AshTalksHobbies

Yes, this can be a hobby! Some people, like my mom, just love visiting zoos. She has gone to the zoo in Delhi, Chennai, Nainital, Hyderabad and Trivandrum. We happen to live near the Vandalur zoo in Chennai. We’ve been here quite often. Here are some pics from Vandalur zoo. Taking young children to zoos is a good idea to enable them to see a variety of animals. The tiger temple in Thailand is famous, too. One does feel sad to see animals outside their habitat and living in bad conditions and in cages in circuses and commercial display like the Dolphin City that once existed in Chennai. All four dolphins apparently died since they were not in a conducive environment. Most zoos, however, are well equipped with facilities and staff who are well-trained zoologists with a good knowledge of animal psychology. They have veterinary doctors affiliated with them to help the animals. Most animals do not breed well in captivity, but it is a joy to behold tiger cubs or other ...

I would say yoga is a way of life and more than a hobby, but I’m including it here as a form of exercise for those looking to modify their lifestyles. When I lived in Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai, for a brief while in 2011 or so, I had a lady come home and teach my mom and me yoga. It was with slow movements.  In 2013, I joined Bharat Thakur’s yoga classes in Indira Nagar, Bangalore, and my perception of yoga underwent a drastic change. It was so aerobic and there was so much movement. I lost inches quickly and also used to perspire a great deal during the sessions. I later did yoga with 136.1 yoga studio in Indira Nagar, which has since shut down. These sessions were slower, but not as slow as the ones I did in Tiruvanmiyur. It was hatha yoga. In 2015, I signed up for classes in a 1000 yoga in Brookefield, Bangalore, and the sessions were similar to the ones I’d experienced in 136.1. But by then I was older and I felt the slow pace of yoga was more suited for my body. It helped me ...

There are certain kinds of people who just can’t be content with the humdrum of everyday life. They seek out adventure and are daredevils. These are the people who bungee jump, paraglide and take part in X-treme sports. My earlier post on U is for Underwater Pursuits   covered some of these, but today, I will continue with those that can be done on land and in air, too. Here’s a link that discusses adventure sports in India.  Although I wouldn’t really call myself a daredevil, I have done parasailing twice ( Once in Thailand and once in Ibiza), rappelling( in Mahabalipuram, Chennai) , trekking ( in Munnar), hot-air ballooning in Corbett and caving in Araku Valley, Vishakhapatnam. The rappelling in Mahabalipuram was at Silversands resort and was a day trip from Cognizant where I was working then. We had to scale a tall outcrop of rock, which was almost vertical. We had to hold on to small ledges that were carved into the rock, and we were also secured by a rope i...

Who doesn’t like watching the telly, Netflix, Amazon Prime or any of the other streaming platforms? It’s a popular pastime, especially now during the lockdown. People always called the TV the idiot box, but over time, the quality of the shows have improved dramatically and there is content for every kind of sensibility out there. I’m not an inveterate TV watcher, but my mom simply cannot do without the TV to de-stress. Her favourite shows, as are mine, include Two Broke Girls, Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory, Superstore and other comedies. On Netflix, I’ve enjoyed Sacred Games, Atypical, Sex Education, and other shows. On Amazon Prime, I’ve mostly watched movies. I’ve also watched a couple of Man vs. wild shows featuring our PM and another starring Rajnikanth. There is a show for every kind of mood and every kind of person. I don’t consume much news on TV and rely on online publications to get my news. My dad watches Christiane Amanpour’s show and also a lot of ...

I’ve already touched upon gardening as a hobby in my post G is for gardening . But I have dedicated a special post for vegetable gardens here. Every adult should consume at least 300 gm of vegetables daily. In times such as these, you might not be able to get a good supply of fresh vegetables. The vegetables might have been plucked many days earlier and might contain chemicals and pesticides. Growing your own vegetable garden is a wonderful way to have steady access to fresh, organic vegetables free from pesticides. You have total control of the soil, water, manure and nutrients you use for your little kitchen garden. Here's a picture of my dad tending to his kitchen garden. A beginner can grow beans, ladies finger, lime, curry leaves, brinjal, tomato, cucumber, greens of various types, etc in a kitchen garden. Good soil is needed and many of these varieties can be planted as seeds. Curry leaves are an important part of the garden as they contain useful medicina...

There are a whole bunch of activities that can be done underwater, starting with scuba diving and snorkeling. I haven’t done either although I had the opportunity to do it on my trip to Ibiza in 2012. Some of my friends who accompanied me on the trip to Ibiza did take part in scuba diving, but I decided to give it a miss. I did take part in parasailing though in Ibiza and other adventure sports in other countries.    My friend who came on the Ibiza trip with me used to do scuba diving in Africa, too. She has done a course and obtained a certificate in scuba diving. She enjoyed it immensely, but it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Another friend has learned scuba diving in the Andamans. As the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara shows us, it gives some people a unique experience to enjoy marine life in its habitat. Here's a picture of the Mediterranean sea that I took on my trip while seated on a speedboat with my friends.  Even on my trip to Thailand, when I went pa...

I don’t recall which movie it was that featured a group of girls recording a message for their future selves in 2050 and burying it in a box in a vacant plot of land. It was their ‘time capsule’. Was the movie the Britney Spears’-starrer ‘Crossroads’? This concept has been featured in several Hollywood movies, none of which I can recall at the moment. But I think it’s something we must explore, especially if we are keen on collecting memorabilia and creating memories. It would be a great activity for students in school to perform.  Here’s  a link that explains more about what you can put in a time capsule and how to go about it.   In my post, ‘ L is for letter writing, ’ I’d explored the idea of creating an email account for your newborn (if you are a parent) and sending emails to your baby for years and years and then giving your child the access to the account when he /she becomes an adult. That, too, is a kind of time capsule. How about leaving video me...

I’ve already done a post on R is for Reading , but I’m dedicating a post to science fiction since I feel it deserves one. I loved E.T and ‘Back to the Future’ as a child. I also enjoyed Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton back in the 90s when I was in high school. I’ve watched the movie, too, numerous times over the years. The movie has spun off sequels, too. One of the earliest science fiction writers was H.G. Wells who wrote The Time Machine. Some best-selling science fiction writers include Michael Crichton and some books of Dean Koontz. I read a lot of Michael Crichton in high school. My mom’s first science fiction novel was ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley. She was 18 when she read it. In fact, even my English teacher from high school had asked us to read this book along with 1984 by George Orwell when we were in Class 10. Recently, my mom read Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy. The same author’s ‘Recursion’ is also doing well. Many of the science fiction stories ...

I guess the first books I remember reading are the Ladybird series of books. But I can’t remember which ones. What I do remember clearly is that my mom joined a library back in the 80s and brought home my first Enid Blyton and my first Archie comic when I was in Class 4. I was hooked to Enid Blytons after that and also added Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drews, Trixie Beldens, Archies, Tintins, Asterix comics to the list. I moved on to the photoromance series before I was even a teen! That’s why childhood seems like such a magical time for me. I inhabited the world of Darrel Rivers and the five find-outers and escaped to the enchanted woods, too, whenever I wanted to. In my teens, I read a lot of Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Ken Follet, Arthur Hailey, Robin Cook, Michael Crichton etc.  In my twenties and thirties, I read mostly chick lit like Lauren Weisenberger and Candace Bushnell, interspersed with the odd literary classic. When I turned forty, I started taking my read...

For some, participating in quizzes or watching them on TV/online is a hobby—and a good hobby that increases their General Knowledge. I remember taking part in quizzes back in classes 7 and 8 when I was a student in a convent in suburban West Bengal. A group of four of us (if I remember right) from our school went for a quiz conducted by the famous Derek ‘O Brien. We were awarded a copy of the Pear’s cyclopedia of that year for our performance. I still remember one of the questions. We were asked to provide the spelling of supercilious! Some popular quiz competitions for school children include The Cadbury's Bournvita Quiz competition, which was marked by the publication of a Q&A book every year. I used to watch Siddharta Basu on Mastermind India quizzes when we moved to Chennai. It was a real coincidence that I went to college for a year later with his niece! The quiz format became a huge hit with every household in India through KBC or 'Kaun Banega Cror...

Most sensitive souls love poetry as do I. I’m not trained in poetry, but my former colleague from Ogilvy had studied poetry in the US and graduated in the subject. There was a time when poems had a rigid structure, but over the decades, they have become more free-flowing and convey a spontaneous outpouring of emotions. Today, insta poets, such as Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav have a huge following. I’ve read Rupi Kaur’s ‘The sun and its flowers’ and ‘Milk and Honey’. I’ve also read Lang Leav’s ‘The Universe of Us’. I enjoyed them in parts. A friend of mine loves Mary Oliver’s poems. I own and have read Mary Oliver’s ‘A poetry handbook,’ which is a slim volume that explains basic terms in poetry. I’ve also read Sharanya Manivannan’s ‘The altar of an only world.’ I enjoyed the book for its rich imagery, creative use of vocabulary, and sheer sense of poetry it conveyed. I’ve enjoyed Rilke’s poetry in 2014. ‘The Essential Rumi’ with a translation by Coleman Barks was another book on po...

What better time than the lockdown to pursue an online course? I have done three courses on LinkedIn so far during this period, but I would love to do more courses on other platforms as well. LinkedIn enables you to download a certificate and also add it as a skill on your LinkedIn profile, once you complete the course. Now, so many reputed universities and Ivy League colleges are offering free courses online. Have you checked out https://online-learning.harvard.edu/ ? Udemy is offering courses starting from Rs. 420 for Shuttl users. Instapoet Rupi Kaur conducted a live writing workshop online earlier this year. BYJU’s, Unacademy, Vendantu and Coursera are having special offers and limited free access to their learning material. There is no better time than the present to upskill. Learning is a lifelong process. The half-life of an engineering education today is only three years, so it becomes crucial to keep learning after graduation or post-graduation. It is best n...

People have collected newspaper clippings over the years and stuck them onto their scrapbooks. My dad cuts out a newspaper clipping, of say, a book review, and keeps it inside the book in question. My dad tells me an anecdote of the time he was a student in IIT and one of the boys he met during an inter-university student leader’s conference had a huge collection of newspaper clippings on Kamaraj. The boy had collected news clippings of every news item pertaining to the Tamil political leader and arranged them chronologically in his scrapbook. Others collect pictures of strange UFO sightings, criminal cases covered in the media, favourite cooking recipes, pictures of touristy places and music festivals. I’ve not been in the habit of collecting newspaper clippings, and now with print editions rapidly folding up, it doesn’t seem like a good time to start. I just add sites I want to go through later to my Bookmarks. These days, people do online scrapbooking. I’m plann...

Music has been a hobby for some and a passion for others. I just listen to music. I haven’t learned how to sing. But I still feel that my life would be bland and empty without music. There is a song for every mood, every high and every low. Sensitive people are more dependent on music. The movie ‘Sound of Music’ highlights the importance of music in one’s life. I loved the songs in that movie as a child and can listen to them even now. For me, music makes my world go round. There was a period in my late thirties when I had completely stopped listening to music. And those years were terrible. I listen to a lot of pop. My teenage music idol was Madonna. An all –time favourite band has been ABBA. These days I like Camilla Cabello, Billie Eilish and others. I used to listen to a lot of Demi Lovato, Imagine Dragons, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus in 2014 or so. In 2006, I listened to Missy Elliot, The Pussycat Dolls, Nelly Furtado, Evanescence and others. In the late 90s, I listene...

Writing letters is that wonderful way of communicating with people that the xennials believed in. The generations following that might stick to Instant Messaging, Skyping or ‘House Party’ing, but there is a thing or two to be learned from the boomers and the 80’s and 90’s kids. Today, letter writing can be considered a hobby. A xennial myself, I loved writing letters. I’ve written several on inland letters to my late maternal grandmother. I’ve also sent letters on aerogrammes to friends living abroad. Letter writing is probably a lost art today, but it is slowly finding favour with the youth, even if only for them to experience a different time. In fact, today an article about India Post coming to the rescue even in times of COVID-19 caught my attention, but I was unable to open the link, thanks to some Internet issue. And therein lies the charm of snail mail. It gets to its destination, even if after ages. A few months back, I bought fancy letter paper from Amazon. I could f...

Everyone’s a closet singer these days, and with apps like Smule and Starmaker, they are all coming out of the closet! I came across the Smule app around four years ago when one of my Facebook friends posted a video of it. I shared it with my uncle, who fell in love with the app and has made a gazillion videos on it. He has sung numerous Hindi and English numbers on Smule and shared them with family, friends and colleagues. Recently, he started a YouTube channel featuring his songs. You can check it out here .   He has lately taken to using vidtrim and uploading cool videos to go with the songs. I’ve been to a karaoke bar only once as far as can remember. It was to ‘Connie’s’ in Bangalore with my friends. I sang (or brayed) ‘La Isla Bonita’ and one other Madonna number( I think it was ‘True Blue’). It was quite an exhilarating experience. I had to summon my courage to go sing in public since singing is not my forte, and the people who frequent karaoke bars sing like...

One can collect different things as a hobby. People interested in fashion can collect jewelry. One advantage of collecting jewelry is that you can wear your jewelry and always look well turned out. My mom has always loved baubles. She has bought beautiful artificial jewelry, and I remember seeing boxes and boxes of costume jewelry all over the house as a child. The boxes multiplied over the years. As she got older, she preferred gold jewelry as she considered it an investment. I’m not too particular about the kind of jewelry I wear, except that it needs to be made of surgical steel since I’m allergic to most artificial jewelry. My mom’s collection includes semi-precious stones, silver jewelry, oxidized silver, beaded jewelry, plastic jewelry and even wooden jewelry. Some of the semi-precious stones in her collection include topaz, tiger eye, Indian Jade, lapiz lazuli, malacite, coral, rubies, moonstone, pearl etc. A couple of my primary school friends have taken to ma...

Yes! Insect collecting is a hobby. People do collect insects and preserve them in chemical solutions. A former colleague and friend from Hewlett-Packard used to do it. She was even featured in 'The Hindu' for her unusual hobby. She said her parents always told her stories of insects while she grew up, so she did not consider them icky or creepy. Now, I’ve got arachnophobia that’s been passed down from my maternal grandmother, so the thought of collecting any insect gives me the heebie-jeebies. I do like ladybirds and butterflies although I don’t really want to collect them. Here is an article on ‘How to start a proper insect collection’ from the Internet in case you want to explore your options. If you enter ‘insect collecting supplies' on Amazon, it throws up a list of supplies like ‘insect collecting net’ ‘insect display case’ etc. Maybe once we are rid of COVID -19, you can look it up.  Children interested in science can do it as a school project for t...

  Yes, this( horseriding) is a hobby, too, albeit for the rich and famous.    Tourists visiting hill stations can go horseback riding with guides leading the way. Children can ride small ponies in beaches, as I have done as a child.  The last time I sat on a pony was when I was about ten years old. At least that’s the last time that comes to mind. Here’s a picture of me with a pony in Kashmir. My parents and I were tourists visiting J&K in the 80s. A simple Google search throws up a list of results for horse riding schools in Chennai alone. Talking of horses, the scene from the movie Godfather comes to mind, when a beloved racehorse Khartoum is found dead and its head severed on the bed as a threat from Marlon Brando’s character. A lot of ‘Westerns’ in Hollywood couldn’t have been made without horses. More recently, the film ‘The War Horse’ was made.   In Indian movies, the heroine on horseback or riding a horsedrawn carriage ( li...

Gardening is a great hobby for the youth and the aged alike. My cousin who is about 19- 20 years old has a green thumb and has a collection of over 120 plants in his house. He is on Instagram as https://www.instagram.com/theleafiestboy/ My dad, too, has tended to his little garden in our backyard and to the pots in our balcony for the last five years.  He has raised 31 types of plants in our small garden, which includes evergreen, medicinal, flowering and house plants as well. My dad bought some of these plants from a nearby nursery and watered them and gave them fertilisers. Unfortunately, there are natural calamities like droughts, floods, cyclones etc, which can affect the plants.  So a gardener has to toil hard to maintain a garden. My dad says gardening teaches a person the virtues of patience and gives them an appreciation of nature. He says one has to understand seasons, weather, light and shade, the water table, soil conditions, air quality, composting, etc b...