The Material World Strikes back

Not too many noteworthy things happened this week. I couldn’t find a book I was looking for at the NTU library, but by sheer luck happened to come across another book that I had not been able to find many months ago. It was in the BV section instead of the BX section where it belonged, which made me realise how fundamentally fragile library systems are. It only takes one mistake for a book to become completely lost until someone serendipitously comes across it. The library could, I suppose, search the most likely places a book might be misplaced upon its being reported as missing, but I have reported many missing books in the past and not a single one of them has been found, which makes me think that such requests are simply ignored. That said, I am happy that I brought some order to the universe by returning the book I found to its proper place.

I also had fun this weekend. I had just finished doing my laundry when I discovered that the trousers I had been drying on the balcony were no longer there. Surveying the land from a height of fifteen floors, my eyes finally came across a black bundle lying on the pavement close to where the yellow cab taxi drivers usually congregate. I rushed down, but before I could make it to the bundle, I saw that another pair of trousers (in my panicked state I did not realise that I had lost more than one pair) had fallen on top of the three-metre-tall gate to the apartment complex. The process of getting them down reminded me of how I used to scale the fence to our house whenever I forgot the keys. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Southern Delhi and Other Bits and Pieces

Image
On my last day in Delhi, I managed to cross off the last few items on my sightseeing list. I began by packing my luggage, all the while congratulating myself on having remembered to ask the hotel to do my laundry in advance. That finished, I ordered an Uber to Akshardham, a massive Hindu temple east of the Yamuna River. The opening hours of the temple are not well advertised, and when I arrived by the front gate, I learned it was still closed. For a few minutes, I took pictures of the temple from afar, when suddenly an autorickshaw driver approached me. He reasoned with me that since the temple would not open until ten, I had better come with him and see other sights. I had to admit the soundness of his reasoning and gave him my next address.
Read more

India: Day 9 – Independence Day

Image
Tuesday the 15 th was Independence Day. I woke up in the morning to find a scorpion in the bathroom, whom I clobbered to death with a flip-flop. I figured that leaving it alone to go seek help might give it a chance to hide somewhere and threaten us later. I paid off my karmic debt in a few minutes by letting a trapped cicada out of the house. Having lodged itself between a shoe and the door, the insect zoomed off into the garden when I threw open the door and pushed the shoe out.
Read more

India: Days 5-8 – On a tea estate in Darjeeling

Image
I woke up a few minutes after four this morning as Sparsh began to rouse the house for our journey to the train station. Frantically but methodically, we washed ourselves and packed the last of our belongings before loading them into three cars and piling the fourteen-headed group inside them. The ride was smooth. Although I had been woken up a few times that night by the loudest thunder I had ever heard, the roads did not seem dangerously wet, and indeed, it was early enough in the morning that the lack of traffic added considerably to my feelings of safety.
Read more