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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Learning new vocabulary!



The broker who represented the land we finally bought was an interesting person. He had fairly good command over English and made an earnest effort to speak in Hindi at times (more often than not he would make grammatical mistakes in Hindi), however the most fascinating aspect was the new words I learnt in his association.

During one of our trips together, we started discussing about Karunanidhi (Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) and his monogamous life. I inquired about his marital status since I had read he had more than 1 wife.
He replied “Recordically, (i.e On record) Karunanidhi has 2 wives but otherwise he has 3 wives”.

In another instance, we started talking about vast tracts of lands in and around Madurai and Virudhnagar districts that seemed fertile but were not being cultivated. He stated that majority of the lands in those districts were investment lands and were under litification (i.e litigation)

The first time we met, I inquired about the soil color of the land he represented. He replied the land has piyuuuure (pronounced  p-yoor) red soil.  I did not understand the first time, and then later I figured he wanted to accentuate on the purity of the soil.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Japanese Tsunami Disaster

As you all know, Japan has been devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and Tsunami. I hope none of our readers have been affected by this tragedy. Some of the coverage I saw on TV was heartbreaking and overwhelming at times.Giant walls of water swallowing vast tracts of lands was just too surreal.

This tragedy also brings back memories of the 'Indian Ocean Tsunami' of 2004 that killed over 200,000 people across countries in Asia and beyond. At the time, I was in Chennai on winter vacation. Although we live about 1 km away from the beach, houses on the beach side were inundated severely. This event also gave us an opportunity to do some relief work further down in Mahabalipuram area, where multiple fisherman hamlets were marooned.

We pray and hope that the situation improves in Japan as soon as possible and the country that has seen many disasters before, limps back to normalcy. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers!