define: rime

RIME
Pronunciation: 'rIm
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English rim, from Old English hrIm; akin to Old Norse hrIm frost
1 : FROST 1b
2 : an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward sides of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud and built out directly against the wind



According to Wikipedia, "Rime ice is a white ice that forms when the water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects. It is often seen on trees atop mountains and ridges in winter, when low-hanging clouds cause freezing fog. This fog freezes to the windward (wind-facing) side of tree branches, buildings, and any other solid object.

Rime ice is similar in appearance hoar frost but whereas rime ice is formed by vapour first condensing to liquid droplets (of fog, mist or cloud) and then attaching to surface, hoar frost is formed by direct deposition from water vapour to solid ice.

Rime ice and glaze ice are also the two types of ice that can form on the surfaces of an aircraft, if it flies though a cloud made of supercooled water liquid droplets.

Rime ice is formed also inside of freezers, and on objects taken out of freezers on humid days, hoar frost is formed on their surfaces in a while."

Having spent two long winters in cold Ames, Iowa in the late 90s, I'm quite familiar with this ice formation, but ironically learnt the word for it only today over a game of scrabble.

Salsa at Opus

Although I love latin music and dance, it's been a while since I've had a chance to go out dancing here in Bangalore. This weekend, Nali informed me about a special salsa workshop going on at Opus and we decided to check it out. Malik Roy, a visiting French instructor was hosting a special session on the Cuban variations of salsa.

The first hour was spent on learning a variety of fun lifts, jumps and tricks. In one of the tricks, the guy had to drop the girl, catch her by the neck and then pull her back up in a spring motion. For some of the girls who had just shown up and were dancing with total strangers, it must have been pretty nerve wracking to be putting their neck, quite literally on the line. All the lifts and jumps were flamboyant and a lot of fun.

The next hour was focused on the basic salsa steps with the Cuban style - the dile que no, guapea, exhibela, and the cortico.

Since I've danced merengue and salsa in the States earlier, I need to get around to finding an intermediate level class in the city where I can polish my skills.

Bheemeshwari Cauvery Fishing Camp

Last weekend, Aditya, Vengada, Ramesh and I made a trip to the Bheemeshwari fishing camp along the Cauvery river. The package was offered by the Jungle lodges resort, which is about 120 km from Bangalore (two hours away).

Jungle lodges offers two options for accommodation - tents or log cabins. We stayed in the tents, which were a bit warm since it was mid April, but spacious and well furnished.

After a quick lunch, we were taken on a short coracle ride across the river and back. The river itself is only about 100 feet wide near the camp, but is about 60 feet deep and has some treacherous whirlpools! Soon after we finished the ride, I ventured into the water for a swim and started to wade around. Suddenly, a few of the local villagers started shouting something in Kannada that I didn’t understand. I first thought they meant that the water was deep, but it was only after a few minutes that I saw that they were pointing at the other end of the river. As I squinted to look in that direction, I could see two bulbs just above the surface of the water about fifty feet away. At that point, it ceased to matter what the word for a croc was in Kannada, I just scrambled to get out of the water as soon as I could. Fortunately, our friend (whom we nicknamed Doob Doob, after the Tinkle comic character) seemed quite happy just bobbing up and down at the other end of the river.

We then went on to try fishing with the long line and maida bait used by the locals. The locals toss the rock hard maida deep into the river and then slowly pull the line in, hoping that while the little fish nibble at the maida, a larger fish would nab them, and we in turn would be quick enough to rope the big catch in. Funnily enough, I had dozens of little 10 paise coin sized guppies nibbling away at my toes while I was fishing, but couldnt catch anything. We might as well have had a better chance at tossing a rock at the watchful croc in the distance and knocking it out.

We walked further down the river, throwing flat bottomed stones like idyllic boy scouts. Aditya and Ramesh made six ripples each, with one of Ramesh's throws going almost across the river. The water was clear, the sand was soft, the pepples were round, and there were little crustacean sea shells by the sand.

Later that evening, we spent time by a campfire by the river and then playing scrabble in the tent as the night wore on. When we stepped outside the tent to fetch a wine bottle opener, we saw a few large deer gallop by our tent. The next day morning, we were woken by a monkey climbing up over the tent on its way up the tree. We quickly got ready and joined the trek organized up to the top of a nearby hill which offered a panoramic view of the river meandering around the camp.

On the way back from the trek, we drifted away from the pack to take the road less travelled up the river basin, cooling off at times with a dip in the water. We finally arrived at the elephant farm where Vengada and Ramesh took a majestic ride around the block on a large tusker. But as for me, I fell instantly in love with little Bheema, a naughty but friendly baby elephant that was running around, jostling with the mahouts.

I was wondering - have any of you been to Bheemeshwari? What has your experience been? If you are planning on making a trip, what are your plans?

A thespian dies, and Bangalore burns

Rajkumar, the Kannada thespian died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 77 last Wednesday, and the state plunged into mourning the demise of their beloved movie star. But what surprised many and shocked some were the riots that followed – buses, cars and bikes set on fire by crazed fans on the streets, all public transport systems coming to a halt, corporate offices stoned, Kanteerva stadium trashed, a state wide government supported bandh the next day, and flag toting fanatics on the street ensuring all establishments were shut down.

Devoted fans carrying Rajkumar’s picture through the streets

Several parts of Bangalore reported stories of looting and pillage. In some areas, an entire neighborhood was plundered by a mob that broke into houses, with no apparent motive. Newspapers featured various psychologists explaining the reasons for the riots, and drawing analogies to similar incidents that occured when MGR died in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. But then, its easy to dismiss the events by drawing an analogy to an Elvis dying in Memphis. This perhaps runs deeper, and maybe points to the resentment and anger of a deprived working class in a city with growing divides between the rich and the poor.

Images of arson on the Bangalore streets – cars and buses being burnt down.

On the day of the bandh, I drove around for a few hours since I was out of groceries and was trying to find an open shop somewhere. But all shops except pharmacies were closed, and some of the closed ones even had a Rajkumar poster on them – perhaps due to reverence for the star, or more probably so to keep out irreverent fans on a pillage roll. Petrol stations were shut down as well, and I saw a flag toting mob on bikes doing the rounds.

A colleague of mine recently cracked a traffic joke -

Q: “Which side of the road do you drive on in Bangalore?”

A: “Wherever there’s space left”.

But today, the city might as well have been a ghost town, with not a soul on the streets. Since shops werent open, I quickly bought some overpriced fruits from an enterprising streetside vendor who had parked his cart off 100 ft road, and then headed home to catch up with reading and surf through TV channels, all of which were playing Rajkumar movies. So we've made it through this weekend, but then questions persist. Why were there not enough policemen to ensure law and order prevailed? Why were there not backups or army reinforcements? Does the 'India shining' IT capitol need to plunge in the darkness and panic of what felt like a city under Taliban regime when a cine star dies? Does this set a precedent for things to come?

The Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music

The Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music is an annual "dusk to dawn" all night long music festival held at the Fireflies Ashram off Kanakapura road, Bangalore. It was previously known as Bhoomi Jathre.

The Fireflies festival covers a wide range of musical genres including Hindustani and Carnatic vocal and instrumental, Baul, Fusion, Western jazz and folk. The fourth annual event was held on April 8 and 9, 2006. Performers included:

1. The Choir of the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore - led by Siddhartha Kotwal
2. Vid. B.K Ananthram & Amit A Nadig - Classical Carnatic flute duet
3. Sanjay Deshpande - Hindustani Sitar
4. The Taalavadya Percussion Ensemble - Carnatic percussions
5. Prakash Sontakke - Hindustani Hawaian Guitar
6. Dr. Thomas Chandy with his group - Jazz Revival
7. Geetha Navale with her group – Esperanto
8. Oikyotaan - Baul music fusion
9. Bharat Sargam - Qawali
10. Sumati - Hindustani Vocal
11. The Raghu Dixit project - Fusion
12. Dollu Kunitha - traditional drumming
13. Lounge Piranhas - ambient-psychedelic music
    

Sadly, I didnt take my camera along. Pictures here are courtesy: Jace

We reached the fireflies ashram around 10PM and were there through the night until the last band at 7AM. Some of the early performers were the Dollu Kunitha and Jazz Revival. As the night wore on, the performances simply got better and better. The Baul contemporary folk band Oikyotaan and Bharat Sargam Quawali who performed around 3AM drove the crowd into a frenzy with their lively music. As the first rays of the returning sun pierced the grey mist of the morning sky, Sumathi Murthy's poignant voice urged those in the sleepy audience to 'jaago re'. The sunlight glinted across the lake behind the banyan tree, suddenly lending a dream like setting to the stage, and bringing a fitting end to a splendid night of fine music.

Guardian article on books and gender

Take a quick look at the list below. If the list for your gender seems to reflect your personal tastes, you might want to read this Guardian article "A tale of two genders: men choose novels of alienation, while women go for passion", about how men and women display patterns in their choices milestone books which have changed their lives.

Men's list

1 Albert Camus The Outsider

2 JD Salinger Catcher in the Rye

3 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five

4 Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Hundred Years of Solitude

5 JRR Tolkien The Hobbit

6 Joseph Heller Catch-22

7 George Orwell 1984

8 F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

9 Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

10 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

11 Vlamidir Nabokov Lolita

12 JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings

and Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment

14 Graham Greene Brighton Rock

15 Nick Hornby High Fidelity

16 James Joyce Ulysses

17 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

18 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

19 Franz Kafka Metamorphosis

20 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath

Women's list

1 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

2 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights

3 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale

4 George Eliot Middlemarch

5 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

6 Toni Morrison Beloved

7 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook

8 Joseph Heller Catch-22

9 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past

10 Jane Austen Persuasion

11 Mary Shelley Frankenstein

12 Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

13 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude

14 George Eliot The Mill on the Floss

15 Louisa May Alcott Little Women

16 Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

17 CS Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

18 Margaret Mitchell Gone With the Wind

19 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

20 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird