My Musings

Well, it was not exactly one, but there was definitely much louder applause than I have ever heard in a theatre in the United States. It was a well deserved applause at the "Great Lakes Crossing" a the end of " The Chronicles of Narnia " - the beginning of a journey to a magical land. I read about it first in Kumari's blog and how she was dissappointed that people had shown no response to the most fabulously made adaption on the Original novel by C.S. Lewis. So, we decided today to go and see for ourselves what this wonderful thing was all about. And were we Awed and surprised and pleased to the tee... We were floating in a different world while walking down the aisle of the Theatre rows. Not a single detail missed, a single character unexplained, a single dialogue without meaning. Magic weaved into ordinary lives of 4 young kids brings out the most beautifully fabricated tale of a fantasy land called Narnia... It is very difficult to hold yourself from fallin...

I have never seen the Mr. wait for a specific day this badly, as he did for Dec 22, 2005 - the day life poured into his existence in the US .. the day we got Comcast installed in our house. Life in the US is certain bloodless without internet and a speaker phone at home - say "Some people" ... The multitude of wires that bring people close together just by one click is amazing .. What I Love the most about the internet in the US is 24 hours availability . I remember all those dark lonely nights when I had to spend alone in my home during my last stay in this country - and it was only Online Radio which was my saviour. The next best thing about Internet is "Being Online" all the time.... Any Old friend coming "alive" after ages will never be missed. I have got in touch with many "out-of-sight" so "out-of-mind" people, over this little smiley messenger. And the latest craze of the world and mine - blogging. All is possible because of thi...

Happy B'day to You ... happy b'day to You .. Happy b'day dear Kochi ... Sang Rajesh, while I cut the pristine looking white Pineapple "Heart"(cake) .. with glowing candles on it and confetti all around it. On the way hung balloons and a Happy Birthday slogan. Thus was celeberated my 1st b'day after marriage, with lots of love, affection and cake on my face :D. The fun and excitement started a couple of days ago, with dinner at Bangalore's tallest restaurant "Ebony" .. Situated in the heart of the town in Barton Centre, on M.G.Road, this quaint eat-out is on the 13th floor, boasting of an exquisite cuisine that includes Parsi, Italian, Thai and much more.. You should definitely try out the Saladi per Ende (Parsi omelette) - it is simply out of the world (the price of 120/- too :P). We walked in the drizzling rain on the streets of commercial street, enjoying the weather and being satisfied with our purchase of a wonderful coat for me. Another day ...

Unfotunate are those friends of mine who got married this year and missed their "Thalai Deepavali". Deepavali/diwali(as it is called in North India), in itself is probably the brightest of all festivals.... All around lamps are light and no street is spared of crackers for the entire week.... All around you can see a haze let out by the Man vilakku(mud lamps), and of course the smog let out by the Standard Fireworks :).... The first diwali celeberated by a married couple, in Tamilnadu, is called " Talai Deepavali ". It is one of the most special occasions in the entire year. And it was the most special in our lives also... We landed at Chennai the day before Diwali, after having soaked ourselves not only in religious piligrimage, but also in the sweat (due to the sweltering heat in Madurai). A few hours later my in-laws arrived from Palakkad.... There were two huge bags of crackers waiting for all of us, and of course the sweets that amma had ordered... After a nic...

What is the recipe and place for ideal weather I can never say. While in Chennai i was always bothered to the core about the heat, profuse sweating, sultry evenings and dry, still nights.... In Bangalore, the rains had shown what it takes for nature to unleash its wrath on human beings... while the weather is pleasant, there are other things like traffic which spoil your mood... And come Winter, bangalore has become something like I have never seen before. Right from 6 in the morning, the sun is its full glory, burning on your skin - but the moment you cross a patch of shade you are shivering and wishing you were under the cosy comforts of a jacket ... Strange is the maya of nature... Far away on the other end of the world I hear that it is already snowing :) ... The best splendour of nature that I have seen was while travelling to Coutrallam (the only and infamous waterfalls in TamilNadu). We were driving through warm , breezy sunny climate when suddenly from nowhere there was a downp...

Yaaawn! ... Reading documents is the most boring job in life. Even after having spent close to half a decade in an industry that requires me to interact with the comp once every half a second ; i have not got used to reading documents on the scren. I woudl rather have a print out , sit inches away from the Mon(i)stor and read it in peace... Again after a long break, I am blogging. Not that the thought of spilling some ink(well i cannot say that exactly), on my monlogue did not cross my mind, but either i was too busy or tooooooo lazy to do so. Mornings begin as usual with Radio city listening in the bus. Today for the first time on radio, i heard the song ... "Bahon ke darmiyaan...." , and my thoughts drifted to an incident nearly a decade ago ... Me standing with my head hung down (can't say in shame, for till date i don't realize what shameful act had i done) and tears almost forming in my eyes, while mentally i was hitting the taskmaster standing in front of me.......

For some reason the Compose mode seems to be missing in this window, so can't use the fav among the ones given - Trebuchet Ms .. It is ages since i wrote here. Many reasons attributing to it, my laziness, lack of motivation to write anything, my exams (the last of which i will get rid of this saturday), and many more .... Every evening I sit in that "royal" transportation from the heavenly E-city back to "city", thousands of blogs fly through my mind - about how irritating it is to see even kids walk by your bus faster than it rolls, how i can count the number of stones by the roadside everyday (just that the exact place where I cound changes), and how I can participate in a "Yawning" competition and create a guinness Record. It is a big pain travelling in Bangalore, and especially if you are one of those most unlucky ones who have not mastered the art of sleeping in bus, you are close to dead. For a mere distance of 17 kms, I take on an average of 1 a...

Friday is a one off kind-a day. Most of the people in software industry have their own reasons to feel happy about this day - most of them concurring at the fact that the next two days are "OFF" .. In My office, girls are allowed to wear "informal" (dirty minds - stop thinking too much) clothes (as in jeans, skirts etc) only on Fridays. So, we 3 (the trio we were in Chennai) always loved to watch folks in office on a Friday. Fridays would be our longest lunch times - looking at each girl's dress, admiring/commenting it, learning what is new in fashion and wondering how ever guys could get themselves to work, when there were so many pretty girls around ... Here in b'lore, there is a certain trend that i have prominently noticed - the saree trend on Fridays... Most of the girls form gangs and decide to wear sarees ... some of the girls and sarees (not necessarily both - all the time) are gorgeous , that even I give them a third/fourth look ... Saree in itself ...

No Particular reason for not writing for long. No topics brushed my always "alive" brain ... Everyday while coming to and going away from office, i hear the radio - it plays mostly hindi and a few kannada songs. I have often noticed this. Even as the music of a song starts, I would be able to idenfity that it is a kannada song/hindi song. There is a characteristic difference in the way music is composed for south indian films and hindi. South indian - i say - because those are the ones i know. Not being a trained musician, i am not able to put my finger on what causes the difference. Maybe the instruments used, or the ragas they are based on - what i am not sure, but i have always felt that just by listening to the starting tune of the song, one can identify whether it is a hindi/ local language songs... This probably explains why many songs that A.R.Rahman composes initially for a Tamil movie don't gel into the typical hindi scenario when they are dubbed/copied... and th...

Tring! Tring! – Groan! … grumbling and mumbling I shut off the alarm clock. Just like any other day, amma turned towards me and mumbled sleepily “Koncham neram kooda paduthuko kondhe”(sleep for some more time my child!) … And as obedient (atleast in this aspect), I turned and tired to sleep, only to wake up 50 seconds later(this is also the usual)… after being tormented by horned images of my manager and suddenly alive and eating versions of my CSQA books … Well! It was just yet another day…. Bored with the daily schedule of getting ready early and rushing off to catch the bus, I decided to take a detour – enjoy some time excercising, eating amma’s delicious dosas and “trying” to study… There are some days when unknowing to yours, you just hope that the day is something different from the normal, hoping for something “Lucky” to come your way .. When such a feeling started to go through me, I realized I was reading too much of “Potter and the half bloo...

We took a day off to visit our in-laws after around 2 months, not counting the one time in between that they came to visit us ... It was the most bestest thing that could ever happen admist a busy, scurried, harried and frustrating week of work ... Mannarkkad is where this little abode of my P-in-law's is nestled..... This tiny little valley town bordered by mountains on two sides and flanked by two cute little rivers (called Puzha in malayalam) was the most pleasant sight to my eyes and we meandered through the sharp U-turns in the rounded hill called " Notta Mala " ... The first glimpse of Mannarkkad is sure to take anybody's breath away(other than Mellus of course) .... A sheer drop from the mountains brings one to this beautiful , green carpeted town-to-village kind of place .. The town extends on both sides of the highway from palakkad to Kozhikode .... The 50 ft road lined with shops of all kinds ranging from vegetables & fruits - to groceries - to cloth sho...

How many times Have I already felt this in the recent past ? Today is a fresh start - I am going to be more regular, keep a track of all work i do, learn something new everyday and prepare one chapter for the exams that I am appearing... And just within 2 days of this resolution, i come back to 'square one' - my lazy circle of my wasteland ... This fresh start has been lots of things - transfer to b'lore, shifting to a new place, changing my chair, the week begining, the month begining on a monday ... and so on ... not to forget the new water bottle that i got to office. Today is yet another fresh start - something quite bigger than the ones mentioned above. A Change of department, a new building, a new project, new faces ..... and of course so-called lots of work .... It is been a hour since i am trying to twindle my thumbs, sift thru pages of the Quality manual, but no one from the project is in ... and god knows what my work is going to be .... So much for a fresh start...

When we shifted to MIG 175 (our quarter number in Vizag), I got a new friend - a friend for life - Balaji Mama. He was Appa's colleague in Steel Plant who was newly married and was staying alone, as his wife had gone home for delivery. So, he would visit us often and thus our friendship started. Balaji mama has always had this wonderful knack of befriending young girls and being their closest buddy - he would crack so many jokes, make so much masti, play with me, discuss topics with me, teach me new things (i give him the credit of my little knowledge of the game of Chess). A Brilliant to the "Tee" is Balaji Mama... At that very young age, apart from his nature, what I loved most about Balaji Mama was the wide knowledge of books that he had , and (slyly) the wide variety of books he had, and the fact that we both were crazy fans of the indomitable gaul - ASTERIX. He had a beautifully bound collection of all the books of Asterix and he was soo proud of his collection - whi...

There is a book exhibition on in our Campus - 20% off on the books. I just came back from there - bought a book for my "Invest Savy" husband - Intelligent Investor by Richard Graham... I spent money to buy a book that speaks of how to invest money ha ha ha .... I know it is a Poooooor J .... Books have always fascinated me from a very young age, and I give the entire credit to my mother for inculcating the reading habit in me. Ever since I can think of, My mother has always made it a point that I read some comic or novel ... I have a huge collection of " Tinkle ", which I am very proud of ... I have been buying Tinkle's from the time they costed 2/- to 2.50/- to 4.00/- to 5.00/- to 7.00/- to 10.00/- .... During the same time, I would get lots of Amar Chitra Katha , Anderson's Fairy Tales and other tiny-tot stories as gifts from amma ... Rarely we would buy Champak at the Railway station .... One scene of my childhood still always hovers in front of my eyes...

I really feel very flattered to know that they are some " great " souls in this world who spare time and read my non-sensical blogs also - I owe my allegiance to " Shaila " and " Padmaja "... Yesterday I was talking to Padmaja after a long time .. it brought back lots of memories of Vizag and our college life, those careful days of 12th holidays, when we had thrashed all those wicked exam papers and jumped over the barriers of the common entrance exam EAMCET - and enjoyed our last 'few' happy days before having to shed crocodile tears on our results - and pack off our bags to enter a new world of 'responsible' engineering-to-be-graduates... Every alternate day was spent in planning new adventures, new places to visit, new hotels to ransack and new movies to watch .... Not that we did all of them ... Our most favourite haunts were the Ramakrishna beach - the best being the visit to this part of the beach below a cliff called " Silver ...

No, I am not writing about Britney Spears , not am going to discuss just how beautifully she has ' dressed ' sorry sung the song .. This is about my own doing - my "aa bail mujhe maar" classical example... I was enjoying my life, doing almost no work at all, leaving early, cooking for my ' patidev' and doing a bit of reading ... And then, this stupid thought of getting into another department got into my head. As if I did not like my life, I went in for a transfer... And I met the new Manager today, only to be scared within 5 minutes of talk with him. My new assignment is going to be a nightmare. It is 10 times worse than what I came out of just 3 months ago ... Did I need this good lord ? .... Ooops! I did it again with my own MOUTH ... Me and My Big Mouth ...

Yesterday I was on leave - a day of complete rest. Sometimes, the thing that you hate the most can be of very good help also. I Hate my Migrane headaches... I have been suffering from it for about 7 years now, with intermediate periods of respite. Each time I go to the doctor i am dismayed further by the fact that there is no permanent cure for it, one can only reduce the frequency of attacks by finding out the trigger factors(which always seem to be non-existent - before I can conclude that one particular reason is the cause for these headaches, I am struck with a series of attacks which have no remove connection to the previous reason), and trying to avoid them ... Atleast I am lucky that in this modern world of drugs, I have tablets that can prevent the fury and wrath of a terrible ache ... Aches are such strange things .. The person suffering from it, from outside looks perfectly fine, except for probably a drained look, but the intensity of this 'tsunami' can only be felt ...

Why is it that I always start off writing a blog with something in my mind and end up with something that is totally unrelated to what I wanted to pen down ? That is what happened to the "ga-ga" blog that i wrote last .... So, continuing the Radio saga again ... hopefully this time I pen down my thoughts as they are - and that they don't get corrupted into something that they are not ... Probably the only thing that i look forward to while coming to office these days is to listen to Radio City - 91 FM... every 5 minutes they keep insisting that they are b'lore's fav music station - i wonder they HAVE to be .. i mean there is no competition FM Station that they have to fear, they why this self-dabba ... For instance in chennai, we have two FM channels , Radio Mirchi and Suryan FM... So, admist their radio wave war, we got to hear some of the best catchy advertising tunes ... I was particularly fond of Radio Mirchi, this has 'nothing' to attribute to the fa...

My first association with radio was the old toota-foota Murphy radio that we had at home ... which inspite of its exterior ugliness served well and played wonderful music(whenever the radio station choose to play it) ... When I visited my grandparents in chennai, i would hate the radio, because my thatha would put it on at 5:30 in the morning and wake the whole neighbourhood up ... Those were times when the day HAD to begin with a group of singers crooning "Vandemataram" .... it would be followed by classical music by some non-existent and some existent and known musician ... Then would come the best part for my grandfather - the news ... i always admired the voices that read the news - so crisp and so much full of authority .... Radio was a part and parcel of my holidays .. it would be constantly on in the background, and no matter where in the house one was, he/she would never fail to listen to the commentator on the Radio. Radios bring back to memory an article i read once...

I think it was shakespeare who said this in the very famous in the play Romeo And Juliet ... But I am sure he would have never ever thought how much troubles lay in the very small,yet the most important attribute of a man - his/her name .. I am livid right now thinking about this very particular thing. Every Region in India has its unique own way of names. In North, runs the tradition of a family name being attached to a person's own name, in the South , it is usually the Father's name before marriage and Husband's name after marriage. In some parts, like Andhra, the tradition of Village name being attached to one's own name exists .. This is not what I am upset about ... I don't care what name your parents give you, or what attachments get added on to it at every stage of your life .. It is when the 'government' part gets involved with a name that troubles start ... I have had so much trouble with names in the recent past, that i wish everybody's name w...

Life is full of routines and changes in them .... and i detest changes .. You could say, I am scared of changes.... How often we feel familiar with something that we see, hear and feel no? That one sudden day, when all that we are 'routinely' used to changes, we feel lost somewhere unknown ... but then again , if you notice, the beauty of life is that , unknowingly and very cleverly a routine gets set in this change also ... My life has always been one of routine and order(if not to the extent of an army order - much orderly than many)... I liked the routine of my life and would always make an attempt to add new things to my daily list of activities ... In College it started with getting up early, and brushing up college stuff/catching up with my diary writing/reading a most interesting novel that i had laid hands upon , taking a bath at 5:30 or 6:00, for that is when the whole clothes line would be available for me ... do a bit of puja(got more inspired by Lalli's daily ch...

Little Rahul introduced himself thus when he was 8 : "My name is Rahul, I study in Class IV c, My Hobbies are : Drawing, playing violin, playing cricket, watching cartoon network, reading Tinkle, playing carrom board,visiting the beach" ..... When he was 16 he introduced himself thus: "Hey! This is Rahul ... I love Painting, playing violin, watching and playing cricket" When he was 25 he introduced himself thus" Hi! Rahul here ... My hobbies include playing violin and catching re-runs of cricket match on TV" ... At 35, when his son asked him what his hobbies are ... he goes like ... "My hobbies are ..... ahhh ... uhhh .... ummm..." ... he is speechless.... With growing age and increasing work/home pressure - people are losing their hobbies... There are very people in my generation who take time to go out for music/art classes, who read a book as a hobby, who play a few games that they love .... Last Saturday , when Rajesh and me spend a few wonde...

Wonder why Fridays of all days seem to be passing by slowly. And if you have cold, headache, body ache rolled in together with a dull day, the day seems to have stopped forever ... After a nasty double cappuchino, which tasted like the bitter kashayam, my mother makes; I am no where feeling any better than I did before the coffee ... a long time since i wrote something in my blog ... Well, I am not at all a writer, or atleast beleive so... Ideas don't flow into my mind always and all that i think is also not well-received by all - not upto their standards , so-to-say ... This reminds me of Ernie - a character in one of my favourite series as a kid and a teenager - Enid Blyton's Five - Find outers... Ernie is a look alike of the leader of the "Five" find -outers(as they call themselves) - Fatty ..... Who desperately wants to write poems, but can never write one line in like a week.... Each time he tells this to Fatty, the latter rattles out a beautiful poem in like sec...

Every weekday evening finds me rushing home to make a cup of hot tea for me and sitting in front of the computer to watch one of my ever-favourite serials "Tu Tu Main Main" ..... A long running episode about the "nok-jok" (as it is called in Hindi) between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.... It depicts the ever existing fued between the MIL and DIL in a very humourous way..... Each day is a new episode - new "Taane-baazi" ... new laughs, new emotions .... Some of the eposides are very silly, but what makes the whole thing so nice is the genuineness of the key characters - Reema Lagoo and Supriya Pilgaonkar... They are so spontaneous and so nature, one would atleast give a smile seeing them, if not guffaw with joy ... Sachin's slick direction certainly deserves a wonderful applause - all the characters are so much at ease and you long to know what is going to happen in the Verma household the next day ... In this age of soaps - mostly filled with te...

Long since I wrote a blog. One very unpleasant incident put me off for a while. Some 'friend' commenting very nastily on my blog. Anyways , dogs will bark , that does not mean that I stop my writing. Turning to other better matters in life... I had been wanting to pen down some thoughts on the "topic line" for quite some time. Everyday when I go back home, i notice this phenomena. Mine is the last stop, so the bus stops there for a while for everybody to get down. Even before the stop comes, almost everybody starts to get up and crowd near the entrance. I don't get this - It is the last stop, so even if you are the last to get down, the driver will wait for you. And you are coming back home, so there is no meeting/call you need to rush for. Then why don't people follow an unlaid rule, let the front seat people get down and then get in the line, when it is their turn. Every single person has a rush, for what? - nothing. Getting home a minute later does not caus...

I really have not been feeling like writing since a long time ... but today thought would write this blog in dedication to my dearest husband .... who is celeberating his b'day today .... Till a certain point in age, b'days are such important events in life, you could call the most important ... For many middle class families, it is one of those very very few days when you get a new dress ... As a teeny-weeny kid, till the age of 3 one hardly remembers what b'days are .... but it is these years that are celeberated with lots of pomp and grandeur ... I can recall one of the recent b'day bashes that i heard of , where the IT couple spent close to half a lakh on their kid's 1st b'day .... wonder if such extravagance is really needed.... neither the kid nor the parents remember it a few years later ... You get the biggest cake in your life on your 1st b'day when you can hardly eat it ... I remember the first b'day cake that I cut was on my 7th b'day , w...

Sundays are 'clean the house' days usually .... That sunday was no exception ... we were cleaning my husband's trunk - a precious collection of every single relic related to our love story - from the petal of the first rose he gave me, to the chocolate wrapper that i gave him upon returning from vacation, to the chits we passed in class, to the folders i wrote for our lab work, to the numerous cards i gave him, to the poster of his favourite juhi - that i bought for him at chowrasta ... to the beautiful handwritten letters I wrote to him over the period of 5 years .... Letters .... are such special and wonderful memories.. Ones that you hardly see/write these days .... Letters of Nehru to his daughter were so special that they were published ... Another such cleaning day in chennai once caught me re-reading all those letters my mother wrote to me and vice versa when I was at college .... at about 12:30 in the afternoon, i would come back for lunch ... and rush to the board ...

Every morning, I think of what would today's topic for the blog be ... There is nothing more to write ... but something or the other happens in the course of the day, and it becomes my point to muse about or ponder about ... Loud speaking over phones in public place is so irritating .... There is this person who leaves for home in the same bus as mine ... if any day i happen to sit anywhere near him and his cell phone rings , woe betide me. I will get to know everything from what his plans for the evening are , to what his wife is cooking, to what fights he had in the office, to what movies he plans to see, to what he thinks about everything in the whole world ... Today when i entered the main hallway of my office , i heard a vociferous voice discussing the divorce case of one of her relatives and how the lady of 40 was getting another match and what her opinions on this were.... Imagine discussing private affairs in the mid hallway .... Seriously, it is high time people realised t...

Having spent the best part of my last couple of days visiting relatives, I thought this was something i definitely should write about .... it was quite frustrating to realise that the precious 3 days that i had at home, was mostly spent visiting all relatives i could think of , at the same time , it was soo heart warming to see all near and dear ones, update myself with their news and give my side of news ... It is always a pleasure to meet my mom's side of relatives in some function/gathering ... Thursday was one such time at Shyam's poonal .... Since I got married just about two months ago, Rajesh and me were the hottest topic of discussion and the most sought after people ...So, we did what the proverb precisely says " Make Hay while the sun shines" ... It is nice to be basking in people's company once a while :) .... I must have answered these questions a million times "Bangalore eppadi irukku" ... "Daily chamakiriya ??? " .... "Mazhai...

Well, I am not going to write an article about suiting and shirting ... but when i thought of the fact that i am going home today .... this is the first thing that came to my mind ... I love this caption and the way it is sung in the ad .... Ahhhh! Home ... Well i go home every evening from work , but today i will be going to my other home , the home i have been in for 25 years and no matter where i go , when i return to it , i feel so complete .... "Home" , as a kid was never constant for me .... Every summer vacations i would go to chennai... While leaving Vizag , i would wail in despair , that i did not want to go there ... but the moment i landed at grandparent's home .... i would forget everything else in the world and while coming back after 2 months, i would wail in sorrow that i never wanted to go back to vizag .... The sense of "Home" actually came full-fledged when i left for college and hostel life .. The first vacations that i came back from the host...

I am not at all in any mode to do any amount of reading online today .... So, thought i would sit and edit my template and make it look nice ... i spent all time editing it and finally the internet connection went off .... grr ... it is so irritating ... HMPH!

I would have loved to call it a Roller Coaster ride of fun and Masti ... but unfortunately it is not entirely a roller coaster ride ... but undoubtedly one of the best movies in the recent times is B&B ... (reminds me of the bed and breakfast - in Gimmelwald). In a big bowl, put the charming, made-for-each, romantic, hot on the block couple - laurel and hardy --sorry Rani and Abhishek : Add to this the ever favourite, ever green, ever imposing, ever show-stealing Amitabh : Put 4 ladles of pure, unadultered fun : 2 scoops of nice peppy music, 1 tablespoon of modern choreographed songs ... and 1 Aishwarya rai for the masses .... and there you are with the newly baked cake : Bunty aur Babli ... A nice treat for the eyes and ears, paisa vasool movie is B&B ... The picture is centered around the adventures of two young , dashing, zara-hatke youths , who yearn and long to do something that is by no means "normal" ... A good storyline , slick direction (though with minor sli...

Having come from the land of Scorching Sun , Singara chennai, my experience with rains in b'lore have been very novel... Not that I have never experienced rains in my life... Friday will always be a day/rather evening to remember .. I started off back home , smiling to myself - that it was the weekend and i had loads of fun to look forward to ... The first dampening (literally)of my spirit (as well as self) started when i almost got completed drenched in the first few (no more) showers of the rain , walking to the bus stop .... One and half of ant crawling journey to my place , tested my break-any-second patience to the maximum ... Imagine to be stopped at the street next to your house for about 20 mintues - you cannot walk down because it is pouring and the roads are full of slushy mud, drainage water and what-not ... I was sooo releived to get down off the bus and walked with swift steps towards my apt complex when the brakes of my sandals were applied with such a force that i al...