Remembrance of things past: School ends, 30 years ago

In cyberspace, we have been marking the passing of thirty years since we completed high school. Yes, it was back in 1981. In a small town, Neyveli. A town nearly as magical as Macondo in One hundred years of solitude.

In the culture then, I know not how things are now, there wasn't any formal occasion to note the last days of school. Nothing structured, I mean. All of a sudden the exams were over, and that was it.

I remember being confused--because it was the first time in my life that I didn't know how life was going to be when the summer break, or "annual vacation" as it was called, ended.  Up until then it was easy--roam around aimlessly and simply waste time. Eat quite a few mangoes. Care not about the hot Sun, despite all the yelling from parents and grandparents. And, as one who simply loved going to classes, I missed that structured learning, but knew that the soon I would head back to that known place.

But, this time it was all brand new. All I knew was that I would report as a student at a college. And it was going to be at a new place. With strangers.

Well, thirty years later, after meeting a lot more strangers in life, we have been reconnecting with those old mates.  Our faces are barely recognizable anymore--some have changed a lot more than others.  Out of the 120 or so students in the graduating class, we have connected with 40, and four are already dead. And perhaps we have lost more?

We have been sharing memories of teachers, good and bad. Many of the teachers are now long gone. YouTube came to my rescue with "To sir, with love" as the music of the evening as I thought about my teachers.. Of course, we didn't have any male teacher a tenth as good looking as Sidney Poitier is in this movie. Heck, not a millionth even :)  But then, well, he is Poitier, and it is not fair to compare any normal person with Poitier!  But, we did have a few teachers who really cared, as much as Thackeray did. And they were not "sir" but "miss" ... I suppose it is then "to miss, with love"



Natalie Merchant did a wonderful cover of this song--can't find a decent audio/video version of hers on YouTube.  But, there is one that is good enough--with Michael Stipe of REM

It is summer ... finally!!!

Summer officially--astronomically--began this morning.  (editor: here is a depressing thought: from now on days will get shorter!)

The summer solstice is a result of the Earth's north-south axis being tilted 23.5 degrees relative to the sun. The tilt causes different amounts of sunlight to reach different regions of the planet.

Today the North Pole is tipped closer to the sun than on any other day of 2010. The opposite holds true for the Southern Hemisphere, for which today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

Growing up in the southern part of India, I was familiar with only three seasons: hot, hotter, and hottest!  Of course, I am kidding; there was only one season--HOT :)

But, as a kid, I cared for nothing, as all kids are (and ought to be?)  Life was only in terms of school days versus holidays.  And holidays meant doing nothing, or climbing up mango and tamarind trees, or biking all over the place, or playing cricket, or fighting with my brother while doing any of the previously listed activities ... maybe the age difference was why I never fought that much with my sister? ...

It was a near magical place where I grew up, and I thank all the lucky stars for that.  It was my own Macondo.  Neyveli will always be my true home in my heart.  It will be awesome to have my ashes scattered in Neyveli--well, after I die, of course!  Perhaps under my favorite mango tree in the yard.

BP oil spill, and One Hundred Years of Solitude

Yes, there is a connection between the horrible oil spill and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's phenomenal work.  What is the connection, you ask?

Macondo is the magical town where the Buendia family lives, and dies.  Oddly enough, the area where BP's rig was located was called Macondo:

The Macondo Prospect is an oil and gas prospect in the Gulf of Mexico which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April 2010 which led to a major oil spill in the region.

Corporations give projects strange names, and this happened to be one of them. Remember the names that Enron had for its projects, such as Fatboy, Jedi, Braveheart, ...?

Ok, back to Macondo in Marquez's creation:

The novel chronicles the seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of Macondo. The family patriarch and founder of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and his wife (and first cousin), Úrsula, leave their home in Riohacha, Colombia in hopes of finding a new home. One night on their journey while camping on the banks of a river, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo. Upon awakening, José Arcadio Buendía decides to found this city on the site of their campground. After wandering aimlessly in the jungle for many days, the founding of Macondo can be seen as the founding of Utopia^[6]José Arcadio Buendía believes it to be surrounded by water, and from this 'island' he invents the world according to him, naming things at will^[7]. After its establishment, Macondo soon becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events. All the events revolve around the many generations of the Buendía family, who are either unable or unwilling to escape periodic, mostly self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, Macondo is destroyed by a terrible hurricane, which symbolizes the cyclical turmoil inherent in Macondo.

Well, the hurricane season has begun in the real world Macondo ...
The series of events, and the names that BP had for each of the failed maneuvers, like "tophat", will be funny and comical if only it were not so awfully tragic.

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If Marquez' Macondo story was one hundred years of solitude, then how long will this BP Macondo story run?  It might very well go past the latest August deadline--the gushing well might not be capped until December!
But, wait:

The ultimate worst-case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged, said Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields who previously worked for Unocal Corp. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade, he said in a telephone interview.