Thursday, May 15, 2008

Dream-a-holic

The thing about day dreaming is that it gives you loads of ideas but little time to implement them. At the outset of the longest vacation of my life so far, I have been trying to come up with ways in which I could do this vacation some justice. Some have been as boring as an internship and others have been as whacky as working under a master chef. Listed below is everything in between, not necessarily in any particular order:

1. "I love flying. Where the hell is that flying academy located?" - Long time ago when I did not understand the perils of free fall and didn't have the fear of heights, I wanted to become a pilot. With five solid months before me, I woke up one day wondering if I could get a Private Pilot's License (PPL) during this period. You first clear a couple of examinations on air technicals and aviation meteorology and an interview to get the Student Pilot License (SPL) and after that it takes about 60 flying hours and a few more exams to get the PPL. The downside, apart from instant incineration in an air crash, is that I would have to get back to books and it costs a cool 6 to 7 lakhs. In view of my strained financial resources and an equally inadequate will, I decided to drop this idea.

2. "Plastic is choking this planet! We need to do something about it" - I read somewhere a long time ago, that a city of the size of Hyderabad generates a few thousand tonnes of solid waste EVERY DAY. Some back of the envelope calculations, using flimsy estimates and optimistic projections, suggested that this heap of rotting garbage was actually a gold mine. The plastic could be recycled to churn out a host of goods and the organic waste could be converted to manure. After a couple of days, weary of my virtual environmental activism, I gave up and decided to just try and avoid plastic bags.

3. "May Guevara lead the way" - Inspired by Che, I decided to make a road trip and came up with a plan to visit an awesome collection of towns, cities and villages in South India. The itinerary included Hampi, Shravanbelagola, Dandeli, Alibagh, Raigad, Thirunalveli, Kanchipuram, Madurai, Wayanad, Cochin, Allepey etc though not in that order. I decided to march forth even if there wasn't any company. But it was the heat outside. God damned 42 degrees of blistering heat. Never mind, some other time perhaps.

Apart from these, there were a host of other things that went on my "things to do" post-it and were struck down as unceremoniously - volunteer in Africa, campaign for a political party, fight for a dying lake etc etc. So meanwhile, I am gorging mangoes and enjoying every other delight that summer brings and hoping to death that these 5 months do not vanish like a broken dream.

1 comment:

Queen of All Things said...

so what did you finally do anyway?