Dust the ants away

My friend and I were studying for the next day’s exam and all of a sudden she says I smell ants.

Me: “What nonsense? How on earth can you smell ants??”

I look around and tell her that there are no ants.

My friend: I’m telling you. I can smell ants!!

I was particularly tense about the next day’s exam to the point that I was literally in tears.

“Look, please let’s continue. I’m really tense.”

Ya ya

After sometime suddenly I feel as though something had bitten me. I saw a few ants on the bed.

I looked around the place carefully and I see a line of ants. I trace the line and I see that it goes under my mattress. I turn the mattress and you will not believe the number of ants I saw. I thought to my self “Great, everything has to happen just when I need to study.”

See, I told you!!!!

I had no clue what to do and I knew I had to remove the ants because my friend hated them and I was sure that she wouldn’t study with them there. All of a sudden my friend says

Do you have any powder?

“Powder? You mean facial powder?”

Ya

“For what?” I ask puzzled.

Well after so many years of hating ants, I have found out that ants hate powder, especially Cinthol.

Though I was sceptical about it, at that particular moment I was willing to try anything. Anything, at all, I was that desperate!!

So I gave her Pond’s talc (because I didn’t have Cinthol) and she started putting it all over the ants. Surprisingly it worked!! I couldn’t believe it. One by one the ants started moving away.

Since then I’ve become a believer and every time I see ants coming near my bed I just put my ever faithful Pond’s talc and they stay away. And now you know the secret to keep ants away.

An encounter with a living dinosaur

I couldn’t believe what I just heard. Did he really say that? Did he actually say that I would make a good journalist??

Wow!!! I was on cloud number 9 for almost half an hour. It’s not every day that you are given a compliment from a person from such a high reputation.

TJS George called him “one of the best editors of this generation” and according to some others he is one of the last members of “the fastest vanishing tribes in Indian media – independent editors.”

Have you guessed by now who I’m talking about is? Well I’ll give you a few more clues that will literally give you his name on a silver platter.

Hmmm... He was the editor of the ‘Sunday’ magazine, started ‘The Telegraph’ and ‘Asian Age’. He recently was unceremoniously removed from the post of editor of the ‘Asian Age.’ I’m sure you have figured that it is the one and only MJ Akbar.

He recently came to our college and gave us a talk. When I first found out that he was coming I was excited and I told my friend and editor of The Manipal Journal (which is a weekly news website) that I would do an interview with him. “Do you even know anything about him??” she asked in a slightly angry tone. All I knew about him at that point of time was that he was the ex-editor of the Asian Age and also that he was one of the best editors in India.

After reading up about him a bit further I was in awe of him, so much so that I actually felt a bit nervous and I wondered if I would be able to do the interview with him. But the moment he entered the hall and I felt at ease. He was smiling at everyone and wasn’t as I pictured him to be (a slightly strict and less cordial).

For the next hour or so there was almost no sound in the hall (which is very rare in colleges I might add!!). No, they weren’t sleeping!! Everyone was actually listening to what he was saying!!

At the end of the talk and a question and answer session, all those who wanted an interview with him were asked to come to the lobby. There were five excluding me. We all had to ask questions one by one. I was sitting the closest to him, so I was the first to ask a question. One thought went over and over in my head ‘don’t make a fool of yourself in front of him.’

I guess I didn’t. The whole meeting and the interview felt dreamlike. It was almost as if I had an encounter with a living dinosaur!!

Utsav all the way!

Ahhh!!!!!!!!!!! Just five more days to kick start Utsav, and everyone in Manipal is buzzing with anticipation of what’s going to unfold on 5^th April.

There are so many things to do and so little time. We have to finish getting our costumes and props ready, need to finish choreographing our steps for our dance, fashion show, and the list is endless............

What is Utsav you may ask? Well it is a six day annual intra-Manipal University fest, in which over 20 constituent colleges of Manipal University will be participating. Every college has the aim of getting the highest overall scores in the competition and declaring to the rest that they are the best.

You will never guess the steps that people are taking just so that they can look good and perform well. I was just having a chat with a friend who is taking part in one of the events and she was cribbing about the things she has to do at all times. She has to keep a watch on her diet (which is very hard for her as she loves junk especially Mad Angles and chocolates), she has to wake up every morning at 6, just to go and exercise with her choreographer (and she is a person who usually wakes up just five minutes before class), then practice her dance for three hours in the evening. By the time she gets back she’s half dead and but wait, she can’t sleep as yet because of the assignments that she has to submit the next day. Though she has lost weight (which she loves and flaunts about!!) she’s just waiting for her performance to get over so that she can eat, breathe and sleep again.

Even those who are not participating are involved in some way or the other, some are helping out with the props, some are making sure people stick to the diet, and others are so excited that they are busy dreaming about it (more like looking forward to check out the hot girls and happening guys around).

All in all it’s going to be a show that you wouldn’t want to miss. It gets bigger and better every year (last year was humongous!!!). A fresher batch of people, with newer ideas, more exclusive themes, happier faces and much more to look forward to. So pack your bags wherever you are and head down here to catch up with the most happening event ever.

Mangalore-Bangalore train

I was thrilled when I found out that the Mangalore-Bangalore train has finally started to run and was waiting to get a chance to travel in it and see if it was the same as or better than the bus journeys between the two places.

Since this weekend had three continuous holidays I decided to go home and the first thing I did was to go and book the train tickets without a thought.

When my friend and I arrived at the station the train was already there waiting for us before time but I was pleasantly surprised when the train started on dot 19.45.

My friend and I had both booked the tickets separately so we were in two different compartments. We tried to get our seats exchanged but we had no luck as in one compartment there was a huge family and in the other there was an old lady who was sick and so we couldn’t ask her to move.

I have a tendency to fall asleep whenever I travel at night so I fell asleep within one hour of the train starting. The journey was pretty smooth and except for one hour in between when I was woken up by a boy who was crying non- stop.

I reached Bangalore at around 7.15 in the morning but had to wait till about 7.45 to reach Yeshwantpur station (the last stop).

After reaching Bangalore I tried to compare and see whether it was worth travelling by train or by bus instead. What I realised was that both take the same amount of time to reach Bangalore so the time is not an issue. But I also had to take into account the 3-4 extra hours it would take me to get home i.e. 2 hours from Manipal to Mangalore station and 2 hours from Bangalore station to my house whereas if I travel by bus, I get on at Manipal and I reach near my house about 12-13 hours later.

The amount I pay for a sleeper in bus is Rs 380 whereas I spend about Rs 240 for the same in the train. But if I consider it its not much of a difference especially if I spend the money that I would save on travelling from Manipal to Mangalore station and from Bangalore station to my home.

So the only advantage I see if I travel by train is that I would not get stuck in the ghat section, during the rainy season, like I would if I went by bus (I was once in a bus which stood in the same place for about 5 hours and I ended up reaching Bangalore in the evening!!) and also the train journey is said to go through areas where you have breathtaking sceneries (these cannot be seen as the train passes through these areas at night)

So after weighing the pros and cons I have come to a decision to travel by bus unless the train reaches Bangalore in a shorter time, and (being a nature lover) I get to see the beautiful sceneries.

Bhootha Kola...

The whole place was lit up with beautiful and colourful lanterns. Every now and then you could hear loud bangs which would end up as smoke. You could smell the gunpowder which was in the air.

Hundreds of people were either standing or sitting around a cleared area waiting in anticipation of something.

Inside the cleared area, on one side there was a man painting his face yellow. And on the other side there was an area where the idols are placed.

In a couple of hours, the man had finished painting his whole face and also put on two head-dresses.

You must be wondering what this is all about. Well every year, in the month of March, a Bhoota Kola is organised in Manipal.

What is the first thing that comes in your mind when you hear the word ‘Bhoota’? Well people usually misunderstand it to be ‘devil’ and equate Bhoota kola to devil worship. But it is nothing of that sort. It is something like ritualistic theatre.

Last night a few friends and I went to watch this event happening. At first I was slightly scared. But then I found it very interesting.

The man who painted his face was supposed to be a daiva, Babbu Swami. He started by taking the blessings of the god and then his elders. He then entered the cleared area and started dancing to the music that was provided by the traditional musicians. As he dances, he slowly starts getting into a trance and gets possessed by Babbu Swami.

He keeps dancing up and down the area and then goes to the organisers and the people who are responsible for the event and blesses them. Later he puts on something that is similar to a grass skirt. And ties a traditional back piece of metalwork.

All this goes on for hours till early morning, when he goes to the main organisers house and drinks milk. He then comes back and answers questions that are put forward by the public.

All this made me think of the many people who are directly or indirectly affected by the performance. They are usually not talked much about. Right from the people who make the crackers, the musicians, to the people who make the metal ornament that are worn by the performers.

Damsels in Hostels

My room-mate came upto me the other day and told me that her friends had a new girl who had just moved into their room. I asked her what’s new in that, I mean if a guy had moved into a girl’s hostel that would be something new. But she then told me that that girl was married to a French guy (!). Ok that was interesting… but what she told me next was unexpected. What, you ask? Not only was she married but she was actually pregnant!!


Wow.


A French husband and a mother-to-be, that’s quite a killer combo. But in Manipal that’s nothing new. There are many students who are either engaged or married and are living in hostels. There was this girl, a neighbour of mine, who was married and for some reason didn’t own a cell phone. And every time her hubby called, the matron screeched into the microphone- PROMILAAAA!!!! Husbandu… this made all the girls want to actually donate Rs 2 each and buy her a phone!!


Jokes apart I’ve always wondered what these females do in hostels far away from their

(k)nights in shining armour (!). I mean single-dom and hostels go hand in hand with each other but being married is a different thing all together.


Do they imagine the vamp in the latest K series to be their mother-in-laws when they hijack the TV room and don’t let us watch the world cup final?? And anyway aren’t you supposed to be a bit saner when you are married? I’d seriously not expect an aunty to fight with me over silly issues like who uses the washing machine first!!


But actually when I think about their situation I feel sorry for them. A friend’s friend just got engaged and is going to have an arranged marriage. Juggling between talking to her fiancée on phone and spending some time with her friends in her last semester of college and at the same time studying for the upcoming exams is pretty much all that she does these days.



As if its not enough for women to manage households, cook, bear kids, please their in-laws, and work, they now have to get double MBAs from premiere institutes. And live in dingy hostel rooms with bandicoots, snakes and what not.


All said and done, if I were married to a cute French guy and was pregnant, I would be comfortably living in a villa by the sea-side getting pampered! With my knight in shining armour at beck and call.

Un expected rains...

A few friends and I were just chatting and I said that I thought that it might rain that night especially since there were a few clouds in the sky. My friend and I even bet on it.

That night while I was watching a movie I suddenly heard someone banging on my door. It was my friend and that was the first time I realised that I had won the bet and that it was raining heavily.

Many of my hostel-mates and even a few friends of mine even went out and got drenched in the rain. Some just stood in the rain and the others danced.

Though the rains have brought relief to the students and localites (especially as it rained during Holi), they also caused a lot of problems. From what I’ve heard from the locals there have never been rains during this month before and that they are surprised as the rains start only around June- July.

The rains have mainly affected the farmers as many had just started sowing their seeds and had not made a path for the water to flow out of their fields thus flooding them instead. Also people of Raichur were affected as the red chillies that they had put to dry were soaked and were spoilt.

There were also many other incidents that occurred due to the rains such as accidents, people getting struck by lightning, people falling sick due to the sudden change in climate, people are getting stuck while travelling from one place to the other by bus especially those who have to go through the ghat section, etc.

What is the cause for such unexpected rains? Well according to a few it is due to a change in the ocean currents. But I feel that all these climatic changes are mainly to global warming that is taking place at a large scale throughout the world and if something is not done to reduce it then we are in for trouble.