Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • The Tale Of Hanuman


    Corinne’s entry on Monday got me thinking about words that were similar and yet different. I finally found one that is applicable to my life today. In fact I think it is applicable to most people who start out on repairing or refurbishing or simply just rearranging.

    The Tale of Hanuman is actually the Tail of Hanuman which legend has it grows longer and longer. This is exactly what happens when one undertakes a job that involves a major clean up. For instance a simple re-arrangement of books in a shelf or clothes in a cupboard will unearth many more related tasks such as sifting out unwanted stuff, then grappling with the hard choice of keeping it (like the book you may just want to read again or the shirt that may just fit you if you lose just half an inch)

    It all began around March 2013 when our building underwent a major overhaul of damaged beams and falling plaster. Being an old RCC structure right in the middle of the monsoon wind currents, this is the fate of several Mumbai buildings which spend months if not years enshrouded in scaffolding gunny sacking while they are being repaired. The moment the scaffolding came down, most of the residents , us included realised that there were several areas in our own homes that could do with some looking into. For us it actually began with a broken lock which had to be replaced. That simple task set off a chain of repair work . From one lock we changed eight and even changed the doors. When that was done we changed the electrical wiring and then naturally we had to paint the walls.

    Everything was going fine with painting the house till we came to the kitchen. That’s when we discovered that the parts of the ceiling were on the verge of collapse so that had to be chemically treated and repaired. This obviously threw our painting schedule out of gear and we had to spend a good amount of time re-organising things so that the painters would have work to do while the ceiling got dry.

    Then I discovered that my cookstove needed fixing as a nozzle needed to be replaced. I did what I thought was clever – taking it to my local Mr. Fix It who apparently did fix it but not to the satisfaction of the gas company mechanic who deemed it unfit and unsafe for use. So I had to re-do the job!

    I do hope the Tail of Hanuman has now stopped growing and the rest of the house refurbishment goes on smoothly……

    This is my post for Write Tribe

  • Blogging Woes

    Even though I’ve been blogging for quite a while and would technically be considered a professional blogger I find that I am still a newbie simply because I don’t understand the terminology and the technicalities involved in blogging.

    Despite several attempts at conquering the blogosphere, I don’t seem to have made much headway and the problem I was told was because I was not self hosted. That took me down a different path.

    I bought myself a domain thinking that that was the ticket. Obviously, I was wrong because buying a domain and shifting my blog to the domain only helped me to lose my identity – my blog was no longer available under its old name – something which I didn’t really bargain for. That done, I found that my old template still remained unresponsive and that buying a domain name didn’t do anything to my traffic or otherwise.

    So I connected with an Internet consultant and find that I’ve refurbished my home but don’t have the keys to it!

    But this journey has been a truly enriching one – where I discover new things every day. And as they say, life is the best teacher and it is only when one learns that one really learns. Yesterday for instance I found out what SEO ranking was and how it works – something that was eluding me all this while despite repeated explanations.

    I now have to figure out the basics of tagging, labelling, hosting platforms, meta descriptions and………..

    Well, it still seems I have a lot to learn but I’m sure I’ll eventually get there and become the master of my Blogging World!

  • Sorting things out

    Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Luckily this time it happened later than sooner.

    It’s hard to write every day, not because I don’t have anything to write about but simply because I get swamped in daily life and don’t get the time to sit down and sort my thoughts. In fact, all that I seem to be doing these days is just sorting out things.

    Ever since the scaffolding came up outside our building around two years ago, my house, and I assume that of the other residents ( going  by their harrowed expressions too),  has been in a mess! It all started with re-wiring which took all of a month and generated so much dust that it took another two months to sort that out. Then the scaffolding came down just before the rains but the rains came down bringing its own problems in its wake. Finally everything seemed to be getting sorted out and back on track when my washing machine gave way. That took almost a month to get fixed but not before we began painting the house.

    The first week went like a dream as did the second when we managed to get all the bedrooms done without a problem. It was only when we began doing the kitchen that the problems arose: first a chunk of the ceiling came off revealing some seriously rusted iron bars which had to be cleaned and polymerised. Then just as the painters were winding up for the day, we discovered that the gas stove got disconnected from the pipe and that the nozzle had to be repaired/replaced. I panicked for a moment not knowing what to do. Taking a deep breath I realised that I had two options – either to buy a new gas table top cooking stove or to get this one repaired – the deciding factors being whether to save money or go without tea, breakfast and lunch today.

    Jumping into the car with the stove, I went to my favourite shop and found out that the price difference between repair and purchase was 1: 3. My inbuilt parsimony won hands down and I turned in the stove for repairs. I only hope I’ve done the wise thing and will have to do without tea just for today!

    This is my post for Write Tribe today.

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