My Musings

Happy Vinayaka Chaturthi! I know this blog is late, I started it ages ago- but got busy with some work! May Lord Ganesh bless us all, and provide a new beginning to each one of us – a better life, with more peace, friendship and harmony. Ever Since I can remember, Vinayaka Chaturthi has been one of my most favorite festivals. Part of the reason can be attributed to the fact that Amma made my 1st favorite sweet – Kozhakatai on this day. The other part of the reason being that this elephant-faced god has always been one of my favorite gods. Since ages, he has been the first one to be prayed at the beginning of any auspicious event – Aadhi moola bhagavan. Vinayaka Chaturthi celeberation at my home has always been an elaborate one. It starts with the buying of the Mann(clay) vinayakar on the morn of the festive day. Appa would go to the market early in the morning and buy the vigraham – sometimes I would insist on getting a colorful one rather than the drab, plain looking clay puliyaar. Am...

There are a group of food bloggers that I got to know from Indra's Site. They host an event called Jhiva for Ingredients - one food ingredient is choosen, and people are asked to send in recipes using that ingredient. The current event is hosted by Vineela, and the ingredient is Milk. Mine is not exactly a recipe based entirely on Milk, but uses milk to a small extent. It is a recipe told to me by mom. I am very amateur cook and it did not turn out to be exactly as amma said it should be (Jaana tha Japan pahunch gaye cheen samjhe na?), but nevertheless with encouragement and tips provided by hubby dear, we turned it into something tasty :). Thought I would send the recipe to Vineela, I am not sure she would post it in her fest, but nobody got flogged for trying right ? :) What you need? 1 Cup cashewnuts 1/4 cup pistachios Milk - enough to soak the above 2 nuts(around 1 1/2 cups for the above measure) Sugar Ghee- 2-3 tablespoons How to make it? Soak the cashew and Pista nuts in milk...

I wonder, each day, how beautiful the world looks because of the vibrant colors each entity in the world appears in. How dull and boring life would be if we were to see only one color or maybe two – black and white? I read up some trivia about color on the Net, not that I appreciated everything I read. I have never been a great fan of Physics and Biology and the theory of color happens to rest on these two pillars of science. Did you know that the color that we perceive is dependent both on the reflection/refraction of life and also the built of your retina and other components of the eye? This boils down to the fact that no two people can perceive color exactly in the same way! That does not mean if I see blue, you would see the same thing as Red! When we see something, the color we see is the wavelengths/frequencies of light, the particular object is unable to absorb. Color can be broadly divided as two – additive and subtractive. So, the color that is projected and we see is signifi...

Anybody who is a Hollywood movie buff will not have missed this movie which is hailed as the greatest romantic film in the history of movie making – Casablanca. Set in the times of World War II, it is a poignant two day, three nights story of two lovers, joined by fate and separated by the same – not once but twice. The story is set in the independent province of Casablanca which is like a dark hole. One desperately wishes to get out of the place using an exit visa to America, but has to cross many hurdles in doing so. A strong cast, a solid story and unshakable conviction portrayed by each of the characters make this movie a “Must-See”. After having placed the hold a long time ago in our library, I got lucky and happened to catch this classic yesterday. Humphrey Bogart – Rick - the protagonist is neither handsome, nor macho. But one cannot but fall in love with him, for the sheer brilliance with which he portrays emotion with just a twitch of the eyebrow or a smirk and his dialogue de...

Groan! It is another Monday. Why does Monday have to tailgate Sunday so close that you don’t even realize that within the blink of an eye the glorious “Sun”day is gone and the “Mundane” Monday is in? Over the weekend, Rajesh discovered something – which took us back the memory lane to Pre-College days. In those days, when “cable” TV was practically non-existent and all that the “Idiot” box was able to receive was DD, the Sunday morning alarm clock was – Rangoli. Remember that wonderful program of 45 minutes, which later got shortened to 30? I still remember – refusing to wake up until I heard the starting music of Rangoli. Over the years, the anchors changed, the title song changed, the structure of the program changed – but what never changed was the choice of the songs – sweet old numbers, merging into newer ones, and just before the session ended – some snippets of the latest songs – which always left you craving for more. I distinctly remember one or two anchors of this program, na...

Amma always told me .. It is start of festival times with the birth of Krishna, as after vishu for about 3 months there is no activity in the department of Poojai and of course eatery :)... This year, I decided, to do something for the festival. So, after 3 days of long calls with amma in "how to make this", "what next", "Which time" and so on .. I armed myself for celeberating Lord Krishna's B'day .... It started off on the evening of 15th , with the preperations of cheedai. Amma had warned me of the bursting uppu cheedai's , so when I put the cheedai into oil, I ran out of the kitchen - and came back in a few seconds later daring myself for a destruction scene... but :) I was lucky - no such thing happened and all the uppu cheedai were roasting merrily in the oil pan :). Want some sample ? Here you go. Then began the ordeal of making the vellai cheedai - which is longer than the geetha upadesam that this little balan did when he grew up! Havi...

Nearly 3 months after getting my temporary driving license, I took my road test on Sunday ---- and PASSED IT! ... Yipee ... Yohooo .... Now I will have a state license and can drive anywhere, even without the Mr. :) ..... We celeberated in style with The Mr.'s special - Pani Puris and home-made Banana Cake .

Disclaimer: all written below are purely my views and are in no way meant to hurt or indicate any particular person/sect/group. I have never written in my blog anything controversial. I might probably be writing one now. There was a nice post in one of the blogs that I visit frequently, that set me to think. You can read it here - I really admire and like the writings of this lady and have often felt so much respect for her mature writings. In one of the numerous training sessions I attended, the trainer shared an anecdote. An Indian lady who was training a bunch of Americans, in an attempt to make a friendly conversation, started telling about herself and proudly stated that she had a "Love" marriage. She was swamped by incredulous expressions as the audience asked - "How else does one get married?". In India, since ages - and to a large extent even in the changing generation - "Love" marriages have been a serious taboo. To be truthful, yours truly was al...

I love music. When I was in my teens, I would jump at the opportunity when amma-appa would leave for shopping, doctor's visit or some party; turn on the volume of our dear old BPL music system and jump around in joy. Many a times in hostel, when I missed home, felt low, I would put on some soulful, sad song and cry out loud - and after all that loss of saline water - i would feel all the more better. I have always felt that music reflects and assists in strengthening your current mood. Well, all that peramble was to talk about two of the movie albums that I have been listening to since the past few days - "Kabhi alvida na kehna" and "Omkara". I read on the net quite a bit about the review of these two. Thought I would pen down my thoughts too. KANK - Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna One person has written that this movie should be re-named as "Kabhi copy na karna". Definitely the tunes of KANH are very much reminiscent of "Kal ho na ho". But then you ca...

To drive away the dark clouds hanging over my head, I was browing through some of the frequest blog links that I visit and chanced upon this article . This piece of writing talks about how modern gadgets have taken over many of the traditional activities - narrating a cute little incident in a bank. This made me think of how much change in lifestyle has come about. -- Gone are those days when people would write letters to inform of events and happenings and make enquiries about the other person's well-being. These are the days when you pick the phone, speak a few words , or worse even - send an SMS or an E-mail. No longer does anybody feel the envelope and try to guess who would have written the letter based on the strength of the ball-point pen imprint. The art of recognising the handwriting from the address to identify the bearer of news is no more. --As a kid, we used to make regular trips to our hometown to meet our relatives - atleast once a year. Even today, most of my relati...

Today is one of those blue days, where everything and anything seems just too depressing. Sometimes I feel I complain about just everything. One of my colleagues used to call me "Ms. Polambal". Nobody likes to be criticised, so even I would feel a bit hurt at times to get this title. But then, when I sit and analyze(which i seem to be unnecessarily doing too much), I think - maybe he was right - maybe i do crib a lot. From the very beginning of my job shift, I have not been utterly too much happy about what I have been doing. Occasionally I have good periods at work, nice work, nicer folks around and a gala time - but as the saying goes "Everything good must come to an end" - when all ends, it crashes - not like the ending note of a nice song - and puts me into an even bigger pit than I was before the "good" started. I wonder - is it only me or is it that everybody goes thru a similar phase in life? Ups and Downs I mean. How do we handle the downs and stil...

Just as any couple in late 20's, Rajesh and me often keep wondering and thinking of planning for a family. The discussions become more prominent when we visit any friends, having kids - or hear about a close friend - on the family way/delivered a baby. I feel the most and the biggest pleasurable feeling on earth is when you have a offspring of your own - it is even bigger than the feeling you get when you get married to the one "Choosen" for you. We had a 1/100th of that feeling this weekend - when we saw the first Tomato on our plant(which we have been nursing for like 2 months). Of course, the entire credit to our blossoming little garden goes to Rajesh and Rajesh alone - all I do is supervise it occasionaly, and after having seen a small creepy crawly thing come out from under one of the pots, I have not even dared to step near the plants!!... But I could not resist looking at this tiny little 'baby' of ours... See this ... About a month ago, when one of our po...

Just Yesterday I wrote about wishing that I had a couple of friends who blogged .... and here I got a college friend, P.Sirisha , who replied back saying she blogs .... and what more - she visits mine regularly :). Yippee!! .... Well, actually I was complaining a bit too much I feel. There are more than a couple of people who keep peeping here - Padmaja (who has always ever loyally complimented/commented on my blogs), Sowmya(a dear friend - who became a friend in the strangest circumstances, but has been the one to stick by me forever), Deepti (who promised to start a blog of her own some day, inspired by mine ...), Venu (he is Sirisha Geeth's husband - Geeth is a very close friend of mine ... one day I accidently happened to land on his site and was so pleasantly shocked to see that he had my blog link in his site). Another office friend cum colleague, recently got in touch - a major blogger - Gomathi - need to add her link to my site - also said she liked my blog :) So, there I a...

I have been wanting to write something since a long, but not feeling like penning down anything. I have been visiting some other blogs, which I got accidently from someplace.... And was amazed to see just how huge the blog world is. Most folks are on a regular go at blogging ... daily experiences, feelings, frustrations, happiness ... everything shared with the entire world. On one hand, the prospect of all this getting into the wrong hands is scary - but the on the other and larger hand - it gives a wonderful sense to read about these multitude things. Someday I am feeling blue, I read a piece of article, where somebody has written about a similar bad happening to him/her and I feel slightly comforted ; or when I read a funny incident/post by somebody - i forget my irritation and get back to normal self. Many a folks have tons of friends on their blog list also ... Why don't any of the friends that I know of blog, or have me on their blog list :(.... I think it is a nice way to me...