving the bugs ( just to remind, now whenever asked about the meaning of bug - i start with the SW bugs - already forgot that bugs are insects......). I do not know who our neighbors are - never get to see them.There is a lot to add to the hotchpotch life of SW engineer but i think this should give an in-depth view of what is going behind the scenes. The only good thing about it is - it gives us a decent amount of money - but this money acts a screensaver - which means it can only be used when you are free or idle- and those we have a precious few.But you know what even though it has taken a toll - there is one saving GRACE about all this - we are taking mankind and technology a step ahead in the future ..and i like that ...........