Grapes - No one can eat just one!

Is it possible to overeat grapes? Can one ever be enough?
This season we seem to have had a bumper crop of grapes and suddenly they were there everywhere (though not cheap enough to our liking considering the abundance). Needless to say, we had lots and lots of grapes. I would like to say 'to our hearts content' but with sun-kissed, translucent, jewel-like shimmery juice filled orbs, my heart is bottom-less! I know one might be thinking that the apt organ to be mentioned here considering my drooling here should be the Stomach, but remember we are still talking about eating to one's hearts content? Yeh Dil maange more...and some more!

The other day I bought about 2kgs of grapes from the nearby local market. Tiny orbs of jade look alike sweetness!! And Amma was like why 2kgs; they would get wasted! Ha ha..famous last words!! They didn't even last the day - all tucked in by Appa, me and the skeptic Amma herself!! We had to specifically store away some for S & P!!

Oh, for the sweet love of grapes!!
And for those who didnt get enough grapes in this season - Don't worry, I am sure there will be some 'sour grapes' for you!!

P.S. If you can stop yourself from reaching out for the next one, you win the title of the Mega-Grape-resistor!!

The 5 things I like about Bangalore

The other day when I was visiting a dear friend, we all were talking about Bangalore and related lifestyle, vis a viz Hyderabad. S and me were nostalgically reminiscing our post-marriage time at Hyd and felt that the quality of life was better there. I guess we gave off a feeling that we didn't like Bangalore too much. 
That's not quite true. Yes, I would prefer Hyderabad anytime, but it isn't like Bangalore doesnt have its share of good things.

So, here are the top 5 things that I like about Bangalore ( not in any particular order)
1. Food - When it comes to the variety in cuisines, Bangalore is definitely heads and shoulders above other cities that I frequent. The city is littered with small cafes and bistros ( my favorite cuisine), pastry and gourmet ice cream parlours, different international cuisines and the inevtiable resultant fusions! And not forgetting the 'cannot-do-without' Sagars.  Tell me where else one can find a restaurant dedicated to eggs, a la The Egg Factory at St. Marks Road?? Or a new food joint opening almost every week??

The IT revolution made Bangalore a big melting pot of flavors. For a curious foodie on a budget (like me), this aspect of Bangalore truly rocks. All this with without even exploring the old Bangalore and Avenue road? So, go figure!

2. Weather - There is no denying to this fact at all! Though I often lament about the lack of sunshine or dull grey saprofic weather, where else can u find a foggy morning at 8am? Summers are hot and uncomfortable anywhere in India for me, but a hour in sultry Chennai has me hallucinating about Bangalore. 

3. Weekend breaks - The options are so many and each one so tempting. Albeit we haven't done as many as we would have wanted too, there is a certain  pleasure in the knowledge that its possible!!

4. Road trips - The proximity of Bangalore to Chennai and Gudiyatam has allowed us to take quite a few road trips, which we wouldn't have otherwise done so. Good highways, the feel of speed and good music make the journey as exciting as the destination. Rubber meets road, iPod on the Aux input and we are groovin'!

5. Street shopping - For the shopoholic me, how can I not mention this? Though not unique to Bangalore and definitely not the best that I have seen, but its quite good in its own right!! And then, there are so many malls too.



See, Bangalore isnt all that bad (for me). Like any city, it has its own charm and guess it will also grow on me.

Finding the "connect"

In her book 'Eat Pray Love', Elizabeth Gilbert rightly captures how I feel in crowded regilious places. She says....
"In my stay at the Ashram, there were never more than few hundred residents at any time. If the Guru herself had been in residence, those numbers would have swollen considerablely, but she was never in India  when I was there. ...... Its not considered essential to be in her literal presence in order to keep up your studies with her. But there is, of course, the irreplaceable high of actually being around a living Yogic master,..... But many longtime devotees agree that it can also sometimes be a distraction - if you are not careful, you can get all caught up in the celebrity buzz that surrounds the Guru and lose focus of your true intention. Whereas if you go to one of her Ashrams and discipline yourself to keep austere schedule of practices, you will sometimes find that it is easier to communicate with your teacher fron within these private meditations than to push your way through the crowds of eager students and get a word in edgewise in person."

While she talks about her experiences of finding spiritual guidance, I am relating to the more simpler and common ritual of going to a temple or going for darshan in an ashram. Very few times have I found the peace that  begets devotion in such places; the connect where you feel the oneness with God or feel that there is only Him and you there giving you the clarity of a sincere prayer. Often the crowds distract - either I am annoyed at being jostled, or distracted by the people around, or just simply amused by the way people try to outsmart/jump queues or am busy counting similar lost souls who are 'caught up in the buzz' but lost focus on true intention of being there.
One of the few places where I have felt the deep connect despite the huge crowds has been Shirdi. There is something there - some vibration that makes you unaware of the crowd once you see Baba. Then for few earthly moments (and many ethereal ones), its only you and Him. A darshan there despite how long it takes always has been moving and deeply satisfying.
Another such incident was when we went to Kapaleeshwar kovil at Mylapore on the 13th day of Appa's passing away. I have gone there many times and it is definitely a very peaceful enchanting place, albeit often a tad bit crowded for my taste in the main sannadhis. But on that day somehow I felt, when in Kapaleeswarar sannadi, that He was telling me that Appa was with him now and would always be looking down upon us. Maybe that was my frame of mind then and hence I was easily suspectible to such thoughts. Nevertheless, the peace the 'connect' brought is indeed something indescribable.
Coming back to the crux of this post, I seem to find the connect with my God at different times and at various odd places; almost never in temples which are usually others seem to.....
Reading the above prose makes me go, "there you go lady, you stole those words right out of my mind!!! And you have said it so well too!"

Guzaarish

I finally got around seeing the movie, Guzaarish! I am glad that I didnt see it when it was being talked about and was 'in the hype', but rather when I was in the mood to watch it. I am really sure if I had done so, I would have come out hating the over-melodramatic movie. But watching it when I was in a mellow mood made it a nice experience.


Yes, it still is an overtly melodramatic movie and possibly an over glorified account of a quadriplegic. But hey, kudos to Hirthik for play the role to a T. And to Sanjay Leela Banshali....the man really is an artist - dares to be different, take make lyrical movies leaving behind beautiful visual imagery, and pick topics dealing with disabilities and treats them sensitively. 


Having said all that, his movies are similar to those of K Jho, only in the fact that like how you need to be in a certain frame of mind to take all the pinky fluffy cotton candy stuff KJho doles out, you need to be in a certain frame of mind to deal with the dark, blue, slow emotional stuff Bhansali makes you see.


I dont know what penchant he has with the victorian/old-english look - all the swirly skirts, corset like blouses, black coats and hats. You can see them in most of his movies. I have to admit that it looked amazing on Aishwarya Rai. She does look really pretty with her elaborately braided hair and ruby red lips. But hey, what about her role? Didnt give much scope to her for her share of histronics...Guzarish is a Hirthik's movie out and out.

IMO, its worth a watch, esp when you are feeling a bit blue....


P.S. Hmm...Bhansali as a music director is quite nice. Sau gram zindagi is a nice song that fits the movie very well....

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Old habits die hard, but old fears die harder!!

I was working from home today and while sitting on my bed doing so, I notice something dark, small and oblong'ish speck on it. My heart leapt up and had this most horrendous thought - what ...is that a bed bug?? No not again...please God!! Thats when this line came to my head - Old habits die hard, but old fears die harder!! - and now this blog post...

One would wonder what is to be so scared of a measly little thing like a bug. But hey, bed bug to all its credit is no small mite! (Indeed, it is a mighty mite.) And I, to my credit, am not that easily scared of tiny little things (well, not most ...ok ok..just cockroaches. And for all you *smart* readers, lizards are not insects, and now I am digressing!)

We had a bad case of bed-bugs which started 2 years ago and lasted almost a year long! The origins are still a mystery. The infestation started in one bedroom occupied by my BIL and Paati (so, were our parasitical visitors from the hospital or from the lovely BMTC buses??). It took Amma to figure out that something was ticklishly crawling over her when she used that bed one rare night. Next morning, she moved the sheets and our small dark lovelies were running around, like how the villagers of Ramgarh ran when Gabbar (and/or his henchmen) came into the village.

At first, Amma was the most worried and I was like yeah-whatever-these-are-just-bugs-and-will-go-away, but there was some growing up to do on my part I guess! Never had seen bed-bugs before and had heard about them (like 'oh-that-theater-it-has-bugs' and in the famous parody of Kishore Kumar 'Dheere se jaana kathiyan mein re kathmal...'), I was curious to see how they looked and was even amused that we had them in our house.

But little did I know that my amusement was my undoing....

Our little pests grew and multiplied and were really going places. First to the hall sofa, the next bedroom and the worst of all, in my bed!! And sometimes, to my high embarrassment, I found the scurrying menace in my office bag, tucked in my notebook and I would hurriedly throw them in the dark dustbin. Let’s hope that I did infest that measly office of mine!!

Then began our bug-fighting saga - we got a first round of fumigation done. We had to spend a night outside the house and happily camped in Chitappa's house. It was all still a new experience then and there was a faint novelty around it all. But the fumigation hardly did anything. Maybe all the bugs had a happy smokin' time then, sitting around drugged by the smoke and jiving to 'Dum maro dum.....'

Then, the combat went to the next level. More reputed pest control company came in and with them, they got extremely smelly sprays. The smell was so nauseating that we were sure that if I could wreak havoc on us, sturdy 5ft+ human beings, these 0.5 inches bugs will die instantly. Well, the eternal optimism of us simple humans! The bugs - some died and attained moksha while the rest lived on to take revenge.

The sprays became a routine every 45 days and new generations of bugs would breed. I am sure some Bheeshma Pitamaah bug would have been relegating the war stories to the young ones, making them stronger and cleverer than us humans (with our five senses and all that). Who knows, maybe a Gitopedesh might have also happened in the hidden recess of our cots!

Meanwhile, most of the family members gave up and were resigning to accept these bugs as family , rakthapaasam and all that (loosely translated to 'blood is thicker than water' and after all, these mites did have our blood running in their veins (do they have veins?). But, it was a personal vendetta for me. I was itching (yeah literally itching all over) for their blood. Confusing right? Their blood was my family's blood and how could I shed that! But hey, I never killed any of the bugs. I always threw them off my balcony so that they could run into some other apartment or maybe some unsuspecting pedestrian took the little one home. Who knows, maybe they have a homing instinct...the result was there were always more bugs for me to find.

I added a new nightly ritual - search for bugs before sleeping and irritate the hell out of my poor husband! And then took to leaving the tube light on in the hope that they won’t venture out in the light. You see they like the dark, but I guess they liked my blood more.

Then came more changes - let’s throw away our old mattress, refurbish our sofa...and with all of them went out a new colony of bugs; like voyagers setting out to find and colonize new territories. We spent money like bug spray, but still no avail.

Eventually when we gave the old teak (sigh sigh) cots and still bugs were treating our house like their property, we realized their headquarters was in our cot. My wedding cot, the first thing that S and me bought together??? Noooooo (think hindi movie style 'Nahiiiiiiin!!').

So, tired of calling pest control companies and turning the house upside down and doing tonnes of laundry each time, we tried the DIY method. We got advice on how painting the bed will seal the pores and hence lock the bugs in. So, armed with sticky varnish and some brushes, S and I spent a precious weekend painting the bed and then cleaning the mess we made on the floor.

The bug spray smell was well lodged in our noses by then and the varnish's sickly smell fought hard to find space there. Yuck and a double yuck!

A week of short lived euphoria and then our friends returned again!! 'Athithi tum kab jaaoge?'

Sadly, we bit the bullet and decided to dispose our huge cot. That followed by another round of stronger fumigation where we sealed the house for 48 hours this time, we hoped that we would have finally reclaimed possession to our house.

For 2 weeks, we were edgy and not proclaiming any result...finally, things became normal and we could say that the bed-bug chapter is closed.

There are times when I still check under the mattress, corners of the bedcovers - like I said before, old habits die hard!

And yeah, that thing that I saw on my bed today - well, that was a piece of rolled up thread! Whew!!

Addendum to The Tiger Mom - The Calvin way!

Calvin & Hobbes captures the sentiment and Calvin's parent's elternal dilemma almost to near perfection. I just love the strips where his parents appear.

A sample:

The Tiger Mom

The pharse that launched a thousand words: Tiger Mom

The new hotly debated topic is nothing very new - something that has been the major topic of contention in all houses - how to bring up kids!!

Amy Chua wrote an essay in WSJ about how Chinese moms are strict and use disciplinary methods to bring up their kids, striving at every available moment to make them the very best. She contrasts this with the Western way of friendly and sensitive handling.

This has caused a huge online uproar and there are so many megabytes has been written commending, complaining, defending and tearing Amy to pieces.

I see it in two different dimensions.

One, a more tangential view is that it is so amusing to see how people get riled up on such things rather than ignoring it as her view. Read the essay and you will realize that she isn't even labelling the Westren way as bad; but in my opinion, she is just contrasting it with what she thinks is right.

It is just so easy to start off a war....even a war of words. And I am sure this will color the already jaded view on all asian ways. We will still continue to be seen as backward barbarians in the eyes of the 'liberal modern westerner'.

The other dimension is on the hot topic itself. Is Amy right or is she wrong? Well, thats depends. We have often heard and to some extent seen the adage 'spare the rod and spoil the child' in action. I think its neither right nor wrong as it entirely depends on the circumstance. There are moments when a misbehaving child needs to be admonished without us worrying too much about what it will do to the child's self esteem and also times when sensitive handling will go a long way in building the confidence.

As an adult now, when I look back, I can appreciate now many of the instances when my parents have been strict with me or haven't given permission for doing certain things.

If they hadnt been strict about eating all veggies, I certainly wouldn't have developed the love for them (but the thought of cauliflower curry still scares me; I eat it in limited portions nevertheless). Most importantly, he taught me that everything is worth trying at least once. This lesson goes a long way for me now.

Going to music classes when I couldnt (and still cannot) sing even a single note right after school when we could be playing; it certainly wasnt the most enjoyable experience. But looking back, if they had given up on that then, I wouldnt have developed the basic taste and the ability to appreciate classical music. And we also made some very good friends there and got our share of playtime too!

I can go on listing many many such things - each fundamental to my 'now' personality; nurtured lovingly over years with equal doses of love and discipline. I think the most basic underlying fact that was always imparted to me and my sister was that they loved us the most and whatever they did was for our good. And thats what has made us successful as good human beings today.

In my opinion, people who are riling up against Amy is missing this fundamental piece - her children are happy, loved and secure in that knowledge that they are loved.

I am not saying that the Western way of leniency and individualism is wrong. But that also needs moderation similar to how discipling needs.

Most kids dont even know if they like something or not. They want to play the guitar because the cool teenager does so, or the hero in the movie did so. Maybe they would like the piano too, but they see only serious, 'stuffed-shirt' old people doing so.Maybe initiating them slowly to classical music might spark off their interest?

It is a bit too much to expect five or even ten year olds to know what they like or will be good at. They like bread and jam one day and hate it the next day!

But pushing them to be the best in all fields is taking it too far. When the need to excel comes in, the fun aspect dies taking the creative spark along with it. Then things can easily become a punishment than an hobby. If all children got A+ grades, then whats the point? The bar will automatically rise and the definition of A+ changes and we all will be square one again!

Amy mentions in her essay that no chinese mom will accept anything less than A+ from her child. But hey, I would like to see a class of all chinese kids where everyone gets A+. It is just not possible.

Obviously, the method applied has to change and adapt as the child grows up.

Trying to treat a child like an adult hardly works; but teaching the child how to be one always will! And probably the most important thing to remember is that like how each child is unique and special, so is every parent!

Well, all this from a person who has zero experience in parenting but has over 30+ years of being brought up by 'not-so-Tiger' parents!

By the way, the essay is at

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

Ra Ra Cinnanna.....

Such a beautiful song.....

rArA cinnanna.

rAgA: cenjuruTi.

Adi tALA.

Annamacharya Kriti

P: rArA cinnanna rArOri cinnavADa rArA muddu lADa rArOri bAlakrSNa rArA (krSNa rArA)

C1: kindi cUpula giligilinci Alamanda golletala mariginci
sandadi valapinci javarAla Ura vindavainayaTTi vEDuka kAdA rArA

2: podalu mATalane goNagucu bhUmi sudatula cikkulu cUrADi
ciduku cetalalane ceNakucu muddu pedda vicavulu cUpina jaNakadA rArA

3: kaliki tanamunane karaginci kATSi celula kagiTanE celagi
lalanA maNiyaina lakki mamma talacuka shrI vEnkaTa nAthuDaina vADa