Idle musings

One has heard of father-in-law, sister-in-law and other “in-laws”. I coin a new term today: “friend-in-law”! My wife has a friend from her working days who she has known for more than twenty years. The friend, her husband, their daughter, my wife and I visited Puducherry recently. I had half a mind not to write a blog post, since we had visited Puducherry earlier. My blog post https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-recovery-smart-phone-and-trip-to_1.html shows my impressions about Puducherry in 2012. What is the point of repeating myself? Then it struck me that I have written about Dubai thrice, the first time at https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2003/06/dubai-2003.html , then https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2008/01/dubai-and-uae.html and also at https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-nieces-dance-recital-and-dubai-again.html . My wife’s cousin spoke with me a couple of days ago. During the conversation, I spoke about the Rajgiri fort that we visited on t

Unexpectedly, I travelled to the Netherlands for a week on work recently. On the professional side it was good to see the collaboration, team work and learning in a well organized workshop. This blog post focuses on the places that two colleagues and I visited in the course of the stay. I plan to use photographs as the starting point to describe my feelings, thoughts and experiences. NOTE: I have avoided using names as much as possible.   Our Dutch colleagues did not like the fact that the onset of summer has been delayed this year. Rain and lower temperatures (around 15 degrees Celsius) have been around longer than expected. Still, my colleague and I did see pretty flowers while we went for walks in Eindhoven. The freshness and rich colour of the flowers were a treat to my eyes. My thoughts went to my wife who appreciates the beauty of flowers far more than me! I had never such a big cluster of hydrangea flowers bloom so well, seen here! Eindhoven is a city that houses 320,00

    Of late, I find myself enjoying movies from the '70s and earlier decades on streaming services.  In this phase, I watched Satyajit Ray movies, an underrated black and white Hollywood movie called "The night of the hunter" and an Italian movie, "The hand of God". I find now that "The night of the hunter" is regarded as a precursor to horror movies of a later age. It is a good thriller.     This blog post is on three other movies though, one of which is a Kannada movie that my wife and I watched in a multiplex near us.     The first movie I want to write about is "Judgement at Nuremberg". I stumbled upon this movie unexpectedly on a streaming service. For an English movie, it is  a long one lasting around three hours. It is based on the Nuremberg trials, which is discussed at https://www.britannica.com/event/Nurnberg-trials and https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judwarcr.asp#general . The brutality of Nazism is brought out in the latter link.

Recently, my wife and I visited Kolkata to take a break. We went to Shantiniketan and the Sunderban mangrove forest as well. I have been mulling over writing one of my long blog posts or using a few pictures and long captions to describe the trip. Today (05-Dec-2023), I decided that the second option is better. So here are some photographs without people and disproportionately long text to go with them as captions!  Notes: I have avoided mentioning names. The photographs are NOT in chronological order.   This sunset in the Sunderbans was a highlight of the trip. The sun and the clouds toyed with us on the horizon. Sometimes, slivers of the sun appeared, a milder shade of orange, sometimes the clouds covered it, obscuring its brilliance partially. The effect of the light on the water was superb. My photographic skills and my smartphone do not do justice to the actual light and hues of gold, pink and orange that we saw in the other pictures that I took. There is something spiritual abou