Like the flowing river

From whatever little I have read so far, there is no better collection of thoughts than in this book by Paulo Coelho.

I have no energy to read something new, so I have been revising some of my old books. This one can be re-read any number of times.

One small extract in which I find a lot of meaning and comfort is below

A rose dreamed day and night about bees, but no bee ever landed on her petals

The flower, however continued to dream. During the long nights, she imagined a heaven full of bees , which flew down to bestow fond kisses on her. By doing this, she was able to last until the next day, when she opened again to the light of the sun.

One night the moon, who knew about the loneliness, asked : 'Aren't you tired of waiting?'
'Possibly, but I have to keep trying'
'Why?'
'Because if don't remain open, I will simply fade away'

At times, when loneliness seems to crush all beauty, the only way to resist is to remain open

And I remain open. Oh but what a fight it is at times, you shall never know ......

The Dribble

Roger Federer in full form, Virender Sehwag in a destructive mood , Tiger Woods on a 4th day charge or Zinedine Zidane [when he is not head butting others] are some people who have the capability to make professional sport look ridiculously easy

Stumbled across this video on YouTube, which is actually an ad for poverty eradication program. Especially watch the section The dribble from seconds 20 -26

Need I say more ? An unquestionable Genius, this guy was.

Meetings and Dilbert

For a friend who has become a meeting moth :)
 

 

 

[Link]

 
[Link]

[Link]

Dilbert ©2008, United Feature Syndicate, Inc

Ambushed !!

It feels as if somebody has hit me over the head with a hammer and then ran a road roller over me.

I have been hit with one of these typical Bangalore viruses. A throat pain and irritation, leading to ridiculously high fever followed by an extremely sharp recovery .

Don't know where I picked it up from, may be related to food. Wednesday morning I was fine, by afternoon I could feel the signs and by night I was shivering with fever and talking in my sleep !!

One of the pains of staying alone is having to feed yourself when even getting up from the bed and walking to the kitchen is an ordeal, let alone cooking anything.

Good old Bread-Jam and biscuits to the rescue as always....

Recovery has been quite fast, was almost normal on Friday. Could not sleep a wink yesterday night though, was up wide awake till 5.30 am in the morning . Don't know why, had no fever, no throat problem, just felt fine.  Then slept fitfully for couple of hours in the morning

Since I have not shaven for a few days now, I am thinking of re-launching the infamous french beard now :)

Guava's

You know, attending the punjabi wedding of the year and writing up all this wedding blog reports tired me out. There is nothing on TV except the follow up on terror. Good time to go out and do some grocery shopping.

So here I am sitting with some lovely Guavas. 

What is the best way to eat them ? Bite straight in ? Chop into 4 quarters and then eat it with sugar ? Or should I eat it with salt-chilly powder combination ? I've also heard that Guava's smeared with jam is yummy.

 

Hmmm ... So many different options for such a trivial thing. Maybe I should try a different method for each guava and then compare

I guess there is no prize for guessing this is one of my favorite fruits. Do you know one fruit that I hate ? Apple !!

Did I hear you ask why ?
         "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away" :-))
Still can't figure out why ?
         I am married to a doctor :-)

She has been away for higher studies for the past 2.5 years. I must have eaten lots of apples in my previous birth !!

So here is to Guava's , may all the apples in the world rot !!

 

And here we go again

Yet another terror attack, yet another eyewash of expression of "grief" by our leaders. Scores dead, many more wounded, some perhaps scarred for life. Yet I don't see any change in the response from the government or opposition. I watched our Prime minister addressing the nation and promising that a federal agency would be set up to combat terror, saying that those who did this would be caught and punished.

Really Mr. Prime Minister ? Who the heck cares if a central agency is going to be set up at a time like this ? Are you completely incapable of speaking with passion and emotion even in a time like this ? Don't you feel the pain that brave folks like Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Hemant Karkare died trying to capture these terrorists ? Terrorists who should have never got in if we had strong anti-terror laws and border protection systems in place. Don't you spend sleepless nights tossing around in your bed that in-spite of repeated attacks, we still do not have a semblance of emergency response systems in place ?

What gives you or anyone the right to treat our lives with so little value ?

They are telling Sandeep Unnikrishnan always wanted to join the army, even from a very young age. For what ?  To die like this ??

I know that this is a democracy. I read somewhere that we get the government we deserve, we get the media we deserve and we get the judiciary we deserve. Fair enough...But what did we ever do to deserve all this ?

Hey, but we are Indians. We don't have any national pride, do we ? In two weeks no one will remember this, till the story again repeats. Maybe this time in Bangalore.

And then the show can start again ........

A punjabi wedding : Part-4

Finally around 11 p.m there is a murmur around the place that the bride has arrived. Sure enough I see my friend covered in a dark maroon dress [ I don't know what it is called ;), I think it is a Lehanga ], making a very slow progression towards the side of the stage for a photography section.

Why so slow , you might ask ?

For starters, I am told that the dress weighed around 8 kilos. The dress is also long, so it sort of flows below her feet. Somebody has to lift the dress a bit for her to walk . The third factor is of course the absurdly tall heels , which she was wearing in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that she is vertically challenged :-). After the photo session, she proceeded to hide a room in the farm.

Meanwhile we heard some excitement on the road outside, time was around 11.45 pm . The baraat party was just about visible on the road now. We could hear the loud music and see the bright lights. I could see lot of colored umbrellas also as part of the baraat. There was of-course the customary horse driven chariot too. We were not allowed to see it in too much detail as all the bride's party were asked to scoot inside the farm and stand behind a tape drawn across the entrance. Again the fear of doing something wrong and sparking off an inter-caste bloodbath made the three of us scamper behind the tape in double quick time ;)

You know why I think a horseback ride to a wedding is a good idea ? It gives you the first feel for a bumpy and painful ride :-))

The temperatures were quite low outside and we resorted to hiding inside one of the halls to escape from the incessant chilly breeze and continuously falling dew.

The procession headed towards us at a painful pace. In fact there was a moment when we thought it was actually heading backwards !! Near the tape at the entrance there seemed to be some negotiations going on between the groom's and the bride's side. I could see lot of people laughing, so must have been fairly entertaining conversation. [ Hope it was not a dowry negotiation ;) ]

Finally the groom and his party got in and proceeded towards the stage. Shortly after that the bride emerged from her hideout and did her "penguin walk" towards the stage and joined the groom. She was taken right till the stage by her family and then the groom took her hand and welcomed her.  Pretty romantic stuff !! :). For some bizarre reason, there was an engagement function then followed by a reception. It was new to me on 2 counts

• Never heard of a couple having reception before the actual wedding takes place
• What is the point of the engagement ceremony when marriage happens 2 hours later ??

Anyway due to the lateness of the hour, hardly 50 folks were around, mostly family members. One thing I did find hilarious during the entire ceremony was my friend's attempt to act like a shy bride. She was very consciously not looking up or laughing. It was so against the natural personality that I just had to laugh out from time to time :).

The engaged couple proceeded for a photo session , followed by a brief dance on the disco floor ( !!) and then proceeded to have their dinner at the tender time of around 1.30-2 am !!

Mixture of cold weather and sleep deprivation had caused me to puff away happily on my inhaler. I swear that I had enough steroids in my system that day to fail any dope test :((

And finally on the mini-stage for the actual marriage. By this time only the close family and the three bakras from Bangalore were around. The customary fire was lit , an the couple were seated next to it as was the Panditji. Weather was so cold that I was sorely tempted to push away the Pandit and sit in front of the fire myself. Using loads of self control ( which you naturally acquire after a few years of marriage ) , I restrained myself.

The ceremony itself was bit of an anti climax. We started around 3-3.30 am and it hardly lasted an hour. The bride [ who had to be helped to get to her feet because of the heavy dress :) ] and groom did 7 rounds around the fire, Panditji extracted some pretty heavy promises from the groom on what he is supposed to do after the marriage and we were done !! [ Let me say if he intends to keep all of those promises, he is a dead man :-) ]

So at 4.30 am we headed back to our rooms. Was chilled to the bone, tired and on the verge of getting an asthma attack .

As I reflected on the entire ceremony, I can't help admit I've never seen something as grand in my life !! Only feeling that lingered in my mind was that the delays are a bit un-necessary . A wedding held on-time just has to be so much more enjoyable for everyone concerned.

But hey, I attended a Punjabi wedding, made a trip to North India, sampled some awesome food, all without speaking a single word of hindi !! Not bad at all.

So what is next ? A Kashmiri wedding, perhaps ?

A punjabi wedding : Part 3

And finally we got ready for the wedding.

We were asked be ready by around 5 p.m . Off went the three off us dressed sharply in our suits to the Karnal community hall. The groom and his party arrived there around 6, they were greeted with a quite delightful array of sweets and hot snacks inside. Groom's side all dressed in traditional dhoti-turban attire, except for groom who looked sharp in a shiny black suit.

I must say the three of us felt a bit over-dressed for the occasion. It looked exactly as if an Oriya, a tamilian and a malayali had gone for a Punjabi wedding :-)))

Then there was some function involving the groom, bride's family and groom's family. Did not quite understand what the purpose of the function was, it was called "Sagaayi", looked more like a mutual hand-over of gifts to me !!

While the groom's side were having snacks, we decided to rest for a while and sat on some chairs. Immediately we were surrounded by videographers with all sorts of equipment and bright lights. I guess we were looking pretty impressive in our suits. Then the realization dawned that we weren't really supposed to sit there, those seats were meant for the groom side folks :)

We did a quick protocol check with bride's family before we ate anything, did not want to spark of riots just because we ate when weren't supposed to !! Customs and nature of people are quite different from South to north. [I am not implying one is better over the other]

In case you are wondering where the bride is, she is not present for this function. She was packed for the beauty parlor to get ready a while earlier. And knowing her, I was a touch surprised she had not gone there to get ready the previous night itself . It takes that long usually .... :-))

From there we proceeded to the ESS-ESS farm house [ yes, it is spelt that way, don't ask me why !! ]   where the actual reception and wedding was going to take place. A walk through into the farmhouse can be seen below as can be the Stage and some lighting arrangements. The entire place looked awesome!!

ESS ESS Farms- Walk in

And here is a shot of the stage

Stage view

According to the standard misinformation we were fed, wedding was supposed start around 8-8.30. Again the three idiots reached there at 8.15 only to be welcomed by waiters and photographers. Not a guest or family member in sight, let alone the bride and groom !!

We walked around for a while and sampled some of the food. Food was just amongst the best I've ever had, hats off to North-Indians for that :-).

It was getting pretty cold outside. Rather disastrously, we had not anticipated that the function would be held outdoors. Though we were dressed in suits, we had no head or throat protection. This would really come back to bite us later on in the night.

Finally around 9.30 some of the bride and groom's family started to turn up. People had already started to stream in and there was quite a big crowd by then.

But where are the two most important people ? 10 pm and still no sign of them !!!

And it is 11.55 pm while I am writing all this and I am sleepy. So you can meet the bride and groom tomorrow :-)

A punjabi wedding : Part-2

So after reaching the would-be-bride's house on Friday evening, we were led to our respective rooms in houses nearby. there were 3 of us and we were put up in two rooms in two different houses. Mine had an attached bathroom , but no hot water. My other colleague had a bathroom with hot water, but it was inside the main house with no easy access . The relevance of this will be clear to you soon :)

We got back to her house for dinner and a dance party on the terrace. Apparently this is customary on the night before the wedding. Bride-to-be was undoubtedly the most enthusiastic dancer. Repeated attempts to coax yours truly into dancing was met with a stonewall response of NO. [ I don't dance, not now, not ever. No particular reason, I am just very un-comfortable about it and it is a non-negotiable item :) ]

It was pretty cold and I was beginning to get the initial rumble of asthma, so I retired to my room around 11.

Saturday morning arrived with the complex problem of how to take bath in the cold weather. My other colleague with hot water access got locked out of the room , he had to come over to our place to take bath:-) I decided to take the the first step. In an act which deserves nothing less than the national bravery award, I opened out the shower to full blast , closed my eyes  and stood underneath it.

Curiously I could hear water falling, but none hitting my body . Was my body going into denial ?

A quick glance up, revealed a massive leak in the shower head which was pushing water sideways rather than down . Had to remove the shower head and stand underneath what can only be described as an icy waterfall. I guess my body went into severe thermal shock after the first 5 seconds, so rest of the bath was not such a big ordeal. In fact once I was done with the bath, I was feeling quite nice and warm :-)

We got dressed and went to her house for the morning function. At 8.00 am sharp I was at her door step. Apparently the mis-information continued here as people had not even woken up then !! I know people always call IST as Indian Stretchable Time, there seems to be and extra stretch when you are in the north !!

Anyway we hung around till the Panditji arrived and did some pooja. There was quite funny moment when Panditji was reciting something and his cell phone went off and he coolly attended the call in between the recital. No one seemed unduly bothered by this . Good for them, as I would have for sure made a racket if someone did that to me :)

We had nothing else to do whole day as the wedding was in the evening, so decided to go shopping in Karnal for some authentic north indian clothes for spouses and kids. Which is when we saw these cycle rickshaws and decided to take them to get back home from shopping.

Cycle Rickshaw ride in Karnal

I have never got on one and the experience was quite hairy to say the least. There was one stretch in which he had to stop and cross a highway through which vehicles were zipping past at break-neck speeds. [ And yeah, the driving is a lot rasher in the North too ]. I could see my life flash in front of my eyes right there. How he got me over the highway, I'll never know. My eyes were shut tight when he made his suicidal dash across the road. Thankfully we reached the other side in one piece !!

On to the marriage in the next episode tomorrow :)

Travel log : A punjabi wedding part-1

So off to Karnal I went to attend a close friend's wedding. Have to add couple of things before I start.

• This is probably only the second friend's wedding that I am attending
• I understand hindi, I can't speak it very well. In fact I rarely speak it other than to say save my own life
• The marriage is an inter-caste marriage, so any misplaced comment made by the hindi-challenged yours truly could spark of riots and honor killings
• I have never been to North India other than for a visa interview 2 years back

So naturally I was a bit tense. Journey started off on the wrong note with the Friday ( 21st November) morning flight to delhi being delayed by an hour. Had only a skimpy breakfast before I started from home ( around 7 am) , so had to have one more round at the airport. Boy, don't they rip you off with the food prices there. After eating one of the costliest idly-vadas ( 90 Rs !! ) , I proceeded to board the aircraft. Flight was un-eventful and I reached Delhi at around 2 pm.

From there my friend had asked me take a cab to ISBT and then catch a bus to Karnal. The cab ride was quite interesting. First my driver had a pure female voice, which I found quite hilarious. Second , the car ( Maruti Omni) was so run down that it would shake violently at lower speeds !! After about an hour of intense tossing around , I managed to reach ISBT. Couple of Sardar's greeted me as soon as I stepped out of the cab, they wanted to whisk me away to their cab which was going to Chandigarh !! :) I politely declined their offer and went inside the bus terminal.

Scandalous is the only way to describe ISBT. Rarely have I seen a more filthy and run down place in my life !! According to my friend (who is the same as the on-shore consultant and new driver described earlier :) ) , buses depart from there to Karnal every 5 minutes. Well, I stood there for 40 minutes waiting for another friend to arrive and I saw only one bus depart from there. Little was I to know that this was just one in the long series of mis-informations we would be fed over the next couple of days .........

Finally we managed to scramble into a bus. Seating was pretty cramped, though not as cramped as you would find in a flight !! Bus driver drove fast and we reached Karnal by around 7 pm in night. Roads were very wide and in excellent condition for most parts. We were picked up from the bus stop and deposited in her house by her brother. The bride-to-be was bubbling with enthusiasm and showed no signs of nervousness. Please note this point, I will come back to refer this in a later blog :).

Unfortunately that is all I have time for today, will continue tomorrow ....

Dilbert

Here is another one that I like. Source :http://dilbert.com/fast/2008-11-01/

More cooking tips

It is advisable not to rub your eyes after chopping green chillies :-)

Now why was I chopping them ? Nope, not for an omlette. Turned out yesterday that I had incorrectly assumed I had some eggs in my fridge. All I had was a cracked one, which looked suspiciously  empty, almost as if a chick had hatched and escaped Quick survey of my fridge and house did not reveal the chick though :)

As usual I am digressing from the matter in hand of green chillies. I like to add finely chopped green chillies to Dal, gives it a bit of punch. I have no clue if this is a standard practice or not :). Will be trying Rice-dal-pappad-pickle combo for  a couple of days now.

Had a topsy turvy night yesterday because my inhaler got over and I got some mild wheezing. By the time I noticed, medical stores had downed shutters. So had to spend the night with mild poly phonic sounds while breathing :). I was ironing my shirt in the morning  when I noticed my spare inhaler right behind the pile of un-ironed clothes. Guess there is more than one benefit in keeping things neat and tidy at home :-))

I am off to Karnal, Haryana in couple of days to attend a close friend's wedding. Never been to the north apart from a visa interview couple of years back in Delhi. I guess my hindi skills ( or lack of it ) will be severely tested. As long as they don't mistake my hindi for abuse, I guess I should be fine ...

Stay tuned to see if I survive :-))

Christmas gift

The ideal Christmas  gift for me, the picture says it all :-)

Friendship ...

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend - Albert Camus

But what if the friend tells you I do not trust you to even walk near you , let alone beside you ?

Today I have realized that one such friendship has reached the point of no return. IMO A friendship which completely erodes your self-worth is not worth pursuing.

So here is wishing good luck to the un-named friend. Maybe our paths will cross in the future. Will I will look the other way if that happens ? Today I might say yes, who knows what tomorrow holds in store ...

Catch them young

First start with the un-borns. Eat them whichever way you want. They are un-borns, they can't speak. Then graduate slowly to parents, kill them one by one. Use your experience in cooking the un-borns to good use here.

I am just talking about cooking Egg and Chicken, what were you thinking ? :-)

My attempts at chicken curry are still continuing. Unable to get small quantities of chicken. I tried buying the Real Good chicken, somehow the stores are stocking only the 1 kg ones now, they used to have a boneless 300 gms version earlier.

What makes you happy ?

Albert Schweitzer says : 'Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory'

Then there is this line from the song Affirmation by Savage Garden :'I believe that forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness'.

Which one of the above two would you pick ? :)

I prefer the first quote. Partly because I have had pretty bad health problems growing up and partly because I have experienced that way too much hurt and pain is suffered because you cannot let go or forgive someone. I'm not implying I am going to be more forgiving ;-), just an observation.

Speaking of happiness, what are some of the small things that really make you happy ? Ever tried putting together a list ? Here are some that come to my mind

• Chatting with friends and family,face to face or over phone
• Reading a nice book
• Hearing a nice joke or cracking a nice one. I can be quite a pain with jokes once I am in the mood :)
• Playing with my daughter, especially tickling her and listening to her burst out in peals of laughter.
• Seeing the sun shine on wet greenery immediately after a rain
• Eating good food with good friends . Actually good friends is the important part, food can be average too :)
• A call from any one of my past students
• Watching a good sports match on TV , preferably football, pool or F1. Not too crazy about cricket these days
• Experimenting with cooking and actually coming out with something that is edible :)

I guess there could be lots more , refer my favorite happiness quote above to understand why I cant remember those :-))

Indian wedding cost

I was reading some articles on the net when I stumbled across this. "Average cost of Indian wedding is as high as $34,000"[Link].In today's exchange rates, that is almost 17 lakhs !!You know, you can buy a Honda Civic and a top end Suzuki Swift in the same amount of money .

Now why is this a tough choice to make ? :)

Driving ..

Driving on Bangalore roads is at times a dangerous thing to do. What if you are in a car with someone who is just learning to drive ? Well, need I say more ? :-)

I had promised one of my closest friends that I would let her drive my car. The wonders of the Indian driving system has ensured that she already has a valid 4 wheeler driving license, without ever having driven one :)

She was very confident. Perhaps a touch misplaced confidence  ........

It was a thrilling experience to say the least !! The kind of thrill you face when you jump out of the plane and your parachute fails. Or the kind you get when you realize the oncoming headlight which you thought belonged to a bike is really that of a tanker lorry with one light non-functional:-)

After 30 minutes of intense near misses, missed braking points for humps, stalls in mid road and abuses hurled at us by a truck driver , we were done. My cardio-vascular system was responding as if I had just finished running a marathon ( Not that I can run even 42 meters, but a nice comparison to put nonetheless )

Looking back at the half hour from the comfort of my bedroom, I have to admit that it was not all that bad ;-). Just the common mistakes all of us make when we start. I am the co-passenger described below, cop for short, pun intended ;)

• Stalling in first gear while starting, and again and again and again . cop begins to get a touch nervous.
• Popping the clutch too fast after shifting to second gear, resulting in a violent lurch forward. cop gets the impression that he is sitting on a horseback rather than in a modern car
• Not braking for the hump / taking it in the wrong gear, resulting the cop nearly hitting the roof due to the choppy helicopter like vertical lift
• Swerving suddenly to right to avoid vehicles on left rather than slowing down or even stopping causing a near heart fail condition for the cop
• Forgetting to apply full clutch while stopping in gear resulting in stall. Only minor blood pressure increase for cop on this one
• Inability to start the car without going backwards or stalling while on an up-slope. The last one resulting the famous maneuver of cop actually getting out of the passenger seat and into the drivers seat after traffic pile-ups in all directions

Did she really do all of the above or am I just listing the stuff that I did while learning ?? ;-))

Scientifically it has been proven that victims of severe trauma often have a distorted idea of what really happened. I take refuge in that study just in case the above list offends anyone :-). Also as a writer, I am allowed to take a few creative liberties.

Incredibly, I am ready for more . I guess it gives me topics to write about in my blog :-))

Defection of the taste buds

What if my cooking has been such a brutal assault on my taste-buds that they are finally beginning to die ? What if they have given up the ghost, surrendered, sold out to other less 'talented' cooks ?

God knows, my taste-buds are so happy and over the moon when I eat out. I mean it could be any Tom, Dick and Harry place and not a squeak from them, they like it all. The moment I start my cooking the protests start. "Too much chillly", "Too little salt" , "Its ok, but it lacks something" , "not quite there yet" , "if you say that is a curry, then I'll believe it". I don't believe these guys !! To think we were all part of the body called Pradeep, and now they are shameless defectors. Shame on you taste-buds, shame on you !!

Well they say Genius is rarely appreciated in his lifetime. Add one more name to that list .....

Cooking tip

Came back from office today at 11 pm and made appams. Ate them with the egg curry that I made yesterday. Now if you are wondering where the cooking tip is , here it comes

Turn off the gas burner once you are done making appams .

Rather disastrously, the humble one forgot to do this. Happily I settled in front of my TV with my late dinner. 20 minutes later I strolled back into my kitchen only to be greeted by this incredibly strong aroma of red hot metal. Quick glance at the gas confirmed my worst fear. Thankfully my non stick tawa is not damaged .

This happened nearly an hour back, still there is a strong smell in my kitchen :-)

Happy birthday to me !!

And several years back a 4.5 kg baby was born, and the world was never the same again !!

I used to look like this when I was very small. The abnormally big head is surely an indication of superior intellect :)

I guess I will sing myself a birthday song tomorrow, cut an imaginary cake and head off to work. Yet to decide what the birthday special dinner should be. It is just me who will eat it, so should not be a tough choice to make ....

Happy birthday to me , happy birthday to me !!

Random Thoughts

I suppose all of us have had moments in our life when we thought what the whole point of our existence was . What is your calling in life ? Is it to work in a certain company ? Is it to help people ? Is it teaching ? Writing ? I will turn 32 shortly and I still have not figured out what exactly I want to do.

Occasionally comes the moments of despair when everything seems hopeless, followed by moments of peace and harmony when the world seems a perfect place to live in. Is it just me, or is rest of the world also like this ?

One thing you always hear people say is Life is all about choices. Can you really tell which of those choices were really made by you, with no other incidents/persons influencing you ? None, I bet. So does that really mean that I have been just a pawn ever since my birth, with everything programmed to happen in a certain way ? I would like to think otherwise. I am getting into The Matrix territory here :-) , which happens to be a movie that I absolutely hate.

I can tell you one thing life that is absolutely precious. Taking a walk with your 4 year old daughter and just listening to her shooting questions and comments at you non-stop. The world through the eyes of a 4 year old is so refreshing. I know it sounds very cliched , but it is surprisingly true !!

Robert Frost and medical students

I am not well read in Frost ( or poetry in general for that matter), but there are some lines that somehow stick to you over the years

Like the classic
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep

Or the lesser known, but equally memorable

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now why this sudden burst of poetry , you may ask. Well, the poems above must be appealing to any student in Kerala unfortunate enough to choose medicine as their career. I share part of the pain as my wife is a medical student too.

Now here comes the "unfortunate" part of the choice of a medical career. You would know that MBBS is worthless, you need an MD to survive. If you want to excel, DM is a must. Here is where the completely illogical compulsory rural service bond enforced by the Kerala government comes into play. See the table below to get a sense of this atrocity. 

Degree	Years to complete	Bond period  (years)	Amount to break the bond ( Rs. Lakhs)
MBBS	5.5	3	5
MD	3	3	15
DM	3	2	25

Total years for completion = 19.5 , assuming that you clear all the entrance exams in first attempt. You enter the system as an 18 year old, and if you are really brilliant, you can leave at the tender "young" age of 37.5 !! And during the bond period, you could be posted to any village health center, pretty much anywhere in Kerala.

Contrast this to engineering where right after 4 years of studies the students start earning. Higher studies in Engineering ?? You must be kidding !! Why this disparity of treatment is something that fails my logic. What we lack in rural areas is not so much in terms of healthcare, but more in terms of basic infrastructure like power and roads. So all the case of government to do rural service agreements for engineers, one would think ...

As a husband of medical student, I know I am doomed :((. There is pretty much no hope of a family life any time soon .... Maybe things will change , maybe sun shall rise from west.

Getting better

I have been calling home frequently to get updates on how my Dad is doing. He is recovering and is in post operative ICU, he is not feeling any pain right now.

I guess he would be discharged later this week. I am going home tonight, tomorrow and day after are holidays here.

Project Paneer

As a part of my new initiative to expand my cooking horizons, I had lined up Paneer butter masala as my next item. As always, my off-shore consultant was kind enough to send me a very detailed recipe on how to make it. I followed the instructions faithfully and here is what I got !!

Looks nice, doesn't it ? Tasted awesome too !! :-). First time I can really claim that after making something. I will shamelessly re-produce the recipe here soon , continuing my history blatant plagiarism :-)

Cooking has been a good diversion for me today. Been struggling with the news of Dad developing some illness. He is scheduled for a surgery on Monday, hope and pray things will be alright. Initial indications are that it is something minor, hope that turns out to be true

No matter how much we grow up, we never handle the news of a parent not being well, can we ?

Updates from the lab

Orkut baba says "He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals." 

I say "He that falls in love with his own cooking shall never go hungry" :-)

Vada pav experiment turned out with satisfactory results. I followed the recipe given here . I made the vada a touch too big, I think. Also it had bit of a strong taste. I suspect too much coriander or garlic could have been the culprit. You are supposed to eat it with some chutney. Being a keralite, I of course opted for a coconut chutney with onions.

Was lying around this weekend when this sudden urge to cook chicken hit me. Chicken tikka is what I zeroed in on. I always prefer bone-less chicken, much easier to handle for novices like me. I followed the recipe given at the back of the tandoori chicken masala. Not too much of a recipe, though. Marinate chicken in lime juice and salt for half hour. Then marinate it in a mixture of curd, tandoori chicken masala, ginger and garlic for a further 2 more hours. I remember some one telling me that it is best to leave the marinated chicken in the fridge , so that is exactly what I did. This was followed by cooking in in my microwave in grill mode for close to half hour, need to turn the pieces around couple of times.

Turned out pretty ok, very different from the hotel version of tikka, but very much edible :-)

Plan to cook paneer soon, been pressing my on-shore consultant for a recipe, have not got it in full yet. Should be able to extract it in full in like 4-5 attempts, I know the drill by now :-)

They say "A fool and his money are easily parted", I say "A female and her recipes are not so easily parted" ;-))

Project Poori

Before I jumped in with Vada Pav, this thought stuck me today morning as to why I cannot make poori at home . A phone call to my off-shore consultant and discussions followed. The key outcome was the advice to knead the dough more than what you do for chapathi and make it soft. Also I was told you have to fry it in full flame and really hot oil. My previous misadventures with hot oil did make me a bit nervous, but I was confident I could pull it off.

Spoke to my on-shore consultant during the day and was told that dough needs to be hard, only then would pooris come out well. 180 degree phase opposition between consultants !! Not entirely un-expected. ( It is a bit like Kimi Raikkonen and Luis Hamilton are unlikely to take the same driving lines in an F1 course. Why ? Because each has their own distinct way of getting the maximum performance out of the car. I am more of a Sakon Yamamoto when it comes to cooking :-( ). Finally I decided to take the middle path, neither hard, nor too soft :-)

After all the kneading and rolling, I started frying them on full flame. The first 3-4 came out like stiff papads, very crispy. I hate it when pooris are this crispy. S.O.S call to on-shore consultant followed. Got the suggestion that I was probably over-frying them. Good tip, started taking them out a bit sooner and suddenly things were a whole lot better !! The aloo curry was 2-3 days old and was showing every sign of going bad, just was too lazy to cook more curry. So managed with it for the time being ;-)

I am getting pretty happy with the slow expansion of my range. Future projects in mind including baking buns and cookies.

A Wednesday

Just one day after my lament about no one seeming to care about terrorism here, I watched this nice Hindi movie called A Wednesday, which deals more or less with exactly the same stuff that I was mentioning. Maybe I should focus on screen plays now :-). Movie was nice, no songs or typical Hindi movie dramas. Very gripping, superb acting and a decent plot line.

Health is back to normal now. And my cooking speed is improving. managed to make 5 chapathis in around 25 mins from start to finish !! ( Used to take me up to 1 hour ). Happily reported this to my North Indian food consultant ( have a seperate one for non-veg, keralite food , cakes etc ;-) ), and immediately got ridiculed. Consultant claims she can do the same in 5 mins !! That is surely an exaggeration, no way you can do it in 5 mins start to finish. Or can you ??

Next in line is the humble Vada Pav. Hilariously, Shiv Sena is now interested in Vada Pav. They claim it is necessary to have a standard taste for it. Surely there are more pressing matters for them to focus on !! I guess I will wait for their standardized recipe , don't want to get stoned for cooking something else ;-)

Deja Vu

I was watching the shocking visuals from the Delhi blasts yesterday. I just could not help feeling an overwhelming feeling of bitter frustration as everyone went through their motions once more. The politicians expressing shock and sympathy, the news channels with their share of opinion polls and panel discussions, the mandatory cat fight between BJP and Congress. We have seen the same thing after the Mumbai and Ahmedabad blasts. Sadly, we shall see it again.

Picture this :  Some folks come in , murder 20 or so of our own citizens, taunt all of us with an e-mail which says "do what you can, but we will still kill you", and as a country we are not even outraged by it. Why can't someone from the government say something like "As a country we will not take this anymore. Wherever you are, we will hunt you down and we will eliminate you" ? In 2 weeks, no one will remember this, then they will strike again. In a different city, different head count and then the carnival shall start again.

Our own citizens being slaughtered in our own country, what do we care ? Life of an Indian is not worth much, is it ? Life goes on.

Does the word Indian mean anything any longer ? May be I am one of the very few idiots who still think it does

Return to blogger

Finally after sometime I am returning to blogging. Drove down home recently in my WagonR. It is a superbly scenic route to Calicut, especially once you enter Kerala. Sometimes it is easy to forget how breathtakingly beautiful God's own country can be. Couple of snaps clicked from the Wayanad Ghat section of the road is below, cameras can never do justice to this scenery.

My family came back to Bangalore with me and spent the whole of last week here. Yesterday was Onam and it was nice to have them around here. My wife and her team won a second price in their medical college pookkalam ( flower carpet ) competition with the following rendering, looked pretty nice

Unfortunately, I have been down with an infection since Thursday, throat pain and really high fever in the night. Gobbling up lots of medicines now.

Most of them induce drowsiness, so I am off to dreamland now.

Back in Bangalore

5 a.m , jet lag is really biting now. I am as fresh as a daisy and hungry !! Had a miserable flight back as usual, I just hate being inside those aircrafts for 18-20 hours ..

Did not make much progress on the V2 specifications front. As a first step I have brought back the long discarded jeans back into my wardrobe collection. Now I can save on my washing expenses :-)

Listening to the song "Maa" from Taare Zameen Par.Such beautiful singing, with so minimal instruments.

  I can rarely listen to this song without a tear or two welling up in my eyes. Which would sort of tell you why Pradeep V1 has been having some ups and downs of late, just the heart taking over the mind :-)) Internal wiring at birth, nothing I can do to change it, I guess.

Another song that always moves me, Hallelujah from Shrek. Again, just a piano as accompaniment, beautiful singing ....

V2 ..

You might have read about my Aloo paratha and cake versions 1 ,2 ,3 and so on.

Now what happens if you decide to launch a new version of yourselves !! No, I am not kidding. Just think through whatever you think are the problems with the current 'version', and come up with a plan for version-2.

What are some of the things that Pradeep - V2 could do with ? The question is definitely very deep.

So let me think a bit more and get back on this one :-)

Trousers, buttons and Engineers

How many engineers does it require to sew back the button on a trouser ?

Wondering where this question came from ? Let me explain. The amazingly lazy lifestyle that I have adopted has resulted in a few expansions in my life. Now generally expansion is considered good - expansion in your salary, expansion in roles and responsibilities, expansion of your house - all are just great. The expansion that I am referring to is around my waistline. You don't have to be the brightest bulb in the room to realize that this is NOT an expansion that is desirable.

And you don't need to have a PhD in Mechanical engineering to understand the stresses and strains experienced by my trouser button, which has been fighting a valiant battle for survival against my waistline. Well, sometime last week , the unthinkable happens. I hear a pop sound around noon in office one day. Sure enough, there goes the button, severed from the umbilical cord that tied it to my trousers. Sadly I picked it up and put in my pocket.

Now the options for me were (a) To buy a new trouser (b) Sew the button back on . Being a non-IT engineer , the pay check more or less ruled out option (a) . I am not much of a tailor, but hey if the other option is to actually spend like 1500 Rs on a new pair, bring it on buddy !!

Frantic search of the home landed me with the tools for the job, the thread the needle. Several challenges popped up as soon as I start stitching. The main one being the apparently simple process of pushing the needle from one side and getting it through the hole of the button on other side. I just could not get them aligned. On the rare occasions in which I did manage to thread it though, I also managed to maintain a 100% hit rate on my finger !! By the time I finished stitching, my fingers had neat rows of perforation marks. I will omit the bloodbath details in interest of the family audience :-) All the bloodshed paid off in the end though, got my button back on and the trouser is ready to go !! It is stuck at a slightly odd angle, but hey , who cares as long as it does the job ..

Pradeep the tailor though may not have too much of a future, I doubt very much if I am gonna make Versace turn over in his grave. Unlike Pradeep the cook, who will definitely give Gordon Ramsay a run for his money :-)

Quote

Walk a mile in my shoes, you may find that it is the most painful and loneliest walk you ever had ... ( source : myself )

In U.S !!

Finally landed here in Albany yesterday evening around 6.30 pm. Flights were long and tiring and usual. The Bangalore Frankfurt one was ok as I slept through most parts. The Frankfurt-Washington DC one was awful , could not sleep a wink and nearly 9.30 hours !! The DC-Albany one was just about an hour, the plane looked awfuly shady though. One of those Embraer jets which looked as if it is falling to pieces. There were 2 seats which were damaged and had no back rest !!

Slept like a baby yesterday. Woke up at 3 am watched some TV and fooled around on the laptop, then slept back again 4 am, just like a baby would do ;-)

I had booked a Mazda or equivalent car. When Hertz lady told me that they will give me a small upgrade,I thought maybe I will get a Corolla or Camry. I got a Ford Edge SUV instead !! Now I am in trouble , the thing is so big that I am finding it tough to manouvere around. I will be doing a demo run to Walmart today, hopefully would reach there and not the police station :)

We went to Lathay Biriyani yesterday for dinner. Most of my colleagues here have been in US for past 2 weeks and are really desperate for Indian food :-)) The food was excellent, better than Biriyani's you get in most places in Bangalore.

Today will mostly be just some shopping and roaming around. Have to catch up with some work also later in the day.

Will the real me please stand up ?

I had a bit of time for reflection in my last trip home. If you have been reading my blog, you would know that I do this reflection thing quite often !!

Looking back at the past 8-9 months, I realize that a lot of the time I have been behaving a bit out of character. I have complained and whined a lot, which is unlike my normal behavior of just accepting things the way they are and moving on silently. ( At least I think that is my normal behavior. I know that self-assessment often leads to wrong conclusions in behavioral analysis)

Which begs the question , will the real me please stand up and be heard now ? My sense of humor seems to have taken a back seat. Need to bring that passenger back to the driver's seat for sure !! The ability to make others laugh , to share a good laugh and even laugh at yourselves from time to time , is a grossly under-estimated quality in a person.

Being the darker side of me is no fun, I am off to the fun side now !! :-)

Abhinav Bindra, you beauty

Finally I witnessed something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. An Indian winning gold medal at the Olympics !! Just incredibly happy that this long long period of shame has finally come to an end. I'm a blogger from a gold medal winning country now, don't mess with me !!

Started off my trial work from home program this Friday, turned out really well. I really should have done this a long time back. Better late than never, I suppose.

Indian cricket team of course slumped to a miserable spineless defeat once again. One idea that was doing round in our office was that let us use the cricket players as targets for Indian shooters. Interesting one that, I must say :-) .

I have this nasty feeling than within couple of years, it will be Abhinav who ? . That is the sad state of recognition for our true heroes ....

I am planning to travel to the U.S from 16th to 29th August. I am a very reluctant traveler, just hate the thought of spending 7-8 hours inside a plane. I get more leg room in local BMTC bus !!

But coming back to the main thread- Abhinav Bindra, you rock buddy. Thanks for restoring some sense of pride to all Indians.

Working from home

Got scared of the office AC's influence on my Asthma, do decided to work from home today. Actually was a very nice experience, managed to get more work done at home than in office. Which in itself is not saying much , but let us not get there.

I kept the TV news on in the background just so that I do not feel very lonely. Could not help overhearing this whole abortion case that is going on now. The question being asked was whether the would be parents have the right to terminate the pregnancy of their child who has been diagnosed with congenital heart disease beyond the legally allowed limit of 20 weeks of pregnancy.

I firmly believe nothing of that sort should be allowed provided there is no threat to the mother's life.
Where do we stop if allow things like these ? Are we trying to imply that only the healthy babies have a right to live in this world ?
Should we kill all the babies who are unhealthy ? 
How can you or me or a doctor reliably predict if the baby will have a health problem after birth ? Why don't we start playing God and allow killings of everyone who has a disability from now on ?

In my book, willing termination of a pregnancy based on guesswork like this is nothing short of murder. I dare you to look into the eyes of a baby and tell me otherwise. Unfortunately , as per the polls not a lot of people share this opinion. Most of the respondent might have never been parents is my only guess.

I know there are lots of other issues involved like difficulties for the child, trauma for the parents, costs of treatment etc. If you are a parent, you should never ever ever give up on their children. I am happy to see our court has stepped up and said no to this abortion, according to me that is the way it has to be.

Quotes , quips, dialogues

You know, some quotes that you read, dialogues that you hear, tend to stay with you for a while. Here are some that randomly come to my mind

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist" - Verbal Kint ( Kevin Spacey)  from the movie The Usual Suspects

"Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!" from the book The valley of fear by Arthur Conan Doyle. ( I must have read this while I was in 10th, it was so thrilling !! )

"Anger is what gets us into trouble, pride is what keeps us there" - Source unknown ( Might have mentioned this earlier sometime on my blog, one of my favorites )

"Beedi undo sakhave oru theepetti edukkan ?" from the Malayalam movie Lal Salaam.( Dialogue has no specific meaning, just one of those you can never seem to forget !! )

"I am going to make him an offer he cannot refuse" from the book, The Godfather by Mario Puzo ( One of my favorite books, sadly whoever I have loaned this book to has never liked it :( . For the record, I have not seen the movie )

"You don't need a patch on your arm to have honor"  - Kaffee ( Tom Cruise ) in the movie A few good men

"Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?" - from the movie Reservoir Dogs

"I'll be back" - Don't think you need a source on that one !! :-)

I would like to add Stand by me by Ben. E. King to the earlier list of songs. Lyrics are decent and a soulful rendering.

Off to my cooking lab now . Let us see if something edible comes out today !

Back to basics

Unresponsive consultants have held up my experimentation plans for cooking. Been sticking to basics lately, Dosa, rice, bread etc. My shoulder still hurts from exertions of yesterday. Raising my arm above shoulder level is quite an effort. Sad state of affairs ...

So what else is happening ? Reading has been painfully slow, cooking has been just routine stuff, no more wild mood swings of late( apart from the occasional feeling of loneliness, which I can live with quite easily) and pretty busy at work.

Started watching Yes Prime Minister recently. Really classy humor. Also been watching episodes of Everybody loves Raymond, which is also nice, but entirely different type of humor. Nothing like a good laugh to relax you at the end of a tiring day !!

Cricket !!

An inter-lab cricket tournament is fast approaching. Due to the severe talent crunch in our lab, many old warhorses like me have been forced to return from retirement.

Believe me, when I say I have been called to play for a cricket team ( I don't care what team, could be a team of 4 year olds ), you can bet your life that someone is really desperate for people to make up the 11. Rule of the thumb is as the degree of movement involved in the sport goes up, my skill level goes down exponentially. I can manage quite well in carrom, I can kick some rear-sides in 8 ball pool. But soccer and cricket ?? Hmmmm. Let us say that I am a bit motion challenged .....

We had a practice session today. I started of by attempting to bowl fast for the first couple of deliveries. A creaking shoulder and knee resulted in me settling down for gentle medium pace instead. Stinkingly low fitness levels resulted in off/leg spin variations after a few more deliveries :-). Did experience some direction related issues while bowling, often my deliveries were up to a quarter radian from the intended target . In my defense, I must say I am not alone, our  whole team uniformly sucks in this department

My batting philosophy has always been pretty simple. Swing the bat with all your might in a wide arc. Depending at what point of arc I make contact, results vary from clean bowled to leading edge to sixer.

Feeling tired after the physical activity, I am sure I will sleep well tonight. Also a pointer for me on how to over come my sleep problems !! A pointer that I am sure I will ignore. Why, you may ask ? welll..............

Cake with unsalted butter

It was pointed out to me couple of months back that it is always recommended to use unsalted butter for cake. I had been thinking of baking a cake the "proper" way for a long time now. Finally got around to doing it today. The only variations from the original recipe being the use of unsalted butter and the addition of chopped figs to the cake.

Well, here is what the end product looks like ..

I don't know if you can make out from the picture, but the middle of my cake is actually lower than the edges !! Don't know why this happened, maybe my baking powder is getting old. Maybe the eggs were not good. At the time of mixing, I did notice that one of my egg yolks was a very dark yellow.

Inside was just a touch undercooked. I did 220 deg C for around 30 minutes. As you can see the top is very brown. Maybe I should do 200 deg C for say 40 minutes next time.Have to say the unsalted butter has not impacted the taste much. I don't know what happened to the fig, can't taste it in the final cake !!

Raining here in Bangalore. Temperatures have taken a sharp dip down, asthma is taking a sharp rise upwards !! But this time I am right on top if it with my Inhalers, hot soups and steaming coffees. We shall see who wins this time around !!

Due to some strange coincidence almost all my friends are in the U.S now, whoever is remaining also would be there by the coming weekend.

Off to cook dinner now !!

Bangalore blasts

I have to admit I am a bit shaken by this whole episode of serial blasts in Bangalore. I am scared of going to any place with a crowd gathering now , I guess most people would be feeling this way for a couple of days. The amazing nature of human memory would ensure than within a week most of us would really push this incident out of our minds and carry on with life as usual. Till the time the next tragedy strikes of course.

Spare a thought for all those people who lost their lives in this mindless incident. Their families and friends would not forget this day for sure. The simple truth regarding irreversibility of death is what they have come face to face with today. Just think about it, tomorrow it could be you and me in the same situation.

I can't believe there are people who think that killing innocent people would somehow help their 'mission'. I guess there is no shortage of morons in this world.

When will this nonsense ever end ?

Lean on me

Mentioned about this song by Bill Withers called Lean on Me in one of my earlier posts. There are several version of this song sung by other groups later on. Somehow I found the lyrics to be very simple and touching , so producing the same below . Listen to this song if you get time, you might also enjoy it like me :-)

Sometimes in my life we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you Won't let show

you just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that You'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For ,it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need Somebody to lean on

Ya just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that You'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on
If there is a load you have to bear
That you can't carry
I'm right up the road
I'll share your load
If you just call me

call me (if you need a friend)
call me (call me)
call me (if you need a friend)
call me (if you ever need a friend)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me (if you need A friend)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me (call me)
call me

Short and sweet trip

Had a nice short and enjoyable trip home over the weekend. Only problem with a short trip is you never really recover from the tiredness of bus travel.

Kerala is a complete mess now. Swami Vivekananda once referred to Kerala as a mental asylum , I believe he was being very mild indeed. Hartals happen at the drop of a hat(remember, bandh is banned by High court, so why not just re-name it ?). I bet no woman can step outside safely after 6.30 p.m or so.  Minor insignificant issues being totally blown out of proportion. A toothless media which hardly does anything other than just plainly report events that occurred. A population which is completely dejected and has very little hope of a better future. And I am not taking sides with any party here, all are uniformly bad. I had once harbored hopes of going back to Kerala sometime in future and settling there, now I think that might remain just a wish :-((

My little one was really happy to see me. We played lots, read stories and cuddled up together. Apparently she has been told in school to sing songs loudly. Boy, doesn't she follow those instructions well !! When she starts to sing, volume is so absurdly high that you have to cover your ears just to retain some sanity. I heard her sing in Sunday school class, she could be heard right outside the church. And I am talking of a really big church here !! :-)

She had a day off in school today. Education Bandh in Kerala. This state will never ever improve.

Songs , driving et al

Ever noticed how what song is playing on your CD payer affects your driving style ? I have noticed definite increase in aggression with Its my life !!

Been downloading and listening to quite a few English songs now. Quite a few I am hearing for the first time. Here is a few that I can recommend, choose based on your mood !!

• Lean on Me by  Bill Withers - Nice song about friends who are always there
• The Wonderwall by Oasis - Similar in theme to Lean on me
  An Innocent Man by Billy Joel - Just a nice song about relationships and hurt, I guess. Not a negative song, very soothing .
• Unforgiven 2 by Metallica - This is the song that I listen to most when in a dark mood. More interesting than the song is the millions of weird interpretations that you will read about :-)
• Sleeping Child by MLTR - Whenever I miss my daughter
• Wonderful Life by Black - When life just feels good !!
• Tubthumping by Chumbawamba - Just to pick up the mood when I feel down. Its incredible how a repetition of the lines "I get knocked down, but I get up again, You're never gonna keep me down" can influence you !!
• Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel : An English Ballad.One of the most soothing songs that I have ever heard, love is the theme.

Might add to this list later on !!

Little one down

My daughter is down with Asthma. Poor thing has been coughing non-stop for a while. Doctor has put her on steroids to ease away the Asthma. We do use inhalers for her, but if you use them too much ( like a Salbutamol ) , the heart rate gets bumped up and that is not good.

This is one thing I am sure I have passed on as a hereditary trait to my daughter. How I wish I could reverse that :-((. Bad Bad Bad gene, no donut for you ....

There must be few things more upsetting to a parent than a sick child. Also wish I could be by her side comforting her . Well, she has an array of grandparents, uncles and aunts to fuss over her, so I must admit she is not doing too bad on the affection front :-)

Question & Answer

As another Sunday evening approached, an interesting question popped up in my mind :How fast can my Wagon-R go on the outer ring road ?

Answer : Not very :-(

After some attempts, the max I could hit was around 110 kms/ hr, got limited by traffic mostly. That is like a first gear corner in F1.

I am realizing driving fast is also a mood elevator for me :-). Do not get alarmed though, I am a fast driver , not a rash or stupid one . There is a difference, you know . A difference not appreciated by most of my friends, I must say :-(

Weekend passed by with the usual dose of activities. Cooking, reading, some TV, movies and volunteering. Latest movies were Silence of the lambs, Forrest Gump and Remember the titans. Liked all of them. Chilling is the only word to describe Antony Hopkins in Silence of the lambs. Forrest Gump is one of those genuine heartwarming stories, Tom Hanks is just amazing. Remember the titans is based on a true story of a football team that overcomes racial segregation issues. You can learn more about the true story here : http://www.71originaltitans.com/

Next in line is Bridge over River Kwai

Another weekend looms

My plans of making a brief trip home have been upset by some work related stuff that has come up, so sulking a bit because of that. Would be missing my niece's birthday, so feeling down now :-((

Today we were asked to leave office by 7 p.m as there were reports of some unrest in parts of Bangalore like JC Nagar. No one knows what exactly is the nature of unrest, unable to find anything on this on TV either !!

I have resumed volunteering as you might have read in one of my earlier posts. I am convinced that the direction we are headed in with our new initiative is wrong. However no one seems to be keen on listening to me :-(( I can only put in my best effort and hope things work out well. I must admit that I am missing a bit of passion from my time at EOTO.

According to me our target student population has been woefully off so far , this is still ok as we are just starting. More disturbing to me is that our agenda is getting hijacked into something else now. If we are not really careful, it could mean the end of our program. However, not many others seem to have the same amount of concern, maybe I am wrong.

Or maybe I am just tired and my thoughts are all scrambled up. God knows, that has happened a few times before .

I am adding the disclaimer again that this blog is not intended at any particular person(s) , it is just an expression of my own frustration

The taxi driver

As you can guess from the title, yesterday was mostly a driving day.

Started off by going to the Passport office near Koramangala national games village. My passport expired couple of weeks before and had to renew it. Made a strategic blunder by choosing the outer ring road and was severely punished for the error by being stuck in a jam near Bellandur cross for like 30 minutes. Another unwise choice was to skip breakfast. By the time I was done with the whole submission process, I almost collapsed due to hunger !! Hey, how come my mistakes always get savagely punished, this ain't fair !!

Went over the good old Imperial hotel near Koramangala club and parceled the legendary Kerala porotta with chilly chicken. Was nearly 3 p.m by the time I finished my "brunch" and reached back home( near Marthahalli)

This was followed by a trip in the evening to Richmond road to meet a dear friend of mine, the kind I mentioned in this post :-). You know some friends never fail to cheer you up, a 5 minute chat is all you need to feel great again !!

Traffic was pretty light and managed to reach near MG road in 15 mins. The last 500 meters took a further 20 minutes :-((. We had dinner at Karavalli ( Residency road), dropped her back to Richmond Road and then back home.

All I recall is lying down on the bed, next thing I know is alarm going off in the morning !! So now I know the pill for sleeping. Drive around in Bangalore traffic for couple of hours :-)

The cook returns

After the stellar success of Aloo paratha, I had some recent discussions with my consultant on what else can be achieved. We discussed 4-5 options , each of the recipes went like this

"Take chilly powder, green chilly, mango powder, coriander, onions"
"Take green chillies, onions, potato, mango powder , chilly powder"
"Take onions, potato, green chillies, coriander powder , mango powder"

You sort of get the drift don't you ? My head started spinning like a top trying to work out the subtle differences. Vague qualitative answers did not help one bit either. Take in the following conversation, Con is short for consultant, no pun intended :-)

Me  : How much coriander powder should I add ?
Con : A little less than Chilly powder but more than Mango powder 
Me  : Hmmmm .... So how much Chilly powder ?
Con : Well, it has to be slightly less than the salt
Me  : What ???? How much salt do I add ?
Con : Depends
Me  : #&^%#$#)#$(#*

Well, the last response of mine is imaginary, I don't swear in real life :-). Rest all is true !!

Finally after some effort , we narrowed down the choice to the fairly innocent looking cousin of Aloo paratha , The Onion Paratha. Apparently, there is nothing to it, instead of using aloo, just use more onions and make the stuff.

Ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.......

For starters, rolling it is a heck of lot more trickier than aloo paratha, but my technique has become very polished with time. So I tackled that hurdle ok. But boy, what happened to the taste ?? It was some of the most horrendous tasting stuff that I ever made. I am pretty sure, some ingredients have been conveniently 'forgotten' by the consultant again.

Hunger forced me to eat two parathas anyway, just could not bring myself to finish the third one, had to throw it out :-((

Another case of a talented cook led astray by poor advice, I must say :-)

Hungry !!

Guess what, I am hungry. I am out of raw materials as well as patience to cook. So enforced fasting at night for the past week :-(

For me hunger is always something that causes bad mood swings. I get angry the most when I am hungry. I believe it does have a strong co-relation for most people. Which is why it is never a good idea to schedule a meeting right before lunch hour, especially if it is a brain-storming session. Mostly you will end up having people getting on each others nerves :-)

So what should be my next cooking project ? Need some discussion with my consultants to finalize that. Till that gets done, more fasting in store for me , I'm afraid.

Been following Wimbledon a bit, happy to see the Maverick Marat Safin returning to center stage. I have always had a fascination for these odd-ball characters in any sport. Not the consistent brilliance of a Federer and Nadal, but on their day these folks can take your breath away.

They seem to be fighting some demons from within most of the time and are always within a hair's breadth of hitting the self-destruct button. Say a Vinod Kambli in Cricket or a Paul Gascoigne in football. Somehow I feel we are not getting enough of these mavericks in sports any longer. Every one is so focused on saying the right things, looking the right way, having the right technique and so on. I almost fall asleep listening to most of their interviews. Come on folks, let us see some color and life out there !!

And this coming from one of the least lively and colorful persons out there. Saying is so easy, ain't it ? :-)

Yet another weekend

The main thing to report is that I am finally back to volunteering ways again, started going to the new computer education center. Had taken a break of close to month just to re-charge.

Lots of challenges this time around as the student population is very young and does not speak English very well. So we will have to devise smarter ways of teaching. Unfortunately, in spite of being in Karnataka for 10 years now, I cannot speak the language. I can understand bits and pieces. Cannot really say that I am too proud of this fact :-(

Just downloaded OpenOffice and was playing around with it. Very impressive. A touch slow , but hey it is completely free !! Menus and navigation is pretty similar to that of Microsoft Office, so picking it up was really easy. I wonder why this has not been more popular here in India !!

Drove around Bangalore on Sunday evening due to lack of anything better to do. Traffic was not all that bad. Did a round of AECS layout, Outer Ring Road, Airport Road, Koramangala, HSR layout and then back home. Picked up dinner also along the way. The all time mallu favorite of Kerala Porotta with Chilly Chicken !! :-)

Really happy to see that Spain has won the Euro 2008 !! They have been such an under achieving team so far. Wanted Holland also to do well, they had some really awesome players. Somehow did not click when it mattered.

Still reading the Manual of the Warrior of Light. This one cannot be rushed, so taking my time with it.

I am stuck with Appams as breakfast , lunch and dinner for the past couple of weeks. Boy, I am sick of it already !! This is the trouble of using instant Appam mixes that come only in 1 kg packets. Serves 35-40 appams, they say . Who will eat all these is my question ? In my opinion they should come up with bachelor friendly mini packs that makes 4-5 appams only

Manual of the Warrior of light

I am finding the above book to be really good. I have been re-reading the the following passage over and over again.

Every warrior of light has felt afraid of going into battle

Every warrior of light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone

Every warrior of light has trodden a path that was not his

Every warrior of light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons

Every warrior of light has, at least once, believed that he was not a warrior of light

Every warrior of light has failed in his spiritual duties

Every warrior of light has said 'yes' when he wanted to say 'no'

Every warrior of light has hurt someone he loved

That is why he is a warrior of light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is

Keyser Söze

Finished watching The usual suspects, hence the title of the post . I really enjoyed it, my kind of movie, with a wicked twist at the end :-).

Well that gets me thinking. How do I really know what the real identity of people around me are ? Well for all you know, I could be a serial killer !! You might smile on reading this . Not so fast buddy, you might be next on my stalking list :-)

Saw Reservoir dogs  too, really nasty movie. Lots of bloodshed , swearing and double crossing. I did not like it very much.

Blasted through Bloody River Blues  by Jeffrey Deaver. Decent book, nothing special. Started on The manual of Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho, it has been very interesting so far. Again a collection of thoughts and ideas.

There is a neat little site called Shelfari which lets you build up a virtual bookshelf. Helps me keep track of my reading nicely. You can see a snapshot of my Shelfari bookshelf on the right side pane of my blog. You can also rate you books, write reviews, read about what others have to say and all that. Nice concept. Could do with a better web interface though !!

Movies , EURO 2008 reading and relaxation !!

Been a while since my last post, the culprits being the items mentioned in the title above. :-)

I have been downloading and watching movies at the rate of one per day. Some of the recent ones being A few good men, The siege, The Shawshank Redemption and  Chariots of fire. All were pretty decent. I had read the Shawshank Redemption book earlier, the movie is almost as good as the book.

Next in line are Reservoir Dogs ( Kaante was apparently a rip-off of this movie), Drunken Master 2 and Raging Bull.

Just finished what must surely be rated as one of the worst books ever, Devil wears Prada. This apparently was a bestseller, I don't have the slightest clue why. Maybe people just wanted to experience what a poor book feels like. Very rarely have I felt like throwing a book in trash after reading it, this one did produce those feelings !!

There is a 25% discount sale on at www.indiaplaza.in/books and with free shipping, so I have been ordering a few of late.

Thankfully with the installation of a webcam here and back home in Calicut has meant that I see my family daily and chat with them. Has made a world of difference. Technology is just amazing , isn't it ?

All this means , I am at peace with myself finally :-)

Monsoon time

For all the keralites out there who are missing the onset of Monsoon, here are couple of videos that I shot from my home during my recent visit. Enjoy the sound and sight of rain !!



On the reading front, I am a bit tired of Devil wears Prada, boringly repetitive.

Got two more acquisitions during my trip home, from a lovely shop called Odyssey in Focus mall, Calicut. Acres of space to browse books in and fully air-conditioned to boot !! Similar to Landmark @ Forum mall Bangalore in layout, minus all the crowd. Books that I picked up are The Liar by Stephen Fry and Bloody River Blues by Jeffrey Deaver.

Suffering from Bus-lag now, so thinking of dozing off. If you are unfamiliar with the expression, it results in being tossed around in your berth while traveling by sleeper bus, partly due to bad roads and partly due to the winding nature of roads. :-)

Relaxing at home

I am set into this eat-drink-sleep-TV routine at home. Feels awesome to sit around and recover back to normalcy, May had been a mad month for me !!. Just spending some time with my family has washed away all my tensions and apprehensions. Glad to report that Pradeep is back to normal and would soon be firing on all cylinders again !! :-)

Monsoons have started in full flow here, as always it is a spectacular sight to watch. But realistically, I do not like the rainy season so much. Whole house has a damp feeling, your clothes never dry on time, you are forever splashing around in wet clothes. And if you stay where I do, you will have to waddle through pools of muddy water just to get home everyday . Yuck !!!

My little one started school yesterday and quite remarkably she has not shed a tear so far. Seems very comfortable in class. I went with my camera to capture the crying and came back disappointed:-) Here is a snap anyway, was taken just before we started for school.

You will notice that I am again sporting this experimental French beard. Started itching badly today evening, so I have gotten rid of it now :-). Good riddance, most people would say. I have had very low acceptance rates for this beard, from friends and family alike.

Planning to get some reading done later this week, apart from that no plans . Just chilling :-)

Ciao .

Now I see the sun , yes now I see it !!

Lay beside me, tell me what I've done
The door is closed, so are your eyes
But now I see the sun, now I see the sun
Yes now I see it!

From Unforgiven-II by Metallica

Finally the day has arrived. I am going home today , will be there in Calicut till 15th June. Two important dates coming up. June 9th being my daughter's first day in school and June 14th being my 5th wedding anniversary. It is amazing how fast the time flies.

I hoping to put a full stop to all the 'emotional disturbance' I have been facing over the past few weeks. I'll be back as a new man, that much I am sure !! As always a few close friends boosted me tremendously during this time, so yet again I have to thank them .

Adios Amigos. Will be back with more news on how the first day in school went. I think I am looking forward to it more than my daughter :-)

Friendship and expectations

Disclaimer : This blog is not a potshot at anyone, its just an expression of some of my own thoughts !!

Is a friendship meaningful without expectations ? I mean a really good friendship, not the casual "Hi , how are you" type.

According to me , the answer is - No. Without expectations, there is no meaning to a close friendship. Now what are some of these expectations ?

- Belief that if you have a problem, your friend will always be there to listen to you. That you can talk on any topic freely with him or her. He or She will always offer a shoulder for you to lean on.
- Feeling of zero obligation. A friendship cannot be based on obligation. If you are feeling 'he has helped me so and so times, SO I have to help him this time', then according to me the friendship is not working. Friends are there to help one another, there is no place for keeping count.
- Complete trust that you can place your life in your friend's hands and feel absolutely safe. I can count on my fingers of left hand, the number of friends that qualify for this :-)

So why I am thinking of all this ??

We cannot really control what our mind chooses to think, can we ? :-). If we could, many of our problems would just vanish into thin air ...