Reality Bites

Am I a cynical, narrow minded, pessimist who always, looks at the negative side of the things and fails to relish the positives? I try not to be one. But, I had to put an effort to stop whining about things to myself. This blog is a result of a failed effort.

On the very same day when the websites were flooded with news about a few Indians winning the coveted Oscars, people expressing their happiness through facebook feeds, gtalk, etc. I received an email from a Swedish colleague, in Swedish, calling for donations to one of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) projects which read something like:

(The mail was in Swedish, translation by Google)

Project 1: Building new sovlokaler in the orphanage in the village of Kolkata
Mathieson Music School (MMS) is an orphanage located in the village of Kolkata in India. Many children in this
by living in a DISTRESSED situation

Project:
- Build new sovlokaler for girls, will be able to provide room for 100 girls aged 5-18 years
- Building safer sovlokaler (build up in height, including to avoid snakes)
- To assist the increasing number of children with education, meals, medicines, books, etc.
General facts about India
- A quarter of the world's poor are in India
- 20 percent of the world's children without education available in India
- 50 percent of children in India are malnourished
More info: www.mathiesonmusictrust.org or talk to Catharina Zetterquist Melander

I was ecstatic and read about the news from all the possible news sites I knew. My patriotic self was brimming with pride and honor that my country men brought laurels to the country. The mail brought me to reality and reminded me of the plight of majority in my country. More importantly got reminded of big hue and cry about portrayal of the Mumbai and its slums in the movie, by some elite people in the country. It’s very important to know that the world knows that we are a great country with some of the exceptional qualified and talented people, at the same time they also knew about the dark side. There is no point in denying it or criticizing the people/movies that portray it. As an individual, given a choice to select between ‘Me not receiving this type of email for ever’ and ‘An Indian not winning an Oscar for next 50 years’, I would blindly go for the first option without giving a second thought.

I am proud of the crew of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and my hearty congratulations to them for making a wonderful movie. At the same time when I read a mail like that, it puts in a doubt in my mind, if I have to be overly happy. To put it short, its ‘Disturbing’.

Reality Bites

Pronunciation

You know to pronounce the letters, A-Z perfectly, as in English; you can push your ‘P’s and roll your ‘R’s and sound like native speakers of English, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can read and pronounce everything written in Swedish with your English knowledge. Remember, you are in Sweden and the Queen of Sweden speaks Swedish.

Knowing few letters and the way they are pronounced, will be very helpful in spelling names of places and people. The most pleasing sound to hear, is someone calling you by your name, exactly the way you pronounce your name. Swedish language has few extra vowels with one or two tittles over ‘a’ and ‘o’ them, lets not try to understand them now.

Lets see how the name of the place ‘Karlberg’ is pronounced. Its simply ‘Karlby’, as in English. So remember anywhere you see ‘Berg’ replace it ‘By’. It applies to a lot of Swedish last names, like Dahlberg, Edberg, and Nyberg etc. Now pronouncing Nyberg is tricky again, ‘y’ is a vowel in Swedish and it is used like ‘i’ in English, So its ‘Niby’ or ‘Knee + by’. This applies to name of the places as well, ‘Vallingby’ is ‘Valling + B’. Confusing?!!! ;)

Don’t think ‘Peater’ is your new teammate, because it might still refer to your old friend ‘Peter’. If same letters appear twice consequently, You will find people stressing both of them, like ‘Henning’ is ‘Hen + ning’, similarly ‘An + na’, ‘Em + ma’ etc. Don’t consciously make a effort to pause to prounce the letters, it will sound stupid. J

Another important candidate is the letter ‘K’. It sounds like ‘S’ when followed by the vowels ‘i’, ‘y’. ‘a’ with dots on it (I don’t have that letter in my laptop keypad). The tube station ‘Kista’ is ‘Shista’ and ‘Skarholmen’ is ‘Sharholmen’. Church in Swedish is ‘Kyrka’, which is pronounced as ‘Shirka’ as in English.

When I have to ask for directions, I say ‘How do I go to Karlberg (pause for a moment and quickly) Karlby!’ because sometimes people do not expect a foreigner to pronounce it correctly.

Having said this, I still wonder what the lady voice in the underground train announces, when I arrive at ‘Medborgarplatsen’. I am pretty sure that its not ‘Med + Bor + Gar + Platsen’. Hope I get to pronounce it correctly very soon J…….

Pronunciation

Tryst with Tyresta

I had spent a lot of my weekends and public holidays not doing much at all. And the words I used to describe them were lazing, relaxing, sleeping, easing etc. While thinking of options to break this monotony, Hiking, was the first that came to my mind. As a result the following plan was made, rather a simple one:

Where to go: Tyresta National Park

When: 31.12.2008

Time: 8:00 to 17:00 hrs tentative

I reached Svartbacken, at around 10AM, this place is around 3 Km from the entrance to the national park. There are buses that go to the park but I had to wait for another half an hour, so decided to walk.

After reaching Tyresta By (Village) and checking out some information boards, at 10:30 AM, I took the trail following the ‘inverted orange triangle’ marking on the trees. This orange triangle was a common symbol, back home in India, which was used in population control awareness campaign (See picture).

This trail leads to Stensjödal(Another entrance to the National park) from Tyresta By. The trail is also marked in green and white strips as it is a common path which forms half of Bylsjöslingan (Name of a trail).

I would say that, his trail was easy, and it was a leisure walk with occasional ice sheets on the way, which could give you a few shocks if you put you foot carelessly on them. It went through the forest with pine trees all around. The whole atmosphere was calm, clean and serene. I walked taking my own sweet time, enjoying the freshness of the woods. After hiking for around 3.5 Km, I reached a junction at 11:00 from where the trail diverts towards Stensjon Lake in one direction at 2.5 Km and in the other direction, Bylsjöslingan continued with its green and white stripes which would lead to Tyresta By.

Just after walking in to the forests towards Stensjon, was the most surprising part of the hike. It was the area of the forest that was destroyed by a massive forest fire during the summer of 1999. I have never seen a charred forest in my life, though it was a unique experience, it was not pleasant feeling observing the destruction caused by fire. There was hardly any greenery and it was vast open land, profusely covered with logs of the fallen trees and which in turn is covered with ice. The ice over the tree trunks looked like bright white flowers, which will never wither away rather melt away.

This part of the forest was little difficult mainly due to the ice covered areas which make it slippery. I got off the track, as few of the orange triangles were hidden under snow. Remember that if you are walking over a slightly rugged path, you are little off the route, as the trail is not difficult. If at all there are some ups and down or rough patches, there will wooden steps and planks to make it easy. As the area affect by fire comes to an end, the green woods starts approaching. Few meters within the woods there was a tiny wooden bridge over a frozen stream. This should have been the water flowing from the edges of the Lake Stensjon.

I trek for about 10 minutes took me to the Lake Stensjon. It was a beautiful site on a bright day with blue skies and crisp air; it can’t be anything better than this. The frozen lake was shining like a huge mirror reflecting the mild Swedish winter sun rays. It was here for the first time after entering the fire hit forest I saw 3 humans, we had a little chat and they guided me to Fornborg, which was supposed to be an ancient castle. The man was kind enough to give me a map and enquired if I knew about light fading away by 3:00 PM as it was 1:00 PM by then.

Don’t have high expectations about this castle and imagine drawbridges, battlement, canons etc, I had to search for the castle for a while, and soon I realised that it’s just a bunch of rocks. Tyresta never ceases to surprise you. After a few hours of hiking, I was hungry and decided to have my lunch with a view. It was at the cliff over looking the bright lake, I had the sandwich I picked from Pressbyran and relaxed for couple of minutes before, starting to Tyresta By at 1:30 PM. I did the return at a brisk pace, following the same route except towards the end took the other half of the Bylsjöslingan, which passed by Bylsjon Lake, where few peoplewere found skating on the lake. At 3:00 PM I reached Tyresta and took the SL bus and headed back to Stockholm.

While travelling in the bus, I already started thinking about hiking the trail Kustleden in the National park which goes along the Baltic Sea……

Tryst with Tyresta

Weird or Creative or Weird Creativity?

I got a call from Oskar on a Sunday morning, and he asked, if I would be interested in visiting the Moderna Museet (Modern art Museum), I readily said, yes, as I didn’t have anything to do. Modern Art museum!!! Arts and me!!! Are like, like poles of magnet.

As per the plan we met at Kungstragarden and walked down to Skeppsholmen, the island where the museum is located. While walking, he told me that currently there is a touring exhibition of paintings by Max Ernst. I heard that name for the first time and I could just reply, ‘Oh Ok!’ hearing the painter’s name. To our surprise there was no entrance fee on that day, as the event was sponsored by Eurocard.

We entered the exhibition hall and it was fairly crowded. Being a first timer, I was clueless and I am sure it was reflecting in my body language. My feeling was similar to someone who entered a business meeting in swimming costumes. I collected myself, observed others and paused momentarily, in front of those huge wall mounted paintings, pretended to observe them. I was not able comprehend those weird colours and shapes in the paintings as I was trying to relate them to the real world events and objects, and could not appreciate them. It was beyond my imagination.

To add my complex, when I saw people standing in front of the paintings and relish its beauty, I thought ‘why am I not able to?’ The answer to the question was simple. I always asked myself ‘Why?!’ Instead of enjoying the fascinating colours and shapes; I was trying to understand them. I was trying to evaluate and conclude, how difficult or easy and good or bad, they are. It took a moment for me to realise that any form of art is for enjoying and not for me to evaluate. The next few minutes was interesting as I glanced through tens of paintings and sketches. We went on observing the paintings, the patterns in them, thoughts behind them, techniques used etc. They no more appeared weird to me, instead I admired the creativity and how different someone can view things around them.

It surely was a life time experience and one of the wildest things I had ever done. I would be lying if I say I have become a modern arts enthusiast, But I won’t say no to another exhibition. I suggest everyone ( with no taste for arts ) to visit the museum once, I can assure that it will be a unique experience!!!!

Weird or Creative or Weird Creativity?

Glogg

The e-mail read,

*Hi all,
Come and have a Glögg andPepparkaka.
See you in the kitchen!
//Christina*

The moment I read that, got curious to know, what on the surface of earth is called Glögg* and *Pepparkaka*.Like anyone sitting in front of a computer, opened the wikipedia.org and searched for them. Now I got fair idea that, Glögg is wine ‘like’ and Pepparkaka is biscuit ‘like’.

I saw people passing by my desk, heading to the kitchen, with their coffee mugs in their hands and I followed them. The arrangement looked like this: an Electric griddle with a saucepot on it contained the Glögg, and 3 bowls containing raisins, almonds and pepparkaka(Ginger Biscuits), all aesthetically arranged on a table.

I stood well behind in the line for my turn to fill the mug, so that I can watch colleagues who helped themselves to glögg, to understand the glöggetiquette. While standing in the line, a colleague explained that glögg is red wine with cinnamons, cardamoms, cloves, etc and served during the winter around Christmas. Well, almost all the ingredients go in to an Indian Curry too!! I filled my mug, dropped a couple of almonds and raisins in the mug and picked apepparkaka.

We stood in small circles, having a chat, while I took a couple of sips from the mug. It tasted good and a bit warm, with a strong aroma. The taste suggested that the drink should be had out of a goblet not a coffee mug. The immediately effect was, I started feeling tipsy and funny from within. The drink hits you hard. May be because its warm and alcohol vapors mix in the blood stream and reaches the gray cells quickly. I picked up an empty bottle to check the alcohol content; it read 15%v/v. A colleague joked, the temperature is just enough to evaporate the alcohol, but not enough that all of them are wasted in the air. There were couple of guys like me, who are first timers to glögg and we had some funny talks about their experiences. By now my first drink is over, and I took the courage to refill my mug and got back to my desk.

For a moment I forgot my password to unlock my computer, and I
realized glögg is not for the ‘Light Weights’!!!! Beware, you ‘Light Weights’ out there, before getting adventurous with glögg.

PS: Oops!! I forgot aboutPepparkaka, its type of ginger flavored, thin biscuits.

Glogg

Directionless

New to a place!!! You are bound to face few embarrassments during the initial days.

There is no way that you can avoid those blushes, but, recounting them will bring a smile on your face. I think its pretty easy to identify a person new to the city. Especially if you do not have good sense of directions, you will look stupid in the middle of the crowd. I am no exception to it. Initial few days in the tunnelbanna is as challenging as finding your direction without a compass in the middle of the ocean.

Every time I got out of the T-Centralen, I landed on new streets to find new buildings, new restaurants and new Shopping Malls. Thanks to umpteen number of exits that one can take.

I made it a point not to ask for the directions from people around, thinking of the surprise package that's awaiting. I read some where, 'One without direction in life goes nowhere'. I disagree with the gentleman who wrote that. One who is direction less finds new places, I believe I am nothing less than Christofer Columbus in this regard. :).

My definition of a new comer to the town goes as follows, from my experience in the tunnelbana:

He who comes out of the train, walking out slowly just before the last few people, takes a couple quick steps, stands still for a moment, slowly turns his heads towards either side of the platform with out looking for anything particular wondering which exit to take is a new person in the town. :)

Wish you very good luck in all the directions that you take in life....

Directionless

Desert

I thought I should write this travelogue before I forget the details of the wonderful trip to Jaisalmer.

One fine day in the hostel rooms of MREC, few people started counting the savings from their pocket money after the mess bills, DP expenses and Jai Ambe expenses, for a possibility of pulling out a trip to Jaisalmer. After persuading each other and a lot of deliberation and careful budgeting, four of them thought they can make it and I am one of them. Those were the days when we googled less frequently and only thing that could be termed as 'trip planning' was booking of return tickets to Jaisalmer.

The day of the trip arrived and the four us boarded the train to Jaisalmar with our backpacks on, on an evening from Jaipur Station. It was an over night journey from Jaipur to Jaisalmer. Indian railways offered us sound sleep in its coupe and we all arrived at Jaisalmar in the morning fresh and full of energy. I bet no Railway in the world can match the comfort is to cost ratio that Indian railways can offer. We had no reservations made for our stay. At the entrance of the station a ricksaw/auto ricksaw waala (I couldnt recollect) approached us and after telling him our budget, he took us to a house adapted to be a hotel. The price charged by the owner of the property was nominal and that was the cheapest which was well with in our budget and pretty ok when compared to our hostel rooms and toilet.

We got freshed up and hogged the Aalu ki paratha at the hotel, took some sight seeing tips from the guys in the hotel, we moved out to explore Jaisalmer. The only hue that could seen in whole of Jaisalmar is yellow or Orange. No wonder the its called 'The Golden City'. We went to the Jaisalmar fort, from which the small city looked wonderful. The fort had some temple inside it and usual stuffs like Rajas undies, soap box, comb, sword, crown etc. We had an analog camera with 32-36 snaps reel (Noone knew the exact number) and judiously used them. We also visited the havelis may be 2-3 which were homes of kings in the past and tourist places now. All these places were beyond our understanding, its architecture, history etc. and none of us put any efforts to understand them. :)

The major attraction of the trip was the trip to the sand dunes,infact thats the only thing in our minds. Thats how we visualise a desert and were taught and told thats how a desert looks like. We took a jeep to the sand dunes which was few miles away from the Jaisalmar city. Jeep generally would be used for transporting milk cans. Our joys knew no boundries looking at the sand dunes. It was beautiful. There was an ad shooting going on in the sands for some basmati rice. After bargaining for a while we hired 2 camels for the desert safary. We were 2 each on the camels which never brushed it teeth and burped close to our faces. A little boy was escorting us and controlling the camels. With all four of us on top of the camel, we had noone but him to trust. The boy entertained us by making the camel run fast, which was exciting. He also showed huge iron remains and told that was a destroyed army tank during the war. After a tiring safary we relaxed in the sands and it started raining heavily. It cant get anything better when it rains in the middle of the desert.

I do not remember the events that followed or the order in which I have written, but I remember when we boarded train to Jaipur, our seats/berths had a thick layer of sand due winds, which we cleaned up and went to sleep, before roughtly 7 years ago......

Few question in my mind:

Which month and year did we go on this trip?

Was it a direct train to Jaisalmer?

How many day/days was the trip?

Any other important place we visted in the town?

Travellers : Bharathwaj, Hariprasath, Jayapratap, Ramesh.

Mood after the trip : dont really remember

Mood after writing the blog : brought smile in my face.

Desert