Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Why I like cooking...

Because it's as easy as this:

Salt and sugar and every spice 
Blended in with oil and rice
Along with yogurt cold as ice
Make my dinner yummy and nice :)

And that's how you make biryani!
 
 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Happy Birthday Harish


Three little words make my day a little brighter
Three little words as good as a three day spa
Three little words that make me fly
Three little words take me high into the sky

Make me smile every day those three little words
They take my breath away those three little words
Please say them again those three little words
I'd give it all away for those three little words

Three little words the first time they were said
Made my head spin those three little words did
Three little words penned down on parchment
brought tears to my eyes those three little words did

Simple songs they make me sing all day and night
I'm humming all the time be it cloudy or bright
Powerful as a drug they let me sleep so sound
Solid as a wall they keep my feet on the ground

They make you a promise with every syllable
They tell you my story like I never could
They make me yours to always cherish and love
They are all I have for you from my treasure trove

Saturday, October 20, 2012

I'm back!

It has been quite a while since I wandered in here. An update since I last posted - quit my job, got a US F1 student visa to study management information systems. Spent the summer at Austin, tripped around, made awesome new friends, and pissed off some others. College life will never bore me. And I'm glad to be doing this for another year.

Find a job. Everyone tells me to do it. There's no dearth of advice floating around, and I love my life for that - so many well-wishers don't want me to take the wrong path and end up failing. But heck, the US has taught me to fail well. But I found happiness in so many things, and learned more about myself than I ever knew. There's some things you just can't get rid of, they become a part of you and don't let go no matter how much people around you disapprove.

Anyway, this post is more than a status update or random musing. I'd like to pick at one particular topic - learning a new language. I took zero-credit Beginner's Spanish classes without thinking. Four subjects apart from this, one TA class - I was effectively taking 6 subjects, not to mention look for a job and work on graduating safely. Of course, all this was before I decided to push graduation to next year. But it turned out to be the most instructive class ever. New grammar rules, new wording, present, past participle, "gerunds" - all of them take me back to school days when I used to love playing with English grammar, a love that I carried with me through college and work and left off abruptly after. Maybe it was a fear of being judged. This fear is not without cause - I know how much people talk about blogs that bore them more than those that entertain, which could be hard to find among one's immediate circle of acquaintances, and I'm sure this one must have bored more than one person at some point.

I digress. Why wouldn't I! It's what makes editing a sweet challenge - digressions. It's not eliminating them that makes it fun, it's following the train of thought that flows underneath the words that makes them special. Right now I'm just typing without making too many corrections except for spelling errors. It's just what's coming out of my brain and onto the keyboard in a very un-graphic way, probably fueled by a bright screen in a dark room and the gentle urges of a backlit keyboard. I'm so not going to edit this post!

So where was I then? Yes - Spanish. Spanish is a beautiful language - the musical sounds, the rolling 'r' that I sorely missed after a year of listening to people swallowing it, the ease of spelling out what was just said and being correct, unlike French, where reading out written French in a room full of French people would make you stick out like a sore thumb. In Spanish, all you need to do is remember that "j" is actually "h", "v" is actually "b" and "ll" is actually "y" and you're half-way there! Conversational Spanish is easy to pick up and native speakers are tolerant to errors and just get you as long as you get the verb right. Throw in the professor who is perennially affable - you've got yourself a nice cheesecake with whipped cream and cherry on top. Yeah yeah exaggeration - but I'm learning a new language! How often do people do that and really enjoy it?

I'm a big fan of the song "Bhaja Govindam" where Adi Shankaracharya advises a fool to stop nit-picking about grammar and start paying attention to the Almighty and attain various human virtues and calling God's name. Totally agree, but no harm in indulging in learning grammar and being the fool for a while. Not today when you can't really get away from a crocodile by making promises of giving up material pleasures tomorrow - they just don't understand when you're begging, all they really want is a square meal really. But no matter what part of the millenium, I sincerely believe that all humans owe it to themselves to live life to the fullest and never have regrets or fears, especially of things such as religion and other people, unless said people own guns of course.

The point? Go learn Spanish! Here's a list of countries you would survive in, if you did it properly. Until next rant then! Hasta luego!


Sunday, September 05, 2010

Life Afterlife


Life was back then, till the summer of '09
Afterlife came after that, I'd already begun to pine.

Life was when I went to college
Short days and nights on high gear
Afterlife's when I live with the knowledge
That the weekdays are alike and weekends are dear.

Life was when I had all the choices
Every flavor I had tried and tested
Afterlife brought its own juices
Most were water, sugar, and I adjusted.

Life was when I didn't care what I was doing,
So long as I was having fun
Afterlife is when I don't know what I'm doing,
Or why; all I do is run.

Run the rat race at a fast pace,
Or it'll be nothing but all things bad.
Find yourself in the sewage or in a lab,
But do it fast, or you'll be had.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Question.

I was watching a movie today on TV and there was this commercial about great weekend getaways on islands or something. I thought, "Wow, how lovely if i had an island of my own." Strange how mundane this thought actually is. Surely everyone will want an island to themselves. But there really aren't islands for all of us. What then? Do we dismiss this want as a lofty dream that can only be an abstraction and can never turn into reality? Why? I really want an island. I want to dig up sand castles and put little flags on them and build a home for my people to live a-happily. It seems much more important than having a job and earning money. Of course, earning money is a given since noone in my family owns an island and even if someone did, it wouldn't be a part of my legacy. So i'd have to have money to buy an island. But then, in the end, if i had that money, my childhood ambition of visiting all the countries in the world would need funding, and then i'd have to earn more money sitting on my new island.
I'm going wayward; my point is this: what happens to the dreams and aspirations of humans, both lofty and otherwise? Do they, in some weird way, serve as a reason for existence? Some people i know would say, "No, that's responsibility. You exist because you have to fulfil your responsibilities and obligations." Whatever.
I'm going wayward again, but more purposefully so. The thing is that there is not enough resources on this planet to fulfil our aspirations. I'm sure someone will disagree saying, "Hey, all i really want is X or Y or S(p) to be happy. I don't need the earth's resources to fulfil that!" But still, if we take a majority, it really is difficult to satisfy everyone's dreams. And then, our dreams keep changing and morphing and growing all the time. What of those? And then what about the things that we need? Clean air, broader roads with lesser potholes, more schools, cheaper access to air travel, etcetera, those are essential and their absence infuriates us and makes us want them and thus add them to our wish list. So with this growing list of wants on the one hand and the inability of the Earth, Nature, Technology, Fate, God, whatever to fulfil it all on the other, we have a pair of weary hands far apart. I'd prolly pause to admire the wide shoulders of this huge being, which, i assume to be a human male, but that would be going wayward for the third time.
Having now explained the situation in detail, my next exploration is in the direction of the theory of action to take in such a scenario. What dyou do when you want something?
A. You start working towards it diligently from Day 0,
B. You want something else 30 minutes later and are confused
C. You remind yourself that you have responsibilities on your shoulder,
D. You achieve it with ease, and plan your next item on the wish list.
The ideal action would be D. But none of us is perfect. So how do we do this? I mean, if this is the purpose of living, we have simply got to do something, right?
Yeah, there are things that we can do. Like wanting simpler things and not always building castles in the air, staying focused on one goal at a time, etcetera. By the way, what i'm actually doing here is simply talking to myself. There is not much take-away material here for a reader. You're simply witnessing the introspections of a confused person being essayed here.

At the end of it, I recollect some thoughts from friends on this subject, such as this: The mind is usually wanting things, and the man becomes a servant of the mind. He must, instead, concentrate on being content, selfless and temperate. That's not really possible by everybody. That kind of philosophy may be applied as i border on senior citizenship. It really is the purpose of life: WHAT I WANT. Unnerving? So true!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

"y no mail?"

I was reading my some old mails and came across quite a few mails i had sent to my cousins and brother and sister-in-law. What I saw made me want to shake my head to clear the dew collecting inside my head. I had been so brazenly open about whatever I wanted them to do, and they would always reply with a sorry. I've never really been all that brave with anyone, but when it came to emails, here i was ordering them around! Well it wasn't really all that bad but still, I'm just surprised that those were written by me.

My first incoming mail was spam. CIAL1S for a 13 year old girl! No wonder it was unread mail. 'Course, Harish anna had probably instructed me not to open such mails. Did he tell me what Cial1s was? I really don't remember.


dear anna,
wot happened?i've not heard 4m u 4 @least 2 m's!!!
btw i m cruising thru my hols and 2morrow i get my xam
results.got 2 go to the kovil u no!btw,my cousin Reshmi's here and she's leaving 2de 4 kozhikode.h annas here.wt more?
pls do tell me when u r coming back 2 our dear Bharat mahaan!?
so long since i seen u .whn is ur course finishin?pls dont forget to mail.
anna says u r going thru a lot of tuf times.sok.tuf times do come u no?
of corz u do.ha !joke of the ear!!! ;-)anys pls reply soon.
be,
poochai.


I know it's crazy of me to post this here, but I couldn't help noticing how different I am now from back then. This was sent to a cousin when I was 15. My English was bad and I used the SMS language. The subject of the mail was: 'y no mail?'. I struggled to read and understand it today. I posted it here because I had a hearty laugh reading it, and invite you to read your first email, if you were born at the right time :)

FYI,
Wrote that email during my vacations after 10th standard to a cousin in the US.
Kovil means temple in Tamil.
Kozhikode is a place in Kerala. A lot of people I know haven't heard of the place, and most can't pronounce it. You gotta roll your tongue a particular way to get the 'zhi' part right.
H anna means Harish Anna, my brother.
Poochai in Malayalam means cat. It was one of my pet names.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

It was all meant to be.

Always thought life was white and snowy
Just didnt wanna know it was not.
Always wished for things too early
Could have waited, it's my fault.

Why would I be upset and complain
When all is fine and set to rumble
But in fact its all a new terrain
'Course its my fault when I stumble

Lots of wise words from everyone
All having sense, I'm guessing
After all, they say, it's your decision
Wont take no blame for messing.

All the hope and faith I had
On the plans that had been laid
Of a life-like dream I'd had
Or is it a dreamy life I lead?

In the mechanics of routine life
The little joys I've lost
Like golden rows of candlelight
In a hallway caught by a draught.

Standing under the shower
I wash my woes away
It's right then that I wonder
Why it rained today.