In which the SRE goofs !!!!!!

He doesn't know it yet, but the Sometimes Resident Engineer has blundered.......

Washing machines are a great blessing and a boon, but they do require a little care in using them, or you may end up with  strangely coloured splotches on a load of formal shirts. I remember my mother-in-law being extremely impressed with the SRE's watch surviving an entire wash cycle, and still keeping time accurately. Although the SRE was the person who put it in his trouser pocket, I ought to have checked the said pockets before loading the machine.

Pockets are a pain. Things get left in them. Things like wallets, which I have managed to wash a few times. That is one of the few things I do that actually annoy the SRE, and for which I feel genuinely very remorseful.  And yet, somehow,  his wallet manages to get washed every year or so.

I have also managed to stain a brand new bed sheet with ball pen ink, by the simple expedient of bundling up the sheet and throwing it and its accompanying pillow cases into the washing machine, along with a ball point pen that one of us must have been using for Sudoku or the crossword.

This time, though, it was the SRE who done it. Not his wallet, but his Parker cartridge pen. (The replacement of the one I gave him for his birthday, which he lost within two months). He had come home from his travels on Saturday with a suitcase full of dirty clothes, which he proceeded to dump outside the hamper in our bedroom. I told him that he might as well dump them right into the washing machine, and he proceeded to do so.

I added more clothes and did a load of laundry yesterday.

The maid dried the clothes on the line. It was late at night when I took them down, as we had gone for a late movie (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, in case you want to know- great film). It was only this morning that I noticed the pen lying on the window sill with a wet blue streak on its side. My heart sank. Did we have a load of clean-but-ink-stained laundry? Apparently not- the SRE is one lucky guy- his shirts escaped, and the pen leaked only after emerging from its ordeal! I have dismantled and wiped the various parts of the pen, and have mostly got the ink off my fingers.

I am already metaphorically rubbing my hands in glee, and looking forward to a very enjoyable evening.
My first question, of course, will be regarding the whereabouts of  his pen!

In which the SRE is very concerned

On our recent trip to  Kerala, (where the SRE was working and I was holidaying with friends), we had a little weekend getaway to Kumarakom. As we entered the resort we saw several trees laden with huge flocks of snake birds or darters.

Solitary darter

This photo courtesy Aurangabadkar

                                         

Cottages at the resort

The hornbill in our room

Indian almond trees on the shores of Vembanad Lake

The trees near the lagoon full of darters

As you can see from these photographs, it was a very lovely place. The SRE, however, got  very worried when he saw a darter dive into the lagoon, head first, and apparently not emerge from the water. This was followed by several more. I presumed that these were aquatic birds that could swim underwater, but the man was not convinced. He was quite convinced that these were all kamikaze birds, each one on a suicide mission. It was only after he saw a few snakey heads emerge that he relaxed!

After the Storm: Book Review

After the Storm, Sangeeta Bhargava's second novel, is set in the latter part of the British rule in India.
It opens in 1941, when Mili (Malavika Singh), princess of Mohanagar, is allowed to go to boarding school in the hills of Kishangarh, along with her best friend and soul sister, Victoria Nunes, better known as Vicky, whose mother is Indian and whose late father was British. The two girls share an extremely close bond, despite the differences in their temperaments and upbringing. Vicky is a tomboy, ready and eager to embrace her new found freedom with wide open arms, while Mili usually hesitates at first, knowing how hard it was for her parents to let her leave her sheltered, pampered existence. Two and a half months into her new life, "she had got used to life in a hostel. She had even got used to getting dressed and making her bed all by herself, without the help of Bhoomi. But she hadn't yet got used to queuing up outside toilets every morning, drinking tea that smelt of kerosene oil - just like the tea sold on railway stations - taking showers in tiny bathrooms without any bathtubs and gulping down the inedible food. The only things that were the same as Mohanagar were the classes; they were boring."


With her characteristic easy to read narrative style, Sangeeta Bhargava manages to weave a gripping story around several burning issues of the day. As the story unfolds, the characters and locales come to life. Your interest is gripped by Raven, the teacher without a surname and what seems to be a mysterious past, Gurpreet, who is violently against the British, his friend Jatin, the young widow Vidushi, Vicky's Aunt Ethel and her husband Uncle George, the mysterious Guruji and his band of insurgents, the popular Uncleji and his tuckshop, Bahadur, Miss Perkins, the sinister ceiling fan, the tattle tale Angel........


A central tragic event affects them all. Childhood and youth give way to a new maturity. Love and loss forge Mili's character into a person completely different from the pampered princess of her youth, a person you feel proud of, although she is aware of some irrational aspects of her personality, and hopes to overcome them some day. " Would she finally have the courage to break free of age-old customs and traditions and leave home? To pursue a life which none in her family had ever done before? All the girls in their dynasty had been good little princesses who had married the man of their parents' choice and become good little wives. Would she be able to break off this tradition?"


As with Sangeeta Bhargava's previous book, The World Beyond, you live the story and the history.  You realise how the personal becomes the political, how seemingly unrelated events have a tremendous impact on individual lives, sometimes detrimental, sometimes hugely positive.
Through it all, I can see Sangeeta's steadfast love for India........


Published 2012 by Alison and Busby, UK
Available at http://www.flipkart.com/after-the-storm/p/itmd9z3cpk6smaur?pid=9780749009441&ref=bc1312ac-f049-48d1-9409-f183cefc45bf&srno=t_1&otracker=from-search&query=after%20the%20storm%20sangeeta%20bhargava

Promises, promises

To myself, mostly! That I have so much to share and no time to do so. I will blog lots, soon.

Triplets?

This morning,
Not my regular route
three Lhasa apsos
on a  triple leash
(One with her(?) fur
tied up in a little fountain
on the top of her head)
all trotting along
in synchrony.
Happiness!

My day was made

While waiting for my friend in the mall, I heard faint, tuneful whistling.
When I turned to look at the whistler, I was delighted to see a spry, white haired lady, perhaps in her early sixties, whistling merrily as she made her way.

Gladdened my heart, her whistling!

A cellephonic mystery

When the SRE came home from office on Saturday evening (yes, he works most Saturdays), he was distraught. His cellphone was completely and utterly dead- not a glimmer, not a twinkle, not a beep out of it. We put in to charge, hoping that it would revive once it had some power in it. But it remained completely and utterly dead. Not only was he phoneless, he has huge amounts of important data on that phone, so he was understandably upset. On Sunday morning I called his secretary to get the number of the person who supplies phones to the office. The gentleman was told all the gory details, and said he would send someone to the office first thing on Monday morning to collect the phone, and try and retrieve all possible data. As instructed, I put the phone in the SRE's laptop bag, so that it would get to the office.

We had a nice and peaceful weekend, without the phone making its presence felt every few minutes.

I needed to speak to the SRE a few minutes ago, so I called him on his direct landline number. After telling him what I had to, I asked him if the phone chappie had collected the phone. He had come to collect it, but it turned out that after being comatose for over thirty six hours, the phone was alive and well again, and was apparently showing that it was 80% charged!

Now how did this happen????? Any ideas????