Creating Nostalgia

I don’t know how many of us realize this but every day we create nostalgia. Most of the days the brain sweeps the nostalgia under the carpet, or worst into the recycle bin never to be retrieved back again. But some days are so special that the days' happening are safely tucked away into a cupboard or in an attic, just to be retrieved many years later as a nostalgic memory. It also has an uncanny habit of improving with time just like wine. We would go to this imaginary attic or open the cupboard and go through the stuff in it. Looking at this stuff, cleaning the gathered dust on it, going through it… that’s when nostalgia hits us.

Reverse Engineering

“Apart from the homework that I have given you for the summer vacation you will also have to make a working prototype of a solar cookers and a windmill. Since most of your parents are Engineers they will help you in this project. Final grade will have 20 marks assigned to these projects.” This was told to us with a sinister smile on our physics teachers face just like the one on Prof Snape face from Harry Potter series. The bell rang and we shot out of the room with full zeal and enthusiasm for the summer vacations that started along with the bell of the last period. The summer vacation was fun. Collecting leaves for the Herbarium file, making models of windmill and solar cooker, learning new things in the summer vacation camp, meeting grand parents, cartoons, no getting up early and so on so forth. Irritatingly though the summer vacations came to a grinding halt as soon as it started. With so much fun nobody of us saw the days flying by and only realized it once they flew by.

School began and so did the lame excuses of not doing any of the homework. Many of us were seen standing outside the class, punished for not completing the homework. In this whole commotion of lame excuse and teacher scolding one thing was amazing. Everyone had brought the solar cooker they were supposed to make. Big boxes with glass mirror on the lid and couple of utensils inside. Some of the utensils had name on it. Maybe those kids mom were sure that they will lose the utensils. Most of us got graded average as it had very little option of improvement. (at least, as per us.) Still there were few who had shown there creativity streak. One of the girls had painted the box Pink from inside out (which by the way is generally black to absorb heat) that was not it. It also sported Barbie with lots of attires and poses. But mostly they were same. One box, glass, mirror and utensils with names on it. That was day one. Next day it was windmills turn.

Engineering [en-juh-neer-ing] (Online Dictionary)

Noun:

1. The art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants.

This word came into play when we got the windmills to school. Almost all were different. As if each and everyone of us had a go at the windmill with our parents helping us. Some were quite elaborate. With windmill, field, houses, transmission lines etc. but the windmill was a cardboard cut out. So didn’t count. We were asked to make a working model!!!! Our Barbie loving girl had done it again. She had a windmill with a well and Barbie posing beside the well. One of the windmills had made in India tag. There were many more engineering examples.

AJ also did a similar thing like mine. He had the windmill shaft connected to a big wheel (some house hold containers cap). This cap was connected to a small DC motor with rubber-band. One end of the motor was then connected to a bulb and the other end of both motor and bulb was open. The description he gave was the windmill will turn the big wheel, which in turn will turn the motor. This will generate electricity for the bulb and a battery to be connected to the open ends so that it gets charged. In short our teacher was quite impressed. So she asked him to demonstrate it as he claimed it to be a working model.

Reverse Engineering (Online Dictionary)

Verb :

(Used with object) to study or analyze (a device, as a microchip for computers) in order to learn details of design, construction, and operation, perhaps to produce a copy or an improved version.

He smartly took out a battery from his pocket, then simultaneously connected the battery with the open ends of the wire and blew air to the wind mill. And as he had described the windmill turned, turning the wheel then the motor and surely the bulb lit up. With loud clapping our teacher stood up. Chap got an alpha++ grade. Highest grade ever!

What happened that day was a good example of reverse engineering in a crooked way. Well because what actually happened was just the opposite of what our teacher perceived. The battery when linked with the open ends completed the circuit lighting up the bulb and turning the motor. This turned the big wheel and then the windmill. Reverse of what should have happened and so reverse engineering. We all had a good laugh after the class and for quite some time we had this definition of the word and not the actual one described about in the post. 

Laugh at Accidents

How many times in past have you met with an accident, that time was really bad, painful and the worst time ever, but now when you think about it you can’t really stop laughing. Once it so happened that a close family friend met with an accident. Till the doctor said that he is fine (which was by the way 4 hr after he was admitted to the hospital) the situation was very tense. When the doc said he is fine and sleeping the scenario changed courtesy his parents. They came up with so many anecdotes of accidents (of the same genre described above) that all of us couldn’t stop laughing. Finally the nurse had to put her foot down and kick us all out. (Yes even his parents.)

Let me tell you of one such incident. I was in 9th standard. My best friend and me had joined this basketball coaching during the summer vacations (I do miss those vacations now that I am in a job.) From 4 PM to 5:30 PM we had our basketball coaching. Then from 6 PM we had our Tuitions. (Khanna group) This used to take place in my house. It meant that we have to travel some 4 or 5 Km by bicycle in less than ½ hr. That we used to do all the time so not big deal. Now along the full stretch of route that connected the playground to my house there were many speed breaking bumps. Most of them were single bump and some space then another single bump. But there was a stretch where there was a rumble strip bump (or that’s what we used to call it. It is one of those annoying series of equidistant small bumps). What we used to do was, gain speed while coming up to this set of bumps. Jerk the bike at the 1st bump and land at the last one, and in the process reducing the pain of going over it with all the shakes that used to get amplified by the cycle. (Especially after a though workout at the basketball court). This was in a township of BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd.) Hardwar, which is very near to the Rajaji National Forest and so in summers we can see many wildlife coming to the township in search of water.

Back to the true story! One fine day we were coming back from basketball coaching and at that point (rumble strip bump) tried that stunt of ours. (It’s still a slow-motion memory of mine that happened in a split second.)

Speed increased. 1st bump came, gave the by-cycle a upward jerk, the cycle takes off in the air, (of-course I take of with it like one of those ET movies) then I see a fox running perpendicular to me and towards me. I was amused to see that creature thinking of waiting to see it for a while. All of a sudden my cycle stops moving. I look down and see that I have hit that fox while we all (fox, cycle and me) are in air. The cycle came to a stand still. But to my dismay I didn’t stop. I look down towards my cycle and it as doing a summer-salt. I on the other hand was like superman. Flying through the sky, uninterrupted! This thought did strike me and to tell the truth I was really excited. Then I saw the road coming at me with what looked like full speed. I didn’t want to break my hands. (There was a basketball match coming up) so I pull my hands back thinking of what next to do before hitting the ground.

Next what happened was something I believed happened in cartoons only. You must have see Roadrunner and Coyote. As soon as the coyote realizes that it is in air miles above the ground it falls leaving behind a puff of cloud. But till then it does all the stunts like its not in mid air. Same happened with me. It took me fraction of a nanosecond and I was on ground.

I sat down on the road cross-legged and tried to see if I have got hurt. Hands check, legs check, tummy….. It was soaked in blood. I was dead scared. But I wasn’t hurt there. Then my friend told me (to my relief that I am not dying) that it was my chin. And it was a nasty cut. The doctor latter on told me that it was adrenal rush that made that cut numb and I wish I was having the same rush when he put some 5 stitches there.

Then it was accident and now when ever I think of it I can not stop laughing. What was I thinking that I pulled my hands backward?

The mark is still there to remind me of the day…

Nostalgia

It’s been quite a time since I left the college. Here is a extract of what I wrote as I was leaving the place.

“Now when I look back to the days of ragging, classroom fights, surviving quarrels in the group, fighting with friends and then buying them cold-drink to say sorry, endless nights of staying awake and just killing time talking playing guitar and making others life hell, doing classes just because the teacher is cool and bunking as we didn’t like the teacher, parathas at the canteen, trade fair, autoexpo, doing assignments (coping them) and most of the time not doing them at all, mass bunks, exam fevers, photocopying notes, one night studies, exam day, saying “Mai nani hota pass”, viva-voice, result blues, parties for apparently no reason, silly games invented to kill time, sports, cultural fest, movies, tillu da dhaba, having crush on every other girl, playing in the rain, solving issues among the love birds, comprehensive strategies for future life, planning and re-planning what to do with life, Valentines Day, holi, rose day, chocolate day, wish we could celebrate kiss day, diwali……”

I was able to put in most of the things, at-least I thought so then, but now I felt like adding a lot more to it.
Well when I saw this I feel like reliving those days again. And then I get a question “why do we grow up?”