A rupee for my thoughts!

The Wednesday Soul - a book review

2012-01-23T05:05:00.000-08:00

The Wednesday Soul by Sorabh Pant is the second book I received from Blog Adda as a part of their book review program. I did not read the book description through fully - just the first few sentences. It had sounded like an interesting enough premise. With the few sentences I had read, I had assumed that the book was some kind of chick flick.

When I got the book and finished reading through the first couple of chapters, I realized that a chick-flick this book wasn't. Nyra Dubey, a self-annointed vigilante finds herself dead after being run over by a bus. She goes to the after-world and finds out (along with the readers) that it is absolutely nothing like popular imagination of after-life. What follows is a humorous tale of adventure, drama and war as Nyra finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy to wipe out after-life.

Sorabh Pant creates a whole new universe filled with "new" characters and new concepts. The twist here is that most of these "new" characters are people we have heard of in this world. Only difference is, they play roles that, while related to their roles on earth, are not quite exactly the same. Thus, Agatha is a Karmic detective. Pythagoras is a mathemagician who reincarnates from time to time as other famous scientists and mathematicians.

To guide us along, there's Radha. N. Recliws, a thought-caster (a thoughtcast is something like a podcast, difference being you don't need an ipod, your mind is enough) who gives titbits of information about the after-world at the beginning of every chapter.

There is a whole lot of information about the after-world. While this was interesting to read, beyond a point it became tough to keep track of what was what and recollect what a concept meant when it made a reappearance. Skimming through the book is not an option unless you want to be left scratching your head wondering whether you can grasp the English language anymore as there are plenty of terms which will not make sense unless you have read about them earlier in the book.

The book reminded me of Terry Pratchett novels in the way it creates a new world with its own rules. The footnotes in the first few chapters added to that feeling (these footnotes mysteriously disappeared in the later chapters though). However, it was a little more difficult to navigate this world and I found myself re-reading pages at times. It did not help that in some places the editing job was a bit shoddy. Spaces separating events happening in two different worlds were missing and I had to do double-takes.

Overall though, I found the book an interesting read. The various characters featured in the book are very likeable. The writing style is irreverent and amusing without looking like it is trying too hard to be funny. Though it takes some amount of concentration to read the book, it is time well-spent. The book ends after laying the foundation for a sequel. I wouldn't mind reading the sequel too!

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This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-09T03:03:00.000-08:00

Chai in a earthenware tumbler that I bought at a handicraft fair over the weekend:

Wah - chai!

So cute - I know!

How are New Year wishes connected to tea you ask. Well, drinking tea makes me happy and comforts me too. My wish for you for this new year is: May you not face any trouble this year that cannot be eased by drinking a steaming cup of strong chai (or insert your favorite drink with appropriate adjectives).

Happy New Year folks and here's to your hopes and dreams coming true in 2012! *clink*

Two Fates - a book review

2011-12-16T22:38:00.000-08:00

I read about Blog Adda's book reviewing program on Binary's blog. Immediately, lots of bulbs went off in my head. Wheeeeeeeeeee - I can get free books to read! Signing up was the work of a moment. Within a week, I had received my first book: Two Fates by Judy Balan. Keeping my end of the deal, here is the review:

Two Fates follows the lives of Deepika Sundar, a Tamilian, and Rishab Khanna, a Punjabi, who, after a long courtship and two years marriage are now fed up with each other and want to get a divorce. However, their respective families, who were at hammer and tongs before their wedding have now become one happy family and Deepika and Rishab dread telling them about their separation plans. How they try to do it is what Two Fates is about.

In the first few chapters of the book, Deepika and Rishab are portrayed as two annoying individuals with few likeable qualities. Thus, it seemed like it made sense that they annoyed each other as well and wanted to divorce. But a few chapters on, I was not sure (like most of the other characters in the book), as to why exactly these two people wanted to get a divorce. They had been courting for five years prior to marriage and all of their current divorce-contributing factors would have been present back then too, in which case they probably would not have even agreed to get married in the first place. Or perhaps familiarity breeded contempt and all. Anyway, I decided the story needed some premise and this was it and I should leave it at that.

The story is generously populated with caricatures of Punjabi (and to some extent, Tamil) families. I have Punjabi friends and they do have other aspects to their characters than being a ultra-happy bunch of boisterous and loud people fond of eating. I guess this was for comedic relief but beyond a point, it got repetitive and I skipped a few pages with descriptions of how these Punjabis on Prozac manage to irritate Deepika and Rishab.

About a third of the way in, I began to think that perhaps this reviewing for free books was not such a great deal after all if I was going to be forced to complete reading books I rather would not have. However, the book picked up from then on. The characters had grown on me a bit Though I could see the end from chapter 1 itself, I had become mildly interested in knowing how it got there.

In spite of the flimsy story line, the writing is pretty decent. Though I thought the prose was a little too wordy in the beginning, it sorted itself out in subsequent chapters. The language flowed smoothly making it an easy and quick (the book is only 200 pages long) read.

When I finally closed the book, it was with the feeling of contentment that comes from having done decent timepass. That would be my verdict for the book as well: decent timepass when you do not have anything better on hand to read.
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This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Going under

2011-12-07T00:04:00.001-08:00

When I was told that I would need to undergo a minor medical procedure under the influence of general anesthesia, I almost started hyperventilating. As much as I hate doctor/hospital visits, I usually follow the resultant treatments without much fuss. But, this time round, I started panicking with a capital P.

I was not worried too much about the actual procedure. Instead, the alarm bells in my head had started clanging loudly the moment the words "general anesthesia" were mentioned. Years and years ago, I had heard a story of a neighbor who was administered general anasthesia for a very minor and common place operation and wound up never coming out of it. Since then, the words general anesthesia have always conjured horrific images in my head.

Yeah, so, I was less than enthused to hear I had to go under general anesthesia (GA). I tried wangling out of it by suggesting other options but finally had to recoincile myself to GA. On the bright side, if anything happened to me I would be too gone to be aware of it. On the other hand, I felt profoundly sorry for my family if anything did happen to me (I can be morbid like that).

Two nights before the procedure saw me wide awake. For some reason I kept envisioning a scenario where I would be unable to move my body or open my eyes on the operating table but where I could hear all the people around me and had to fight the panic that image brought in. That lack of control over myself had me scared out of my wits.

It did not help that S casually mentioned that he was one of those people who did not take easily to GA. In fact, once he had counted all the way up to 35 before the anesthetist decided that the dosage was probably too less for him and decided to increase it (usually anesthetists ask you to start counting while they wait for the drug to take effect and people are usually out before they reach 10). What if something similar happened to me?

Anyhow, the day of the surgery arrived. After prep and waiting, I was wheeled into the operation theatre (OT). Darn, the OT was frigging cold! I wished I had several more layers of blankets on me. But before I could mentally start whining about that, the moment of anesthesia arrived.

I guess I had a frightened deer caught in the OT lights look on my face for the anesthetist kindly look at me through her mask and asked "Is this your first time with anesthesia?" When I dumbly nodded, she said, "Don't worry ma. You will simply start sleeping in a bit." Then, some drug was injected and she asked, "Are your teeth loose?". What a weird question, I thought, mentally bookmarking that I should later google the relationship between general anesthesia and teeth (my inner geek shalt never be quelled).

Then she again said, "You will sleep in a bit". I lay staring at the bright overhead lights. I did not appear to be any closer to sleeping at all. Did they really inject anything into me? Oh, wait a minute, I feel lightly dizzy, maybe I would feel a bit more dizzy in a bit. But wait, I can still see the lights.

Someone was prodding me, "The procedure is over, are you fine?" I had been in the middle of some pleasant dream (I have no clue about what) and was mildly annoyed at being so unceremoniously woken up. But then, realization dawned: Wait a minute, I had gone under and come out of GA successfully. With absolutely no recollection of what had happened in between.Yaay!

Then I looked around and thought I was still in the OT. It took me several minutes before I processed that the overhead lights were missing and a bunch of cupboards had sprung up next to me, thus making it highly unlikely that I was still in the OT. Oh, I was probably in the recovery room then.

I was quite lucid post-GA and was even able to walk around on my own in a short while. Contrary to expectations of nausea,a common GA side-effect, I was ravenously hungry in a couple of hours and was demanding food (ha, who can separate Archana and her food!), having been foodless for close to 14 hours.

The next 24 hours saw my head spin lightly whenever I changed positions between sitting/standing and lying down. But otherwise, I was not very much worse for the wear and was completely back to normal the next day.

So yeah, as a in case of emergency nugget of info, I now know that I do not have adverse effects to GA. Yaay.

Our national pasttime

2011-11-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

Officially, it might be said that cricket-watching is our national past time. But I think that our true national past-time is people watching.

Of course, everyone does people watching. Being curious is simply human nature. However, desis take people watching to the level of an art. Where people from other nations* may look embarrassed and turn away if caught in the act by the object of their watching, a true desi would hardly acknowledge that s/he has been spotted. Instead, s/he would watch with greater confidence now that there is no need for even the token pretence that they are not watching the object.

Which is how, many a time I have caught starers in the act of watching, turned away and turned back after some time only to realize that I was *still* being watched by the same starer. It is as though once you are in public, you become a part of the landscape and hence can be gawked at.

This could also be the reason that whenever it looks like more than one person is watching something, those persons are immediately joined by more people. No one wants to miss out on any fun. Often times, it turns out that an entire crowd of people are watching *nothing* (I am desi too, so, if circumstances permit, I will go and check out what's happening too - that's how I know) but why miss out in case it is some thing genuinely interesting?

Once we were driving around Ooty with some other relatives. A non-designated tourist spot, consisting of rows of pretty trees, looked interesting. So, we made a turn into the mud pathway leading to that mini-forest. Our relatives' jeep followed us. We had hardly gotten off our Jeeps when we realized that about six other random vehicles had followed us into the mini-forest. Evidently, the people in those vehicles thought that if this spot was of interest to *two* vehicles, there must be something to it and had decided to check it out for themselves!

Recently, I had a surreal conversation with my mom. We both were enjoying a cup of tea at my parents' place. We were sitting in a room which opened out into a balcony which faced a tree. Mom remarked on how much the tree had grown since the time they had moved in.

She added, "The other day, the lady from the flat across the street said that she was feeling kind of bad that she could no longer look into our house. The tree has become too tall and shields our house from her eyes."

My jaw dropped. I looked at mom and gaped, "Really? So not only was she she spying on us, but she also admitted it to you without any embarrassment?"

Mom shrugged and said, "Yes. Apparently she used to watch us all from her flat. In fact, I think she must have been happy when I invited her over for last year's Golu so that she could finally place the rest of the rooms in the house as well instead of having to imagine where we go when we move from this room!" Both of us burst out laughing. To think that her flat was a little too far away from ours to even give a proper view. True blue desi that neighbor lady was!

I love watching other folks at the airport, train-station and bus-station. I notice what they are doing and what they are wearing. And these places usually provide such a high turnover of people that there is never a shortage of entertainment. However, I have never done it blatantly (unless of course, I am wearing sun-glasses and cannot be spotted :-P) - I probably couldn't stand the attention that being caught in the act would bestow! And I also draw the line at deliberately looking into other people's homes - that just seems a tad indecent to me.

But yeah, I love people watching too.

* I do know that people from other countries (Asian, mostly) do unabashed people watching too. Maybe it has something to do with a country's culture.

Ponniyin Selvan

2011-11-04T04:31:00.000-07:00

As I had said in the post, my interest to read the Ponniyin Selvan series was kindled after my trip to Swamimalai which included visiting the great Chola temples, Gangai Konda Cholapuram and Darasuram. I had said then that I will try to read the series in Tamil. Well, if my wishes were horses, the galloping sounds they would have made would have caused world-wide noise pollution. Given that, my wish largely remained a wish (my abominable Tamil reading skills ensured that) and I eventually wound up reading the entire series in English.

The verdict? Definitely worth reading. There are five volumes with the fifth part being split into two books. The story is fact woven with fiction. All the principal characters are real flesh and blood people who lived in the 9th century AD. If you are familiar with the towns and cities in the Kumbakonam-Thanjavur region, you will surely get goosebumps when you read some of the place-names in the book - those towns have been in existence for more than a thousand years now!

The series has several passages which describe the beauty of the Chola country. You can see the lush green fields, the beautiful river Cauvery and its tributaries, the abundant stone mandapams and grand Siva temples with ardent devotees come to life before your eyes. Those were the places where I sorely missed reading the book in Tamil. The passages have been translated decently enough in English but quite understandably, they lack the beauty that Tamil would have given them.

The story by itself is quite gripping. Book five especially has a significant event happening in almost every chapter. It was when reading part 5 that I was pretty much deaf to the world and could be spotted carrying my book everywhere. I can imagine how readers would have waited with bated breath for every edition of Kalki magazine back in the 1950s when the story was first published in it as a series! No wonder the circulation of the magazine shot up then.

My favorite character in the entire series is the boat-girl Poonguzhali. What a fiesty and spirited character! She manages to outshine even the "heroes" when featured along side them. What a woman!

Now I have re-embarked on my "read Ponniyin Selvan in Tamil" project. I really think reading the series in Tamil would be totally worth it. Let's see how that plan goes!

Plastic and steel

2011-10-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

The other day, as I threw out yet another plastic water bottle, I thought back to my school days. That time, my lunch was always packed in stainless steel tiffin dabbas. It was one big sadness(!) in my young life back then that my mom wouldn't give me lunch in a box like one of those colorful plastic dabbas that some of my other school-mates brought. Plastic boxes just seemed way cooler.

Somehow, mom never listened to my pleadings and whining and I did carry stainless steel tiffin boxes for the entire time I brought lunch from home.

It was only when I went to grad school and got to pack my own lunch that I realized that most plastic boxes (and yeah, in grad school, these were the cheap ones) had the annoying tendency to hang on to the odors of the food last packed in it. Thus, food never tasted fresh after spending a few hours in the dabba no matter how recently the food had been made prior to transferring residence to the box. Finally, the bulb began to glow - stainless steel did have its plus points!

And then, of course, came the whole influx of articles about how most plastics are so terrible for your health. And thus I began my slow transition to avoid all things plastic, at least in utensils which could come in contact with heat. First, the plastic water bottles were changed to stainless steel. Then the plastic tiffin boxes changed to ceramic and glass.

That was when it struck me: not for nothing do they say that Mother always knows best. My mom knew even before the scientific community did that there was something iffy about plastic and thus withstood all the incessant whining from her nagging child and refused to pack her lunch in plastic tiffin boxes :-).

10 years later

2011-09-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, the beginning of September saw my last few days in Chennai before I headed off to Davis, USA, to study. The last flurry of shopping was getting wrapped up. All important documents were collected and ready to be placed in the hand baggage. The suitcases were brimming with clothes, shoes, utensils, books, groceries and were getting readied for the final weighing. Lists of people to whom I wanted to bid farewell before leaving were prepared.

And, all the excitement of going off to a new part of the world was slowly being replaced by a tight knot of dread at having to face the unknown soon. Yes, the first time of heading off to a country where I had no family to speak of was quite frightening even while being exhilarating.

Fast forward to today. In a quirk of fate, I got to visit the US again 10 years almost to the exact day of my first departure to the US. This time though, on work. And this time, with not much fear of the unknown. After all, this was my USA I was heading back to!

The past two weeks were probably my busiest two weeks ever in the US. Besides work, there was the shopping and catching up with people to do. Though I seemed to be out of the hotel at all times except bed-time, I still managed to not visit all the places I wanted to visit, not meet all the people I wanted to meet and not eat at all the restaurants I wanted to eat at. In short, I did not get to do all the things I wanted to do. Oh well!

But the trip was a great lot of fun. I got to drive again (yeah, turns out for all my viewing of driving as a utilitarian activity, I do *like* driving and had been missing it), got to meet several people face to face after a whole year (or longer) and got to see oh-so-familiar places again. Who would have though I would get all nostalgic upon entering a CVS of all places! I even drove by our old apartment (yeah, it's still there).

After two US weeks, I am now back in Chennai with the worst case of jet lag in the history of mankind - at least, it feels that way. Whatta souvenir, I say!

I had a lovely time in the US and enjoyed practically every minute of my stay. However, when it was time to head back, I did not feel a sense of loss. I guess, now that I have seen both the worlds, I know the good points of each and so have much to look forward to in both!

Here's to more such straddling between worlds!

Rowthiram

2011-08-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went to see the tamil movie Rowthiram. Now, I am not a Jiva fan but parents had watched Jiva in Ko and had been suitably impressed. Thus, his standing had been upgraded from masa-masa (rough translation: not quite hero-material) to watchable. So, hoping that Rowthiram would be entertaining along the lines of Ko, we set off.

Morning of the movie, I read in the paper that the movie was not worth writing home about. Ouch. This is what happens when you book tickets without reading reviews.

Still, after thinking through, my eyes brightened considerably. We were going to watch the movie at Satyam theatre. The last time we had been there, I had totally fallen in love with their popcorn. S had added a wee bit of extra butter flavoring and then sprinked jalapeno seasoning over the fresh, hot and crispy popcorn. The end result was YUMMY. We had finished the entire medium sized bag of popcorn even before the movie had begun.

So, salivating, I thought, so what if the movie is bad, I still can eat the popcorn. Finding silver linings in unlikely places, that's me

At the theatre, in spite of his protests, I convinced S to buy the large bag of popcorn to share. And, being the, whatever happiness I get, the world should get it too, type of person, I convinced mom that she would be able to eat a medium sized bagful of yummy popcorn by herself (mom is the quintessential pop-corn lover. With popcorn, she looks as gleeful as a little kid with a bag of candy. Still, she always gets only the regular size).

So, armed with our popcorn, we entered the theatre and started munching on the it long before the movie started. Movie started. Movie story was like this: a whole series of fights threaded together with a few romantic scenes and songs.

Even considering that the fights were pretty frequent, I was still surprised to see that, by the time fight #5 rolled around on the screen, I still had more than half a bag of popcorn to finish. S had stopped munching on the pop-corn and refused my offer to have more. I sneaked a glance at mom and saw her bravely chomping through her supply.

By fight #10, I was seriously getting tired of the pop-corn. Man, was that bag bottomless or what? Another sneak peek showed mom was still bravely chomping through her popcorn supply. I whispered to her "Lots of popcorn, huh?". She grinned weakly and said, "Yes da. It tastes good but my mouth is beginning to ache with all this chewing."

That's when I realized that MY mouth was aching as well. Then, I casually pushed over the bag to S and said, "Here, you finish the rest." S said, "Ha, you are not able to finish it right? I told you it would be too much." Oh well, now I KNOW, right?

Anyway, like they say, all things happen for a reason. Turns out Rowthiram was competing for the record of the world's longest movie. Thus, it was way past lunch-time when we emerged bleary-eyed from the theatre. But hungry kya? No way! With all that popcorn in our tummies we (other than dad) were set to watch one more hour of the movie. Of course, that would have meant exacerbating my headache but at least the stomach wasn't complaining. I *knew* eating all the popcorn would have some good effect!

Oh, you thought this post was a review for the movie? Well, here is the short review: don't watch. The long review? It should have been shorter by at least 45 minutes. The actors (other than the main villain, who dad said looked like a oona (chameleon) and who was about as menacing) were pretty good - but the story was non-existent. You can easily remake Rowthiram by stringing together the fight sequences from some 15 movies or so. So yeah, buy your pop-corn and go for 15 other movies instead.

One year and counting...

2011-08-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

With today, S and I complete 1 year of moving back to India. Yaay!

Turns out, we are still lovin' it :-D.

Oh, the minuses are still there: the insanely hot summer, the no-rules-is-the-only-rule traffic, the number of hoops one sometimes needs to jump through to get basic services done, day-to-day living sometimes taking annoyingly more effort than what could be considered reasonable, very low understanding of the concept of privacy, lack of decent public libraries etc. etc.

But the pluses continue to outweigh them: being close to family and having the pleasure of being able to visit them as and when the mood strikes, the awesome food (Chennai has new restaurants sprouting every week and there are nice places offering delicious non-Indian food too), being able to afford household help, other friends making the decision to return to India too, celebrating Indian festivals and functions with gay abandon, being pleasantly surprised to find many of the products and services available abroad are either already here or are slowly making their way here and of course, the indescribably nice feeling of finally feeling "settled" and being at "home".

Considering I always wanted to eventually return to India since the time I set foot in the US, it is not surprising that my experience on my return has been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, if you see everything with rose-tinted glasses, everything will look good, right?

Still, even with a non-prejudiced view, I can honestly say that in spite of being highly frustrated at times, I still have not found minuses that cannot be worked around. And that the pluses still have not begun to lose their sheen.

Overall, I still think that moving back was a great decision.

Adieu Harry Potter!

2011-07-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

After not getting tickets for last weekend, we went to watch the final installment of the Harry Potter series on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At the end though, when the screen read the words, "The End", mom and I looked at each other misty-eyed and simultaneously said, "J.K Rowling really ought to write more Harry Potter books". It really felt like the end of an era.

I started reading Harry Potter sometime in 2000. My sister was the one who provided the first book. After that, I raced through books 3,2 and then 4 (I got hold of book #3 before book #2 and read it in that order 'coz I couldn't wait). Then began the long wait for book #5. I got that as a bribe.

I pre-ordered books #6 and #7. I was awake through the night to finish the humongous book #7 on the day I received it. Well worth it! By this time, Harry Potter & co were like friends. I also took strange joy in the fact that according to the book, Harry, Hermione and Ron were born in the same year that I was (the cheap thrills of life).

In between waiting for the next book in the series to show up, I refreshed my memory by reading the existing books all over again. With each reading I found more pieces of seemingly irrelevant information which later tied in perfectly with the plot lines of future books. Nice!

Then there were the HP movies. Initially, I mostly watched them so that I could complain about how they were not a patch on the books (movies #1 and #2 were such snore-fests - I slept through movie #1), but the main reason was, as a devout Harry Potter fan, it would be sacrilege to miss out on anything HP related. But slowly, I started looking forward to the movies as well.

I have HP to thank for tiding me through times when I was sick enough to be forced to stay in bed. Once I started reading HP, I got so immersed in its world that I pretty much forgot any other discomfort. I usually never cry while reading books. But when Dumbledore died (what, you did not know that??) in book #6, I shed copious tears: about Dumbledore dying but mostly for Harry - he was now an orphan in every sense of the word. But the amusing part was, when I re-read the book, I cried *all over again*. Like one of my friends asked, did I really think Dumbledore would not die when I read the book a second time around? The power of books!

This post is simply a rambling but fond farewell to one of favorite works of fiction. Seriously, even though I smirk when bands/authors make a grand declaration of some tour or book being THE FINAL ONE only to change their minds about a year later, I would be the first one to hand Ms. Rowling a paper and pen if she decides to change her mind about not penning any more HP-related works. Thank you Ms. Rowling for creating such a marvelous world for readers to enjoy!

Globe trotter and all

2011-07-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't been exactly trotting the globe. But I had been trotting around two of my must-see destinations - Switzerland and Paris. Yaay!

I saw plenty of beautiful sights and heard plenty of French sounds. However, the first time I thought "I really ought to blog about this" was when I saw the following souvenir at a gift-shop in Lucerne.

Yup, not making this up at all. In case you are wondering, the tin was *empty*. I even shook it to make sure. I laughed for about five minutes and then clicked the picture just so that I could spread the joy further :-D. I only hope the tin was not manufactured in China - heh.

Watch this space for more stories and photographs. Right now I am recovering from the effects of an unwanted souvenir I brought back - a raging cold with cough and fever. Achhooooooooo!

Weighing me down

2011-06-28T05:25:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, my work place launched a wellness initiative. Basically, it was a program to encourage its employees to become more fit.

I thought this was a great idea. Since, at any given point in time, I am usually on a quest to lose weight (the last time I was too thin happened in 2007). This event seemed like a good excuse to kickstart my fitness plans with vigor.

You see, when you are heavier than you know you ought to be but still not heavy enough for others to notice it, the road to losing that extra weight is paved with good intentions. However, actually traversing the road requires a lot of willpower, determination and most importantly, a GOOD reason to lose weight.

The last time I was super motivated was during the months before my wedding. I was so determined to lose the extra weight and look all slim and fit in our wedding pictures that I actually managed to pull it off pretty decently.

Since then, I really haven't had good motivation (looking nice in sister's wedding - um yeah, but eating all the wedding-related goodies sounded better, looking nice in summer clothes - um yeah, but I already looked nice enough in skirts and it was not like I was going to frolic in a bikini).

Getting married again was not an option. So, while I exercised okay-regularly, I decided to view my higher-than-my-liking weight with an indulgent eye.

Still, when the work-place initiative rolled around, I was happy to join in. For, the higher-than-my-liking weight niggled in the back of my head and I now had a goal to work towards!

Thus started the regular exercising, walking and daily logging. To my delight, soon, my arms got leaner and my clothes fit better. Filled with hope, I stepped onto the weighing scale.

Noooooooooooooo! I weighed exactly the same as I had done earlier. To be sure, I weighed myself again the next day. Great! I weight 1 kg more than I had the previous day. Ugh.

At this point, I was quite sure the weighing machine had stopped working. So, in the time-tested Indian way of repairing stuff, I shook it, banged it a bit and stood on it again. Yeah - it still showed the same weight.

Maybe it was stuck. So I dragged S and made him stand on the weighing machine. He weighed *lesser* than his normal weight range. Grrr. S is a lucky fellow. The moment he starts any kind of cardio exercise, he drops weight like crazy. Thus, he is forever being greeted with "Oh you have lost weight" as soon as he decides to jog for like 3 minutes a day.

Anyway, it was obvious that it was not the weighing machine's fault. For some freaking reason, my weight refused to go down :-(. Yeah, I have heard that people usually gain weight after beginning regular expercise as muscle weighs more etc. etc. But by that logic, I must now look like a female Arnold Schwarznegger, which I don't.

I am now at my wit's end. I thought of throwing in the towel and replacing all my exercise and walking with uninterrupted net-surfing/book-reading while munching thattai and seedai from Grand Sweets.

But, upon introspection, I have decided to not let a mere weighing scale beat me. So I have now started a food dairy to keep track of what I am eating and see what I can do there. And if that does not work too, I am going to trash the weighing scale. Haha, take that, you sucker!

Any tips, gentle readers?

On a positive note - Azzuri Bay

2011-06-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

Of late, this blog seems to have turned into a whine-fest. So, instead of writing about another horrible dining experience which followed yesterday's already bad experience (in case you are curious, don't worry, that will be written about too), I will write about a good dining experience I had.

Time: A couple of months ago. The occasion: S's birthday.

After considering and tossing several restaurant suggestions, S said, "Hey, why don't we go to the other restaurant in the Crimson Chakra complex?" That seemed like a good idea.

Crimson Chakra is a restaurant quite close to our home. However, it took my cousin A's recommendation before we finally paid it a visit. We had a good experience. We also noticed that the same complex housed two more eateries and decided that we would come back to visit those too some time. One of the two restaurants was what S was referring to.

We headed out to the Crimson Chakra complex. The other two restaurants were Cornucopia and Azzuri Bay. We picked Azzuri Bay which serves Mediterranean and Chinese cuisines. A lift whizzed us upstairs. We entered the dining area and were greeted with the sight of a pleasant and spacious arrangement of tables and chairs. But what took my breath away was the awesome wall which was entirely made of clear, glass windows. And from the windows, was a beautiful view of Adyar river and its surrounding areas. Whoo! Who knew Adyar river could look so beautiful!

Adyar River

We got a lovely table for two right beside the window-wall. I felt like I was seated on a tree-house. First, two iced popsicles were placed in front of us - what a cute summer treat! We then ordered our food. Food arrived promptly and was delicious. The portion sizes were quite big (S, as always, had the duty of finishing up all the stuff I transferred to his plate from mine. However, as I said, the food was delicious, so no complaints from S)!

Great ambiance, great food. But what impressed me most was the impeccable service. Our water glasses were never left unfilled. The waiter was patient with answering all the questions we had about the menu and even offered suggestions. The servers were attentive without being in in the way. All this service with a pleasant smile that did not falter.

We left a glowing recommendation in their guest book and a generous tip. What a lovely experience!

Thus, it was not very surprising that when sis visited about a month ago, I immediately suggested Azzuri Bay as a meeting place for lunch.

Sis was delighted with the great view and enjoyed the food as well. This time round, I was smart and suggested that we share an appetizer and an entree - even this left us quite full. Needless to say, we had another pleasant dining experience.

If you are in the Adyar area, check out Azzuri Bay. Food is a little on the expensive side but the portion sizes are generous besides the entire experience making it well worth it.

p.s. See, I don't whine always :-).

p.s.1 Nopes, I am not affiliated in anyway with Azzuri Bay and they are not paying me to write this review!

No Kumarakom for you!

2011-06-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

There is this sit-down restaurant near my house in Adyar which serves Kerala cuisine. Kumarakom it is called. We once had food delivered from this place, with the result that neither of us cared for it much.

However, we read a couple of good reviews for the restaurant and it being near to our place (and thus, a potential can-take-guests-to place) and all, thought we should give it another chance.

Last Saturday was the day. We went to the restaurant and were shocked for find a crowd for more than 35 people waiting outside the rather small restaurant. No matter how much the restaurant host insisted that the wait time was 20 minutes (yeah right), it was quite obvious that we would not be seeing food for at least an hour. So we decided to eat elsewhere.

Today, we decided to be smart and call up Kumarakom in advance to make a reservation. Which was when we were told that the restaurant does not take reservations. Oh well. We then said we lived quite close to the restaurant and requested that our name be added to the waiting list. After all, the current wait time was 20 minutes (yeah right, again) and we would be there in 20 minutes.

Which was when we were told that our names would be added to the list. However, as soon as we showed up at the restaurant in person, our names would again be added to end of the list and we could wait as usual. Huh and double huh!?!

The husband sweetly asked why seeing our faces was very important to the process of adding us to that list and what pleasure the restaurant got out of making us stand and wait outside their restaurant when we could wait in the comfort of our own home. We only got a non-committal mumble in response.

Which is how, we are giving Kumarakom a miss today. No promise of tasty food can make up for such arrogant customer service.

No more Kumarakom for us. And, no regrets.

Health & Glow

2011-06-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, I absolutely hated shopping. So much so that I sometimes had my sister select my clothes and other stuff because I did not want to go shopping. Of course, this choice came with inherent danger. For, my sister seemed to select my stuff depending on how our relationship was at some particular point. So, while sis has selected some beautiful churidhars and cute tops, I have also been saddled with green-colored jeans (I am NOT kidding you) and a post-box red school bag (gosh, my friends never let me live that down).

Now that I have grown older and wiser, I do enjoy shopping from time to time. But some places, I can *always* window-shop without getting bored. This list of places includes stores which sell cosmetics. Though I don't use much beauty stuff on a regular basis, I love looking at what's available. I will admit that I have a problem knowing when to stop when buying eye-stuff - especially since I hardly ever wear eye-makeup - but on the whole, simply browsing or spending on inexpensive bargains usually keeps me happy.

I had a few stores ear-marked for cosmetics-browsing back in the US. Over here, the obvious first choice was Health & Glow.

Or so I thought till I stepped into a Health & Glow. This was when I realized that the shop was lined end-to-end with sales-people. Really. Till date, I have never seen any other store where the sales-persons outnumber customers by a ratio of 5:1.

You would think that with so many sales-persons, the service would be outstanding. Again, no. First, any product you ask for is either a) Out of stock or b) Not arrived yet or c) not available in the size you need.

If at all the store does manage to carry the product, you will get to participate in the sales-person relay. This is the game where you tell the sales-person nearest the door what you want. This person relays the product name to the next sales-person in line. And on it goes till the sales-person nearest the shelf housing the product will randomly point towards the shelf and say "It is here". At this point, you can bend/ get down on your knees while you search and try to figure out which exact rack of the shelf has the product.

While you are thus hunting for what you actually need, the sales-persons will begin the let-me-try-to-sell-you-a-product carousel. This game consists of a different sales-person stopping by every 30 seconds to ask if you need "ABC conditioner" or "XYZ face cream" or "PQR body-scrub". If you get really annoyed and answer tersely, the carousel slows down to about 1 sales-speech a minute.

What if you just want to browse? Heh. Good luck making a trip around the store without tripping over at least five sales-persons.

Really - what exactly is Health & Glow's business strategy? Always show a full store by having a shop filled with sales-people? If that's the case, the sales-persons should at least not be wearing uniforms! Or if H&G is trying to prevent theft, won't it be cheaper to tag all the products with anti-theft devices instead of paying salaries to so many people?

All that H&G has achieved is to make me quit the store as soon as I buy what I actually need because I hate being hounded while shopping besides hating feeling claustrophobic. Thus, H&G misses out on any impulse purchase that I might have made had I been allowed to browse around the store in peace. While this is good news for my wallet, I doubt this is the kind of customer-reaction H&G was going for!

Thank you H&G, for curing me of my cosmetic-browsing tendencies!

So, you must be the elder sister...

2011-05-19T02:45:00.000-07:00

When you and your sister are just a couple of years apart, it is a fairly normal occurrence for a person you have just met to incorrectly figure out who the elder sibling is. Especially, if you, like me, are taller as well as more broadly built (and I admit, weightier) than your elder sibling.

So, from the time I overtook my sis w.r.t height, I have heard my fair share of "Oh, you must be the elder sibling." Hearing it once was annoying enough but some of the strangers persisted with "Oh, but I thought you are the elder sibling. Aren't you?" even after I had corrected them the first time. Ooooh, you caught me! I am one of those weird people who pretend to be the younger sibling when they are not! Grr.

I know it shouldn't have irritated me so much. Especially since my sister, knowing how it grated on me, never took these insults (according to me) as an opportunity to tease me and instead was quite sweet about it. Besides, people thinking you look older than you are is quite low on the list of life's tragedies. Still, it rankled every time it happened.

With time, I reconciled myself to grinning at every wedding or family function or lots-of-strangers occasion I went to with my sis when I was greeted with "Oh, you must be P's (my mom) elder daughter" even as I inwardly ground my teeth. For, you see, I always translated this innocuous remark to mean "You look like the old woman of the mountains".

Then, yesterday, at a family party, a clueless relative by marriage stopped by, looked at me and my sis and exclaimed, "Oh, you must be P's daughters." Looking at me, she said, "I remember you." Then, turning to my sis she said, "I don't remember you though. You must be the younger sister who lives in the US." Sis pointed to me and mildly said,"No, that's her. She used to live in the US but moved back. I live in Mumbai."

Clueless lady could not get a clue still. Ignoring me completely, she continued enthusiastically talking to my sis, "Oh, you are from Mumbai? No wonder. You have that Mumbai look.", meaning it as a compliment. Evidently, according to Clueless, not only did I look older, I also looked like some fresh-off the bullock-cart villager. Gee thanks!

Obviously, I was annoyed. That was not the surprising thing. The surprising thing was, after a couple of minutes of bristling, I thought about it. a) I had no idea who Clueless was. b) There was no reason why what she thought about me needed to affect me at all. c) I thought I looked fine. d) Life is too short to be wasted over clueless people.

Two minutes after this introspection, I forgot all about the incident(till now) and totally enjoyed the rest of the party.

I tell you, this is the best part about growing older. Things which seemed like tragedies even a few years ago, no longer bother me much. The older I grow, the more secure and confident I am getting about myself and the less I base my worth on what others think of me. Especially when these others constitute people who have little or no role to play in my day-to-day life.

I must say, life's good :-)!

p.s. For heaven's sake though, if you meet siblings, wait for them to bring up the topic themselves instead of playing the "Are you the older one?" guessing game. Being mistaken for the older sibling is a pet peeve of many younger siblings I know!

Tamilnadu election results

2011-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Note: This was supposed to have been posted before noon today (May 13, 2011). Unfortunately, blogger decided today would be a good day to go into read-only mode. Thus you were deprived of my excellent (and now, dated) writing till now.

*****

And so, after a whole month of suspense, vote counting for the Tamilnadu Assembly elections was today. S and I turned on the TV first thing in the morning. Most of the Tamil channels were busy broadcasting the preliminary results. We surfed through all of them and were amused to find that the "results" varied widely depending upon which channel we were watching. Essentially, depending on which party's mouthpiece a particular channel was, the number of seats garnered by that party would be higher. LOL!

Thus, we resorted to watching an English news channel which seemed to be broadcasting something closer to the truth (as in, the results were an average of what was shown on the party channels).

But around 9.00am or so, it became quite clear that the AIADMK front was heading for a sweep. And the DMK party channels could no longer keep broadcasting their elevated numbers for DMK. So, some of the DMK party channels dejectedly switched to telecasting a movie or regular programming instead while the others somberly started sticking to the real results! Meanwhile, Amma clearly believes in rubbing her opponents faces in the mud. Because, Jaya TV (the AIADMK party's channel) for quite a while kept displaying such a low number of leads for DMK, in single digits in fact (the actual count then was closer to 33)!

Now that the numbers have pretty much coalesced and the final results almost decided, all channels are finally beginning to broadcast similar results. And with that, the last bits of the voting tamasha is coming to an end.

I admit, I enjoyed the whole election process a lot more than I thought I would.

Now, let's hope that this change of government brings at least some good news for the people of Tamilnadu. The general thinking seems to be that given the magnitude of scams the DMK front has been involved in, it would be difficult for the AIADMK to match up. Ergo, AIADMK will form a less corrupt and better government (I know, excellent logic for choosing a government. Still it trumps voting for a party because they promised a free food processor or some such)!

I really hope that Amma proves to be worthy of this trust!

Summer

2011-05-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

How can I call myself a self-respecting fairly newly-returned NRI if I don't sigh, moan and complain about the weather? So, here goes!

It is so darn, horribly, terribly and infinitely frickin' hot. I now totally believe our bodies are made of of 98% water. Nothing else can explain the amount of sweat I shed every day and the fact that I still haven't run out of sweat. Or maybe it can be explained by the amount of water I drink every day. I drink like a camel. And still can put away more glasses of water at any given point in time. Phew! Summers in Chennai are really, truly HOT.

On the brighter side, with the advent of summer, a whole host of summer fruits have been showing their faces: mangoes, jackfruits, palmyra fruits (nongu), watermelon - yumm! Having to face summer in order to enjoy them even starts to feel worth it when one of those slices of deliciousness are sliding down one's throat!

But, remember that post from before? Kindly ignore the advice in that post at least till August unless and otherwise you are a masochist. The new advice is: at the first sign of a day-long power cut, put on your walking shoes and head out of the house to the nearest fully air-conditioned mall. Do not come back home till you are reasonably sure that electricity has returned to your house.

Like Mom sarcastically said, "The government is so nice. They force us to save on our electricity bills by not supplying any electricity. Then they also make sure we get our daily exercise by forcing us to walk around the mall". Dad quipped, " Yeah, I am planning to send a bill to the government to get reimbursement for all the money I spent as a result of all that mall walking!" See, we can now laugh through our frustration. So much character building, I tell you!

With the temperatures hitting 42C in the past few days, there is finally something I very, very, very much miss about not being in the US. The awesome California bay area weather. Yeah, those were good weather times!

p.s. In the last sentence, I had wanted to link to some post in which I waxed eloquent about the bay area weather. Then I realized, the posts I have about the bay area weather are the ones where I complain about how it was not to my exact specification! Truly, you never fully realize what you had till it is gone!

Vaanam - the review (sort of)

2011-04-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

Before you start judging me for watching Chimbu movies in the theatre, this is what happened:

S had wanted to watch the Tamil movie Ko. Last night, he said he had booked tickets for the movie. Late this morning, we went to the theatre. We were well in time for the pre-movie trailers. A couple of movie trailers later, the trailer for the Tamil movie Vaanam popped up. The theatre was filled with ear-piercing shrieks and whistles. Wow! I turned to S and whispered wonderingly, "I can't believe a Chimbu movie is getting so many whistles for the trailer itself!"

Which was when S turned to me and grinned broadly, "This is not the trailer, this is the movie. We are watching Vaanam. I booked tickets for Vaanam, not Ko."

I think my face became smaller by 3 sizes. For, a) I hate the gimmicky lyrics and consequently the song "Evandi unnai petthan" in Vaanam and had mentally made a note to never watch the movie even if it was featuring anyone other than b) Chimbu, whose movies I think are usually cheap (VTV being the exception). Furthermore, the movie featured c) Anushka, whom I fondly call Anushka maami coz I think she looks like a maami with those big-round kohled eyes.

And now, S had successfully managed to make me sit in the theatre to watch a movie featuring all of the above. Aaaaargh! S, how could you!!

Anyhoo, after some 10 minutes of bristling (and thus happily not paying much attention to the totally gratuitous opening song and subsequent fight sequence), I decided that I might as well make the best of a bad thing and settled down to watch.

And wound up being pleasantly surprised. The movie has five parallel tracks and of course, one knew that all the twines would eventually meet but it was quite interesting to watch how events would unfold to make that happen.

The stories are multiplexed with one another and hence, before you get too bored with one track, the next track is on. There are some funny one-liners in between to keep you laughing when things become too serious.

But the thing which I found was a very refreshing change from typical Indian movies was that Anushka (one of the more popular heroines in Tamil cinema now) was cast as a prostitute. That was not the big deal. The big deal was that she was unapologetically cast as one.

Otherwise, all Indian movies I have seen, which dare to feature currently popular heroines as prostitutes invariably have a long flashback about how a dead/alcoholic father, a mother racking with whooping cough, a crippled brother, an unmarried sister and numerous other pathos-ridden family members were the reason why the virtuous heroine took it upon herself to become a prostitute. No such stories for Anushka. She just says "I have no education and I took this up as a profession." and that's all there is to it.

Finally, even commercial Indian cinema seems to be growing up! Actors (especially female ones) need not always have to maintain their "good" image - they are acting in a movie and what role they play in a movie has no reflection on their real life!

On the whole, the movie was fast-paced and decent entertainment. While I wouldn't urge you to run out and watch the movie ASAP, it is definitely not something to be avoided either. If you voluntarily go or if you are caught in the theatre like I was, be happy and enjoy the ride!

p.s. In case you are wondering, both Chimbu and Anushka acted fine and I was not irritated by either :-).

Serendipity

2011-04-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

Last year (gosh, it is soon going to be a year - it feels like a lot less), when we decided to move back to India from the US, one of the factors which helped me feel a little less odd-woman-out was knowing that a bunch of my peers were moving back around the same time too.

One of these movers-back was my close friend, A (who has been featured on this blog quite a few times, possibly under different pseudonyms). Though she was going to be in a different city, we would at least be in the same country again!

Then, a few days back, A gave me the awesome news that she and her husband are moving to Chennai soon. Yippeee!

Like my sister put it, "Man, I don't believe your luck. You move 10,000 miles and not only do you have a good friend moving back to the same country, you also have her moving back to the same city! And then you tell me that she is probably going to live close to your neighborhood too. No fair".

Yeah, me lucky, I know!

Welcome to Chennai, girl! I am busy arranging the red carpet, the flower-girls and the band! We sure are going to have a grand ol' time :-D!

Of patti and crochet

2011-04-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

I have often been told that looks-wise, I take after my patti (paternal grandmother). As in, I have a similar face-cut and smile. Note I said similar and not same. I wish it was the same because patti is one of those lucky people who have naturally smiling faces. Thus, it is very pleasant and calming to look at her. Me, er, not so much. In fact, I have been told by people who had the misfortune of waking me up from deep sleep that I have looked like the dragon that St.George slayed. Sigh.

Anyhoo, patti is also super-energetic (again, unlike me. I think I will have checked myself into a retirement home by the time I turn 40). She would rather be doing something than simply sitting around. Thus, whenever she visits, my mom specifically sets aside tasks for her so that she does not feel bored.

Recently, I heard that patti had taken up crocheting again (she used to be an avid crocheter when she was younger). When she came to visit a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to know that she had crocheted a napkin for me.

Guess what she had made it out of? Off-white cotton thread which had been used to string flowers together! Apparently she was unable to get hold of regular crochet thread and hence landed upon this improvisation. Talk about recycling!

However, patti's inner artist rebelled at the idea of leaving the off-white napkin without a border - "It looks unfinished", she said. Thus, she and mom hunted the house till they found some old leftover woollen thread. Using that, patti happily crocheted a maroon border around the it and gave the lovely napkin to me.

I promptly decided that it was too pretty to be used as a napkin and decided to use it as a part of the centerpiece for the coffee table in our house. Here it is:

See how subtly I worked in the showing off?

S and me were both super impressed by patti's enthusiasm and thus set off on a hunt for regular crochet thread for patti. After some googling and calling around, we found a store and bought her several balls of colored woollen thread. Patti looked like a kid receiving candy when we gave it to her - she just couldn't stop grinning!

I hear that she is busy coming up with new things to crochet. I can't wait to see them!

Exercising my franchise

2011-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

A violet-mark day in my life! I voted for a government election for the first time today. Yes!

The voting came with all the attendant Indian-voting tamasha. We waited for over an hour at the election-booth while voting-machine malfunction was corrected. This was of course accompanied with plenty of shouting, self-importanting and useless stand-bying. Some people walked away in frustration but the majority of voters stood their ground declaring that they were prepared to stand for however long it took for the malfunction to be corrected. I was rewarded for my patience with a violet mark on my finger and a chance to press a key on the voting machine. Yaay - I am now a part of the democratic process!

Marked finger! And no, I don't have dirty nails - it's just that they put too much ink which then spread around!

Other stuff:
1. Since the time I turned 18, it has been a long-standing desire of mine to get that mark on my finger. I remember how my cousin sat on election-day furiously painting her finger-nails. Her sister enquired why she was doing so instead of getting ready to go and vote for the first time. Cousin smartly said, "I want my nails to look pretty when they apply that mark".

2. This election's campaigning has been a whole lot of fun to watch. The various party-affliated television channels showed speeches from their own candidates - some of them were pretty entertaining. There were also plenty of party-ads and smear campaigning too. Of course, there was our truth, their truth and the real truth. Very interesting. Ever since the campaigning stopped, I have been missing this entertainment a lot.

3. I hear quite a lot of working professionals have treated the election-holiday as a vacation and have gone out of town since today is followed by a lot of public holidays. I wonder how educated people especially can be so irresponsible. These people are probably the same ones who will later complain long and hard about how the government is awful and does nothing for the welfare of the people. Even if you don't want to support any candidate, at least file the option to not choose any candidate! At least you will prevent bogus-voting! It is your duty as a citizen of a democracy.

4. Why on earth is it taking a whole long month to reveal the results of the election? Something does not sound right at all.

5. Some of the election-related SMS-es that have been floating around have been really witty. Sigh, I am going to miss the end of the elections!

How to survive Chennai summer when there is no electricity

2011-04-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

The way electricity supply works in Chennai these days is, the hotter it gets, the lesser the electricity available. Thus, when the fans and ACs are working hard to cool you off, electricity to the said devices is shut off. I suppose this is the government's way of building our character. After all, if we can survive the Chennai heat without electricity, then we must be able to handle almost all types of adverse situations, no? See, our government does so much for our welfare. Does yours do that?

Anyways, back to the point. This morning I was busy working when all the lights and fans went out leaving an eerie silence behind. That is, till the generator at the bank next door started up. Yup, we had had a power shut down. I frantically rifled through the newspaper again. I had read that parts of our neighborhood was having "maintenance" shut down but not our specific area. Oh, by the way, what once used to be called as "power-cuts" or "load-shedding", now has a new fancy name: maintenance. Though one's mind keenly wonders how certain areas of Chennai need this maintenance shut down *every* week. Exactly what is being maintained? The body-heat level of the concerned citizens?

Anyhoo - a second glance at the paper revealed that our entire neighborhood had been snuck in under some other area's power-cut schedule. Great - so we were not going to have electricity at home till 6.00pm.

Due to various reasons, I had to stay put at home. I survived. How can you do the same?

1. Live in a house which has at least one floor above it (and hence whose roof does not get direct sunlight). If not this, the house should at least be surrounded by trees. If neither of the above conditions are true, tough luck. The rest of the points will not help you. On the brighter side, you will get a bird's eye view of chennai as you evaporate. (Alternately, hit one of the closed air-conditioned malls for the day.)

2. This is a no-brainer - be dressed in cool cotton clothes.

3. Do not move unless absolutely necessary. If at all you have to move, finish whatever you need to do and then come back and sit down quietly till you stop sweating. Permitted sweat-free activities include reading a book, listening to music and fanning yourself.

4. Under no circumstance should you go into the kitchen and light the stove. If this means surviving on water-melon and yogurt from the non-functioning refrigerator for lunch, so be it.

5. Do not make the mistake of bathing. Contrary to what you think, a bath will make you sweat even more profusely, rendering it an absolute waste of time and water.

6. Drink plenty of water. Follow the directions in step 3 to come back to sweat-free status once you have made the trip to fetch the water. Or, be smart and make one trip to get a few bottles of water to keep beside you.

7. If you need to talk on the phone, keep the conversation to neutral topics. Any kind of excitement increases your heart rate and thus your sweating tendencies.

8. Do not go outside the house even if it is only for a few minutes. Once you have gotten some sun on you, coming back to sweat-free status without a fan or AC is very hard.

9. Do not drink hot beverages of any kind. Even if a cup of tea is the only thing that will take you through the noon slump. Chew gum instead or if you have been doing all the things outlined in the above eight points, you can even be lucky enough to sneak in a quick nap (no blankets).

10. Most important of all, do not focus on the missing electricity. This will just cause anger and irritation and that will, you know, cause sweat.

Ta da, now you can grin about a job well done when the turning of the fan alerts you the return of electricity to your home!

Mercifully, thus far, my neighborhood has not had a lot of prolonged outages - this is the first one for the year. The comming summer months will see me keeping my fingers crossed tight. Amen!

* Picture courtesy here.

The ICC 2011 World Cup is ours!

2011-04-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Winners

We won and how! Congratulations Team India! Finally, we can stop looking back at 1983 and start looking at 2011. YES!!!!

Image courtesy www.cricinfo.com

Jana gana...

2011-03-24T02:16:00.001-07:00

Who has sung the Indian national anthem which plays at the beginning of every 2011 ICC World Cup cricket match featuring India? Why on earth are they singing it soooooo slowly? It sounds more like something sung as an accompaniment to a funeral march (going by some of India's performances, perhaps it was appropriate but that is a whole different topic).

Especially during the last bit of Jaya he, Jaya he, it seriously sounds like the singers fell asleep to their own singing, woke up with a jerk, remembered they had not yet completed the song and finished singing the rest of it. There are such long pauses between each of the Jaya Hes!

Aren't anthems supposed to inspire you? And shouldn't that inspiration be to enthusiastically DO something rather than enthusiastically hunt for the nearest comfortable couch or bed for a snooze?

We have an awesome national anthem - is it too much to ask for it to not be sung by what seems to be a bunch of geriatric people woken up from deep sleep?

Update: Oh we won, we won! We won the match against Australia! I really should stop watching these matches - my heart isn't built to withstand such stress! But yeah, we won :-D :-D :-D!

The great living Chola temples

2011-03-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

About a week back, we made an awesome surprise (all planned by S) visit to Swamimalai, a quaint temple village located near the temple-town of Kumbakonam. The entire area is located in the very fertile Cauvery delta region and thus is generously dotted with lush fields and abundant greenery.

Green paddy fields

The area also has several other towns which are places of historical significance. The Chola dynasty (more than a 1000 years ago) reigned in this area. The Cholas, those avid lovers of art and culture, showcased their sculptural and architectural skills in a number of temples constructed throughout the region.

Of these temples, three of them, the Brihadeshwara temple, the Gangai Konda Cholapuram temple and the Darasuram temple are marked as UNESCO heritage sites. In the case of the last of the aforementioned temples, this was huge stroke of luck - it is quite possible that the beauty of the temple would have been left to crumble into ruins otherwise.

Brief historical aside: The three temples above were built by Raja Raja Chola I, his son Rajendra Chola and his grandson, Raja Raja Chola II. All three temples have similar styles of architecture.

I have visited Gangai Konda Cholapuram temple once before during childhood. All I could remember was I loved walking through the temple compound and the green lawn. So, this time around I was quite thrilled to visit it again. The temple was still as beautiful as I remembered it to be. We took plenty of pictures and tried to decipher the sculptures and carvings as best as we could. In retrospect, we should have hired a guide here too (see below).

Views of the Gangai konda cholapuram temple.*

At Darasuram, thanks to my sister's suggestion, we hired a guide. Our mouths fell open as he showed us the amount of detailing that had gone into every pillar, every window, every ceiling and every wall of the temple. Each pillar showcased a different story or a different scene. Miniature sculptures too stayed true to intricate detailing. We could see for ourselves that what the guide had said in his intro was absolutely true: Darasuram truly was a temple built to celebrate beauty!

Darasuram temple up close.*

As we walked around the temple, I swelled with pride. After all, isn't it wonderful to know your ancestors were purveyors of such talent and beauty! I wished I could close my eyes and go back a 1000 years to the time the temple was built...

Staying true to the spirit of the trip, we were lucky to stay in a resort which was actually a renovated agraharam. The resort maintained its antique-rustic ambiance throughout its property which was totally delightful.

The agraharam turned resort.*

My only regret was that we did not have time to visit the Brihadeshwara temple. Next time, for sure!

But, as a lovely way to relive the trip, I picked up the English translation of Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan, a book I have wanted to read for a very long time (my mom and aunts have raved about it for as long as I can remember). I am told that this book is a part-fictional/part-historic account of the life of Raja Raja Cholan (the builder of the aforementioned Brihadeshwara temple). Mom and Dad had pointed out several historical places on our way back from Swamimalai and now as I read the book, I grin everytime a place I saw is mentioned!

Anytime you make a trip to Tamilnadu, earmark a couple of these days for these marvels of Chola architecture!

* Click on the collages to enlarge.

Mumbai times

2011-03-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

Impromptu trips are just SO great. All of a sudden, a routine week turns into something very much worth looking forward to. We had one just this past week. We were going to Mumbai where my sister and BIL live! And from there to Alibagh for a weekend stay. With family and extended family. Yaay!

So thrilled was I that my grin remained intact even as I scampered hard to meet work deadlines, threw clothes together feverishly into a suitcase in 30 minutes, wound up things at home and survived a night with only 2.5 hours of sleep to make it to an early morning flight. S matched me grin for grin just like he matched my rushed pace.

South Mumbai is an awesome place. The entire area has an old-world feel about it with cobbled streets, pretty architecture and quaint stores. Only thing, I was warned again and again that the trip from the airport to Colaba in South Mumbai would be a long one.

For the first time in my life, I saw Murphy's law work in reverse*. First thing, we were out of the plane 5 minutes after it landed. And we got our luggage almost as soon as we reached the luggage carousel (usually the arrival of my luggage signifies that all the luggage on the plane has been unloaded. And no, I am not exaggerating). And then the traffic was so unusually light that by the time I was told over phone (I have no idea what is where in Mumbai and hence had telephonic directions relayed to me) that I would be crossing some particular land-mark, I had already left it far behind. I was at my sister's place about 40 minutes before anyone expected me to. Yeah, I knew it was going to be a great trip!

And a great trip it was. We managed to do some mall-walking, plenty of great-food hogging and total week-end vacationing. I have fallen in love with all kinds of parathas. The feeling of a hot, freshly made, flaky paratha melting in your mouth is simply too divine to describe.

The beautiful coast

Sand, rocks and the sea.

Alibagh is a calm weekend getaway from Mumbai. We stayed in a place built in a mango orchard (the mangoes were alphonsos!! Pity it is not mango season yet) in airy, bright rooms.

View from the room

We woke to the sounds of chirping birds and ocean waves. Had breakfast, lunch and dinner made off the organic vegetables from the farm and fresh fish from the ocean. Got our exercise from walking to the scenic coast and from playing badminton. Got plenty of unwind time with laughter, chatter, drinking steaming cups of ginger chai, reading on the hammock, playing cards and did I mention, laughter? I can totally get used to this.

The fun bunch of travelers

Sunset as seen from the Alibagh ferry area.

My only complaint is that the trip was too short. Still, am totally basking in the glow of an awesome break. Vive la impromptu trips!

* When something can go right, it will.

Exercise

2011-02-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

I have talked (or rather whined) about my exercising in various posts in this blog. My primary goal when I first started to exercise on a regular basis was to lose some weight and get some muscular definition.

For folks who have never exercised in their entire lives, even a few days of exercising can show a difference when looking in the mirror. Even other people notice enough to comment upon the altered appearance. And having muscles where none were before brought a high on its own. In short, it was quite easy to keep going.

But then, all new activities soon get the patina of boredom due to repetition. And sure enough, exercising too lost its charm.

Though I knew that exercising was helping me be fit and look better, it was still not a good enough motivation for me to do it regularly. Then I hit upon the idea of signing up for fitness classes. Knowing me, I knew I would feel guilty if I paid for classes and did not go since it would mean that the cost of every class I missed went down the drain (unlike the gym where I could always reason that I would go "tomorrow", though tomorrow sometimes never came for several weeks)

I was right. Where gyms had failed, fitness classes kept me exercising regularly. All this was back in the US.

Then, after we moved back to India, the first few months were too busy to think about resuming a regular fitness routine. I finally got back to exercising regularly in December. And of course, in January, I promptly fell sick. Fever and cough and cold and body-pain encourage lounging on the bed and not exercising.

Finally, I began to feel much better towards the end of January but (according to me - I am great at finding excuses) still not in exercising shape. After all, I was feeling lethargic most of the time, sniffly-nosed and consequently, cranky .

But then after a week of excuses, even I became tired of them and finally decided that sniffles or not, I was going to start exercising regularly. I had exercised for 3 days in a row when it suddenly hit me that on all those 3 days, I was not lethargic and though the sniffles remained, they no longer made my cranky.

It did not take me too long to realize the only change I had made to my daily routine was to exercise. I had read in several sources about how exercise gives you energy and releases mood-enhancing endorphins. But, while I had always agreed with being in a good-mood post-exercise (I attributed this to the wonderful feeling of knowing that I did not need to exercise for the rest of the day), I had always pooh-poohed the increased energy theory. Run over by a truck was what I usually felt like after exercising.

But now, I was a believer! I did have great energy for the rest of the day, the noon-time slump notwithstanding. And with this realization came another. Where I had not been motivated by the carrots of "being fit and looking good", I was motivated by "great energy and feel-good factor".

Not to say that I have now become an exercise freak. I still have to push myself to exercise on most of my designated exercise-days and I still sometimes continue lie down in bed long after being wide awake since getting up means having to exercise. However, it has become easier to not skip exercising and not come up with lame excuses since I started looking at exercise as something I do for mental and physical well-being and not for vanity.

Of course, since I have been enlightened only for a few weeks now, it is still too early to tell if this enlightenment too shall pass or not. Still, I am happy that it is working for now!

Indane

2011-02-14T03:18:00.000-08:00

Indane is a great Indian company which sells LPG cylinders. Indane considers itself to be God's gift to Indians and makes sure you treat it with respect. After you register for a new connection with them, you wait, wait, wait and continue waiting till it generously decides to bestow a new connection to your name. Oh, the connection is not free or anything, of course, you have to pay for it. That way you can pay and feel extremely grateful for getting something you paid for too. Win-win all the way.

Among the other rules for getting a gas connection, is the rule that you should not have any other gas cylinder in house when procuring a connection. So essentially, when you wait, wait, wait, wait and continue to wait, you are expected to subsist with either wood-stoves or induction stoves or just keep buying your food from hotels. Since most people are not insane (wood stoves are too smoky, induction-stoves - haha, with the highly reliable electricity available here, you are kidding, right?, hotels would be too expensive and unhealthy), they borrow gas cylinders from kindhearted friends or relatives while they wait for the new connection to appear.

We applied for our LPG connection in August last year. After months of telling us they were processing our application, we finally got approval in the first week of February this year. Yaay, we got it in just 7 months - aren't we extra blessed or what? Right during the application process, S told the gas agency folks that we had a borrowed connection with a borrowed regulator due to the long drawn-out process of getting a new connection. Shouldn't be a problem, S was told.

Two days ago, a gas inspector came over to our place. Not for inspecting that the kitchen is well-ventilated or that the gas cylinder would be kept in a safe place. No siree - that would actually make the inspection useful.Turns out, his only job was to make sure that there was no other gas connection in the house.

Since I had no intention of dragging the borrowed cylinder and hiding it under the bed as soon as I saw the gas-inspector at the door, the inspector saw the borrowed cylinder in all its glory. The inspector then magnanimously told me that he would not report the existence of the other cylinder so we could get our own connection. I could not believe how he could shamelessly declare that while Indane took its own sweet time to grant us a connection, we are not supposed to have any alternatives. However, I did not say anything. In retrospect, this was apparently a mistake*.

Today I call up the Indane gas-agency asking what happened to our first cylinder which was supposed to have been delivered hours after the gas-inspection took place. Then we got the news.

After seven months of making us wait, the Indane Gods had gotten angry with us. Since we had a gas cylinder in the house, they had decided to cancel our application.

But I totally get it - how dare we mere mortals use borrowed LPG till the Indane Gods decided our time to use a LPG cylinder had come? Stupid, stupid mortals! When you are registered with Indane, till Indane says so, you don't get to use LPG. And hear ye mortal, Indane shalt make you repent your presumptuous folly. No LPG connection for you!

Thus, as of today, we are no longer in line for receiving our own LPG connection from Indane.

All this is happening in a the country which is aiming to become a future superpower. Bless its little heart.

p.s. BTW, the name of the gas-agency is Kalarani and it is located in Mylapore. Just letting you know so you know upfront what you are facing in case you get cursed and get assigned to them!

* When S went to the gas agency, he said the employees there actually hinted something like we had not grovelled enough for the connection. I guess I should have shed copious tears of gratitude and kissed the gas-inspector's feet when he magnanimously said he would not report the borrowed cylinder. Totally my fault.

Operation Zero Crack

2011-01-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

While being the first to admit that I am quite far from the Miss World mold, I am nevertheless quite vain about a few physical features of mine. When I was kid, I used to love the smooth feel of my ankles. For some unfathomable reason, cracked heels were disgusting things to me and I would primly inform my mom that she and my aunts had ugly feet when those horrible heel cracks appeared (for some inexplicable reason, mom continued to love me). I had no idea back then that cracked heels were prone to afflict adults more. Instead, I just assumed that I had been born with divinely blessed perfect heels.

Fast forward to adulthood. Regular readers of this blog will know my penchant and fondness for moisturizing. If a person bathes themselves in moisturizer I guess that person's heels will have a very hard time trying to crack. So, while I did not make the connection, I continued to have smooth heels and I continued to believe in my divine perfect heels.

Fast forward some more. Last year we moved back to India. As I said, moisturizers were mostly unnecessary in Chennai and I had to regretfully give up on using so much. Then, the winter set in. Now, in Chennai, you have to look really carefully to find winter. About two days of the ceiling fan being unnecessary and winter is over. Still, the air does tend to get a bit drier than usual.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I was climbing the stairs to my in-laws house ahead of S when he asked, "Hey Archu, are those cracks in your heels?" I froze mid-step. Just like in that ad where a teenage boy calls a prematurely graying lady "aunty" and the lady hears echoes of "aunty, aunty, aunty", I could hear echoes of "cracked heels, cracked heels, cracked heels".

Stunned, I checked my feet and sure enough, I could spot two cracks on each heel. Noooooooooooooooo. All I could think about for the rest of the visit was "I need to get rid of the cracked heels NOW." How could I have neglected my favorite activity (moisturizing) so much?

Now I have launched Operation Zero Crack. I soak my feet in warm water and scrub my feet morning and night. Then douse them in moisturizer and cover my feet with socks. So what if I look like a geriatric wearing socks in 29C weather? Getting rid of the heel cracks is priority #1.

After 4 days of this routine, I don't know if the heel cracks are healing. But I do know that I have the cleanest feet in the whole of Chennai.

Here's to crack-less heels!

Only in India

2011-01-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

For the past three days, celebration (read, eating plenty of yummy food) has been in full swing in honor of Pongal, the harvest festival.

I ate sugarcane today after eons. I still remember the days of yore when we kids used to spread plenty of newspapers on the ground and then seat ourselves in a circle around them and chew and spit the sugarcane husks away to glory. This was probably a negative calorie activity since tearing away the sugarcane's outer layer, chewing the inner layer, spitting the husk out and navigating through the sugarcane eyelets (kanu) used to be quite energy-consuming. This was the macho (and time intensive) way of eating the sugarcanes - the cut and cleaned pieces were for sissies. We kids used to enjoy this ritual a lot and it was one of the highlights of Pongal.

Today, maattu (cow) pongal day, as I stuffed yet another vada into my mouth at my parents' place, I was thinking about how Pongal has mostly lost its significance for urban dwellers. After all, hardly anyone living in a city is tending to farms in their backyards that they can give thanks to their hardworking farm-animals or for a bountiful harvest. Still, considering that Pongal comes with its share of festival food and celebrations, I really was not complaining too much.

Later in the night, as S and me set off home, we bade good bye to my parents and took the elevator downstairs. We were about to walk out of the building when the strangest sight met our eyes. Standing outside the building was a cow and her calf!

The cow had tiny bells tied to its horns. Both the cow and the calf looked resplendent in the silk clothes covering them and the garlands of flowers and glittering paper hanging around their necks. In front of them stood one of the ladies of the apartment complex, venerating them with aarti as the animal-caretaker looked on.

So what if we can't give thanks to our own cows? Just rent-a-cow :-)! Still, it was great to see maattu pongal being celebrated in its true spirit!

There is still one more day of Pongal left tomorrow. So:

Wish you a very Happy Pongal!

Weird tag lines

2011-01-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

I simply *had* to write about this somewhere. When stocking our kitchen after we moved into our new place, one of the things we bought was maida (all purpose flour). Now, I am quite used to some desi products having funny-sounding names (kali mark, bovonto, seval-mark beedi (translated to cock-mark beedi), sudermani veti, poomer veshti, Bommi nightie etc. etc.). But the new love for having tag-lines associated with products have me reeling again.

So our maida had the brand name Naga. The tag-line? Naga - the glow of satisfaction.

??!?! So the maida glows or it glows when made into parathas or the Naga company owner's face glows when he sees the profits? No idea. What an irrelevant and weird tag line for an edible item I thought.

Then I saw this ad on TV today: Naga bubbly-bubbly maida. Complete with a lady singing about her bubbly bubbly son and bubbly bubbly husband and how they eat bubbly bubbly parottas made with bubbly bubbly Naga maida.

Ayooooo! I tell you, this company needs a new marketing team, stat.

Clean slate to write on

2011-01-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year 2011, folks! Boy, 2010 went whizzing by or what? Though, like S said, instead of mourning for a year gone by too fast, I should look forward to adding many more new experiences in 2011. That's a great way of looking at it, no?

My 2011 got off to a flying start. First, we went on a family outing to a resort in Pondicherry. The weather was great, the company was great, the food was great and the beach was a stone's throw away. What more does a mini-vacation need?

Then, as if my cup of joy was not full enough, this happened: I went to the in-house spa to get a massage done. The masseuse first asked me if I was a student. Amused, I said no and stated that I was working. We continued talking about some other topic. In reply to a question, I started off saying, "Yes, my husband and I..." only to be interrupted by the masseuse with a, "What, you are married?" followed by, "Oh, then you must be newly married.". I am told I wore a cat which has drunk milk expression for the rest of the day.

Before touching the big 3-0 last year, I was briefly depressed and felt that as soon as I turned 30, I would be standing with one foot in the grave. Only after turning 30 did I realize that except for filling in new digits next to my age in application forms, absolutely nothing had changed. I was going to be as old or as young as I felt and not as dictated by the number of years I had spent on the planet.

Still, it was a total cheap thrill to think that I had looked young enough that particular day to be assumed a student. Especially, since being ID-ed is something which happens more and more infrequently these days!

Yup, like I said, this New Year got off to a flying start :-D!

Here's to a wonderful 2011 *clink*.

Party girl

2010-12-29T20:28:00.002-08:00

My friend Shilpa had invited me to her kid's first birthday party. This party was happening on the 26th of December in Bangalore, the same day that a milestone occasion of close relatives was being celebrated in Chennai as well.

Thankfully, while the family party was in the afternoon, Shilpa's party was going to be held in the evening. The total party girl that I am (or more truthfully, wanting to attend both parties), I decided I would attend the family party, then hop onto a flight to Bangalore, attend the other party and return to Chennai the next day (sounds so jet-setting, right?).

Thus, tickets were booked and I was all set.

December 25th night, I decided to check in for my flight to Bangalore for the next day, at 3.25pm. To my delight, I found no one else had checked in for the flight and I checked into seat 1F, right behind the pilot, as I told my family proudly later. Which was when my dad pricked my delight bubble and told me that if no one else had checked in, it was quite possible that my flight would be canceled. Oh? Ouch.

The next morning, the day of the parties, saw me feverishly packing stuff to take to Bangalore. I would be leaving for the airport straight from Party #1. That was when the SMS alert came on my phone. Ta da! The flight to Bangalore was canceled. Ugh.

The next 45 minutes saw me on the phone to Jet Airways while they confirmed that I had now been moved to the 5.35pm flight to Bangalore. Um, I would be landing right when the Party #2 started, but as long as I went dressed in my party dress, I would still be able to make it to most of the party. Okay, all set again.

Party #1 turned out to be a total blast and everyone had a wonderful time. After the party, some guests came back home with us. While S entertained the guests, I dressed up for Party #2, again at a feverish pace, wishing that I could have spent more time with the guests.

After bidding good-bye to our guests, S and I rushed to the airport. I was dropped off and I went off to check-in, all the while feeling utterly conscious about my blingy party dress (maybe from now on I wont be so judgmental about people in airports who look like they ran away from a party). At the counter fell the first blow. My 5.35pm flight was now delayed to 6.25pm. What!!!!

Shilpa's party would be starting at 6.30pm and I would now only be landing at 7.15pm. But the brave little soldier that I am, I figured that since this was an Indian party, the guests would show up according to IST only and thus I would not miss too much of the party (I can be a little too optimistic sometimes). When told about the delay, S asked if I was planning to go all the way to Bangalore just so that I could wish Shilpa good night and come back. Har har.

So 4.10pm to 5.40pm saw me seated at the gates in the airport, shivering slightly. In my rush I had forgotten to grab a jacket and a book. The latter was remedied by buying a magazine.

At 5.45 pm, I was all ready to be called for boarding. Which was when a voice over the intercom announced that the flight to Bangalore was now delayed to 7.00pm due to unavoidable reasons and "we are extremely sorry about the delay". I had a great idea about where exactly they could shove their sorry but being of the polite type, decided not to tell them.

At this point, even optimistic me had to concede defeat. There was no point traveling all the way to Bangalore for a party if I couldn't attend the said party. I lugged my suitcase back to the jet airways counter to ask for a refund. The funny part here was I had more difficulty in getting out of the security check area than getting into it (I was not asked for ID at any point while getting in). However, my thundercloud-like, irritated, disappointed and annoyed face got me out quickly enough.

Thus, 2 hours after entering the airport, I was outside again, waiting to be picked up by S, without ever stepping onto an aircraft.

The best laid plans of mice and women...

Thanksgiving

2010-12-21T07:22:00.000-08:00

I know its almost a month past thanksgiving but hey, it is always the season to give thanks! Never mind that most of these thanks are for inconsequential teensy things.

1. I am thankful
... that we can now afford to employ a house-help to do daily household work. No more washing dishes or folding clothes. Hallelujah!

Not so thankful though
... that I can't sleep in on weekends because I have to be up to let the maid in.

2. I am thankful
... that we have a circulating library which delivers weekly/fortnightly/monthly magazines right to our doorstep to be read and returned in 2 days.

Not so thankful though
... that when I am busy, I get so guilty about returning the magazines unread that I actually read through them at a feverish pace like I was cramming for an exam.

3. I am thankful
... that festivals are such a joy to celebrate in India.

Not so thankful though
... that all the happy stuffing of yummy festival food always results in post-postprandial remorse after looking at the newly added bodily inches.

4. I am thankful
... for the abundant rain Chennai has been blessed with this rainy season. The weather is lovely and Chennai rains are a joy to get drenched in.

Not so thankful though
... about the crater-sized potholes roads are spotting these days. Seriously, do they construct roads here using mud or what?

5. I am thankful
... about our new washing machine which has an absolutely cool delay feature which lets me set up the wash before going to bed to be ready just in time for the maid to hang up to dry the next morning.

Not so thankful though
... well, this one is all good. I ain't complaining.

6. I am thankful
... that curd sets without any molly-coddling here. Seriously, you just add some yogurt to a bowl of warm milk and five hours later, the curd is brilliantly set. Only people who have tried making curd in cold climes will understand the joy of watching this happen!

Not so thankful though
... that set curd goes sour at a very rapid speed too. Ouch.

7. I am thankful for
... having both our families so close by that we can visit and get visited whenever we want.

Not so thankful though
... this one is all good too!

Overall I am more thankful than not-thankful.

Great

2010-12-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

I met again with my friend Shilpa after more than a year and a half. Since we first met (19 year ago now, man, time flies), this is probably the longest we have gone without meeting up. But of course, the moment we met, it was like we had been chatting together forever. That is the best part about close friends, time apart never affects anything.

Shilpa had traveled by herself to Chennai to attend to some official work. Though she was here for exactly a day, it was a great one day. We shunted S out to the hall and chatted late into the night till we couldn't keep our eyes open any more. We talked about everything under the sun - it was just like the good old times when we were in school. The chatting continued at all the times when we weren't asleep and time just flew.

Since we have known each other for so long, there are hardly any sides, good or bad, of one, that are unknown to the other. And since we like each other the way we are, we can simply be ourselves when we meet and get right down to the business of having a good time.

I totally had a jolly good time!

Cosmopolitan

2010-11-24T21:52:00.001-08:00

I am not a regular reader of Cosmopolitan magazine nor I do I personally know any other regular readers. But I have read about other people either swearing by the magazine or making fun of its articles. I am currently reading a Cosmo and I think I will fit snugly into the latter category.

Sample one of the tips from a Cosmo article about "50 ways to become a legendary flirt" (no, I have no idea why anyone would want to become a legendary flirt):

Take a sip of your mocha latte, stare into the eyes of the barista who made it and moan "Oh, yeah...that is sooo good." Next time, watch your drink appear before everyone else's.

Just visualizing the above scenario made me dissolve into laughter. If I moaned in the coffee shop at a barista, I am sure the barista will back away slowly while simultaneously reaching out for some heavy object.

Seriously, who comes up with these tips and ideas? More importantly, who are the poor sods who implement them??

p.s. I did not read the rest of the tips. After laughing through the first 9 tips, I decided that I do not have it in me to become a flirt, much less a legendary one.

Woman's era

2010-11-20T19:38:00.002-08:00

When I was a kid, I remember two English magazines for women used to be popular. One was Femina and the other was Woman's Era. Of the two, Women's Era was my favorite since each issue used to feature at least 5-6 fictional stories and I used to be a story junkie those days. See, I even used to read up all the stories in my English textbooks as soon as we picked up new books for the school year. Thus, Woman's Era (WE) was my favorite since it featured far more stories than the non-fictional-article-rich Femina.

However, it did not take me much growing up to realize that though the stories in WE were plentiful, plentiful in quality they were not. Most of the stories featured English which sounded like it had been written by someone with a Standard 8 education (with English as a second language) - for all I know, it *had* been written by such authors. Many sentences and phrases sounded like they had been literally translated from some other language. The pictures accompanying the stories mostly matched the stories' written quality.

Soon, I started reading the stories more for the unintentional humor the English usage sometimes provided and also to hone my English grammar police skills. In my immediate family, all the lady folks have this tendency towards grammar-policing. I tell you, we can get pretty annoying when we "gently" remind someone that it is whether not weather and it's and its are not interchangeable.

Once I moved to the US, my WE reading came to an abrupt halt. We used to get WE back home from the circulating library and obviously, the US did not feature circulating libraries which included WE in its collections. Soon, WE and its stories got relegated to some distant corner of my brain.

Then, during one of my India vacations, amidst all the eating, relative-visiting and function-attending, I glimpsed a WE on the coffee table at home. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it now featured a glossy cover with a decent layout and the pages were also of better quality. I had a slight twinge of nostalgia though, as I thought of the WE of yore and how so many things change as life goes on.

Then I browsed to one of the stories. Photographs had now replaced the amateurish drawings which used to accompany the stories earlier. I started to read the story. And slowly a smile spread itself across my face. In spite of the all the fancy-shancy packaging, WE was still the same. All the Standard 8, English-as-a-second-language authors were still very much on board.

I tell you, it is such a great comfort to know that no matter how much the rest of the world marches on by, some things will never change!

Weather forecast

2010-11-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

How does it never fail?

Two days from Diwali, so that the last of the crackers could be burst too (isn't that perfect timing?), it started raining in Chennai. Not just ordinary rainy season rains but rains due to Cyclone Jal. I woke up on Sunday morning to heavily clouded and darkened skies, gusty winds and the sound of incessant, water-fall strength showers. Cyclone it was.

Cyclone Jal was off the north Tamilnadu coast and was expected to cross into the land on Sunday night, bringing heavier showers and winds with it. Sunday noon was spent in talking about the impending cyclone and how it would affect nephew's upcoming wedding reception on Monday evening.

Then it happened. The TV news came on and the newscaster announced that all schools and colleges would be closed on Monday on account of the impending cyclone. Immediately, cheers went up.

Because this announcement meant two things: 1. All my school/college going relatives would get an unexpected reprieve from school/college. 2. The cyclone would most definitely circumvent Chennai and Monday would be a rain-free and quite possibly, a sunny day too. Hassle-free wedding reception, here we come!

For, you see, it is one of the unwritten laws of cyloning. Whenever a day is given off for educational institutions on account of an impending cyclone, the cyclone shalt not come by and normal weather shalt prevail*. This law has *always* been followed for as long as I can remember.

Thus, today, Monday, is a cloudy, albeit rain-free day. And this is the news I read this morning.

I told you right? It never fails.

* corollary to this law is, whenever educational institutes are not closed for impending cyclones, heavy rains shalt hit with great fury and causing much discomfort and inconvenience to the full-time learning public. Basically, you can't win.

Ten steps to write a chick-lit novel

2010-11-01T03:04:00.007-07:00

1. Start with a heroine. She has to be thin and have other characters tell her from time to time that she is pretty. So that readers know that inspite of her modesty, she *is* attractive.

1a) Heroine could have been fatter/uglier before current time - this opens possibilities for adding dimensions to heroine's character.
1b) Heroine has to be a sweet little innocent thing. But most importantly, she is also "endearingly" stupid. Foolish women look a lot more convincing as damsels in distress.
1c) Heroine is grown-up physically only (can be anywhere in her 20s). Mental age is about 3.5 years with generous doses of selfishness, self-centeredness and neediness thrown in. All of which only adds to her endearingness.

2. Introduce heroine's female (or gay male) friend/sister who is way more interesting than the heroine and also functions as a responsible adult acting her (his) age. This person is great friends with the heroine. Opposites evidently attract.

3. Put heroine in a situation from which anyone with an IQ greater than -30 could have got themselves out of satisfactorily. Heroine though, should wait with enormous bambi eyes to be rescued.

4. Enter the tall, dark and handsome (or blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous) hero to the rescue. Note: hero should not look like he is rescuing out of a general sense of pity for stupid people. He should be rescuing because he is charmed by the heroine's endearingness (see point 1c above).

5. Heroine starts mooning about hero. Exhibits innocenter and innocenter(read: stupid) behavior. Hero gets more and more charmed.

6. Ominous music - introduce hero's current girlfriend. Current GF is a totally hot, confident, independent and smart woman. Making her the total b*tch.

7. Add episodes showing how hero and current-GF are totally unsuited for each other. Hero obviously did not realize he digs only innocent and helpless (read: stupid) women.

8. Make hero and current-GF break up over some trifle. Note: don't make current-GF look jubilant like she got the luckiest break of her life.

9. Let hero make a move and proclaim undying love for heroine. Let heroine accept endearingly.

10. Hero and heroine should continue proclaiming undying love for each other and sail off into the sunset together.

THE END.

Optional
- ex-boyfriend for heroine. This BF can be used to create the next optional situation.
- in between, allow the hero and heroine to have misunderstandings and then understandings and then make up and continue down the path of true love.
- if the story warrants, pick unbearably smug over endearingly stupid as the heroine. The pretty and thin requirements stay the same.
- throw in conflicts with parents/siblings etc to show why heroine/hero is to be pitied for being such a brave little soldier.

******
Ugh, ugh, ugh - do most easy-breezy rom-com type novels have to be this annoying and formulaic? Ever since Bridget Jones' Diary came out, most chick-flick novel writers seem to be laboring under the impression that dumb, wishy-washy, immature women constitute the most attractive female species on the planet. Just because it worked once (I loved reading Bridget Jones' diary), it does not mean that the reading public does not want to bean the next self-absorbed twit of a heroine on the head as hard as possible (case in point, Rebecca Bloomwood of the Shopaholic series - ugh ugh ugh).

Serves me right for reading such books, I guess.

p.s. These are NOT M&B books - I have not read M&Bs and never will. These are the supposedly easy-reads written by authors like Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot etc. Not that these are superior to M&Bs or something.

You know you have been working too hard on new technology...

2010-10-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

... when you google for a recipe for Vegetable Pulao and are surprised to not be flooded with the usual results featuring a cornucopia of foodie blogs and instead seeing generic food sites.

Then realize your search term was not "Vegetable Pulao recipe" like you thought you had typed but "Vegetable Pulao example"

Sigh. And they say working remotely is so much more relaxing.

Right.

I'm waiting

2010-10-24T07:02:00.004-07:00

Now I know what I have been missing for the past nine years:
(in no particular order)

Deciding what fireworks to order.
Planning for the arrival of guests.
Happily braving the crowds to get new clothes shopping done.
Visiting sweet shops buzzing with activity, busy handling advance orders.
Seeing offers on sugar, ghee and other such groceries so that the ladies of the house can get a head-start on the sweets and snacks prepartion.
Reading newspapers filled with pages and pages of special offers.
Navigating through temporary platform shops selling mud lamps.
Watching TV inundated with ads hawking everything from sarees and veshtis to discounts for refrigerators and TVs.
Feeling the festive spirit all around, Indian style!

Yes, Deepavali is fast approaching! I can barely wait! So much so, I am even eagerly waiting to get up at 4.00am to have the traditional oil bath. Really.

Yes, it feels great to be home for Deepavali!

Mummee

2010-10-21T10:14:00.001-07:00

With the number of reality shows broadcast on Tamil television growing by the minute, the number of judges required for judging such shows is also going up exponentially. Thus, any person who is even slightly famous (read: acted in one movie) can be spotted "judging" one or the other of these reality shows.

S and I were watching one of these shows today while playing cards. The show featured participants who had some special talent to showcase. The best of these participants then got to go to the next round.

The judges were JM (male) and JF (female) both of whom have in all probability acted in 3 movies(combined total) so far. Which explains why I have absolutely no clue who these folks were. But I can tell for sure that both these judges were definitely over 20 years of age, quite possibly older. Definitely not 2 years old. This point is relevant later in the post.

On the show, one of the participants let hot candle wax drip all over himself (!!!!) and finished the act by dripping wax over his tongue (!!!!!!). Not surprisingly, JM and JF ooohed and aahed over his ability to endure pain. JM then jokingly told JF that she should try to drip wax onto her tongue too. JF refused pronto - obviously. Then JF volunteered that she would let a bit of candle wax drip over her hand instead.

The compere promptly brought over some lit candles to the judges table. JF was about to drip wax over her hand when she suddenly stopped and said in a childish voice, "Wait a minute. I need to ask mummee". I thought this was her way of releasing tension before doing some thing.

Nopes - JF was serious and her mother was in the audience. JF turned her head to mummy to wait for the response. A second later she said, "Mummee said no, so I am not going to drip wax."

I was gobsmacked. Which adult person asks their mother to give them permission to do something so trivial? On TV? Especially when they are judging some show? Unless of course, said person is 2 years old which JF was most definitely not.

I have heard that many adult actress's mothers come along for shoots. Never realized that this could be because darling daughter might die otherwise because she could not ask Mummee permission to breath.

p.s. In case either the channel or JF thought it was "Awww - so cute!", unfortunately, it was much more like "Ugh - so retarded!".

Ayutha Pooja

2010-10-16T09:30:00.001-07:00

Happy Ayutha Pooja!

Remember the part about being in India to celebrate festivals that I had written about in my moving to India post? Here's one of the whys:

That's the absolutely delicious home-cooked Ayutha Pooja special lunch at parents' place today. Shown in pic: Medu vada, sundal, beans usili, arbi fry, sankegourd kootu, potato pal-curry, poori and appalam. Not shown dal, sambhar, rasam, rice, curds and payasam.

Burp!

Strangers and magnets

2010-10-13T20:34:00.001-07:00

Yesterday noon we were at home. Being the good bharatiya nari that I am 0:-), I was busy making lunch. The door bell rang. We usually don't have visitors showing up without calling first. Thiking it was the service-person asking if we had clothes for ironing, I peered through the peep-hole. Only to find a complete stranger-lady outside. I cautiously opened the door.

This lady said that she was coming from the Indane (gas company) office and she had come by to check the safety of the gas connection. Now, considering that we have not even received our long-ago ordered gas connection yet (we are cooking on a borrowed gas cylinder currently), I thought sending someone to check the non-existent connection was a bit rich. However gas-lady was not to be put off. She was running checks on all houses and would check borrowed connections too - for free! Thinking it over, I realized, a) S was at home too b) gas-lady was female. So risk of letting stranger into home was kinda minimimal. Thus I took her to the kitchen.

Gas-lady started checking connections. That was when my brain engaged into paranoia mode. What if this lady belonged to a gang of thieves who were surveying potential houses to rob? Or what if she was a solo-robber? I stood a little away from gas-lady (to avoid being chloroformed - I told you I have an active imagination) and watched her like a hawk so I could scream at the slightest odd behavior.

Gas-lady made some motions of checking the connections. Then she revealed the real reason for her visit. She was selling some magnetic gas saving gadget. Instead of being annoyed at being conned like this along with being interrupted in the lunch-making process, relief flooded through me. Yaay - she was not a potential burglar!

By this time, S came by to see what gas-lady was upto as well. We both listened open-mouthed as gas-lady gave some ultra-vague theory about how affixing magnets near the cylinder source would miraculously allow gas in a cylinder to last for 60 days as opposed to 40 days. Umm - right. We asked if she had proof of some study conducted to validate that claim. Oh no, said gas-lady, people have been using the device only for 6 months or so now. That there are plenty of 40 day chunks in a 6-month period did not strike her.

At this point, gas-lady realized that S and me were of too scientific a bent of mind to buy into her magent-attracts-steel-in-gas-tube-leading-to-fuel-efficiency theory. Disappointed, she packed her magnets and left.

When I later narrated my thought-sequences to S, he told me that it was good idea to listen to misgivings *before* letting strangers into the house rather than after. Good point, that.

p.s. I did google search and apparently there is some credence to magnetic fuel saving contraptions. Who would have thunk! Though the reason is most definitely not what gas-lady told us.

Conversations with friends - II

2010-10-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

So this morning sis sent a forward. I found it funny and forwarded it further to a few friends. This was the subsequent email conversation between friend V and me:

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:46 AM, V wrote:
BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Archana wrote:
Oh no - does this mean I am going to be smote by lightning anytime soon :-P??

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:32 PM, V wrote:
God is very angry with you right now .
You know which God, dont you... dont you, infidel?

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - are you talking about Jesus? One likes to be clear about such things so that when one is about to be smote by lightning one knows which name to ask for mercy.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM, V wrote:
no, idiot - Jesus is the son of God, not God! - duh!
just God - English God!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Archana wrote:
Why English God? Huh, huh? Why this racism? That too, for a forward forwarded in India. Hmph. Racist Gods!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:49 AM, V wrote:
Ufff - it is the official language!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Archana wrote:
No dummy I was referring to English as in the race. Not English as in the language. Doh!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:52 PM, V wrote:
English is not a race.. Doher!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - so explain the term Englishman.... Dohest!!!

Much later:

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:07 PM, V wrote:
Yea.. there was no comeback for dohest. So I slept and took a shower instead.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Archana wrote:
Eeeehaw .....
*Archana does a victory lap around her Gmail Inbox*

*****

And they say you get more mature as you get older. Right!

In case you are wondering, this is the forward which started it all:
There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was
Black:

1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3. He didn't get a fair trial

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Jewish:

1. He went into His Father's business
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Italian:

1. He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3. He used olive oil

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a
Californian:

1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an
American Indian:

1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Irish:

1. He never got married..
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.

But the most compelling evidence of all -

3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do

AMEN!!

p.s. All of this is in fun. So please to not come after me wielding pitch-forks.
p.s.1 First installment of conversations here.

Let there be light

2010-10-04T06:38:00.008-07:00

With moving to a new place comes a new set of things to learn. Which switch turns on which light or fan. Which direction the taps need to be turned to make the water flow (my sense of direction in this regard is totally screwed now). Which keys to use for the front door locks. Thus, I am currently getting used to our new home.

The first time we stayed overnight at our new place, I was in bed before S. Reading at least a few sentences, lying on my side on the bed, book or magazine in hand, before going to sleep is my long established and cherished routine. Sometimes, when the book is too darn interesting, this has lead to almost night-outs as I devour page after page, helplessly unable to put the book down. I later pay for this enthusiasm in the form of bleary eyes and zombie mode the next day. The last time this happened was with book two of the Millenium series. I really liked the series, especially the heroine. I think Zooey Deschanel would make an excellent Lisbeth Salander for the movie version. Okay, I have totally digressed. Back to the story now.

Where was I? Yes, so, I was in bed and reading some book away to glory when S walked in. S is one of those weird people (seriously, how do you do that?) who has to have the lights off as soon as his head hits the pillow so he can go off to zzzz-land. Now you know why I try to go to bed earlier: to get my nightly reading fix.

So, S marched in, settled down in the bed and asked me to turn off the lights. I told him that he would have to get out of bed and walk to the the switch-board across to do the honors.

I could see S's brain whirring. He was comfortably settled in bed and definitely did not want to get up again to go turn off the lights. On the other hand, I would most certainly not get up to go turn off the lights till I had read to my heart's content - which might wind up taking a very long time. I watched as he made his decision and reluctantly got up, switched off the light and then came and settled himself back into bed.

At the exact instant he let out a contented "I am comfortable" sigh, I lifted my arm and flicked on the dual-control light switch above my head. As light flooded the room again, the look on S's face was priceless. Obviously, I had known all along that the light had dual-controls and no walking across the room was needed.

I can be evil like that sometimes :-D.

Follow up

2010-09-23T06:01:00.003-07:00

When I made the move to India, a friend told me that the most important tool to I would need to settle down would be the ability to follow up. Though S was doing quite some running around even then, I was still in vacation mode and did not quite grasp the importance of that bit of advice. Now that I am in active settle down mode as well, I cannot believe just how much following up every single activity requires.

Example scenario: Placing an order for something.

Me: This is what I want. Can you please note down the order and deliver it within two days?
Salesperson: Sure, I will note it down as soon as I hang up.

Two days later.
Me: What happened to my order?
Salesperson: Oh, when did you order?
Me: Two days ago.
Salesperson: Oopz, it wasnt registered. No problem madam, now I have noted it down.

Two more days later.
Me: I hope you are sending my order today.
Salesperson: Madam, sorry, somehow we missed it.
Me: !@#$%^*(!*
Salesperson: I really apologize. I will definitely send it to you in two days.

Yet another two days later.
Finally it arrives. Turnaround time for a 2-day thing is usually a minimum of 6 days.

-----
Now imagine doing this for every single thing - be it a gas connection or an internet connection or a plumber visit or a product demo or anything which involves depending on someone other than yourself. Do you wonder why I have lost half my hair due to sheer frustration?

Being out of India for close to 10 years has made me forget that this is how it happens in India. But seriously, who enjoys doing this? How come things which are taken for granted in most of the rest of the civilized world become Herculean tasks in India?

And to think my biggest worry when I moved to India was thinking about the weather and the traffic. How laughable.

Mahabharata revisited

2010-09-15T05:06:00.003-07:00

The Mahabharata is one of my favorite works of fiction (part fact?). It is a humongous work with countless interesting stories and sub-stories woven into it. To add even more variety, though the basic story remains the same, there are several different interpretations of it - which is total paisa vasool in terms of the number of reading experiences you can get for reading the what boils down to essentially one story.

The best part though, which makes the epic so engrossing, is that none of the characters are larger than life. Be it a mere human or a saint or even a God, none of the characters are flawless. Of course, their not-so-virtuous actions may sometimes be considered reasonable if the reasons behind them are examined. Still, the actions by themselves are not what the ideal, perfect character would have done. Which, according to me, is super-cool, since that is how the real world usually operates.

Not surprisingly, I have been waiting to read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Palace of Illusions. It is the story of the Mahabharatha told from Draupadi's view point. A female perspective, how could I miss it?

I laid my hands on the book a couple of weeks ago. Finally, I got to read about how Draupadi felt about being married off to five men just because an old lady made some thoughtless comment or how she was stupefied about being made a stake in a game of dice. For the record, I still feel outraged whenever I think about how Yudishthir happily staked his wife as though she was a cow or about how his brothers were so bound-by-loyalty-to-the-elder-brother that they sat watching as their wife was humiliated. Evidently, women did not count for much those days (how glad I am that I was not born in that era).

As for the book, some of the turn of phrases were pretty neat. Some of the passages detailing Draupadi's thoughts as she juggled the various men in her life were downright hilarious. Draupadi herself is not portrayed to be a Mother India or a self-sacrificing ideal queen. She is a normal human being with normal human emotions and weaknesses. But in spite of her faults or maybe because of it, she emerges as a likeable character. After all, who cannot identify with a woman who is human enough to know that something is bad for her and yet persist to do it because, you know, it made her feel good at that instant?

I thought Draupadi's transformation from shy girl to stunning queen was a bit Bollywoodish (one song and hey, we have gone from beggars to zillionaires). Also, I thought her attraction towards Karna was a bit unconvincing and at times, it felt as though this attraction was being shoved down my throat. But I guess the author needed a new fulcrum around which the story could revolve. However, considering Draupadi has interesting takes about the various characters she meets, I wish more space had been devoted to those insights rather than harping upon her (non) relationship with Karna.

Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and would certainly recommend it. Women readers would probably enjoy it more. Palace of Illusions has now whetted my appetite for the Mahabharata and I am looking forward to picking up a different interpretation soon. Any suggestions?

Chennai weather and its effects

2010-09-07T06:18:00.001-07:00

I had forgotten that Chennai air is very humid. So much so, moisturizer-girl a.k.a me (see point 8 here), does not even need to moisturize quite so much any more. I maintained my long-perfected moisturizer routine (quite simple, moisturizer any time, all the time) for three whole days after my arrival in Chennai. After which, a number of hitherto unseen break-outs happened over my face. Ardent moisturizing then came to a screeching halt. Now I have dumped all my heavy creams, lotions and washes for lighter and much lesser stuff and no longer stock every room with ample moisturizer. Sigh. What a sad loss for the moisturizer industry.

But, one industry's loss is another industry's gain. Within a few hours of arrival in Chennai, my hair texture started giving major competition to coconut-fibres across the country. No matter how smoothly I combed my hair, within an hour, tendrils of hair would start creeping all around my head. Not to mention the rough look my whole head would take on. Remember Monica from friends? Aaaaaargh. After seeing for myself that this battle would not be won easily, if at all, I gave in and straightened my hair at the parlour after parting with $$$. Still, considering that, skin-wise, I have never been more happy, that too with so little effort, I think I am still coming out tops. Hurrah!

That said, Chennai does get really hot at times. And it is not even summer! I am still training myself to turn on the fan in any room even if I plan to be in it only for some time. I have figured that it takes a very, very short time to feel very, very hot. Hopefully, by the time summer rolls around, I will be acclimatized enought to not completely evaporate. Amen to that.

Finally, did you folks hear about the unseasonal heavy rains in Chennai this August/September? You must have also heard this saying about how it rains where-ever good people go? And of course, you know that I relocated to Chennai this August. Have you connected the dots yet :-P?

That wraps up the weather update from here.

1 dalmatian

2010-08-26T06:24:00.001-07:00

The first time I entered S's family's house, friendly faces greeted me from all around. Only one face growled at me. It belonged to Figo, the dalmatian of the house. He took one look at me and barked sharply. Then, he pointedly turned his tail to me and ran back into the house. S's family consoled me saying that this was Figo's normal reaction to strangers, especially females (I later saw for myself that this was not true).

Things did not improve as time went by. The second time I visited, Figo repeated the growl and turn-tail act. To mollify him and bribe him into being friends with me, I fed him bones and other canine delicacies. Figo being the smart dog that he is, ate all of it and then signed his disapproval of me with a bark before sauntering off. Same thing happened when I stroked his fur and belly. He would enjoy all the attention and the moment I stopped stroking him, would get up, growl and walk away!

According to me, this was the problem: S was the first person in his family who got acquainted with Figo. Figo, though a very mild-mannered dog, is jealous and possessive by nature. He loves his family with a passion and at the same time hates sharing them with anyone else. So my theory was, his doggy instincts somehow told him that I was someone who was going to be competing (!?! - en owner-thaan, enakku mattum thaan*) for S's attentions. Hence the extra animosity.

I know - this seems like too much thinking for a dog but seriously, the way Figo refused to enter S's room (Figo's erstwhile domain) while I was there and the way he took an extra effort to growl at me before turning his back whenever he saw me told its own the story.

This remained the status quo for all my past India visits. This time too, I entered S's family's house with some trepidation. I could not decide whether to feel sad for Figo or feel amused that he would finally have to start learning to put up with me considering that the my visits would be far more frequent now.

Imagine my pleasant surprise then, when upon seeing me, Figo jumped up and tried to put his paws on my shoulder and lick my face. This was a gesture he usually reserved to welcome people he liked a lot! Then he nuzzled my hand - which was his way to indicate that that he wanted me to pet him.

Either all my feeding and petting of the previous times had finally worked or Figo had resigned himself to acceptance. Either way, I was finally his friend!

The rest, as they say, is history. Figo now trusts me enough to routinely come and lay his head on my lap or contentedly lie down and sigh while I rub his tummy. He still responds to my calls only when he feels like it and plants his feet firmly on the ground if I try to move him when he does not feel like it. But hey, now I am his family too!

* my owner, only for me. A famous Tamil song of long ago had similar lyrics

Onam

2010-08-23T01:47:00.001-07:00

One of the best things about marrying a person from a different regional background is that you get to celebrate more than the usual number of festivals to honor traditions from both regions. Other than learning about different customs you also get to eat more than the usual amount of yummy festival food.

So guess who is mighty thrilled that it is Onam today? Me, me, me! My very first Onam celebration - yaay! In the morning I prised my eyes open earlier than usual so I could go and asist my niece in drawing the "Poo-kolam". We had a great time decorating the floor with flowers - finally, lamps were also lit.

Looks gorgeous or what?

Besides dosas/chutney/kurma, these are the Onam special dishes I had for breakfast. Unniappams (those small puffed ovals) are something I have never had before - they are very tasty.

I had a super yummy lunch as well. Burp. And oh, I am dressed in the traditional Kerala cream-colored saree. Yup, my cup of joy overfloweth :-D!

Happy Onam to all :-)!

p.s. Though S is technically a Malayali, he was born and brought up in Tamilnadu. So he is more Tam than Mallu. But happily for me, all the principal cooking members are true-blue Mallus - hehehhe.

August 15

2010-08-14T20:50:00.002-07:00

For the past few weeks, the newspapers, TVs and radios are filled with special Independence day offers. I have also spotted Independence day decorations at various commercial establishments. Of course, special Independence day TV programs are lined up on the various TV channels with a much longer line-up of sponsors for those various programs.

What a far cry from the days when Independence day meant dragging yourself out of bed on a holiday just so that you could have the pleasure of seeing a "Chief-guest" hoisting the national flag at school followed by the highlight of the day: a single piece of candy doled out to each of the captive students once the flag hoisting and the national-anthem singing was done.

It has been thundering and raining out here in Chennai since morning today. Ain't I glad those going to school days are behind me! Instead, I can wrap my hands around a warm mug of chai and cozily settle down to watch the Independence day advertisements and their attendant programs on TV.

Happy Independence Day :-)!

On the dark side

2010-08-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

After the hugs and the cries of welcome, the first words my mom uttered upon seeing me and S were, "Why are you both so tanned?" Don't get me wrong. I have always belonged to the "curly hair, not so fair" species. I never been bothered about it either - perhaps I have been bothered about the curly hair part of it, as mentioned here. I used to get pretty pained when I saw the ads for fairness creams for women - who on earth mandated that being "fair" was the beauty ideal which Indian women should strive to attain? However, nowadays, I guffaw heartily when I see ads for fairness creams for *men*. Hahahah!

Anyway, I digress. Coming back to my story, I ruefully looked at mom and said, "I know. We got the first tan-coat at San Diego. Just when it was wearing off, we got a second, more-durable coat at New York city. This was followed by a third coat finish at Washington DC. By the time we reached Hong Kong, we were prepped and set for the final sealing coat."

July 2010 had been a month involving a lot of travel and sightseeing for us. While it was a lot of fun, it was also a lot of heat. I tell you, being in the Bay Area has spoiled me so much weather-wise. I imagined a similarly comfortable and pleasant summer in NYC and DC and was shocked to find that both the cities were giant ovens set at broil heat. Needless to say, we both were roasted and well-done by the time the trip was over. On the bright side, it prepped us well for the two days of Hong Kong sightseeing and for the current Chennai heat.

Now, some people, when they get tanned, get tanned evenly. So their entire skin takes on a nice, even, darker-hue. Not me, no siree. Instead, my skin gets tanned in splotches. So at the end of it all, I tend to look more like a human-cheetah or maybe a human-zebra than like a tanned-human. Sigh! Is it any wonder then that I tend to slather on copious quantities of sunscreen, at least on my face, before I go out into the sun?

Clearly, the sunscreen hadn't worked as well as I had hoped it would. So now, Mom has taken on "Operation De-tan Archu" with great alacrity. Every morning, she enthusiastically gives me a concoction of turmeric and cream (skimmed fresh off that morning's milk) - "to be applied right before showering". Then a cube of crushed papaya "to be applied to the face".

I strongly suspect that the only effect these rituals are having on me is to make me smell like day-old milk and old fruit-salad. Still, who can say no to such pampering?

Chennai - the ugly

2010-08-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

For the longest time now, I have wondered why it is so hard to provide clean toilets/wash rooms in Chennai. When you enter the Chennai International Airport, the first thing that greets you is the unpleasant smell wafting in from the toilets. Woe betide any person who actually wants to use these toilets. One look at the toilets and you will decide that a bladder burst is probably preferable to going through the horror of using them.

Now, if this phenomenon was universal in India, I might have chalked it to some unique Indian characteristic. However, toilets in the Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad airports seem to be well-maintained and in good condition. Why then, is it so hard to maintain similar standards in Chennai?

This phenomenon is not restricted to the Chennai airport. The other day, we went to Mayajaal, advertised as one of the "hang-out" places. The toilets there were again cringe-worthy. I am sure the story repeats itself in most commercial establishments in Chennai, that is, if they provide toilets in the first place.

In the US, I have been spoiled by the abundance of clean restrooms (most of the time), no matter where I go. Thus, I did not use to think twice before gulping down humongous quantities of water or coffee or chai before setting out somewhere. I need to curb this habit now.

I do not think that Chennai-ites have a sloppy standard of hygiene and thus are okay with the anything goes attitude. Then, why? I am unable to solve the mystery of the near unusable toilets.

Forget flyovers, the green-Chennai initiative and widespread use of cellphones. As far as I am concerned, Chennai's first step towards shining would be to provide something as basic as toilets in a decent state.

Update (August 14, 2010): I went to the Sathyam cinema complex today. I am thrilled to report that the bathrooms there were spotless and extremely well-maintained. Like my sister said, maybe I just had the bad fortune to visit the most ill-maintained wash-rooms in Chennai first!

Food in Chennai

2010-08-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

Kellogg mango flavored cereal
I spotted this in the local grocery store and was thrilled. I expected something along the lines of Kellogg Special K strawberry cereal, only with real mango pieces instead of strawberry. Unfortunately, this cereal has a suspiciously bright dark- yellow color and tastes like regular corn-flakes soaked in mango Rasna. Sigh.

Guava
I *love* the guava fruit. Back in the bay area, I found guavas only in a bruised state and priced exorbitantly. Here, it is not only unblemished and delicious but is also priced sweetly. Is there any harm in scarfing down 5 guavas a day?

Groceries
To my pleasant surprise, things like tofu and mozzarella cheese are very readily available in all stores. Also, the number of ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat items available is staggering. Ready-made chappathi, idli-batter, idiappam? Yes, yes and yes. A great number of food delivery options are available as well. One thing is for sure. As long as you have the money, you can eat your fill without ever putting a toe outside the home.

Mom's cooking, Dad's feeding
It is taking a great amount of effort to not wolf down mounds of food at every meal time (and every in-between snack-time). I have now banned my parents from buying snacks from outside. That is not stopping them from plying my plate with home-made stuff like vadas and fried fish. Parents, I tell you!! I love them :-).

Bidding adieu to my noble steed

2010-08-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest things for me to leave behind during our move was my beloved car, my trusty steed of the past six years. True to the Honda brand, the car was very low maintenance, highly reliable and ran like a charm. Considering that I tend to view cars primarily as a means to transport me from place A to place B without any hassle, this car had been my almost perfect dream car. So ya, having to sell it was a major downer.

Our ad on Craigslist evoked several responses. As luck would have it, we zeroed in on a Tamil buyer. This acted as a palliative in several ways: a) Somehow, the buyer being Tamilian assured us that the car would be taken care of well (this is regionalism - but delusions are comforting). b) My car is already familiar with Tamil being spoken in it (I can be weird that way). c) I had a slightly higher chance of visiting the car if I made a visit to the US.

Soon we found that the buyer, K, was a first time car-buyer in the US. He was also younger than us by a few years. Both these facts put S and me in the the position of advisers. K, a nice chap, was only too eager to lap up any and all the advice thrown his way. So we gave him gyan on maintenance, tires and insurance. I had deja-vu as K asked many of the same questions that I had had when buying my car. In turn, K let us have the car right until the day before we left.

The last time I drove the car was a couple of hours before K arrived to pick it up.
As I turned off the engine for the last time, I literally kissed the car good bye and patted it for its faithful service of all these years.

When K showed up, we handed all the car-keys and the maintenance records to him. Both S and me assured him that he would have a ton of fun with the car. We then threw a barrage of information at him: how to adjust the mirrors, how to get to the expressway, how to drive safe and so on. K dutifully nodded his head.

Finally, he reversed the car, made a right turn and the car disappeared from view. As we walked back to our apartment, I told S that perhaps we had thrown a wee too much advice at K. I was beginning to feel like we were K's surrogate parents. S laughed and protested.

After 20 minutes, the phone rang. It was K. S and I anxiously looked at each other and exclaimed "Oh no, I hope K did not get into any trouble.". S answered the phone. He spoke to K and after he hung up, S looked at me and burst out laughing.

Apparently K had called to say that he had reached home safe and sound. Ha - so K had felt our surrogate-parenty concern enough to let us know of his safe arrival! I *knew* it!

Arrived

2010-08-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

The check-in bags had finally been packed and fastened shut. The hand baggages weighed a ton. The last of the trash had been thrown away. Our apartment, my home of the past five years looked empty, save for the five boxes of stuff to be donated. We were set.

Our friend arrived with his SUV. Soon, every last piece of luggage was loaded onto the vehicle. S and me returned upstairs to bade one last farewell to our home. Our eyes met. Though we had barely had had time to even think about missing anything till then, for a brief instant, all the memories built up in the home flashed before us. I felt a lurch in my stomach. Then, it was time for goodbye.

The ride to the airport was smooth. At the airport, our cosiderably weighty luggage got through without any penalties. S and I grinned in relief though the grins drooped a bit when we had to lug our hand baggage to the gate. Oh well, in case we ever had to backpack a house, we were getting good training.

Once we sat in the flight, I waited for take off. When the aircraft's wheels left the ground, we would have officially left the USA. That would be a poignant moment.

I woke up with a start - I had dozed off. Boy, had the last stretch of winding up been tiring! The plane was still. I turned to S and asked why the plane was taking so long to take off. S replied that we had taken off a while ago. I had slept right through the take off!! So much for poignancy!

***

Chennai is great. It is just more than a day since we landed. We are being pampered and are being treated like royalty. For the first time since I moved to the US, I don't have to count the days till I had to leave India again. It is a curiously heady feeling.

I know I will miss the US in a lot of little and a few big ways. I know I will probably be frustrated, annoyed and will have some regrets once the honeymoon period gets over and real life starts happening.

Still, here feels like home and I am lovin' it.

Moving to India

2010-07-27T08:29:00.001-07:00

Moving between houses is a pain by itself. But moving across countries takes the definition of pain to a whole new level. The number of tasks that need to be taken care of range from closing myriad gas, electricity, internet, bank, telephone.... accounts and selling every last stick of furniture you have to figuring out how to handle any leftover things once you have actually moved out of the country. Not fun at all, I tell ya.

My stress levels have held steady at the red-danger zone for over a month now. We started executing our move in right earnest from the middle of June. While it seemed a bit early at the time, looking back, it gave us time to take things a wee bit easier than we would otherwise have been able to.

Since then, everyday has brought along its own set of tasks: posting furniture listings on Craigslist , setting up account closing dates , sorting out stuff that needs to be tossed/donated or packed and so on. The last activity is the one which has taken the lion's share of our time. I am now ready to run at the sight of any box. Besides, nowadays, everytime I need to pack something, my brain slows down so much in protest that I can actually see things happening in slow-motion. Only two more days, Archu, only two more days.

My biggest consolation is, once we get back to India, our support system is so well-entrenched that many of the settling in tasks can be delegated or at least be moved along with generous doses of help.

On the work front, things have worked out awesomely well. I can't believe the number of hoops my manager and my company has jumped through to make sure that I can continue working for them from India as well. I must tell ya, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I am valuable enough to be worth making all that effort for. My ego has gotten boosted by several hundred points.

Curiously enough, in spite of all the moving work that we are doing, I still feel like we are going on vacation rather than moving back permanently. I guess three months in Chennai would cure me of that notion.

I will keep you folks posted as we go through the process.

Home sweet home

2010-07-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

The first reaction I got from most fellow Indians when I told them that I was moving back to India was the last one I expected: envy. Most of them sighed and said they wished they could go back home as well.

Thinking back, I guess it is a predictable reaction from most first generation Indians who arrived in the US thinking that they would go back to India in a couple of years. In reality, two years became three, three became five, five became ten and suddenly, the roots had grown so deep that acceptance slowly started to creep in that perhaps US was home now. Still, that does not stop residual guilt from popping up when someone else is implementing their original plan. There, that is my Freudian analysis for today.

Coming back to me, next week this time, S and me will be on a flight back to India, going back to home sweet home: Chennai, India. It took me time to get used to the idea that I will be leaving the country I have lived in for almost 9 years now for good. The bay area, especially, boasts the privilege of hosting me for 7 years continually, a privilege which no other city has had in all my years of existence. I will miss the city, its weather, its parks, its community recreation center, its roads and most of all, the lovely city library.

Still, the idea of being among family and friends, celebrating all the major festivals with pomp, not missing out on the various functions, eating delicious food, having a very well-entrenched support system and finally going HOME is very intoxicating. Both of us are very much looking forward to it.

India, here we come :-D!

The aim game

2010-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

I have written about my not-so-happy bowling experiences before. Little wonder then, when we had to choose an activity for a team-outing at work, I steered clear of Bowling and Bocche ball (which sounded like it involved plenty of aiming as well) and voted for Laser-tag and Go-karting instead.

Most of the rest of the team voted for Go-karting as well. We picked a location which offered Go-karting as well as mini-golf. Now, while mini-golf involves aiming as well, during my previous mini-golf outings, while nowhere near the best, I had at least fared average, on par with most of the other participants. So I was not unduly worried about winding up as the mini-golf idiot.

Last Friday, after a hearty lunch at a Thai place, we decided to begin our outing with a round of mini-golf. Two teams were formed. We began playing. Plenty of good-natured laughter ensued when for some people, the ball merrily went over, around, beside, across but not into the hole. Oh goodie, if I was going to make a fool of myself, I at least had company. Hurrah!

Then my turn came, I hit the ball and to my pleasant surprise, it went right into the hole in a decent number of strokes, without much detouring. Nice!

We continued playing. Lady Luck, who had favored me for the first hole, continued to sit on my shoulder. At every hole, my ball went precisely where I wanted it to go, stopped at convenient places and never once overshot its intended position. Of course, there were other good players as well - but I could not believe that I could actually count myself among them.

Finally, it was time to tally up the scores. My team had won - yaaay!

And *drum rolls*: I was the one with the best individual score! Among 10 other people. Wonders will never ever cease. I had actually managed to play an aiming game well. Woohoo!

I acted totally cool like I was a born mini-golf pro around my colleagues. However, once I got home, I crowed to S about my "achievement" only about two dozen times over the past weekend. Now, he is just about ready to swing a mini-golf club at me the next time I go, "Guess who had the best score at mini-golf".

Funny how little things can bring big cheap thrills.

Movies watched

2010-06-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Are we there yet? This movie is reason# 1926 as to why one should not pick up random movies from the library simply based on the positive jacket blurbs. Seriously, any person who thinks that kids acting like selfish, insane, sadistic demons are cute need to have their head examined. Even more unbelievable, at the end of the movie, the hero actually decides that he wants these kids kids in his life. As Obelix says, "Tap, tap, tap". In the same situation, I would have probably taken a vow of celibacy for the rest of my life just to eliminate any possibility that I would ever be responsible for bringing such horrible kids into the world.
******

Raavanan Oh God, I hate Aishwarya Rai. She of the open-mouthed, wide-eyed, "Look, I am so paavum" plastic face. I marvel at how the world conspires to make a bad actress worse:
A. dress her up in weirdo deeeeeep necked costumes.
B. Make her mouth dialogs which will never come naturally out of any person's mouth (congratulations Suhasini Maniratnam - your husband must really love you if he voluntarily agreed to let you pen dialogs for this movie)
C. Find a dubbing artiste who has a voice even more annoying than her original voice.

Some things even Maniratnam cannot save. I take back all the positive Ash-Rai comments I made post Guru-watching. I did not like the movie as a whole much either. The locales were stunning but the story jumped around randomly. Mainly, the whole movie was just sooooo boring (this, from a person who ardently watched all the episodes of Ramayan on TV).
******

I rummaged my head hard. I cannot think of any good movies I watched recently just so that I can round out this post. So unfortunately, yet another whine post this is.

For want of a mango...

2010-06-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I spotted an awesome sale on Manila mangoes at the Indian grocery store. Deciding to buy them was a no-brainer. S and me are die-hard mango-lovers. To our pleasant surprise, while nowhere close in taste to the divine banganapalli (sorry Alphonso lovers, banganapalli is the king of mangoes according to me), the mangoes were still pretty tasty. Needless to say, within a week, the substantial collection of mangoes we had brought home dwindled rapidly to zero.

This weekend, we went to the Indian store again, hoping to buy another box of mangoes. To our dismay, the store was out of Manila mangoes. Sigh! We did the rest of our shopping and were ready to go home when S said, "Hey, let's check out the other Indian grocery store nearby. Maybe they have Manila mangoes". We drove the short distance to the other store. I was too lazy to get out of the car, so S volunteered to go check by himself.

Within a couple of minutes, I got a call from S. He excitedly said, "Hey, they have Manila mangoes here. Come on to the store." So I grabbed my hand-bag, got out of the car, locked my door and was about to walk to the store when I spotted that the car-door was unlocked on S's side. How careless, I thought and very responsibly, opened the door, pushed down the lock and slammed it shut. In the split second before the car-door locked, I thought, "Oh, does S have the keys". SLAM. Oh well, too late.

I ran to the store and breathlessly asked S if he had the car keys. He stared at me and said that he had dropped the car-keys onto his car-seat right in front of me. Had he? Ooopz! Ladies and gentlemen, applause please: we were locked out of our car.

But - S in the presence of mangoes is a S engergized. He thrust a box of carefully selected mangoes into my hands and said, "Pay for them and wait near the car - I will go home and get the spare set of keys". Uh S, I don't want to stand in front of the car with a case of mangoes while it took you God-knows-how-long time to cover the 1.5 miles distance to our house and back. I would rather do the trip home with you. S brushed aside my arguments and I dutifully paid for the mangoes while S set off home.

I then settled myself down on the side-walk in front of our car with the box of mangoes beside me. All I needed was to coo a bit and I would have looked like a street mango-hawker. The next step obviously was to pull out my cell-phone to catch up with a friend. After a bit, I lost my awkwardness at my care-of-platform status and was yacking away busily when I saw someone running towards me. I looked up and saw in amazement that it was S! Hey, it had hardly been 10 minutes since he had left. I know he is super-fit and everything but covering 3 miles in 10 minutes seemed to be a sprint worthy of the Olympics!

He opened the car with the spare-key and we set off home. On the way, the secret of his speed came out. He had asked and gotten a ride from a Tamil couple who had been sweet enough to drive in the direction opposite to their home so that S could drop by our apartment and pick up the keys! Ah, okay, so I was not married to a sprinter after all :-D.

We reached home without any further incident. But the icing on the cake came when we parked and were unloading the groceries. S suddenly looked at me and said, "Don't you have a spare key for the car on the key-chain with the apartment keys?". And it all came rushing back to me. Anticipating this exact scenario, about a month or so ago, S had threaded one of the spare car keys onto my apartment-keys key-chain. So, all along, I had had a spare car-key right inside the hand-bag I was carrying. Too bad neither of us remembered that. Brilliant or what?

Picture from here.

Smart phone

2010-06-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

I am not much of a gadget-geek. As long as a gadget does what it is primarily meant to do, I do not care for bells and whistles that come attached to it. Thus, for the longest time, my cell-phone did exactly one thing and did it well: it was an excellent mobile phone. It had a great signal, clear un-garbled voice and good battery life. It had neither a camera nor a mp3 player. In other words, it belonged in a cell-phone museum. But I was extremely pleased with it.

AT&T finally got fed up and sent me an ultimatum asking me to upgrade my phone - they were no longer going to even support the technology my phone was on. Sigh! Oh well - I upgraded to another phone with good reviews for voice-quality and battery life. The camera and mp3 player on it were basically a joke though. No problem, I use my canon and my ipod for those purposes anyhow!

Last year, I bought an iPhone for S as a gift. S is not much of an Apple fan though and re-gifted the phone to me after a couple of months of use. I was annoyed at having to give up my beloved no bells and whistles phone. But hey, you don't keep an iPhone lying around with no one using it.

Thus, I started using the iPhone. Initially, what I loved about it was the in-built GPS. It worked so well when we concocted plans on-the-go to visit a previously non-visited destination - just google the address and feed it to the map application - nice! The next draw was the availability of so many good apps for free. I went into app-overload mode for a couple of weeks. Then I began loving the ability to check weather/stocks/email anytime, anywhere.

iPhone, how do I use thee? Let me count the ways:

I set the alarm for the morning wake up call and also use the snooze function extensively.
I set up appointments and reminders on the calendar.
As soon as I wake up, still lying down, I check personal email on it - reading email from family is a nice way to begin the day.
Checking and replying to work emails when I am supposed to be on-call off-hours is such a cinch.
I love,love,love the maps and GPS functionality.
I make shopping lists on it.
LoseIt is an awesome app for tracking calories.
I carry it to work-meetings and fiddle with it when things go too off-topic (no one knows that you are not using the phone to check work emails >B-))
I use it to listen to music.
Occasionally it has served as a stand-in camera when I miss bringing along the real camera.
Locating restaurants in a new area is so easy.
So is browsing for vetti things like what the "Congress-created dust bowl" sign you spotted on the highway means.

Oh, I could go on and on and on. I realize now: A smart-phone is one of those things that you do not miss having in your life till you have owned one.

However, I do have a gripe - the iPhone mostly does not have a strong enough signal and the voice quality sucks. Really, would that be too much of a requirement to ask of an i-PHONE?

Oranges

2010-06-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last week, for two consecutive days, whenever I walked in home after work, I smelt a strong orange smell at home. Wow - the mandarin oranges that I bought at Costco really do have a very strong smell, I thought. I asked S about it and he shrugged, "Maybe!".

On day three, I once again entered into a house smelling of oranges. I told S, "I bet the oranges are going bad - the whole house is smelling of them!"

I rummaged through the sack of oranges. Though I really couldn't smell the oranges any stronger at this close range and I couldn't find any spoilt oranges, I finally managed to find one misshapen, squished orange. I triumphantly pulled it out and said to S, "Aha, this is the culprit!". S asked, "Are you sure? This orange does not have any smell at all!" I stubbornly said, "This has to be it, there is no other source for the orange smell."

This was when I noticed that S was having an undefinable look on his face and was shaking silently. I demanded, "What?".

S burst out laughing, "Hahahahah - I found this orange-scented room-spray in one of the cupboards the other day and I have been spraying it every evening since then. I have to appreciate you though! You are one mighty talented detective - you so smartly deduced that the strong orange smell was coming from one squished orange with no smell in it whatsover - hahahahahah!"

Grrr!

How that orange-scented room spray came to be at home is a mystery still unresolved.

Dance

2010-06-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Call me racist but I always used to think that highly flexible body movements were out of reach of Indian women. As graceful as many female Indian dancers are, I never thought flexibility was one of the strong points as far as the women were concerned.

I have eaten my words (and my prejudices) since I saw this video. Start watching from minute 3.00 if you want to cut the chatter.

http://www.tamilrain.com/jodi-no-1-season-4-17-04-2010/black-and-white-round-day-2-part-1-video_dc429fbb4.html

Isn't that such a magical performance? The girl, Sai Pramoditha, has done her puppet act so well. So bendy, springy and flexible - wow!

As an aside, the show itself, called Jodi No. 1 Season 4, features several ultra-talented, creative and gifted dancers and choreographers competing (pretty civilly, I must say) with each other to get the top spot for the best dancer couple.

What a pleasure it is to watch a reality show that showcases such deserving talent!

I like the sound of that!

2010-06-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

My friend V once told me that he read somewhere that salsa (both dance and the food) could be so popular because people love to say "salsa". I am not sure I love saying salsa quite so much though I love the food as well as the dance. But there are other words I like the sound of. I also like the way they roll off my tongue.

Here are some words I like listening to or pronouncing:

Sugar, shoes, chalk, meal (it is always a disappointment when I realize for the n-th time that the boring chapathis and dal I had for lunch is a "meal" too), juice.

Off the top of my head, that's all I can think of.

But if you kind reader folks will post some words you like in the comments section, I would love to read about them.

Grumble-grumble

2010-05-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone know how to uninstall that newly added annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying --> infinity left bar on the google search results? Google had such a clean look - why did they have to go and tweak it? At the very least, shouldn't they have made these bells and whistles optional? Sigh.

***

What do you do when someone asks totally inapproprite questions? I just overheard two colleagues talking. One of them, say A, was enquiring about the other's (say B's) baby. B made the usual blah-blah comments. Then A goes, "Are you done?". B looked confused and A helpfully clarified "I mean, are you done having babies or are you having one more?" The expression on B's face was priceless and she spluttered some response. Seriously, since when did someone's reproductive habits become topics of casual conversation? I have noticed that people of Asian descent are more likely to be the perpetrators - probably owing to the Asian culture of "everyone's business is my business as well".

***

I uninstalled the Facebook app for iPhone. I realized that my tolerance for reading daily status updates like "Yaay - my kids finished eating their bowls of cereal completely" and "Watzisname is twiddling her thumbs" is pretty low. Must say, my quality of life seems to have improved.

***

Phew - I sure sound grumpy! On the bright side, the weather today is gorgeous. A perfect California day - cloudless, sunny and pleasantly warm. Niccccceee!

The cook in me

2010-04-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, thanks to being a shy little kid, I used to take refuge in the kitchen under the pretext of helping Mom whenever guests came over to our house. My sister, the social butterfly, preferred to take on the task of entertaining the guests. As a result, I picked up quite a few kitchen tips like how to cut vegetables, how dishes looked in the intermediate stage of preparation etc. To this day, I am the official taster in my house and in relatives' houses. I can always tell when "something" is missing in a dish and adjustments can be suitably made.

Despite these forays into the kitchen, I did not know any actual cooking. I learnt to make exactly two things - tea and rasam (I once made killer rasam which made my granny appreciatively sigh "Get some gold bangles for the hands which made this divine rasam" (nah I did not actually get the bangles :-()) - these dishes being two of my most favorite things to drink/eat.

Life went on this way till I was thrust into the role of head-chef at home for a few days when in college. Though I acquitted myself reasonably okay then, other than sporadically trying out some exotic recipe from some magazine (this was before the days of food-blogs) I never voluntarily cooked.

All this changed once I moved to the US for grad school. Obviously, there was no mom around to place plates filled with piping hot food in front of me. If I wanted to eat, *I* had to cook (or persuade a room-mate to cook for me).

For the first time in my life, I began to appreciate just how much effort cooking involved. I mentally cursed myself for all the times back home when I had whined, "Not idli for dinner again", "this dosa is not hot enough, can I get one off the stove", "Aaargh, do I have to have left-over sambhar" and so on. I especially hated the clean up and doing dishes that the end of every cooking session entailed. I decided that cooking was an annoying chore which I had to do.

When I moved out on my own once I started working, I cooked huge pots of food over the weekend which then served as lunch and dinner for the rest of the week. This got boring soon enough but I thought it was definitely preferable to slogging night after night in the kitchen.

But - during the weekend, I slowly started cooking different kinds of food - recipes from cookbooks, recipes from mom, cravings that had to satisfied RIGHT NOW and so on. Soon enough I realized that what was annoying to me was not the cooking. It was the cleaning part of it. Mincing, chopping, measuring spices, stirring and other essentials of cooking was something that I did not mind. Heck, I actually *liked* it.

The next time I went to India, I offered to cook a meal for my family. Though she had her doubts, mom agreed. My parents and sister were pleasantly surprised with the end result. Duh - did they really think their foodie daughter would have survived by herself for so long in the US if she was making inedible food?

In any case, these experiments with food gave me enough confidence to actually cook for relatives when they came to visit me in the US instead of whisking them straight to Saravana Bhavan or Udupi Palace which is my standard operating procedure for visitors. These relatives were amazed that I could cook. Seriously, I think once someone has seen you as a drooling baby, they assume that you will never grow up and do "adult" things like cooking, driving etc!

Last year, after S and me got hitched, I got a full time guinea-pig, er, appreciative recipient to test my cooking on.

If I am a foodie, S is a super foodie. Which works out great because S is a good cook (it is my theory that people who love food with a passion are typically good cooks as well). For the first few months of married life, we took turns outshining each other in the kitchen. This caused an unforeseen problem: within a couple of months, we had gained back all weight lost for the wedding plus some. Not good at all. So, the enthusiasm had to be curbed.

Nevertheless, with S being such an eager taster, I have become only too willing to experiment*. Not everyday - fixing daily meals still mostly bores me - but over the weekends I usually try my hand at a new recipe or two. And, I actually look forward to it**. Yup, I am discovering the cook in me.

*Of course, not every culinary end result is a spectacular success but the suspense about the final product is part of the fun.

** It helps that S is willing to do the dishes afterwards :-). I still hate that part.

Spotted

2010-04-14T10:08:00.001-07:00

New kind of herb tea at work:

Am wondering if they are trying to send some kind of message here.

Clash of the Titans

2010-04-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Movie-makers seem to have been bitten by the 3D bug since Avatar happened. A slew of 3D movies are coming out these days. I have always found 3D movies to be a lot of fun since the first time I watched one (remember My dear kuttichatan? My mom still recalls both sis and me reaching out eagerly to grab ice-cream in one of the scenes).

Last weekend, S said that Clash of the Titans was out. Since the movie is mythology based with scope for plenty of monsters and CGI, we shelled out an extra 10 bucks for the 3D version of the movie as we thought it would be paisa-vasool*.

We had reached the theater at 11.00am for a 11.00am show. No problem - usually the trailers run for a good 20 minutes or so before the movie starts. We put on the dorky 3D glasses and settled down. When the movie started, the titles leapt out of the screen. Cool - this was going to be good!

The movie continued on its mythological way. After a while I realized that I could not see any 3D-ish effects even in the places where 3D effects should have been obvious - like a coin being flung towards the screen, a sword being pointed towards the audience etc. Was this really 3D or what? To validate my suspicion, I took off my 3D glasses and peered at the screen. Whereas for Avatar, the entire screen was kinda blurry when I took those glasses off, for Clash of the Titans, the movie continued being crystal-clear.

Aaaaargh! Evidently the movie makers had 3D-fied about 10 minutes of Clash of the Titans for the trailers and left the rest of the movie as is. Effectively, we had paid 10 extra bucks for a few minutes of watching fancy-looking titles.

Only after we returned home did I read on the Net that the movie had had 3D effects added after it had finished being shot. Essentially the producers had decided to cash in on the 3D-mania without actually spending much on it besides adding the words 3D to the title, and providing dorky glasses to the theatre patrons.

The movie itself was not too bad - an okay masala entertainer as movies in this genre usually are. Regardless, we felt cheated.

Flash news for the producers: Dorky glasses doth not a 3D-movie make.

*value for money

I can't think of an apt title

2010-03-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

These days, what with women's lib and everything, the old adage, "Behind every successful man is a woman" is slowly taking on a new avatar: "Behind every successful woman is a man". Still, I found this bio-profile of the Consul General of India in San Francisco, Susmita Thomas, totally hilarious.

Slightly self-trumpety as it sounds, I have no issues whatsoever with the first three paragraphs. But what on earth are the last three paragraphs doing in the Consul-General's profile? The description about her husband Ravi's achievements is even longer than her own! This chap is in no way related to the Indian Embassy other than being the Consul General's husband. How is what he did, is doing and going to do even relevant in this context? Perhaps this is how Susmita is supposed to show her loyalty to her husband - don't know! Aaaargh!

This brings me to another question: am I the only one who finds the practice of women doctors in India identifying themselves Dr. (Mrs.) Female DoctorName on name-boards odd? How many male doctors are there who have the compulsive need to identify themselves as married by saying something like this: Dr. Male DoctorName (married) on their name-boards?

New look

2010-03-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

Finally, I tried out the new Blogger template designer. It is so much easier to change the various elements of the blogger page. Thus, in about 15 minutes of picking and choosing, my blog has got a new look. Sweet! Though I usually avoid it in interest of speedy loading, this time round I could not resist picking a background picture.

Do hop on over and let me know what you think. For the lazy ones, here is a screenshot of "The New Look":

Vidathu Karuppu

2010-03-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

Last week S discovered all the episodes of the Vidathu Karuppu television series on some website online. If you recall, Vidathu Karuppu (VK) is part two of the thrilling Marma Desam stories penned by Indra Soundarajan. VK was telecast on Sun TV more than a dozen years ago. It was one of the very few TV series that I watched regularly. I still remember waiting eagerly every Thursday night 9.00pm for the next episode of VK.

So when S asked if I was interested in re-watching it, it took very little thinking on my part to say yes. Other than remembering the climax, I recalled nothing whatsover of the series. So we started watching it. And I realized all over again as to why I was so attracted towards the series.

Each episode is divided into scenes from the past and the present - both these parts are rivetingly done and more often than not, end in an event which leaves you with burning curiosity as to what happened next.

Needless to say, S and me were completely hooked. The main advantage we had was that we just had to click on the next button to see the next episode instead of having to wait a whole week to know what happened (man, it must have been excruciating back then to wait for a entire week - and even more exasperating to see a a few minutes of recap every week when that time could have been used to move the story further). The downside was that we were completely addicted.

On Sunday we finally finished watching the series (ya in one week we watched all 84 episodes of it and yup while working full time and everything). The series was as satisfying as ever. We are still discussing the nuances and we kinda miss the characters now - addiction withdrawal symptoms I guess. I wonder how come such thrilling serials no longer get made in Tamil these days. Instead we have these sob-fests called mega serials which go on for years together. Ugh.

Another thing I liked while watching VK was seeing how naturally the various characters were dressed. But I wondered at the protaganist Reena's clothes. She mostly wore extremely loose tops and jeans/skirts or tent-like salwar kameezes. She was supposed to be a modern young woman from Chennai - so why was she wearing such ill-fitting clothes? Then I realized with a pang - that's exactly how most "normal" Chennai girls used to dress back then. Including me. *blush*. Oh well, you live and you learn, no?

If you know Tamil, Vidathu Karuppu is a must watch series. It has aged well with time and is as gripping now as it was more than a dozen years ago.

p.s. do you know if DVDs of good Tamil serials are available for sale?

Faith

2010-03-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

While driving to work this morning, I was hearing NPRs broadcast about the latest series of allegations of child abuse against priests in the catholic church. These priests are supposed to be people in God's service and they behaved worse than animals! Even more disgusting is the fact that their higher ups actually tried to protect the predators instead of stripping them of their titles and kicking them right out of their community. How will people continue to have faith in a religious institution if they know that even the most vulnerable and innocent members of it have no safety?

Not long ago, another of those Hindu Con men, sorry God-men, in India got exposed for what he was - a greedy, lustful charlatan. This is not the first time this is happening. Religious and spiritual figureheads being caught doing immoral, illegal and criminal activities is something which happens in India with even greater regularity than the coming of summer. In fact, the more I read such news, the more I wonder every time I hear about a new God-man or spiritual guru, as to when exactly that person will be found to be a fraud as well.

Given that such news has become a fact of daily life, I have never been able to look up to a religious or spiritual figurehead. Since childhood, I have always strongly felt that my religious faith and my spiritual inclination is something intensely personal between me and the supernatural force that I believe guides the universe. I do not need a "broker" to talk to God or a spiritual guru (the very term spiritual guru sets my fraud alarm bells ringing) to guide me onto the path of truth or whatever, thank you very much. Really, I cannot see what makes someone else, who is just as human as I am, closer to a higher power or more blessed or more divine because they claim that is so.

However, there are plenty of people, not necessarily illiterate or uneducated who totally believe in their gurus no matter what anyone else says. I was seeing a rather disgusting interview on the internet the other day where the fraudster Swami was giving some cock and bull story as to why he was inculpable and the interviewer was actually looking at him like he believed every word was true! Whoever came up with the phrase "blinded by faith" knew what they were talking about.

I guess for every hundred fraudster gurus out there, there might be a genuine guru. But if you were so enlightened and free of the materialistic world, why would you encourage people idolizing you and worshiping you as God? Isn't renunciation of all worldly wants the first step towards a "pure" life?

However, as I said, faith is something which is intensely personal and I have no interest in questioning other people's choices and beliefs especially since I get annoyed when people question mine. Live and let live without causing any harm to anyone is my motto.

Still, it does not stop me from feeling anger at the gullibility, naivete and faith of people which enables the fraudsters, every time such an expose happens.

Blogger gets a template designer!

2010-03-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Oooooh this sounds promising! Can't wait to try it out.

Bullet points

2010-03-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

- The key to enjoying restaurant food is to never look up its nutritional information. Recently we ate at PF Changs and when we got home I looked up the calories in the sesame chicken bowl I had. Turns out it was 525 calories per serving and apparently the plate had *two* servings in it. So I had had a whopping 1050 calories for lunch and this was not even counting the appetizer and the soup. Gaaaaah! I am so not going to look up restaurant calorie information henceforth.

- Watched Vinnaithaandi Varuvaya. I liked the low keyed tone of the movie and the very down-to-earth, real-life dialogs, settings and clothes. Even the clothes in the dream song-sequences was something which "normal" people could wear. I enjoyed the movie though I thought the second half dragged a bit and I was not totally satisfied with the turn of events. Another outcome of watching this movie was me actually being able to stand (and maybe even *like*) the hitherto extremely annoying Simbu. Also, though I had not heard the entire soundtrack of the movie before (really) I thought the songs, though forcibly inserted in some places, sounded good on screen and have now downloaded them to hear them through.

- Is Karthik the most happening name for movie-heroes? Off the top of my head, I remember that the heroes in Alaipayuthey, Mozhi and now, Vinnaithandi Varuvaya were called Karthik. Or is it because Karthik is a very common Tam name? I had three classmates named Karthik in undergrad and have three cousins named Karthik. Don't know. I can only be happy that Babu/Bharani or some such name did not catch the fancy of movie-makers.*

- I have become a big fan of guacamole. I found this recipe which is so easy to make and yummy as well. Avocado being made of plenty of good stuff, it is a total win-win situation I say!

* I have nothing against people named Babu or Bharani. Just that I hate those names for no reason.

Weekend

2010-02-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

When the alarm rang this morning, my sleep-addled brain wondered why on earth I had set the alarm on a Saturday morning. Then I slowly realized that today was only Friday. Then began to wonder what happened to yesterday's Friday. And then - okay, as you can see, I was totally confused and annoyed that it was not Saturday today. On the brighter side, today is Friday which means tomorrow is Saturday. Which is far better than waking up thinking it is a Saturday only to realize that it is *Monday* (that has happened to me as well - that week correspondingly seemed to be the longest of my life).

I think it was only after I got to the U.S. that this concept of weekend being a BIG thing was introduced to me. I mean, I liked in weekends in India as well (other than that awesome year of my life when I disliked weekends because I could not hang out at school with my friends). However, since I was going to school/college back then, besides going out, weekends also usually meant catching up on pending school/college work. Also, no matter how much you try, such work always runs as a background process in your mind.

One of the best things I like about working life is that it is possible (at least most of the time) to completely detach yourself from work once you step away from the office. Which is why I think weekends take on a special significance as it is a complete break from the daily grind. On weekends, you can sleep better, eat better, be vetti better and the possibilities to relax seem almost endless. That is, until Sunday evening rolls around and you wonder where on earth all that time went to!

Grad school was when I first started chanting the TGIF mantra. Our department even used to host TGIF parties every Friday! My friends and I were a relaxed bunch and most weekends meant renting out a car and going somewhere, mostly to hike or camp. Of course this meant doing night-outers on other days so we could catch up on course work but hey, weekends spent doing nothing were a criminal waste of time, no? I still remember my parents worriedly hinting that they thought their daughter had gone abroad mainly to be a wanderer until I sent them my grade sheet and quelled their fears!

Though I remember doing this in childhood as well, grad school was when this "got to do something on weekends" and "got to travel for long weekends" concept got permanently embedded in my psyche. Thus, now, weekends are treated special and long weekends are treated specialer. So much so, a weekend where I don't put a foot outside the house sometimes becomes a treat in itself!

Luckily, S has turned out to be an even more enthusiastic chanter of the TGIF mantra than me. So now our household has two ardent members of the "Go Weekend!" brigade. I have no idea what we are planning to do this weekend. Still, am mighty glad it is Friday today. TGIF, folks!

You know you have waited too long in queues...

2010-02-18T20:25:00.001-08:00

...when you start getting nightmares which feature you standing in a queue which does not have a destination.

S and me visited LA over the long weekend and did all the touristy things - Universal studios, Disneyland, Walk of fame and so on. We had a wonderful time though I am visiting these attractions for the 3rd time!

Last weekend being long weekend and all, we had expected the crowds to be on the higher side. Universal Studios crowd was manageable but Disneyland seemed to have attracted every person in the United States.

Thus we wound up doing quite a lot of queue waiting at Disneyland - the longest being the wait for the Space Mountain ride at 90 minutes (to boot, we weren't the only morons who gamely decided to wait in line, the queue swelled behind us as well)!

Now, are you surprised that for the next few nights, I kept dreaming that we were waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting in a queue, with no destination in sight?

Regardless, the whole visit was fun from start to finish. As S put it, Disneyland is a magical place - and LA is one place which does not get boring to visit.

p.s. Both of us kept a lookout for the famous Hollywood sign. On the freeway, S spotted another huge sign which said "Save Peak" on a nearby mountain. We both were curious what this new sign which was as big as the Hollywood sign was. It was only at the Kodak Theatre complex that we realized that the Save Peak sign *was* the Hollywood sign. Apparently they had covered up the sign to raise awareness for some cause. Sheesh! So yup, no Hollywood sign patel pics this time.

p.s.1. The Universal Studios Simpson ride simply rocks - I *totally* loved it.

p.s.2. During busy season in Disneyland, get the Fastpass passes much earlier in the day for the popular rides, else they simply run out of it.

Spokesperson

2010-02-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

Like I have said before, by conscious choice, I have never commuted a great distance to work. Thus I really don't need to come up with many ways to entertain myself during the drive. Usually I listen to one of the many radio stations blasting pop music.

A couple of months ago, I re-discovered the National Public Radio (NPR) and decided to give listening to it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised to find out just how many diverse topics they talk about and how entertaining as well as educating the discussions usually were. Now, I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of listening to NPR while driving to and from work.

This morning the talk was about the Tea Party. I have heard about the Tea Party (as in present-day usage) only a couple of times, that too in passing. Wiki tells me that the Tea Party movement

"is a United States grass-roots protest movement that emerged in 2009 and is opposed to the federal government's stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

Anyhoo, the topic under discussion was the Tea Party convention currently being held in Nashville, Tennessee. The program host gave an informed overview of the movement, what it stood for and its ideals. Then the host started to interview one of the convention attendees, let's call her Lady, about the movement.

The first question was what she thought the movement stood for [note, I am paraphrasing the dialogs, my memory is not good enough to remember exact wording]. Lady said something along the lines of "It is against a big overseeing government" or some such. Then she bristled, "People are against the Universal Health Care bill because it is unconstitutional. It is against the law. THe government is trying to pass an unconstitutional bill."

Now, though I keep reading about the healthcare bill that Obama is promoting, I have not quite gotten my head wrapped around what its specifics are. But I was quite sure that I had not yet heard of it being an unconstitutional move. Sure enough, the radio host asked, "So in what way do you think the bill is unconstitutional?"

There was a flabbergasted silence from Lady. Evidently, whoever had filled her with passionate protest had forgotten to tell her exactly why she was filled with passionate protest! Lady finally rallied around with, "I am not sure about the exact part of the constitution it violates but if you look around in the constitution, you will find that it has a section stating it is invalid". WTH!?!

I rolled my eyes and am sure the radio host did too for he promptly switched over to another question to a different person.

My question is, when you are holding a convention, how difficult is it for you to find someone who is well-informed to talk to the media? After all, this person is supposed to be a representative of the attendees. If this is the best you can come up with, what impression does it give about the rest of the attendees?

Now I know why most organizations use only trained spokespersons to talk to the press and media!

p.s. I still don't know enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion about it one way or the other.

Titbits

2010-02-02T21:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my second fitness class after a longish break of about two months. I have said it before and I say it again - it is highly unfair as to how it takes several months to reach a certain level of fitness and how only a few weeks break undoes all the good work. Unfair, unfair, unfair!

Anyways, considering that these days I am looking more and more like a well-iced snow-woman, not to mention puffing like a steam-engine at the slightest exertion, I am nevertheless dragging myself to class and putting myself through the grueling workout.

So, last evening, I followed the teacher as closely as I could. Still, at the end of class I felt a bit bad that for a couple of exercises, for a short while, I had not been able to keep up. I finished putting away my stuff and was about to leave when another fitness-class participant called me and asked "How long have you been doing this?". And then continued, "I have been watching you as I could not see the instructor from where I was. O boy, you did all those tough exercises without a break - that is so awesome! I wanted to know how long it takes to get there."

I was so delighted to hear this - I am not as unfit as I had imagined then! This is exactly the boost that I need to keep me going. So maybe next week I will not whine quite so much as usual before class. Amen to that.

***
I don't think I could say it better than this post. Still, I really have to put this down somewhere:

The new mile sur mera tumhara video simply sucks. [Part 1, Part 2]

And not just because I am viewing the original version through rose-tinted glasses (though I admit, I get all nostalgic whenever I hear that tune). According to the new version, present-day India apparently is defined by her actors and actresses. All of whom "emote" the song so well that I felt like someone was drilling my teeth as I watched them.

Sigh - some things are better left alone, no?

p.s.1 What's with Big B speaking out words in the song? I thought everyone was already tired of hearing Big B's baritone voice in almost every movie out of Bollywood. I sincerely hope he gets an incurable case of laryngitis if that is the only way to save us from the misery of hearing him booming everywhere.

p.s.2 Amar Singh did not make an appearance in the video as an extension of the Bachchan ensemble - thank God for small mercies!

p.s.3 I even hated Vikram and Surya in the video. Ya :-(.

Small town memories

2010-01-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday S and me were watching this movie "Something Something Unakkum Enakkum". One of the songs in that movie has a scene in which the hero and heroine watch with awe, a goat give birth to a little goat-kid. I exclaimed to S, "Oh you know, I once watched a cow give birth to a calf".

Then I thought about where exactly I had seen this. Oh ya, it was a long time back, in my grandmother's village. Then it struck me, there are certain things which one can easily see/do only in a small town or rural place and which are not easily accessible to city dwellers. How many of these things have you done?

- Bought a "cooling glass" with gaudy pink/green/orange frames from the trinket peddler.

- Smelt the fresh butter as the butter seller weighed it on his scale and slid it into the vessel your aunt has brought to the door. And surreptitiously dipped your finger into that vessel and licked the butter when you thought no one was watching.

- Bought som-papdi in paper cones from the street vendor's cart outside your door and savored the sweet taste as each fluffy bit melted in your mouth.

- Looked at plenty of black beads strewn on the ground and remarked innocently that you would like to gather them into a chain only to be told that the black beads were actually goat poop. Yuck.

- Cajoled your parents into buying a "whistle" from the potti kadai* outside the temple with promises you so will not use it till you were away from human hearing. And then driving everyone crazy with the constant whistle-blowing on the ride back home. Till someone grabbed the whistle and flung it out of the window.

- Swung from the branches of the mango tree on a makeshift swing made of jute rope with a gunny sack for a seat.

- Named the cows in your grandma's cowshed and fed them hay every morning.

- Made yourself sick by eating too much raw mango with salt and chilli powder.

- Had a bath sitting in a big brass drum filled with warm water and sang as you pretended that you are a movie heroine having a bath in a bath-tub.

- Eaten half dried vadam from the terrace and acted innocent when grandma wondered how her vadam quantity had gotten cut in half.

- Walked to the river and played in the shallow knee deep water.

- Pinned freshly woven jasmine flowers onto your hair and sometimes even begged for the bright orange kanakambaram flowers because it matched your dress better wondering why none of the adults seemed to prefer it.

- Lain on the verandah on a clear night, staring at the sky and admiring in wonder, the billion stars sparkling in it.

- Had a long swim/soak in the the water from the pumpset used to irrigate the fields.

- Drank coconut juice and then scooped out the tender coconut flesh with a spoon fashioned from the shell - all from coconuts just cut from the tree.

- Ditto for nongu (sorry I don't know the English name. The fruit comes from palm trees).

- Had everyone in the street greet you when they saw you because, you were so-and-so's granddaughter, right?

I guess I can write a lot more but okay, enough memories for one day. In case you didn't guess, I have done all of the above in my childhood days when I visited my grandparents :-) (because it is *my* list :-D).

*potti kadai - a small shop typically housed in a tin-shack.

Hawaii ho!

2010-01-02T22:17:00.000-08:00

When we came back from India, the last thing S and me had in mind was budging out of the house for the next few weeks unless absolutely necessary. Both of us were looking forward to the Christmas vacation just so that we could sleep, sleep and then sleep some more.

But then, a week-end came in between, before Christmas. Both of us totally chilled out and slept to our heart's content. That Sunday night, I announced - "Let's go somewhere during Christmas." S enthusiastically agreed as well.

And lo! Within the next 24 hours, the tickets and the hotel were booked. Yaay - we were going to Oahu, Hawaii! One of my childhood dream vacation destinations!

This was the first time in as long as I can remember that I have gone on such an unplanned vacation. Anyone who knows me can tell you that my vacations usually involve plenty of research about the destination and a wish-list of places I want to see along with the tentative dates on which to visit them*. Plus I carry along a horde of printouts having maps, restaurant directions and what not.

This time round, there just wasn't any time to plan. So, S and I simply packed our bags and drove to SFO to catch our flight. And boy, did we have an adventure.

We wound up doing a ton of things - a submarine ride, shopping in the International Market Place, going to the North Shore, visiting Pearl Harbor, going to Waikiki beach, hiking up the Diamond Head crater, going on a sunset cruise... I only wish we had more than 4 days to spend there!

Turns out that even unplanned vacations are super-duper fun!

Just to make this post a wee bit useful, if you are heading to Oahu any time, do drink coffee at the Island Vintage Coffee cafe located in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping center in Waikiki. I kid you not - they ground coffee from the beans to make my yummylicious cup of Lava Mocha. BTW, they served the best coffee I have ever tasted. Aloha!

* note, all this happens only if another a fellow-vacationer has not entirely taken up the planning mantle.

2010 is here ...

2010-01-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

Wishing you a wonderful year ahead filled with all possible joy, happiness and prosperity!

*clink*

Pic courtesy here.

Another vacation, another wedding and am back

2009-12-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

Did I say that the vacation to India for my wedding was my busiest holiday ever? Now I realize that I said that because I had not yet taken a vacation to attend my sister's wedding!

Sis got married on Dec 11th to Deepak (congrats again :-)). S and me landed up in des during thanksgiving weekend (just in time for the engagement) and are back after a hectic whirlwind two-and-a-half week vacation. Wedding was ton of fun and we had a blast at all the the pre and post wedding events. Only, I re-realized that Indian weddings involve an insane of amount of getting up eaaaaaaarly. So much so both S and me actually slept quite a bit on the plane back to the US (that is definitely a record for cannot-sleep-in-a-seated-position me). Now I need a vacation for my vacation.

Being in India made me realize all over again just how wonderful it is to be around close family and how much fun it is to participate in family activities. I also figured that after living all these years in the US, India is still the only place which feels like home to me. Super good thing, if you ask me!

I am going to be spending the next few weeks dreaming of des. And also spend the next few weekends and long weekends sleeping.

Unnai pol oruvan - the review.

2009-09-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

Since my movie reviews usually only dis movies, I thought I should write about a movie I liked for a change. Even seeing two Tamil movies in the recent past and getting mega bulbs in the bargain could not stop S and me from heading out to watch the latest Kamal Haasan movie, Unnai Pol Oruvan. Both of us are Kamal fans after all!

I learnt that this movie was a remake of A Wednesday ! which was released sometime last year. This was a further plus for Unnai Pol Oruvan since I had heard many positive reviews for A Wednesday!

We reached the theatre and bought tickets. S rushed ahead to get good seats. Right. The theatre had an audience of two viz. S and yours truly. Mercifully some more people showed up as movie starting time approached thus dispelling our fears that the entire show would be canceled thanks to lack of an audience!

The movie started on time. From the beginning, a fast pace was set for the movie with every scene bringing anticipation of what next. No unnecessary scenes or songs. The movie's locations fluctuated between a total of less than half a dozen places but still managed to hold attention.

After intermission, the pace picked up further till the climax. I liked it, especially the speech at the end. I am specifically holding back details - I really think you ought to watch it yourself!

When the ending credits rolled, it was only slightly past the 2-hour mark. What a crisp and neatly made movie! Each frame of the movie contributed in someway towards moving it forward. The acting overall was quite good (though Kamal's accented English jarred a bit at times).

Thoughts provoked by the movie's ending speech were under discussion between S and me all the way back home. Its been quite a while since a Tamil movie did that.

Final verdict: go watch.

Benefits of blogging - updated again

2009-09-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

Did you know there is a country by the name of Saint Kitts And Nevis? I did not but now I do and what's more, my blog had a visitor from there today!

Ever since one of my posts got linked here (before you jump to conclusions, a long while back Blogger had a link where we could submit posts from our blog which narrated some experience we had with blogger or something like that - I told you it was long ago, right? Anyways, I had no idea on what basis they picked posts but mine got picked somehow), I have been receiving one-post-stand visitors from all over the world.

So, now here is yet another benefit of blogging: you get to brush up your Geography :-).

Kandaswamy - the Review

2009-08-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

Sridhar (henceforth known as S in this blog) and I decided to see the tamil movie Kandaswamy today. Since we had already seen one Tamil movie based on a positive recommendation (false, as it turned out to be) and gotten a mega-watt bulb, I was kind of wary about going to see this movie in the theatre especially since S said that the movie had gotten not so great reviews. But S wanted to be a true-blue Tam and see the movie in the theatre anyways.

We went for the 3.30pm, late noon show. As events later showed, that was probably the best decision with regards to the movie we made today. The movie started. After a series of events in the movie, a police officer steals money from a poor woman and is resting in his room at night. All of a sudden, this character wearing billowy black colored harem pants, a black full-hand shirt with big metallic buttons, gigantic bat-like wings with colorful markings, reddish-orange feathers on head and a red eye-mask (no, am not making any of this up - I don't have such a fertile imagination) descends from the roof and starts clucking like a hen while bobbing his head up and down to look like one too.

At this point, I assumed that this was the new-age punishment for wrong-doers - make them die of laughter. Instead the police officer on screen actually gets intimidated and scared. To be fair to the director, the red-masked character does deliver a few bodily punches between clucking. Still I could not wrap my head around the "hen laying an egg" act performed by the red-masked character. Who, by the way, was the hero - Vikram.

By now, my poor self was sadly drooping at the thought of sitting through the entire movie. Which was when I suddenly perked up. I excitedly turned to S and said "Hey, I got my idea for a blog post - this movie's review". With this happy thought in mind, I resumed watching the movie in a slightly happier frame of mind.

So, where was I? Ah yes, the hen act. Anyways, apparently the latest fad in the Superman, Batman, Spiderman series is Henman. Seriously, I wonder what Vikram was smoking when he agreed to appear on the big screen in that role.

Then the heroine, Shriya, appears. She studies in this college which looks like a harem-themed casino in Vegas. Correspondingly she participates in a college-dance show which looks like a Victoria's Secret model lingerie parade. I know masala movies require suspension of belief but this one required us to not only suspend belief but also expel it.

Anyways, the story is something along the lines of Henman robbing the rich and giving to the poor. In between, Henman performs this series of matrix stunts while bobbing his head up and down. What about Shriya you ask.

Well, when normal people need entertainment they watch a movie, go for a play or some such. When Henman needs entertainment, he goes to visit Shriya whereupon they immediately break into song and dance (I kid you not, every time they met, there was a song and nothing else).

The movie was proceeding along these lines when I realized that it had run for quite a while and there was still no sign of an interval. I anxiously asked S why the interval had not arrived yet. He consolingly said that since this was the US, there was no interval. I doubtfully nodded my head - Indian movies did have an interval even in the US.

Then around the 2 hour mark, the interval sign popped up. WTH!?! To revive our flagging spirits, we bought popcorn (easily the best part of the entire experience) and returned to the theatre. From that point, the movie dragged on and on. Obviously the director (who is also the screenplay, story and dialog writer) was so much in love with his masterpiece that he couldn't bear to conclude it.

By this time, S and I were having our own far more interesting parallel commentary for the movie. We could no longer follow what was going on in the movie and frankly, we couldn't care less. Finally, at long last, the end flashed. At 7.15pm. For a movie which began at 3.30pm. We were out of the theatre like a shot (only the fact that wehad paid $15 a head made us stay for that long). As we passed the crowd waiting to see the 7.30pm show, we giggled conspiratorially. The poor sods!

On the plus side, the look and feel of the movie was top notch. On the minus side, um, everything else.

Verdict: Recommend this movie to people you don't like. You yourself stay away from it like the plague. Even renting out the DVD is a bit much.

p.s.1. Just to clarify, Vikram's character's name in this movie is Kandaswamy, not Henman.

p.s.2. Good thing we went for the noon show. Like S said, we would have been far more irritated had we lost sleep due to going for a later show.

p.s.3. Vikram, dude, you are established enough to pick the movies you want to act in. Just thought I should remind you.

p.s.4. This movie is hitting Bollywood soon as 'Bhagwaan Kand'.

Anybody there?

2009-07-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Hola folks! After a long-ish break, perhaps the longest one on this blog thus far, I am back. And this time round I have a water-tight excuse as to why I could not blog: I was too busy. Okay, okay, stop rolling eyes! I was too busy because I was in India. That's better, no? But wait, it gets even better. While I was there *drum rolls*... I got married :-D!

Yup, Sridhar and I got hitched on the 24th of June, 2009 in Chennai. The weeks preceding and succeeding it were a huge blur of activity - I don't think I have ever been more busy in my life. But I we had a great time.

This is the first week that I am back in normal operation since our return (though, sadly enough, my work-brain has been forced to be on full alert for quite a while now).

Now, if all this isn't a good enough excuse, I would like to know what is :-D! But fear not gentle readers, I will certainly be more regular from now on.

Lost

2009-06-07T14:18:00.001-07:00

The other day we were supposed to go to a conference in San Francisco from work. As I have said before, I *hate* driving in San Francisco and invariably take the Caltrain followed by SF Muni buses/trams whenever I want to visit SF. However, after lot of discussion, my colleague and I discovered that taking the Caltrain involved getting up at some unearthly hour if we had to make it to the conference on time. So, driving it was - sigh :-(! My colleague said she would get her GPS but I said, "Hmm - okay! I will also get printouts of the directions."

Now in this world where using GPS is the fast becoming the de facto standard and paper maps are slowly becoming extinct, I am still stoutly refusing to buy a GPS and am clinging to paper maps with a vengeance.

This is not because I hate trees and using paper maps is my insidious way of trying to destroy them. Just that, since the time I started driving and using maps to find my way around, my sense of direction has improved. A lot. This might not seem like a big deal to most of you, but not so at all to me!

I was a directionally challenged child. I would have to visit any place at least half a dozen times before the way to get there would get impressed upon my brain (and note here, I am not even talking about long distances, I am talking about stuff like "how to get to the library from my classroom"). Not surprisingly, I grew up to be a directionally challenged teenager and a directionally challenged young adult too.

Some of you may be thinking, "Ah, but everyone loses their way from time to time...."

Okay, beat this:

- When we moved to a small town near Trichy, we moved into a colony which had exactly two streets. On the way back from school the first day, I promptly turned into the street in which my house was *not* located. A neighbor (who knew that new folks had arrived in the colony - it was a small town, didn't I say?) kindly directed me down the right street.

- In the first week of grad school I trailed like a lost puppy behind two other new grad students who were temporarily put up in the same apartment complex as me because I could not figure out how to get back home from school. Don't get me started on the different kinds of grad orientation programs I was utterly uninterested in and yet had to attend because I did not know how to go home by myself!

- Within a span of five days in the same grad school mentioned above I asked for directions to the administrative building when standing right in front of it, behind it and beside it. Yup, with campus map in hand too.

- When I visited my parents for the first time in their new home, the first morning, I made the wrong turn while trying to get to the kitchen (before you get ideas about palatial mansions, this is a normal apartment)

So anyways, the point here is, if there was any way to get lost getting somewhere, you could count on me to get lost. Hence anytime I had to visit an unknown place, I asked for several landmarks/street-names etc to make getting there idiot-proof. I had more or less resolved myself to spending a lifetime of memorizing copious directions.

Then I started driving. Initially I had nightmares about getting lost along with a car. Then I noticed a strange thing. As if by magic, my sense of direction started improving. Not by leaps and bounds but certainly very much in the forwardly direction. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I was consciously noticing where I was going.

First I started recognizing which streets were parallel/perpendicular to each other. Then when getting back from an unknown place, I could pull out the reverse directions from memory. Then I could tell which freeways intersected with each other and whether to go north or south (east or west) to get to that intersection.

The pinnacle of progress (for me) was reached when I managed to guide my friends to spots around San Diego with only a normal AAA map to help me. A stellar achievement when you consider that just a couple of years earlier, my superior navigational powers made my friend drive about 15 miles in the direction opposite to Disneyland in LA.

All this is not to say that now I can get around the world with only a compass in my hand. I can't. For that matter I doubt I will be able to get around my city with only a compass in hand. But if I make a wrong turn now I can mostly figure out how to get back to the starting point and start afresh. I can also make intelligent guesses about where something is located. Which is not quite so grand in the big scale of things - but which nevertheless gives me a cheap thrill when I am right.

Ah - so where was I? GPS. Ya - the reason why I don't want a GPS is, I don't want it to dumb me down all over again and undo all my progress in recent years. I want to use my brain to do the work. Agreed that printing directions off Yahoo maps and driving to a place is not exactly a Mensa challenge but it still requires more work and direction sense than having a random female intone "Turn left in 0.3 miles".

So yup, I am not going to hop onto the GPS wagon as long as I can stand it out.
--

Image from here.

Retribution

2009-05-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

So you know how nowadays many weddings offer free on-site mehendi drawing to guests in one of the many the pre-wedding functions. Last year, I spotted one such mehendi artist at my cousin's wedding and promptly went and showed my hand. I got a minimalistic but cute design done across the back of my palm. I was hardly done crowing over its prettiness when a friend promptly managed to smudge it. Giving him a glare which could have melted the Himalayas, I got it corrected by the mehendi artist. Then the clarion call sounded for dinner.

Of course nothing stands between Archana and her food and I was well at the front of the line for the sumptuous buffet spread. I was making my way through getting servings of the yummy dishes, safeguarding my mehendi decorated hand, when a young guy appeared out of nowhere and rudely pushed his way in ahead of me without so much as a muttered 'Excuse me'.

I was startled and annoyed but there was nothing I could do and I proceeded down the line after him. A bit later, when I glanced at my hand to re-admire the mehendi design, I got a shock when I realized that pretty much all of it had been rubbed away. Darn - that rude person had spoilt my mehendi - grrrrr!

I was ready to get all upset and direct my angry gaze upon rude guy when I spotted him and realized that most of the mehendi on my hand had transferred itself to the sleeve of his shirt. Which, till a few minutes earlier, had been a nice milky white.

FOr a moment I was filled with guilt but glee took over almost immediately. Retribution - ha! Since I spread word to my cousins I had plenty of spies to report exactly when rude guy realized that his shirt sleeve now had new designer patterns on it and was also able to note his expression. That would teach you to not cut lines, dude!

It is so true, that old jungle saying: "Never mess with the mehendi on a woman's hands or you will be sorry."

***

Image courtesy here.

Fact for the day - 2

2009-05-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Celery eaten as Cream of Celery soup with (important!) a side of toasted sourdough bread is actually quite palatable. Even though each serving has quite a generous quantity of celery in it. I still am not a celery fan though and will think twice before stocking up my fridge with celery again.

Soup made by yours truly. Not so the bread.

A happy ending

2009-05-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Have you heard this saying which goes, only the child which cries gets milk meaning that unless you make a fuss, you are most probably not going to get noticed?

Well, I learnt that for myself today. Two days after I wrote my mighty annoyed post about the misleading cancellation policy at 24-hour fitness, I found a message on my answering machine from a Jennifer at 24-hour fitness who wanted to discuss my troubles with the cancellation policy. With a slight dawning of hope, I tried calling her the next day, but got her voice mail repeatedly.

This morning, I tried her number yet again and voila, she answered. As soon as I said my name, she recognized me immediately and even before I could say anything, she said that they would not be charging me for the month of May because I felt so strongly about it (duh, I bet other people who were forced to pay up in a similar way would have felt quite so strongly about it too). And since the last month was paid for, I could continue to use the gym till June. In other words, everything would work out exactly how I wanted it to in the first place!!

I reiterated to her that the gym employees had given me misleading information about the cancellation policy and Jennifer said that it was "mis-communication" and in any case I would not be charged for May. Hip hip hooray!

I don't know whether this one-eighty degree change in attitude happened due to their pity for my whining or because they thought I was going to take some action against them. In any case, I am pretty sure I *would* have been charged had I not expressed my "strong" indignation.

Ya, so the child which cries does not get to pay useless fees too.

Also, people who want to become members at 24-hour fitness can now do so if you promise me to whine nice and strong if you see any sign of ripping off :-).

A too green thumb

2009-05-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back, the green bug bit me yet again and I went and bought a whole bunch of plants for my patio garden. Among my planting ambitions was growing coriander from seeds. According to the directions on the packet in which the seeds came, the seedlings would sprout within two weeks. So I planted the seeds in a pot along with planting the other plants (tomato, capsicum, Thai chilli, egg plant and two flowering plants - california poppy and geraniums - ambitious, ambitious, I know!).

Me being a very protective and caring plant "mother", I began every morning by watering my plants assiduously. However, after more than one and a half weeks, there was absolutely no sign of any activity in the coriander pot though the other plants seemed to be doing okay - touch wood.

Then one day last week I was discussing with a colleague at work about plants and she mentioned that it was watering day for her plants. Huh - watering day? Isn't *every* day watering day? And she said, "Oh no, though I drench the soil completely when I water my plants, I water them once a week only". I doubtfully asked her if her plants did not wilt and die due to this neglect. She replied that they were doing fine and in fact an avid gardener friend of hers had told her that once a week was plenty enough water unless it was very hot weather.

Hmm. Hardening my heart, I decided to neglect my "babies" and decided to keep the watering jug away the next morning. The next evening, my skeptical self was surprised to find that the all the plants looked fine in spite of not getting any water in the morning.

The day after that that, I once again skipped the watering. Later that day, late noon, I stepped into my patio to see how my plants were doing. Surprise, surprise, not one, not two but six seedlings had popped out of the coriander pot!
O boy, I had been drowning the poor seeds all the previous days and no wonder they could not put their heads up! What's more, my tomato plant had grown two more new branches, all the other plants had put forth lots of new leaves too.

Meanwhile I had consulted the Google God. Yup, more people kill their plants by anbu thollai* a.k.a over watering than by under-watering! And there was no need to water plants as long as the top one inch of soil had moisture in it.

Ah.

Oh well, you live and you learn. Here's to hoping my darling plants will not be the guinea pigs for too many experiments!

*anbu thollai roughly translates to trouble brought on by too much love.

The shameless fraudsters a.k.a 24 Hour Fitness

2009-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I was forced to join a gym in spite of not liking gyms much because one of the classes at my beloved community recreation center got canceled and I could not find a suitable replacement for it.

In spite of some initial disputes with them(never ignore warning signs), I wound up signing a month-to-month contract at 24 Hour Fitness as it is conveniently located. Now, being the ever vigilant exerciser, I had read plenty of reviews online for 24 hour Fitness. Almost all of them sounded upset about 24 hour Fitness's cancellation policy. Apparently you would invariable be charged for one extra month after cancellation.

I decided to be extra careful and asked about the cancellation policy during sign up and was told that it would be no problem at all, I would simply have to cancel before my credit card got charged and I would have terminated the membership from then on. That sounded reasonable.

While signing up, I was charged the last month's fee too along with the first month's. I made a reminder for myself to call up to cancel my membership in May first week since I did not want to go to the gym from June and since the last month was already paid for, I would not have to pay for May. So far so good.

So today I called up the 24 Hour Fitness people and the operator there coolly informed me that I would be charged for one more month and since I had already paid for the last month, my membership would be active till July! I explained that since I had already paid the last month's dues, there was no reason to charge me for the month of May - they could use for my last month's paid fees for the month of May.

Then this idiot tells me "Oh, we have a 30 day cancellation policy". Well, if that was the case, I did want to cancel in June only but was giving him a 30 day advance notice by informing him in May! But apparently the prepaid last month's dues were some kind of Gandhi-kanakku* which was in some limbo-world where it could not be included as fees for the 30 day notice period.

I asked him why and he said that the payment request would have already been sent to my credit card company though the billing date is 8 days from now. I found this explanation ridiculous as any idiot knows that credit company's will *very* easily stop payment requests even two days before the due date.

So I asked him if it is was okay that I called up my credit card company to stop the payment if they found it so difficult to do it themselves. He said okay. Now this sounded too easy but since I did not have an option, I just got a cancellation confirmation number and hung up.

Then I called up my credit card company and they tell me that they cannot stop a payment request unless it comes from the requester, in this case, 24 Hour Fitness, itself - however I could dispute the charge once it was processed. Okaaaaaaaaaaay.

Since I wasn't sure what would happen in case of a disputed charge, I did a quick google search for other user cancellation experiences with 24-hour Fitness and was stunned by the number of complaint stories which showed up. The crux of the matter was 24 hour Fitness is well known for ripping off cancelling customers and has also been involved in a resultant class action suit which resulted in settlement with the plaintiffs.

Quite a few people had faced the exact same scenario that I have. And here is the rub, if users disputed the charge, in some case, 24 Hour Fitness came after them with collection agencies!!!! WTH!! Obviously, I don't want that to happen and now I am being initmidated into ponying up for a service I am not going to use. Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

I am so irritated right now. Their cancellation policy is extortionist in the first place - fine! At least, shouldn't they take the time to explain it to new members especially when they specifically ask for it? Or is this the way that 24 Hour Fitness makes money - by duping people? What kind of horrible corporate ethical business practice standards do they have?

I know one thing for sure, from June, I am never going to go back there again. I am also going to actively persuade people I know to consider other gymming options before they choose this big fraud dump.

Now I am seriously worried since there were quite a few people on the web who had stories where 24 Hour Fitness continued to charge them for months after they had cancelled their membership and had collection agencies come after them when they refused to pay it! I really hope I am not one of them and my relationship with this fraud-house ends permanently in June. Good riddance.

*Gandhi kanakku literally translates to Gandhi's account. Essentially it is equivalent to throwing money down a drain.

Fact for the day

2009-04-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

Raw celery eaten by itself tastes horrible. Yuckkkk! I am so glad I am not a super model.

Of videos and video stores

2009-04-26T22:07:00.001-07:00

Between the ages of 8-11, I spent three years in Calcutta when my banker dad was posted there. Those were the good old days when DD was the only channel that came on TV. In Calcutta, most of the programs on DD were broadcast in Bengali.

My family's knowledge of Bengali extended to saying "I don't know Bengali" in Bengali. Thus, we used to wait with great eagerness for the very few Hindi and English programs which were broadcast: Ramayana (later Mahabharata), World this Week, Giant Robot (o boy, my sis and I used to *love* this show in spite of being able to predict exactly how the story would go - alien monster attacks city, baffled police unable to contain it, police let loose Giant Robot, Giant Robot vanquishes monster, everyone cheers- only the appearance of the monster changed from week to week), He-man cartoons etc. etc.

But this still precluded watching any show in Tamil but for the odd Tamil song or two which used to pop up in the national integration song show (forgot the name) and the odd Tamil movie (usually from the period immediately after the silent movie era) which showed up once in a blue moon as the DD Sunday movie.

Enter the VCR. In Calcutta we stayed in the Lake Market area. This area had quite a sizable Tamilian population and hence it was fairly easy to locate Tamil magazines, vegetables, you name it. The area also had a video store which rented out the latest Tamil movies. I even remember the name of the store - Balaji Videos. Most weekends, we rented Tamil movies/ song shows/ dramas etc. to watch during the time we were at home.

We also rented Hindi and English movies to watch. We watched almost all the Shammi Kapoor movies as everyone in my family liked him. We also watched a lot of old English movies as my dad was fond of them and both dad and mom has fond memories of watching them as newly weds. Oftentimes, Dad would remember the name of a good English movie and it would be on the rental list for the next weekend.

Sometimes, we managed to exhaust our weekend supply of movies rather fast. Then, my sister and I would make the 15 minute trip (by walk) to the video store to pick up some movie. Usually other than our desire to watch a movie trumping our desire to crib about the walk, these trips passed off uneventfully.

Once, my dad told the name of a movie about a shipwreck which had a rather unique name. Sis and I carefully memorized it and set off. On the way we got engrossed in other conversation and when we reached the store and went up to the counter to request the movie, we realized that neither of us could recall the movie's name other than the fact that it started with a P. Uh-oh, now what!

So we both racked our brains and finally concluded that the movie we were looking for was "Pobsbion Journey". Now this did sound like a funny name for a movie but then, hey, we did remember it was a weird name. So we both confidentally strode up to the counter and asked for "Pobsbion Journey". The video store guy had never heard of such a movie and asked us if that was indeed the movie name. Not the ones to lose face, we both said, "Yes, it is!" Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere, we asked if we could use the store phone to call our dad to confirm the movie name.

Mercifully, the store guy said okay. We called up home and asked my surprised dad, "What movie did you say you wanted, daddy?"

Dad said, "Poseidon Adventure*. Why, did you forget?"

"Oh no, no, just confirming".

With that we shamefacedly went back to the video store guy and asked for the movie "Poseidon Adventure", which turned out to be very readily available!

You would think this incident would have made us more careful in the future about writing down the movie name before heading out. No way! We were way too smart for that. That's how I once wound up asking for the movie "Kelavan" (meaning old man in Tamil) when my dad had asked for the Hindi movie "Caravan". Sigh, I never learn, do I?

There are a few other movie-name mistakes too, but I think this will do now!

* Obviously, not the 2006 version of the movie.

Technology ki jai ho

2009-04-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

Have you folks seen this video clip from Britain's Got Talent show, yet? If not, please, please, please do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Isn't it amazing? I actually got goosebumps on my skin when I heard her sing the first bar!

I saw the video for the first time about a bunch of days back when it was linked on the popular India Uncut blog. Since then everywhere I turn, I seem to be seeing news about this lady. First, it was all over the internet news sites and blogs. Then, this morning, while at the gym (yup, no cable so no TV watching at home), I saw a news clip on CNN in the morning news about the sensation Susan Boyle has caused!

I have obviously never met her, but Susan Boyle comes across as a very optimistic, upbeat and sweet person. Since the time I saw the video I am rooting for her. Everytime I hear or read something positive about her, the voice inside my head goes "yaaay"!

When I saw the news on CNN this morning, it struck me all over again as to just how much technology has helped us in shrinking our world. Ten years ago I am very sure I would have never heard about Susan Boyle and quite probably neither would have any person living outside of Britain. Now all it takes for me is a few clicks to find out not only who the person is but also what the sang and how they sang it! Wow!

Really - information overload is sometimes sweeeeeeeet!