Monday, 31 January 2011

Deaddiction...

I confess, that I am addicted to buying books, just can't help it, when I see a bookstore my mind goes on autopilot and my feet automatically start walking towards it. It is almost like I am the mariner being lured to be shipwrecked by the music played by the Sirens, the store beckons to me and once inside the intoxicating smell of the new books holds me spellbound.

I am at a very critical stage of this illness and just like men who chase women they have no intention of marrying, I sometime buy books I have no intention of reading. The reasoning I use to silence the teeny weeny logical part of my brain or conscience or whatever else the accusing voice that goes in your head every time you do something bad is called, is that it will help to improve my mind, and I know it could use all the improving it can get. This ploy usually works but as a result I have an entire closet full of books of which about 25% are of the kind, which in moments of sanity, I wonder what made me buy them in the first place. Add to this the books that are gifted to me by friends and colleagues who know I am a voracious reader. To be honest I don't have the heart to say no, but I believe that like lingerie, books are of a very personal nature and no matter how well you know the person, you shouldn't gift a person some book because you liked it as the person may have vastly different taste in books.

In the new year, I had decided to try and control my impulsiveness when it comes to buying any new books and try and go through the ones that I have accumulated over the years. I have managed to keep on the straight and narrow so far and hope to be good the rest of the year as well, so help me god!!!

Saturday, 29 January 2011

100th Post !!!

Two and half years back I tentatively put up my first post and since then there has been no looking back; after boring you to near-death, tickling your funny bone and writing some posts that make you want to kick yourself as to why you spent the last 10-15 minutes of your life reading it, I have achieved something of a milestone today; I post my 100th article today and as I type it I am on cloud nine.

This just happened, I never really though I would achieve this milestone, what with my temperamental and impulsive nature, this blog has been through a lot, being deleted once, reinstated with invitation reading, back to free-viewing for all, me going through writers block, making some friends, losing some of them, this blog has remained constant through it all and has been an outlet for me to be me!!!

I really wanted to write some thing funny as my 100th post but am really feeling far too emotional just now to wisecrack. I want to thank all my readers (people who read and comment), stalkers (people who read but won't comment, just kidding), friends who egged me on to write (honorable mentions, Poonam-who put the bee in the bonnet while we were still in college with the comment "You have a fabulous vocabulary and command over language, you really should take up journalism or something", thanks Poonam- you are a star!!! and Vin, though we have lost touch over the years, the sole reason you see me here is Vin, if she had not bulldozed me into creating a blog, all these words and posts would have remained in me and gone into the afterlife unspoken and unsaid), my family who are my best critics, if I can get a crack of a smile from my Mum (she is quite like Jeeves, when it comes to showing emotion while reading my posts) I know the post is a cracker and will be appreciated and last but not the least my sister, my partner in crime and inspiration for most of my post, what with her ready wit and zingy one liners, I don't need to go far for fodder for posts.

I leave you with this stanza from my favourite poem...

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

Thank You!!!

Mumbai to Mangalore - 1000 kms, countless memories...

Just back from a flying visit to my hometown Mangalore where I had the good fortune of visiting quite a few temples. From Kollur Mookambika, to Someshwar Somanatha Temple (my istha devata), to Kota Vishnumoorthi and finally our Kuladevi Bhagavathi's temple at Akkare Uchila. As I try to settlle back into my old life, I just can't help but hum (I dare not say "sang" cause I couldn't sing to save my soul, if you know what I mean) this amazing song immortalised by Dido.




Two weeks away it feels like the world should've changed
But I'm home now
And things still look the same
I think I'll leave it to tomorrow till unpack
Try to forget for one more night
That I'm back in my flat on the road
Where the cars never stop going through the night
To real life where I can't watch sunset
I don't have time
I don't have time

I've still got sand in my shoes
And I can't shake the thought of you
I shake it all, forget you
Why, why would I want to
I know we said goodbye
Anything else would've been confused but I wanna see you again

It really feels like time just flew and all too soon it was time to come back. Let me quickly jot down the lingering memories that I have of this trip that began as a 1000 km road trip and ended with a quick 1 hr 10 min flight back to amchi Mumbai. We hail from a small fishing village of Someshwara, which is on the outskirts of Mangalore. Yes, my ancestors belonged to the fishing community and I am proud of my heritage. In fact, my mum's grandfather was hunter, maybe I get my love for the forest, mountains, hills, trekking and love for hunting stories written by Kenneth Anderson and Jim Corbett (two of the greatest and  most respected hunters from South and North India respectively) from him !!! But I digress, this is a note of the road trip and that is what it shall be from hereon.

The trip didn't quite start on an auspicious note, we had just reached the outskirts of Mumbai and were on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and one of the tyres burst when we were doing speeds of 120-140 kms/hr. We were plain lucky that it was early morning and there were no cars or worse trucks in the immediate vicinity, else we would have ended up as the gory headlines that the newspapers publish with much gusto on the front page alongside equally grotesque pictures of the pile-up of mangled cars and mutilated bodies. If you must know it was the left rear tyre that burst and I happened to be sat there. Our insides shaken up and souls stirred we continued the rest of the journey at speed of 80-100 kms/hr.

But Fate had other things planned for us, as we left Kumta (this is a small town in Karnataka where we halted for the night) around 7.30 ish the next morning, when a herd of cattle began climbing on to the embankment and on to the road to get to the other side, we would have easily passed them before they got to the road, but for two playful calves who actually bolted on to the road and rammed into the right side of the car, call me plain unlucky I had traded places with my mum that morning and was sat on the right side. As a rule I like to keep the window glass down when on long trip as the AC tends to suffocate me also contributing to the keep-the-window-glass-rolled-up routine was the fact that I was wearing a saree as we were to stop at Kollur Mookambika temple. However on this trip I kept it up, I could only imagine what would have happened in case the window glass been  down, as a Zen has a very low ground clearance, at least one calf would have got it head inside and both of us (the calf and me) could have sustained grievous injuries. FYI we checked the calves did not sustain any noticeable injuries, other than being quite shell shocked and will no doubt be very wary of crossing the road going forward.

From there we travelled on and arrived at Marvanthe Beach. The National highway  passes close to this beach and a stretch of a kilometer of this highway is flanked by the seashore of Arabian sea on one side and the Sauparnika River on the other. It is quite breathtaking, and for me this spot has always been a highlight of this Mumbai-Mangalore road trip ever since I was a child. I am usually in a spell when I reach this spot and as usual forgot to take a picture, the picture you see above is actually sourced from wikipedia.

Nothing much of consequence worth noting happened after that and we arrived at Kollur a little after eleven am. Kollur is famous for a Mookambika Temple and in all these years we had never had a chance to visit it. I little history on this temple, courtesy Wikipedia.

Kollur is a tiny hamlet situated about 37km from Kundapur Town, about 133 kilometres (83 mi) away from Mangalore City in Karnataka state in the southern part of India. This village lies at the foot of the Western Ghats and is famous for the Mookambika temple, a Hindu pilgrim center. Kollur is an important seat of Shakti worship. The temple is rich in puranic lore.

Legend goes that a Maharishi (monk) Kolan was enchanted with nature’s beauty and decided to perform a penance on a rock near the Agnitheertham. Lord Shiva, delighted with Kolan, appeared before him and blessed him. The Maharishi wished for the welfare of mankind and nothing else. The Lord, happy with Kolan, granted him his wish. He assured that a swayambu (autogenetic) Lingam would appear for his daily worship. However, Kolan wanted to worship Devi also. So, a swarna rekha (gold line) appeared on the Lingam, signifying Shakti. Thus, Shiva and Shakti are worshipped together in the Lingam. Besides this, a unique feature is that the other Gods and Goddess of the Hindu pantheon also believed to reside in aroopa (non-form) in the Lingam. It is thus believed to be an abode of the entire celestial congregation.It is believed that Adi Shankaracharya had a vision of Sri Mookambika Devi and installed the deity here.

The legend goes that Adi Shankara mediated at Kodachadri hills and Devi incarnated before him asking for his wish. He revealed his wish to install the Devi idol in a place in Kerala to worship where he wanted. Devi agreed but put forward a challenge that she will follow Shankara and he should not look back till he reaches his destination. But to test Shankara, Devi deliberately stopped the voice of her anklets when they reached Kollur whereupon Shankara turned and looked back because of doubt. Devi then asked Shankara to install her vigraha, just as he sees her, at that very location in Kollur.

The temple and its surroundings are very beautiful and I have often felt a sensation of total peace when I visit such places and Kollur Mookambika was no exception. After some frantic praying sessions, I am currently in a soup the details of which I will lay before my public at a later date when it will be of no consequence or could do no harm to anybody in anyway. For the time being my dear reader please bear the suspense as to what I asked for, I'm sure I will be successful in my endeavour as I was rewarded with kumkum and flowers placed at the feet of the deity. I look at it as an approval from the deity for me to go ahead with my plans (I see you smirk, yeah totally filmy, but doobte ko tinke ka sahara, and as it is women are big on reading meaning into everything and I am no different).

A day prior to our departure we visited the Someshwara temple, the Kota Vishnumoorthi temple and Shree Bhagavathi Thano at Akkare Uchila. In each of these places certain small things happened that has re-kindled my faith in the Supreme Being and I am sure that with the combined blessing of all these deities my efforts will bear the desired fruits. I would really like to elaborate the history of these three temples but unfortunately am not aware of the same at the moment and will need to wait for my parents to return to Mumbai.

Inventors Needed!!!

As we aspire to become a superpower with world domination on our agenda, I believe the below listed inventions will at least put us on the right track towards becoming civilised, if not fast track us on our journey to the top.

1) File that scream when not actioned on for more than five days - for the specific use you know where.

2) Walls that fight back when anyone spits on or urinates on them.

3) Satellites that follow people who urinate in public, with the images of offenders being broadcast on TV as a special bulletin much like advertisements, over and over again, till people all over the country recognise them.

4) Drawers that auto shut when money is brought near them - again you know where these need to be used.

5) Aisle seats that bite when other seats are empty - to combat people who sit in aisle seats and inconvenience others commuters.

6) New Legislation's empowering citizens inconvenienced by potholes to dig up holes in the contractors/ engineers residences ( one for each pothole) and to tar and feather them while they are at it (the contractors/ engineers, I mean) who were responsible for building the said roads that develop potholes within a few days of them being open for public use.

7) Empty food packets/ plastic bottles that follow the consumer of the food/drink like heat seeking missiles if they are not dumped properly in a dustbin.

I could go on with this list, any takers for these ones ??

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Jab We Met...

D and I had not met in awhile and this is something of a cause of worry as both of us a share a common passion - "Food" and usually haunt food joints in and around the Andheri-Vile Parle area. Am I developing into a regular 9-9 type (9-5 breed are now extinct in today’s dog-eat-dog-for-a-promotion world) the kind who just work and have no time for friends and family? What with D enrolling for an E-MBA and me moving teams and going off on secondment to Singapore we really have not met for months. The only time we seem to "catch up" with each other is on Facebook. These days I look forward to reading my friends updates on Facebook rather than meeting them in person and I am really beginning to worry about my Facebook addiction. One of these days I am going to delete my account on this social networking site for good!!!

So I finally dropped an email last Tuesday with an invitation to catch up with an added carrot of "free lunch". However not a peep from her, come Friday a really worried me tried to call her and when there was no response, I sent her a text asking if all is well. What with her having the exact same sentiments towards food like your truly... an invite for "free lunch" is not something that either of us will take lightly. There I was sat all day thinking of all possible reasons why D was not responding to my mail and text (I can get really paranoid at times, the what if scenarios I can come up with can put the best script writers and story tellers to shame), all of the scenarios ended with me thinking:
a) Something was seriously wrong
b) Unknowingly I had goofed up big time

Come evening D called and put me out of my misery, she never received my email!!! I had messed up on the email ID (now you will ask why I did not get a delivery failure notification, I will have you know that for some reason I did not receive the delivery failure notification until Monday this week). After chatting nineteen to a dozen we agreed to meet up the next day at Yoko's, Khar for sizzlers. I like the sizzlers at Yoko's, call me a sentimental fool, but I ate my first sizzler here and till today I rate it as the best place for sizzlers, though there are people who would bat for Kobe's, but I will remain a Yoko's girl to the day I die...

Accordingly we met up at Yoko's the next day, though we are out and out foodies, both of us do not have the capacity to eat an entire sizzler... so between us we ordered a Fried Pepper Chicken sizzler, Fresh Lime soda and Iced Peach Tea.
The Fried Pepper Chicken sizzler is a Chicken Pattie loaded with pepper, served with a great sauce (I think it is barbeque sauce, but I may be wrong) fries, spinach, peas, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce and florets of cauliflowers on a hot plate. I love the way the sizzler arrives, all show and pomp like a Bollywood Masala flick, what with the sizzling sound of the food getting cooked on the plate and the smoke rising from it, an absolute sight for sore eyes is what I call it. When it arrived for a first couple of minute I could not see D across the table thanks to the smoke as the veggies and sauce got burnt on the plate (both D and I like to scrape the burnt bits off the plate, according to us the burnt bits are the best) and sizzled. The aroma that wafted from the dish is absolutely divine and guaranteed to send you to gourmet heaven. After polishing off the sizzler we decided that a Sizzling Brownie was a must eat to complete the meal, accordingly we asked the waiter to get us one, only to be told that the Brownies had not yet arrived!!! Looking at the glum expression on my face D told me "It’s Ok, I need to go to Shoppers Stop, Andheri to pick some stuff and Bombay Blues has a branch there and they have Brownies to die for". This put me in a better frame of mind and we traipsed from Khar to Bombay Blues, Andheri for Brownies. We went to Shopper Stop and D shopped while I window shopped for a change, I went mental at the D'Damas counter, they have some lovely solitaire rings and being a diamond lover I just cannot resist trying them on...the salesman manning the counter let me try on the rings to my heart’s content with a "We are here to serve you", if I buy a ring anytime soon, no prizes for guessing where the purchase will be made. As a memento of our shopping trip D got us matching bangles and like giddy school girls we both wore it on the spot and clicked pictures to be updated on Facebook (I really need to put and end to my Facebook Fixation). Shopping done we headed over to Bombay Blues.

We were deliberating whether to order just the Brownie or do we order something else as well. I happened to glance at the next table and spied Nachos. That settled it for us, we ordered a Nachos Mexicana and Sizzling Brownie with Ice-cream, the smiling waiter noted our order and commented "from Starter straight to Dessert" and we grinned. The Nachos Mexicana is Nachos served with melted cheese and unless you are a fast eater, it tends to get soggy as you make your way through the dish. The Sizzling Brownie with Ice-cream though nice, the portion is absolutely small and you feel like you are not getting your money’s worth. In no time we had finished both the dishes and it was time to leave. We decided to meet every month going forward and have already decided on the venue for next month’s Khaddadi venture... Linking Road, Bandra!!!

Sunday, 9 January 2011

My initiation into the world of hi-tech gizmos : How to buy a Blackberry

This post is on popular demand, rather my one and only fan, Paccashaana asked me to put it up so doing it lest I lose her as well...

It all began when my trusty Nokia which also happens to be the first phone I bought myself (with my khoon pasine ki kamai, if you must know) way back in 2005 started developing an attitude. Incidently I blew up the entire full and final settlement I received at my last company (now you know what peanuts I was paid at the job and why I left it) to buy myself this phone and was mighty pleased with it. At that time the dealmaker was the fact that it was "phone with a flap" you know the cool phones which you flick open to receive and make calls, a muted brown in colour (I hate bling), compact and quite sturdy. Throw in the added advantage of FM radio and a something mega pixel camera and the salesman never had an easier sale.

I took care of this prized jewel like people take care of their kids, the only thing I didn't do was give it a bath, the rest I did. Also when in office I would keep it open in a 90 degree angle so that I could see who is calling and decide whether I wanted to take the call, so over the years my phone has been given many nicknames "Cobra", "Antenna", "Sattelite" to name a few and together we have been the butt of many jokes, but we just took in our stride. And I can say with some conviction that even five years later it still looks new, with not so much of a scratch on it (I am something of a bawa when it comes to taking care of my belongings). But as all good things must come to an end, my relationship with my phone also soured. One fine day it just completely switched off and no amount of coaxing and cajoling on my part helped. To say that I was devastated is an understatment. Thats when I decided that I need to get me a new phone and I decided that I am going to buy me phone that had the bare essential options, text message, incoming calls, outgoing calls, thats it. I decided that high end phones are not for me. Accordingly my sister and I set off to the store.

We arrived at the store and true to form I told the salesgirl what I was looking for - a mobile phone and made my self quite clear "I want a low end version, which just has calls and text". She went off to hunt for such phones and we were left to look at high end phone on display. Different varieties of Nokia, Sony, Samsung, etc. along with their vital stats were on display. We looked around for a while and in a section of the store all by itself I found the Blackberry sitting quitely giving me the eye. As if by magic I was drawn to it and found myself falling in love all over again. It was quite sleek to look at and it boasted of emails and internet. I stood looking at it and just then the salesgirl arrived with the low end phones I had asked for. When I say they were basic... they really were!!! If I had seen them first, there was a very good chance I would most definitely have bought one of them but given my sudden love-in-first-sight with the Blackberry I hesitated and the shrewd salesgirl saw it and put two and two together and launched into an superstar salesgirl mode promoting the Blackberry. It does this and it does that (everything she said bounced mile high over my head, I tend to switch off when people get over technical with me, this reminds me of the time a good friend was trying to get me interested in going to the casino, explaining how in the long run you may lose your money in the casino but in the short run given the probability and standard deviation of things you can end up making a decent sum. I only hope I was not looking as dumb I was feeling when he saying "probability and standard deviation". It there is one thing I hate more that technical jargon it is Mathematics and related fields. How I managed to get through school, college and Chartered Accountancy with this dreaded subject on the syllabus is something I will reserve for my memoirs). Fifteen minutes into the jargon blasting speech I was feeling so numb skulled that she many have said that it is toilet trained  and cleans up after itself at home and I would have believed it.

The only thing I really wanted to know was how to make calls on a Blackberry, rather whether you really could make calls or does it only receive and send emails and support business applications which make graphs, presentations, excel spreadsheets, but was too ashamed to do so. Still I asked a few questions like how many contact can I store (a training I attended saved me here, one of the faculty members asked us to invest in a Blackberry as he said you need to develop contact and store all of them, with a Blackberry you would do just fine, he said), What other colours was it available in, how many mega pixel was the camera, other buyers in the store were smirking, but I ignored them and went ahead and bought it.

We have been together for the past nine months and the only hiccup we have has so far was the text message icon disappearing when I pulled out the SIM card, other than that we are getting along just fine.

Tuesday, 4 January 2011

I Do

If you’re asking, how long I’ll need you,
The answer is Forever,

If you’re asking, if I’ll leave you,
The answer is Never,

If you’re asking what I value,
The answer is You,

If you’re asking me, whether I love you,
The answer is ‘I Do’.

My colleague is getting married and this poem was on his wedding invite, I find it very beautiful hence sharing it with you my dear readers.