My Musings

The amount of pleasure that can be derived from “small” things in life are the “biggest” achievements of one’s life. I sincerely believe that it is the more “small” non-consequential happiness you fill your daily life with – the more fuller a life you have lived. The definition of “small” is upto the individual. One such “small” thing that has been a part of our life for about a year now is our – Chai Time. The Mr. and I religiously have this “Chai Time” 10 minutes in the morning and about 30-40 minutes in the evening. The Morning “Chai Time” is more like a pick-me-up event where we start with a crib “Why does Morning always have to follow the night? Why can’t it be night after night?” rubbing out the sleep in our eyes and Every day while in office, we long for the clock to strike “Time to go home” , so that we can rush back home and spend the best moment of the day, savoring the pleasure of each other’s company + tea + the latest DVD that we got from the library – interposed with tidb...

The Year 2006 was a good “Blog” year for me. I made some really nice Blog friends – one of whom –Shobha- is now also a personal friend. She gave me a recipe of a dish that was a total hit with all her friends – I tried it out over the weekend and it was indeed a knockout one! So, with her permission I thought I would share it on my blog. Bisi Bele Baath. My very first recollections of this dish go back to 16 years ago. There was a new shop that had opened in the Dwaraka Nagar signal. Those were times when Appa, Amma and me would eat out almost every Saturday – the hotel industry was in its infancy in Vizag and the quality of dishes were truly good. We were delighted with the bisi bele baath that was served in this new hotel – a small but clean place. The dish in itself was delightfully prepared , garnished with cashews and soaked in ghee; and to add to it were the best potato chips that I had ever had. We were addicts of this place for a long time and then suddenly it closed. Our Palat...

Okay! Enough of postponing writing a blog – I told myself today Morning! The New Year is only 25 days old and I have already broken one of my resolutions – being more regular in writing my blog. I had resolved this year that I would try to find out if I have a “creative me” and make her wake up more often; and if I did not find one – try and develop one! So, where I have been? Kinda busy – sounds a nice way of explaining the break; but that is not entirely true – I have been plain lazy also in betweens. We shifted apartments as the new year dawned – that way I got to leave all the ‘old dirt’ literally behind me. I liked our new place – it is a single bedroom (the previous one was 2 bedroom) and seems quite spacious. In 4 hours of shifting the Mr. drove 42 nails in the house and magically set up all the decorative items. The best part of the new place is “GAS Cooking”!!! Well, for all those friends, not in the USA – please don’t think I have gone mad to be pleased about “Gas” for cookin...

Dear Friends and fellow bloggers, Wish you all a wonderful and happy new Year! May all your dreams come true and you be blessed with all the happiness in the world.

Finally the lazy me is publishing the promised photos. Well, there are not exactly as many as I would wish. Especially after the Mr. scared me with "Invasion of privacy" being considered too seriously in the USA , I did not want to get into trouble just for a couple of photos. It was mostly houses that were beautifully decorated, and the Mr. was too lazy to drive down to a couple of the downtowns. After many persuasive talks(by me), 2 heroes(ahem 1 was a heroine) all covered up, braving the cold winds and sub-zero temperature went, on one dark shining night, to take these photographs. So here goes ... This is the house round the corner from our apt complex. It is a beautiful pink house, that the Mr. and me have always liked. This is the place that we jokingly called "Auburn hills downtown" because of its cobbled streets. Well, the sign-post in between is not exactly "beautiful" but I could not avoid it. Now this is an interesting snap. When shot at very lo...

The holidays are almost coming to an end, and so is the year. But none of my plans advanced even so much as a millimeter - Gosh! I do so hate myself. The only good thing about this week was watching old episodes of "Friends". We got the 1st season and the 10th season from the library - and it was probably the bestest thing ever - to sit with the Mr. and laugh till our sides split - watching the spontaneous friends ... Awww... why am I not one of the "Friends"? About the title of the blog, Well I happened to "food-browsing" - when I found that there is going to be a new Jhiva event - and this time it is one of my favorite food ingredients - Coconut. Being born in a palakkad based family, I guess it is really difficult to have grown without having to eat this delicious "fruit"?? every day in some form or the other. In fact it was only after marriage, and due to the stubborn insistent of the "cholestrol" conscious hubby, that I have reduce...

I don’t want to work . Today is the last working day of 2006 for me. For about a week now there has been practically nothing going on in the work front. The holiday season began pretty early here – almost a week before xmas. All around you see beautifully wrapped gifts, tied up with pretty bows made out of shining paper, candies & cakes, people wearing colorful holiday patterned sweatshirts. All of this week I feel I have been only eating and eating in office holiday lunches – some sponsored and some BYOL (buy your own lunch), each colleagues taking turns to bring in Christmas cookies and today to end it all was the biiiig tri-department lunch. The Dessert section was indeed yummy –aleast 5 varieties of cheesecakes, a huge strawberry cake, a monstrous carrot cake and tons of Belgian chocolates. Boy ! I think my new year resolution is staring right at my face – go to the fitness center every day !!! I really like the holiday season here. All around the place you feel cheer . Everybo...

Hmm… Quite some time since I posted anything here. Was Quite caught up with some work – for once in life huh ? And then there was this really stupid exam that was mandatory as per the new rules laid down by the ‘breadgiver’ – so after almost 6 years I did a “One-day” batting again! And was I glad to manage to scrape thru it J(kudos my brave gal – Pat on my back). Wonder how my father ever manages to write all those exams for insurance even at this age. He really is a “superman” I say! I was very upset today morning. Amma’s BP shot up recently and she has been having problems with head heaviness, feverishness and all. So, she decided to get a check-up done with Dr. X , who is the doctor that appa regularly does his check up with. Now this X is a very renowned doctor and his diagnosis is very much respected and appreciated. All is well – but just as everything in nature, he has a very bad aspect to him. He does not talk much, will not respond to your questions, not give you any assurance...

One day in the week that went by was truly blessed – because “I” celebrated my Birthday. GOSH! I am such a humble person hee hee. My birthday was made one special day – all because of the Mr., Amma, Appa and all the loving friends who remembered this day and called me/emailed me/orkutted me & last but not at all the least, Jai & his sister(one of our newer acquaintances). The day before, my boss gave me a beautiful set of beaded jewellery that she herself made. The Mr. was an absolute sweet – took me shopping the weekend before and also on “the day”, decorated the “birthday corner” (it got its name when we decorated this corner of our living room on the Mr’s bday) with loads of balloons and baked(with my supervision of course) a carrot cake for me. Jai & his sister, Bindu, surprised us with a cake that evening when they came home for dinner. He had bought candles also (he got less number, as he was unsure how old I was , I felt sooo nice that he thought I was just that youn...

This is what I think I am best at writing – reviews of movies that I have watched. After coming to the US of A, this has been “THE Thing” that we had been doing most of the time. Read up about old movies on the imdb website and place holds for those movies in the public library and spend all free tea-times, lunch/dinner times and weekends watching these movies. One movie that I accidentally placed hold for was “12 Angry Men”. We were in a comedy spree watching Jack Lemmon’s movies and somehow I misread that this movie featured Jack Lemmon. But, after watching this movie I felt that I was so lucky to have made a “mistake” else we would never have watched this absolutely superb and gripping classic tale. The whole 1 and 34 minutes of the movie, except for about 3 minutes, has been short in a small, dingy and closed room. The tale begins on a hot and sultry summer evening with the judge requesting the 12 jurors to come up with a unanimous decision based on the proceedings that they had be...

It is nearly a month since I blogged. We had been to a “Dream” vacation to the happiest place on Earth – Walt Disney World – Orlando & SeaWorld for about a week (3 weeks ago). After coming back from the vacation, instead of feeling rejuvenated, I started feeling depressed, home-sick, dull and whole lot of other negative things. I guess it was as one of my friends rightly put it – “A Person who is back from vacation is the one who needs a vacation the most”. I went into some kind of a stupid shell and hibernation. There were scores of emails to reply to, dozens of calls to return to, zillions of photos to organize and upload for those eagerly waiting loving friends – but the heart was not set in doing any of these. Then finally I gave into the persistent inquires of my lovely friends as to why I was not blogging! Thanks dear ones – your inquiries made me feel so much wanted. I felt so happy that here are these darling friends who visit this URL often and want to know more of my thou...

He drives the big machine in the corridors of the place where I sit and never fails to give me a broad grin and call out “Happy Monday/Tuesday…” (based on which day of the week it is). I don’t know his name; just know that he is a mechanic working in the same area where I sit. He might be an American, Mexican or some other race – I don’t know. There is another “he”, who waves or slightly nods in acknowledgement when he crosses my place and catches my eye. On Days when I am sad / blue / thinking of something bothersome when one of these two smile/wish me – for a moment there I feel so cheerful. I have heard often and got many forwards that say “A Smile can change the course of day / A Smile is a curved line that sets things straight” – it is in these moments of cheer that I feel all that is so true. And that sets me thinking – there are zillions of Indians working in this place (in fact at lunch you see such a crowd that you wonder if Americans are at a tourist spot in India) – and atle...

Usha has written a very beautiful article here about a Time Capsule that has been created by Yahoo. It is a memory Engine kind of thing , where you can post almost anything – photos, scraps, blogs – anything at all about anything and everything you think/feel/know – This Time Capsule will close itself in a couple of days and be lost in the sands of time – to be reopened maybe a decade or so later. The assumption is that things might be changed so much by that time, that the artifacts you are going to store in it now will become relics. And I definitely thing it might be absolutely the truth. The rate at which life in general is growing, some event/custom/ritual that happened 10 years ago is no longer a part of our lives now. Usha asks – if there were to be a time capsule that would open say 100 years later what would you want to put in the time capsule. Here are some of the things that I would like to write down about for generations a century later to be reading about. I would give a...

This is on Usha's request! Some photos of my puja room, with our new idols - Saraswathi and Radha-Krishna.

The winds of Change are blowing. The trees are shedding all their apparels (leaves). Fall is “falling” off and winter is slowly creeping in. The first thing I loved about the US of A when I arrived here for my first visit was – Seasons. If you have ever lived in Chennai, you would know of only one season – Summer, though you would read in your text books that there are 5 seasons. It is in this country that I could see the varied differences in these 5 seasons – spring, summer, Monsoon, Fall/Autumn and winter. The two seasons I love most are Spring and Fall. This Fall Season we decided to put our big $$ investment to some use – our Nikon digital camera (for which we spent quite a buck). When I researched on the best places to visit in USA for Fall colors, I found that almost all of them were very far off from where we stayed, and we could not afford to “fly” at this time. So, we decided to drive to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan state to visit the Tahquamenon Falls. After some rounds o...

I am always a day late in wishing :) , but then I write the post after the day has passed! Wish you and your family a very happy deepawali. May the year be filled with good news, cheer, good health and hope. Diwali (or deepawali as it is called at home) for me was always associated with 2 things - the "nalla ennai" bath early in the morning and distrubuting sweets (wearing new clothes) to all neighbours. I am not much of a cracker person - been always scared of even the tiniest vedi and after sometime the smoke starts to bother me much. For Diwali this was the routine - we would wake up early, at about 4 or so, amma would apply the "nalla ennai" (gningely oil) on appa's and my head, take an aarthi of us and shoo us into the bathroom for a nice "head bath". After the bath, appa would hand over the new clothes to amma and me (i always love getting new clothes hee hee) and then we would go down to burst the crackers. In Andhra diwali is celeberated in the...

We bought a new 2007 model Toyota Camry yesterday – fulfilling one of our dreams ever – a long black car!( it all started when I saw the ad of Chevrolet Optra – the karva chauth ad) The Mr. remarked – there is so much pleasure in materialistic things also :D… Definitely yes! We both were grinning ear to ear all the 13 miles back home from the dealership – for no reason. The Mr. drove in the new car and I followed him in our old Corolla – smiling at the way the bright shade of the Fall colors reflected off the shining black hood. It was a thought was there in our minds since a long time to own a new car. In India, I would have never even given this wish a thought – because of all that I have seen in India – owning a car is a pain – and that too a shiny black one – it is a crime to own one! Within days of buying it, there will a couple of scratches, blotches of mud everywhere and the car would rattle badly within months (unless you lived in those suburb areas where they have laid road fo...

The past two weekends and the week between have been really hectic, so did not find time to pen down anything. The weekend of Oct 6th we had been for a “Fall Tour” to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan(more on this in next post). The week between Oct 7th and Oct 14th was strangely busy (considering the fact that I am “Vetti” most of the time at work). This weekend was also satisfactorily busy – Saturday was spent at a friend’s house and yesterday we had a couple over at our place ( this was nice because 1) we like the couple a lot and they are good fun to be with 2) I got a chance to experiment on my culinary skills). So, Friday night Reliance India earned a lot of revenue, when I was on phone with amma trying to get some recipes for “quick” sweets that I could make. I wanted to move away from the “comfort zone” that the easy-to-make MTR Gulab Jamun pack gave. So, I decided to make this very simple-yet-very-tasty sweet that amma would concoct at the shortest notice – this 7-cup cake. I wo...

I wanted to write about this about 3 weeks ago, when I actually saw the movie, but never got to doing it. Now it is a bit of stale news, but then no harming in jotting what I wanted to say. In a movie-world that has lost the meaning of comedy, amidst the hotchpotch sex-based comedies that the bollywood industry churns out every two months – comes a breath of fresh air – a neat “family” comedy called “Lage Raho Munnabhai”. Right from the first scene where the unsuspecting no-name character gets trapped in the parking lot, the giggles started in the theatre. The crescendo reached peak when Arshad Warsi so casually remarks – “Abbe Tu andhar aa raha hai ki bahar jaa raha hai”. I felt that the movie outrightly belonged to Arshad Warsi – his dialogue delivery, timing and facial expressions. Not a single line of his missed the laughter-applause that the audience had to offer. I found his devotion to this “Bhaaai” so endearing. Wish I had a friend like that, who would do anything for me. Sanja...

Happy Vijayadashami to all of you and your family ! This year’s Navarathri was pretty much inconspicuous – more so because I really have never celebrated one entirely on my own. But it still had some of its special things – like the beginning of the 10day festival – with Kalpana’s Kolu. My boss at office, Kalpana, sets up Kolu every year (or so I am told – for this is the first time I went to see it), so she invited us home on the 1st day of Navarathri. The Mr. was all excited after seeing the Kolu and extracted a promise from me, that we will do something next year. I caught up with a colleague who recently quit our workplace and two-three other ladies also. It was nice seeing all sarees, beautiful bangles, jewellery – took me back home for a second . Kalpana’s home itself was so beautiful – it made the Mr. and me want to set up a house of our own soon – wonder when at all that will be. Well, in order that we don’t disappoint ourselves, we decorate our rented apt quite beautifully. Ye...