Space, The Final Frontier .... errr ... Resting Place

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It’s good to learn a new odd thing every now and then. Today I learnt about “Space Burial”. Space burial refers to exactly what its literal meaning is. The cremated remains are carried out to the outer space into the orbit of earth, or other planetary system or maybe into the deep space.

But don’t worry, these won’t be scattered into the space to add up to the space debris but they stay sealed within their space vehicle till it reaches its final extra terrestrial destination. More information are available in the wiki site wiki/Space_burial

Private companies such as Celestis, Inc. and Elysium Space offer space burial services. I have found out that the cost starts from around $2000, which is actually quite a small price to pay for being able to flirt with the stars. This is an option, I would not mind considering when time comes for my final destination.

The website of Celestis celestis.com declared that there are two missions scheduled for this year. One can take the advantage of either The Tribute Flight, scheduled for launch on November 5, 2015 from New Mexico's Spaceport America, or The Heritage Flight, scheduled for launch in the 4th quarter of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Elysium Space elysiumspace.com provides three space burial service options. The plans are “Shooting star memorial” for remaining in the earth’s orbit, “Lunar memorial” to remain in the moon’s surface and “Milky way memorial” to travel to the deep space.

 Interestingly one of the first person to be buried in the space happens to be Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek. I found this quite symbolic. Following are some statistics, sourced from wiki site, about the missions undertaken till date.

One of Those Afternoons

Ashutosh, Santosh and Arijit were not established writers but dreamt to be one since their college days. During the good old days in Kolkata, they used to spend hours in the college street coffee shop arguing. They have now known each other long enough to understand one another and are at peace with their agreement to disagree. Not always though!

  Sometime they would find themselves on the brink of publishing their first novel after striking a fantastic plot or encourage one of them to apply for the position of an editor of a leading newspaper. But once out of that place, money and relationship took precedence over writing their journalistic dream always got pushed to the back-burner. After so many long years things haven't changed much in this respect except for the fact that now they have access to portals for publishing their thoughts.

The coffee house in the college street is famous as a breeding ground of intellectuals and artists, while at the same time it engulfed many a prospective career through never-ending debates and impractical ideas. The irony of that place, they once debated was that all the socialists minds argued within an environment, which could be best defined as a reminiscence of the British Raj of India. 

The very idea of drinking coffee, served particularly by waiters dressed in a uniform designed to evoke the memories of the orderlies from the British era is so foreign they contemplated the other afternoon.

 By sheer luck they landed up in the same city and were thrilled to find long lost friends in an alien land. Old habits die hard and this trio too caught up after work, once every week to discuss, debate and argue over steaming cups of coffee. After all the weekend debates over hard liquors doesn't have the same zing as these sessions.

Arijit started excitedly before they could settle in, “With the freedom of press enslaved by the advertisers and sponsors, is still the pen mightier than the sword?” 

 He seemed to feel threatened this afternoon by the bias in the media and the eluding truth. Moreover with the social media being evolving as the parallel media, the audiences are bombarded with photographs, videos and statistics which are often manipulated. Everyone can put forward their views and opinions to the public, which is an advantage but there are no one trustworthy to control that.

  "Unless you are aligned to the popular or the powerful your post will never matter, no matter how excellent your views and analysis may be. On the other hand they will keep flooding the scene with more and more trash." He rest his case for others to react. It was now a bit clear that his blog was not getting footfalls, eyeballs or as they call it page views causing frustration and anger towards the media.

"No one has invented a condom for the pen yet to put a cap on the productivity of all those trash" said Santosh quoting  Khuswant Singh trying to pacify his friend. 

 “Well the pen has a cap, if one wishes to put a cap on the flow of his rubbish”, Arijit later argued, not willing to give in. “There is still a lot of optimism left in this world”, Ashutosh chipped in for the first time that evening.  “After all, the pencils always last longer than the eraser” he concluded.

 “One should not undermine the power of a humble pencil when it comes to symbolism”, said Santosh as the discussion drifted along. He quoted the thoughtful remark Mother Teresa's once made to induce some serenity.

  “I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more.”

They were touched by this and continued with their discussions on other topics.It was soon time to depart and one of them said, “I thought of telling you guys a interesting story about the broken pencil... but it was pointless.” they giggled and parted ways for another week.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Why Give Night A Bad Name ....

Night, you are so beautiful, quiet, serene and peaceful

I can spend a lifetime gazing at your stars looking for the departed souls

When your moon is in all its glory and stars keep winking for attention

Lover gets moonstruck, strong becomes romantic and even the mighty turns emotional

and the poet sits alone tipsy, while tired farmer sleeps dreaming of a bright new day

Why they do wrong things during nights? Why did they give you a bad name?

Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Tel - Ecommunication & Speed

The Banerjees are a happy family of four. The parents and the brothers and sisters, all busy with their daily chores.

While the younger ones are in their teens and full of excitement, the parents are having are going through what everybody calls, a midlife crisis. Nothing seems to excite them any longer.

Mrs. Banerjee has decided to start her own consultancy. She has chosen a though challenge of reviving faltering businesses by giving their trademark products a new lease of life.

Mr. Banerjee on the other hand wants to come out of his plum finance job and dive into fashion consultancy and photography.

Scene 1:
Date: 20 July 2015
Time: 9:00 AM
Place: The living room, Banerjee Residence, Kolkata, India.

Son: I am fed up with this Ipad. I have been trying to upload the bike trick from this morning and all that I can see is circles.

Daughter: Mama, He had promised that he will give me the pad after 15 minutes and now it’s more than an hour and still not giving me. I wanted to listen to that song before I go to school. There is a audition tomorrow.

Mrs B: Oh! Keep quiet both of you. If I cannot send my proposal within the next hour, I will miss the biggest chance of my life. My career will be history.

Mr. B: (trying to answer a business call and at the same time upload a power point presentation from the laptop) this internet speed is going to kill me. That’s the biggest handicap of our telecommunication industry. I had worked so hard to get the contract for designing the costumes of the participants of the music talent hunt program that’s going to start on the TV soon. I got the styles, theme, and budget all in place but if I cannot present it, what was the point in working so hard. I agree the files are big but that the nature of the game.

 Sometime later .....

Mr. Banerjee have taken the wise decision to install Airtel 4G for their home internet network as well as his smartphone. Now their work takes about the same time as it used to take but communication time and the frustration time has been wiped off the system. By 8:00 AM in the morning all family members are done with their pre-breakfast internet chores and ready to face the day.

Scene 2:
Date: 2 September 2015
Time: 8:30 AM
Place: The living room, Banerjee Residence, Kolkata, India.

Mrs. B: The breakfast is being served. Everyone hurry up.

Son: Hey Sis, do you need the pad. I am done with it. Dad, you need to see the highlight of yesterday’s exhibition match between Arsenal and Manchester U. It was superb.
Daughter: Thanks Bro! You are being too kind these days. I am suspicious.

Mr. B: Leave the pad aside. Let’s talk over the breakfast, it’s good to start the day with some great family time. It makes the stress disappear give lots of positive energy to deal with the challenges of the day.

Thanks to our new 4G connection, it has added some precious hours to each day of our life and we can enjoy this time with each other and still stay focused on our goals and dreams.

Everyone: Thanks a lot for getting us these unbelievable speed, we can do all we do so much quicker and with so much ease.

A Gambler’s supper

Given a choice, I would like to dig my four fingers into one of those delicious meals with curries, rice and other side dishes. But life doesn’t always provide choices as most of my lunch ends being sandwiches while the car being the dining room.
After today’s lunch, I thought of digging a bit into the history of this food keeping many like me up and running.

There lived a recklessly extravagant British statesman called Jon Montagu (1718 – 1792) in south east of England in the eighteenth century. He was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a historic town and civil parish on the river Stour and notorious as a gambler.

Montagu had invented this bread-enclosed convenience food known as the "sandwich", so that he would not have to leave his gaming table to take supper.

The concept is this food is wonderfully simple: a delicate finger food served between two slices of bread. People of the Mediterranean and Greece are known to have this culinary concept in practice since ancient times and Montagu is thought to have picked it up during one of his trips.

Early reference of sandwich is found in the 1760 that during the initial days they were assumed to food consumed primarily by the masculine gender during late night parties and drinking sessions.

The general public of England and rest of the world got indoctrinated with the passage of time.

For Reference: Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Solomon H. Katz, editor, William Woys Weaver, assoicate editor [Charles Scribner's Sons:New York] 2003, Volume 3 (p. 235-6)

You May Say I' am a Dreamer

I always dreamt of a home, just like in the film President (1937) “Ek bangala bane nayara, ati sundar pyara pyara, Vishwakarma ke dwara.”  Yes, dreamt and not really own a home as in my dream, but I am hopeful of fulfilling my dream pretty soon.  I always have dreamt big as they say “when you dream, dream big.”

I would like to own my dream home in a skyscaper and would like to buy myself a duplex on the 20th and 21st floor of a high rise. Just as K. L. Saigal would have sung “Itana uncha bangala ho yeh mano gagan ka tara, jis pe chadh ke indradhanush par jhulaa jhule chand humara”.

The property would have the guest room, lounge, dining, and kitchen on the first level and the 3 bedrooms on the second level and a terrace.  Each of the bedrooms would have balconies, a small dressing room, and the master bedroom would have a small study attached to it.The maid's room, however, will be semi detached.

As for the interiors, the flooring would be wooden and the doors and windows would have a mahogany brown wooden color. The walls would be painted cream and the ceiling white. The kitchen would be a spacious one with marble flooring and fitted with both chimney and exhaust (as we do use a lot of grease in our cooking). It would be fitted with GI modular (from Godrej Interio) and all the regular electronic fittings (viz, toasters, dish cleaner, grinder, juicer etc).

The living/lounging area would be fitted with a home theater and would have a lot of art work on the walls.  The stairs leading to the second level would have exquisite sculptures.

The home will be a smart home with interactive devices and gadgets and will be equipped with Godrej furniture and security systems. The interiors will be designed with a minimalist approach with lots of open spaces.

 Now, that is my dream and I believe I am going to live my dream someday, Goddess Lakshmi willing or in K. L. Saigal’s words “Bhandar hoye lachami ke haathon mei sara, paye ab jibhar ke sukh jisne bipat uthaye.”

The Dream Home I Grew Up With—and Still Dream Of

 My “dream home” has fascinated me since I was a child. As the mini me then, I would imagine a home by a river, miles away from the hustle and bustle of the city, where the only sounds would be the flowing water and the occasional bird chirping.

As I grew up, I began to fall in love with the mountains, and my idea of a dream home slowly shifted. I started dreaming of a small house perched atop a vast mountain, from where my eyes could see nothing but cliffs covered in white snow. I would picture myself sitting by the window with a cup of steaming coffee, gazing at the mountains and slowly drifting into a dreamland of my own.

Time passed, and soon my dreams wandered again—this time to the sea. I imagined living on a secluded island, watching the waves roar, feeling the cool breeze over my shoulder, sitting on the rooftop with a can of beer in hand, wondering what made ancient travelers take to the sea, and whether mermaids were ever real.

Now, at this stage of life, I find myself dreaming of a different kind of home—not in the mountains, not by a distant river, nor on a faraway island.

Now, I dream of a house not too far from the city, yet far enough to escape its constant noise. A few acres of land—not hundreds, but ten would be just fine. The outer perimeter would be lined with trees, offering both privacy and a home for my winged companions. A tree-lined driveway would lead up to my “dream house.”

At the heart of the property would stand an expansive Victorian-style two-and-a-half-storey bungalow, in all its quiet glory. Built of stone and brick, it would be designed to let nature peek in through the day—bringing with it light, air, and a sense of openness. I would want multiple bedrooms, indoor and outdoor kitchens, and large living and dining spaces. There would be terraces, balconies, and spaces that flow between open, closed, and semi-covered areas.

At the top floor would be my studio-cum-office—a place to write, paint, and meditate. The stairway would be lined with artwork and sculptures, slowly building the experience for any guest who walks down into my personal art gallery in the basement.

Behind the bungalow would be an L-shaped swimming pool with a diving board. What would make it special is an aquarium running along its sides—so that while swimming, I would have fish in their own world, quietly sharing the space. Beyond the pool, there would be a tennis court, a basketball court, and a small amphitheater for those occasional lively nights.

Along the outer edges of the property, I would have an organic farm—growing my own vegetables and fruits.

Till that dream becomes a reality, I remain content with the three-bedroom apartment I have. I would like to shape it in a way that it carries the feeling of that dream home. The bedrooms would be painted in earthy tones, while the living room would remain white, accented with classically framed artwork. One wall of the living room would be a video wall—replacing the television—interactive and responsive, bringing answers to any question at a touch.

The flooring would be a blend of parquet, marble, and carefully chosen tiles. The bathroom walls would be adorned with hand-painted ceramic tiles, with one wall opening into a large aquarium behind the bathtub. The kitchen would be designed with clean lines, built-in appliances, and seamless surfaces—comfortable in its own quiet way.

Each bedroom would carry a distinct style, with thoughtfully chosen furniture and artwork. While wooden wardrobes would be the preferred choice, the study would house a traditional storewell, complete with an electronic safe. The balconies would be designed to bring nature inward, softly lit by solar-powered lamps as the sun sets.

And in that space, I imagine closing my eyes and feeling as though I am in heaven—and when I open them, finding myself in the very same place.

The only thought that would come to my mind—

if there is paradise on the face of the earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.