2005 –  July 28 – 7:00 a.m. – Some bus stand, TN, India : 

Vandhana’s subordinate had just returned from India, where they had just acquired a massive plot for Cameroon Enterprises’ next project. Apparently, everyone’s desk was filled with souvenirs from India and Vandhana’s had a box of some famous brand of Indian chocolates. She was getting ready for a conference with few venture capitalists. Hectic day! Still, she was smiling at that empty ‘mittaai’ container. Little did she notice that the plain container that she was holding was a less tempting version of the chocolates at her desk – Chocolates with some Indian ingredients and cream wrapped in crushed golden covers with a brown wrapper around, that made the chocolates look even more tempting. And that the brand name’s logo on the top of the wrapper was similar to a ring that never left Vandhana’s right hand.

8257  miles away, a successful entrepreneur who runs  an Indian gift store, with its own specialized Desi gifts for foreigners to take back to their motherland (who once used to be a puny little girl)  remembers that hand. almost everytime, with an elated sense of gratitude.                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                  -Sindhu

When you read and re-read a slam book  

Aha! A little smile is always a great feeling, even though it gives a hint of madness to people around you. After all, life bestows upon you enough moments to experience and enjoy. Huge achievements indeed matter in life. But over the long run, it is these little moments that we are going to cherish forever and ironically enough, most times, these little moments come from total strangers or people whom you know (or talk to) the least , which makes it a bit more special

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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
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 Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
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  — I hafta read this, for some board exam!! Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book !!
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  — Read this one whenever I feel like reading it!
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 (English)
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

And I tag my usual bloggie pals : Somsie, Prithi and Raji

That day, Arjun, vowed to make a difference to his usually mundane weekend. So far no luck While Arjun was completely aware of this very fact, he did try his level best. It was just that there was nothing, that could actually make a difference. He did not count girlfriend for a difference (the smart guy that he is ). Sticking to his routine, Arjun opened those gates of that virtual world that actually connects everyone now (Yeah! Right! Facebook was just one of the rooms in that monstrous villa that everyone calls Internet, with Google being the huge drawing hall). Little did Arjun know that the difference was indeed awaiting him there in the otherwise pointless status updates of most of his friends.

Arjun : Dude! Can you come with me to Dilawar Hospital? There’s an emergency. A certain Mr. Gupta or his relative, needs A negative. Can you? 

Yousuf : Well… I think I can. I will get ready in sometime. Gimme the details yaar.

Arjun : Wait! Will send you the link. (10 seconds later) Done!!

Yousuf : Got it!! But Arjun! I’ve never made a blood donation before. And I dunno what it takes mahn!

Arjun : All it takes is humanity yaar. Listen.. You ok with it right? I really don’t wanna force you into this. If you are not willing to donate your blood, I ..

Yousuf : No.. No  No! Nothing of that sort !! Ok! I will get ready for my first blood donation man. Am glad that am being part of saving someone’s life.  You get your bike here. Let’s go to this hospital, wherever it is and do what we can.

Arjun : Well! I am glad too! Get ready! I will be there in another half an hour.

(Half an hour later. At Yousuf’s place)

Arjun : So! Let’s go! Yousuf. You ok?

Yousuf : Arjun.. Well.. Err…

Arjun : Are you hesitating? Yeah right!! (with that sarcastic warmth in his tone) What did you trade your principles or values for in half an hour? Fear? Selfishness?

Yousuf : Will you just stop for a sec. I called up this Mr. Gupta.

Arjun : And you got scared. Huh?
Yousuf : I said, ‘Shut up!’. He wanted the blood for his 6 year old son. Wanted – like 7 months back. Unfortunately, they did not get enough units of them,and the boy died.

Arjun : WHAT?

Yousuf : Yeah! You heard me! And the worst part, he is getting phone calls almost every 2nd day from people all over the city, coming forward to donate blood. Can you just imagine how much of pain, this Mr. Gupta must be going through now? Like the loss of his son’s life was not enough!!

So folks, whoever you are, if you are reading this and if you come across such forwards, think twice before your emotions reign you, when it comes to a humanitarian act, ESPECIALLY when it  comes to a humanitarian act. You never know, that person whose life you are trying to save, might just be fit enough to be amused by those messages begging to save his/her life that are forwarded infinite times a day or might just not exist. In either case, it doesn’t take you any closer to THAT HUMAN whom you strive to be. It is natural to act impulsively when it comes to such sensitive issues. Watch out! Sometimes, even humanity can hurt! And at other times, even what is not said (or forwarded) can make a difference

An early morning (well, not too early, but early enough), a neatly maintained park, with a huge clear pool of water, AND on top of all these, drizzles that reach the earth at a regular pace, with no sign of the sun being out, with the hustle and bustle of Bangalore actually at your eyesight and despite that you are still safely away from its unwelcome impacts. That was Sankey park for you.

While  the Adigas’ in 18th Cross, Malleswaram was already swarming with its loyal foodie fans from Malleswaram, quite close to it, was this clandestine, yet popular Sankey that I am talking about. It was definitely one of the most beautiful areas where you might want to witness a morning, with all its beauty. Simple, clean, this place easily accommodates all those morning walkers. And the best part about this place – the ‘Don’t Cut Me’ placards around trees that were saving the last remains of greenery in Bangalore, and the little kids who prefer mere running around to real jogging.  (You should have seen this little kid in the black sweaters that day! Trying to resist his temptation to sway his hands around, forcing himself to keep his little fists close to his chest, trying real hard to take measured fast paces as against the teeter-totter that he was used to. He looked fettered while his brother taught him real jogging. Kids are a bliss to watch !! But curbing their ‘freedom’ – that part is not ) 2 hours of walk should be real easy there since, the pavement is also well maintained, and it’s really comfortable. And to add to it, there are these little kids to old uncles who ‘gossip’ (Ha… They do all the gossiping and end up blaming women! Phew! Talk about gender discrimination!!)

All rightey!! I give up ! It’s difficult to harness all of nature’s beauty into words. So go ahead and check out Sankey for yourself ! But I can give a shot to the man-made ones. And that precisely is what I am going to do now. Well! That was partly a reason, why I wanted to walk in Sankey that morning. Given that it was in Malleswaram, I thought it was high time, I tried the much-hyped CTR Benne Masal Dosa.

I had no clue as to where it was. Nor did Lincy. We ended up asking one of the gate-keepers of Sankey. And according to him, it was a ‘Go straight and then turn left’ (That folks, is the Desi equivalent of ‘I don’t know’ ) But he assured us that that was the route and we had no choice but to believe him. By the way, the location of CTR was not the only thing that I was clueless about.  What the hell was ‘benne’? I could only try the simple translation trick that I knew for almost a year.

StringBuffer tamilEquiv = someKannadaWord;
tamilEquiv.replace(‘b’,’v’);
return tamilEquiv;

Venne? Butter? Definitely! Maybe!! But hey ! Apparently I turned out to be right! As I got to know from Lincy later on, it was indeed butter.

Oh k!! So where was I ? Outside Sankey Tank. No seriously. Watchman number two did not  have a clue either.I tried expanding CTR on Lincy’s suggestion. Much to our dismay, all we got back was a , ‘Tiffin bekha?? Illi ondhu idhi. Alli ondhu idhi!!’ Yeah! Right! And we went about asking an English speaking, Kannadiga guy for the directions. (Updated on request: Yes! The guy was good-looking)Yo! We got the right route this time.

After walking past few crosses, few ‘mundhe hogi’s,  and one (close to) haunted houses, was the ‘Eureka’ moment awaiting us. CTR, aka Shri Sagar What welcomed me was a bunch of what Vivek would call ‘jilebiya puzhinju potta mathiri’ matters Like it matters ! I already knew, what I had to order. So there goes.. Benne masal dosa ondhu, coffee ondhu.

Now! Be warned! If you are looking for ambience, soothing instrumentals in the background, buffet, feedback forms,  four-wheeler parking and finger bowls, CTR is definitely not what you want.  Oops! Are you this simple guy who goes to a restaurant to taste something edible? Then you are in

It has just been renewed to accommodate more customers. The waiters are friendly and they don’t address you  , ‘Sir’, ‘Mayym’, or ‘Madam-Sir’. But those are just about the restaurant. Not about their ‘creation’ 

After a 5 minute wait came our precious benne masal dosa. Wait! Aren’t the one in restaurants supposed to be bigger?? What is this? My mom’s dosas are of the same size. My dosas are of the same size. -2 points from 0 Mummy! I want bigger dosas.

But the cribbing hardly lasted. One gulp of the dosa and I was mouthshut. Awryt! A typical Chennai foodie, who is so used to Saravana Bhavan will still want to claim that the sambhar was sweet and the masal had some excess garlic. No it did not! Such claims will be made by people who eat the dosa and masal separately. Take a piece of the dosa, with the masal AND the benne on top of it, it is just perfect. As good as my mom’s dosas. The plain dosa as such was really good. And as I looked around, all dosas were the same size blended with the same content and for the first time, I saw these Malleswaram foodies in action. There are people who claim that it gets much more attention than it deserves. That I dunno.  But I am yet to hear someone say that the dosa is NOT good.  Few gulps and I was done. Watte breakfast. And I was specifically asked to have some coffee after that. Now I am no particular fan of this bitter drug, but still, it perfectly complimented the excessively good taste of this CTR special dish.

No wonder it survives around 45 years as almost an uncrowned champion of dosas in Blore. While we walked down, there was one board that said, “Ice-creams and juices coming soon”. But somehow, by now, I am sure as hell that the one particular dish that would be in constant demand would be the one that was not advertised anywhere in CTR – the one that I had just then.

P.S. : I did make a promise – to blog about this Benne Masal Dosa, before the taste fades away from my tongue. Apparently, I had kept up with that part of the promise

VWWAFAA  : Err.. Sorry M’am, if I had offended you.
Me                : That’s all right!

 The point is this : It’s really stupid when people act like they find it difficult to pronounce a bunch of names, just to send a subtle hint of pride on their faked-up accent. Helloo.. In case you did not know, Obama can pronounce ‘Gandhi’, the right way. So No thanks! We are not really interested in figuring out if your faked-up accent is anywhere close to the original one.

P.S. : 10 mins after the conversation was over : 

Appa(over fone) : Hellooo
Me : Appa!! First, pera mathungappa! Uyire edukraanga

 This was suggested recently by one of my colleagues, to have a, let’s say, a smoother working environment. Let’s forget the work part of it and apply it to the life part of it, if at all it’s possible. Let go!! That part is easy, but for what (I think) he really meant, that is Easier said than done! I’m wondering, how many of us will be totally ready to let go of things they are fond of? Totally is the keyword here. Something that you don’t to do whole-heartedly will only add up to your already corrupt soul. You do something and you are really not happy about it. More so, you do it just because you did not have an option. How good does reality sound?

Well! I am not against this ‘letting go’ concept. It takes enough guts to let go. But it takes a matured mind and a well trained soul to let go whole heartedly. Sample this : You wanted to do your own business. You even give it a shot and it is not really the cakewalk that you thought. And there is that good old pressure from people, who are so used to a comfort zone (Need I tell you, how they relate to you? For crying out loud, they are called parents !!) and they want you to be one too. One of the most common weapons they use, “You might not get a bride/groom if you don’t get into the oh-so-safe-herd of software engineers” and for practical reasons they are forced to, well, let go. (Why not give up? I am coming to it). That was just a sample. Take anything that sounds closer to reality to you!

I could only see 3 different reactions to this and before I jump into them, they all have one thing in common:

Now the reactions:

•  Those set of people, who very badly want a second chance or a time machine. People who just let go – The possibles (I call them possibles, because there is a greater probability that many of them fit into this category)
• And of course there are those who can make their second chance.People who very well know that life does not change in a 5-minute song sequence. These kind of people, have actually let go, but they come back with a  bang,  more like a prancing stallion. Well! Isn’t that really cool? They are ‘The Impossibles’ (Ok! Not in the literal sense, but in a real positive sense; they are rarity after all)
• And then there are these people, who let go – whole heartedly. Sorry to repeat it over and over. But you know, it is not as easy as it sounds. Not that these people do not think about it. But they shut up and move on. This is the most important part of it. Beware, moving on and being happy with what you have are two different things. And I am not even talking about the latter. These people are beyond the possibles and the impossibles. Like I said, it takes a well-trained soul to do it. They are the Possimpibles!

Life hardly gives us what we want out of it. Since the Superpower keeps him(/her)self busy by disposing all that we propose, humans need to keep themselves equally busy by chasing those dreams or sometimes, bigger ones. There is no point in just waiting for a miracle and cursing the unfairness of the world. You chase something and you end up only getting nothing. That is most definitely not the way to be. You either get that something, or end up getting everything, After all, nothing and everything is Possimpible   In short, letting go is not healthy. It’s not the way to be either. But letting go whole-heartedly or coming back is.

*Spelling mistake was intentional. Pirates of the Carribean 4 is 3D!  That might have sounded like a totally irrelevant note, had it not been for the spelling mistake. Hehe

I started out, the foundation of my ‘career’ with the most crucial interview of my life – The LKG interview!! I was interviewed by Sister Rose.  By the time she was done, I ended up asking her questions ‘Where are my chocolates? I saw the others who came out having chocolates in their hands. Where is mine Sister?’ (I ended up getting two) And the next 14 years were the smoothest in my life. Building um strong. Basement um strong !

Cluny has seen us ever since the days we found it hard to talk in English, which was an imposed rule on us. Or even worse, when students used to mix a generous amount of Tamil verbatim to frame, what they thought were,  proper English sentences (Sample these : 1) Hey girl! Stop kiLLing me! ==> kiLLing was supposed to be pinching and not murdering. 2) Slipper beatings!!) Cluny has patiently put up with our unintentional bad-usage of the language(And it still does). Coming to think of it, it was those silly little mistakes that carved most Clunians into what they are today.

And then of course, she witnessed the transformations from pinafores to salwar-kameez with skirts doing the intermediate part. The first days of 6th Standard and 9th Standard used to be fun, to watch people in a new costume. But somehow in college or workplaces,a different costume or a new haircut or any other experimentation of sorts is something that we are all pretty much used to, and nothing is really FUN about it.  There comes more pressing things in life and these things hence take a back-seat. Cluny also had the typical elements that you see in all schools. But again, it was special to Clunians.

• Lines of hymns that we had sung (read shouted) without knowing the meaning for the first few days and then losing interest just to end up with lip-singing over the last few years, 
• Lunch time being the best time of the day in the sense that it gave us an opportunity to catch up with our mummieeee or daddiieee initially or to talk about nothings later on, with people of our age. (Now I know, where this entire generation gap thing started !)
• Report cards that all the Ranchos, Silencers and Farhaans dreaded/loathed unanimously.
• The bell sound at the end of every period and the final one, especially.
• As the fate deciding 10th and 12th standards creeped in, the little breaks that we get between the so called special classes and the normal hours.
• Kid-to-teen transformations.
• Novena prayers in Std X and XII
• March-past and drill days
• Lily, Daffodils, Prim Rose, Blue Bells (Thanks to Krithika for getting the fourth one )
• Jawahar, St. Pauls Well ! What’s life without a little bit of competition? And for those with siblings from other schools, ESPECIALLY brothers, the Clunian spirit dives deep into their souls for the obvious reasons

When I come to think of it, Sister Rose is the Mother Superior of Cluny as I type this. And the last time I went to school I was able to meet only her in the evening. Maybe, that’s how life goes one full circle in its own way. And that was the first and last time(so far) I saw Cluny in an evening, well past sunset that is. She looked gorgeous as always

Green being the color of our hearts, I somehow couldn’t resist myself from finishing this post with the words that had been reigning us since the days we knew ourselves –  the first part being what we all strive to be forever and the second part of it being the state that we (well! most of us at least) are in now – Loyal & Cheerful  

There was Roy Muller

who accidentally meets June Havens

twice in an airport. (No duet!! We are watching an Englipich padam)

In comes the ABC officer (Oh! Sorry! CBI officer… Oops! Sorry again! Engleech padam. FBI agent Fitzgerald )

who doesn’t give Havens enough time to fathom the fact that she is going to fall head over heels in love with the mysterious Muller, who ‘saves’ her from anonymous villains, when she voluntarily runs into troubles. But then, this is 2010, heroines finally have six senses. So, unlike Saroja Devi, who is so fragile that she faints with a ‘screaaaaam’ on seeing a bad guy with a big mole and a well polished knife, Diaz has to be drugged all too often for Muller to show off his skills as a hero. Back to the story, ABC officer harasses Havens akka and Muller uncle again comes for her rescue with the tagline, ‘Ei Bhaskhar! Mariyaadhaiyaaga avalai vittu vidu’ missing though. But heroines still don’t use their 6 senses. So Havens is perplexed. Is Muller a bad guy? Should she believe the ABC officer?

By the time she comes to a conclusion, more gun fights, more smoke, more poor graphics creep in and Muller takes Havens to a safe place with him.

((Ithaan andha safe place! But the island in the movie is too good. Maybe, one reason to watch the movie))

After enough knock-outs and watching the beautiful Havens sleep(Stop stop! No duet here too!!), Muller decides to confess the truth to June. He seems to guard a certain ‘vilai-mathippillatha porul’ (For the Tamil challenged – it means ‘something precious’)

and the heroine immediately grasps its value (or claims so). Again this being a 2010 English movie, ‘vilai madippillatha porul’ is too vague a term. So, the director splashes in some 10th Standard Thermodynamics, gives it a weird, not-so-easy-to-pronounce name, having made up his mind, that, our ‘vilai-madippillatha-porul’ must have ‘Z’ in it and vowels must be replaced by not so frequently used letters in English. But it all boils down to the ‘vilai-madippillatha-porul’ at the end. Its rightful owner also joins them and they escape. Yaarterndu nu laam ketka kudathu. Summa padatha paarungappa.

Meanwhile, few chota mota villains who are essentially dons also chase em. How did they find out their secret hideout? Well! That’s the essential role that the heroine has to play in almost every second movie.

Havens is drugged again and the trio escapes and Havens wakes up to ask, ‘Naan enga irukken?’ Muller hides the rightful owner and the stupid heroine behind the rock, to go handle the enemies himself. Meanwhile, Havens is kidnapped by Don thatha and the rightful owner, by the ABC officer.

As it happens, ABC aapeecer is the bad man in good guy’s boots. So Muller has to save the heroine and then the rightful owner (Priorities. Duh!!). But ABC aapeecer escapes with the ‘vilai-madippillatha-porul’. But the rightful owner reveals that it is nothing more than the perfectly cut rock candies that his granny used to feed him, while he was a kiddo. And then Aal izz well!!

There were few things that differentiated an old tamil movie from ‘Knight and Day’. Whether they worked to the latter’s advantage or not is best left to the viewer’s decision.

1) Eastman color
2) A side line of comedy usually played by veterans like Nagesh or Cho. Ramaswamy
3) ‘Tent kottai intravel murukku’
4) An imdb entry.
5) The century and the language in which ‘Knight and Day’ was released.

Well!! My brother right away dismissed the movie, while we started watching it with these lines, “I guess, Tom Cruise is becoming Dr. Vijay of Hollywood”. Hmmm!! I guess it’s high time I started taking his inputs seriously before settling down for a movie.

P.S. : Intha post parthuttu, evanavathu entha partkavathu copyright infringement/defamation nu vandeenga, bad words pottu thittiduven!! Be careful!