Mental Excursions

  We, the aqua magicians! Remember the week before last I ranted about the deadly humidity and many of you totally understood what I was complaining about? Perhaps our collective prayers moved the powers that be and the next day as we were driving up to Delhi for a couple of days to do some long-pending work, it started to rain on the way. It rained and rained in what maybe is the proverbial cats and dogs fashion, so much so that the visibility got very poor and I could enjoy neither a nap nor my knitting. My attention was on the road ahead trying to see what the driver could ram into View through the windshield    even in that very little traffic on the expressway.  I     was nearly as scared as I generally am while going  in the fog when I cannot see beyond a metre on the road.    Yet when the friends we met said, “You brought rain  and respite from the heat and humidity,” I beamed  and puffed up with misplaced pride as if ...

  Who is afraid of the third wave? If one has 20 news channels available on TV network and on an average they dish out Covid-19 news, views, debates or other issues related to the pandemic three hours a day, simple logic says (even with channel-surfing), the viewers have absorbed nearly as much information about the pandemic during the two waves in the last approximately 500 days as the experts speaking on the issue know. Not only that, those sitting in front of the TV also have thousands of anecdotes and so-and-so-was-telling-me-this-case stories to add to their already flooded storehouse of information. When it all began, scared about my and my dear ones’ existence, I had only one opportunity to ask an expert how the virus was going to behave. This was around this time last year. Patiently, Dr Sunanda Gaur, MD, Director of Clinical Research Center, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, NJ said, “C -19 is a novel virus though its other cousin Coronas have existed. This ...

  Kaale megha, paani de! (Give us water, O black clouds!) Is it global warming? Is the earth’s atmosphere changing as our planet ages? Is it the effect of the pandemic? Or is it simply our slowly-lowering capacity to withstand cyclic weather changes as the pages on the calendar change with the months flying by? Whatever the weather experts say the answer is, summers are slowly becoming more and more unbearable not only for me, but also for most others if their mutterings and mumblings about the heat and worse, humidity  are anything to go  by.   Just a few months ago I shared with you that I prefer the winters https://anupamaexcursions.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-it-already-goodbye-winter.html because summers are turning crueler in not only our country but also the rest of the world.     Consider the cold climes where traditionally people never needed air-conditioners like Russia, Canada, and the seas around the North Pole. Now they witness  fa...

  College in Corona times! Let me start with a disclaimer. Online education is very good, in fact in these Covid times of isolation and distancing, it is the only way learning is continuing. I also totally agree with people who say:   Online learning is empowering , because it provides ‘standardized’ learning to students at the place wherever they are.  The costs are lower because it saves up on food and residence, fuel and transport and for the educational institutions - real estate.    E-learners are supposed to have better job prospects because companies and corporate offices prefer to employ people who are familiar with technology. Please recall that online or e-learning, also called distance learning or remote learning, is different from distance education or correspondence courses run by the universities for outstation or working students desirous of following their courses. In that method course material is sent to you by mail and barring the o...