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My days in Germany 1980-81

During my service with BHEL in Bhopal and Bangalore, I underwent basic courses in German language which was required for deputation to Germany in 1980-81 for joint working with Siemens .  About six months back , after a gap of about 45 years, I felt like brushing up my knowledge of German so joined online course Duolingo. This reminded me of an interesting incident which took place while I was in Germany ( at Erlangen, Bavaria).   Members of our engineering team from Bangalore, who were posted, were fairly well versed in German language to manage day to day affairs. A few of engineers from Bangalore Office, who used to visit on official work for a short term (week or two) , used to be accommodated in a nearby hotel.They were knowing only engineering related German and so not well versed in conversational German.Therefore, they were advised to remember the name of the hotel and name of the street so that while returning from the office they could reach their hotel without any ...
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My tryst with Trigeminal-neuralgia (whatever it means)

  My tryst with Trigeminal-neuralgia (whatever it means) Time : somewhere in 80's  Place : Malleswaram, Bangalore I had to visit a dentist in Malleswaram. Apparently one of the molars needed a filling. After it was done I went back home, maybe after one or two days, I felt sharp pain on that side of my face where the dental filling was done. I went back to the dentist. He checked the filling job done by him and declared that it was in order.   As to the pain, he declared that it was Trigeminal-neuralgia and suggested that I visit a neurologist immediately. He also suggested that I might need Alcohol injection into my jaw which frankly terrified me. We took an auto and proceeded to consult him. I told him about the dentist's diagnosis.  He advised a brain scan and then declared that my brain was in order. But the pain was still persisting. The neurologist advised me to go to the dentist again to check my filling again. ( probably he wanted to curse the dentist b...
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HOLI MEMORY- A TALE FROM CHILDHOOD

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   ( Above picture is of Flower Fields,San Diego, clicked when we visited it in 2018) Reminiscences of Holi:  I had been planning to write about my Holi experiences since long but kept putting it off. This time I made up my mind to write about it. It was the late fifties when I was in my middle school. Place : Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh We were residing in a Railway colony which was a small world in itself. Our activities for the HOLI used to start with organising for Holika Dahan  ( Holika,  the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu  , was killed in the fire) .   There was an open place in our colony earmarked for it. A couple of days before Poornima ( Day of Holika Dahan), a Pooja was conducted at the site and initial collection of fuel ( Wood, cow dung cakes and other combustible materials) were collected and placed there. Then the task of gathering more fuel was taken over by the Bachcha Party (we) under the guidance of a few elders. We used t...
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Lost and Found - A long lost tune.

The year was 1967! I was studying in the 4th Year of Engineering ( It used to be a 5 year integrated course at that time) at Jodhpur. It was a requirement of the course that we were to spend our summer vacation time as a trainee  in any reputed engineering firm. I applied to ITI Bangalore as I had my uncle's place to stay. Duration of the training was about three months. At the ITI factory , during the lunch period of 30 minutes, instrumental version of popular film songs  were played on their PA system in the canteen as well as in the work spots. These tunes used to be  from Tamil, Kannada and many other languages.  I used to find one of the tunes quite catchy and appealing which I still remember. It was from a Tamil Movie , that much I knew. It had a notable feature that in the midway there was a change of pitch, which was a bit unusual in the Indian context.  About a fortnight back I remembered that tune again and got an urge to identify and listen to it. But...
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Bapa's posting to war torn areas near western border during Indo-Pak war in 1965

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                                              ( Pencil sketch by Anil Jagalur )  Those were the days in Sept 1965 when we were at Jodhpur....... Indo Pak war was in full swing. Jodhpur, being near to the western border and also being an Air Force base was a target for many air raids. We used to hear, while sitting in trenches dug out by us in front of our house, sounds of Anti Aircraft Guns and also number of bombs, which used to be dropped in Jodhpur (in total 192 bombs were dropped during the seventeen days' war). My father Dr D Ranga Rao, whom we siblings used to address  as Bapa, was a medical officer posted in Railway Hospital at Jodhpur in Mid 60's.We stayed in a railway quarter, which was just diagonally opposite the hospital.His posting was in outpatient and later in Mobile Dispensary ( A full bogie -hospital-on-wheels) which used to get attache...
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Premchand and my interest in Reading Hindi

 As far I can remember, it was in the middle school,that  I developed my interest in reading in Hindi. Till that time,my interest in reading in had remained confined to the textbooks. But all of a sudden I took off to general reading in Hindi. One person who created this in interest in me was Shri Omprakash ( we used to refer to him as Omi massab), who was a railway employee, was commissioned by my parents to be our  home tutor basically to teach  Hindi and arithmetic to  me and my sister  .We were a non Hindi speaking family thrown into Hindi speaking town Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. My mother,who had only a sprinkling knowledge of Hindi, took to studying Hindi in right earnest to be able to teach me. In the course of it she became well versed in it herself.    Shri Omprakash made us read Children’s section of the Hindi Newspaper “Navabharat Times”. He even made us send small entries for publication. We were thrilled the day we found ...
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MBM Golden Jubilee Meet 2018

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One of the highlights of 2018 was certainly my college reunion (Golden Jubilee of 1968 batch) at my Alma Mater( MBM Engineering College Jodhpur,Rajasthan) . A bit of sight seeing, a lot of Bonhomie with many of my classmates whom I met after 50 years, memento presentation and plenty of Gaana Bajaana and dancing! Here is a full report .....
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