Waiting4Dawn

Wisconsin

2011-01-02T16:20:00.001-08:00

I am in Marshfield, Wisconsin today.
Its as different as any place could get from where I was born and raised.
There is snow of the quality of freshly whipped buttercream, frosting the whole landscape in a dazzling white.
What I saw of this town on my way to the Hotel is picture perfect. Just the kind of place me and my Anurag would love to visit for a holiday.
Too bad, you are not here honey.
Planning to let the shutterbug in me loose, but the camera aint cooperating.
Hope the dang card format error goes away, so I can atleast show y'all some snippets.

PS: Need to befriend the chef at the restauaunt down there. The best hot chocolate of my life, ever!!

Ring it in

2010-12-31T21:32:00.000-08:00

Be warned : the below muddle of thoughts has been penned down at an impossible hour and in a mushy state of mind…

Now that you insist on reading on…
The cabbie who drove me to office this morning, a very nice old man, told me a funny story.
“Back in the sixties, when I lived in a poor neighborhood, there was no much firecrackers. People used to come out in the streets and bang pots ‘n pans together.. ringing in the new year, that’s what they said. We had fun, ringing in the new year that way”
I don’t mean to be rhetorica, but this has been a very special year for me. Special in that weird way which makes you wonder and shudder all at once. Special because there is just a melee of memories, sweet and sour with just the right amount of garam masala thrown in together. Yet there is not one day that can be pulled away, held up to light, examined up close and stamped “Special”. Its exactly the dizzy feeling I get when I try to tell the leaves apart on trees that pass by as we speed away in our car. Everything looks green and pretty and exactly as it should be, but you cant tell the leaves apart.
So as we take a tentative baby step across this finish line of the year that went by, which is also the starting line for yet another journey, I cant help this old fashioned sentimental state of mind. I have realized the value of love, family and of real friends this year and I am not saying this because it’s the right thing to say. I am also watching myself in wonderment as something inside me is mellowing down inexplicably, wondering if that’s what maturity is supposed to be. I am thinking about everyone and everything that’s touched my life so far and I think I am mostly thankful (considering what a whiner I am, that’s a lot).
I have met some truly wonderful, awe inspiring people this year. They aren’t making the headlines anywhere, they are simply going about doing what they do best, in the best way possible. I have also learnt that “that’s not fair” is a ridiculous statement, because the boundaries of fair and no-fair fuse beyond recognition in the times we live. I feel unhappy about the things I have missed doing this year, like telling a friend that they meant the world to me, or calling a cousin just to say Hi. Its taken me some time to realize that none of what anyone does for us matters as much as what we can do for ourselves.
In that sense, I will always remember what the cabbie told me about the pots and pans and ringing in the new year.
No worries if there be no firecrackers… pots and pans, that’s all it takes to ring it in….
Happy new year my dearies and thank you for sticking by me in spite of everything. Hope some of those real dreams you have do come true for you this year, Amen…

Happiness

2010-04-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

Happiness has a smell.
To me, it smells of flowing water under a summer sky. It smells of rustling cool leaves, their reflections flowing lazily in that water. It smells of hot stones and floral soap and chattering children and laughing women, as everybody plunges in the shallow but fast running river, splashing crystal globules of cool water under the fire-gold tropical sun.

Happy International Women's Day

2010-03-06T23:25:00.000-08:00

I should love to continue the uplifting tone of our previous post for a few more days. I cannot though, because she has been crying. She cried yesterday for the one hour or so she spends with me, and she cried today before she stepped out of my home. I have known her for a year now and I have seen her broke many times before. I have never seen her broken though. She never said before that she wished she were dead, not even when she lost the only man who remembered how she had looked as a child, a ten year old bride. She grieves for him though he had taken to drink and beaten her with a stick reserved for the purpose every night, when he was smashed enough. Her health and that of the other three people of her household is failing rapidly. A teenage son who labors at breaking stones in the killing heat of the Hyderabad afternoon, a daughter who is young enough to be amused with fancy hairpins and works with her mother as a maidservant, a three year old grandson – the only memory of the deceased elder daughter who succumbed to medical negligence in her pregnancy two years ago.

My maid has been crying because all her children are suffering from some ailment or another and she is helpless. Her son has been running high fever for some time now; the doctors say he cannot stand the heat and the strain of such inhuman labor. Her daughter suffers frequent belly cramps, and then she cannot even sit up, much less keep her morning appointments at the several households that wait for their dishes to be cleaned.

They have already pawned all the silver she had saved up for her daughters wedding, which must happen sooner than later, because when you live in a slum where broke men come back home drunken in the nights, a teenage daughter is heavy responsibility.
Yet she says, it’s not about the money, as long as my children are well.

None of them can read or write in any language, thus reducing their chances for any other kind of indoor work next to nil. Every rupee spent on hospital expenses or medicines means a rupee taken away from weekly rations of food and travel fare. They still laughed and joked about many things till last week, not anymore. The burden is too heavy now. Yet they give another dimension to honesty when they hand back my gold earring fished out from below the dresser. Loss of that earring would have meant a little heartache to me, no more. Its value is enough to pay for her daughters pawned silver anklets, which is a shameful reminder of helplessness to her.

I don’t know what to feel. Giving her some money to tide the times over is always an option. It makes me feel gracious too. But when that money is gone, and the little child falls sick with Chikunguniya, she will be worse off than now because she still has a remnants of pride that wouldnt allow her to borrow anymore from me.
I don’t know how this will change. I have been thinking a lot about her now a days.
Let me know if you have any “teach them to fish” ideas.
In the meanwhile let’s celebrate the international women’s day.

Congratulations!!

2010-03-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

Are you one of those people, who forward emails full of pumping feel-goodism such as “the only thing worse than an unfinished job is a job never started”? It feels so good to tell people to go out and catch their dreams, because isn’t that just what we have been waiting to do? We occasionally stare at the flat screen monitors in office and dream about the day when we will have arrived!
How exactly, we aren’t sure; we are still waiting for a few things that need sorting out first - marriage, a car, a house, a better workplace, anything. We lie down late in the night after watching some movie, which we have probably seen at least three times before, simply because they push it to our TV at prime time and we dont care anymore. Sometimes, before sleep takes over, we uneasily remember that little boy or girl who once confidently stood up and said “when I grow up I will be so and so!” and wonder, whatever happened in the meanwhile!

So when we come across this bizarre couple who have been crazy enough to decide that, everything else can wait, but not the dream, we tend to follow them closely. Especially when the dreamer is a girl. Especially when the dream entails quitting a plush job to invest twenty four months of her life for cracking one of the toughest competitive exams. Especially when, the other spouse builds a solid net of protection around this girl so that none of jeering or worried calls for sanity from well meaning relatives bump her off course. Together they toil through one milestone after another, as though a single entity, all the while dreaming the same dream.

Then one day, which couldn’t have come sooner, what with the countless nervous visits to the website, the results are out.

You know what the results are, when you look at the man, whose ebullience has somehow deified gravity, so he hovers slightly above ground. Then you know, what really a pay off is. There is no need to stop and wonder, what if, the result had been different? These two people would have still been heroes, don’t you agree? For heroism in our times lies in keeping our dreams alive.

I am not sure how big an impact the Women’s Quota bill would have on the women of this country. I am not sure whether there will be ever an acceptance for stay at home dads. I am very sure that the day there are more couples like these, the need for Women’s Day celebrations would have been obsolete.

Congratulations Niyati and Paresh!! We need our heroes…

Happy Holi

2010-02-28T05:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Holi, dears.

Let the evil and ugly within ourselves be tossed into purifying fires. Cleaning the slates once in a while is what our times need the most.

A hurtful relationship that makes you brood or a cunning plan to outdo your colleague, let is pass through the cleansing fire once. I am sure it will make us better people.

Tomorrow, we will colour the world in the anticpation of Spring!

I bow down to thee

2010-02-28T05:02:00.000-08:00

Of late I have been catching up on reading quite a bit. Thats the one thing I never get enough of. Every time I think about all the wise and beautiful things that have been written over the ages by so many gifted architects of our shared culture of humanity, I feel as if time is running out. After all, there will be only so may years and so many days and so many hours that I will have to enjoy this bounty, and there is too much I have to catch up on.
Every now and then I stumble upon a gem hidden in the clutter of the world wide web. I am not sure why I wasn't aware of this remarkable piece of writing earlier, but I am so glad I found it.
It is by Joyce Maynard, written when when she was 18.

I am thankful, I discovered it.

Here is an excerpt:

Every generation thinks it's special - my grandparents because they remember horses and buggies, my parents because of the Depression. The over-30's are special because they knew the Red Scare of Korea, Chuck Berry and beatniks. My older sister is special because she belonged to the first generation of teen-agers (before that, people in their teens were adolescents), when being a teen-ager was still fun. And I - I am 18, caught in the middle. Mine is the generation of unfulfilled expectations. "When you're older," my mother promised, "you can wear lipstick." But when the time came, of course, lipstick wasn't being worn. "When we're big, we'll dance like that, " my friends and I whispered, watching Chubby Checker twist on "American Bandstand." But we inherited no dance steps, ours was a limp, formless shrug to watered-down music that rarely made the feet tap. "Just wait till we can vote," I said, bursting with 10-year-old fervor, ready to fast, freeze, march and die for peace and freedom as Joan Baez, barefoot, sang "We Shall Overcome." Well, now we can vote, and we're old enough to attend rallies and knock on doors and wave placards, and suddenly it doesn't seem to matter any more.

My generation is special because of what we missed rather than what we got, because in a certain sense we are the first and the last. The first to take technology for granted. (What was a space shot to us, except an hour cut from Social Studies to gather before a TV in the gym as Cape Canaveral counted down?) The first to grow up with TV. My sister was 8 when we got our set, so to her it seemed magic and always somewhat foreign. She had known books already and would never really replace them. But for me, the TV set was, like the kitchen sink and the telephone, a fact of life.

Go read the rest here:
http://joycemaynard.com/Joyce_Maynard/E__18_looks_back.html

Thank You Joyce!

Being Her

2010-02-12T07:05:00.000-08:00

That the ancient takes

more living space

inside her, than the new,

Is it true?

That she has loved

Babes unborn yet

longer than she knew

is it true?

That she’d crossed for love

a threshold strange

life in those walls she blew

Is it true?

That she sees too much

and feels much more

while you think those drops were dew

is it true?

In the choices she made

And the dreams she doused

Was naught but love for you

That is true.

Forgiveness

2010-01-26T04:48:00.001-08:00

Forgiveness

I wish I knew this before
That when you smiled and stared away
It wasn’t insouciant hardness of heart
Rather too much guilt, too much pain

I wish we all knew this before
So we could peer down deep in our souls
And find the apathetic torches
With which we immolated yours

We didn’t know this before;
But now we know too much of past
The past we created in odium, yours as much as ours,
And we have this future now, we gape, aghast

I wish myself away sometimes
Feverishly dreaming of beautiful places
As if the gurgling springs, innocent meadows
Would somehow grant me what only you could’ve…. Forgiveness
=====(c)========================================

Delusions

2010-01-26T04:46:00.000-08:00

So many times to breath for the first time,
To have gone through the same old new chos
Religious, Godless, confused myopic,
Breathing, secreting, cobwebs of thoughts

Will I ever learn and be done with it,
What they call as Wisdom of Stars,
Or in every birth and every death, start afresh,
Like a blank page, innocent? Ignorant?

Somewhere on the brink of dawn or dark,
I know, I knew, the reason and the answer
All I know now, is that, I have known, many times,
And I will know again, for a brief eternity

In the moment, momentous only to me,
when I cease to be

====(c)============================

Confessions

2010-01-26T04:28:00.000-08:00

They watched her brand new feet
When she was but a two footer,
And spoke no coherent words,
Take her first step and then another

Oh what a clever little child, this!
Best in the neighborhood, nay
best, In the entire town of ours
such a darling, so much promise!

Say, my darling, you think?
Will she be a big shot lawyer,
she in her prim coat and collar
stand up for justice and order?

Oh, I think she’ll be an actor,
Look how she is born to it,
Flirty smiles charades of tears
Can’t tell when she’s playactin’

A clever little one she is I say,
She’ll be at the top of her school
We’ll never force her this way or that
But she’ll make us proud soon

So little Minnie grows up and fast
She’s all they thought an’ some
Lawyer or doctor or actor or anyone
She chooses she may now become

She doesn’t know in her heart although
Which path to set her foot on
Should there be just one, o why
Could she not try it all one by one?

She was hard on herself for this
And pushed herself so much
Reprieve she never gave herself
Worked and brooded, harder again

And thus it went on for the longest time
And Minnie was doing well enough
Well, she wasn’t a lawyer or an actor
But a good job found her somehow

“Course this isn’t the final thing,
For mom and dad are still waiting’
She hadn’t still made it big you see
And time, so ruthless was slipping

Every night, her dear old pillow
Heard her sniffle and mutter in
Dreams, such dreadful dreams she had
Running so hard, never reaching

So one day she said its ‘nuf
And thought she needed a break
Just some hard thinking you know
About the one path she must take

There she sits by her desk alone
‘Mommy I am alright, no one
disturbs me or gets me food right now
till I say its ok and I am done’

“Do you think she is in Love my dear?”
No, I don’t see how that could be
Never saw anyone ‘xcept her cat
Come around, other than you an me

So you think she needs someone?
To ward off some of those blues?
Well, that may be so you know,
No one likes being utterly aloof

When did she get that way honey
Was a happy enough child I guess
She works herself too much I see
Though makes so little progress

Did Minnie hear any of this?
Some tears are surely rolling
She flung that door open wide
Took the car out , went driving

She was back with the fading day
Spoke to none, didn’t Minnie
She had dinner by herself,
And went to bed early

Morning found her room all cold
Just a note flapping on the pillow
Mommy held it close to her heart
they wept, graying, getting old

And days went by, and months and months
They were angry and bitter and morose
Why their child now hated them
Never came back nor called or wrote

He knew not what to think of it
when daddy heard the bell one day
they leapt and rushed without a doubt
It did ring in that familiar way

There she was all right, their girl
Just a bit older than they knew
They dint hug or welcome her in
For a moment she kept standing too

Then there were smiles, tentative
Tears too there were a few
And they had noticed something in her
their daughter had changed for good

When the night fell calm and quiet
and they were afraid to let her be
for they hadn’t had a word till now
about the while she wasn’t seen

that was the time when they sat
together in a dim light in the porch
and she told them in a dreamy voice
of reasons, all travels, and more

“so down and out was I, you know
for I let you both down so
One day in the park I sat alone
‘twas evening, no, just a dusky glow

I looked at the sky above me then
And some magical surprise it was
It had the cleanest blue I’ve seen
Not a cloud or a bird in sight

I didn’t remember how long
It’d been since I saw the sky this way
I looked at it all right, I know
But saw it the first time that day

I asked myself what else I’d missed
So one by one they came
All those things I should have seen
And known that this was it

Like my dear old cat an’ my pillow
Who are surely the best in this world,
My mom and dad and all their cares
And weekends spent together

Well, I knew in my heart that day
What really does keep me going,
Sure, I dint want to believe it then
But I now I am glad for knowing

It doesn’t drive me, as it should
This dream of making things big
Home and hearth, and books and love
That’s what gives me peace

This ain’t what we set out for
But it’s what I really now want
Others I know there are for sure
For them, could be Acting or Law

Its not simple, this business of life,
You’ve taught me all you could
Will you love me now, as you only can
If I tread the familiar road?

======(c)===================

Some days

2010-01-26T04:24:00.000-08:00

To sit by the window on a langorous day
Silver webs of spiders, blue skies stretch away
To let thoughts wander like gypsies of yore
How easy they come, dance, tug, and float

Cup of hot coffee, warm palms, old chair
Quivering of dreams, some magic, all day
Wet earth of the garden, rustling fall leaves
Is it the smell of coffee or of coffee memories?

Days of fairy charm these, so precious, so rare
My little piece of sky, by window, my chair
So clear, the hum of life, in my veins in wet earth
Rendezvous with mystery, a secret spring of mirth
=========(c)==========================

Summertime

2010-01-26T04:19:00.000-08:00

Summertime

Slip down swift, low hanging branch
Barefoot run to mildewy garage
Three buddies and a brother and a sister
Sharing cupcakes in the 4’o clock blister

Grown ups, full bellies, all drowsy - asleep,
For they cannot bear the summer sun’s heat
They think its crazy that we can’t be still
For a moment all day, or when starlight spills

Oh, what a waste, there is so much
To do, gather, scatter, build and plunge
Hide in dark corners, seek hidden treasures,
Maps there aren’t, so ingenious measures

All day long, its busy busy time,
Candy for company and sweet drink of lime
We play, we scamper, tell stories and cry
Over Little fights, but make it up alright

Sometimes we hear the grown ups say
‘let them be, ‘tis their time for play’
They will grow up, before one can blink
Of that, this summer they shu’nt have to think

A time that’ll stay in their hearts all life
Like a warmglowing pool of golden light
Just a dip in there, in distress or pain
And they will be happy children again

==========(c)=================

Catching Butterflies

2010-01-26T04:15:00.000-08:00

He remembers…
Crouching, Holding breath,
Eyes narrowed, intent
Slow step - step of stealth,

Smells of March wafting about
Backyard fringe of berry shrubs
Beneath his feet, grassy stubs
Steady now! Lub-dub lub-dub

There she was softly alight,
On weightless feet, sunning
Soft rainbow plumes, a-gleaming
Temptress, in mockery reveling!

Stretching out, cutting through space
Quickly cupping palms together,
‘Round a lone nameless flower
Delight! How palms tickled aflutter

He remembers…
Panting, as he ran forth to Sophy
Make her smile, what a rare trophy
Rainbow thrills, aquiver softly

“Lookey here neighbor,
Live across that fence, over there!
Thought you’d like a li’l souvenir,
We could be friends, y’know, if you care?”

Suspicion, suspended on her brow
Sophy, stealing glances for the prize
Careful or away it flies,
Give me your hands, there! Surprise!

Shrieks of horror, she runs away
Turns back at me just this once,
Mouth contorted in disgust
“Freak! Go away!” outburst…

I don’t understand, not now either
What’s wrong with a gift so lovely?
Even in death butterflies are comely
Well, the rainbow was there, mostly!

He remembers... the note under his door
“Don’t catch butterflies, they die!”
Silly girls! What good’s a butterfly
That flies away? Now or later, it must die

==========(copyright)========================

To Mommy with Love

2010-01-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

I was refilling my tea canister the other morning. Idle thoughts were playing tag inside my head. What flavor for the tea today? Ginger? Cardamom?
Hubby says I hardly use the five million different tea powders we have foraged from Ceylon to Munnar. Why this brand?
Hmmmm… Mother always uses this brand. Okay. There you are! Am I still trying to play Mommy? Draping her endlessly long, not to mention tall sari around my six year old frame, bumming about the home in her oversized slippers? Well! Who knows?
Then I began to deliberately think of all the little things I do, not out of conscious choice, but just because, thats how its done at my place!! Puh-len-tee!!

I am not proud or happy about all of them. Baking however, is the thank God for it item in this list. Let me be clear here. Kitchen was the last place in our house where I could be found. There was no need for help over there. Mom managed it alone and beautifully. All I cared was, we got smackalicious food every single day, customized to our crazy idiosyncrasies(like one brother hating anything that remotely resembled mustard in his food, the other one a chilly buff, me living mostly for a good serving of Basmati rice , so on and so forth). Some of the best memories are walking into the home after a long evening of rough play, hungry, drawn in by the most divine aroma of freshly baked cupcakes. Then there was this time when my father went a-tin-searching in the kitchen looking for a quick bite, happened to bite into some horribly acrid white slab, and threw away the whole package of pricey yeast! That was no consoling mother for a long time. Those little fellows from that white slab made many a Sunday breakfasts absolutely delightful! Soft, fragrant thick slices of bread, buttered way beyond excess, with Jam or pickles piled on for good measure. It may seem incredible to people who have known me as a child that I ever took a liking to cooking (and an obscene obsession to baking), but seen from my perspective, there was no event more predictable.

Some of the most enjoyable time I have spent last year in my lovely apartment kitchen has been accompanied by my trusty oven. It has seen it all; chewy early batches of burnt cocoa, too embarrassing to be called chocolate cake, to golden crisp batches of buttery croissants. Every time something as amazing as only a homemade baked good can be, hops out of this oven, I send secret thanks to Mommy. I cannot think of a more fitting way of sending a muwaah her way than by sharing the recipe of her awesomely beautiful Marble Cake. THIS is what one calls a repertoire.

Ingredients:
Eggs: 3
Flour: 1 ½ Cups
Powdered Sugar : 1 ½ Cups
Butter (softened) : 1 Cup
Baking Powder : 1 tsp
Water : ½ cup
Unsweetened Cocoa : 1 Tbsp or bittersweet Chocolate – 100 gms
Vanilla essence : 1 tsp

Preheat oven to 180 C. Butter / Line an 8 inch cake pan (be generous with the butter!). Sift the flour and baking powder together. If you would be using chocolate instead of cocoa powder, now is the time to melt it (over a double boiler or in a hot water bath, without letting chocolate container come in contact with direct heat). Keep the chocolate mixture in a hot water bath (50 – 60 C) till the time rest of the steps are through. Cream the butter and sugar, till butter becomes fluffy. Add eggs and flour alternating with each other and mix well after each addition. Now, dissolve the vanilla essence in water and add it to this mixture. After the consistency of this batter is smooth and spoonable, divide the mixture into two equal parts. You may choose to keep one portion a little short of half if you are planning to use molten chocolate. Add the chocolate / cocoa to one part of the flour mixture and briskly incorporate it thoroughly.
Now comes the most surreal part. Spoon the vanilla and chocolate mixture into the pan in alternating layers. Once you are done (I prefer the top layer to be vanilla), run a fork in a ‘Z’ in the batter once. This will give the cake that swirly marbled look.
Bake at 180 C, for 45 – 50 Mins, till a skewer inserted at the center comes out clean. Let the cake rest in its pan for five minutes before running a knife around the sides and inverting the pan on a wire rack to cool.

After the cake is completely cooled, slice… and you will be proud of yourself dear. Swirling layers of chocolate and vanilla look like a match made in the heaven...taste even better!

Happy New Picnic

2010-01-09T03:18:00.000-08:00

As kids, the three of us siblings must have been a real handful for my mother. Mere mention of a long travel and she would be visibly petrified. I have been known to send fellow travelers scampering for cover with my threats to throw up on them, because I didn’t like the way they smelled. Both my brothers played passing the parcel, except the parcel in this case was called “bawling to the top of your vocal cords for no apparent reason”. Then there were the numerous pee-pee breaks which were nuisance enough on road trips but a serious threat to the sanity of my poor mother in long distance train journeys. Besides, we (especially our father) loved the hawkers in those trains. Since eating and bawling at the same time wasn’t exactly feasible, we were occasionally allowed to eat dirty food. The pickiness which so dominated meal times at home was gone with the wind in trains. Our tummies however, had been too well and overly protected all along, so that sort of food did its magic soon enough. Then came the worst part, as you may imagine, given the state of toilets in sleeper class compartments of our trains. Enough said, you get the idea!

Picnics however, were another thing altogether. We were still a beastly lot to haul all the way up to the destination, but the considerably shorter distance clinched the deal. Most of our picnic haunts were located at walk-able distances. We usually went as a big party with more kids and their moms from the neighborhood. We could play as much and as long as we liked, while the moms busily knitted, chatted or fixed sandwiches and Rasna. Everybody came home pleasantly tired.
The inexplicably happy thrill I feel at the thought of a picnic even now must certainly have a good deal to do with those sweet carefree days.
So, on the long weekend for new years’, it was picnic that was on our minds. To tell you the truth, I was being a hopeless daydreamer. How we would stroll in the lush greenery, then bring out the tiny outdoor grill, make some sandwiches, collect a basketful of flowers, well well, if wishes were horses, I would own a stud farm by now.

Hyderabad is not the best place in the world for a quiet, green get away. We (me and Anurag) finally agreed on this seemingly neat place called Manjeera Barrage and Bird Sanctuary, not very far from home. A bit of fussy, meticulous packing of food, books, mats and whatnot by me, and a great deal of TBHPing for the directions by Anurag, we were get-set-ready-GO!

We couldn’t have picked a better place really. Quiet, cool and green, though the roads leave you asking for a lot more. The place is just off the Sangareddy town. There was hardly any water in the barrage, though we saw a great many birds.

The crocodile breeding center and environment education center is a small but well maintained place.

We found a cool spot, spread out the mat, fixed some sandwiches and fruits, and simply relaxed. It was really quite restful to look at tall grass flowers nodding away at the slight breeze, little fearless birdies going about their business, warm sunlight stealing through treetops on that cool winter day. I even tried reading a few pages from the Sea of Poppies, though I gave up soon because the crocodiles were being less lazy and more camera-friendly just then. We couldn’t find a good enough place for lighting a fire for the grill (alas!) though, it was really unnecessary on second thoughts. May be some other time.

Towards late afternoon, the bustle began to increase and the quiet charm of the place began to dull a little. So we packed up again, took a good look around and hopped back in to the car, happy and refreshed.

Jingle all the way

2010-01-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

Winters are my favorite! Oh no offense Mr. Rain, you are a life saver! Howdy Mr. Summer of Mango Land, please don't get me wrong. I love you both too! But you see, this Mr. Winter here, everybody thinks him cold and gloomy! Poor Mr. Winter. That's why my heart goes out to him you see! No offense really!

Snicker Snicker! Now that those two are out of earshot, let me tell you the truth. Winters ARE my favorite! Sorry, did I say that before? How I love the crisp mornings. That carefully stored hibernating old sweater comes out all cuddly again. Oh the flirting Gerberas and Roses and a million other beautiful flowers. Not to mention the abundant green leafies, cauliflowers and apples. Its happy happy time but come Christmas and all I feel is homesick. You would feel the same way if your home happens to be in a pretty little place like Goa. Every little hamlet perfectly adorned with lovely (and real) Christmas trees, (cotton wool) snow, glittery lights and a general air of pure festivity!

Somehow this year, it didn't feel right to just sigh, wallow in nostalgia and then carry on. It was a long weekend and before we knew, without much pre planning, there we were, having one of the most memorable Christmas days, right here, in Hyderabad.

We even had this pretty Christmas star which Bijou brought (sadly, no grotto could be found). Ample food, complete with roast chicken and a semi-traditional fruitcake had us bursting at the seams. The fun part was supplied was Shveta and Laukik, who brought in this 3 D, Christmas scenery card that needed to be assembled and decorated. Everybody took a shot at proving their artistic non capability, though it turned out really neat at the end. All in all, this could be one of those times we missed festivals at home a little bit lesser.

It was the first time I handled a whole, uncut chicken and I should admit, I don't have the strongest of hearts. I had to continually remind myself that the chicken would have probably died in vain if I were to act like a sissy about touching it with love.
I improvised a lot on the roast chicken to make it palatable to the spice loving group that we are. I couldn't find any recipe, neither in my gradually multiplying cookbook collection, not on the net, which would precisely fit that “Stuffed and Roasted and not bland Chicken picture) in my mind. So this is what I ended up doing.

Ingredients
1.25 Kg dressed, clean whole chicken
Butter 50 gms
Baby potatoes – 12 - 15
Baby Corn : 3 – 4
Mushrooms – Handful
Ginger – 1 inch
Garlic – 8 cloves
Fresh Cream – ½ cup
Curds – 1 cup
Tamarind paste – 20 gms tamarind soaked in 4 tbs water
Powdered thyme – to taste
Coriander – 1 bunch
Green chillies – 4
Salt – to taste
Red chilly powder – 1 tbs

Serves 6 hungry tummies

Preparation

Marinade

Wash and pat dry the chicken from the outside and the inside. Liberally apply butter, salt and pepper powder to all the surfaces. Cover the chicken and let it marinate for half an hour.
Chop onions, green chillies, ginger and garlic and sauté on a medium flame in the remaining butter for 10 minutes. When the onions look glassy and cooked, switch off the flame. Shred the coriander leaves and add to this cooling mixture. When the mixture is completely cooled, add the curds, fresh cream, thyme and red chilly powder along with the strained tamarind paste and salt. Stir and to mix ingredients and grind to a fine paste. Divide the mixture in two parts. Apply one half thoroughly to the chicken from the outside. Again let the chicken marinate for a further one hour at least, or a whole night in the fridge if you have the time.

Stuffing
Cut baby potatoes in halves, chop baby corn, mushrooms and onion. Add oil to the skillet and stir the onions in it for 2 mins. Add all the other chopped veggies. Dump the other half of the ground mixture in the skillet on high heat. Adjust salt. Add a pinch of sugar to balance the tang of the tamarind. Stir vigorously till the veggies are well coated with the gravy and the mixture just begins to bubble. Cool the mixture.
While the stuffing cools, preheat the oven at 200 C, for 10 mins, without the roasting pan in it. Butter the pan in the center and keep aside.
Now, slowly push the stuffing into the cavity of the chicken. Make sure sufficient quantity of gravy also is spooned in. adjust the potatoes and corn pieces on the outer side, under the wings and neck flap. Hold the wings and neck near the body with toothpick if needed.

Roasting

Place the chicken in the center of the pan and roast for 1 and a half hours, at 200 – 220 C. check the potatoes by poking a long knife's blade in. Roast for a few more minutes if the potatoes are not well done. Though within one and half hours the chicken should be cooked just right, if you feel there is still some cooking needed, cover the whole pan with aluminum foil and cook for another few minutes. The foil prevents the chicken from over roasting on the outside.

Carefully unwrap. Let it stand for 5 minutes for the steam to escape. Serve!

Christmas or no Christmas, this will have you celebrating.

PS: I don't have a picture of the chicken, because... take a guess... well, folks devoured it before I realized I had no pic.

Knock Knock, there?

2010-01-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

Hi, there!
Its cold in here, thanks to me! I was entrusted to keep this place warm enough for you and me, when we wanted that little sip of hot chocolate, or a friendly chat at by the hearth.
Sorry, I went missing. I never meant this to be such a long silence dear reader, somehow, the beastly sloth I normally try to keep at bay caught up with me.

In the meanwhile, I got married to my long time sweetheart. In fact, have been married for a year now and I still can’t believe it!! In a good way of course!

Pretty interesting things have happened to me while I’ve been away. For example, I discovered that I could spend 10 hours at a stretch in my kitchen, trying to bake the perfect croissants. I also discovered that I have a long way to go if I am to be the best person I know, though its very hard to accept. Somewhere along the line, I have picked up some fortitude, buried some ghosts and decided I want to try my hand at something I have loved always. Writing. I am really not sure how fabulous or super-sucking I may be at it, but we wont know till we try.

With the fresh new year, that ends the first decade of this millennium, I wish you all good cheer, love and peace. May you make a few discoveries of your own, fall madly in love (all over again is fine too), have your table always full of good food cooked with great care and a may there be a spring in your healthy step.

Happy New Year everybody!!

We will meet more frequently and regularly, unless of course, the Giant Turtle from that other galaxy swallows our earth.

Methi Paneer Chatakdaar

2008-07-29T00:37:00.002-07:00

The other day, we were stuck with just a handful of Methi, hibernating in the fridge, and no other veggies to turn into dinner. There was Paneer, but well... the choice was between - a bunch of Methi, that was sure to see the Garbage bin before sundown the next day, and frozen Paneer, which would keep for another week. The Methi wasn't sufficient to feed three hungry souls. So we came up with this superbrainy idea of combining the two. Didnt sound right to the ears -- Methi Paneer! But then, you have seen Ratatouille the Movie, havent you? Remember, how the little Chef closes his eyes and imagines flavours, that go boom boom spark spark in the head?? I thought on similar lines about the Methi and Paneer combo...:D. The dish turned out quite well and almost close to my expectation. So, may be you can try this out on a lazy Saturday afternoon

==================================================================

METHI PANEER CHATAKDAAR

Ingredients:

Fresh cleaned and chopped Methi Leaves – Two handfuls
Crushed Methi seeds – 5 /6
Soft, Cubed Paneer – 200 Gms
1 large Onion – Finely Diced
Diced Garlic – 4 cloves
Tomato puree – 2 TbSpoons
Cumin powder – 2 Teaspoons
coriander powder – 1 Teaspoon
Turmeric Powder – 1 Teaspoon
Diced green chilly – 2 Teaspoons
Garam masala – (optional) 1 Teaspoon
Oil – 1 tablespoon
Salt to taste

In a skillet / kadhai, heat one Tb Sp of Oil. Add the chopped methi leaves, on high flame. As the leaves collapse by loosing moisture, keep stirring to avoid burning. When almost all the moisture is gone, sprinkle some salt and cook for a minute more. Scoop the methi off the skillet, draining the oil first. Let it sit for some time.

Let the skillet sit on fire, we have more work for it. Add crushed methi seed powder to the hot oil in the skillet, followed by diced Chilly, Diced Garlic, Diced Onion, in that order.

When the onion starts becoming transparent, add the coriander powder, cumin powder, and turmeric powder. You can add the garam masala (optional) at this stage. Cook for half a minute, and add the tomato puree. Cook for another minute.

Add the cubed paneer pieces and mix gently with the rest of the ingredients. When paneer begins to colour up with the ingredients, add the methi leaves that we kept aside. Add salt to taste, and cook on a low flame and with a closed lid for 5 – 7 minutes.

The Methi flavour goes surprisingly well with the slight tang of the tomato puree, and the green chillies with crushed garlic, accentuate the Methi taste.

The end result should be – semi dry, soft pieces of paneer, well coated with tomato puree, flaunting lovely green bits of methi leaves.

Goes really well with thick rotis.

Our Kinda Life

2008-07-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Hope you guys missed me around here... But I am back after the unplanned hiatus, and this time, with (yet another) idea...:)

Well, most of my friends are single, twenty-somethings, staying in Metros, away from Mom and Dad. Their work hours are not exactly NineToFive and when they get back to their apartments (mostly shared with one or more roomies), they sometimes miss the "I am Home" feeling... that includes everything - from tidiness of the place to simple, homemade food. It happens to me all the time too...

So here is an effort from my side, to alleviate those "all I have is a place to sleep in" blues. Whenever I try something that makes my shared accomodation here, feel more like home, say nice and quick homely recipes, tips and tricks for a longer lasting neat look for the house or any other ideas related to this topic, I would share all those with you... I think it will be fun to hear from y'all on these as well...

So here we goooo

Appraising Performance

2008-04-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

Its that time of the year again....Are you thinking yet of your appraisal? I bet, you are!

Most of us, belonging to the white collared workforce; are drawn to and intrigued by the process at the same time. They come in all colours and patterns; these appraisals… the MBOs, Rating Scales, 360 degree feedback, Peer to Peer feedback… and all other permutations and combinations of these. They are almost the biggest events of any year in the lives of employees, especially so when the figures on our paychecks are determined by them.

So how many of us have always felt that the process is fair? Has there been any time when you had nothing to complain about it? I have seen approximately half the workforce going about with their sprits flushed down the drain, for days together after the results are declared. Managers are seen giving fuddled, glassy eyed explanations of the ratings to grumbling lots, or there is a complete reluctance to discuss the matter further.
Can one help asking why, after spending a great amount of collective time, energy and money, do appraisals come across as “unfair” to their employees? Why does the process get shrouded in secrecy at some point or another? Why do attrition rates skyrocket after each cycle?

There could be a million explanations, ranging from the simplistic “People have overly high expectations nowadays” to the “it’s a complex process that calls for a deep socio-psychological analyses” sort of answers.

I will not pretend to know the answer to this conundrum… but yes, I would love to share some observations. So first things first… why appraisals?
1. For giving timely feedback on work done, so that people know what they did right from what the did not
2. For rewarding, compensating for the work done, in a proportionate manner.

Please note: there is a school of thought that is completely anti-linking of performance and compensation. I disagree with that view. More on that later…

So, coming back to the point – why the general attitude of wariness towards this seemingly harmless objective?
What kind of employees are we talking about here?
Most of us, however individualistic our nature is, work in teams. The better part of our day is spent in interacting, working and learning with our teams. So, am I correct here in assuming that, the fundamental learning and performing unit of today’s organization is the Team?

In fact, it is quite evident that, a good team in company is quite similar to a good sports team. Different members are good at different things, but each has a definite place in the group. They learn together, push each other to perform and the victory or defeat is for the team. A lone batsman scoring a double century may well mean that he is an excellent batting talent… but if he took all the fifty overs, taking only the easiest shots, the team loses on the whole, because the target was 300! If you had a performance appraisal for this team, how would it be for this particular dude and the rest of the team?
Some would say – he likes to hog the limelight. There were other really good batsmen in the team who never got a chance.
He would say – I was doing my best for the team, I needed to keep standing and not let wickets fall.

Doesn’t something similar happen in a lot of teams in office too? Do you remember any times when you were a part of a vibrant, cohesive team? Where everybody seemed to be magically suited to the role he or she played? Don’t you think, almost everybody over performed in that team? The same people may have moved elsewhere in the hope of continuing the winning streak… but somehow, failed to be as spectacular?
Say, this team was your college soccer team, and after a consistent winning record, it lost one of the hyped matches. The Forward missed an easy goal. What would be the team’s responses to this event be like? I believe, at the least, there wouldn’t be a blame game. Assuming all these guys gel together, there could even be a strong solidarity. If the spirit is right, people would take this in their stride and fix the faults of the last game.

Working with such teams is not only highly enriching but also a strategy for winning.

So here it goes… my hypothesis towards the apparent distrust and circumspection with which our appraisals are treated. It applies to places where teams are the basic unit of performance. It may not be relevant to some professions, where team work is minimal.

First of all ...Acknowledge that, it is the Team that works for you
There may be some high performing individuals in your team. There also would be some average ones. There could be a few mediocre people too.
Assess each individual’s fitment in the group, do they complement each other?
Make sure, each member has a well defined area of work; while, each knows that, completing their individual tasks would not necessarily make the team win. Unless the whole team has a view of the final deliverable, and how their tasks fit in, the sense of “Yes! We did it!” will never form.
Appraise the team… Easier said than done… it may even sound like injustice to the high performers when their team doesn’t perform as well as they do… what does this tell us? If nothing else, special efforts need to be taken for putting together teams, as I said in point 3.
Also, it is important to make everybody realize, that no matter what our personal achievements be, unless the team wins, nobody wins.

I know I know…. There are a lot of wrinkles, grey areas, even utopian ideas here. Even the methodology of conducting team appraisals is not clear. (That could well be the next post in this series from me).

But seriously, isn’t it worth a thought? We might be on to something here… something that might truly bring out the essence of Appraisals and even help people take the whole process positively.

For the Sake of Our Cities

2008-03-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

I am lucky enough to be working in a place, where they believe in creating state of the art campuses. Every day when I step inside the gates, all the hectic running around of the morning gets pushed to the background. Even as I walk down briskly to my building, soft shafts of golden rays glancing off the well manicured lawns, fresh dewy sprays of flowers…they lure and refresh all senses. For the rest of the day, my cubicle is mostly all the scenery I get, but I enjoy the walk back in the evening on the same paths, now admiring the gentle dusk.

Then I am outside on the road, trying to find commutation. If you are the bike, auto, scooter sort, the din, dust and smoke is inescapable. By the time I reach home I am covered with a layer of dust and I suspect I inhale a few grams of it daily too.

Does this end when I am home? I would have loved to say big hearty yes. But Alas!

A big stretch of highway in the front of my apartment has been undergoing a road widening project for about two years now. The roadsides have been dug up and flattened to the level of the main road. Someone somewhere seems to have forgotten that it was a “road” that they were to construct, not a mud track. All the area around the building premises is a patch of mud too.

Vehicles passing by are in the greatest hurry to overtake other vehicles on the road, so mostly you would find quite a company jostling for space on those “widened road sides”. A nice consequence of this, apart from the interminable horn honking is that, we have begun to believe – Thou art dust and thou will be dust!

I see kids playing in the space between two apartment blocks, women taking an idle evening stroll. There are a few shrubs here and there, and most of the bigger trees were uprooted for the road widening.

Isn’t it upsetting? To see five year olds making play on bare cemented ground, breathing in dust and smoke, not knowing about birdsong or butterflies? I almost feel guilty for the pleasant mornings and evenings in my office campus.

It sure upsets me. Many people blame our generation for this reckless onslaught of construction which has been dubbed as infrastructure development. They think, we are responsible for the ever increasing prices of property and the concrete jungles spawning in response to our spending capacities. I don’t fully agree with that view for various reasons. Nevertheless, I feel we are in a better position to alleviate the situation than most.

The cities we inhabit give a lot to us – good jobs, better lifestyle, shopping places, eateries, a cosmopolitan society… How many times do we complain about the state of traffic and the attitude of local populations toward us? Aren’t there a few things we can change for the better?

Take the problem of dust that I mentioned earlier; recently, they published survey results for Hyderbad’s air pollution constituents. The major constituent of air pollutants is Dust – 43%, contrary to the popular belief.

I am planning to put some ideas across to the management of our apartment; things like, paving the area around the building with cement block tiles. I have seen these tiles in some places. They are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can lock into each other firmly. No additional construction is required to pave an area with these. I think they can be dismantled too. They would prevent dust being racked up and would stand minor traffic. I also plan for planting flowering plants and patches of lawn in whatever little space is available in the premises.

Do any of you have good ideas that can help our cities? Small steps that could make life even slightly better for the inhabitants?

On Hate and Diversity

2008-02-29T04:24:00.000-08:00

Have you read a remarkable book called "Baudolino" by Umberto Eco, the famous Italian author? The title is the name of the main character of the book. The story is based in the middle of the siege of Constantinople in the 13th century AD. It’s a remarkable book not only for the well researched erudite representation of History of but also for the clever characterization and superb meshing of fantasy, myth, science, psychology, not to mention cynical sprinkling of humor throughout.

It set me reading a bit about the people, culture and religious beliefs of the time. To our modern sensibilities, many of the actions of famous men and women of the times seem difficult to comprehend. I think there is one common theme running throughout the shaping and reshaping of Europe of those times. The theme is of intolerance and of brutality of punishment. Death by a hundred thousand methods of torture seems to be the favored method of discipline. The most powerful of the kings unabashedly and nonchalantly seem to promote such massacres. Intolerance specifically of religious beliefs was commonplace and wars were waged on the pretext of spreading "one true faith".

I read about another linked story of a Scholar of Mathematics and Philosophy, called "Hypatia". She was a Hellenic, Greek woman, considered in high esteem even by her detractors and was a teacher of Geometry, Algebra and Neoplatonistic philosophy to pupils of all faiths. She was killed in a hapless incident of mob violence, apparently incited out of jealousy of some of the Christian Jury in Alexandria. While this is not very unusual, I am deeply horrified and amazed at the brutality of the killing. According to various accounts of the incident, she was stopped on her way to work, dragged through the streets of Alexandria and stripped. Her flesh was scraped away with sharp tiles, dismembered and her still quivering body was set afire.

Nothing…nothing at all to my mind can explain such hatred for the life of a fellow human being, especially as the women had done nothing except lead a life of a brilliant scholar dedicated study and teaching. According to modern day scholars, her work on Apollonius’s "Conics" and higher order equations to bring about algebraic representation of Sections and Intersections of conics was invaluable. Her commentaries on Mathematics, Astronomy and Philosophy were destroyed by her detractors. The result of this mindless violence was that, 1600 years passed before any advancement could be made on the topics of her research – algebraic representation of conics, their sections and intersections. It set science and mankind behind by several centuries! Acts such as these were what plunged Europe into the “Dark Ages”.

When one researches a little on the most prosperous, the so called Golden Periods of the history of any nation, the opposite theme seems to emerge. The theme is of tolerance and respect. The hatred of women and learned people is conspicuous by absence. The greatest of kings are known for their promotion of religious harmony and treatment of all subjects with utmost respect. Even if there were incidents of the other kind, the perpetrators of these acts have been punished by History, by refusing to note their existence. Tolerance of variety, above everything else was the virtue displayed by the greatest rulers of those times.

It brings to my mind a story concerning the Maratha warrior King Chhatrapati Shivaji, the powerful ruler and founder of the Maratha Empire. This story is part of the folklore that has been sung ever since.
It says, after the siege of Kalyan, the King was offered the extremely beautiful daughter in law of the defeated Subedaar shah, by an uninformed captain. The king dazzled by her beauty addressed her thus "Had my mother been of such unparalleled beauty, I would have been a handsome man too". He sent the women back to her family unmolested and protected. The exact words uttered by the man are arguable, but the fact that the King respected and protected women is beyond doubt. Stories such as this, is what folklore in India is made of.

We may dismiss these tales today as being glorified, utopian or unpractical, but look closely, the age old wisdom and sheer practicality comes shining forth. Talking of Shivaji, one should note that about a third of his army consisted of non Hindus. Also a great many people’s livelihoods would be worsted in the continuous battles raged in the area potentially leading to unrest. His army was a fraction of the size of the powers he fought with. Unadulterated love and respect of all he commanded was crucial to his mission of nation building. Had he shown even slight disrespect to the holy places of other faiths or to any particular section of society, the nascent empire would have been aborted in the womb! No policy could have worked better than that of justice and high moral caliber.

It makes one appreciate how and why great men of the past protected and nourished diversity. But just one look around, and I feel the very fabric of our multicultural society coming apart.

From a people who passionately embraced every fresh thought, ideology, art, language, we are gradually turning into rigid communities; groups that seek to shut themselves in from the “others”. We are trying hard to believe that a monolithic society comprised of people “just like us” is the panacea for all that ails us today. We are at best indifferent to people who not “just like us”. But mostly we are not at our best! So we hate them… and hate them with a frenzy that would put the crusaders of the dark ages to shame. Not all of us take to the streets to kill and incinerate. We nevertheless secretly cheer the perpetrators as long as victims are from the other group. What has happened to us? How did such evil find its way among us? In spite of all our advancements and relative prosperity, have we lost practical wisdom?

We see four year olds rushing to our cars at every traffic signal, filthy and begging. We may throw a penny in their palms but we surely crinkle our noses at their approach as if they stink of poison. We won’t hesitate to slap our maid’s kid for stepping on a wet floor with his dirty feet. We hate the poor for “being there”, constant reminders of the reality that we are running away from.
We form regional groups at workplace, deride the others for their customs and make decisions favoring the ones from our caste, region, and religion. We hate them for being so different.
We biliously smell out nasty gossip about the rich and the famous, and gnaw on it, salivating…never for a minute thinking of the trauma we cause… We hate them for being so rich and famous… for not being just like us!

It scares me imagine how much resentment a billion people are building up in their hearts… each has his own favorite “hate group”. Yes, there is a lot to be unhappy about, lot of frustrations. But is a monolithic society the way out?

It is neither desirable nor possible to chisel out all from the same block. Hoping to achieve such an end can never bring a moment’s peace. Instead, if only we teach our minds to genuinely appreciate that there ARE other points of view, that there is no one “RIGHT” answers in life as there are in school, we would be full of wondrous discoveries every day. It is easy to hate when we don’t “know” those others… when we build walls around us to the high heavens. We need to open the doors and step out; not as wolves in a pack but as individuals. Then we can feel how we are like trees in a wood – all different in their own right, but all a part of the wood. The banyans and creepers are all there; each growing in their capacity, style, place… you can’t set fire to the wood and hope to burn out the creepers only…

We cannot wish those street children away… but it is possible to help them push the street life away. It is stupid to be in a global workplace and wish other cultures away, when there is so much to learn from each other…
It is possible to throw the filth and chaos around us away if we really want to… one act of faith at a time, one moment of consideration at a time, one “NO” to mindless violence at all times….our devices could be different, but the end must be common - dissolving those hate groups from our minds...

Weekend Beckons!

2008-02-28T03:52:00.000-08:00

Through with Thursday!!!! Errrr... Ummm... Just about. One day to go and it will be weekend… Yippee!!

Do I hear snickers? The weekend is always round the corner in our industry … is that what you said? Do you know the salary is due this weekend? Ha! Now that’s not always round the corner…Let me give you a sneak peak of my weekend plans!!!

Friday evening, keep up till late night, watch one of the Academy favorites – may be Juno or TWBB…wake up only when sun starts beating down even through the small chinks of bedroom window… Have the laziest and biggest cup of Elaichi flavored tea… eat... eat and eat some more… then go shop… buy new sandals, trousers, may be even change the ancient relic of Nokia 2100 to something more in line with my new, reinvented hi-tech persona (take that seriously). If the distensible bag called stomach lets shove in any more food… Gorge! Gossip… Sleep!!!
Sunday is reserved for the D Victors’ cricket Match. We have to go and WIN the finals!! Wish the D Victors team all the luck!

Ever had a more eventful weekend?

A Debate

2008-02-20T21:46:00.000-08:00

I remember the day I first landed in Mumbai. It was during my summer internship. I had never before been to a real metro. On a stuffy Tuesday morning, I stood at the VT and looked around. It was bewilderment at first, curiosity next, but the lingering feeling I was left with was mostly that of being like a grain of sand on the beach.
The whole platform gave an impression of some mammoth sized monolithic machine, with a million big and small parts, each rolling into another...There is no way anything or anybody can simply stand and look... one has to morph into some part of the machine and continue grinding... or be ground!
It is probable that I took a very negative view of the situation. In any case I began abhorring the swarm of humanity and secretly resolved to never make this place my home. A few years later, when I began visiting the city more often, meeting with people and growing up in some sense of the word that I began to think about what had happened back then. Now, I need to ask myself some uncomfortable questions.

What was it about the rushing crowds that made you uneasy? Did you get hurt in any way?
No, it wasn’t that. It was just an overwhelming feeling...all the thousands of men and women, so mingled without trace, each must have a story at least as interesting as mine, but to me, standing over there, it didn’t matter. Each of them just made up the - "crowd". Scary part being, I too made up the "crowd" to each and everyone of them. I could be the Princess of Timbuktu or an empty pushcart standing in a corner, how did it matter?

So, what do you think of Self worth? Does it get affected by factors within or without?
Oh, now you are tricking me into answers. Do you want me to say that, on that day standing at the platform, I began having doubts about my self worth?

Hey, I am the one questioning, so you don’t question back. What got you so defensive about the self worth part?
Come on...let’s come back to the topic. Honestly, I did feel for a moment, the way we feel on starry summer nights. You know, when you just lie down on your back in terrace or a courtyard, and look at the millions and millions of worlds within worlds? That feeling when you try to imagine the whole universe spread out for your eyes, our galaxy's place in the scheme of things the solar system, this blue planet of ours, our continent, country, state, village / city / town, and finally you lying down on your back and looking? I have felt a shiver down my spine on such occasions. But I have felt something else too... the beauty of the whole design, the complete poise and perfection with which every piece of matter or no-matter (whatever they call it) is related to each other. Well I am a believer in Intelligent Design...what I saw on the platform was spine chilling in its own way, but I have failed to see the beauty there in.

This means either of the two things - Either your belief of Intelligent Design is flawed (Humans from big cities don’t fit into it?), or you are still making excuses for an overinflated ego...
Hey, now you are not being very polite are you? What is wrong about wanting to have a distinct identity? Haven’t a lot of great people fought for it? Do you forget Nietzsche - "The Noble Soul has reverence for itself"?

There you are again! Quoting people out of context… The noble soul has reverence for itself, and its greatness doesn’t depend on the masses. Why do you fear that mingling your body with the bodies of rest of humanity makes the greatness of your soul any lesser? Or makes the greatness of any soul (even that of other individuals of the "crowd") any lesser?

Well people, I am exhausted!!! whaddya think...?

Welcome Y'all

2008-02-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

"Yaar... I hate this daily business of pretending to like this work. I am not cut out for this you know! The other day I was checking out orkut and some of my buddies asked me if I was still into madcap business ideas... And I felt soooo damned tied up... One of these days I am gonna start something up... only problem is I dont have the money, an there is one more problem, Neetu wants to settle down or she says she will dump me... And dad isnt any help either... he just pulls the 'haveyouanysenseofresponsibility' face when I try to bring this topic up... I am too goddamn tied up man!"

Gotcha!!

If this sounds familiar, Welcome! This is just the place for you.

If the name of this blog isn't clear enough an indicator, let me warn you. The author is an individual, at least as befuddled as you are... about everything... from her choice of job to the meaning of social responsibility. Nevertheless, She likes to have an opinion on topics ranging from Obama's suitability to 'Why Namita's boyfriend doesnt dump her'.

More often than not, she thinks she is depressed and needs a dose of dark chocolate or cheese (mostly with a fat base of pizza), but thanks to her small town upbringing, she doesnt think she is a part of the crowd. Somehow, she is more comfortable at the front benches rather than the rear ones. So she would like to speak out, converse, crib and more than anything else, listen to you. May be, we can together try and wipe the mist off the windscreen and the scenary could be ever so beautiful.

Welcome reader...