Spring introspection and acchh...acchhhoooo!

When people told me, "Oh, I have Spring allergies", I used to think that they were oh-so-delicate dahlings that needed to develop a better immune system. That was until last week when I developed a bad case of Spring allergies. I sneezed uncontrollably and my eyes and nose itched. Serves me right for thinking those thoughts. So anyway, to cheer myself, I updated my food blog and gave it a new look! For those of you who didn't know that I had a food blog or err...that I cooked, consider clicking the little icon on the right of this blog right below the google custom search bar once in a while :p.

Other than that I am in a pretty vacuous state of mind (read d u m b). Today at work, one of my colleagues asked me a technical question that I should have been able to answer and I just looked blankly at him and said, "I don't know" - maybe I should stop reading those articles that celebrate these situations -

Yeah! Go ahead and say, "I don't know", people will praise you for your honesty and assume there are a lot of things you actually do know

or

Change your career, give up your job, take a sabbatical and get to know the real you, it's okay to retire early and goof off at home.

All my life, people have been telling me that I have a "confidence problem" which perhaps is true, partly at least. I have been in several situations at work where people with far less knowledge on a subject than me have shot off their mouths confidently and worked their ways out of it pretty decently. So, maybe I just need to trust my instincts and gray matter and speak up and appear more confident. Or maybe just be the way I am, perhaps my perception of me is not the same as what others perceive me? Gaaaah.

There was this lady on the Bob & Sheri radio show who claimed that women needed approval from people and that differentiated them from men. k, for instance would ask me, "How does it matter what a particular colleague thought of you? You deliver your work on time and do a good job and that's all there is to it..." You know, I think that lady had a point, women pay way too much importance to other people's opinions, think of the times you had a crush on someone that all the hep girls in school had a crush on? Or think of a more relevant analogy that would prove my point (Don't blame me, I have the sniffles).

So, all this thinking did not help with my allergies. So for now, am goin' to return to my vacuous state of well-being and nothingness. S'long!

Oh, almost forgot, here are some pics we took at Georgetown Kite Fest this year - Spring allergies, gloomy skies and pouring rain couldn't keep us away :)

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STOMP!

I am in a black and white flashback sort of mood, so much so that I took black and white snaps using my SLR although I loaded color film on it :p


Anyway, we went to see the STOMP yesterday at Danville. And they rocked! It's amazing how they beat out a tune using newspapers, plastic water cans, trash can lids and mops! Gosh! Almost made me want to lead a different life where I could stomp out a tune with my feet, just like they did. I really like attending artsy shows in Danville. I have seen a couple of plays at Pioneer playhouse and now the Stomp at the Norton center for arts. Of course, the Shakespeare plays at Lexington were a lot of fun too, too bad we won't have them any longer. The nice thing about the Shakespeare plays was that it was outdoors, spread out a blanket on the grass, grab some funnel cakes, relax and watch the play! I always bought one of their tshirts although I never wore them more than once :) To me it was the equivalent of an American thiruvizha or maybe one of those travelling stage drama troupes back in India...never did watch one in India, but, you get the picture?

Which brings me to this Saturday, Georgetown Kite Festival! I really hope it doesn't rain this Saturday! I guess I'll switch my SLR back to color mode, way too much color at the park to be clicking black and white photos, no matter how whimsically old-times-romantic I feel!

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The importance of being awkward.

You know how it is when people invite you to parties? Not the people you normally hang out with, the other people. Like office colleagues for instance or the kind of people who are nice to you and whom you are nice to but have not entertained in a contained space, your home or theirs. The kind of parties that make you feel a bit awkward. Like "Hmm, I might have fun at the party or may find that I have nothing to say, I guess I should go..." - those sorta' feelings.

Anyway, last week, we went to one of those parties after fighting some initial reluctance. There were a mix of people of all age groups, some we know well, some not so much.

And we had a blast!

The newness of the interactions there had something to do with it, I think. Since these were people we would not meet so often in a social setting, we ventured to topics we normally did not discuss at get-togethers. Also, coming from different age groups, they all had something new and interesting to contribute to the conversation - recipes for sweet potato soup, early morning risers and how they manage to wake up just before the alarm, arangetrams and dances, karate and small Indian men as easy opponents, skiing and doctors, medical school costs and bad direction sense and of course food - it was a potluck after all!

So anyway, it was a lot of fun and I would have missed it all for fear of being awkward! No wonder all these bond-together articles in magazines have a bulleted point, "Explore new activities with partner to enrich blah...blah".

And to that I would add, "...even if it makes you feel awkward initially. Don't underestimate the importance of being awkward."

Of course, it doesn't always apply to all new experiences, the other day, I went to a yoga class where I was kind of a mis-fit, there were all these older, well-built (big?) women and a few of them gave me distinctly unpleasant stares, not the "How could you walk in 6.8 minutes late, little girl?" kind of look but the "There is something I really don't like about you, so I am going to stare and make it awkward for you" kind of glare. As the instructor went, "relaaaaaaaax", I tried to ignore unpleasant-stare-glare without much success and ended up not experiencing perfect yoga-calm for the first fifteen minutes of class. Plus I had to use the rest room and I was scared the woman would tsk-tsk if I cut through the class to the rest room!

Those kind of awkward situations are just that...awkward. Not sure if I picked up anything important from all that awkwardness :p

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Spring's in the air!

Spring is finally here and lex is a beautiful princess in white again! For once, we (k, ~p and I) captured the white flowers on lens, while they bloomed for less than a week before turning a bright green! But fabulous weather has had a strange effect on dear husband. Normally, he is a bit weird. The good weather added a good dose to that normal bit. He manifested that in many ways.

Yesterday, we drove to work; it seemed like a normal day which means we were in the middle of waking up from zombie state as we parked at our office parking lot. That's when k realized that he had forgotten his shoes again (he did that, if am not mistaken, spring last year too). Sounds bizarre but it won't sound quite so bizarre if you a part of our chaotic morning routine.


I swear I will never be one of those people who wake up with a spring in their step, brush their teeth with a manic enthusiasm and sit down to a leisurely coffee and breakfast at 6.30 in the morning and then still in the same zen-like state proceed to drive to work while listening to calming melodies on FM. Anyway, to save those precious few seconds in the morning, k drives bare-feet (or on better days, sock-feet) to work and then wears his shoes at our office parking lot after finishing his coffee (i,e whatever remains of it, the rest would have poured all around our nice coffee holder in the car, but no problem they dry and form a neat bed for the next day's caffeine fix!).

Anyway, yesterday he had forgotten his good socks and his shoes. So at the parking lot, he looks at his bare feet with a confused look and asks me where his shoes are. I did what every responsible wife does in these situations. I laughed and waved a cheerful goodbye to him. So anyway, that's how he spent an otherwise uneventful day at work without his shoes and socks.

Today was another story. The weather was nice and balmy today and k decided to be really brave. He had a dentist appointment today morning at 9. "Just drop me there and I can walk back home!" So, I dropped him at the dental clinic and drove to work and around an hour later, I get a call from a number I don't recognize.

"Hi, it's me. I am locked out of the house and I don't have my cell phone. So, thought I'd...call you."

So, I did the responsible wife thing again. I laughed.

Anyway, eventually I did drive back home, gave my husband his morning cup of coffee, which he had forgotten inside the house before we left to the dentist.


I suspect good weather tomorrow too. It's going to be one entertaining spring season.

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A good fight.

Growing up means also having to realize that good fights like good laughs are rare. I tried to think of the last time I had an honest, involved fight and gave up after counting back five years. I have had fights, actually let me take the blame here, I have fought often in the past five years but they were not what I would call good fights.

They were either the lame, watery, excuse-for-a-fight-variety where I vaguely expressed displeasure and did not wait to ascertain if my displeasure was registered, you know, the kind where halfway through the fight, I backtracked and just gave up because I thought it wasn't really worth it in the big scheme of things! These fights kinda suck. The issue is not resolved, you don't have the satisfaction of having fought a good fight and there is no closure!

The other variety is the no-holds-barred loud and ugly fights, which is fine as long as I can resolve them at some point. The problem with these fights is that while you have the satisfaction of raising your voice, expressing your opinion forcefully and disagreeing disagreeably about something, the most important part of the fight is not handled correctly - the end! If you mess up the end, you have another bad fight on your hands, the kind that can end friendships or leave it in a lukewarm, comatose almost pitiful state which makes you think of the good times you had knowing you can't have it again. Just as bad as the first variety.

Which brings us to the really good fights. The ones filled with strong emotions and powerful words, tears and scorn, the kind that scares you but then eventually dies down to a resolution - ties broken for good reason or made stronger for better. These are the fights that are fought for the right reasons, they still may involve jealousy, possessiveness and traits not really treasured but they are inspired by closeness and fear of losing the relationship. Like really good movies, such fights are hard to come by. Until then, I'll be twiddling my thumbs with empty fights or none at all.

So...wanna fight?! :)

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About giving fundas.

Local news first, our newspaper carried this article about the cultural programs organized for Dr.Kalam's visit last Sunday! 26 of us managed to get our makeup and hair done in 5 hours! My eye shadow was a mix of shocking blue and peacock green, heavily inspired by Shrek! Much excitement!

Now that the big day is over, I am looking forward to a bunch of fun weekends - visit to the new Ikea at Cincinnati, Priyadarshini's dance performance, Georgetown kite festival! All the little things that come together to create the cultural scene of our little town. I guess these would be the moments I miss most if I were to move to Seattle or India!

Ok, enough chitchat. on to fundas! By funda, I mean something that you speak (usually while advising others) and believe that it is the whole truth and that you will never behave contradictory to your maxim. This is usually delivered when you have stated a feeling or thought of your own and the other person wishes to contradict it. And my addition to the whole scene is that the funda is wrong, mostly (I have to add that disclaimer or this would become another of those fundas that will eventually be proved wrong!)

Consider this setting. I am sharing some ideas about safe cooking and cleaning - what utensils to use, what cleaning ingredients to use and so on and the other person goes, "Gee Ramya, lighten up. You only live once! You can't keep scrutinizing everything like this...live life a little!"

Ah, a plethora of fundas, in case you didn't catch it,

funda1 -> "You only live life once!"

funda2-> "You can't keep...live life a little!"

That night, I wondered if I was indeed scrutinizing life a wee bit too much and made a list of ways to lighten up - I take advice seriously and somehow each time, when people say something, I assume they are saying it because they really (really) mean it! Anyway, several months later I find the funda giver's kitchen listed in the "safe green kitchens magazine" - model kitchen of the year! And I am told, "Oh you should really consider switching to...safer, non-toxic...blah blah!" What happened to living life and scrutinizing?! Those would precisely be the fundas I am talking about! Well, there is no such magazine but you get the point?

I could give several other examples with fundas like "I would never do that because..." and eventually the funda falls flat because the person went ahead and did just that! The problem with this whole deal is the initial funda makes you go, "Whaaa...did I really say something that bizarre?!" and you actually begin to believe that some thought ought to be given to this funda since it sounds so...point-blank and authoritative!

But, I guess "giving fundas" is in a way addictive. So much fun to declare with certainty that you would do this and not that, most certainly not! It shows such conviction and decisiveness. Not so much when you go ahead and do that instead of this but then you had fun giving the funda and no one is really monitoring your fundas enough to say "Hold it! On this date, you said this...hence proved wrong. Yeah!"

Sometimes I wish I had the time to do that. Just for the fun of it!

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The sideward nod.

You are in the middle of an excited description of something. You are gesturing with your hands, modulating your voice accordingly and looking into the eyes of the person you are talking to and all the while you are assuming that the topic of the conversation is of interest to the person you are talking to.

And suddenly, pfffffff!

The other person gives you the looking-away-nod also known as the sideward-nod. You know what I mean? She is nodding as you talk as if to say, "Yeah go on. Am listening..." and slowly, her gaze shifts elsewhere. So she has this sort of sideward tilt to her head and she is nodding but definitely not meeting your eyes. To me, it's the equivalent of pouring cold water all over me in the middle of the conversation. I find it hard to carry on but then am in the middle of a sentence and it feels like unfinished business to stop. So, I lamely finish the sentence and grudgingly also turn toward the object of her attention.

So, I ask myself if am a boring conversationalist. Not really. I mean, I have talked to people who obsessively talked about themselves and I have nodded and actually listened (not the guy trick - say "uh uh" and continue doing what you are doing under the incredibly silly assumption that the person talking to you thinks you are listening!). Anyway, if I were to semi-objectively rate myself I wouldn't call my conversations boring. They are not refreshingly stimulating and thought-provoking at all times but then whose are?

And honestly, I have never given the sideward-nod to people while they were talking to me. It is really rude if you think about it. Maybe the person you are talking to is unable to focus for long, then they are not really being rude, they are just being...distracted, I guess.

So remember, people (women...like me) pay a lot of attention to your little gestures and body language. So ditch the sideward-nod. Perhaps you could do something polite like saying, "Erm, excuse me, I have a sudden urge to be away from this conversation. My sincere apologies." instead!

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About being grownup and some random questions.

Since it's Friday, am allowed to post random thoughts in this space and have the audacity to call it a post.

• My first random thought is about growing up. Is there a cut-off age when we are supposed to consider ourselves all grown up? The reason I ask is, I certainly don't feel grown up. An uncle I know, who is 42, seemed offended when one of my friends called him "Uncle", my friend is 24 years old. A couple of 50-something-maamis in Lexington did not approve of "aunty". So, really besides the 60-something people (what are they called?), septuagenarians and octogenarians does anyone really want to be considered a grown-up? The other day, I went to a puja at a maami's place. After the puja, I talked a bit to the teenagers there (because some of them were dancing with me for a cultural show - remember I told you, Lex desis are getting all spruced up for Dr.Kalam's visit?), and then I talked to an American Indian 20-something girl and then turned to all the 40 something maamis with the intent of making similar excited conversation. I talked to the maami who invited me and then clung to her like a kid! I really did not know what to say to the other maamis! I actually felt a bit intimidated. The experience was all very strange. k told me that was all cool, "It just means you can totally relate to your kids, won't that be cool?" Hmm, yes. But when does a girl make a transition to maamihood? At 30? After a kid? Would be nice if all of us get one of those notices saying "You are all grown up now lady. So suck it up and act like an adult!"

• Next random question - do you guys know how to make a blog "by invitation only" but at the same time allow people to request readership? I am getting bored of editing my short story blog everytime I submit a story to a magazine (it's that nice image on the right-hand side in case you haven't noticed - don't tell me that, I'll be heart-broken - just click it :-). I have to save the story as draft because I don't really know what the publishers mean when they say, "Can you confirm that your story is not published anywhere else?" Sometimes they specify "online". So anyway, I made my short-story blog "by invitation" only, but I fear my small subset of readers will quickly exit if I provide such major incentives to not read what I dish out. So...any suggestions? How can I restrict membership dynamically? Oh and please do let me know if you want me to add your email id to the reader list. Muchos gracias!
  

• My third question - I want to self-publish a book about my "going green" obsessions. I am working on a website currently. But the thing is, if I publish through amazon, then I have to pay them 75% of the cost of the book, I can't even set the price of the book less than $8 or I make a loss! I checked out lulu.com and a few others but I guess that's the price you pay to buy "presence"! Any smart ideas?

• Almost forgot! Today is Karadayan Nombu. Going to try sweet adai and delight the better half (So annoying when he doesn't get delighted enough :p). Wish me luck!
  

Ok, that's that for now. Me off to lunch soon. Tada.

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Blue winter crib-fest, oh! and about being rich.

We are experiencing miserable weather. The kind that makes you want to break the damned alarm clock, pound it into a mush and go deeper into the comforter. I lead a pretty normal life, so I did none of those things, got up on the wrong side of the bed, got ready and came to work. So, I sat staring at my monitor, having finished checking my gmail, my blog comments, the daily dilbert cartoon, my horoscope for the day, witty saying by unknown famous person of the day, the first few links in reddit, headlines of the most read articles in the New York Times and then I wondered about right and wrong, good and bad and such thoughts that only a gloomy, wintery day like this could inspire.

I reached a few conclusions in life.

1. Oatmeal sucks. I know I claimed it was a super food to my mom, made her switch to oatmeal for breakfast and proudly declare that I eat oatmeal for breakfast to people who enquired about my breakfast - well, there are not really that many that enquire but I tell them all the same. But the dirty little secret that I am privy to is the fact that I completely, honestly HATE oatmeal. It tastes like nothing. And if you add a bunch of stuff to it to make it better, it only comes off tasting even more awful. And that is the truth.
   
   
2. Tiffin time sucks next. You know, around 5 - 5.30 PM after you have driven home from work, that time. That time is what I miss most about India. No jasmine-like idlis with molagai podi, no hot crispy bread upma, no rava kesari, no hot chola with bread, no nothing. It's the same - toast and jam or on other days even chips and salsa and thank God, a cup of coffee or tea. I really wish I had better tiffin options. Yeah, you can stop giving me that look "Cook!", I just don't have the energy to cook anything remotely edible at the end of a long day! No, I don't want cold fruits and ready-made processed crap. I want hot food! Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is...

Ok, that concludes the crib-fest for today. Stupid weather. I am switching to one of those fancy companies on the West coast that has like 4 different canteens on campus serving HOT food, not cold salad but real, hot food. Plus, the weather has got to be better than this. Or better still, I'll go back to Madras. I guess I can't do that either, k promised we could shift to Madras only if I (not him) became super rich.

Any ideas? Let's see...(since I am in the mood for bulleted lists)

1. I could write a novel like Rowling did, sitting in a cafe or was it a train and imagining super-fantastic characters,
   
   
2. Or maybe I'll write one of those natural-living-green books but then I'd have to eat oatmeal everyday and not yummy crispy-creme donuts...


3. I could work real hard and become rich, does that still work?


4. I got it! I need a life event! I keep reading about life-changing events that umm...changed people's lives forever, again. I mean, Lisa Jewell, my new favorite author, got kicked off her job, that was a life event. And then her friend challenged her to write the first three chapters of her novel, she did, sent it to ten publishers and forgot about it. And one of them called back! And she became a famous author. Like that. But, I really would not like to be fired. I like my job (All the people I know say that, I guess it's a sorta ego thing, maybe you don't want the other person thinking "Poor old so and so, look at her stuck with her job", or maybe they really like their jobs, I mean, I can't complain about my job - I fought with my dad to switch from Bio to CompSci. Except some days I think, "What am I doing stuck in a little cubicle with my hands freezing in spite of the wristies when the sun is shining golden bright outside and so on...you get my point?).
   

So, that's that. I'll probably be doing the same thing ten years down the lane and asking you for ideas even then. You'll stick by, won't you?

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Priyadarshini Govind

Eagerly looking forward to Priyadarshini Govind's dance performance this year! She will be visiting Lex for a dance performance on April 12 for the Indian arts exhibition at UK arts museum. Seems as though our little town is all excited for Dr.Kalam's visit and the cultural programs that would accompany his visit! Anyway, I attended a dance performance by Priyadarshini Govind, October of 2007 and I remember being so enthralled about it that I wrote a gushing article about the programme for the Kentucky Kernel which they obviously did not publish, but I gushed pretty enthusiastically all the same :p

Photo by Eric Thigpen

Each face in the audience mirrors the quickly changing emotions that dance across her features. Happy as a baby, angry like the Lord Shiva - each expression on her face arrives in a flash and remains for a mesmerizing second before exiting gracefully and yet each abhinaya stays behind in the viewers' eye taking them along its journey. Such is the power that Priyadarshini Govind's dance exudes.

At the Bharatiya Temple and Cultural Society, Priyadarshini started her BharataNatyam recital with a dance depicting femine energy, the Devi. She followed her first dance performance with an equally compelling recital on a woman waiting for her lover, the Cosmic Lord of dance, Shiva to come to her. The second half of her performance covered a wide range of emotions - the love of mother Kausalya for her dear son, the baby Rama; the mischievous invitation that a lover extends to her beloved; the pain-filled wails of a mother who has lost her son in the battlefield and finally a thillana, a fast dance that provided a fitting finale to an evening of scintillating dance moves and perfectly choreographed steps in tune with the musical instruments and the song that accompanied each piece. An evening well spent with dancer Priyadarshini Govind and accompanying artists, Maheshwar, Natarajan, Subramanian and Narayanan.

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Going, going, gone!

Claiming that I suffer from a writer's block somehow makes me feel vain, like I am a writer or something. So I shall say that I have been hiding behind this beginner's mini-block-series, sort of a poor man's writer's block like so,
...hoping that the inspiration for my next story is just around the corner. Anyway, I got some time to myself after several months, so I devoured a bunch of desi chick lits and then managed to cough up a story. At least the mini-blocks are gone for now. Whew!

Here goes, enjoy the masala!

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Tag! You're it!

Tagging is this quirky thing that we bloggers do, isn't it? Now, why did I feel compelled to say that? Firstly, it makes us feel like we belong to this neat clique - we blog! Yeah! That sorta thing. Secondly, it sounds techy and cool, not as much as it used to but still it falls somewhere in the category of Web 2.0, wisdom of the crowds, folksonomy and all that.

I find tagging pretty challenging though. Sometimes tags rock, they are just what you wanted to say in your blog but didn't want to sound too conceited and self-involved; enter tags and you have a legitimate and humble reason to ramble on about yourself, not that am against rambling, oh no, that's what keeps the women-folk and some men-folk sane at times! But then, there are times when the tags are just lame. Then, I am not really sure what to do. I have to answer the tag for the aforementioned reasons that bloggers are cool and all that but then I just don't want to. And the sticky point there is, I have to tag 28 more people and make them experience the same discomfort!

Anyway, this tag by dear a~ was different in the sense, it was an entertaining brag-a-tag :p

The rules of the tag are: Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

I mean, come on! Who doesn't like to quote from their blog posts? (No, that's ok, don't bother nodding yes, the question was not meant for you :) So, I thought I would stumble upon precious memories, notes from self that would change my life, brilliant observations and such from my previous blog posts. Oh well, at least I had fun while I thought those thoughts believing them to be true!

The easy bit first, I tag:

* bus (mainly because he hardly says anything even semi-personal on his blog and hasn't written for a while!
* k - in a desperate attempt to revive his blog, which is taking its last few breaths...

Family:
Not a thought-provoking bit of prose or anything but at least it's funny!

Lost in translation

Friends:
My all time favorite. I guess I can say that (since nobody else will :p)

Harmony in disharmony

Yourself:
In a rare moment of honesty, I penned down some thoughts about myself...

Scribble, scribble...

Your love:
I could say something lofty or meaningful like I love dancing and I love to write, my life is meaningless without...but (am not really in that mood and...) nothing beats writing about the balancing dance we call marriage, a post about my love, clueless and lovable, as he always has been (Gosh! That's gotta be the sappiest thing I ever said on this blog, so not me!)

Did I do something wrong?!

Anything you like:
To dance, to write and to be merry :)

Shades of her.

Gosh! That almost felt like the oscars announcement to me. Such excitement and talk about RS!

Umm, apologies for the same.

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My life and associated trivialities.

Books...
I had a delicious three days off! For matrimonial purposes, Queen of dreams and Shopaholic & baby, what more could a girl ask for?! k has taken to giving me these really strange looks whenever I tell him that I finished a novel in a day; I bet, one of jealousy and associated evil thoughts! Just to prove a point, he finished Man, woman and child in a day, for the second time. But he doesn't know that (that it was his second time) 'coz he doesn't have the sort of memory that is needed to recollect and realize that a movie/book has already been viewed/read. In a way, that's pretty cool, I mean, delightful books will always remain delightful and surprising till the end. You can watch the same old Friends and Reba re-runs and laugh each time Chandler/Van says something funny. I laugh anyway but the fact that I already know the joke and the first laugh is over takes away some of the fun out of it.

Directions and dreams...
While I wouldn't care for that kind of selective memory loss, I suppose I suffer from one of those memory losses anyway - the inability to remember roads/directions and by extension any attributes associated with what we call, "Local Geography". I mean, I really do make an effort. I watch pretty carefully when k drives to weird places but I just can't get the map to stay put in my head! But 10, I believe, is the magic number. If I have driven to a place ten times, that'll do the trick! Gaaah, I wish I could have my own limo and driver; Ok fine, a good car and a driver, like in India (minus the traffic jams and stuff). So cool. Day dreaming is fun. Actually, I might as well wish for a nice desi canteen, actually any canteen that serves veggie food also (just anything hot) at our work place, one of the disadvantages of working in a small university town is that the office is not considered big enough to have all those sweet things other bigger offices get - on campus gym, day care, multi-cuisine canteens - like in MSFT, God! I envy them! Imagine hot samosas with tangy chutney and a hot cuppa coffee at tea time!

Cooking and cuisine...
The past long weekend, I also had a chance to ruminate on my cooking skills. I used to like to cook and experiment, especially experiment and try mixing spices and strange ingredients to known dishes just to see what it would morph into it. Umm, ok so that doesn't sound so appetizing, but it's real fun, you should try it sometime. Add cashews to cabbage curry or cinnamon to your rasam and also remember to establish the well known rule of woman empowerment - "No complaints at the dining table about fresh food that is cooked that day" - I guess, it's kind of ok to complain about left overs, somehow that's not as bad as spending a good chunk of time toiling and sweating in the kitchen (more like 30-40 mins tossing stuff while on the phone but still...) and then having the guinea...I mean person sitting in front of you tell you, "I think the coconut did not get crushed fully...". So anyway, I don't know what happened, but after the preG visit (Duh! Keep up, willya?), I have lost the fascination I used to have for cooking. As a result we have been frequenting just about any restaurant in and around the Lex area...just in case you are too, here are a few tips:

** Vindaloo is not one of the dishes you should try out at Tandoor

** Green curry used to and still rocks at Bangkok house

** Drunken noodles might have fish sauce or not, am never able to figure that out at Iching, get a different waiter each time! Lo Mein is a safer option if you are a vegetarian.

** One restaurant, I won't mention which, served us nice, juicy melted plastic with out vegetable patia (Oops! Didn't mean to give it away...) and when we pointed it out, we were served four hot gulab jamoons with a heavy dose of apologies. Oh well, I suppose all that hot jaggery sauce will melt the plastic, no harm done.

** I like dahi wada in Curry house...hmm, but I also like it everywhere else :p

** If you order carry out for less than five bucks at Masala, take cash with you! There was this one time when k and I were starving and ordered samosas and realized we didn't have cash! We could have asked that guy to make it a non-carry out but then that's just plain awkward.

** Still haven't come across anything yummier than Ravioli de portabello at Olive Garden. Their salad rocks too.

** At Joe Bolognas, the generous mayo served on their garden vegetable pizza is so sinfully delicious, you'll forget that you are eating something that's not exactly good for you :p

Chic (lit)...
I have come to the conclusion that I am the only desi woman-software-engineer that comes dressed to work like a day off at home aka bum! Everytime I catch myself in the office mirror, I tell myself I should be err...better dressed if not exactly "chic"! And reading books about Becky Brandon (Sophie Kinsella Shopaholic series) only makes me feel more ignorant and dull. Would be fun to spend loads of dough on the latest Gucci, Prada yada yada out there and turn a few heads, know what I mean? Somehow I have this sneaking suspicion that if I were a working woman in India, I would dress better... ;)

Girl friends...
I wonder if wives have this secret desire to make their husbands their girl friends, at least part-time. I guess, when we don't have access to a girl-friend, school chum, best-girl-buddy for a long time to chat, discuss guys (that was in college but you get the point)...and all that nice stuff with, we turn to our better halves to fill that void in our lives. Maybe I just made that up, that void bit, but it kind of makes sense. Of course the husbands don't take kindly to such suggestions ("Let's have a spa day together", "Let's do our eye brows together" or even, "Let's get matching new hair styles"...), but would be nice if they tuned in to our inner selves, explored their feminine sides and indulged us once in a while...ok, that was a lot of nonsense, but face it, you can dig out the little sliver of truth buried in it, cantcha?!

Such is my life. I am beginning to think the three days off and all that free time kind of messed with my head... :)

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Aiyayayaya!

I think I heard this phrase in Hatari (the cute movie with the elephant...) ages ago and I can't find a word that better describes the past five months of my life. k's parents stayed with us the first three months, my mom joined them the last month of their stay and stayed another two months and my dad joined her the last week! He stayed for a whopping five days with us before he left with mom and we managed to arrange their sashtiabdapoorthy too :)


Some key observations, notes to self about the previous generation during US visits (call them preG):

* If you think preG is going to take a look at your life style and go, "Whoaaa! You guys rock!", you are mistaken. Totally. Understand that they have been living a particular way the past 50-60 years of their lives, there's nooo way they would take a look at you and say, "Geee! Wish we could live like that!" Nope, the house and the car don't do the trick :p

* preG thinks we are a Bhakasura generation, judging us, among other things, by the size of our coffee mugs.

My dad - "Idhu ennadu ivolo perusa? Soup bowl madiri?"
Me - "That's ma's coffee bowl..."
Mom (immediately pipes is) - "They make me have coffee in this big, fat mug, I didn't have a choice!"
My dad - "I am going to courier a dozen ever-silver tumbler-dabara sets as soon as I reach Madras!"

* Dads, especially TamBram ones like to spend. Letting daughters spend in front of them is a NO-NO! In walmart, after half-an-hour of quick shopping for chocolates, pens and other gifts for relatives and friends, we stood at the checkout line and...

My dad - "I will pay. I know my Master card works outside India."
Me - "No"
My dad - Repeat
Me - "No"
Finally, I start snatching the credit card away from him and he pulls it from me. By then the checkout person has finished arranging the items neatly in bags. k looks embarrassed, my mom used to similar situations stands patiently and watches. k tries to mumble a plausible explanation to the counter guy, "Umm, they are fighting over who has to pay". The counter guy seems un-amused. So, anyway, the moral is that just because you earn, don't assume your dad will let you spend. He is the bread-winner of the family. Period.

* Moms don't like dishwashers. They dislike our cookware even more.

Mom - "Ramya, you could have at least bought a few decent stainless steel cooking utensils!"
Me - "I have them, ma"
Mom - "No, I have to use the same vessel to make tea and more kuzhambu"
Me - "We have several others..."
Mom - "But they are in the dishwasher. That is why I said, the dishwasher is useless, you anyway have to rinse, then why load the dishes in again?"

The other day, I took my mom to Williams-Sonoma at the mall.

Mom - "Ohh! There is the vessel I have been asking for to make tea for 1-2 people!"
Me - "It costs $125"
Mom - "Idhukku thaan naan sonnen, India evlovo better, pesama India vanduru!"

* The concept of BPO. This is unique to our family, I guess.

Me - "Appa, I will bake a cake for your birthday..."
My dad - "Why, we can buy it from outside..."
Me - "Illa, I can bake decently, I like to bake..."
My dad - "Have you heard about the concept of business process outsourcing? When you can get others to do it quickly and efficiently, why put in your energy and time to do it? As it is you are so thin..."

Which brings me to another of preG's favourite topic. About how I need to gain weight.

After showing my dad my Salanga Pujai dance DVD, my dad says, "Now I know why you are so underweight. Reduce your dance classes, eat more, you need to gain weight..."

My mom - "That's why she had that pain in her foot, because she is so thin..."

Unfortunately, I sneezed then...so, both of them chime in, "See, you need to put on weight. 110 pounds is a joke! Then you won't sneeze so often!"

* Landlines are essential.

Mom - "Why can't you have a land line?"
Me - "We have 2 cell phones and we work at the same office..."
Mom - "Still, you should have a land line, so we can reach you there also..."
Me - "But I carry my cell with me at all times..."
Mom - "You should have a landline."

So yes, landlines are essential.

And so on, if I can write a booklet about my parents, I can write a mega-serial about my in-laws stay but I'll reserve that for later. Our house has been a whirlwind of activity the past five months. And now it's back to just us and our not-so-great utensils that we will use to cook what we can after the five-month break.

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The ipod story.

I am now in possession of a brand new enough-to-sleep-in memory-equipped ipod. And how it came about in my hands is an interesting story. Like everything else related to India, this ipod by virtue of staying in India assumed the Indian character-trait of making every process a bit more colorful and interesting than it originally was designed to be!

My sweet uncle bought a bunch of these ipods as gifts to take to India to distribute to my cousins and relatives. He had one extra and thought it might be a nice gift for my bro, ~L. L, being his lazy, wd-rather-not-move-an-inch self, politely refused. I had given him a neat ipod shuffle ages ago and he is very very particular about the songs he listens to, so much so that he adds the same song multiple times in his shuffle so it plays more. My uncle insisted and finally ~L said yes and this is where the journey begins.

From California, US -> Chennai

My uncle left the ipod with my mom and dad and asked ~L to pick it up when he visits them in Chennai. ~L lives in Bombay.

From Chennai -> Bombay

~L miraculously remembered to pick up the ipod the next time he visited Chennai.

From Bombay1 -> Bombay2

Enter RS. So, a few weeks back mom mentioned that the ipod was lying unopened with ~L. "What?!" exclaimed k! "160GB ipod and lying unopened?!". Self joined in exclamations.

Mom said without much excitement, "Yes, just like the perfume boxes you gave me, they lie neatly in the bureau, I haven't even opened the box", such pride in her last statement. Jeez! Coming back to the ipod, we immediately called ~L.

"Yeah, it's there. Haven't opened it."

Repeat exclamations by k and me. I think I heard ~L yawn, "Too boring to transfer all my songs to the new ipod."

"I need it. I need it."

"Yawn. Ok."

So, now the next question was, how should he send it. ~L wouldn't dream of actually posting the thing to us. Too much work! Enter ~P, k's sis. Fortunately, she was in Bombay at that time for her vacation, planning to return back early January.

"Send it through ~P."

"Ok. Gotta go."

He agreed. A miracle.

Several weeks later, having missed ~P several times, ~L decided to make his job easier. He dropped the ipod with k's uncle who lives close to his workplace in Nariman point.

A day before she left, ~P picked the ipod from her uncle's place. Whew!

Bombay -> Lawrence, Kansas

~P reached Lawrence and was duly troubled by k and me to send the ipod asap! We can't wait a second longer!

Lawrence -> Lexington

And now, it lies happily in our home. Unused, but at least with us. Such bliss.

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A pongal story.

Once upon a time Varuna Bhagawan and Vayu Bhagawan decided to go to God and ask him for a long vacation. They were bored with their work. So they went to God and said, "We work everyday and think we deserve a vacation". God thought about it for sometime. Anyway Kaliyugam has to end soon, perhaps Vayu and Varuna Bhagawan will help end Kaliyugam by taking their vacation now. And so he said, "Ok, you both can take a 10 year vacation." From that day, Varuna Bhagawan stopped forming clouds and creating rain and Vayu Bhagawan stopped creating air and winds. As a result, earth became dry and hard. Crops stopped growing. As God watched, one farmer continued plowing his land, day after day. So, God approached him and said, "Everywhere the earth is parched and crops have stopped growing. So, why do you continue to plow? I am curious." The farmer replied, "Today, there is no rain and wind and the earth is dry. But, what if it starts to rain tomorrow? What if the earth becomes rich and moist again? Then, I should still remember how to do my duty, to plow and raise crops!" And thus even God learnt a lesson from the farmer, to always do one's duty, no matter what.

Thenkachi Swaminathan narrated this simple, sweet pongal-story on Sun TV yesterday :)


Kanu outside our house, bet this was the first time my mom kept kanu while trying to keep her hands from freezing completely! Kanu in the winter rocks!

Happy pongal to all of you!

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On Organic, going green and all that good stuff

Couldn't resist posting about Clorox buying Burt's bees. For sometime now, I have been a fan of burt's bees products. Their website is clean, lists ingredients and even mentions the % to which a product is natural. I have used their products and the really nice thing is I have been able to recognize the ingredient list in their products - I mean, who wants to discover after ten years of shampoo use that sodium-lauryl-suphate is dangerous? I think one of the problems is the complicated chemical names that the consumer cannot recognize easily, add to it labelling like "Natural", "xyz-free (for eg: formaldehyde)" and the whole process gets more confusing. If I buy a nail polish that is formaldehyde-free, does that mean it has no other harmful ingredients?

And then there is the whole ethical issue. The product might be safe to use but may not exactly be doing good to our fellow-species. Leather is reasonably safe to use but I for one would try to avoid buying leather products where possible for obvious reasons.

And then there is nature. A product with the slogan "No animal testing" need not necessarily be good for our environment. It just means there is no lab where animals were tested with the product. It might still be made using petrochemical derivatives that are not bio-degradable and will not be for the next billion years!

And then there is GMO, cloning, irradiation and other processes that our good old food goes through in the name of "decontamination" (who would think frozen corn could be genetically modified?!) and how they are not required to be labeled such.

And so on and so forth. Sometimes the old ways are really the ways to go (such as our old friend, soap, who will go a long way with us :). Actually, let me rephrase that, old, time-tested ways rock, almost all the time (Blech, I sound like someone who hasn't read Who moved my Cheese, I did read it - it just does not apply in this case :p)!

Anyways, interesting how the big bad boys are at least trying to clean up their acts. There is some hope, after all.

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Information, Time and Us.

I used to wonder why old(er) people, the general category of uncles, aunts, parents, in-laws and others, began conversations with "In those days...". I used to think that that was such a non-starter. Because "those days" were relevant to the people who talked about them, not the teenager who is listening to them half-heartedly, stifling a yawn. I wonder if I am making the transition from the latter to the former. At least in the sense that I want to begin my conversations with "In those days..."

Anyway, the thing with those days is, to put it simply, "time". It seems the sepia-tinted photographs of yesterday represented people who had time at their disposal. And to seek information, they went to institutions like the public library, relied on word-of-mouth and mostly advice from elders and wise men. Those days when people would have laughed if you told them "books" might become obsolete (books, not ebooks, just plain good old books). The days when time-management was not a science learnt from books or blogs but an art that women and men learned and passed on from one generation to another. I guess the difference I am trying to point out is for instance, waiting for your patti to finish her chores so she settle down to your favorite story-telling time versus downloading AmarChitrakatha from the internet and reading it to your kid right now because he wants to hear it now - the anticipation that fills the wait-time makes all the difference, doesn't it? Perhaps that is not feasible because we live here and patti in India , to me it is again a question of time and how much of it we are willing to spend on ourselves and on others...something that this generation of self-help (American?) books keep quoting - "Spend time pampering yourself", "Relax and spend time just the way you want it"...And in this indulgence is lost a much greater time that you think...

Fast forward a few decades and you reach "my school days" when I did not check email, did not know what SMS meant, orkut/myspace/facebook did not exist and instant-messaging was definitely not a buzz-word and greeting cards were not synonymous with hallmark. And then in Bits-Pilani, we were told we could use "Pine" and whoa! We could actually write electronic letters to each other. And that's what we did. Our emails were long and had a beginning, middle and end, somewhat like a letter.

Fast-forward a few more years and now I see kids that are always "logged in". Every morning, they check their cellphone for SMSs, missed-calls, voice-mails, next their preferred social community scraps or whatever the fad-word is that kids these days use to indicate incoming messages :p and then they log on to msn/yahoo/aol - actually I think they stay logged on through out the night - they just check for IMs they might have perhaps missed and then emails, RSS feeds, reddit/digg and so on. If the parents are lucky, the kids might have sneaked in a good-morning and actually made eye-to-eye contact...

And really, I am no better. Perhaps I don't scrap (see how this is also a verb now?) on social communities 25 times a day but I am definitely a product of this generation of people overloaded with bits and bytes of information wherever they go (But a slightly older product and hence capable of standing at a vantage point and looking behind at a day when people were not so information-obsessed). While we are considered fortunate to have so much information so easily accessible (Imagine how much easier it is to locate a pizza hut and order a pizza - google even makes the call for you...well, come to think of it, it was probably more fun to stop and ask someone for directions and maybe discover parts of your city you had never seen before, but those are indulgences for people of a different time. Not us. We need information. Yesterday.), we also see situations where people have to actually make a resolution to stay off the internet. I remember an article talking about email becoming obsolete and then I remember reading about this guy who wanted to see how long he could exist without hitting google. Now, we have made the switch to "existing" without information, not just information as a way to make our existence more comfortable.

After making you read through five fat paragraphs about information overload, I am going to claim that I didn't really intend to write about IO.

I wanted to write about patience and time. Patience in a world that is constantly filling your thoughts and being - patience to actually open a scented letter wrapped in silk, filled with words written painstakingly, slowly by a human hand. Patience to write such a letter to a loved one. To take the time to think and write. Not type and then think about it. I wonder how different it would be to live in that sepia world of our old photos, to rise with the sun and have the time to serve hot coffee to your husband, just the way he likes it, and to savor the smell and moments of significant nothings, precious moments spent together before he buried his nose in the morning newspaper and I guess, at that moment, I would have sighed and walked back to the kitchen waiting for the other women in the house to rise and share "information" with me - limited but first-class information, like my first-class coffee...

First-class because I hear it from a human being. It might be prejudiced, incorrect, incomplete...but it is personal.

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Investing in Happiness.

My mom and I were having a late night discussion on happiness after watching Transformers (How is this relevant? It just is; movie-induced stupor sometimes brings out the subliminal into focus and trust me, there is more truth in that than meets the eye ;) So anyway, as we talked I realized how much of her happiness she has invested in others. I guess, to a certain extent, that holds true for all of us, doesn't it?

It's like we divide our big pool of happy thoughts and feelings and make little bundles of it that we hand out to people to manage. And once we have done that whether we feel completely at bliss is no longer in our control. It's the people who hold our little bundles that control our happiness and in extreme cases, we lead lives determined by these people, even a moment of happiness or the lack of it is not in our hands...

I guess it is unrealistic, humanly impossible to expect to control our happiness completely. Part of what makes life interesting is the unexpected events that occur in our lives, the unpredictable actions of people around us and our own imperfect selves and how our lives are intertwined. A healthy mishmash of all this and we have those surprising, lump-in-the-throat, touching moments that take our breath away...but sometimes we lose track of how much we have invested in others, how many of those packets of joy we have handed out to others, possibly even to those who don't deserve to hold them...the challenge is to hand them out cautiously and take back what should rightly only belong to us...

Yada yada. Too heavy for a post-christmas post :)

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to y'all!

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My christmas gift to myself!

Got mahself zis new pen!, would hardly do justice to it unless I put it to paper and so...

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