Bits And Pieces

Clichéd though it may sound, it IS really the small things that make life "funner".  Here are a few things that can help improve the quality of your life –   Get Wet Water is amazing! Never EVER miss a chance to be near/in water (unless great white sharks are swimming around). H 2 O can be your personal therapist and masseur. It can even get you contemplating the origins of our universe. Get drenched when you go to theme parks. Walk in the rain once in a while. Go to a beach and let the waves kiss your feet. Have a luxuriating bath. As long you are not drowning, water really is your best friend. Get Addicted NEVER TO DRUGS/CIGARETTES!!! Addictions can provide immense satisfaction. Just make sure to pick one that is not harmful to you in the long run. Ever started to read a book and realized you can't put it down without finishing it? That dear friends, is addiction. There are a zillion addictions to pick from once you start looking. Become a movie buff, or becom...

Sorry about the highly pedestrian title guys. If Benjamin Button , and a dog in the night can have curious cases, well, so can I! What happened - I had a mobile phone in India paired with an Indian SIM card. Now here in the US (where I'm currently kuppa kottufying*) I have the same mobile phone with (Surprise Surprise!) an American connection. I keep getting a particular kind of weird Call on my phone all the time. Sometimes, several days pass by with no signs of it, and on other days it wreaks vengeance with an annoyingly high frequency. For two years now I have had this problem. The Call leaves no trace. Never shows up in my Missed or Received Calls list. It comes up as "Unknown". You try to reason with whoever/whatever only to be greeted by dead silence on the other end. One can only wonder at the intellectual genius of the Call that can so effortlessly transcend SIM card boundaries! What everyone said - "You have a stalker! Kalakku**!!" (??? Serio...

When you've lived more than half your life looking at the world through four eyes, it can be quite magical to once again use only two to experience the world like with the four. LASIK can do that to you. It can change your world, especially if you are able to relate to what i have to say below. It all started when i was in 2nd standard. The math(s) teacher always used to give us mental sums in the beginning of the class as a small test of what we'd learnt until then. Funnily, i always got the audio questions correct, but when the questions went up on the black board, i muddled up the 8's with the 0's, the 3's with the 5's and ended screwing up my most important mental sums tests! I still manage a wry inner smile whenever i think of the agony that my younger self went through, not knowing the answer in spite of knowing the method. It took till 3rd standard before i could confide that there was something wrong with me, and i was terrified it was my fault. Let us...

Something just had to break. What with the waves of "SCAMS" (which is almost the name of a disease now) and the dumbass cover ups, it was just a matter of time before a few good people sat up and thought - "What the hell? I've got to do something about this menace". Kindly notice the use of the word "I'VE". It shows courage and patriotism. After all, it definitely can't be easy taking on the corrupt politicians of India head on. When we suffer from gastro-whatever problems (read stomach indigestion), we vomit. That's how the body cleanses itself of the muck that sits in the stomach. Our nation is currently undergoing a serious case of indigestion. No amount of Gelusil can help us. India has got to throw up or the puke will remain inside and cause further torment. Have you heard about the Lokpal Bill? What about the Jan Lokpal Bill? Don't worry if you haven't. That is why this post is up here. The Lokpal Bill allows "aapu adich...

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that most of our Indian on-stage speeches are just plain stuffy? Why doesn't anyone ever get to the point? Longer is definitely not the way to go, and yet, it seems to be the sole aim of the speaker to shush the audience to dreamland for at least half an hour. And don't even get me started on the Adjectives!!!! Why in the world does a mayor have to be "Worshipful"??!! We aren't in England for God's sake! And "Beloved"? "Radiant"? Sheesh. Such grandiloquence puts even the great bards to shame. The irony is, not even a single bit of any of this actually comes from the heart. Every word that is uttered is meant to butter up the "Dignitaries". Gone are the times when humility was considered to be a virtue and not a weakness. And while we are at it, let us not forget "Very". The ubiquitous "Very" has seeped through, into every speaker's "very" life blood. Isn...

My recent trip to Tirupati (to attend my friend's wedding) was fantastic! We had loads of fun. The wait for THE DARSHAN was an opportunity to get gossiping, and it didn't hurt that i got a wonderful eyeful of his highness Sri Venkatachalapathi. The laddu was definitely a welcome break after the mad rush and the ever famous "jaragandis" (guards yelling at you to move on). A small observation here - the smaller laddu given inside the temple seems to taste better than the larger ones we get outside. My friend's wedding went off quite well. The bride & groom looked gorgeous. We did what friends usually do at weddings and then headed back to our rooms and got started on this wonderful game of cards known as LITERATURE . "Thank you Srikanth chithappa for teaching it to me. You have no idea the amount of fun i've had with it." The heady combination of a slightly complex game and a few mercurial players ensured that the fun never went away. I think we m...

He wears saffron robes. He has a HUGE fan following. He is almost never politically correct. And he swears by Pranayama as the cure to everything. He is Baba Ramdev. To be honest, i was a bit skeptical at first when my mother told me about him a few years ago. Another "poli saamiyar" (fake godman) i thought. Over the last few years though, from what i have seen and heard of him, my opinion has changed quite a bit. He is a Baba of the masses. Wherever he conducts his shivirs (workshops) on yoga, it is not only the affluent people, but also the "aam junta" who throng the place. He seems to have Utopian dreams for India. He follows a 2 pronged approach : 1. Popularization of Yoga in every nook and corner of India 2. Taking on national issues like corruption and poverty head on. It is no secret that he has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his comments on non-vegetarianism, soft drinks, homosexuality and supposed miracle cures for incurable diseases. But the fa...