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Father was fond of driving nails into walls. I recall that when I was a toddler of 3, the home we rented in our village had all the 4 walls of our hall covered with photos of all our relatives, calendars, showpieces, and a huge framed photo of the graduating class of Father from his Christian College at Madras. There was a haunting photo of what I thought was a very old and lonely woman covered with a sari with veil sitting under a tree. I asked my mom about her. And she laughed and replied that it was not a woman but a swamiji...the holiest of the holies for our family...the Elder Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham:
However, I didn't inherit the nailing skills of Father. I am worse than Uncle Podger. In my few attempts I succeeded only in punching my left thumb. My son knows this and never lets me anywhere near a hammer and nail, for I bleed profusely for an hour after the event. He is an expert...old genes tell!
RKN considers the impulse for nailing fresh walls a vandalism, and I agree:
Talking of likes and dislikes I recall reading that Facebook is coming up with a new symbol for its 'like'. It must have made quite a splash in the goofyspace. Much like what used to happen 60 years ago whenever the LBW Rule in cricket was changed.
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...for years I dreamed of having a bit of a house of my own and plenty of nails to drive into the wall; dark fat nails or shiny nails six inches long. Driving nails into a wall is an incomparable adventure. The plaster is smooth and white, concealing the mysterious irregularities that lie below, and the game consists of finding the point where a nail can be driven in between one brick and the other.
When they began to talk about radar in the course of the late, unlamented war, I couldn't take it seriously. I'd like to see a radar tell me where to drive a nail into a plastered wall. Because I happen to be a living detector, and if you set me in front of a wall of solid cement, I can pick out on its flawless surface the vulnerable soft spot below...
...From : The House That Nino Built
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Father was fond of driving nails into walls. I recall that when I was a toddler of 3, the home we rented in our village had all the 4 walls of our hall covered with photos of all our relatives, calendars, showpieces, and a huge framed photo of the graduating class of Father from his Christian College at Madras. There was a haunting photo of what I thought was a very old and lonely woman covered with a sari with veil sitting under a tree. I asked my mom about her. And she laughed and replied that it was not a woman but a swamiji...the holiest of the holies for our family...the Elder Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham:
However, I didn't inherit the nailing skills of Father. I am worse than Uncle Podger. In my few attempts I succeeded only in punching my left thumb. My son knows this and never lets me anywhere near a hammer and nail, for I bleed profusely for an hour after the event. He is an expert...old genes tell!
RKN considers the impulse for nailing fresh walls a vandalism, and I agree:
...Those that love calendar pictures will not rest till they cover the walls of their homes with all the calendars issued in the new year by all the business concerns in the country; a lover of group photos will cover every inch of space in his home with portraits of all friends and relations that ever came his way...
...RKN in Next Sunday
Talking of calendars, I recall that those issued by the State Bank of India and the Life Insurance Corporation of India were symbols of high prestige as collector items while I was at Kharagpur. They were huge and had 12 and more glossy leaves with color photos of themes like Bharata Natyam, or the Backwaters of Kerala (which my son and D-i-L and Ishani are planning to visit next week).
Nino would be perplexed had he bought apartments in Hyderabad. The one we were renting before we moved into our own home a couple of years ago was an NRI Gated Community. A retired middle-class brahmin with his two sons in the US was persuaded by them to buy two back-to-back flats on their behalf and rent them out. And each flat was costing a whopping Rs 85 lakhs, ready to move in. And we were the first to move in @ Rs 15000 as monthly rent.
The first day when we wanted to instal a heavy-duty Geyser (water heater), we were in for a surprise. The boy from the vendor brought his drilling machine and found that wherever he tried to drive his drill into the wall, it was sweetly sinking in through and through. And he was cursing his luck when the Floor Manager happened to come in and told us that the walls of all the 12 floors above the second were made of hollow bricks...Nino's radar expertise would have come in handy but in a negative way...he would be trying to find a hard spot instead of a soft one on the wall.
When we narrated this to our Owner, he lamented it beating his proverbial chest...hollow bricks for 85 lakhs!
On the other hand, our own flat which cost us Rs 23.5 lakhs only (during recession) has hard concrete walls without a single brick...latest German Technology gimmick as was advertised by our builder. The boot now is on the other leg. When my son wanted to drill a tiny hole into the wall for installing the Samsung Smart HD TV that he smuggled in from Singapore, the TV chap had to bring in his Hammer Drill (with its infernal noise).
And when the AC chap wanted a 6" round hole to be drilled through and through the bedroom wall, no mere hammer drill would do...he had to rent the Electrical Scooper. I had a desire to watch the thing in action. It was a huge affair like a mini-cement mixer. And it had a hollow punch that drilled in the damn thing sweetly in 30 seconds...the cylindrical concrete scoop came out imbedded in it and we used it as a roller for the pleasure of li'l Ishani.
Talking of likes and dislikes I recall reading that Facebook is coming up with a new symbol for its 'like'. It must have made quite a splash in the goofyspace. Much like what used to happen 60 years ago whenever the LBW Rule in cricket was changed.
Many of my students have been asking me to come on the Facebook. But I got scared ever since I read that two little girls were arrested when one of them posted an item that offended the Sena of Mumbai, and the other just 'liked' it.
Talking of likes and dislikes, I recall Prof KMK of the Phy Dept at KGP in the late 1960s winding up his duty in the Lab Class 10 minutes before time with the excuse that he had a Lecture Class to take at once. One day I happened to watch him exiting our ground floor common bathroom instead of entering his Lecture Hall. And he explained:
"I don't like visiting the bathroom on my way to a lecture class"
For most of us however, the bathroom was like the land of the Calypso beckoning us in whenever we passed by. And entering them with chalks and duster and rolled up attendance registers while on way to the lecture class was with us a COD (Compulsive Obsessive Disorder)... just tuck the paraphernalia into the half-open glass window, ease yourself, and enter the classroom triumphantly.
But we knew the risk Prof KMK was scared of...all males are accident-prone while transacting this peeblution.
Prof JGK of our Andhra University had his own trick:
"When an accident occurs, I carefully wet my shirt in spots all the way from its collar to its last button"...trying to fool the students (in vain) that the accident occurred while inputting water rather than outputting it...
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