South-Indain Meals

This is picture of South-Indian meals that we take for lunch. There are so many items and still, my favorite 'Appalam' and a big bowl of rice is missing in the picture :)
Counted myself - total 16 delicious items.

Baby's smile

O Baby, stops smiling. It is beyond your and my capabilities but I want to communicate to you a truth. The smiling that you are holding on your face is either fake or you are a mad. Your life is more miserable than of anyone else. You can’t walk, can’t speak, and can’t understand who is friend and who is enemy… in fact, you cannot do a thing that other people can. The whole world is alien to you. Everyone else are telling thousand words and communicating at the rate of which you cannot even imagine. And here you are! Even your mother cannot understand you. Others are around you just to play with you like you are a toy. You don’t have any freedom for which people die in real world. So, I am telling you o baby, stop smiling. Because to me, you look crazy when you smile like this even after all these problems.

O God, this is one of my more than thousand efforts that I made to speak to a baby. If you can hear my words then say something. Is there any knowledge that this baby has got which I haven’t yet? Or, is there any knowledge which took away my happiness? Whatever but these babies have become reason for my surprise and jealous.

Are these ‘high class’ people?

The place were Jessica was shot dead by Manu Sharma was bar, full of so called ‘high class’ people. A middle class girl, who was working in bar for her livelihood, dies and all those high class people keeps mum when the time comes to just speak ‘truth’. Those who broke their mum, at last, spoke in favor of Manu. And today, the verdict of the Delhi High Court have proven them ‘high-class’ cowards. Like all other Indians, me too, feeling more secure and proud then yesterday :-)

Google Blunders

Atlantis is back safely and now it will be used to hunt Laden :)
And Mush is also there.

Madras Coffee

This is speciality of Madras - the way they serve the coffee. It's commonly reffered as 'madras filter coffee' and 'capi' in desi language. It's available in full (Rs. 7 to 10) or mini (Rs. 3 to 5) form. The vessels which you are seeing in the picture are traditional madrasi Dabarah and tumbler. Tumbler is very helpful to cool your coffee if you feel it too hot, although it need some practice if you really interested doing it in proper manner. Don't underestimate this style as it's now in "Quickie's" menu here. I would like to add that it's full of milk and sugar (for those who are not from India).

Thought

This is what Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (founder of the Art of Living an International Foundation) has said about Hinduism:

“Hinduism is not a religion; it is just a way of life that thousands of Rishis have written about. It is such a democratic religion where everybody has the freedom to think, write or say whatever they want. We have no opposition for any other philosophy coming into us. We have no opposition for the Bible to be part of our own study. Nobody here will say, 'If you read the Bible, you will go to hell'. It is an inclusive way of looking at life, and that is what we need in the world today. We have no objection taking food from every part of the world, listening to music from every part of the world. So we need to globalize wisdom too.”

I wish this message spread to all.

Blog updates

With upgrade of blogger, my blog got updated to beta blogger before few days but today it's truly updated because now you can see the changes.

You can see list of categories (blogger says it 'labels' but I don't like that word!) and new archive explorer tree view. And you can see 'categories' given to each blog. Unfortunately I lost my statcounter code but I regenerated from statcounter.com :) Happy ending!!

Madras shopping

Oops ! Madras is Chennai now! Anyways the style is good old Madrasi. Nothing is changed.

A general stores like shown above is very common in madras. But I cann't say it as general store as they sells very limited items. Banana, biscuit, packeted namkeens, news paper and Tamil magazines is must. At many shop we can also find English magazines and other stuffs like my favorite nestle polo :-)

I am semi-vegetarian now

कुछ समय से मैंने मांस व अंडे बंन्द कर दिया है (सिवाय दरियाइ जीव)। अब मैं दिन मे ज्यादातर दक्षिण भारतीय थालि लेता हुं और रात मे सुप के साथ दोसा खाता हुं। यहाँ तमिल नाडुमे केले के पत्ते पे भोजन लेने कि प्रथा है जो कि आज भी लगभग सारे भोजनालयोंमें निभाइ जाति है। यह मैरा पत्ता है जिसमें से स्वादिष्ट दोसा मैंने तमाम कर दिया है।

Dancing on the face of death

Yesterday, after reducing some work load from the tons of it, I with my other two colleagues went out of the office for evening coffee. While I was waiting for my coffee, I felt some procession was passing from the restaurant. I turned back to have a look at it. Dancing-rejoicing people were leading the procession and a man was beating drums like anything making their presence important. At last a van decorated with flowers was coming. The back door was open making all insides visible to everyone. I was expecting a statue of one of those thousands lords but I was wrong and I was really stunned when I perceived the actual. The van was carrying a dead body. I saw two men, whom I believe dead person’s close relative, were seating near the body keeping their head down like every thing is lost. What I saw was absolute sadness on their face and nothing else. Whatever was happening ahead of van was not at all matching with the spirit of people following the van. Even, I had no reason to believe that the procession was one.

It was Shocking !! Tottaly shocking! Later I came to know that this is common practice in Tamil Nadu (an Indian state).

Half is never true!

I was shocked when I read a news heading at news.google.com. "US security chief confirms liquid explosives planned by UK ...". Then this "..." came out to be "terrorist cell" :D

!! Oil, sticky Oil !!

Indian government is preparing for sharp increase in oil prices. It’s proposed to increase (per liter!) petrol prices and diesel prices by 10 Rs, kerosene by Rs 17 per liter and LPG by Rs 115 per cylinder in order to bring the prices in parity with imported costs. This historical hike will badly affect common man as prices of each and everything will hike from 10-20%.
Today, when energy prices in international market are touching new heights, I feel, all the world governments are to be blamed for poor infrastructure of producing alternate fuel/energy. Next couple of decades is most crucial for the world in order to cope up with energy demand of common man.
From childhood I am learning that oil is non-reusable resource and one day it will end and I had no doubt that I will be alive to see the end of this resource. In current scenario, I cannot think about living without hydrocarbons most of which is coming from petroleum. It’s widely expected truth that oil extraction will become more and more costly and so its foolishness to believe that this is final hike. Hikes are going to be sharper than this one and many of us have idea about that.
The best solution that people may find is plantation of hydrocarbons, more popularly ‘Bio Diesel’, about which many governments are already taking steps to create government policy for that. As far as India is concerned, 1 liter of bio diesel price may be set at 25 Rs. Per liter which obviously increase with increase in hike of petrol prices. At the same time plantation of bio diesel will result in to reduced land for farming food products which will bring food crises earlier than it’s expected to come. (In my opinion, farming is the best business of tomorrow).
I am writing about this ‘other than personal’ affair in my personal blog because I am aware of impacts of this in my life as a human living in 21st century. I am sure that you are sharing the same feelings no mater who you are and where you live.

[Updates: 6th May, 2008] I never knew it will start this fast. Food prices are shooting sky and governments are blaming each others. Main reason is plantation of hydrocarbon by developed countries.

Anubandham

Everybody from my office were ready to goto (sorry... but I can't use break statement here) a resort to execute our cultural event 'anubandham'. At morning 6:30, I had no energy to cheer-up and shot like a mad. I was totally unsure what's going to happen there. But at the end of day the feelings were quite different. We did rock climbing, rappelling and played some other games. We were divided into 4 teams of 20 people and the spirit of competition was high. The environments was full of cheer-ups – motivational enough to double the score for anybody. With the flash of joy we also learned many lesson of corporate culture and values there. The flash got off but the heat remained.

Indian Railways Upgraded

This Saturday when I was coming from Delhi to Chennai, back to work from a wonderful convocation ceremony of my Bachelor degree, an another exciting experience was waiting for me. This time it was Indian Railways.

After reserving a berth in 3 Tier AC, I was regretting that I should have gone through flight. With this sorrowfulness in my mind I was just about to get into my coach before I saw a reservation chart sticked very tidily. So I just stood a while to satisfy my 'always dubiety' mind and it proved worthy when I saw “Mr Chidambaram” in place of “Rajput Y H”. Fortunately, before I get a deadly shock, the next movement, I saw my name under a separate table at the end of the list and what's this !! It was pleasant shock as this was the list of those fortunates whose ticket was upgraded to 2 tier AC, that too without any extra cost - ya.. not a single new Pice.

According to this schema, if any seat is empty in upper class then, under auto upgrade facility, it will auto upgrade some passengers to upper class so the people who are in waiting list will have more chance to get confirmed for a berth... at least shared i.e. RAC. I don't know exactly when this schema started but here is an article of Oct 08, 2005 saying that this would start from January 2006. Although there was no sign of it before February 15^th of 2006.

Anyways, the Indian Railways has upgraded itself and I am one of those very first fews.