A white round sweet-like substance that smells pleasant and strong to the nose shall attract definitely any child towards it. When it is lighted up, its flame also attracts the child to touch it - but its heat makes the child to retract its hand back! It is our Camphor ('Karpooram' or 'Soodum' in Tamil).
Recently there was news about an Indian-origin doctor implanting inside heart directly a miniature pacemaker, that is leadless - that too without surgery! Pacemaker is a device that stimulates heart when it fails to beat! Without heart's functioning, there is no life at all; so, this life providing device is much more important than anything else.
I had wondered in my childhood about the straight lines found on the muddy soil: it was raining the previous evening; who would have drawn them overnight! As I grew up, I understood who it is: the lines were drawn by worms, the Earthworms! (term and names: Lumbricus terrestris, Rain worm, Night-crawler, Angleworm, 'Munpulu' in Tamil). Though these brownish worms are found in rainy season, their presence in summer can also be inferred by the mud-disrupted lines on the irrigated farm grounds.
At evenings, whenever I walked on the outskirts of my hometown, I used to see small birds flying on the sky in darts here and there. I had wondered in my school days whether they are insects, bats or birds. These arrow like flying things are only birds known as Asian Palm Swifts (Cypsiurus balasiensis, 'Panaimara ulavaran' in Tamil).
In my school days, I have heard my elders tell stories about mongoose apart from that popular story, 'Riki-Tikki-Tavi.' One of such stories is here: the mongoose stole daily a hen from the hen house and left out the hen's body after eating its brain! It simply entered into the hen house burrowing down the earth next to the fence!
Mothers introduce our Moon to their children in their infancy itself: as they feed them each day with the dinner food, they point out at the serene moon. In the night's sky the moon is the sole attracting object than anything else. Each night it presents a new shape of its phases, that too at different times! It plays such for the kids, attracting them towards it :)
Whenever I get some itchy skin rashes, my mother attributed it to the bite of a bug. Wondering about what it could be, I searched for it near me; but could not find one. One day my mother pointed out to that bug: it was greyish on its back and whitish underneath; its body was segmented; it was about 6mm in length.
In my boyhood days we were cheered up by elders about elephants approaching us in the street whenever we heard its chiming bells. We rushed out to see these trained elephants with the mahout, the trainer, mounted on it. We also had heard about the stray incidents of such elephants turning aggressive suddenly, and thrashing down the mahout to death. We call these beasts as 'Madham pidditha Yanai' in Tamil; this violent nature of them though temporary is devastating to all those nearby.
Whenever I see hand lenses, I am reminded of my father using it to read fine prints - moving/focusing it towards and away. And also of my experiments with it in my boyhood days. Then I focused a lens on the house wall to get the inverted image of the windows! I tried also to make a camera with it, and a negative film of the inverted windows' image! With it I even viewed film strips on dark room wall using battery light as light source! I also used it outdoors on a piece of paper or a wisp of cotton to burn them - by sharp focusing of sun rays!
