Thursday, October 26, 2006

Words that English ought to borrow

One of the joys of learning a language is the kick that you get when you encounter a truly expressive word that has no equivalent in any other language you know.
How many times have you looked at Emraan Hashmi, Deve Gowda or Himesh Reshammiya and struggled to sum up what you thought about their faces? The germans have just the right word for it. "Backpfeifengesicht": a face that cries out for a fist in it.

Just last fortnight, on our trip to see Kuranji Pushpa, we stopped at a lake called GaLikere for a while. The lake is perched on the top of a mountain and Everytime a strong wind blows, the water tips over from the side. That's how it got it's name. It used to be one of the most pristine spots I've ever seen, until a super-idiotic belief suddenly sprang up. People started to follow the custom of leaving their underwear behind after they took bath there, b********! Anyway, that's not the point of this post. At the lake, I got the chance to show off my skill at the game I used to call, until recently, "bouncing stones on water". Apparently, in dutch (oh I'm so in love with the language) they have a name for the sport, plimpplampplettere.

Every Saturday morning, my mom drives herself into a frenzy and turns the house inside out in her quest to personally attack every dust particle. In deutschland they call the mania Putzfimmel.

Read this article.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Meet Goobe



Meet Goobe. A cat who until recently was an uninvited guest in our balcony. He used to hang around there at night, and take flight as soon as we opened the door.

Meet my sis. She has held snakes in her hand but she is completely scared of butterflies and moths. Scared enough to cry when a hapless butterfly happens to get into the house.

Last week, Goobe won himself a lifelong devotee when he jumped up acrobatically and caught a moth. He now gets food and drink on the house, and also has a cozy little mat for himself to sleep on.

Friday, October 13, 2006

I was bugged of tags ere I was tagged by 'bug

Regular vistors to this page will note that this blog serves to satisfy the self-absorption of it's author. So when another opportunity to talk about himself came along, he gladly latched on.

The origin of my nick name, Deppe, is shrowded in mystery. I have a vague recollection of being christened thus when I was in engineering. I also have a faint memory of having hated the name. Much later, while I was talking to myself, I caught one of my inner voices addressing another as Deppe. Shocking!

I am obsessed with reading number plates on vehicles and making judgements about the driver based on his origin. Not unlike people who say "Oh! you are cancerian? That explains it", I , for example, look out for the number plates of drivers who honk incessantly and feel very gratified when I see KA-06 (Tumkur) or KA-11 (Mandya). I'm trying to quit this habit btw.

There was a time I was really fanatical about my home town, Bangalore. Now I practically hate it. If there's any geographical feature in India I am parochial about, it is the Western Ghats. I got childishly angry once when somebody said the ghats are very monotonous.

The ghats have never looked as stunning as during the last couple of weeks. There are particular weirdos in the plant family that inhabit this part of the deccan. Every 12 years they all bloom together and cover the peaks with a purple carpeting. It's a sight to behold. I digressed...

I once stood for elections for the post of class rep, after someone nominated me in jest. I gave the worst possible speech; I said nothing. I got 3 votes ( or was it 2?). I like to think that my life would have turned out dramatically different if I had got just one vote.

To be continued...

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Jobless

Why did the french invent a spelling scheme so unappealing to my sense of logic? What's the fun if half the letters in a word are silent? It's not pretty. Not at 7 in the morning. I really think they should reform their spellings a bit. Now that would be a French Revolution I'd appreciate.

Forenoons and afternoons are for interviews. I enjoy the interviews, except for the one ocassion when Toshiro Mifune himself quizzed me while wearing his Samurai temper on his sleeve. What I don't enjoy, though, is driving all those miles in this unbelievably horrible traffic, a topic I intend to crib about in greater detail in succeeding posts.

Evenings remind me about the joys of being unemployed.

Just before I hit the sack, I wish the day had a few more hours. Someone told me that that's a good sign.