My Musings

Has it just been two weeks since I returned from India? Seems like much longer. Maybe because life has become doubly interesting in these two weeks, and will be so for some months to come. Reason – there are more than just 2 voices at home. My parents are here with us. There is some discussion or talk going on all the time – the dutiful son-in-law indulging his in-laws in various snippets of talks, patiently clarifying all their childish doubts about this new country they are in, enthusiastic planning for all the trips that we want to go, snatching each moment of the weekend to take them out to each of the grocery store or restaurant that we have been lining up for their view since some months now. More to come on this and my trip to India. For now, it is about the latest tune that has been playing in my head since Sunday – “Cheenikum hai Cheenikum hai”. The latest hindi album released by the Maestro Iliayaraaja. All the 5 songs in the movie are remakes of old tamil hits of the compose...

I am back .... After a 3 week well deserved respite from the humdrum of our routine life here - after a trip to my motherland. Loads of stuff to write here, may experiences to share - but all in good time. Somebody wisely said that it is a person who has just come back from vacation is the one in need of a break! Piles of work to catch up in the wake up timings provided by my jet lagged body. So many blogs to read up and catch up on. I am not even back on my regular track! But am not complaining ... because my loving parents are here with me. And that superseds anything upsetting. More soon.

Bye for 3 weeks my dear blogger friends! I am off on a much much awaited and well deserved vacation to India.

I have been at this for the past 1 week. The Mr. teases me - you are like an old lady always sewing your beads .. if you get 2 seconds you sit on. It definitely is fun and enjoyable .. and of course the end product decked your neck certainly gives a lot of pleasure... How is it?

Patti complained of joint aches for the first time only when she was 70. Amma started to fret about not being able to do things as quickly as she did before when she was at the end of her forties. And I have back-aches, leg pains in my late twenties!! What is the world coming to? Two close friends of mine, S & B had Slipped Disc issues, just months after their marriages. A friend of mine passed away at a very young age – stress. My neighbour’s husband – aged 33 – had a heart attack one night – out of the blue. The cause was found to be stress. Many of my friends complain about hair loss and aches and pains so often – so do I. Whereas I remember amma having long, black and thick hair even when she was in her forties. On one side I keep reading about how ‘Life expectancy’ is increasing over the years and on the other end, the more personal end, I see how the ‘Quality’ of life is decreasing. My father never got his blood / blood pressure / cholesterol checked till he reached the age o...

Usha, one of my favorite bloggers, has a written a very nice post about Giving and Receiving gifts . She writes about the custom of gifts at weddings. She cannot be any truer. Traditionally in the Mr’s customs people don’t gift anything to the bride and groom during weddings. Close knit elder relatives give a pre-defined amount of money to the bride and groom, that too not at the Kalyana mandapam or at the reception – in one of the pre or post visits to either house. The reason why no gifts are given is this – if you were to gift somebody some article; then the receiving party will take care of noting the article and will have to seek an occasion to compensate you with another article of the approximate price. This is an unwritten rule. So, giving and receiving gifts is considered blasphemy. Now, on my side of the family the story, though similar, is presented in a different way. If you walk to any wedding without a gift, it is considered very bad. This too, has started to cause a prob...

It is rarely that working people get to go off on a vacation on a week day. I got lucky a week and half ago to take a good break – when the Mr. had to get his visa stamped in Toronto. I tagged along to make the best out the excuse. Sometimes I feel that the Mr.’s life is all like a Hindi movie – in the beginning everything seems to be fine, then a bunch of problems crop up – and finally it is a happy ‘The End’. I cannot recollect any such episode that happened to him without any hitches at all. But then I am glad and thankful to God that the ‘The End’ is always a happy one. Following Suite, the stamping for a Canada visa had a hitch. We landed at the Canadian consulate (about 2 weeks ago having readied all our papers couple of weeks earlier, being prompt and getting the M.O. for the amount and all) on the dot – 8:30, were 2nd in line and were just about being quite pleased with ourselves – when the guy at the counter said the Fees has been dropped down by 5$ , so the MO would not work...

Just When I started to believe that Spring has finally started , this nasty day of snow and sleet had to come up again! Boy! I am really puzzled with the weather in this place. Just yesterday though the mercury hovered around the late 30s, there was dazzling sunlight and the sun just would not go down even at 8:00PM – I was so frustrated to be cooking in the kitchen with the blinds on – and today morning we woke up to find the most morose weather. Snow and rain at the same time – causing the worst conditions for driving. It all starts with having to brush about 2 inches of snow off your car – showering your freshly laundered and ironed black pant to all turn dirty white-black. And then comes driving on the freeway at a speed of 50 MPH with hardly a visibility of 50 ft and that too only in the front. Through the back windshield you can atleast manage to make out glowing spots of other car lights, but the two rear view mirrors on the side might as well not exist! I must give it to the re...

Here’s wishing all the great and unique women friends I have – a Happy International Women’s ! I have always been a sucker for these kind of ‘Days’ – Valentine, Mother’s day, Children’s day … so on. The idea is that you take time out atleast on this one day – to ponder and do something about the ‘thing’ that the day stands for. On this day, I would like to celebrate all the great women that I know in my life. Starting with the ‘bestest’ women in my life – my Mother. Her place in my whole life is the topmost and most unique – the great lady who gave birth to me (ya ya my father was also a part of it, but then he did not carry me around for 9 months right?). No matter what happens, I know amma is always there for me. In the most difficult of times, where I was even at war with her, she did not let me go. In her own ways, she always showed her love to me. What I wanted was against her will, she tried to reason, cajole, force me – but in all that she never turned away from me. Some of my ...

I was blog hopping on Friday and found this on a blog, so decided to put in my choices too. Read my VisualDNA ™ Get your own VisualDNA™

So, as promised in my last post - I am unveiling the activity that I was busy with for the past 3 weeks or so. TADA .... I was making this chain - it is made by weaving beads together. The Ladies in my office learnt to make various adornments out of beads quite a while ago. When about 6 months ago, my Boss showed me a chain she had made, I was so impressed and asked her to teach me. She did - and the result is this! I feel so happy at having done this. I am not a very 'arty' person. In fact I was very clumsy at this initial effort - could not put the thread through the eye of the needle, my hands would slip while pulling the thread out of a weave, I would cut the ends of the knot too close and the whole pattern would unravel and so on. But patience made me stick on and finish this piece. It is a gift for folks back at home. So. Shhhh... don't tell them about this. It is a surprise! This chain would probably be available for a thousand rupees or so in India, but I realised ...

I have been quite silent here for a while. Have been a bit busy – at work and otherwise (see next post), and also not in the mood to write anything new – because everytime I opened my blog, I would see the post of Bertie and feel low. I have a bad news to share – we lost our Bertie on 21st of Feb, 2007. We cared for it well, changed its water often, never forgot to give its meal – and yet! A freak accident of nature I guess. I don’t want to dwell much on it. It was my first ever pet in life and losing it like this in just 3 and half weeks after we brought it home is indeed painful. I saw the new Jihva event on Indira’s site and that cheered me up. It is based on one of the most favorite vegetable all over the world – Potato. There is probably no cuisine that does not include this very staple food item. It is one of the simplest vegetables and its taste appeals to all alike – kids or grown-ups. It is one of the most wonderful of vegetables that can be cooked in a million varieties. If ...

Happy Valentine Day to all my friends! The traditional day where lovers express their love – as Wiki puts it. I love this ‘love’ly day. As Usha puts it , anything that adds happiness to our joy is always a Welcome. This is also how I feel about this day! That one special day etched on the calendar, where you take off time to tell every loved one just how much you love them. I feel that it is not necessary that you should wish only that one special person in your life this day, but just anybody that you ‘love’ – your parents, friends, siblings, neighbour (???). But to be spending the day with your ‘special person’ is indeed the biggest ‘special’ of this day! As a kid, Val’s day did not mean anything at all. My parents were not of the romantic sort to wish each other on these ‘days’ – or probably they were even not aware of it. It all started as I stepped into my late teens – with stores like Halmark and Archies coming into prominence and putting up big posters around the city. Those w...

We added a new little member to our family two weeks ago – Meet Mr. Bertie (named by the Mr. after his all time favorite character Bertram Wooster from the PGW Series) – our goldfish. After about three to four visits to three to four pet shops, I gave into the Mr.’s insistence and we bought Bertie home on 3rd February. And I must say, I am really happy that we made that decision. When we started the topic of having pets at home, the Mr. is one great animal love and I am very inclined to think quite the opposite, I was not so very fine – until I saw the little parakeets in Meijer (the local grocery store – which somehow seems to have everything under the sun inside it – just like most grocery stores in the US do – food, household items, pharmacy, beauty products, clothes, furniture … whew! I am exhausted even naming them). I was lured into the trap that the Mr. so cleverly laid. But after talks to 2-3 pet shop folks, we were discouraged – as keeping birds takes quite a lot of effort and...

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...