LiFe aS i LiVe It

Can you help me, please?

2009-11-16T22:57:00.006+07:00

Hi folks,

I am doing a project on "Understanding the helping patterns of people in the society" out of my personal interest. As part of that, I have come up with a survey to get inputs from people.

I am looking at having 200 responses. I need your help in reaching that number.

You can help me by
1. Taking the survey
2. Getting at least 3 of your friends take the survey.

Survey link - http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=c17cbd63-10d7-4278-b355-6fc738fa5ca4

It takes around 5 minutes to complete the survey. So, please go ahead and give me your inputs.

I will be happy to hear any comments you have.

Love,
Aarthi

I want to enjoy my childhood, ma

2009-11-15T15:36:00.003+07:00

"I want to enjoy my childhood, ma", this was an article in the last Sunday's Hindu paper. This article really moved me and I could so much identify with that child.

What surprised me even more was to see Dr.Abdul Kalam's response to it in a few days. His reply was also publishes on the Hindu. Here is a poem from his article that I liked very much.

The Student’s Prayer

Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
And be the source of my own discoveries.

Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
Your wisdom my negation.

Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my richness begin where yours ends.

Show me so that I can stand
On your shoulders.

Reveal yourself so that I can be
Something different.

You believe that every human being
Can love and create.

I understand, then, your fear
When I ask you to live according to your wisdom.

You will not know who I am
By listening to yourself.

Don’t instruct me; let me be.
Your failure is that I be identical to you.”

I thought, there is a connectivity among young hearts even beyond ocean — “I only want to enjoy my childhood, ma” and “The Student’s Prayer.”

All these meaningful articles make me more fond of Hindu than any other newspapers :-)

Just Books

2009-10-23T20:07:00.005+07:00

Today me n N dropped into this new book library 'Just books' on IndraNagar 12th Main road on our way back from the team outing. I should say this place is awesome and their idea is just so cool... As I write even I am wondering what makes them so cool, they are just a library.

I have not seen (m)any good libraries in Indra nagar area in the last 5 years. This one is really a blessing for people like me who need some motivation like a big collection of books to read. They have some rare collection of books. I was sweetly surprised to see the English version of Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan there. The staff were so friendly and kind enough to take requests for books unlike the other famous big ones in the city. They have a cool sensor based book checkout to bypass the long queues and waiting for someone to make an entry. To top it all is the various membership options -- they have a basic plan where one can take 2 books + one magazine at a time, pay Rs.175 as montly fee and 250 as registration. There is a 1000 bucks refundable deposit. They have other options too but I found this one perfect for a slow reader like me. Ooops, i forgot they even deliver books to home. I am just waiting to take pv there to get ourselves registered.

I am so damn excited to get back to reading...

BTW, that remind me I am currently reading "Making It". I will post the review once I am done.
The more I see such places, the more I get enthused about giving life to my own ideas :-)

2009-10-20T21:44:00.004+07:00

"Good or bad!! Short or long!! I want to write a post today. How many long days will I keep telling myself different reasons for not writing one. Enough is enough", I told myself on my way back from office and I decided to overcome this inertia.

This post is about our diwali celebs this year. I have so many other things to write about too. Two weeks ago, I suddenly came up with the idea of celebrating 'Green Diwali'. I wanted to be that caring ecotizen (hahaa...self coined) who does not pollute the environment. I told pv and he agreed to celebrate a green diwali by not bursting crackers. Immediately my mind made plans (totally involuntary) on how else the crackers money could be spent :) . I came up with the next brilliant idea of buying diyas and decorating the house with them.

Then I searched and searched on google to find some NGO selling terracotta diyas (my latest interest) and ended up finding few which did not seem to have good designs. I then went around the Tippasandra market and finalized on the shop where I got a good deal. Pv and me went there and purchased diyas for 500 INR. Pv was shocked on seeing the amount.

We started our diwali celebrations with Pooja followed by yummie payasam made with Milkmaid. After sometime we got bored with the tv programmes and felt something was missing in our celebrations. We heard every one bursting crackers and we could not resist ourselves sitting inside the house. In few minutes, I gave my ecotizen status and went to buy crackers :)
In the evening, we did a small rangoli in front of the house and decorated it with diyas. Then started our foto session and pv's wonderful clicks. We burst some crackers in the night with friends.

Overall it was a good diwali. One big realization for me was, I cannot celebrate diwali without crackers as they form an integral part of my diwali. I can't even imagine any other way of enjoying diwali. I should find one before the next season so that I can be a true ecotizen then.

I have uploaded pics here.

I know but still ...

2009-09-17T22:02:00.003+07:00

Sometimes (actually most times) I feel there is so much in this world to do than to sit in a company and be at the mercy of somebody's decision. I mean, there is so much one can do in every damn field, then why do most of us end up sitting in an office, doing work that does not interest, end up feeling unrecognized for their work and above all don't have any say in the decisions made by the management. We know for sure that we can put our talents to better use in a place which demands so much public attention for improvment, yet we settle for a heavy pay check that gives us all the materialistic pleasures than satisfaction.

I have come across so many so many ideas recently that I wonder why I haven't been able to think about them. Maternova -- bringing maternal and child care by connection health workers, health facilities and innovation in that space. Imagine how useful a handheld ultrasound would be for those rural women who can't afford to travel to the hospital which has the equipment. They have come up with a motor bike ambulance. Another intelligent idea I came across was Sasix - It is a social investment exchange. They have given a truly different shade to the concept of 'donation'. All social development projects are listed out here and people can invest in it like buying shares. They get regular updates (say quarterly) on how the projects are going on. This helps in funding the project for the beneficiary, at same time gives a kind of realistic view to the share holder on how the money is being used and makes the beneficiary accountable for the change they are trying to bring in society.

These aren't any rocket launching ideas, but they are on their way to become path breaking ideas. I am sure they are gonna make a big positive impact on the society. If we carefully look at our society, almost every domain - health, transport, environment, people, education, care, family, agriculture, crafts, tradition, tourism and countless other things are looking for ideas which could greatly benefit. It is not that we don't know -- we know and we still IGNORE.

I started out writing as "I" and ended up as "We". Let me get back to I. I know every time my project at work gets put on hold, I get to think it is His way of telling me that 'Aarthi, why don't you go out and try your ideas. It will be of help to the people.' I know it will be helpful, but I am scared to dirty my hands, am shit scared to quit my job and try. Now I have the time, but the whole project put on hold at work only makes me dejected, disappointed, frustrated and disoriented in life. I know I have to get past this and use this time to try out my ideas. I know.. I want to... I will...

Too many things to write about

2009-08-22T21:12:00.006+07:00

There are too many things I want to write about and don't know which to add and which to omit. Does this happen when one does not write for long???

I will try to cover tid bits of everything I want to write about.

Pv and me took a '2 marriages and a week's vacation' sprint a week ago. We started off with Hyderabad - the city of foodies (no offence) as I would like to call it. Attended a marriage in the morning and went to PARADISE (rightly named) for a round of Veg biriyani and Qurbani ka Meetha for lunch. If you are new to Hyd, don't miss the biriyani here..its yummie and the best of Hyderabadi cuisine. For the first time, I wanted to be a non-veg so that i could taste the other varieties. Visited charminar, for a change I spared pv wallet :) and then had a lovely walk on banks of Hussain sagar.

Wanted to watch 'Magadheera' chiru's son's debut movie but ended up watching 'Gopi Gopika Godavari' :( Don't ask me how the movie was, that emoticon says it all.

Saw some prawn cultivation fields on the way to Kaikalur. Could not get to go closer and check how it would be, I din't want to go near thinking it would stink :)

Auto wala robbed us on the wee hours of monday morning as the rain Gods welcomed us with a heavy shower when we entered B'lore. We paid 100 bucks to come home from CMH rd BDA complex. This is called 'Pagal kollai'.

Yesterday turned to be a memorable day in the life. I had my first convocation on completion of the social entrepreneurship course. Wow!!! I found the course really useful, especially gave a lot of clarity to my thoughts on venturing into social sector. Mom still is apprehensive of that.

Another piece of good news is my mentor agreed to help me out more on my project. Oops.. I dint tell abt my project yet. Its not making science more fun and easy to understand for kids. I have started out with the grade5 children of Ashwini charitable Trust and so far its been ok. However, I am struggling to get simple concepts like sound, environment to children. We (me and the children) created some hand made telephones to understand how sound travels. I enjoyed the whole session more than the children :) I am waiting to get the help of my mentor to take this project further.

The tv at home is down with flu. I mean the picture tube is having some problem. All we get to see is a horizontal line when it is on. Gotto get it repaired. I am slowly realizing the power of 'No TV', atleast I got myself to blog after long time...hehee...

VVVeeeRRddddddddd

2009-07-29T21:47:00.013+07:00

me: Hello
on the fone: Good afternoon Madam, how can I help you?

me: Good Afternoon. I need some info... some information on filing my tax returns.
on the fone: Sure Madam. I need some details before to help you. Can I know your name?
me: I am Aarthi

on the fone: Your father's name Mam?
me: Muralidharan

on the fone: Your PAN number?
me: AG........

on the fone: Your date of birth?
me: 20/7/xxxx

on the fone: Thank you for giving the details. How can I help you madam?
(Here comes the funny part of the conversation)
me: Can you tell me my name... I mean my first name, surname and last name?
(I was laughing at myself after asking this question...How can I ask such a thing!!)

on the fone: Sure Ma'm.
me: Thank you, can you tell me my father's first name, last name?
on the fone: Here you go madam....
me: Thank you so much.

on the fone: Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: Nope, thank you.

Imagine calling up someone who does not know you and asking them your name and your father's name. How much more weirder can it get??

Well, that's what the income tax dept is expecting us to do. I was filing my returns online and I could not get past the registration page with every possible combination of my name for the first name last name.

My God!! Who ever introduced this concept of first, middle, last, sur names????

At least I am happy, my name has only 1 word.. imagine the fate of those who have too many words in their names... heeheee.. I pity PV...

My weirdest conversation ever!!!

BTW, if you have not filed your returns yet, you can do it online on the incometax website. It is pretty easy if you know your name right :-)

Birthday Bash

2009-07-21T16:46:00.002+07:00

I had a superb birthday eve this year. Basically everyone decided to be very nice nice to me and asked me to buy anything I wanted. I quickly grabbed the opportunity and bought so many things...

2 watches (I almost selected the third one too, then from deep in me there rose some pity for PV who was buying the 2 for me, so decided to get the third one later). Now, I have atleast 5 watches in my collection.

Lots n lots of clothes - Oh man!! there is some 'upto 50%' discount in every other shop. So got a good deal in most of the places.

American diamond studded earrings - Mom surprised me with a cute ear ring.

Roller skates - I used to feel so J of those kids who used to skate their way on the roads. Pv fulfilled my long time wish to have my own skates and zoom on the roads. Now, I will wear them and make the kutti gundu girl on my road feel J. Heheheee.... Ok ok ..for that I first gotto learn skating.

A lovely b'day cake - creamy choclatey..yummie.. I jus loved it.

Apple palgoa - Mom's innovative sweet recepie for my b'day. She started making apple rabdi and the milk got spoilt in between. Instantly she changed her plans and make apple palgoa.. It tasted really good.

cute b'day card from aunty n uncle. Aunty was too pro-active knowing my laziness she bought me a salwar stitched the last time she came here :)

With all this, I was all set for my birthday to have lots of fun. Finally, I fell sick that morning and had to take a day off. But I din't miss the fun at home. Happily slept, saw 'While you were sleeping'. In the evening we went out for dinner.

Totally it was an eventful birthday!!

Let's clean Bengaluru in ONE day!!

2009-07-13T17:51:00.006+07:00

Does that sound impossible?? It may, but it is worth a try.

We have been complaining of the dirty roads, garbage strewn all over, plastic covers flying around and what not. This time, lets take it on ourselves to change the place we live.

Check this out -- Clean Bengaluru

Aindian is an NGO which is a group of people who are committed towards a clean Bangalore. They are organizing a clean-up drive in the city on August 15th 2009.

There are multiple ways by which one can take part -
1. Volunteer for the clean-up drive
2. Tell your friends, colleagues and ask them to participate
3. Find some sponsorship for this event
4. Spread the message - Blog/facebook/twitter/orkut ...

Each of us together can make a huge difference.

Come, be the change you want to see!!

The Mayonnaise Jar

2009-06-26T15:03:00.003+07:00

I was reading a forward some time back and liked it way it explained the priorities of life. Here it is for you to read.

When things in your life seem, almost too much to handle,
When 24 Hours in a day is not enough,
Remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class
And had some items in front of him.
When the class began, wordlessly,
He picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar
and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students, if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured
them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly.
The pebbles rolled into the open Areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a
unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively
filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

'Now,' said the professor, as the laughter subsided,
'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things - family,
children, health, Friends, and Favorite passions -
Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, Your life
would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else --The small stuff.

'If you put the sand into the jar first,' He continued,
'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff,
You will never have room for the things that are important to you.

So...

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play With your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out to dinner.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.

'Take care of the golf balls first --
The things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee
represented.

The professor smiled.
'I'm glad you asked'.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem,
there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'

Alternate solution for meetings

2009-06-18T13:40:00.006+06:00

"If you pull me into meetings all day, when do you except me to work?..."
Does this sound familiar to you? Have you been saying this for a while now.. I find myself repeating these words many times.

6 out of 10 times, I have always felt that meetings are/were such a waste of time as people did not have an agenda to begin with, some people don't share information for what-so-ever reasons, the information shared is irrelevant to some folks present, no conclusions reached at the end and most of all there is no consistent way to track the action items. These meetings end up being such waste of time and money for the company.

One of my colleagues just forwarded me an article which talks has an alternate solution for meetings. I am sure you would have heard of "Yammer" which the 'Twitter for enterprise'. I liked the article and thought I would share it with you all. This does not promise to delete all the meetings from your calendar but if practised well, we can cut down atleast 50% of them.

Here is the link to the article - My microsharing success story . Its a nice one, don't miss it.

I am all game to try out Yammer if I can avoid some useless meetings.

What a way to code!!

2009-06-11T17:43:00.002+06:00

Listening to A.R.Rehman songs on my "ipod" ear fones with a chocolate bar half inside my mouth and the other half waiting to be munched and coding... I love this!!! I am in love with my work if all these accessories are there with me everytime I work :-)

Can't believe, y'day I was cribbing and boring myself to death in office and see today, what a change!! Moral of the story - Let me be free, let me listen to music and the most important give me more and more chocolates. Mommie..plesae don't hear the last part and blame me for all the cavities. That reminds me of the Himalaya's tooth paste add - 'If you want to eat like a child, brush like an adult' :-)

So boring

2009-06-10T13:39:00.003+06:00

Wednesday 1:13pm
I am getting bored to the core... No mood to work today as I managed to complete 75% of my work yesterday. After moving to the new team, I almost forgot what it means to browse. In the last 5 years of my work, I always made sure that I spent 30 - 45 minutes post lunch in reading something that is not work related. Now, its almost like work work and work... No enthu around. People are so silent glued to their monitors as if something is going to fall from there and they have to catch it. I know I know.. its all signs of boredom...
Let me quickly turn on my music player and get hold of my ear phones. Guess that will get me going.

Run for Ashwini

2009-05-23T08:40:00.004+06:00

The Sunfeast Bangalore 10K run is happening in Bangalore on May31st. Yeppie...its coming again!! I am all game to run the 5.7kms, it was so much fun last 2 times.

Like the last 2 times, this time too I am running for the cause of 'educating under-privileged children' supported by Ashwini Charitable Trust fondly known as ACT.

I've been volunteering for ACT for more than 4 years now. It has been a truly wonderful experience for me being with those children, see them grow and come out in flying colors.

ACT is participating in the run for
1. Creating awareness amongst people about the cause
2. Raising funds to pay the children's fee for the coming academic year (2009-2010)

Today, ACT supports around 100 children of age groups varying from 3 years to 18 years. The estimated cost of educating these kids is around Rs.10Lakhs for the coming year.

If any of you think you can help these children by sponsoring for their education, please please let me know. We need support from everyone to accomplish the mission.

I have no doubts on the capabilities of these children - the proof of the pudding came yesterday when we heard 2 of our children made jobs by themselves without any recommendation in big firms.

The table below will give you an idea of how much it costs to educate a child for one year.

Let me know if you would like to sponsor a child. If you are interested to Run for Ashwini, go ahead and get registered. I promise you, its going to be fun and a more satisfying experience as you help spread the message.

All contributions are eligible for tax exemption under section 80G

For more details on the Run for Ashwini campaign - check the blog

Netru illada matram ennadu?

2009-05-22T21:46:00.006+06:00

All long when she wanted to breathe, her neck was almost strangled. Now when she is about to be let free, there is so much breathlessness in her.

Though she sees the fresh air gushing in front about to enter her nostrils, there is this weird feeling. Her heart seems to have suddenly stopped craving for the breath.

She has got used to the absence of freshness that makes her heart feel she can do away with it in the coming days.
The mind sends signals to her heart asking it not to sink in the sea of comfort where she has been sailing so long. It tells her to get out of it and inhale the fresh air - For all the struggle was just for that!!!

...Idu daan Vaazhkai enbada??

For those of you don't understand tamil the title of the post meant 'What's the change that was not there yesterday?' and the last line meant 'Is this what life is about?'

Tour de Chickmagaluru

2009-05-16T09:02:00.002+06:00

Another weekend, another trip. Last weekend we had been to the Srirangapatna, Rangantithu bird sanctuary, mysore. It was a great day visiting places of different genres.

This weekend we are planning to hit the coffee country of Karnataka - No its not coorg, it is Chickmagaluru where coffee was first cultivated in India. Our plan is to stay there for 2 days - visit Kemmanagudu, hebbe falls one day and Sringeri, hornadu, kalsa the other day.

I wish the Sun God shows some mercy on us where we are there. I have been wanting to visit Chickmagaluru for long time now. Now, its all coming true. There is just one more thing to do - book our tickets to chickmagaluru for tonight :-)

Looking forward to the weekend

2009-04-30T22:32:00.004+06:00

I am looking forward to this long weekend.
PP is coming here, am gonna meet her after 2 long years!!! Hope to spend some gud time together and meet many friends. I am planning to cook lunch for PP - delicious gift from a sweet cute friend :-) [or punishment for missing 2 important weddings in her life]. What it would turn out to be will be decided post lunch :P
Couple of friends have booked for a day's koothu (fun) in a resort and the best part is I have to ride all the 30kms on my Pleasure with PP behind... As they say, why should boys have all the fun??
And then aunty n uncle are cumng home on sunday, looking forward to that.

So many things happening in one weekend... Hope to have gud fun.

Time is flying

2009-04-25T09:50:00.007+06:00

Time is flying as fast as it can and I am trying to catch up with every moment. So many things to do, so much time and so much much laziness too ...

I have been planning to write a post since long time and I don't need to complete the sentence now... Just got too many things on top of my mind that they evaporate quickly in the heat of the summer making me oblivious to them till they condense and pour as heavy showers in the night when I am too tired to move my limbs to do anything about them.

I am falling in love with Bangalore again and again for its wonderful weather. How I wish the rains followed the GST (Gelf Standard Time) (thanks to Chandu for coining GST, I really liked it) so that it rains after we get back home from work. It is such a mess to drive in the rain when the roads are flooded with water and the car guy next to you splashes it on your not-so-often-washed bike. Anyways, its much much better than the scorching heat that does not let you sleep in the night. Okay!! I know I know...I can hear you... Bangalore heat is not heat at all... God salute to those who bare the heat in places like Kothagudem. For all I realize that I have withstood worser temperatures on both sides of the scale in Pilani. Times when we had to cover the entire face just leaving 2 holes for the eyes to see the road.. times when we were blinded by fog and could not see what's ahead ..Yep, those were times of the past. Now, I am used to the chill breeze of Bengalooru and my body screams to the scroching heat.

Oops.. from where to where.. I wanted to write about something else and ended up analyzing my reactions to the heat and the rain. This is exactly what happens to me, I start with something and end up some where else... Anyways, coming to the point (what's the point??)... Yea!! My list of ever-to-be done things...

1. Write a post which I am doing
2. Write a post on RunForAshwini blog specifying more details on sponsoring a child.
Hey!! If you have not seen this blog, please go and check it out.
I am planning (and planning) to write a separate post to cover this topic.
3. Start reading the book of this month for my OT challenge.
With all enthu I bought the book 'Train to Pakistan' spending close to half a grand (huh!!!) and have not gotten my hands over it yet!! Days are running.. got only 5 more days in this month...
BTW, I have found the book for the next month - 'Love in the Times of Cholera'. Thanks to Goli for suggesting that.
4. Next month is going to be fun with uncle and aunty. It would be good if Shravs n Bunny join. That means, pv n me gotto finalize a place for the trip. If it is damn diffi for "us" to find a place for dinner (the other day we drove from HalliMane in Malleswaram to Bobs in Jeevan Bhima Nagar not being able to find even one suitable place for dinner - Why?? That needs the space of a post for itself.. so I will write about it sometime later. We finally ended up having puchka's, sandwich and juice for dinner), I don't need to say about the rest. But, we shal together come to some conclusion atleast the day before the travel... So no worries.
5. Put clothes for wash - Hurrah!!! I did that, but one more round pending.. Pv says its my favorite job.
6. Have to buy Shabo's wedding gift - She got married Nov last year and I am yet to gift her.
7. Mom is coming tomorrow which means I gotto clean the house and make it look neat atleast on the first glance. It is impossible for me to achieve her cleanliness goals, still gotto do something.
8. Pin-up board - this was part of my new year resolution that I would list down the places I have visited in the year and the ones I want to visit on the pin-up board. Neither did the visiting happen nor did the pin-up board stay up :-) Pv n me put all our efforts n knowledge of physics, chemistry, math and bio too to fix it on the wall and let it stay but the board was too adamant and always want to fall. This time, its gonna be a hang-or-throw situation. If its not gonna work this time, I am gonna throw it off and buy a ready made pin-up board :-)

By now, I realize that the rest of the things have already evaporated and will come back as part of the evening showers. I shall complete these now.

If you are still reading, my thanks to you. In all probability, you might have seen some part of you in the above lines, I am happy to see you too sailing in the same sea if not the same boat :-)

All in all, this week seems to be a pretty satisfying one, I completed my own 'windows task manager' like application @ work, did somethings towards a change in project, managed the house when mom was not there (my huge success item.. well!! 1 more day to go), had been a good girl as always. Full Stop, no comments expected on the last line.

Break the silence

2009-04-20T22:42:00.003+06:00

For those (??) who have been checking this place for a new post, I will soon come up with one!!!

Our little garden

2009-03-30T23:01:00.008+06:00

Few pics of our little garden.

Flowers so beautiful
Courtesy - Aunty

Methi and our new gamla

Methi harvested :-)

The Gift

2009-03-25T22:55:00.023+06:00

Book - The Gift
Author - Cecelia Ahern from Ireland
Challenge - Orbis Terrarum

My review

If miracles had chemical equations then everybody would believe

One of my favorite lines in the book. This one is truly a gift. Read it if you want to know the value of time. The story is about Lou who always wants to be at two places, who thinks of office while having dinner with family, who though is very successful keeps running to be on top of things at work and hardly finds the need and time to spend with his family. There are vivid descriptions of Lou's state of mind, the endless confusions that he battles against to prioritize work and family. Each character is depicted so well that you don't feel it is a piece of fiction. The essence of the story is 'Time can't given. But it can be shared.'

I am so happy that I completed the first book for the challenge. I am not an expert in writing reviews but I want to give it a shot so that I will soon get the hang of it. I am not sure if the review did any justice to the book.

My next book - Train to Pakistan

Back to books

2009-03-10T22:38:00.008+06:00

I came across the 'Orbis Terrarum' challenge in Ramya's blog recently. I found it very interesting and am planning to take it up. The best part of this challenge is it has simple rules. All you gotto do is choose 10 different books, written by 10 different authors, from 10 different countries and read them in 10 months. The challenge begins this month and ends in December.

My theme - Select books written by authors who are from the countries I want to visit in my lifetime
I've picked up 2 books to begin with ...

The Gift by Cecelia Ahern from Ireland
Train to Pakistan by Kushwant Singh from India

Send in your fav set of books to help me select the rest 8.
Just waiting to get started and njoi the ride.

Shopping O soppinggggggggg

2009-03-08T22:28:00.007+06:00

A wallet loaded with hundred rupee notes
Mom by my side to give company
Set free to do anything I wish
What more do I need?

Ended up shopping lots of road side ear rings for a couple of hundreds (literally a couple of hundreds ONLY!!!). It was so much shopping without any prior planning. I've now added 6 more pairs to my LITTLE collection, Happy appy... all smiles... :)

Kathodudhan Naan Paduven

2009-03-04T23:01:00.006+06:00

I heard this wonderful song tonight sung by none other than L.R.Easwari herself on tv. The melody was almost like 'then vandu paayudu kadinile' (literal tranlation - honey flowing in ears). I liked the huskiness in her voice is just too good and brings the scenes right in front of my eyes.

I have been googl'ing to get the lyrics but no success. I managed to write it down as I heard this again on humma.com. The song is written in a very simple language which is also one of the reasons why I was able to enjoy its beauty instantly. Here is the link to play the song.

I am sure this would be there on all tamilians fav list.

Kathodudhan naan paduven
Manathodudhan naan pesuven
Vizhiyodudhan vilaiyaduven
Un madi meedudhan kanmooduven

Kathodudhan naan paduven ....

Valrandalum naan innum siru pillaidhaan
Naan arindalum aduvum nee sollidhan
unakketra thunayaga ennai matrava
Kula villakaaga naan vaazha vazhi kaatavaa

Kathodudhan naan paduven ....

Paaloota oru pillai azhaikindradu
Naan padum patta oru pillai rasikindradu
Ennakaga iru nenjam thudikindradu
Idil yaarkettu en pattai mudikindradu

Kathodudhan naan paduven ....

Right now

2009-03-03T22:38:00.007+06:00

Why do I always have at least 10 things to do and end up doing none of them? Right now, I want to ...

Do some glass painting
Read a book, don't ask me which one
Create my own app using flex
Plan for vacation in July
What will be a nice gift for pv's b'day
How will masinagudi be in April
Why am i not able to keep up my words
Stop watching tv
Buy a fish bowl
Make my own kitchen garden
Buy a gamla from dailydump
Moisturize my dry foot
And the list goes on ....

Lost in Andamans

2009-02-12T21:04:00.020+06:00

There is a long pending post (gonna be an year long if I don't post now) on mine and Pv's trip to Andamans. Now that I have a reader for this post (its u Arun, you better read) who is going there, I thought it would be useful for to blog it. Also, this gives me a great chance to relive those chweet memories :-)

We took a kingfisher flight from Singara Chennai to Port Blair. As the pilot reached well ahead of time, he was asked to fly aorund in the skies of Andamans before they could find a landing space in the Veersavarkar(named after a freedom fighter) airport. The pilot kept circling the various islands and told us about each of them. The flight was not full, so we managed to get a window view to see those lovely bluish green shades hitting the sands, the bushy bushy islands -- a splendid sight I should say.

For those of you who know us well can guess what we did for the acco - yep, we went there without booking any acco. From some friends we got contact of this person by name 'Andman' Sekhar who became our tour guide (finally we realised that there was no need for a guide). We checked each and every hotel there and finally decided on Fortune Bay Island Resort. We had to make stories to the receptionist there on our futile attempts to make a prior booking. You can make such stories there to show that you really really wanna stay there and they will give you a room. But hey!! It is always better to book ur acco ahead of time unless you are like one of us who deliberately does not do. We were lucky to get a sea facing room.

DAY 1 - We planned for a week's stay in Andamans. The first day we went to cellular jail. It was so heartening to see the place and read the sufferings of the freedom fighters. The place is well maintained and don't ever miss the light and sound show. Its so good and just moves you so much. From there we left to 'Chidiya Tapu' in a omni arranged for us by A.Sekhar. On the way we saw some remains of the tusnami disaster. It has a beautiful beach and there is hardly anyone. Though we could not go all the way as some tree had fallen, we really enjoyed the beach. Actually there were only 4 people including us. It feels so nice to be out of the maddening crowd that too after marriage :-). The most memorable part of this place was we suddenly started hearing some hushing sounds coming so close by and we could no identify where the sound came from. Soon, we saw the rain moving in the direction of where we were standing. It was so cool and refreshing. On the way back, we stopped at a tea shop to sip some real hot chai....

DAY 2 - The next day, we left early morning to wandoor. This is the place from where we took a jetty to the Jollybuoy island. As we approached the island, we were asked to move to some smaller boats which had a glass bottom thru which we could see the fishes and corals underneath the water - it was a sneak peak of snorkelling. Just as we reached the place, one of the sailors took just took a jelly fish which was moving on the shore. It was a slimy feeling as I held it in my hand. We were a group of 25-30 people out there on the island. There were couple of guides there for snorkelling. To blow off some myths about snorkelling -- You don't need to know swimming, You will not feel it suffocating on wearing the mask. Just listen to what the guide says and hold the rope he shows. Just dip your head in to the water and keep going into the waters and see the real beauties of nature's creations. Some wonderful fishes, colorful ones, sea cucumbers which are the most laziest of the lot not wanting to move. Its just an amazing experience - don't ever miss it. Remember to take spare clothes to change after snorkelling.

DAY 3 - On the third day we took a ferry to Havelock island which is supposed to be one of the loveliest islands there. Make sure to book your tickets in advance as there are only 2 boats every day. I would recommend taking the Rs.150/- ticket and not the normal Rs.100/- one as it is really hot out in March and so one can't spend much time outside in the deck. Also, the ship is a very normal one not the luxury ones like in Titanic. So, there will be the smell of diesel and if you hate that do take the seat in the air-conditioned coach.

We reached Havelock in the afternoon after some 2.5 hours of sea-sickness for me. Like before, we did not book any acco here too. We used our usual tactis to get 2 day's acco in Dolphin - Government guest house. We have never seen such a beautifully maintained 'government' guest house. We took the Rs.1500/- cottage - sea facing ones. They were so big and nice. After check-in we got help of some local guy there (one of the guides whom we met at the Jetty - most of the guides are reasonable and trust worthy) to rent a bike. It was mid day and we rode to Radha Nagar beach - Asia's most beautiful beach. On seeing it you will realise why. We spent a lot of time on water and then drove back to Dolphins for lunch. The food was good like home made and only costed us 300 for 2 full days - can you believe that!!! That evening we went there again for sun set which was so beautiful.

DAY 4 - We had put alarm to get up ealry morning for sun rise. We were so dumb found on seeing the sun rise. That day we left for elephanta beach for another round of snorkelling. The next day we moved to Sea shells as we had to check out from Dolphins. Sea shells was good but Dolphins was great. DAY 5 - We spent our last day in havelock just relaxing on the sea shore.

DAY 6,7 - We came back to Port Blair the next day and spent another day just lazing around in Fortune enoying the breakfast there. Not to miss at fortune - breakfast, aaloo kaju sazbi, walk in the resort and the resort itself :-) If we go next time, may be we check if they offer candle light dinner. Even if you don't get reservation in Fortune, just go there for a meal.

One place we could not cover and desperately wanted to go - Baratang island, the place where you can find the tribes and if I remember correctly it was one the way to Nicobar. This is a day's trip by itself - so plan accordingly.

Other places one can visit if there is time - Ross island (has some British style buildings), some beach in Port Blair (not worth really) and other islands.

Time to go - Season is between Nov-Feb. It is good to go just after the season as it there is absolutely no crowd. Infact you will see the same set of people as in your flight :-). However, it will be hot.

Carry - Sunglasses, sunscreen lotions, tissues, hats
Wear - Loose clothes, tshirts, capris, tracks

Eat outs - There are plenty. If you are a veggie Annapoorna is a good choice. Remember that all these places close around 9pm as it gets dark very fast.

Shopping - There a whole lot things one can buy - t-shirts with pictures of Andaman, shell based wall hangings, some pearl jewellery (not sure of its authenticity), sea shell like ear rings which come for 10-15 bucks (my fav)

Wallet factor -- The total trip costed us around 50K. Stay at fortune is expensive but as many people say the place you stay can make or break the trip. Snorkelling can cost close to 500bucks. If you hire a guide, it might cost close to 3K for him and the vehicle. It should be okay to take an auto to move around and they go by meter.

Overall, it was a lovely trip and we had a great time. All I can say is -- we are waiting to go again!!!

Running and Catching

2009-02-05T14:07:00.009+06:00

Life has become a running and catching game for me in the last few days. My day starts with the alarm ringing and me snoozing... ring...snooze.... in dreams... with school mates... wingies... office people... work.... and suddenly a full blown up pic of my manager's face and then there is no more snoozing or ringing -- I wake up and it is 6:45AM. "What Aarthi, even today u did not get up early, that's really bad", I tell myself and fold the bed. As I walk down, it feels like I enter a totally different world -- the world of 'running and catching' awaits my entry. I feel just like the kiddoo Ishan in the song 'Duniya ka naara Jame raho..' from Taare Zameen Par.

Over the last few days, I have been so much caught in the R&C game - wake up -- prepare brkie (rather help mom) -- pack lunch boxes -- drop mom -- come back -- drop pv sometimes -- come back -- get ready -- courier mom's application forms -- from there rush to office -- !!!halt!!! take a deep breath and relax at office trying to get things work -- gear up to face the rest of the day -- get back home and then it starts all over again -- rush to meet the eye doc -- as if you did not book an appointment, they make you wait and wait -- finally the eye doc asks to visit once again (oh man!! do they ever know how much of running it is for me?? :-( ) -- go home -- make dinner with mom -- have dinner and keep thinking and thinking of the csim project (sheeshh!! when the hell will I pull myself to do it, I need some scoldings from Aruna, else nothing is going to work.) -- clean the dishes -- and am totally exhausted and jus waiting to hit the bed.

I hate this R&C. I want a change -- Nopes, not a vacation, I've had enough of it. Though I get help doing all these tasks , I just feel I am always running to catch up with things. I have not been able to update my blog, read pv's blog post, not been able to sit in peace and close my eyes (sleep not counted here). Anniversary is coming, have not made any plans!!! Have been thinking of trying my hand at glass painting and I have been only thinking. Wanted to clean the water in the aquarium, my fishes are crying everyday, infact they are on a strike, they have stopped eating offlate.

Hey!! But life is not all that bad. I managed to complete many tasks too. Transferred all the saplings to big pots last weekend, attended ACT annual day, got to spend some good time and fun there, completed all the rounds of eye check-up and doc told me there is no need for glasses, managed to take one step towards my new year resolution, made my wish list of gifts for anniversary (very important)......

Its just that I have too little time to do everything. Lemme spend some time to restructure my day. May be I should get up early in the morning to add a few more hours in my kitty.

The White Tiger

2009-01-18T13:24:00.010+06:00

I wanted to start this year by reading a good book. I had my eye on 'The white tiger' for some now. However I hesitated many times before picking this one from the store. The last time I tried reading the booker prize winner 'Inheritance of loss', I almost concluded that the booker prize winners are more for people who are fond of literature. The story moved at such a slow pace that a leaf falling from the tree would be so awesomely described in two pages. I understand from the view point of the author that she was trying to put in all creativity in describing it but for a reader like me - I lost patience. I could hardly reach 50 pages. This time, as PV also wanted to read it, I managed to break through all my assumptions of how this booker winner would be and took it to the counter for billing.

I don't want to tell the story as it is a true pleasure reading this book. Aravind Adiga has truly captured the economic divide in the Indian society through his fictional story characters of Balram who turns to become Ashok. All through the story, the author has picturised the state of the country from the eyes of the poor who always lives in the dark and thrives to see the light. The sarcasm in the narration has added a totally different flavor to the narration.

A few times, I got so angry at Adiga for continuously talking about the undeveloped India and leaving across the so many achievements or developments the country is witnessing. Going beyond my angst, I could see the majority of us today are lost in the developments and the developing developments that we fail to see the other side. There are many a people and things I notice today as I go on the road which I have not previously. He makes us confront the issues that are there in India today.

There is no place where you can see Adiga exaggerating the economic divide or under-playing the facts. This makes me wonder the extent of his research before writing this book. He must have spent a lot of time talking to people from different stratas of the society, observing them, their actions to understand what is going in their mind.

Sarcasm well wound in words, narrated as a fictional story bringing to light the not so good looking parts of India which we always try to hide or hide from. I neither know nor have read the other contenders for the Booker prize but there is no doubt, this one deserves it.

What a way to end the year??

2008-12-30T23:37:00.007+06:00

In the last 2 weeks I did so many things which I would not normally - Got up late every other day (don't ask me what's new about that), ended up consuming more than two times the calories I need, had family approved gup-shup(pani puri) at road side bandi, ate hot hot mirchi bajjis on the road - went for morning walks with the intention of burning some fat, slept in the afternoons, was not hooked to the laptop more than 10 minutes every day, been with family at home not thinking of work team project ....

2 weeks of vacation - total relaxation - complete rejuvenation - all set to start the new year bright and fresh full of energy.

Feel like looking back to see how I have enjoyed the year. But I gotto sleep right now as I have to get up early tomorrow.

Me off to Puttaparthi tomorrow.. Cu all in the new year.

Happy new year!!!

Education as it can be

2008-12-20T21:22:00.010+06:00

Dear friends,

My weekly sessions at CSIM have completed and I am now doing an individual project. This is like a dream project which I would love to implement some day.

My passion is in 2 areas - children and education. So, I plan to do a project that would bring more meaning to these. As most of you would know, I have been volunteering for ACT for the past few years. The idea of this project is based out of my experiences with children there. It has stemmed from the feeling of helplessness, frustration while teaching children and the constant urge to motivate children to learn the right way.

I have put down my thoughts of the project. In the coming weeks I will post my findings and ways to address the issue.

I would like you all to pass on your suggestions or any inputs you have.

Love,
Me

BACKGROUND

Life of an under-privileged child

Today, there are many NGOs who work for educating under-privileged children. One of the biggest challenges these NGOs face is to sustain and increase the interest of the child in education. Being supported by the NGO, the child joins a government school enthusiastic about going the school and being the first generation literate in his/her family. Slowly as years pass by, the child keeps learning new theories and concepts in school and finds no relevance to it in daily lives. At home, their parents are uneducated and hence are not able to help them in understanding the importance or the science behind the concepts. At schools (typically government schools), the standard of teaching is poor. When the child reaches class 8 or 9, his/her interest in education drops as they hardly understand what they learn. They prefer to mug-up the question answers and score marks for the sake of exams than understanding the logic or reasoning. As time passes, they complete class 10 and face the big question of which branch/stream to choose. Most of them end up choosing commerce not because the want to become a C.A, but because they have an aversion to mathematics, physics and chemistry. Their choices are more derived from their dislikes than likes. Much before they realize, they end up gazing at the limited choices they have for an under-graduate degree. The girl enrolls herself for an arts course and the boy for a B.Com. As they have not developed their application and problem solving skills so long, they struggle to get a good job for their education. And there finally comes the irony - they land up in a job which has no relevance to what they have learnt so far.

There are multiple cascading problems here,
1. As teaching at school is more exam oriented and not application oriented, the child looses interest
2. As they loose interest, they start disliking subjects which need more logic like Maths and Science. This gives them limited options in class X and XII
3. Without developing the required problem solving skills, they don’t end up in the right jobs

Today, there are many organizations that are working for identifying the most appropriate streams for the child based on his/her capability. There are also organizations working towards getting a job for them.

OBJECTIVE

Through this project I would like to work on the root-cause of the problem which is – Learning not being application and problem solving oriented.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Education is important to every child irrespective of their background. The problem of rote learning is applicable to children in general and only to under-privileged ones. Through this project I would like to come up with some ways of addressing this issue for all children.

Coming soon ...
Results of some study/surveys
Analysis of existing solutions if any
New solutions

How terrorizing is a terror attack?

2008-12-07T19:00:00.003+06:00

With the wake of the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, life has changed for most of us. We sit glued to the tv not watching movies or mega serials but tracking the latest updates on the investigations and closely looking out for new terror alerts and warnings. Every lunch table conversations is on the topic of what can the Indian Government do and how Pakistan is playing a double game.

Though most of us have not experienced the trauma personally being there @ the Taj or Oberoi or CST station, it has affected us completely. For me, it has been a major change in thought process -- my mind always clouded with fear and suspicion.

It was friday afternoon, we were sitting at the lunch table watching one of the news channels in the cafeteria. The usual conversations began and here my team mate told me that there is a threat warning sent for Bangalore. He continued telling us about why he cancelled all his weekend plans and wanted to stay safe at home. Dec 6th - the Babri Masjid day, seemed to be an excuse enough for another attack. I had my usual plans of a packed saturday with finishing some pending works followed by csim class and then go back home around 7:30 in the night. But after hearing to him, I was little scared and started thinking twice about my plans. At the end of our discussion, I was completely gotten to believing that it was unsafe to be out of home over the weekend though I knew I was falling prey to exactly what the terrorists want - create panic and confusion in the minds of people. Finally one of my colleagues managed to pep me up to gather some courage and move on with life.

This was not the only incident -- remember a few days ago, there was a high security alert in many airports in the country following some email threat? Around the same night was when 2 of my dear ones were supposed to land in Mumbai. I was so scared, din't know what to do. I din't want to talk about it at home and end up scaring others. That night, I hardly slept in peace.

Of-late I dream of people shooting around, sudden confusion created in the city, people running around to save their lives. It might sound exagerrated, this is exactly what I have been going thru in the last few days. I wonder what it would be like for those people who have been there.

Every other place has become unsafe. How can someone be at peace when survival itself is at stake?

The mumbai attack has been a big wake up call for all of us to identify and fix the major security loop holes and the basic issue of corruption. As a citizen, I don't have much clue of what to do? All I do today is to watch the tv and keep myself updated. That's really the sad state ...

Pix of PRAKRUT

2008-12-05T21:54:00.005+06:00

Pics of Prakrut posted here

Life post PRAKRUT

2008-12-03T21:30:00.013+06:00

Seems like I just got down from a roller coaster ride... yea, I now experience a sudden slow down after a speedy bumpy ride with a safe landing.

There were days when I was juggling between mails, phone calls and work (of course). My days would begin with mom constantly saying 'aarthi aarthiiiiiiiiii.. ezhuduko... mani enna theriyuma.... iduku daan seekirama thoongu nu sollaren, ketta daane...' (I don't wish to translate and loose the charm of it :-)) and then I would sleepily come down switch on my lappy and start checking mails for updates from the team on the event.

It was almost 30 days of hard work concentrated over the weekends, that is how I would define our pattern of working. It was a complete phase of putting all learning into practice. We went step by step, sometimes jumped a few steps in anxiety and enthusiasm.

We did everything right from identifying the social issue of concern, the target audience, how we would want to attack the problem. At the end of these discussions, we decided to choose 'Environment' as the issue of target and we decided to host an event promoting the solutions instead of talking about the problem which is the usual style. That was how and when PRAKRUT was born.

Then we went about identifying target audience and the different activities that we would do as part of the event. School children were our primary target as a change brought in to the minds of young ones tend to stay with them all through the life. We also decided to approach general public thru the children. We planned to leverage the work of NGOs and corporates having solutions in this domain to bring forth the solutions.

Slowly we moved to the most important part of budgeting the whole event. This was the most funny task as each time we did, we got a completely new figure which was way beyond the previous times result. Thank God, none of us even our wildest dreams are doing any work related to finance. Till the last minute this the one constant variable.

All pre-work for the event soon started like inviting school children for the exhibiting their eco-friendly solutions, making posters for inviting them and writing rules. I almost felt like a school principal while editing the rules list. I was wondering how it would be if I were asked to come in school uniform on a weekend and how much I hated such things as a child.

Talking to NGO's, hearing their response, coaxing them to participate, answering wierd questions like 'will you give us food?', running behind them to get confirmation. It was all fun watching the story unfold. Thanks to Aruna for her immense patience in gathering the inputs and doing all the talking. I had enough of a bad experience right in the beginning :-)

The next round of running around was for the misc activities which turned out to take more effort and time than the main ones probably coz most of the important tasks were done by then.
Publicity poster making, visiting the venue, debating what food to serve thru the day, who will arrange, how to arrange, how much to spend - it all looks so simple and silly now. Writing mails to companies asking for sponsorship was the funniest of all. If only I show you the mails I wrote, you would laugh at it. All the realization of how to write a mail to a sponsor dawned after being grilled by Varsha (I hope Varsha is reading this :-)) one saturday afternoon. Oh man!! I almost lost hopes of having the event till she finally flagged off saying we are 70% complete.

It was a lot of learning - learning how to work in a team when people are in different frequency levels, how to ensure majority of them are not hurt and still put forward your opinions, how to use somebody's strenght, how to talk in a press meet (nothing will work if you don't know to speak kannada). What can I say when we had lots of praises at the end for this wonderful event. All the hard work seemed so much fun at the end.

Missing being on top of my mails, getting interrupted at work by phone calls, calling people, being in my own world of thoughts about the event. Missing all the people and the fun.

Life seems to now be moving like a goods train, so slow. Guess, this saturday would be the time to change gears and go on another roller coaster ride. Yep, time has come for my individual project - my FAC (field action component).

PRAKRUT - An initiative to promote eco-friendly solutions

2008-11-27T12:58:00.012+06:00

Prakrut - An initiative to promote eco-friendly solutions.

This is an event hosted by the third batch students of CSIM (Centre for Social Initiative and Management). As part of the event there are
1. Exhibits on eco-friendly solutions by school children
2. NGO's, corporates show-casing their solutions
3. Activities center where there is lots to do and learn
4. On-the-spot painting competition for children all through the day
5. Information stalls

This is one of the ways by which we are planning to sensitize people towards the environmental issues. If each of us take that one step, we would do more good to humanity and our future generations.

Please help us in spreading the word across to all your friends in Bangalore. Feel free to pass on the poster above to all your friends. It is a day long event on Sunday.

Call your colleagues, friends, neighbors to participate. Awareness spreads only by word of mouth.

VENUE - Seva Sadan, Kormanagala 3rd Block, Bangalore
Time - 10am to 6pm
Contact - Aruna - 9886833665

More details about the event - NGOPost
Yahoo calendar

Come, join hands to Nurture mother Nature.

CSIM session 10

2008-10-29T15:00:00.000+06:00

Sustainability was the topic of this session. Ms.Lily Paul of Ashoka was back to explore this with us.

Yep, like every other week we started with the basics of understanding what we were about to talk about. This session began with an exercise making each of us think what sustainability is all about the factors that would affect it.

We all defined it in our own terms, based on our perspectives and past experiences. We settled something like -- It is taking your goals forward through the times in the same way or in an improved way. We then summed the different factors that affects sustainability. Then Lily helped us classify these in to 3 broad categories.

Institutional
1. Mission [You need to have a mission that will make the goals a reality]
2. Strategic plan [The plan is how part of the mission]
3. Leadership [Good leadership is needed to stand the test of time]
4. Organization relevance [How is your org. going to add value in whatever it does]

Resources/Financial
1. Funding [No funds.. not gonna be there for long]
2. Budget plan [To know how much funds we need]
3. Self-sustaining strategies [Most important factor, think what will happen if all donors disappear coz of economic recession!!]
4. Diversify resource sources [Find different sources of funding]
5. Transparency [In terms of accounts n processes]
6. Fund raising and reporting [Report to donors on how the fund was used]
7. Building collaborations [Join hands with related NGOs]

Social
1. Sharing org. values and mission [This makes people understand the org. better]
2. Community participation [Make the community participate in the mission]
3. Networking [Needless to explain]
4. Building acceptance with stake holders [So that they realize the importance of this work]

Well, if all that sounded so much theory here comes the big surprise - a man who has each of these in his organization and has shown us the true meaning of sustainability.

The big surprise was Mr.Ayappa Masagi. He is an Ashoka fellow, founder of rainwater conpcets and Water Literacy Foundation. A man so filled with passion for his work who firmly believes in 'Doer first teacher next'. He has brought water to more than 80,000 bore wells across the country. His book 'Jala-Nela-Jana' talks about the various technologies he uses to conserve and reuse water.

With a mission to 'create a water literate India' he founded the Water Literacy Foundation in 2005. He has 100+ self developed technologies for bore well, stream water harvesting, rain water harvesting.

Initially he started working out as an individual who was trying to save his farms from drought. He found some innovative ways by which he could conserve water. Then, he went about taking his work to farmers in the drought prone areas, some corporates who were spending huge sum on water. All his projects became huge success. He has now worked on projects worth 40 crores with people involvement.

Talking more about people involvement - this is one of the prime factors which we termed as community involvement for sustainability. He worked with the people in proving his solutions, thereby making them participate in many activities and see the change for themselves. This helps in a big way to achieve credibility.

As he kept explaining to us about his projects, we were so curious to know how he spreads this message to people being the one man army. He then told us about how he organizes awareness programs at customer's venue. This hints around the point of diverse resource sources. He also sells books, cds and uses that money back in to running projects.

As in every other social venture, funding is a big problem here too. You either don't get funds or you get it but not at the time of need. It is no different for Masagi. He is now hoping to tackle this problem by coming up with some self-sustaining models. He has established rain water concepts which is a profit making company. A part of the profits from here will be used for running projects in WLF. Also, there is another strategy where he is planning to form a group of farmers and invest an initial sum in doing projects in that farm. He will then take a part of the profit which will be used for doing further projects. With multiple iterations of this, there is will be enough money to get this model going.

Coming back to doer first teacher next - it is so true to see that he has all systems in place at his home where now bore water comes at 3o feet when compared to 1500 feet it would take for water to come.

He is someone who is so full of passion, knowledge and the desire to spread the awareness around. At the end of the class, we were so fascinated by his work and someone (none else than a software geek could ask this Q.. ok its not me) asked a question on why he has not patented any of his technologies. Yea, what else can people like us think when we are so used to listening to patents and IP mining every other day. Masagi's answered asking why he should patent his idea when all he wants to do is to spread awareness of water literacy. Well, that's what happens when you are a social entrepreneur - you don't own your idea and stick to it; you just want to see the benefit of it reaching multiple people.

That was how our last session was - theory filled with practicality and kannada poetry. Masagi is a poet, he recites poems as he speaks. I wish I knew kannada to understand and appreciate it all.

CSIM Session 9

2008-10-29T14:28:00.006+06:00

This session was by Ms.Sangita, CFO Dream-a-Dream. She spoke to us on Financial management for NGOs.

I did not take notes, so not much to blog here. The session was more on the importance of finance management - how to budget, allocate funds, classify expenses and file them regularly. It was a pretty informative session.

What's wrong with me?

2008-10-12T19:11:00.006+06:00

For a change this weekend I feel I have all the time in the world and don't know what to do. I am wondering what's wrong with me. So, I decided to turn back and see what I did over the last one week.

Monday - Oh man!! seems long time ago.. Lemme recollect. It started with the usual Monday morning meetings. I had come back to office with all energy gained from the Wayanad trip and after hearing some inspiring session on 'Power of unreasonable people'. I was all charged up to take lot of work. Then interviewed some guy, it did not go all that well :-(. Then caught up on the Flex trainings.

Tuesday - The power and enthu still seem to be there in me. I was all set to go complete my work at office. After long time, I did some code changes and felt good about it though it was very minor.

Wednesday - Ahaa, there comes it. It was the day of saraswati pooja and did some tasty tashty chakara pongal, vadai and sundal. By the time we had brkie I was feeling too lazy to go to office. Took some sundal to office. And somehow managed to come home by 7 :-)

Thursday - Holiday, woohoooo. Got up and wore some new clothes. After lunch, me and pv set to accomplish our 5 month dream of ordering a book shelf :). Met our family furniture guy (like family doctor u see) and designed our shelf. When we heard his estimates, we decided to cut the frills in our design, made it plain and simple. That is our achievement of the month, rather months :-) Then did some roaming around for buying furniture for ACT. Then we went to Pinx for some dhaba chai and mini samosa. We then went to Prasidhi to do some diwali purchase and the day ended with superb tasty food at Oye Amristar.

Friday - It was a long day at work. One more interview to take. I wanted to come home early and go for a round of puchka but was getting late at office. By the time I came home I had a bad headache. Then some calls from office to fix some issue :( Bad day it was.

Saturday - Most of my excitement died down when I got a message that the CSIM class was canceled. Anyways, it gave me time to be at home and we all watched Sivaji. Then another round of diwali purchase :)

Sunday - Lazy lazy day. Did nothing at all. Finally got so irritated with myself, that we went out for a round of puchka. And now here writing this post. Waiting to goto office and do some work tomorrow.

Waiting to goto office? What's wrong with me?? Nothing, that's what happens when there are too many lean weeks :)

The story behind the Lehman Brothers collapse

2008-10-05T19:45:00.008+06:00

Having heard and read little here and here about the Lehman Brother's bankruptcy over the last few weeks, I really could not understand what went wrong.

I was too lazy to ask anyone to know in detail. All I knew was people failed to repay home loans and that led to bankruptcy. That made me wonder how it could only happen with Lehman, it should be a common case. However, there were too many things that my mind had to munch in the last couple of weeks that this took a back seat.

Today, I came across an article in the Hindu Magazine answering all my questions and much beyond. I appreciate the way the writer has put down the facts that makes it easy to comprehend.

In short, this is how it works

Banks offer home loans to people --> Investment banks like Lehman Bros buy those loans from the banks. This is good for the bank as they get back the loan money at one shot and now they can issue more loans. Lehman brothers now coverts these loans in to funds which investors buy.
Each month the bank sends the EMI paid against the loan to Lehman Bros who then splits it and sends it across to its investors. These investors now get a monthly returns for their investments.

Isn't that a very interesting way of looking at the concept of home loans? Now, where could the problem come? What if the EMI is not paid on time? Well, as this concept emerged the interest rates for home loans were very low and there was close to 1% of defaulters. So, this was not considered to be a major risk at all.

Now you should see the strategy of Lehman. They now convinced AIG (Insurance) to insure these home loans. There being almost a minimal risk in the home loan payment business, AIG promptly signed the deal. Everything was going smooth. With more and more investors getting into this business, Lehman was buying more and more home loans. This internally pushed the banks to offer more loans. Slowly, the qualifying criteria of loan approvals detoriated and it seemed like anyone could get a loan. Around the same time, the interest rates all increased. All this mounted to a large number of defaulters.

As the EMI's were not paid, the banks could not give Lehman the monthly share who then had nothing to give the investors. This was when Lehman Bros felt the heat of the situation. AIG now had to insure all these defaulters and ended up loosing so much money in an area which was considered the least risk.

And the rest is history today...

CSIM Session 8

2008-10-04T22:15:00.008+06:00

What more can we ask for than to hear on Social Entrepreneurship and strategy from CSIM founder Mr.Devarajan himself.

The basic questions were asked - What is a strategy? It is a plan of action to reach goals/objectives.
Then came the point to ponder - When does one need a strategy? Inorder to realize a vision, one needs mission and to accomplish the mission one needs a strategy.

Vision is something which lasts for a long time, it is not something valid for a few years. The vision should be simple and not time bound. With this, each of us were asked to frame our vision in 3 words. Few examples that came out
Empowerment of women
Empowerment of children
Improve quality of life
Providing widow marriage opportunities
Removing economic barriers
Social transformation together
Providing timely help
Create a better world

Out of these we were asked to choose 3 which we thought were missions that would last for generations to come. We selected the ones marked in bold.

The next step was to create a mission. For this we worked to understand what a mission means - it flows from the vision, should be measurable and have a time line. We took the example of the vision 'Improve quality of life' and framed mission statement - Promoting spiritual wellness, emotional well being and physical well being.

While creating a mission statement, ensure that it has goals set against a time line and it is measurable.

Now comes the strategy which helps to accomplish the mission. Strategy is
1. a practical plan to achieve the mission
2. needs to have a time line
3. needs to be in detail
4. identify the risk and plan to mitigate them
5. internalize the risk by planning for resources needed to mitigate the risk
6. Identify the resources [time, people, knowledge, finance, infrastructure]

The cycle of the execution of the plan is more of a common sense.

During the multiple iterations of this cycle, there will be revisions to the plan. Then the process can be documented and shared, replicated to other NGO's. This will help in reaching out to many people and scaling of the organization.

Many times, intuition plays a role in strategy formation. Intuition comes from experience and is useful in risk management.

Then Devarajan sir read out some extracts from the book 'The power of unreasonable people'. This seems to a good read, an inspirational one. One extract had some good statistics that showed why the future of social sector and social enterpreneurs will be very bright. The author says that there are 4 billion people in the bottom of the economic pyramid. These people do very small jobs like the cobblers, masons, sweepers etc. The suprising fact is that the total revenue of such small jobs across the world is 5 trillion. To re-iterate

4 billion people in the bottom of economic zone ===> generate 5 trillion revenue

Isn't that amazing? The future lies in tapping the talent in this zone, by providing them the right skills. Now, who knows best about the people in this zone? NGO's. And that is why the world is looking for SE's to try new business models, study these groups and promote a social change.

CSIM Session 7

2008-10-04T21:14:00.005+06:00

Hurrah!! I completed blogging on one of the pending sessions. Now comes session7.

If I were to describe this session in few words, I would say it was truly inspirational. This time we had Dr.Meena Jain talking to us about Looking Beyond. Meena Jain is the founder of Sambhav foundation which works for children with disabilities.

Most of our discussion in this class was on trying to understand ourselves, our comfort zones and how to build secure zones. It began with the question on what do I see when I look beyond me?

The above pic tells us that there is my family, relatives, neighbourood, community, country beyond me. As we interact with each of these, we have some barriers causing a tunneled vision.
For example, if I had an argument with my father and did not like the way it went, I don't have the courage to go and tell papa how hurt I am. Instead I would go to ma and ask her how papa could say like that and express how hurt I am. We are not direct in our conversations and that's when we have the tuneled vision.

Then we spoke about 2 key things
1. Comfort zone - which are built from our wants, they are temporary. Most of the time, we are not able to adjust when we are in comfort zone.
2. Secure zone - built from needs - like need for shelter, family, livelihood. These are permanent needs and we are able to adjust more if we have build a good secure zone.

This session was so much talking of our day-to-day issues on our families like I am unable to convince my parents of my career choice. Most of the times, when we talk to our dear ones we don't reason out our decision, we justify it emotionally. This makes the opposite party think that we are adamant for no reason. Always use your rationale mind to reason out decisions.

But hey, I know this is no way an easy job. I have tried it many times and failed miserably. As we raised such concerns in the class, Meena Jain gave us tips on how one can work towards it to improve ones EQ.
1. Become aware of your feeling
2. Acknowledge your feeling
3. Be in control of your feeling
4. Sense and identify the feeling of others

The key take aways from the class
1. Only if you have good relationships in your family - you can be at peace and serve others
2. Trust people and let your goals reflect in all your action, interactions like in your neighbourhood, family, community. This will automatically build the trust in people.
Above all, it all lead to

Stop talking, start doing

CSIM Session 6

2008-10-04T20:48:00.005+06:00

This has been a long pending post. Today I am planning to clear of few of my TBD (To Be Done) tasks as this bucket is now overflowing :-)

We had Varsha Avadhany from Fidelity to talk on NGO laws and regulations. Like every other session we began with trying to understand the basic words under discussion - in this case 'Laws and regulations'. Then we moved to understand why should there be laws n regulations in a non-profit sector. We came up with answers like they are needed to have a discipline, transparency, standard operating processes.

Slowly we moved to the intricacies of the formation of non-profits, the different forms under which they can be registered
1. Trust
[This is the oldest way, a minimum of 2 members are required to form a trust. Can be started within by members of the same family]
2. Society registration
[A minimum of 7 members, not more than 2 people can be blood relatives. The board member cannot be an employee of that society]
3. Non-profit company
[Companies sometimes use their profit to start a non-profit (NP) company which works on the same line of business but don't run for profit]
Example of this - Maya organics, mobility India
So, the selling price of the product this NP company sells should be equal to the cost price.

This was already so much of gyaan for us, hardly did we know that it was just the tip of the iceberg :-)

We later covered aspects of tax filing, the different exemtions like 80G where there is a 50% tax exemption, 35AC where there is a 100% tax exemption. The FCRA act and its regulations were an interesting topic.

FCRA stands for Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (1976). For a NPO to get FCRA approval, they need to be functional for atleast 3 years. There are 2 ways of getting permission -
1. Apply for FCRA which will take atleast a year for the approval
2. Apply to the Central Govt. for prior permission for a particular project
On approval, the NPO can get foreign contributions.

The Ministry of Home Affairs grants FCRA approval and they have many rounds of processing and cross verification which makes it time consuming. All FCRA contributions are monitored by intelligence agency across the world.

At last the point that was dirven again and again in to our head was

TO BE ETHICALLY RIGHT.

CSIM Session 5

2008-09-26T08:14:00.001+06:00

VALUEable or inVALUEable ??

Both I would say... That's how I will describe the few hours of our interaction with Mr. & Mrs. Chandran. The title slide projected 'Values and beliefs' as the topic for the day, I thought it would be a moral science class. S0mething like - you should do this you should not do this and probably some stories too (tats one reason why I liked these classes in school).

The class started with the duo (Mr and Mrs Chandran) asking us a very basic question - What do you understand by Value? This question stumped me big time. We keep using this word so very often and when I was asked to define value I was BLINKING. Values are learned beliefs like honesty is a value, punctuality is a value. As we practice these values they become habits or virtues and when a group of people exhibit this value it becomes ethics. That's the definition incase someone asks you.

This class was so filled with exercises that we never felt the time passing by. We did multiple hands on sessions. We began identifying the values which are important for each of us. Following that we had to give priority of the identfied 7. Once that was done, we were asked to split a sum of 10,000Rs against these 7 in varied proportion. At the end we did some basic math like add, multiply and found out which value rates high for each one. This gave us an idea of what takes more priority for us - power/position, aesthetic sense, social/helping others etc. This was a wonderful exercise which re-iterated to me that I am a person who loves being with people and enjoy helping people.

We then came to an interesting conversation on can a project that works for a social cause be profit oriented. This one is many people's favourite. We all agreed on the fact that social projects need not always be non-profit ones. As we reached this point, there was a confusion in distinguishing a business from a social project. If both are profit oriented models what is the difference in them. And here is where the duo helped us see the key difference - in a social cause the profit comes from the work that is done and not at the expense of the customer.

The session turned more and more captivating as we identified that our discussions were bringing forth the on-the-field qualities one needs to be a social worker. Some of the most important ones are
1. Understand the people you work for. Read between the lines - both verbal and non-verbal communication
2. Be objective as you hear to the people. Never judge using your value system.
We were given a wonderful example for this
A lady comes to you - she is pregnant for the 7th time - all the children born so far are either deaf or dumb - she is suffering from syphilis - what would you suggest - abortion??
The question left us in a fix - atleast I did not know what to say - couple of folks suggested an abortion as the chances of the 7th child being normal is less. The rest were against it as they could not accept the whole idea of taking life off.
And know what? The 7th child was Beethoven.

As a social worker it helps to be a
1. empathetic listener
2. have cultural sensitivity [I came across a mail on Bihar relief activity where they were urging people to donate sarees. The women of Bihar have never worn anything other than saree. The person/organization here was culturally sensitive to the needs of the people.]
3. Gender sensitivity
4. good communicator
5. Establish trust

The most important thing is to be one with the mass. That's one reason why Gandhi was loved and Nehru was respected.

Before we realised the clock struck 6 and the session was over. It was - Invaluably valuble.

Hats off to the duo - they had so much energy in them to keep the class going for 4 hrs. At their age, I am not sure if I will be able to talk for 30 minutes continuously. They were so knowledgable and down to earth.

Thanks to CSIM - We are getting a life-time opportunity to meet such great people and spend time with them.

Tum ho to ...

2008-09-22T13:58:00.005+06:00

Tum Ho To Gaata Hai Dil, Tum Nahin To Geet Kahan..
Tum Ho To Hai Sab Haasil, Tum Nahin To Kya Hai Yahan..
Tum Ho To Hai Sapno Ke Jaisa Haseen Ek Sama…
Jo Tum Ho To Yeh Lagta Hai Ke Mil Gayi.. Har Khushi
Jo Tum Na Ho Yeh Lagta Hai Ke Har Khushi.. Mein Hai Kami
Tumko Hai Maangti Yeh Zindagi…

One of my favorite soft beat songs from Rock On movie. I liked this one rendered by Joe (Arjun Rampal) in the movie.

The movie is awesome, God salute to Farhan Akthar for his amazing acting and singing. Never knew someone could be so mutli-talented.

CSIM Session 4

2008-09-17T19:41:00.010+06:00

Today I decided to shed off little laziness and write about my previous sessions. There is too much to write and so I start without any foreground background.

Session 4 - We had Vishal Talreja from Dream-a-dream come and talk to us. He was young, dynamic and of course very inspiring. The session was focussed on leadership. We discussed some of the aspects of a leader and then did a case study which was very interesting.

Here is a jist of the case -- Ravi is the head of DWF foundation which supports around 800 children in Bangalore. Over the period of time, he feels that organization has become stagnant in terms of growth. So he comes up with a project where DWF can start supporting children in Chennai and Mysore. There a couple of organizations who wants to partner with DWF for this. Now, Ravi takes this proposal to his team, everyone is excited about this but are not willing to take it forward. The reasons being they are stretching themselves already and will not be able to give time to any new work, how can they trust the credibility of the partners and how can they get to know their work ethics, what if their mission is very different. The case ended with the question - If you are Ravi how would you take this project forward and convince your team.

On a first read, the question resonated a typical corporate team behaviour. How many teams we would have felt that we are already over working and our manager comes with some new task thinking we have all the time in the world to do it. All the while, I was seeing the problem from the eyes of someone working in the team. With this case study I was forced to reverse roles, tables turned and for once I pitied all my managers and thought of the tough times they would have had convincing someone like me :-)

Coming back to the case, we were 4 in our team and each one was thinking tangential to the other. Somehow at the end we managed to streamline our thoughts though one person was totally against Ravi's decision. There were 3 teams. The first team's presentation was awesome - J had come to present and for the next 10-15 minutes we only saw Ravi there and not J. Truly fantastic presentation I should say. Hats off folks. They gave ideas like Ravi would take the lead and go to chennai and Mysore to start these operations. This way, he would move out of Bangalore and give way to the team to lead the efforts in Bangalore. Most of their points was based on this key idea. Though it seemed to work, the project now looked like Ravi's child and not the teams.

The second team presented ideas on how to solve the existing problems in Bangalore so that the team can start working on the new projects. The idea was good, they had a plan in place to solve the issues but the only point that was missed is what if they get caught in the loop of solving the problems in Bangalore. There were couple of comments from other teams as the plan did not bring out the qualities of a leader who would empower his people to solve their problems.

Last was our team and we knew that our analysis of the problem was not enough. We had brought out ideas like how to partner with the local NGOs, how to reduce the work load of the team so that they can take up new work. Also we split the growth numbers into smaller chunks for it to sound realistic and achievable. Somehow we managed to get appreciation from other teams.

At the end of the case study, we came up with a list of qualities of a good leader. A few of what I can recollect (those which sounded very important to me) -
1. Transformatory thinking or think big and out of the box
2. Empowerment of people
3. Understand the people
4. Have a vision for the future

Apart from these are the essential values like integrity, honesty and others.

That was how our session ended. It was a fabulous case study with a lot of thoughts flowing from everyone.

More to come on the 5th session.

God!! Please help me get up early so that I can blog my thoughts.

Zoommm Vrooooooommmmmmm

2008-09-14T17:40:00.003+06:00

Hurrah, I crossed 1000 kms on my cutie bike. For me its a big achievement. I remember those days when I wanted to buy a 2 wheeler and was so hesitant only coz it was long long time since I had ridden a bike. I was so scared to be ride on on the roads of Bengaluru where half the driving population know no rules.

Thanks to pv, with all the encouragement and motivation we bought pleasure a few months back. It was a like a dream come true for me (one of my small dreams :)). The first week I feared to take it anywhere that was a kilometer away from home. All I did was go round and round the same street. And all of a sudden there came a day when I had to take my sis on the bike all the way to HSR layout. Now, it was not only to ride my way but also to ensure my sis is safe. Too much pressure, somehow I managed to go and then it was all fun ...

That day alone I drove on the inner ring road, outer ring road, marathahalli, whitefield. Confidence grew and from then on all I did was to zoom and vroom and this week I crossed the 1000km mark. For all those bikers, it would seem wierd that I am jumping up and down just for this. But this one is very special to me.

In all these days, I have had so much fun on the bike. Offlate I have started scolding more, scolding somoene on the road who does not drive the way I want him/her to :-). I know almost every other driver would have scolded me. Recently, I had the best experience on the bike.

As usual one morning I started the bike to go to office without realizing the tough times I would face soon. I slowed the bike a little to cross a hump on the road and tak my bike stopped. Then i pressed the button to get it started but it failed to respond. I put the choke on and then things fell in place. And there came the next time where I slowed down coz of traffic. This was the beginning of all troubles - my bike failed to start no matter what. I had no way but to pull it to the side with all those heartless four wheeler guyz honking behind. Then I shook the bike this side and that side without knowing why I did. Well, I remember many people doing that way and I wanted to try my luck too. I was left with no option but to push the bike to some place and park it. That was the time it struck me that its been a real long time since I filled some fuel, but the fuel indicator was showing the petrol tank was half full. Also, that was morning was when I had the wonderful thought that the bike has started giving good milage after the service. With all this in mind, I decided to check the fuel tank myself. I opened to see that it was empty with not even a drop of petrol :) What else, I walked to the nearest petrol bunk, got a half litre can of petrol and filled the tank. After two three kicks, my bike decided to take me to office.

Morals of the story -
Don't always trust your fuel indicator
Don't dream of big milage increase after the first service

Now every time I fill petrol, I use my elementary math to calculate how many kms would come before I have to refill.

Why mobile phones have no dial tones?

2008-09-11T14:07:00.002+06:00

This was an interesting question I read in the sci-tech section of The Hindu today. I thought it is worth sharing. Here is the extract from the newspaper.

Why can’t we hear the dial-tone in a mobile phone but hear it in the fixed wire & wireless phones?

In a conventional telephone network (fixed wire) the telephone is connected physically to a telephone exchange by a pair of dedicated copper wire from the customer’s home or office.

When the telephone goes off hook, the switch in telephone exchange will allow dial tone carrying voltage, to be sent on to the receiver. So you hear the dial tone.

In a mobile, communication is happening between base station and mobile by wireless.

This means the cell phone is not connected physically to the mobile exchange always. In a mobile phone handset, when you enter the number to be dialled and press the “send key”, the mobile phone sends a request to open a circuit, which means the circuit is on demand and not always on as in the case of a landline.

So you don’t require a dial tone in mobile networks. (It happens when you press the call button you may get a message stating network busy which shows the channel is unavailable.)

Fixed Wireless: To provide communication in a sparsely populated area and in extreme terrain conditions, where laying cable is not profitable or may be difficult, fixed Wireless was emerged as an alternative to the land line (fixed wire). So in this system a processor is provided in the customer premises to simulate a conventional telephone network.

The processor provides a simulated dial tone when the telephone goes off-hook. Then the dial number is analyzed by using digit analysis and transmits all the numbers to a base station. Unlike a cellular service instead of pressing a “send key”, a dial tone is provided.

In a landline a real dial tone is a method to indicate that a connection with the communication network has actually been established where as the simulated dial tone in a fixed wireless may not accurately reflect whether a connection can be made with the communication network. For example even if the communications channels are busy the fixed wireless phone will still provide a dial tone giving a false impression that the call will go through.

The story of Ganesha

2008-09-07T17:17:00.011+06:00

Of late I am getting to hear a lot of mythological stories. I can't believe myself, I am reading a book of mythological stories :)

Here is the story of how the Lord Ganesha got his elephant head.

Long long ago, there was an asura named Gajasura who was performing penance for thousands of years. Lord Shiva pleased with his dedication appeared before him and granted a wish. Immediately Gajasura asked Lord Shiva to reside inside his stomach and the lord granted his wish.

Lord Shiva was now not found anywhere in Kailasha or Vaikunta and the devas got worried, they went to Narada. He took them all to Lord Vishnu who knew everything.

All the devas and the Vishnu dressed up like the 'gudugudu walas' (people who take the bull and go to each home) went to the kingdom of Gajasura. The king pleased with the singing granted a wish to the leader of the gang. The leader was none other than Vishnu himself, but Gajasura failed to realise this. Vishnu took this chance and sent the bull to pierce Gaja's stomach with its horns. Lord Shiva came out and that was the time when Gajasura understood that it was Vishnu. Gajasura then asked for a boon to Lord Shiva to be known in all directions.

As the news of Shiva coming back to Kailasha reached Parvati, she wanted to prepare herself to recieve him. While she was removing the nalangu (sandal paste) from her body, she made a cute doll with it. The doll looked so beautiful that she induced life in to it. It became a boy and she asked him to gaurd the place and not allow anyone till she comes from bath.

Shiva too eager to meet Parvati comes to Kailasha and he is stopped by this boy who does not let him. The boy tells him that his mother had ordered him not to allow anyone to come in till she comes out of bath. Shiva became angry and be-headed the boy. Parvati came from bath to find the boy dead. She was so upset and questioned shiva how he could do that to their son. Shiva thought of an idea and ordered his men to bring the head of Gajasura. He then fixed the head of gajasura (whose head is that of an elephant) to the boy and that's how Ganesha got the head of the elephant.

Teacher's day

2008-09-05T10:28:00.002+06:00

Today, I am reminded of those teachers who have changed many things in me for good.
Shanthi mam (bio), Sivaraman sir (English), Chemistry sir, Hemavathy mam (chemistry) and my all time favourite and constant teacher my dearest mom.

Wishing you all a very happy teacher's day and thank you so much for having taken this noble profession to educate and empower young minds.

Kya aap Panchivi pass se tez hai?

2008-09-04T19:36:00.014+06:00

Kya aap panchvi pass se tez hai, hai ya nahi? Ab patha chal jayega.

Try to answer these simple(??) questions and find out for yourself.

1. Who wrote 'Jana Gana Mana' our national Anthem?

2. Who wrote 'Vande Mataram'?

3. How many states are there in India?

4. What is the capital of Jharkhand?

5. Who is the vice president of India?

Well, these were some questions I was trying to answer yesterday and I found
mein Aarthi Muralidharan panchvi class se tez nahi hoon :( :( :( :(

CSIM Session 3

2008-08-26T22:29:00.011+06:00

These days, my Saturdays are packed both with food for stomach and for thought :)
This was the third session and we had Ms.Shanti Raghavan to talk to us on SE.

Let me begin by introducing her. She is the founder of EnAble India, an organization which works for empowering disabled people in India. She worked in the U.S of A for some years before moving to India.
It was interesting to know what prompted her to start this initiative. She has a brother who suffered from progressive vision loss and she wanted to do everything possible so that he lead a normal life. So, she googled to find out more about support groups for such kind of illness, helped him pursue every thing he ever wanted. In the due course of time, she had so much information on how to handle visually impaired (VI) people. As she realized this, she wanted to share this with everyone and that's when the seeds for Enable India was sown.

All our discussion was based on her work, how society views disabled people, the challenges she faces in her work. While she gave us a brief of what enable india does, she wanted us to understand the challenges of her job. So, the class was split in to 3 groups and each group was given a question to answer.

Group 1 - If you are a SE working for empowerment of disabled people, what incentives would you give a company for them to hire the disabled?

Group 2 - How would you teach the Hearing Impaired (HI) work ethics, for example coming to office on time?

Group 3 - How would you handle the task of making a VI a cook/caterer?

All 3 questions were amazing and needed a lot of thought. We were given around 20 minutes time to come up with all the strategies and creative ideas.

Even before I realized my mind had already set up a big block in front of me and was not wanting to think of how a VI could become a cook. At that point of time, it was impossible for me to let my imagination flow in that way to bring forth some innovative solutions. Without spending much time on my thoughts, I jumped in to the first question which we were supposed to discuss as a group.

At the end of 20 minutes, we all had come up with points, ideas that broke our own mind blocks about disabled people, it shattered some of the assumptions my sub-conscious mind had. The best part at the end of discussing all the 3 questions, I could easily understand that every problem has a solution.

The best example to this was when we were brain-storming on the last topic. We proceeded with this by writing down the responsibilities of a cook, the challenges/barriers a visually impaired person would face and the solution for those.
At the end, it seemed to that there is no hard boundaries to what a disabled person can or cannot do. Let us not impose our mind blocks on them and prevent them from reaching their dreams. I just got reminded of what Will Smith tells his son in the movie Pursuit of Happyness 'Don't ever let someone tell you can't do it. You gotta dream, you gotto protect it. People can't do something and they want tell you you can't do it.' How true that statement is.

This session was so damn interesting that I started taking notes and believe me I filled in 3 long pages. So, I will go back to my notes and see if there is something that I missed posting.

CSIM - Session 2

2008-08-21T22:06:00.001+06:00

It was a Saturday afternoon and I managed to reach the class after going round and round on Mission road. It was 2pm and the class started with around 7 students, one coordinator and a guest lecturer.

As I entered, quickly one of the students broke the ice and started introducing herself and slowly everyone followed. Our guest lecturer was Ms.Lily, the chairman of one of the departments of Ashoka. Ashoka is an association of social entrepreneurs (SE). It links SE's with venture capitalists and identifies people who exhibit a lot of innovation in the way they tackle issues.

Lily started of by asking us what we understand by the term SE. There were different answers, all converging to the aspect of someone who has an idea of how to tackle a problem or an issue that will affect the society in a big way. Then the discussion turned to identifying the qualities in a SE - the primary ones being passion, perseverance, networking, integrity. Lot of interesting discussions were started as we came up with the list of qualities.

Then, we saw a short movie on Manndeshi bank. This bank was started by Chetna in a remote district of Satara, south of Pune. She and her husband moved to Satara to do farming and slowly realized the difficulties in that area. As she progressed, she learnt the difficulties that the women in the area under-went in terms on not having right to property, male dominance. She worked towards empowering women by fighting for their rights and finally succeeded in women owning property. Most families in the village were in debts as they borrowed money for a high interest rates. This prompted Chetna to start a co-operative bank and lend money at reasonable rates. This was how Manndeshi bank was started. With time, she further worked on an all round solution by providing women vocational training, opened a B school to educate women on how to handle finance, fill chellans in the banks and now has established a wonderful women self sufficient village. Kudos to her, she is an Ashoka fellow. Chetna and her work

This was a pretty inspiring movie we saw and were asked to brain-storm on the kind of challenges she would have faced and how she could have over come.

Following this, we had a personal interaction with Mrs.Suganda who runs centers to train poor disabled people with less IQ. Her story is yet another amazing one. Today she runs 16 such centers to train these specially abled people to do back end processing for banks, telecom companies. It is such a success story that I was so surprised to learn how she came out of all the hardships that were thrown at her at different points of time. She is a living example to determination and perseverance being the key to success. Sometime next month, we are planning to visit one of her centers in Malleswaram.

Overall, it was a very motivating session and gave a lot of insight into the kind of problems and how innovative one can be in solving them.

Like every other class and course, there is no escape to home work :) Yep, there is a case study for each of us which we will be asked to present anytime. I got reminded of the SupTs (surprise tests) in my college.

That reminds me that I got to at least open and flip through the pages before the coming Saturday.

Some more tid-bits from the class
1. Sanbox project
2. Javed Abedi
3. Matrimonial site for widow re-marriage. This one was one of the ideas of my class mates and I found it novel and of great use.
4. Right To Information RTI Act

More to come after my next session.

The CSIM series

2008-08-20T18:47:00.005+06:00

Here begins the CSIM series. CSIM stands for Center for Social Initiative and Management. This is an organization which promotes social entrepreneurship.

I got to know about this from one of my friend when I met her in a marriage, that's the only useful thing I did in the marriage apart from hogging the good food. She got herself registered to the 4 month course on social entrepreneurship. I found the course pretty interesting and soon joined in Bengaluru.

I started the course by missing the first lecture (courtesy chennai trip) and the instructor called me sometime during the week asking reason for my absence. But this time, I acted like one good student and informed her earlier which she forgot. Thanks to her memory, I was saved.

As I attended the second session, I got to find more people sailing in my boat. Well, now who attends all classes sincerely? But, hey!! I want to do okay... So, our second session began with me entering the class on dot 2pm, blame the bangalore traffic and all the one two three four ways. One gets lost without any difficulty. And to top it all, my bike had as less fuel that we never knew when it would stop.

The second session was damn good. We had discussion on various topics like qualitues of an entrepreneur, had some guest speakers who were so inspiring.

I just realized that I am in office and supposed to attend a conf call.. Before my BigB notices me, let me log off and be a good employee :)

To be continued ...

Here I come back

2008-08-19T20:57:00.008+06:00

I am bakkkkkkkkkkkkk, with a bang (??) :) I don't know about that. But yea, back after a very long time. With new josh, all enthued to fill up this space with some really useful stuff.

I finally managed to find something motivating me enough to blog about it. I recently enrolled myself in to a 'social entrepreneur' course to know more about the social sector and how it works.

I have always been interested in the social sector, something that I quickly connect to and derive a lot of satisfaction from. Many a days, I have thought about the purpose of my existence. Sometimes, I think Mr.G has sent us here for a specific reason - that one reason which makes us unique and truly beautiful from inside. I have not yet found why "Mission Aarthi" was created but here I have set out to find it.

Most of my future posts will be on what I learn in my weekly lectures of social entrepreneurship and anything that interests me as I go this way...

Here I begin with a new look for my dear blog.

Chinnanchiru kiliye kannamma ...

2007-10-16T19:26:00.000+06:00

chinnanchiru kiliye - kannamma
selva kalanjiyame
ennai kalitheerthe - ulagil
yetram puriyavandhai

pillai kaniyamudhe - kannamma
pesum porchithirame
alli anaithidave - yenmunne
aadivarum thene

odi varugayile - kannamma
ullam kulirudhadi
aadi thiridhal kandal - unnai poi
aavi thazhuvudhadi

ucchi dhanai mugandhal - garuvam
ongi valarudhadi
mecchi unai oorar - pugazhndhal
meni silirkudhadi

kannathil muthamittal - ullanthan
kallveri kolludhadi
unnai thazhuvidilo - kannama
unmatham aagudhadi

satrun mugam sivandhal - manadhu
sanchalam aagudhadi
netri churukam kandal - enakku
nenjam padhaikudhadi

unkannil neer vazhindhal - en nenjil
udhiram kottudhadi
en kannil paarvayandro? - kannamma
en uyir ninnadhanro?

sollum mazhalayile - kannamma
thunbangal theerthiduvai
mullai siripaale - enadhu
moorgam thavirthiduvai

inbak-kadaigalellam unnaip-pol
edugal sholvadundo
anbu taruvadile unainer
aghumor deivamundo

marbilanivadarkke unnaippol
vaira manigalundo
shir petru vazhvadarkke unnaippol
shelvam piridumundo

Here is the translation of this beautiful Bharthi's poetry...

My Petite Parrot, My Bountiful Treasure
My Wholesome Happiness, You came to create progress in this world

My Child-like, fruit dipped nectar, my speaking golden portrait
You come before me so gracefully that I feel like hugging you with passion

When you come running towards me, my heart chills
When I see you dancing with merriness, my soul hugs you

When I smell the top of your head, I feel strongly proud
If I hear someone praise you with sincerety, my skin tingles with excitement

if I kiss you on your cheeks, my heart goes beserk as if it is drunk with liquor
If I hug you with passion, I feel a blissful happiness

If your face turns to discomfort, even momentarily, my heart is disturbed
When I see your forehead wrinkle, my heart flutters with fear...

If I even see small droplets of tears in your eyes, a whole river of blood flows in my heart
You're the light of my eyes, my life is yours

In your child-like speaking, you'll cure all my worries/misery
In your innocent smile, you'll cure me of my ignorance

Can you even be described in pages and pages of Happy stories?
In sharing Love, can even a God equal you?

To wear on the chest, are there even diamonds/pearls like you?
Is there even a larger treasure than you in my life?

You're the most prosperous treasure in my life.

Akkam pakkam yaarum illa...

2007-10-06T23:03:00.000+06:00

What a song!!! Amazing locations, lovely lyrics, wonderful melody sung by Sadana Sargam, this song can be heard any number of times without getting bored...

I wish someone takes me to all these exotic locations... Hey, that "someone", are you listening?? :)

Here is a video and the lyrics of the song.

Akkam pakkam yaarum illla, Bhoologam vendum
andi pagal unarugey , naan vaazha vendum
en aasai elam un irukathiley,en ayul elam un anaipiniley
verenna vendum ulagathiley , iinda inbam pothum nejiniley
ezeezhu jenjam vaazhndu viteen

nee pesum vaarthaigal segarithu
seyven anbe or agaraathi !
nee thoongum nerathil thoongamal
parpen thinam un thalai kothi!
kadorathil epothumey un moochu kaatrin veppam sumapen!
kayoduthaan kai korthu thaan un maarbu sootil mugam puthaipen!

verenna vendum ulagathiley , iinda inbam pothum nejiniley
ezeezhu jenjam vaazhndu viteen

akkam pakkam yaarum illla,Bhoologam vendum
andi pagal unarugey , naan vaazha vendum

neeyum naanum serumunney
nizhal rendum ondru kalakirathey!
neram kaalam theriyamal
nejum thinam vinnil mithakiradhey!
unal indru pennagavey naan pirandadil arthangal arindu konden!
un theendalil en degathil puthu janalgal thirapathai therindu konden

verenna vendum ulagathiley , iinda inbam pothum nejiniley
ezeezhu jenjam vaazhndu viteen

nanana nanna naaana nanaaana!
lalala lalala laaala la laala!

Rain rain go away ...

2007-09-30T14:18:00.000+06:00

After a week's work my friends decided to do some shopping, window shopping.... I decided to join in as one of my friends promised to get me my long pending birthday gift. It was made very clear to me that this was my last chance to choose a gift and if miss i have to wait for another year... Baap re!! Another 365+ days to wait (I don't get my birthday gifts on the D day..so it is 365+) it sounded like some decades and I decided to join. Now who will say no to gifts :)

We got down and i paid the auto guy in coins. He gave me a weird look, thinking i treated him like a beggar. I had no such intentions, so gave him a warm smile and walked away. We walked in and out of shops trying out various things till we entered the last one and found exactly what i wanted. Alas! They had only one color in that model. The thought of 365+ days combined with tiredness helped me in making a quick decision. I told my friends that i would take this. It was good, just that silly me can't buy without seeing a thousand varieties of the same.

The best part was when it came to the payment. The guy charged some 8% extra for the card payment as my friend did not have cash. I jumped in a paid for my own gift :) What a way of getting gifts.

We finally pulled our weary legs out of the place to head home. There was some cool breeze and soon the sky started blessing us with water droplets. Yep, with the drizzle started the trouble. We waited in the pre-paid counter for the autos. If there is one place on earth where you can see the most arrogant and indisciplined people, it must be those auto walas who stay just a few feet away from the pre-paid counter. Why will they come to the pre-paid stand especially when it rains?? They would miss a huge earnings if ever they were to come that side.

The rain started pouring, no place to take shelter. Me and my friend stood on the pavement with our backs facing the wall. We were waiting for those traffic police to help the crowd in getting autos. No way on earth are they going to move an inch. They happily sat inside the counter and had fun talking to each other. There were 4 well built men with rain coats and caps. We waited and waited and there was no sign of help.

I saw everyone waiting there and no one even went asked the traffic police for help. I had no option but to remind them of their duties. I knocked at the counter and politely asked if they could call the autos which were parked far from the stand. The police guyz replied saying it is raining heavily and they will not be able to go and call. Of what use will the rain coat and cap be if they can't go in the rain. Here none of us had an umbrella and were getting wet and those guy had everything to protect them did not want to go.

Another 15 minutes and nothing happened. My anger was reaching its limits and i went and asked again. What can you expect from a bunch of lazy people - only unreasonable reasons. Me and my friend realized that there is no use waiting here. So, we moved from there trying to find an auto ourselves. Nothing worked out. The rain showed all its strength and made us dripping wet from head to toe.

What i don't understand is why people can't do their jobs, specially the ones who are trained to help people in trouble? I went again to the counter and this time i asked the police for the complaint number. My friend was little stunned. I almost dialed 100 and was about to press the call button when i saw the coy girl in me peep out and tell me - 'Try and reach home first. You don't even know how to speak Kannada, what will you talk to those bunch of irresponsible people. You better reach home safely.' Immediately i heard my friend saying the same thing.

Also, I realized no one around me did anything that i did. None of them even wanted to ask the police something. All this set me thinking and there came a bus which could drop me close to home. We boarded the bus and in sometime i reached home with those thoughts getting wiped off my mind.

Why do i wake up late???

2007-09-23T23:11:00.000+06:00

Now, why do i wake up late??

1. I love to sleep

2. What's the use of getting up early, i better sleep and live in my dream world for some more time

3. All i gotto do after getting up is - brush, bath, munch some brkie, read paper n leave to office. How
much time will it take to do all these?? 1 hour??

4. Good time management, i now know how many minutes and seconds each of my task takes and i plan accordingly

5. Only if i get good sleep i can work well all thru the day

6. Even if i go early to office i end up working late, so better go late

7. No long waits on the road if i leave late to office... no traffic == reach office quickly

8. I sleep late. Now why do i sleep late? Coz i don't feel like sleeping early.

9. I feel very sleepy early in the morning

10. I want to be healthy. Good sleep is most important for good health

The real reason is i don't see any big reason to get up early... So, the next time someone asks me why i get up late, refer this post for all the possible reasons :)

Most Romantic Lines ...

2007-09-19T19:57:00.000+06:00

This is one of the forwards i got about the most romantic Hollywood lines of all
times...

Very excited to see my favourite NottingHill there in the list... I liked the lines of the last one too..

Gitanjali

2007-08-05T18:47:00.000+06:00

I recently started reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore translated in English.
This one really touched my heart and i liked it a lot.

Love of my life, I shall ever try
to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch
is upon all my limbs

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts,
knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled
the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to derive all evils away from my heart
and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat
in the innermost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions,
knowing it is thy power gives me strenght to act.

Being Misunderstood ...

2007-07-17T22:35:00.000+06:00

I think the worst thing that can happen to anyone is being misunderstood by their near and dear ones.

There are few things in every one's life which we share very easily with friends but not with others. The kind of closeness and comfort we share with friends is something that makes the bond very special and unique.

Most of the times life moves like a goods train in a slow pace with things being same every other day. These are the times, when we give importance to even the small things that that happen to us and share them with friends. This makes them feel that they know our lives in and out.

The other times when life rushes like a Rajdhani express, we really don't get time. Most of the time goes in just realizing what is happening to us. It is then that we realize it becomes less easier than usual to find time to share the events from the fast running life. These are the cases where most friendships suffer.

Suddenly, the closeness is lost and you feel that friend of yours is no longer talking to you as before. The feeling of comfort is gone. This is when one gets to hear some words which are normal but hurts more than you could imagine. Exactly, this is the point when one THINKS he/she is misunderstood. But the way things happen, it will sound as if you are misunderstood.

The friendly conversations happen in a different language, different plane. It terribly hurts. One is no longer able to love the quote 'Friends are those who would not have spoken a single word for a long time and still feel that they had the best conversation'. Silence acts a weapon stabbing you right in the heart.

This is the situation in which i am. I find it really hard to accept it. I need a lot of courage now to get past my wounds and hurts to go and clarify things and get back to those happy times.

This is the first time am posting something that is not so enjoyable to read. I am feeling better after writing all this and my mind is now free to think what i can do to make things better.

Charity begins @ home

2007-06-05T23:46:00.000+06:00

It is very true that charity begins at home. I know people who are walking talking example of this. One such person is Mrs.Sujata Mukherjee.

For her, it all started with a small wish to support the education of a child by name Ashwini. Just like small drops make an ocean, her small wish has now transformed into what is called Ashwini Charitable Trust(ACT). Currently ACT educates and empowers over 75 under-privileged children from urban slums in Bangalore and supports them until they are gainfully employed.

ACT Website - Ashwini Charitable Trust

Sharing some of the snaps taken at Ashwini's annual day function.

5 Reasons why you should celebrate your birthday?

2007-05-29T22:50:00.000+06:00

1. A reason to indulge yourself in the best of the best things in the world
Buy clothes, eat good food, yummie cake, chocolates ...

2. Feel good about yourself and the things you have achieved in life
So many years on this planet, we can go back and see (only) the good things we have done, some proud achievements ...

3. Just sit back and enjoy the day without doing any work
We don't need to wait for Friday of the week to come to stop working and relax :)

4. Friends and relatives to shower you with wishes and gifts
This is the most lovely thing. At least for this we should have as many friends and relatives (only those who would gift :) )

5. At least on that one day, no one will try to get into a fight with you or upset you:)
How would such a day be...lovely, isn't it?

Am sure you can add many many more to it. But these are the ones i could just think of.
Anyways, here goes a birthday wish to one of my very good friend.

Happy Birthday Dear.

Library Thing

2007-05-27T19:21:00.000+06:00

As i was looking into someone's blog (now, don't ask whose and why), i stumbled on something called Library Thing. I liked the concept of having a catalog of books one likes, one has read and so and so.

One of my resolutions for this year is/was to read more books. Well, there is a reason behind this and also a motivating factor :).

I have started reading books a lot this year. And sometimes keep wondering how to keep track of the books i have read. This is when i found Library thing very useful.

Now, i have a catalog of books i have read so far and also managed to write review for one.

Suttum Vizhi Chudar daan kannamma

2007-04-23T12:48:00.000+06:00

I found the translation of 'Suttum Vizhi chudar' from somone's blog. சுட்டும் விழி சுடர் தான

Thanks to that person who has taken some pains to translate it. Hope there is no copyright for it :)

One hour power cut a day - i am loving it :)

2007-04-22T22:43:00.000+06:00

Are you not able to believe that power cuts might be a boon ?? Let me explain ..
With summer fast approaching and an acute power shortage in Bangalore, there is a compulsory one hour load shedding across the city every day.

It was a Saturday night and i was at home with mom. I was busy doing nothing with my laptop connected to the internet and she was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Suddenly, it was dark everywhere, yep - power cut...

Both of us get seated in the balcony and i promptly took the ipod in my hand. I switched it on and we shared the ear phones, like the ones you normally see in movies :). I was selecting my fav numbers to play. First i chose 'mandram vanda thendralukku manjam vara nenjam illayo anbe en anbe' from mouna ragam. Such a wonderful song with emotions blended in the lyrics, tune and the voice of the singer.

Now i should tell you something - am this born and brought up in chennai who hardly studied tamil as a language in school. Though i speak fluent tamil (atleast the chennai tamil), i really do not understand the meaning of some wonderful poetry. So, i started pestering my mom to translate those lyrics for me. She helped me a bit and then got back to the song... I managed to understand most of the song afterwards..

The next one i chose was this wonderful piece by the Mahakavi Bharatiar 'Suttum Vizhi Chudar daan Kannamma ...'. It such a wonderful composition and i heard it rendered in the voice of Hariharan from the movie Kandukoden Kandukonden. God salute to all those who were a part of making this song.

It played, i rewind(ed) and played it again and again to get the lyrics to the minutest detail possible. The whole piece is so much of poetic beauty, truly fantastic. I wish i could get the whole thing translated into more understandable language. However be it, this one is truly awesome.. no words to describe ...

The day before i heard this in such detail, i was also moved by the lyrics of the 'She..' sound track from Notting Hill. The lines are just too good and if you happen to relate to the part of the movie when it is played, you will enjoy it even more.

After listening to few of these, me and mom had the same thought (one of those rare moments) - there are so many songs sung in the praise of the girl or for the girl and so less songs that are sung for a guy. A small discussion and we concluded that guys are more romantic and would like to sing such songs for girls and hence such songs are many in number. May be even girls love to listen to these sung by guys :)

Just as we wrapped our conversation, there was a new light in our lives, the power came back. Thanks to BESCOM, but for them i would not have heard these songs in such depths.
So, the next time there is a power cut, i have my ipod and many more songs to listen to. Power cuts - am loving it :)

Lyrics of suttum vizhi chudar daan kannamma...

Suttum vizhi chudar dhaan - kaNNammaa
Sooriya chandiraro

Vatta kariya vizhi - kaNNammaa
Vaanak karumai koLLo

Pattu karuneela - pudavai
Padhitha nalvayiram

Natta nadunisiyil - theriyum
NatshathirangaLadi

Solai malar oLiyo - unadhu
Sundharapunnagai dhaan

Neela kadalalaye - unadhu
Nenjin alaigaLadi

Kolak kuyil oasai - unadhu
Kuralin inimayadi

Vaalai kumariyadi - kaNNammaa
Maruvak kaadhal koNdaen

Saathiram pesugiraai - kaNNammaa
Saathiram yedhukkadi

Aathiram kondavarke - kaNNammaa
Saathiram undoadi

Moothavar sammadhiyil - vadhuvai
Muraigal pinbu seivom

Kaathiruppenoadi - idhu paar
Kannaththu muththam ondRu

Where are we heading towards??

2007-04-07T23:18:00.000+06:00

An interesting conversation with friends in Garuda Mall had made me think about a lot of things happening to me, you and a whole lot of us.

After a long time, we there got together to buy a wedding gift for one of my friends. It was a record breaking event - 3 girls managed to buy 2 gifts in a matter of 30 minutes!!! Isn't that great?? Well, at least the quickest purchase i have ever made. I go to the counter and pay the bill where the sales women tries to lure me in the usual conversation of being a member of the shop ... ahem!! paid membership. My pre-processed brain tells me that i am buying for a few thousands worth and they can't even give me a free membership. But then, i decide to push my thoughts to some remote corner and get the receipt.

I pass it on to my friend who is standing in the jewelery counter to collect the gift by showing the receipt. It is all over, the gift is neatly packed and we move. Suddenly, it strikes me that they have not put the warranty certificate (Oh yea!! If you did not know, there are warranty certificates even for jewelery.). I go back to the lady in the counter asking if they still give warranty, poor innocent ignorant me (ok, at least in this case) thought they stopped giving those certificates. Then the lady reluctantly pulls one and signs it for us.

Now, why should someone do that? Where is all the consumer friendly talk which we had while choosing the gift. The moment someone buys your product, do they become 'was a customer' whom you no longer care about?? I do not understand, i had to ask for my right. Come on!! I paid the entire bill, why am i not entitled to my right by default? Why does someone want me to fight for it?

For a while these thoughts were going on and soon i got distracted by some conversation my friends had. Then comes the real joke of the day. After this big feat, we decide to treat ourselves. I preferred juice, it was a hot summer evening. However, the real reason was mom wanted me to take only juice instead of some junk food (the obedient me pops up). We soon approached a fruit junction, it was crowded. After a while we settled on what we wanted to drink. '2 anar, 1 orange' my friend told and gave a hundred rupee note. We were surprised rather shocked to hear that 2 anar juice costs 100 and one orange was 35 bucks. Immediately walking out, we only thought of our dear ganesh fruit juice where one could get real orange juice for 7 bucks...5 times lesser. Then we voted for corn and bought one cup each.

Sitting in the sides of the mall, we were actually discussing how rapidly the purchasing power has grown. There are people waiting in the queue to buy that worthless expensive juice knowing that they are over-priced. Hmm, blessed with a IT job, anyone can buy anything without worry. But what about people who can't afford all this? Do we ever care for them, to see how they manage to live in this city where a 5'*8' area would cost around 2000 bucks a month, where tomato and potato prices change with places, malls would soon come in place of small shops?? We are slowly losing track of the value of money. Aren't we??

The long discussion covering a range of topics comes to a halt with the phone call. Time to go home - we walk to the pre-paid auto stand. There is a group of 6-7 people crowded in the booth and the person there asks everyone to stand in a line, like a teacher tells the kids while distributing chocolates. There i stand in front of a girl. Immediately i see 2 girls barge into the queue. This is not the first time this is happening to me, and as usual i get irritated, but decide not to speak as i stand third and will soon get my work done. And in another few seconds, there comes a mother who pushes her child just in front of me in the line. This is the heights, i get irritated and turn to my friend who stands beside me. Her smile asks me to keep quiet. And i silently wait for my turn.

It was disgusting to see well educated people behaving this way. If we behave like this in front of children, how can we ever expect them to be good citizens? What are we indirectly teaching our children? The queue hardly had 7 people, the mother and the other 2 girls could have waited, but they chose not to. They would not have had any guilt barging in. There are lot of people like this who are just bothered about their work and want to get it done as soon as they can. With people like me who don't even tell them that there is a queue and one is supposed to follow some rules, they happily get their job done.

I felt really bad for having kept quiet in a place where i could have made a difference. If i had told the 2 girls in the beginning, the mother would not have pushed her child. The 5 people behind me would have not waited for 2 more minutes.

We are all thought the good habits, how to behave in the society on our schools, but where is it gone? Has it all evaporated in the scorching summer? With so many questions still to be answered, here comes a huge one -- Where are we heading towards??

Chromepet on Wikimapia

2007-03-11T15:29:00.000+06:00

Wooohh!!! I found my home town on Wikimapia...I could also locate the Raja ram street - the lane where our house is :) Amazing technology... Here is the link

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=12952315&x=80148037&z=18&l=0&m=s&v=2

Science appeals me more when it helps me find things closer to my heart.

A ride down the memory lane

2007-03-11T14:44:00.000+06:00

The front page article on Krishna Menon in the Sunday Magazine took me a lovely nostalgic ride. Those childhood days i spent in the small little town of chennai called Chromepet. It was such an unassuming place which became famous after the 'pettarap' song in one of Prabhu Deva's movies. Wait..they have not shot the song here, its just that the first few lines of the song has the place name..it goes like this, 'Saidapettai Rainpettai Chrompettai pettarap ... '.

Chromepet holds a special place in my heart more because of the lovely times i spent there with the most wonderful people of my life - my grandparents. The evenings used to be so much fun, when i spend time with nature - the lovely neem tree i could see from the huge balcony of our house. There would be 2 chairs facing each other just close to the balcony grill. Grandpa used to sit there eternally with the news paper or a book in hand and sometimes listening to a bhajan on the Walkman. My favourite place is the chair opposite to him. As soon as i come home from school, i would happily go and sit there, remove my shoes and keep telling my grandpa what all happened at school. I never bothered to check if i was boring him, i was always so excited to keep sharing my experiences. My grandma would soon come with a some tiffin - dosa or idli or upma. And if it was not my favourite there always a second choice at least for me :)

Grandparents are a treasure. They always had time for me no matter what. They crossed the seas of generation gap trying to connect to the present. A walking talking library, no matter what question i had on history or philosophy - my grandpa used to have an answer which he used to put in the form of a good story. And those lovely stories my grandma had to put me off to sleep :)

Having got to spent close to 20 years of my life with them has been the best gifts which will always be very close to my heart.

Treasured are the times i spent with you both
Amazing are the values i imbibed from you both
Love you hameshaa...

Happy new Year

2007-01-01T09:59:00.000+06:00

Wish you all happy new year!

Is this going to be my last year of spinsterhood?

2006-12-31T23:48:00.000+06:00

It is 11:24pm and just few more minutes for the new year to come. Though am pretty excited and happy to embrace the year in front of me, am little sad.
Looks like am going to miss some things that have been very close to me as 2006 will rest as a fond memory in our minds.

Hmm, this year I witnessed a lot of marriages. Best friends, good friends, friends, acquaintances and the list grows.. Seeing so many people tying knots, I felt for the first time that I was growing old. Man!! Why does one get this feeling when a friend gets married? May be because we did so many things together - did the most silliest of things, watched movies all night, bunked classes, slept in some lecture sessions, shared clothes, talked for hours over stupid things, discussed boy friends (oops..it was boys who were friends) and went on and on about everything under the sky….and now suddenly one realizes that this person will not have such time for you. Well, this is the same feeling that struck me when my best friend's got engaged (not even married :) ).

'It is a lovely time of life - the one after engagement and before marriage', says one of my best friend. Though I did not get much of it, I could really see what they were going through, the new joy they were experiencing. Not to blame this, this is part of everyone's life provided this phase is little long to enjoy :). Well, why am I getting lost, I wanted to talk about something else.

So, as I attended various marriages over the year, hold on, let me count the how many I attended. Beginning in May 2006, one in July, then in Aug and finally in Dec, it was 4 grand ones. Had loads of fun in each of them. In each marriage, the most fav topic of discussion would be to guess who would be the next. Mostly. It would be fun pulling each other's leg. How much ever we tried to rightly guess, there would be someone unexpected always entering the list.

The worst part of the marriages would be the maami's who come there just to find eligible grooms and brides. How sad!! Without your knowledge, you get noticed by those detective eyes waiting to spot the most eligible. I guess I was the bakra in the last marriage I attended :( And then, some maami's whom you know well ask some important details - 'specimen identification details' natchatram and gotram. Well, exactly here is where begins the worry that one is growing old. And with this growing old thingy in me and the new year eve makes me fear if this is the last year of my spinsterhood!

Though as my mom and many others say this is the right age to get married, I feel I might miss so many things. Right from the late morning waking up, ready made breakfast (courtesy - mom), just in time planning for the entire day, no worries life, anything for lunch or no lunch, no sticking to one guy - talk to as many as u can :), come home when you wish, evenings free for myself, no dinner plans, my lonely lovely walk from office to home, no late night calls and many many more…to top it all - free to decide and to do what I want. Hmm…loss of a sense of freedom and in short my spinsterhood.

How I wish I enjoy all these for a little more while. Well, lets see how long or short it takes. Till then, I shall enjoy this wonderful life.

Hail spinsterhood !!
11:56 PM Dec 31st 2006

Gone are those days...

2006-12-16T12:58:00.000+06:00

This was written when i was down with fever and had to stay at home for 2 consecutive days. The following came out of boredom and frustration. So, please bear with me :)

There are times when i used to wait for friday right from Monday, now i have started waiting for monday even before my friday could come to an end :) sad state...

How times change when I fall sick – My inspiration for this piece of poetry. I call it poetry as it does not sound like a normal prose, not that it is one really :)

Gone are those days ….

How I wish it would never be time for dawn,
To be lost in dreams with every yawn.
I would pull myself away from the bed,
Only to get ready and dressed.
How I would just crawl my way to work,
While half the world already at work.
Gone are those days …

How I wish it would always be time for lunch,
To talk about the world with every munch.
Guilt would knock my door at three past noon,
Before I realize it would be teatime soon.
How I would start my work late in the evening,
Sitting there to see half the office leaving.
Gone are those days …

How I wish time would halt for work to be done,
Winding up at ten I have some work undone.
Sleepily mom would wait for me as if she was fine,
With eyes open wide I love to whine and dine.
How I would stare into space trying to find my land,
Lost in my world with the TV on and a book in hand,
As I go to bed, how I wish it would never dawn :)
Gone are those days …

Conceptualized on 16 Dec 2006 at 5:30 AM when I would normally be sound asleep.

My first one...

2006-10-28T11:48:00.000+06:00

What do i write??