What kind of a book shopper are you ?

I often wonder if it is possible to predict what kind of a person you are by analyzing your book shopping habits. Some types of shoppers I have seen are listed below

• The confident shopper : They come in looking for a specific book. If that is not there, they would probably leave not even bothering to browse
• The perennial browser : The kind who spends couple of hours browsing, in the end does not buy any book. Most of them tortured and lost souls :)
• The superfast shopper : Before you blink he / she has 3-4 books under their shoulder and ready to check out. Not a common species, I must say
• The iterative shopper : Scan the book shelves multiple times, often going over the same section more than once before making final choice. Often slow to pick up books.

I am more of an iterative shopper. I usually put down mental markers on which ones I want to buy while browsing, but I don’t pick them up till I am fairly close to checkout. Average shopping time is around an hour and maximum I buy at a time is no more than 4 books.

And I hate store staff lurking near me while I am browsing. I hate crowded bookshops also. I boycott the Gangaram’s in MG road for these very reasons. This is also why I love Crosswords.

I have bought some more books for reading this Friday, however the mind is not quite there yet ……..……

A long drive

Sunday nights are usually pretty boring for me, add to that the fact that power failed here. After around half hour , I could not take it any longer. Took my car and headed out aimlessly , just wanted to get away from my house for sometime. Anything to get rid of the dark clouds in my mind.

Ended up driving towards Hebbal, then took a turn towards Malleswaram, went under the Windsor Manor Bridge and on to Infantry road and then Cubbon Road. Sudden right turn towards brigade road, then further right on brigade road to Church Street. The place is jam packed at 9.30 pm on a Sunday night. A few twists and turns later I am back on Brigade road, this time headed towards Koramangala. Decided to stop for dinner at imperial and then headed back home through HSR layout and outer ring road. A touch under two hours,  was sufficiently tired and distracted by the time I was done.

Came back home to see Liverpool annihilate Aston Villa. Coupled with a miserable performance by Manchester United yesterday, that should set up a great finale for the English Premier League. I still think United will win.

Dark and brooding

One of these dark clouds has been hovering over my mind all of a sudden. Origin is again mysterious, just feel tense and down.

Maybe it will pass, maybe it won’t …………………..

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

by Percy Bysshe Shelley in Prometheus Unbound

Let hope emerge from the wreck and we shall see.

Point to ponder

I was getting hopelessly behind in my ironing, so decided to outsource this to a local shop. Dumped a first batch of 12 clothes, got them back in perfect shape and was charged at the rate of Rs.2.50 per garment. Impressed by their speed, I gave them a second round of 15 garments. This time he told me the charge was  Rs.3 per garment !! I immediately told him about the last times rate and brought it down to 2.50 per piece. Happily I returned home, satisfied with my own alertness.

On the way back itself a sense of shame and guilt began to overpower me. I have no hesitation in blowing away hundreds of rupees whenever I visit a bookshop or a mall. Just recently I splurged couple of thousand on new shoes on goggles. Never ever thought of bargaining in those shops. Now here I am stealing away 50ps per cloth from a husband-wife combo who have a barebones existence, work tirelessly from morning to evening and have at least one kid to support. How insensitive can I get ?

But sadly it is not only me. Most of Bangalore (maybe India and the world too ) seems intent on following this same path. Sample behavior : Negotiate hard with your local vegetable guy for maybe a Rs.5 saving,then go to an AC restaurant and pay Rs.1500 for dinner without even a whimper of complaint.

Every time I stop at a traffic signal, some kid or the other will come begging for money. Almost always I turn them away. I know of some intellectuals who say that is the right thing to do as it will stop them from begging and look for other jobs. In an ideal world perhaps that is true. But in a practical world it is an extremely tough day to day existence for them. In spite of knowing all this I don’t know why I refuse to pay at times.

If at all a resolution made sense for me in 2009, it is possibly to be more sensitive to a fellow human being’s difficulties

More and more random thoughts

The use of a curry leaf is really interesting. You use it to provide flavor to a dish. Especially down here in South India, it is pretty much used in all dishes. However once the flavor part is done, it is mercilessly thrown out. No sympathy, no second thoughts, no word of thanks. Off to the trash you go !! I thought co-passenger duty was thankless, curry leaf wins that battle hands down :)

Finished Jeffrey Archer’s latest book, Paths Of Glory ,over the weekend. A decent read, nowhere near his best.

The true story behind the book continued to intrigue me after I finished the book. The books is based on the attempt by the legendary George Mallory to scale Mount Everest.

Though Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are undoubtedly the first people to reach the peak and come back safely, it seems that considerable debate exists as to whether George Mallory had scaled the peak before them. No way to be sure of this because he died during that climb/descent.

The romantic in you wants to believe that somehow he had miraculously scaled the peak, though scientific wisdom and evidence may suggest otherwise. One particular fact adds fuel to this fire,  quoted from Wikipedia

“Mallory's daughter has always said that Mallory carried a photograph of his wife on his person with the intention of leaving it on the summit. This photo was not found on Mallory's body. Given the excellent preservation of the body and its garments, this points to the possibility that he may have reached the summit and deposited the photo there”

Intriguing. Guess only God and George Mallory might know what actually happened.

Guide to married life

This is really a manipulation of some interesting quips on marriage, nothing original

• Before marriage you might feel incomplete, remember that after marriage you are finished
• You might think marriage interferes with romance and you would be correct. Your wife is bound to interfere any time you have a romance ;)
• In any argument there are two ways you can choose. Your wife’s way or the highway
• In any marriage there is lots of give and take. You better give it to your wife , else she is going to take it anyway
• Do you know of a faster way to transfer funds than electronic banking ? Sure, it is called marriage !!
• "I'll never let go Jack, I'll never let go." says Rose in Titanic. Several seconds later, poor little Jack sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic... [ I love this one :)) ]
• Your wife will work tirelessly to change you, then she will complain that you are the not the same person anymore
• Four most important words in marriage “I’ll do the dishes”. You can replace dishes with cooking , laundry or cleaning :)
• Your marriage is in trouble if your wife says, ‘You’re only interested in one thing,’ and you can’t remember what it is
• Research has conclusively proven that the biggest cause of divorce is marriage

Guide to living alone

Guides and manuals for living seem to be the “in” things on internet. So why not put together a Guide to living alone based on my experiences ?? So here it goes, valid only if you are married and staying away from your family

• Accept the fact that you have no life, peace follows thereafter :-))
• Stay in office as late as possible, immerse yourselves in work
• If you cannot do that, develop an alternate hobby. And no, TV does not work. Reading is ok, cooking is good, exercise is even better
• If you are stressed at work, that is the time you suffer the most as there is no real way to unwind when you come in to an empty dark home with no one to talk to. Vital to have some diversion like above in that case. Turn to blogging like I did :)
• Try to find interesting stuff to do on weekends. A bit of shopping, some volunteering, visiting a few friends, driving at breakneck speed etc…. If none of the above interest you the sleep all day like I often do :-) Though I can warn you that you will wake up towards the evening miserable and depressed
• Avoid any functions or events in which everyone else comes with their families, especially ones with kids. I have suffered silently on many such events. It just throws up a whole lot of emotions that you can rarely control. I often hide behind ill health to excuse myself from these events ;)
• Great to have couple of friends with which whom you can chat freely when you feel down and depressed. This alone has helped me the most. Make sure you don’t pile on your misery on them and get them depressed !! ;) And be sensitive, you are the one without a life, not them. So don’t impose yourselves on anyone
• Take good care of your health. Remember that if you fall sick, there is really no one to take care of you !!
• Use technology, connect with your family over Video chat. Nothing like seeing your family to burn the tension away
• Though hope is most deceptive of all emotions, continue to hope & dream. Things are rarely as bad as they seem.

Confusions of a sleep deprived mind

As is the case with most offices in Bangalore, our office is a no smoking zone.

So imagine my surprise when I was walking in office and I see cigarette smoke emerging from a cubicle. Enraged, I walk over to the guy and demand that he puts his cigarette out. The guy basically blows me off and tells me he can very well do whatever he wants and there is nothing I can do about it. Fuming with rage, I drag over my site safety leader to confront him. As I come back I am met with the bizarre sight of lot of my colleagues carrying boxes and boxes of medicines. I ask them what is going on, they tell me they have been asked to hide the boxes somewhere.

What the #$%* is going on here ????

And then I wake up in my bedroom

It felt so real that I was really in a foul and angry mood when I woke up. Checked the clock, only 7.30 pm, so I was able to catch just couple of hours of sleep after my early departure from office. As has been the case with past couple of days, I have no recollection of anything about the drive apart from the fact that I have parked my car in garage today, unlike yesterday when I left it on the road.

Felt really hungry, so decided to make Aloo paratha, this time with the variation of grating the boiled potato instead of mashing it (i had heard my friend mention this as an alternate way). Somehow tasted better, though I have very little logical explanation of why.

Orkut throws another googly as daily fortune : “The work will teach you how to do it”

Rarely has a statement made so little sense. Though in my current state, i can be no judge of sense :(

Deflated cakes and ego

Nothing deflates a master chef’s ego than a deflated cake :((

I was attempting another version of my marble cake when the typical Bangalore power failure happened. I tried to outguess the state electricity board by shifting my cooking time earlier, however the novice was deftly outmaneuvered by veterans in the state electricity board who effortlessly pre-poned the power cut to leave my cake in tatters

The center of the cake which was nicely rising up completely collapsed. Even the BSE SENSEX collapse in 2008 paled in comparison to the mammoth crater in the middle of the cake

But why should I suffer alone in this ???? Always better to spread the misery around :) So I took the cake to office today and was surprisingly well appreciated by my colleagues.

I guess the true talent of the cook lies in recovering a seemingly hopeless situation.

If talent came in cups, then “My cup runneth over”. Maybe I should try cup-cakes now :))

A sleepy thought

People who don’t know me well would think of me as a very silent and brooding sort of character. And indeed many times folks who know me well also would think the same !!

Why is that ?

A hint to that is in the following two proverbs and my interpretations of the same

“Walk your talk” – Talk is the root cause of misery. Not only do you expend a lot of energy, but you have to follow it up with a walk also. No talk = No walk = Lots of time to sleep. Suits me perfectly

“Practice what you preach” – Why should you even consider preaching anything ? In the era where copy-paste rules, it is highly unlikely that you have something original to say. No preaching = No practice = Lots of time to sleep. Again perfect

Not making any sense ?? Neither does it to me. I am just rambling incoherently from lack of sleep :((

Eyes wide open

And there goes my sleep again……………………………….

Slept like a baby while I was at home. Came back to Bangalore and presto my sleep vanishes.

On Monday I skipped dinner and I was up till 3 am in morning, I put that down to lack of food. On Tuesday I made and ate dinner, still no change. 3 am it is. And even when I do fall asleep, it is very interrupted.

I have no tensions at work, none at home and no major health problems. So it is puzzling why my great friend sleep has deserted me so mercilessly.

So I am pretty much irritable and not in great mood throughout the day. Nor can I focus for too long anything at hand.

Had to nip my emerging beard during my trip home. Asked my little one how I looked with the beard, she told me I look like a Karadi ( Bear ) :(( Had little option other than to return to my usual clean shaven self.

She has also clearly told me what she needs from me during my next trip home : A slipper with a tall glass heel !!!! The way she described to me , it sounded suspiciously like a stiletto heel.

Girls of this generation, I tell you …… I have to keep her away from both of my vertically challenged cooking consultants now :)

For a friend

This is for a dear friend who suffered a loss recently … [ had mentioned this poem in an earlier blog ]

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Freedom

Finally freedom from the shackles of the co-passenger duty. I can come and go as I please , no more waiting, no more constraints !!Promptly celebrated the new found freedom by staying back in office till 10 :)

And promptly picked up a traffic ticket for signal jump in the morning too. In my defense the turn that I took always used to be a free left and they just recently installed a signal there. I was not even aware of the presence of a signal, let alone look at it !!

Went home to attend my daughter’s annual day celebration in Calicut. She was part of a group dance team. There are few things in life more enjoyable than watching a bunch of 4 year olds dancing energetically, each with their own rhythm and version of steps. My little one was bouncing around couple of days after the event too !!

Cost cutting

In the era of cost cutting, lay-offs and hike freezes, Dilbert summarizes the situation wonderfully well

http://dilbert.com/fast/2009-02-16/

Chicken curry

Though the weekend was spent mostly on my fight with asthma and chest congestion, I did manage to get out of slumber and make chicken curry !!

Recipe of course was provided by my off shore consultant. Since I did not have many of the ingredients, I had to resort to a bit of improvisation. [ Typically I have very little stock of any green stuff like coriander leaves, mint leaves etc. ]  Also since the original recipe was for Biriyani, I had to use a bit of imagination :-))

Turned out well, had it twice already. Once with chapathi and once with rice. By the way, i bought rice again this weekend after what must have been nearly 1.5 years. That time I had bought 1 kg, this time I bought 5 kgs, so I am set for the next 7.5 years . I really don’t see what the fuss is about the rising food grain prices :-)

Chest is really bad today, I hear full polyphonic sounds. Sleeping will be a challenge tonight :(( Need to get some shuteye though, I have to be up for my co-passenger duty tomorrow morning again.

While we are on the topic, as I mentioned earlier it is really hard to think of a more thankless job. You get up early in the morning [really challenging for me], you risk your life [not kidding], give up your freedom of work timings [on occasions waiting outside hungrily as the co-passenger thulps down dinner in fancy restaurants] and then get criticized & commented on every day for arriving ON time. That's right, not late, ON time !!!!

And yet the humble driver continues to report for work . Because only he knows the ultimate truth :That is why he is a driver, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is [ from The manual of the humble driver ] :-))

Hope you have a healthy week, mine is pretty much shot to pieces right now :(