Redefining Horizons

  In the initial years of my army service, I travelled by train like all other army officers. When I travelled on duty, the regulation ‘ holdal l’ was my companion. It was a masterpiece of utility. It held my things together throughout the journey. It took on a small mattress, my military boots that could never find space elsewhere, and all the other unwieldy stuff required to be carried along. There was a way to pack it. I first spread the mattress, put a blanket and two sheets folded to size, spread the mosquito net, flipped the covers over, and tied the laces through the three eyeholes provided. Unwieldy things were then shoved into the compartments at the two ends. The holdall was now ready for the makeover.  I rolled the holdall tight, into a cylindrical entity and tied it with the attached leather belt that went through a big leather handle. It was the strongest thing in leather I have ever seen other than the saddle. My orderly was a great help. Over time I learnt to r...

“Workers of the world Unite! You have nothing to lose, but your chains!” The call remains the most reverberating takeaway from the communist manifesto of 1848. It inspired and continues to inspire millions across the world, in far more different ways than it was first intended to. “May Day” presents the best opportunity to evaluate where the slogan has taken us.    I grew up hearing the musical version of the slogan, penned by the famous poet and lyricist Vaylar Rama Varma for the Malayalam hit film, Thulabharam. “ Nashta peduvan vilangukal, kittanullathu puthiyoru lokam ” (Nothing but the chains to lose, and to gain, a new world). The song played a significant role in irrevocably changing Kerala's socio-economic and political landscape. Almost all political meetings and processions, especially the left-leaning ones, played this song. There was a sense of romanticism attached to the movement. Many educated and influential people adopted communism and it took deep roots in Kera...

I knew that tiger sightings are rare in the Jim Corbett National park. People who had gone there before me also told me that despite four or five continuous outings, they saw nothing but a few species of deer. It is not easy to spot a tiger in its natural habitat because their coat provides them an efficient camouflage cover. But there is something that gives away their towering presence in the forest, their pugmarks. Expert trackers can tell whether it was a tiger or a tigress,  and in which direction and when they went by. I knew exactly what to expect when we commenced the Safari. Tigers have a towering presence in and  around the area they live. We may not be able to spot him but the tiger's eyes misses nothing alive or dead. We knew we were being closely watched.  “Look,” said the guide, pointing to a set a pug marks. “It is behind us,” said my grandson accompanying me on his first jungle safari. The pugmarks were deep and fresh. “The dominant male of the area is som...

Which is the highest mountain in the world?  Mount Everest? Which is the biggest desert in the world?  Sahara? If you thought those were correct answers, you are wrong.  Difficult to digest?   You are not the only one. When I asked this question to people, almost everybody answered it as   Mount Everest and Sahara. Some even showed books that say Mount Everest is the highest or tallest mountain and Sahara is the largest desert. The tech-savvy immediately took refuge in the web and got caught in it. I also got full marks for the same answer in my general knowledge tests in school. Both the answers are wrong. They are wrong by 1.36 kilometers in height and 5,000,000 square kilometers in area. Mount Everest is the highest point above “mean sea level.” It touches a height of 29,029 feet above mean sea level. It is the highest point on earth. It still does not mean it is the highest mountain in the world. Mauna Kea volcano, which stands a mere 13,800 feet a...

  I was sitting at the back of the class and playing book cricket. Our Physics teacher was working hard on explaining the Venturi effect. “Remember! Energy is neither created nor lost. It gets converted from one state to the other,” he said. “No loss, no gain,” I found the concept interesting.    Book cricket was my fiefdom. I made rules and decided when to start and finish the match. “Time for a drink break,” I told the cricketers, closed the book pitch, and gave all my ears to the teacher. “So, when the water in a pipeline comes across a choke point, the pressure inside the tube at the choke increases, and the velocity decreases. The moment it comes out of the choke, the pressure falls dramatically, and the speed of the water increases correspondingly. People designing the layout of long-distance pipelines incorporate it to install inline flow meters. It also makes sure that pipelines do not get clogged,” he said. Intuition told me it would be a sure question in the exa...

  Endless Efforts   “Callification?” Your efforts to find out what it means in the dictionary shall go in vain. I just made it up.  Patiently read through it; you will know what it means.     The three submersible pumps working continuously and in tandem could not fill the colony’s overhead tank. The employees kept the pump running. One pump ran dry far too long and burned itself out. The open well also ran dry. They told no one. Why should they? They had nothing to lose. I noticed the unusual activity and enquired. This had been going on for a few days. It should not have.   I did a quick calculation of the flow rates of the pumps, the capacity of the community tank, and the tanks over the individual houses. Considering the endless efforts of the pumps, all the overhead tanks should have been filled and overflowing. It did not happen. I concluded that there must be a leak somewhere in the pipeline. The large amount of water that leaked ...

  Child Smoker  The car was a beast from the outside but a cocoon from the inside. The unending leg space and silent air conditioning inside made it ideal for friends to travel and talk. The endless roads, devoid of traffic, encouraged the car to race with the winds. Whenever Jose, my friend, forgot to rein in the beast, Cini, his wife, lovingly reminded him of the brake pedal. Jose and I are childhood friends.   “Do you know how we first met?” Jose asked my wife as we headed for Khor Fakkan from Al Dahaid. I tried hard to recollect but failed. “Something interesting about it?” she asked. Jose had already narrated many incidents of our childhood since we arrived in Sharjah two days ago. We had been laughing at ourselves and reconnecting. There were times when we laughed till our stomachs hurt. “Like all houses in the locality, our houses were farmhouses and shared a common boundary, a high mud bund we call Kayyaala . It was one of the few kayyaalas in the local...