The Spinning Arrow

A Fire in the Sky

2013-04-04T21:54:15+02:00

A dreary evening.

A surprising message. When was it sent? More than twenty minutes ago!

A hasty scramble for all manner of warm clothing. A clatter of shoes leaping down four flights of stairs. A well-lit night. Feet eagerly walking up and down, and down and up. A head gazing upwards.

A look of disappointment, and a slow walk up the stairs.

A discussion on Facebook: a time and a place – an adventure! Quick – a hurried dinner.

A group of shuffling feet. A pair of cameras, a flask of peppermint tea, a bottle of water. Excited footprints.

A hike into darkness.

A slope, a hill. A sheet of ice, a mass of snow. A moon, a star. A line of craned necks.

A glimmer. And a gasp.

A flash of green! A hint of pink. A flicker, a glow, a movement, a glitter! A wave of brightness!

An awe.

A silence.

And a fire in the sky.

Northern Lights in Trondheim, Norway. Photograph by Øyvind Schei

PS: It turns out that I own a compass that actually doesn’t point North. The irony.

For those of you who didn't know... (Part II)

2013-03-12T04:24:51+01:00

…I’m in Norway.

I’m here on exchange at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU for short, which is a little bit like NTU with an extra N). I wanted to write all about going on exchange before I left, but somehow things always end up snowballing when I decide to do so before I leave: I had to cancel my tickets because of a delayed visa and then sit on packed suitcases endlessly waiting for someone from NTNU, the Danish embassy in Singapore, the Norwegian embassy in Delhi, Norway’s immigration authority, and/or Cox & Kings to tell me what was going on. One fine Friday finally found me procuring my passport, seizing my suitcases and jumble of jackets, and suddenly being seated in front of a rather advanced in-flight entertainment system with a remote control that doubled as a phone. This was soon followed by my saying things like “Well actually, it isn’t all that cold here” and then promptly catching the flu.

Oh, well. The Road goes ever on and on.

The view from my room's window. Snow and red houses!

PS: Why does time fly so fast?

XXII

2012-12-30T06:55:49+01:00

Cake!

That’s two memorable birthdays in a row. Many thanks to everyone who made them so!

PS: Life of Pi is a rather well-made movie. Go watch it in a theatre while it’s there!

Omelettes and Trees

2012-12-19T22:00:00+01:00

As it turns out, a whole year is a tad too long to be away from home for. I landed in Delhi last night (“Twenty two degrees on a winter night?!” and “Immigration officials in India are mean to foreigners”), made my way out of the airport without any incident (quite unlike last year, when I was asked for a bribe by the customs official at the Green Channel while he dipped his moustache in tea), found my sister and dad at the gate and talked non-stop to them on the way home (between mouthfulls of Dairy Milk, that is), hugged my mom at the door (who thankfully forgot to ask who brought the luggage up the four flights of stairs), and proceeded to peer around the drawing room to see if anything had changed (“Where’s the TV gone?!”).

I then spent a good bit of time pottering around the house examining everything from coffee tables to Christmas cards, opening all the cupboards in my room (“Where did those books come from?”), lamenting the lack of speakers (I’ve grown quite used to listening to loud music every day, which is a marked difference from my first year in college when I listened to practically no music for a whole semester), hunting for a Singapore-to-India plug adapter, weighing arbitrary household items with my sister’s travel luggage weighing scale (if only I had that before leaving I wouldn’t have had to hand my things over to a certain someone at the airport) till I could bear it no longer and picked up both my guitars making a prolonged arrival announcement to my neighbours by ‘testing’ my guitar amp (there’s nothing quite like the sound of a real amp), never mind the late hour. My overexcitedness refused to let me spend enough time tuning my guitar though, instead peppering me with dilemmas of the “What should I do now?” sort: Unpack? Read a book? Call someone? Watch television? Plan what to do over the next two weeks? Eat? Sing at the top of my voice?

I ended up compensating for my indecision by reading the preface of Summer Lightning (yes, I literally read books from cover to cover — no, that’s not the reason it took me a year to finish The Book Thief) and turning in for the night, to be awoken to Flipkart’s delivering Artemis Fowl and the Last Guardian at noon.

It’s great to be back home.

PS: If you’re trying to watch Youtube videos on a 512 kbps connection shared between three people, you’re gonna have a bad time.