Claim to fame

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my first ever blog interview. Trying to hold in the excitement, I direct you to this webspace and request you to read up and tell me what you think of it.

I knew I should have got my “thank you speech” ready when I heard from them. Its too late now so I am just going to have to say  a simple but heartfelt thank you to the team that put together the interview and of course, all you blogging buddies ( you know who you are) without whom blogging wouldnt be half as fun as it is!

PS:Soli, IHM, Hitchy,Indy- with that interview, I am technically in your league now!

 

How dumb am I?

Not as dumb as you think. Here is a test to prove that.  Test courtsey  Monika’s blog. 

[] Gum has fallen out of your mouth when you were talking

[] Gum has fallen out of your mouth when you were NOT talking

[] You have run into a glass/screen door

[x] You have jumped out of a moving vehicle

You live in Bombay and use the public transport. You jump off moving vehicles all the time.

[x] You have thought of something funny while walking by yourself

[] Laughed, then watched people give you weird looks

[] You have run into a tree/bush.

[] You know that it IS possible to lick your elbow

[] You have tried to lick your elbow… a few times

[x] You never knew that the Alphabet and Twinkle Twinkle Little star have the same rhythm.

[x] You just tried to sing them.

[] You have tripped on your shoelace and fallen.

[] You have choked on your own spit .

[x] You have seen the Matrix and still don’t get it.

Did you understand it? Really understand it?

[] You’ve never seen the Matrix.

[] You type only with two fingers.

[x] You have accidentally caught something on fire

All the time in the kitchen.

[] You tried to drink out of a straw, but it went into your nose/eyes.

[] You have caught yourself drooling.

[] You have fallen asleep in class and fell outta your chair

[] Sometimes you just stop thinking

[x] You are telling a story and forget what you were talking about

Not a common occurrence but lets admit it, it has happened a few times.

[] People often shake their heads and walk away from you

[ ] You are often told to use your “inside voice”.

[x] You use your fingers to do simple math

Its just easier than fishing out a calculator or a cell phone.

[] You have eaten a bug ***YUCK!!!***

Err.. I am vegetarian.

[] You are taking this test when you should be doing something more important ..

Oh YEAH! I stopped important work to do this. I am seriously pushing deadlines here.

[x] You have put your clothes on backwards or inside out, and didn’t realize it

But I dint wear it outside the house, so  it shouldnt really count.

[] You’ve looked all over for something and realized it was in your hand

[] You have run around naked in your house.

[] You repost bulletins because you are scared that what they say will happen to you if you don’t.

[] You break a lot of things.

[] Your friends know not to use big words around you.

[] You tilt your head when you’re confused

[ x] You have fallen out of your chair before

Someone dragged it from under me. Does that count ?

[] When you’re lying in bed, you try to find pictures in the texture of the ceiling or wall

[] The word “ummmmm” is used many times a day.

If you convert the score  into percentage (10/37 *100 ) it comes to  27%. Not an impressive figure (thankfully) but somethings are so worth their “time pass” value!

 

The quiz result and (yet) another trip

I thought the quiz was a great idea. Hitchwriter thought it was a great idea to wrech my quiz. So he did all but declare the results. No, actually he did declare the results! Yup, that  was the picture of a cotton crop and Homecooked was the first one to guess it right. Homecooked, my friend, you are our official winner. Your virtual prize gift hamper shall be reaching you soon. Others who got the answer right were Hitchwriter (obviously!) Monika and copy-cat Craftyshines. I think I made this quiz a little too easy for you all. Be warned, the next one is not going to be so simple.  I am already  hunting for potential topics to formulate my quiz on. Hopefully my upcoming trip to Mount Abu will give me  some dope for the quiz.

I dont know why I bother unpacking at all. I am off to the hill station of Rajasthan for two days. This time its another staff training. The number of training modules they have been sending me for  this year would make anyone wonder if I am trainable at all!  I mean just how many times does one need to be trained? If I were to look at  my schedule, I’d say  at least one more time!

 

First ..

he dubaoes us in this

and then disappears for the longest time ever only to resurface with this

this

and this

How can you not like this guy? He has a silken voice and has  manage to succeed in an industry that reputedly functions primarily on having the right connections. He gives me hope. No matter whether or not you have a godfather, if you have talent and are willing to go through the grind, you might just find your spot under the sun.

Edited to add: How could I have forgotten Masakalli? May be coz I liked it when  I heard it the first 100 times and then got fed up of it!  Thanks for the reminder Monika and Solilio. Here is the song for your listening pleasure.

 

Sahi nahi

I think it was the ad that did it. ‘MTNL hai toh sahi hai’ it said. It lead my unworldly and innocent father to wrongly believe that MTNL was indeed the right choice for us. We had an MTNL phone to begin with but somewhere along the line we collected an internet connection and an IPTV by the same company.  Big mistake. Never put all your eggs in one basket. All thanks to MTNL we now have a fairly complicated situation at home. The IPTV and the internet have what can be described as an avoidance relationship. Simply put the two don’t work well together. Ditto for the internet connection and the telephone line. In my humble opinion, it’s the internet causing the problem. If you have the internet on, don’t switch on the TV because all you will get is odd looking shapes moving in painfully slow motion across the screen backed with a broken sound track. If you want to talk to a friend while another family member browses the internet, forget about it unless you are sure you are equipped with excellent concentration that can tune out that strange background noise the internet connection creates. Life is now a matter of constantly making choices for us.   The TV or the internet? The phone or the internet? And occasionally, a choice between the phone and the TV thrown in as well. Making choices that are acceptable to all family members at all times is stressful.

The unexpected developments of the last few days have done a lot to reduce the stress at home. We aren’t being forced to make choices and just that seems to have made our life so much easier. When only one of the three services you have subscribed to works, there is no question of making a choice, you see. The present scenario is such that only MTNL’s telephone seva works, all others are dead. Reasons unknown. I suspect the maid yanked a cord or two in one of her recent dusting expeditions. I don’t know for sure but right now she is the most likely suspect. With both the parents being out of town and my working full time, I refuse to lodge a complaint with MTNL.I am just going to pray, and pray real hard that whatever when wrong fixes itself. Feel free to join in the prayers. If you have a magic wand, pass that over, will ya? If neither prayers nor magic wands are your thing, then I suggest you simply wait for the crisis to resolve itself. And while you are waiting, I sincerely urge you to see this. Shakira at her very best, guaranteed to get a few laughs outta you. Yes, you got that right laughs. Don’t waste time now, hop over and take a look.

Note: I think you all know this but I think I should mention nevertheless. The person in the video is not a relative, friend or acquaintence of mine. The said person was discovery courtsey a person at office.

 

Soon

……is a relative word. When the boss says “I want this soon” she’s actually  saying “ I want this yesterday”. When the mother says “You should clear the kitchen soon.” She means get off the couch and clean up now.  When the maid says she will clean away the cobwebs on the walls “soon” she actually means never. When I say I will do this task soon, I mean I will do it sometime in the future, exact date, day and time unknown.

That’s precisely why you can’t say I am late for this tag. I only told Monika I would take up the tag “soon”. Today is soon  As per the tag I am to put my self in a man’s shoes and come up with a list of five women I would find attractive. Its not an easy task when you don’t quite know how you would be as a man cause you’ve  never been one. So what I am going to do is make up a list of five women that I like either for their beautify, intelligence or talent. I am sure if I were a man I would be attracted to independent, talented, pretty women. Anybody would!

Sushmita Sen-  makes it on the list for a number of reasons. A- she’s pretty, b- she has a mind of her own and is what I would categorise as intelligent and c- she’s single and  has adopted a baby!(don’t tell me other women have too. How many of them are famous Indian women that we all are familiar with?) There arent too many pictures of the lady with her kiddo on the web so we will have to make do with this not-so-great pic.

Gaytri Devi- has been shamelessly whacked off Solilio’s post. She  mentioned her and when I saw that name on her post, I just had to have it on mine too. Thats because  the Maharani is too pretty, too poised , too graceful to ignore. Plus she goes with the title Maharani, making her sound all regal and impressive. Thanks for the idea Solilio, I might have not thought of her had I not read your list!

Hema Malini- now not then. Then was when she was she was a hoarse sounding, strange accent speaking, slightly squarish looking actress. Now is when she is a diva. Try not killing me for saying unkind things about Ms.Malini when she was young, I sincerely dint like anything about her when she was in her prime. I think she is one of those women who are like wine- they get better with age. I think the present Hema Malini is what dreams are made off- she’s dignified (she was that back then as well), in fabulous physical state, has skin better than anyone half her age,dances beautifully, loves her two kids and looks genuinely happy.  I dont know too many 50 plus who can do all that.

Asha Bhosle- with talent like that, who can resist?

Madhubala- I am not even going to explain why she’s on the list, you know exactly why.

All pictures courtsey-who else?Google images.

I notice this has turned out to me more of a list of women I admire than a list of women I would be attracted to. But what the heck, a tag is a tag and you are allowed to tweak it a bit. Consider this one tweaked.  

I don’t know if you’d agree to this, but I think Raja Ravi Verma made some of the best portraits of Indian women ever. Take for example these three-

Lady with a lamp

Milkmaid

Draupadi

Picture credit-naturemagics.

These are some of the most expressive pictures of women I have ever seen. What do you think?

 

Because no one likes coming last…

…I dint leave a comment on IHM’s award ceremony post. It wasn’t for the lack of manners. I was brought up the right way I believe. It was for the strong dislike of being last. No one I ever met likes being last, your truly included. I don’t think I have every come in an absolute last in anything I’ve done. Studies, sports, painting classes, recitation, the usual stuff all parents and schools get kids to do sometime till the age of 18, after which the kid typically graduates from school, flies the coop and makes the conscious rational decision to what only what pleases him/her. No wait! The doing only- what- I- want happened at 14 didnt it??Annyway, lets get back on track. I staunchly refuse to mention the word dancing when I speak of things I dint come last it. Its not because I am afraid of admitting how terrible I am at it. I was never really in a competitive situation where there was a possibility of coming last..So  it doesn’t really count and doesnt require a mention here. I would also not mention swimming here. But thats coz  I never really learnt to swim properly. You can’t say you dint do well at a skill you dint really possess, right?

Just because I said I haven’t ever come last at the things I did, doesn’t automatically translate to mean I came first. Far from it. I generally managed to find a slot somewhere close to the middle, often mildly tilted to the higher end of the spectrum. Not phenomenal, I know, but good enough to make my parents and me think I did respectfully well.  I didn’t have a problem with being average. Still don’t. It suits me just fine. It keeps expectations, which in many cases can and will kill you, to a minimal. I am happy without the ridiculous, taxing expectations that “high performers” have to deal with it. No, sir, I want that not.  I am totally ok with average. Just don’t make me last.

I landed on IHM’s blog after the all important post had received 90 comments and she had already published a new post. Unwilling to be the lasts to say thank you, I said nothing at all. If I were to believe Ronan Keating, I would say it best if I said nothing at all. Unfortunately not being the kind to say nothing for extended periods of time, I will say what I want to, here and now. Thank you IHM for beautiful awards!!! I display my badges of honour with much pride. I dint think you’d notice I am a header changer,IHM. Why, I hardly every change my header !  ;)

I gave you the Friends award sometime back and you gave it back to me. That means this is now officially a mutual friendship..unless you did it  accidentally . Please prepare yourself for an onslaught of multicoloured friendship bands and red roses and cards on Friendship Day.

You also thought I was a lovely blogger and that I think is pretty cool.

And to top it all , you though I was creative! “Creativity resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc. Imaginative: creative writing.” I am not too sure I can be called creative in the true sense of the word. I mean look around, there are so many bloggers infinitely more creative than me. So  I am certainly not exceptional.  I guess I fall  right along the median of the bloggers sample slightly tilted towards the higher end of the spectrum. Who cares where I fall? The bottom line is I made the cut. I am officially Kreative now!Yoo hoo!!!!

Now the tough part. Who do I pass on the awards too? I think IHM covered everyone. Umm… I will skip the Friends award because I already passed that one on, that leaves me with the Kreative award and the Lovely Blogger award. I shall pass on the Kreative Blogger award to Crafty( for obvious reasons), Homecooked(again for obvious reasons), Chirag (for the great headers), Parul (for making the simple things of life sound funny) and Solilio (for the great headers and the cool looking RSS icons). Moving on to the  Lovely Blogger Award. This one  goes to N(you are getting it only coz we were friend before we turned bloggers, lets get that clear, ok? :P), Laxmi(for all the smses and email that you field to sort of my baking issues.. I still maintain you dont post often enough but you do make a lovely buddy), Dipali( for the intangible something that makes your posts sound so warm), Dhiren ( you keep fighting for the first position in the comments space. Hight time  you got  awarded for all your effort!) Abha (for sharing with us cute pics of Cubby) , Monika ( for moving to WP! you dont realise how much easier and lovlier you made my life by that one act!! ) and Roop( just because I feel like it!). Now thats all done, I hope you guys have a large smile dressing you face!:D

 

Domestic godess? err..almost!

Just because I made a resolution to go slow  on blogging, you guys decided to stop tagging me! No fair!!! I’m generally partial to tags- just so long as they don’t require me to make public things that I would rather keep private. There’s a meme going around that asks bloggers to give evidence of how “great” they are in the domestic sphere. Monika’s done a post on it and so has Abha. And because no one tagged me, I am tagging myself, if that’s even possible, and doing a post.

Let me take you back to the time when one of my cousins was tying the knot. As family we were obviously invited to the wedding and all the ceremonies that preceded the main event. Living quite a distance away for the scene of action, my parents had decided to attend only the wedding. I wasn’t too happy with that. To me, at 16 years of age, the circus that Indian weddings usually are, was very alluring. I wanted to be a part of everything, see everything, participate in everything (except the dancing. That I could and can live without. I prefer not to dance, not for my sake but for the sake of others’ who have to watch me make a complete fool of myself with my two left feet and all.) Seeing my extreme enthusiasm and the situational challenge faced by me, one of my uncles offered to let me stay with his family till the wedding was over. He was in the cousin’s immediate family and that meant he would be attend all the events leading up to the wedding. What more did I want? I happily packed a bag and tagged along with him. Learning from my example another cousin, S, who lived even further away than us, decided on camp along with me at our uncle’s. We dint really need the wedding to get us all excited and charged up. Between the uncle’s family, S and me, we were enough cousins to have celebrations of our own!

One afternoon, while everyone took a nap to rejuvenate themselves for one of the ceremonies – I put myself to good use. My uncle used to have this part time maid who would do odd jobs like ironing clothes in addition to the usual jhaadu-pochha and kapada. Trying to be efficient and helpful, I though of ironing the clothes for the evening myself.  I pulled out my clothes from the heap set aside for the maid to iron and extracted S’s clothes as well. I was going to iron my own clothes so what would another 2-3 clothes matter? I ironed my clothes and kept them in a neat pile and began tackling S’s lehnga. The moment I placed the iron on it, I heard a sizzling sound. Unperturbed the noise, I considered it a minor distraction and continued running the iron along a straight line. Some more sizzling sound was heard, this time accompanies by small plumes of smoke. It was the smoke that sent off alarm bells in my head. Something was wrong.  I lifted the iron and peered at it. There were trails of red, green and gold decorating the stainless steel surface, akin to a smudged spray painting. I moved my gaze to the lehnga then. The off white base that was once embellished with a pretty pattern constitued of tiny polka dots in red, green and gold, now had practically no pattern and the cloth wore a singed look. Oops.  Not too sure of how to undo the mess I had created, I folded the  lehnga and kept it back in the pile of clothes, switched off the iron and took up a corned in the house and pondered about how to break the news to my cousin. S was bound to be furious. More than her being furious, I was worried about what she would wear at night. She couldn’t quite turn up in the jeans and t-shirt at an event where all would be dressed in finest. And what was I tell her parents when I met them?? I was two years older than S, I was supposed to know what I was doing.

When S woke up from her siesta, she began getting things together for the evening. She asked me if the maid had come in the afternoon to iron the cloths. “She dint, I tried ironing your clothes. But I think I burnt your lehnga a little, S. I dint mean to but the iron was too hot for the light material of your dress I think”. Without a word S ran to the ironing board, pulled at her beloved dress, and looked at it with a broken heart. I waited for a barrage of reprimanding words. “It was gifted by dad, you know.” was all she said. That made me feel infinitely worse.  “What will you wear tonight?” I approached the topic I was dreading. “I brought along a spare dress. And mom’s stopping over here before she goes to the venue tonight, so she can bring me something from too.”  Ok so it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it to be- S would have something to wear, I would only have to deal with two sets of incensed parents- her and mine.

S wore her spare dress that evening, which for the record, I thought was nicer than the lehnga. To my utter surprise my fears of being pulled up by her mom were unfounded. All she told me was I needed to be more careful while ironing. I got a brief lesson on “how to iron clothes” by my mother but not much else.   Here I was expecting to hear a no end of my error, no matter how unintentional, and all I got was nothing!!  What can I say? I have nice family.

PS: Incidentally, have you read the Undomestic Godess by Sophie Kinsella? I recommend it. It makes a good read.:D

 

Gastronomically yours

I could write a post on Gujarat but I don’t feel like it. That’s not to say that the trip was uneventful but doing another trip related post isn’t exciting me too much right now. Plus that particular one has the potential of being rant-y in nature. And ever since I was bumped off IHM’s list (for very obvious reasons) I have lost the will to write long, whiney /rant-y  posts. So its not gonna be Gujarat, that’s for sure. What is it gonna be then? I don’t quite know. Something pointless and inane. Like the weather. Or the greeting cards on my soft board. Or my culinary skills..  Ummm…let’s see…

I think I am gonna pick the last option on my list. If nothing else, it will ensure that this post is short.< Now is the time when you heave a sigh of relief>. Let’s get a few things straight before I march into a discussion on my culinary skills. When I say culinary skills, I am specifically talking about the ability to cook regular food. Baking doesn’t count (not that  I am an expert of any kind in that field either) Regular food is the kind you eat at home- simple and deeply satisfying. And that’s basically the kind of food I can’t make. Give me a book with complicated instruction under the “Method” section and precisely measured ingredients and I will follow it to a t and produce satisfying results. Ask me to cook just like that and we have ourselves a serious problem. Indian food is all about the masalas . “Open the masala box and throw in the ingredients that appeal to you” is what all good cooks will tell you. Well I have tried that- opened the round stainless steel box and stared mindlessly at the ingredients for 30 seconds straight. I am sorry, no ingredient speaks to me. None what so ever. Which is quite sad really because at least half of my family cooks that way and produces fabulous results. That’s my mother’s side of the family, in case you are wondering. The father’s side is the science loving, uninspiring, ration kind that measures accurately and follows the exact same recipes for generations. Yes, that’s what they do, even for something as simple as mutter paneer that can lend itself to a thousand variations. It makes the food quite disgustingly predictable in taste, colour and texture, but it comes with a precious guarantee- that of the end product not flopping.  Unimaginative but safe. The mother’s side is where you will always get great tasting food but no recipes. No one has any fixed recipe for anything, you see. They just follow the instinct they are all blessed with and pick any combination of masalas and any group of ingredients for the tadka and voila!you have yourself a houseful of heavenly aroma and lip smacking, good  food.

I tend to take after my father’s side when it comes to daily cooking. I like clear cut recipes that tell you what you need along with defined quantities. And it’s not like I am the unimaginative cook because I want to be that way. I would love to be able to walk into the kitchen in the morning, use my magnificent imagination and whip up a delicious meal. I mean, who wouldn’t? But whenever I’ve tried to do that, I have failed. Miserably. Embarrassingly. I attribute the failure to three primary reasons-a-I have no sense of how much of which ingredient to use. If proportions aren’t given in the metric system- 10 gms of ghee and the like, I am lost. Even things like ½ C of onion don’t make too much sense. Exactly how much is a cup? What if your cup is larger than mine? Wouldn’t that make the major difference in the final quantity of the food prepared? Working by andaz simply doesn’t work in my case.(don’t tell me it  a cup is a cup and it doesn’t matter how large or small it is as long as you maintain the same cup for the entire recipe. I tried that and in spite of it had 3 batches of bread turning out terribly) b- Genes count for something, don’t they? I think my father’s side of the family has stronger “cooking style” genes.  While you will find some variations in the way people in the mother’s family cook,  there are absoolutely no variations in the way the father’s  family prepares food. Makes them sound pretty stuck up on methods and god awful boring but thats the sad truth. And thats how strong the genes in that part of the family are. Since genes count for a lot,  I believe I  am not really responsible for the way my food turns out( If you want one word for it, it would be bland). My genes are, and I cant do a thing about it. I love the way I can blame anything I dont like on my genes. c- I dont like monitoring anything- sabzis included. And you know what happens when we leave a vegetable to cook on the stove and forget to occassionally stir it.  Ask me to periodically look into cooking vessels and stir things around and I will carry an expression that will tell you how un amused I am with  the idea. I find it infinitely easier to pop things in the oven, set the timer and forget about them.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and that’s precisely why I aspire to cook like the mother’s family. Churn out food with enticing aroma that makes the first floor guys wonder whats for dinner,  create my very own recipes, twist old recipes around to make them more exciting- that kind of thing. I believe the day I will learn to cook the imaginative, fabulous, creative way, will be the day I will officially arrive. At least in the kitchen. There are a hundred other places where I need to arrive as well, but we’ll take it one at a time, ok? Anyway,  the arrival in the kitchen  hasn’t happened as yet.. but I am trying. In the meanwhile I will have to be content cooking from books that say “Take 100 gms of roughly chopped ,blanched tomatoes along with 50 gms of finely chopped onions 25.5 gms of minced garlic.”

Just out of curiosity, tell me, how do you cook?

PS: I cant believe I actually wrote 850 words on something as silly as cooking styles. This must be a record of sorts.

 

Taggedy tag

Its Homecooked this time, passing on two lovely awards and a meme.

Here is the “friends”awar and the ”blogging with a purpose” award for all to see.

No one seems to be mentioning the rules of this particular meme.So it seems all you have to do is write whatever comes to your mind when you read those numbers. Not too tough,eh?Here is my list.

1 is the number of kids my parents have. That essentially means I am sibling-less. That also means to couldn’t think of anything better to write against 1.

2 is the number of rings I am wearing right now. It is also the number of years I have been working in the present job. And the number of blogs I own/co-own.  And the number of cities I have lived in  so far. And the number of languages I speak/read/write fluently. Or at least I believe I do.

3 is the number of people in my immediate family. It is also the approximate number of years since I gave up non veggie food.

4 is the number of pens in the pen stand on my desk. Blue, red, black, green and blue again.

5 is the floor I work on.

6 is the number of things on my to do list right now.

7 is the number of official chhuttis remaining in this year. Don’t doubt me. I counted and checked.

8 is the number of first cousins I have. Pretty small a family, don’t you think?

9 is the number of magnets on the fridge in my house. Elephants,a fruit basket, green apples floating in sparkley water, fish,bottle opner, a picture of Mount Mary church,

10 is the exact number of years since I graduated from school. Boy! Where did all the time go!?

Now to pass on the meme and the awards…

Lakshmi- you need to do this, because……..umm.. I have a real reason, so just do it, ok?May be you could put it up on qtol.

Roop- you will make an interesting list, so may be you should spend some precious blogging time over it.:) It neednt be you primary post of the day. It could be your second or third one!:P

Crafty- I know you dont do tags but  look at this one as free food for your blog and take it up? Or look at this as my effort to reform you and make you a bit tag-friendly! If you hate it too much, chuck it and just pick up the award.

Solilio- not sure if the tag has already reached you, take it up if it hasn’t and tell us what’s on your count down list!

Pixie- haven’t passed on a tag to you in a loooong while! would love to read your list.

IHM-you have to do this..I like the way you do tags!:)

Chirag- because I havent tagged you ever and I would like to see if you take up tags at all!:)

While you guys  are (hopefully) busy with this meme ,I will sneek away and  make a quick trip to Gujarat. With the amount of travelling I am doing these days, I think I have mastered the art of living out of a suitcase.

 

Just before I leave….

I tell you this, it is very very difficult to concentrate on work when you are all set for a vacation. All you can think of is The Vacation. Everything else in life sort of blurs into the background becoming miniscule and insignificant .  How am I going to spend the next 8 hours stuck in this office?? My guess is, day dreaming.

Before I go I have two things to say. All you blogspot walas, you are responsible for my not coming over, reading and commenting on your blogs. I blame my absence on your blog wholly and solely on you! Lately I have been  finding it difficult to indulge in any blogging activity from home. Time has been a constraint as has been the temperamental laptop and the absentee house help. So all the blogging business has been happening from office. IT at work has blocked blogspot and not wordpress. Don’t ask me why. I find it hard to explain practically all the decisions they take, even the “rational” ones. That basically leaves me with the desire to read what you all have been writing and no means to get to your blogs. And it’s not for the lack of trying. I live on the eternal hope that they will one fine day wake up and realise blocking blogspot is a bad idea and un-block it. So far each time I hit on a blogspot blog all I get is ‘The administrator has blocked this site‘ written in bold red. But I promise you this, my blogging buddies, when I return I will read all that I have missed. It’s long due so I’m sure I will have a lot of catching up to do.

Sometime earlier on this blog I had mentioned that my mom has a blog of her own. I remember Manpreet asking me for the blog address. At that time mom wasn’t too sure if she wanted to go public with it. Unlike this blog where I write all gibberish and little sense, her blog is dedicated to spirituality. No, not spirituality in the sense of saffron robed gurus offering you bhashans on what you should be doing with your life to elevate yourself to higher levels. But more in terms of easy to follow tips based on eternal spiritual laws that make your life better. I look at it more as a blog that captures all that she  has learnt and experienced in her life, some of it is  spiritual in nature while the rest simply makes suggestions for good living. I would have loved to do a proper post introducing ma, not  the blog but my mom as I know her and then in a subsequent post  introduced her blog , but for now, I will very simply state that her blog exists, and will leave it up to you to read and discover her through her blog. You can find a bit of history about her and the  blog here and her latest post can be found here.  If you do feel inclined to stop by and read, tell us or rather her what you thought of  her thoughts, experiences and writing. I am sure she will love it.

 

 

Random rambling

This is a stupid -senseless-pointless kind of post. But its a post with reason. Two to be precise. Let’s go over them one by one,shall we? A- Crafty’s reaction to my comment on Roop’s blog. And B- the upcoming International Women’s Day. The comment left at Roop’s was a statement of fact. It wasn’t intended to unleash fear in the minds of kind hearted bloggers, who, by the way, have promised me some fabulous looking crochet articles. I wanted to reassure the kind hearted blogger that I wasn’t going anywhere as yet.  I am, in some ways,  a random kind of person and have tangible evidence of my random, unexpected behaviour. Like starting this blog. Getting a haircut one fine weekend after contemplating over it for like  a year and deciding I don’t need to change the way  I look. Getting over-involved with baking. Swinging between “I fast once a week for health reasons” and “I never fast, it’s the dummest thing to do” And buying a huge jigsaw puzzle that now rests peacefully in its box on my bedside table. It was intended to stimulate the mind. All it has achieved till now is a ½ inch thick layer of dust. Bottom line? I am kinda random but I am still here.

That takes care of A. Now let’s go over B. While the world presents to you the economic, political and social achievements of women as it celebrated the International Women’s Day on the coming Sunday. I present to you this- a cartoon. Not just any cartoon. Calvin and Hobbes. The god of all cartoons. A cartoon on IWD, you ask? Yes, I say. Time is short with the cat around, perpetually on our case. Calvin is preciously-cutely-irresistibly funny. And well-intentioned  humour never hurt anyone.

Lets call this our IWD celebration with a twist. Now before I am hounded by hardcore feminists, I shall run. Have a good weekend you guys. Will try and do a slightly less random post next time around!:P