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Notes from bangalore..

There is something so fulfilling in offering something as prasadam when it is made by oneself -Even if it was only arisi and paruppu.
Made me very happy today.
Having always witnessed grandma/mom/aunt make the neividhyam and always been only a silent spectator when it came to making but an active participant when it came to eating,this was the first time I made something and offered it as prasadam.
Happy,happy feeling!!!
In other news,have you ever heard of house-help using Dove shampoo to wash the bathroom?
No,right?
Well,you heard it here first and unfortunately that’s my maid who did it :@

Off to Bangalore

Have been reading way too many fiction these days.Especially of the mindless kind.I don’t know about you,but they sure keep me happy!
Mindless junk,I mean.
There is something so wonderful about happy endings-impossible as they might seem to a normal eye.
However I do want to broaden my reading horizons-seriously,don’t laugh at the cliched sentence. I do mean it.
Have found some new authors that I haven’t tried yet on many other bloggers reading list-planning to read up on them as soon as I can !
Parents are dropping me off at the airport just so they can happily skip,jump in a I-don’t-believe-my-luck kind of way on their way back home.

D:”So,she’s left to her place”
M:”I know,I know-I can hardly believe it,don’t say it so many times-you might jinx it !
D:*praying hard and touching wood simultaneously* -”Ok”
M: *Starting to laugh suddenly*
D:What? What? She’s checked in and on her way to Bangalore.Don’t laugh like that,you scared me for a second.
M:Well,I was thinking of the poor guy getting back to Bangalore .
D:chuckles to himself slowly at the thought.

*both of them look happily out of the window as the rain pelts the car amongst others..*

I did promise myself this..

Today I saw something so beautiful that I am struggling for words to recreate whatever I saw and however I felt.
Saw the Gateway of India,The Taj Mahal Hotel,The Oberoi Hotel.
But is any of this the oh-so-beautiful thing I spoke of?
No,although they were beautiful in their own way.
But what takes the cake,for me,would be the Sea.
The beautiful,beautiful sea.

There are honestly no adjectives I can think of to describe how the sea looked when standing outside the Taj Mahal Hotel .
I wish I had pictures that told the stories instead of these silly words of mine.

It was simply fabulous.Mesmerizing.
And the gorgeous Marine Drive. I could hardly remove my eyes from the sea. It was riveting,distracting,what-not.
It was as if the sea was watching over all the happenings of the city,of all the people,of everyone basically.
I don’t know,I am not being very coherent-suffice to say it was simply marvellous.

Leaving Mumbai tommorrow back to Bangalore…
Happy weekend!

back…

Sometimes there is no reason on why we stop doing something-Blogging was one such thing I have no idea why I stopped,considering the obvious-I love writing.However , it can also safely be said that -Sometimes there is no reason on why there is a compelling urge to do something and getting back to blogging today is one such.I have no idea why I suddenly decided I must blog right now but it was just that.
A lot has happened since I blogged last-in order of importance-
-The wedding-umm,I mean mine.
-Quitting my job.
-Got to spend LOTS of time with family due to said quitting.
-Currently,contemplating on the future in terms of what I can do vs what I want to do.
-Actual cooking (Hard to believe,right???I know,I know,I know)
-A lot of reading,movies and music

Now here is where I promise to blog MUCH more often henceforth.I do really promise-for my own sake atleast.

Is there anyone else who loves the song mazhaivarum from the movie Veppam ???
I heart that song,really.Truly,truly.

More than six of these-taken from a tag on Facebook!

did this tag on fb..felt like posting something here but don’t feel well enough to type a post-so here’s something thats been lying around..

Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the 100 books listed here. 

Instructions: Copy this into your notes. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt from. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

 1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 

30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

 

32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34. Emma -Jane Austen

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

41. Animal Farm – George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60.  Love in the Time of Cholera–Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61.  Of Mice and Men– John Seinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses- James Joyce

76.  The Inferno- Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 

98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

notes on love

When you have

• a person who will know from your voice tenor if all is indeed well or not..
• person who will do crazy crazy stuff all in the name of sisterhood(if at all i can call it that)
• MANY people who will listen to you crib,whine,polambify,complain(i know,they all mean the same in effect..but still:) ) and NOT complain or say a word that does not soothe the frayed nerves.
• a person who will call despite knowing you won’t pick up,just to say she was thinking of you..
• people who will message despite knowing they won’t get that reply because they understand you’re “too busy”..
• people who let you make total fools of them for fun just because they love the way your eyes light up and smile/laugh ..
• people who send the most thoughtful stuff across the seven seas just because you are always in their thoughts,the distance notwithstanding..
• people who ask you to put your wedding shopping on hold so that they can join in the fun and help you..just because they want to be a part of this major event in your life..
• tough person who became clay that can be moulded the way you want the minute he set his eyes on you oh-so-many-years ago…all he wants is for you to be happy and for that he will MOVE mountains..
• people who are there for you no matter the time of the day just because you wanted to talk..
• people who go out of their way for the smallest of favours you ask and THEN make it seem like it was an honour for them to have helped you!!!!
• people who go about doing every SINGLE thing they can to better your life,non-complainingly..just so you’re happy.
• people who will pray for you regardless of your sheepishly asking them to do so…
• people whose happiness know NO bounds when you speak to them for a few minutes in the midst of your supposedly “busy schedule”..
• people who love your quirks,mannerisms,flaws, basically everything about you-however nutty they may seem ..

you want to say-

To ALL these wonderful,brilliant people who are ALL a part of my life- i am so so grateful..where would i be without you all in my life,i don’t know..

You people make my life worth it-every single second.

And this is just to say,i love you all.I know that i probably drive a lot of you up the wall at times but for the most part i don’t think i do so to all of you ALL the time

So,some saving grace there eh?

the “evil” eye syndrome

As far as i know,those of us who are a part of an Indian family would have definitely heard this term “evil” eye..

WikiPedia defines evil eye as ” a look that is superstitiously believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike. The term also refers to the power attributed to certain persons of inflicting injury or bad luck by such an envious or ill-wishing look”

In my family,as modern/traditional we may be in everything else-in this, we are downright conservative We completely,completely believe the existence of the evil eye and its ill effects..

Now,this is not something i would have ever thought of, as a belief,that  i would go by-however instances have actually forced me to believe in them..strange occurences..could even be on the most mundane things..Not necessarily on huge huge things..could even be something silly someone commenting on my eye and my having continous eye pain the following two weeks for no apparent.Whatever i have mentioned here is obviously not just a one off thing..i just chose to mention this as it involved me and a certain X ..However there are SO many more circumstances that have actually made me sit up and believe in this concept…Call me old fashioned or whatever but this is really something that i have grown to believe in now..:)

And why am I discussing this even ,you ask?

Well,last week for no apparent reason after a great long weekend the first two days of which were spent in good old shopping  with a sister who had come from the US on a short visit and my sister who lives here.Imagine 3 girls going just about everywhere LOADS and LOADS of fun the next two days were also spent in similar fashion albeit with a different person

Now,following this amazing weekend i end up with a very odd problem of a sore heel. Infact sore is not so much the word even that i could use to describe it.More like, a huge muscle inflammation.Initially i dismissed it as a small problem and did not even bother with a doc consultation and went to work as usual on Monday.

Halfway through my day and i realize that i am absolutely unable to walk without a prounounced limp and a painful leg

a scan and a doc consultation later,i am told that it is a muscle inflammation -some tendon problem.

And the reason for this post is that the entire family has decided that all this is because of the “evil eye”..Previously i would have definitely denied the existence of such things ,however  these days i am more inclined to believe ..especially after all the pain that i’m going through this week..My logical mind tried telling me that i might have strained my feet by over-walking(if there can be even be such a thing)..But,THAT is so not true i mean,whatever walking i did is nothing out-of-the-ordinary ..So yes,i ‘d definitely say that i am more inclined to believe these things nowadays..

how about you???Do you believe in such things?

something to ponder over..

If you think you deserve better – find it.

If you can’t find it – you deserve no better.

Such true words,especially for me -in these times…

lovely weekend

had an amazing weekend that is very unfortunately drawing to a close right now

went shopping with friends for my niece shopping and me do not necessarily go hand in hand.Infact i have always had my aunt and sisters do that for me

But the shopping that i am talking about right now was BOOK shopping. And WHO better than me! someone who can stay in landmark ALL DAY and yet feel like there was SO LITTLE TIME!!!

an opportunity i can never,ever let go is to shop for books.i can just do that a million times over.

That too for my niece- a girl i will always cherish more than my own child , for the sheer reason that she is THAT particular sister’s(whom i love to bits) child and that i happen to feel like i had a part in her growing up in the past six years ..She was the first baby i held and kissed and cuddled..ever being the last one in the family and the only child has its disadvantages..So it was when she was born midway during my 11th grade that i realised how wonderful it was to have a baby in the house ..The joy is simply inexplicable.

Remember seeing her the day she was born at the hospital-remember going there at the wee hours of the day even before school started but returning disappointed because we weren’t allowed inside ..

Remember returning back in the evening to see..To me then,she was MY sisters baby. Not an individual by her own right..

And then ,slowly she grew..into this lovely,lovely baby who’d smile EVERYTIME i’d come into the room..who’d move her pudgy legs and arms so quickly to show her excitement at my being there…

who’d look at my face intently as if she understood every word i was cooing in baby language…her eyes would speak what her mouth couldn’t at that point..

and then..she started crawling

she’d scramble for my feet and cling to them as if to say please ,please LIFT ME

And that is probably when i fell for her.

Hook,line and sinker.

I would love carrying her around always much to the chagrin of the rest of the family.Her mother would call me to make her laugh she was in a sour mood:)

The feeling that I could brighten up the moment of a child just by my presence and some antics was wonderful.I revelled in it

She left Chennai when she was around 10months old only to return a short while later

And our relationship became even more mutual.

The reason i say that is that as she grew she would respond to me and that was one of the happiest periods of my life because i was at the recieving end of such amazing unconditional love.

I was personally going through trouble at that time and she was my lifeline.

I would cry and she would just look at me with those huge eyes and say-”thoona” and hug me as if to say-don’t worry this too shall pass.

To my baby,my niece-the absolute darling of our family -love you,ammu

Miss you a lot seekram inga vanthudu

PS:this post is probably not one of my better ones in terms of coherent writing but all i can say in return it is as heartfelt as the rest,if not more.Oh and to continue where i left off,at the start,the weekend involved lots of book buying for her and i am SO hyper about it

I am not being very coherent because its Sunday night and i have an annoying week stretching ahead of me..

Have a wonderful week people