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...

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...

  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...

Wikipedia says, “Fan fiction or fanfiction is a type of fictional text written by fans of any work of fiction where the author uses established characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from an original creator as a basis for their writing.” Although in most cases, writing fanfiction is more than a hobby, there are a few authors for whom it remains a hobby.  Harry Potter has spawned a lot of fan fiction. ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ comes to mind. Quoting again from Wikipedia, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a 2016 British two-part play written by Jack Thorne based on an original story by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Thorne. Previews of the play began at the Palace Theatre, London on 7 June 2016, and it premiered on 30 July 2016.” I remember reading terrible reviews of this book long back, but since I haven’t read it myself, I can’t really say what it is like. Sherlock Holmes has also attracted legions of fans who continue to pen adventures i...

Although I can barely thread a needle, there are several people all over the world who turn to embroidery as a hobby that gives them peace and also some income. Many run their businesses on Facebook pages using Facebook Marketplace or on Etsy. My mom has always been good at embroidery and so has my maternal grandma. Some people just seem to have a knack for it and pick it up easily. My mom considers embroidery a stress-buster. She says she always feels good after doing embroidery since she feels creative and fulfilled. I found that it added to my stress. We had SUPW as a subject in one of the schools I attended, but since I was so bad at it, I dreaded it. My mom says every country has different types of embroidery, and, in India, every state has some speciality. In Bengal, they specialize in Kantha stitch. My mom has a lovely Kantha work saree. Kashmiri embroidery is colourful and elegant. Hand embroidery is considered more valuable than machine embroidery. My mom has done stem s...

I think I was first introduced to darts back when I lived in a compound in suburban West Bengal. I must have been a little over ten years old. I haven’t played darts much, but I know of people who are interested in darts. One of my neighbours here has a dartboard outside his house. It is a solo sport that one can indulge in even in their home. It is a favourite pub game in the UK, and it also played by people of all ages. A dartboard requires very little space and everyone in the family can play it and conduct competitions, too. Those who cannot go outdoors would find d arts a good hobby to pursue.  It would help improve one’s aim and help steady the hand. I suppose surgeons would do well to practice darts. My mom has played darts and she feels it is a simple game, probably similar to rifle shooting. One needs to calculate the distance and aim properly. The dart travels just like a bullet, she says, although she has never done rifle shooting or held a gun. She says she...