Español

Spanish language has always pulled me towards itself through its rhythmic resonance. I like the unfussiness and simplicity in the language.

Spanish belongs to the category of Romance Language (uhh, its not what you would assume initially! :D). Romance here corresponds to Roman. Some of the other languages belonging to this category are Latin, French etc.

Español/ Spanish is actually much easier to learn than English. The pronunciations of English words may consume years to learn but Spanish words are spelled exactly how they sound. Hence the pronunciations are much easier to grasp.

For example the alphabet ‘u’ is always pronounced like the vowel sound in ‘moon’ and ‘suit’ and never like the one in ‘cute’ or ‘bus’.

The first few words which I learnt were ‘Hola’ which means Hello (you might have guessed it :P), ‘gracias’ which stands for Thank you (another easy one, which many are aware of), ‘Cómo está’ for How are you and a few more. They were quite easy but actually talking in Spanish is quite difficult until you a get a companion.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

The creator of the Mona Lisa painting is known by all – Leonardo Da Vinci. And Da Vinci’s rival? Creator of David? Pieta? The Last Judgment? Yeah, it’s Michelangelo, the sculptor and painter. He’s the one who is usually deprived of recognition and had to fight for it.

Pieta Pieta sculpted by Michelangelo before the age of 25 depicts Virgin Mary’s grief over her child, dead Christ. Michelangelo was granted 450 ducats for creating Pieta which is now equivalent to 30,000 pounds. As he didn’t receive the recognition for creating one of the most renowned works of art, he made sure he is recognized by inscribing his recognition on the sculpture.

David -    The symbol of heroic inspiration for Florentine citizens to develop courage & inner divine strength.

First Step Toward Fitness

There were days when I couldn’t even imagine getting up before 8 am. But now, being recently turned health conscious, my phone starts jumping out of the 6 am alarm. To initiate, I opted for the easiest technique to stay fit – a morning walk.

So, with polo t-shirt, track pants, sport shoes and a music player I begin the hard work at a park near my place. Brisk walking – that’s what I plan for, however it doesn’t really work out. Brisk walking along with the numerous park visitors is quite difficult.

Like me, I see many health conscious people – senior citizens, middle aged and young people as well. All have their method of staying fit. Some guys jog with t-shirt and shorts on. That’s so much more effective technique to stay in shape. Some people walk while swinging their hands at 180 degrees. I usually stay away from them fearing I’ll end up having a punch! Some people prefer to go for physical exercises and yoga instead of walking while some go for meditation.

Apart from the walking, exercises, yoga etc another activity that health conscious people opt for is attending the laughter club. Of course this activity is also a type of Yoga, called Hasyayoga. People, usually senior citizens, form a ring and start laughing rigorously. Although initially it is self-activated, gradually it turns out to be a natural one. A good view for me :)

I am not sure how much this little effort of morning walk will affect my health, but a slight transformation has definitely come in my life with a fresh day and bright mind.

Ambigrams – Fond of them :D

I found about this font style when I read the Angels & Demons novel written by Dan Brown, wherein the chest of a physicist was branded with ambigram of the word Illuminati. And I got so obsessed with it that I decided to learn to create one.

So, what is an ambigram? Huh, I don’t need to explain it here. Experts like Google and Wikipedia are present for that.

When I decided to learn to create ambigrams, I found how difficult it is and how much of self-learning it needs. Every word’s ambigram creation technique is unique. Experiments need to be carried out using a pen and paper. And moreover, it all depends on an idea. The moment it clicks, you’re done, whereas it might take days or even weeks for that idea to strike.

I went through really impressive ambigrams. Here are some of them:

Trip to Shri Venkateshwara Tirupati Temple, Narayanpur Pune

Having a long weekend off, my family decided to have a short trip to some sacred place outside Mumbai. And the place of worship we chose is Shri Venkateshwara Temple. It’s located near a village named Narayanpur around 45kms from Pune. It’s also called the Balaji Temple or Tirupati temple and can be regarded as a minor version of Tirupati (a much minor version). It was built by Uttara Foods, the manufacturers of Venky’s.

Image Source: team-bhp.com

So! We travelled by our car and left from home at 6.30am. From the Navi Mumbai fragments we finally reached Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Sitting at the back seat and enjoying my wafers, I was admiring the mountains, trees and bushes. At around 8am, under the not so hot sun, the cool and gentle wind was swaying away the leaves of the trees.

We reached the Tirupati Temple, Narayanpur Pune at 10am and after doing the pre-entrance tasks like parking the car, submitting our footwear, camera and camera mobile phones, we headed towards the entrance. Looking at the less crowded place, we assumed it wouldn’t take long to reach the main entrance of the temple, unlike the actual Tirupati temple. However, the time we reached at the doors of Tirupati temple, Pune i.e. 10.15am, we were told that we will be allowed only at 10.45am.

There was a separate queue for gents and ladies with the ladies queue predictably the shorter one. Devotees were mostly with their families with screaming 1 year olds or else 4-5 year olds who enjoyed playing around.

After the 30 minutes of wait, as the time arrived for the queue to move ahead, everyone got excited and the queue progressed. As we advanced, we could see the bi-colored tall doors of the temple and statues of Lord Ganesha and Lord Tirupati giving us their sacred sight. Still ahead of it were golden colored pillars and a few smaller temples where various Gods resided. We visited all these temples and prayed. Then we were granted Prasadam and lunch coupon. The Prasadam was exactly like the one which is given to the devotees of the actual Tirupati Balaji Temple. The people serving for this minor version are actually the ones who served at the actual Tirupati Balaji Temple. Hence the authenticity is intact here.

Our next destination was the Datta Temple in Narayanpur village which is 7kms from Shri Venkateshwara Temple. The simple yet beautifully built temple dragged us in its holiness by granting us a view of Lord Dattatreya.

At 12.30pm we started with our return journey. The return was rather tiresome because of the hot weather. We refreshed with regular halts during the journey. The halts were mostly at the highway and once at the food corner named Food Hub. This food corner has Mc Donalds, Papa Johns, Café Coffee Day and a few Wada Pav, Cold drinks and sandwich stalls – A good place to charge ourselves!