When I use to walk lanes after lanes in Summer (Life in Chennai!)

It has been Ten years now, the first time I moved to Chennai was in April of 2005. Right after I finished my school and came here to write Entrance after Entrance exams as City of Chennai was my preferred location then. BITs Pilani had its Goa campus started 2 years before that and I was the very first few to take the online exam of BITs then. Somewhere in Mandaveli was the center to take part the exam. I was thrilled. Given that maximum technology I was exposed to was OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Computer exam on 12th grade stateboard exams.

The IIT-Madras campus to write the AIEEE exam, that is when I realized man, I though college was always all about buildings and cool architecture with curves and stuff, was mesmerized to see a Battery van take me through the campus. Deers running through the campus. The best part is the massive amount of super Nerdy people.

It gives me fond memories to look back to, taking notes( heaps and mounds of them just to clear a few 0.001 mark of some ), countless hours of sleep deprivation to hearing audio recordings of some math genius guy ( I don't intent to lie here but I did skip a few part to hear then latest songs I smuggled from my cousins)

Oh! The best part is seeing the city in whole new dimension with my 18 year young eyes. Lot of new Flyovers were coming up. First time to see the Adyar flyover which would later become infamous in Kamal's movie Vettayadu Vilayadu. Lot more to tell from little over a decade back.

The city did see it's truly remarkable change.All those people I met have grown to become famous and humble people over this past decade. But, the city I grew fond of (loving it every time I say that), has somehow shrunk in its beauty.

By whining and grinding the turmoil of heat over the few years, social media and news mentioning the worst in climate that has become and everybody planning on some summer getaways from the city! Let me tell you what happened to this wonderful city over the years.

OVER EXPLOITATION!

Imagine the time, I use to come to city when I was a little kid for vacation in summer. Mom use to jog me up to all crash courses, computer class, music class, drawing class. (Well not much did enter my grey cells then, except Adyar bakery Puffs and Samosa)

The lane after lane of streets I use to wander over the times on side walks have now become filled with Garbage dumps and Car parks. I remember taking the MRTs to just get to the Marina Beach from the city outskirts of Avadi to get a cool breeze.

I am not a newbee to say all this to people who love city more than me ever but imagination is little to lost when I talk to the younger people than me. All they ever talk about is Hot Summer, Come On!

How do you expect to get a fresh air, when all you worry about is raised buildings and car parks rather than green cover and animal lovers!

Just visit a nearby park. NO butterflies, NO chirping birds, NO uncles to ward you off from saying that the park has closing time. I was sitting in a park recently at around 8 pm. Hoping to catch some fresh air. Not a soul was im sight. Summer heat was ofcourse settling on me. Night time temperature was around 29 degree celcius. The guard who was stationed at the entrance was hearing a song in his mobile phone ( must be in his 50s). I was about to leave at around 9 pm. Just so I could ask him when does the park close. He replied me back, "It's usually closed by 8 pm but today I am going to close it 9:30 pm. Since you are the only one enjoying it"

It striked me then, people have got bitten by the heat bug that they refuse to leave their homes for natural air. It maybe an analogy to compare it to Flipkart or Amazon making people stay home and buy stuff. But seriously!  what I contemplate in few years is only big events could draw people out to enjoy out and open air. I am not saying galas and festivals. Something like tremor or storm. Galas and festivals are already hijacked by TVs and Movies. Let me just hope that the world becomes a better place and be responsible enough to say that the wind and air we breathe is all because of what we put out as trees and non-polluting stuff that mother nature can take to her heart!

Happy Mother's day to everyone! I hope Mother nature becomes happy too and not toil us in her wrath in the coming years..

Technology! Reviews!

There is always a never ending opinion and reviews about something in this world.

People have all sorts of needs these day
I want to buy a Smartphone , read a review about it in Gsmarena or TheVerge or Cnet..
I want to buy a car, better yet a luxury car! read reviews at TopGear..

and the list goes on..

Travel reviews.. You have it..
Food reviews.. Yes, you have it...

It goes on and on and on..

Then I realize where does people get these idea to review things.

The answer might be so simple, people like to be socialized and told what to do.. the human gene is built that way.

Let us take a step far back in time.. soooooo.. far back...

Cave men with Lots of stories and REVIEWS of the outside world

Consider the cave man of ancient time, the world`s first reviewer. He gets the opportunity to explore new stuff.
A new beast to tame, a new tool to build, a frontier enemy to defeat and so on. Each time he accounts a new experience he is bombarded with information that is so much significant in sustaining his tribe and humanity.

So, he does what is best for the current time. He makes a scribe in the wall with his tools, possibly knowing the geology of the rock to mix the right amount of water and pigments from the nature to create the world`s first ink and Wall Post! Sounds cool to write it even though every term I use is now trademark or branded by facebook or google in the sense of what actually a WALL POST is!

In exploring these facts, came across the Bhimbetka Caves in Central India which has stories of ancient humans inscribed by some geeky guy 3500 or even more years ago.

Bhimbetka caves 3500 year old cave paintings, Central India

These reviews and information have stood the record of time in helping us know what people use to love and what people see themselves to do once they step out of their cave.

But, imagine 2016 A.D, the year in which I am writing this blog..

Are we in the time where the wealth of information is of use? Some say it is.. some would say it isn`t.. well let's just skip the argument sake and actually see the facts.

Reviews: The blah-blah stuff of one guys fascination to experience stuff the first time. So, you are the early bird to have something new and therefore you have been given the opportunity to share the world how you actually felt in owning it. People get so carried by the fandom and wishful thought that sooner things of good value end up in trash.

This reminds me of a social experiment that I read long back, before I reveal it, let me tell you what the word of mouth can result in.. it can dethrone an empire, make a lie the truth, make a rumor a miracle and so on.

Assuming that the technology of knowing things is enough to make you the versatile enough to write and document reviews, it is not that everyone has to take it with the right spirit. on and on you can make stuff up.. 10,000 hour principle of mastering stuff by Malcom Gladwell - Outliers (http://www.amazon.in/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930) is enough to make you wise.

I believe that it is true! I also believe that not everything can be learned in this human life span of 100 years( let me be greedy on my lifespan). Everything we do now is just another experiment or experience waiting to be reviewed by someone else, all that it counts is to make it the best or the modesty to let someone else make it awesome from the best you already had.

The social experiment that I though of was the 5 Monkey and Ladder.. I leave it to you to understand what the generations of humans and our digital reviews is going to leave as expression on our future race. I mean the future us, in case the world had a Solar Storm and everything that is just Digital got wiped out ;-p Just kidding, although I do wish it would happen one day so that people value people more than stuff that has expiry date to be reviewed upon.

Wonder who gave the phrase "Bell the cat"

In a recent Q&A session answered by Elon Musk in the Hyperloop Design competition for the college grads that happened in Texas. One enthusiastic grad, who has his origins from New Delhi, India voiced over the topic of  ODD-EVEN decision for cars to operate in the city. Elon was asked on how the Hyperloop would answer to this problem and Elon Musk with his impeccable brilliance gave the audience the answer, " Well, I think people should build more tunnels instead of roads, you know.. they are just holes in the ground...."

Sparked by the though of this i wondered what is it that makes it so uncommon for us to complain about the roads and traffic congestion when Elon could come up with some new found idea. pondered by the though i came on to some things that i read an still got bewildered by the idea.

A few years back in an article from Gizmodo i read about what happens when one run out of land to work with and the resulting land grab and the exploitation of available ground would result in. Let me introduce you to city of Manhattan, the very famously known around the world as the New York.

http://gizmodo.com/watch-new-york-city-s-boundaries-expand-over-250-years-496440467

You will start to wonder, "so you are here to say that we will run out of land and start to build road in the sea or increase the height of the land so as to make it higher the better( more like making pride rock) of one's own!"

No! that's not my point. The point is I further pondered in this topic and ended up reading an article from National Geographic,showing that the Central Park in Manhattan alone has been untouched in the Vertical level of the city. All the other Upper, Lower and Middle Manhattan has had its land filled over and over its base sea level over the century, that now cartographers from the 21st century are shell shocked to find drawings from the 1800s and before seem so illogical to the actual. The number is more that 15 Ft of land has been filled up, meaning that the urban spaces have now become more elevated than the central park's original ground level. 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/folger-text

A prominent junction called Adyar Flyover ( Notice the fringes of asphalt that grew over the years)

Now: This is all the while ago about a modern metropolis New York, Lets jump to this side of the planet. The city of Chennai, India. You will be surprised that just recently have we survived the storm that hit us in Dec 2015, a 140 cm rainfall in a span of 3 days. After the lashing rains for about the period of 3 days and following moderate rains of 3 days in the total 6 days of rain almost all that is to be called as Chennai became like a big puddle of water. Just to give you a good picture here is a video to my channel where I uploaded the experience of taking a walk to buy some biscuits and food for the 4th day of rain alone as my mother and father were drenching and pouring water out of our house as it had a feet of water inside.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXs9VQUMPGk

Each fringe of line is a new layer of road laid over the years ( possibly a few decades)

In all this experiences I was startled to notice that the reason water got so much clogged was because that there were not much visible storm water drains in the roads and the roads are instead filled up with lots of Asphalt as it is called fondly as thar roads in India.  The system of road laying is very bizarre in Chennai (I don't assume that this is same everywhere in India, but who knows. I haven't lived in many cities in India except Chennai) a Public Works Department personnel comes to take some measurements hears that the road is in bad condition of potholes and voila he gets a whole new truck load of asphalt fills up the baddie holes and a new layer is formed. I took up my cycle on a Sunday and reached a prominent place in Adyar where I remember seeing the visible fringes of asphalt layer over the years and to my surprise, I was seeing a fresh coat of Asphalt getting laid on top of it. In less than 5 years the road has grown in to 6 Inches( pretty big in comparison to other things that people can grow!!) I took snaps on the same, let the pictures do the talking!!


 Then on the search for why do roads get to be roads, who must have been the reason for it to be there in the first place, theses were all sparking up in my mind. Again, comes a theory of interesting reads in Wikipedia articles on cattle grazing pattern.

Great deal to smooth it out!

Can you spot the Man-hole cover ?

Why the heck do they bother to have a storm drain??

3 New layers.. coming up!!

which resulted in me spending hours on to understand the concept of what the reason was for the first pathways to be made.. and then on it was made in to roads and finally in to highways.. it was all because of some cattle herder who took his flock on a grass terrain herd it of to roam around and ended up creating patches of land for people to walk and so on and so on.

It was pretty nice to read. Then again, as I wondered. Who is there to Bell the Cat?(on this 6 inch road topic), the people.. the Engineer.. the Miner who gave the Asphalt or the Mother Nature who gave me this topic to study on! or rather should I say, "Belled the Cow/Goat" on the right time by the herder. So that the roads of today would not have gotten in to the troubled hands of the people to be pestered with!

A entire year of travel

Travel travel... that's what I have been, from the time I made the last post till about now. I have been piggy backing around the eastern part of asia. Malaysia,  singapore, Philippines to name a few. Well.. here we go let's dive in to my travel logs in detail...

who is this Child from the earth - A blog by the kid on the street corner

When I wrote my last blog post I was just a kid who was turning out to the experience of little over a 24 year old experience.

Then, something remarkable happened in the days to follow, in the middle of the 2014, I had an opportunity to thrust myself in thinking that anything is possible once a group or an Entity of people come together to take a chance.

I along with 5 of my friends ventured out in to discussions and the fruit of which is being eaten by us now.

I did have an amazing experience in to gauging a foreign opportunity and the food and culture I went to adopt was tremendously different from what I actually expected.

Once I came back, I was totally new person ready to conquer anything.

Who said Alexander was relentless in his vision to conquer had actually said the words truly for me.

Alexander was just a 32 year old man who had amazed 3/4 of land in Eurasia and still what he left behind was a true cult of wanderers who would mix with local culture and make that their own or improvise on it.

By expanding once scope in to thinking that the PALE BLUE DOT (by Carl Sagan) was more than that of its glare and beauty in calmness and tempest. I also think that the time has led me to amalgamate in to becoming a child of the earth from the kid in a street corner(a continent -a country - a state - a district - a township - a street - a home)

Planet Earth is vast and I myself has just taken the baby step in exploring it in my 27 years.. Lot more to see.. Lot more to meet..

A entire year of travel

Travel travel... that's what I have been doing for the past year. Eurpoe... france switzerland germany... malaysia...wow.. Iit was spell bounding memory... I have lot to write about it.. it will take me months to write.. Iam just creating this page for a day in 2013 that I wrote a blog... lot to come... lets go....

Year after year! A new human in me..

Normally we as a human being normally see the world in one perspective, binded by their culture, guidelines of elders and so on of the everyday nature.

There is another way of seeing it. People call it the extroverted look, the paradoxical shift in nature where I see something beautiful and could immediately acknowledge it.