curved rays

Kalayan's Swayamwar 2010

2011-04-21T12:35:00.003+05:30

Nautankibaaz productions present – “One Latte’ please”

2010-09-27T22:12:00.001+05:30

On Sunday, 24th October 7:30 pm at Alliance Francaise. click here for more information

A look into the past

2010-06-28T23:48:00.001+05:30

So here I was (driven by a sense of nostalgia, instinct to collect and share information and some free time), trying to figure out the history of my clan, my people, the Multanis… (read more)

Chicken curry for one soul

2009-10-04T02:17:00.000+05:30

It’s payback time! Out of the seven times I have cooked a subji , I have referred the internet five times. (when I say subji I’m not including the egg bhurjees and omelets and all those simple bachelors’ works of art)

And most often than not I’ve found what I needed. Today, when I planned to cook chicken curry (after having gobbled down almost four truck loads of them in my life) I called up my mother for help. A five minute call and an hour later, I tasted the best chicken curry I have had in Bangalore. I hope you can feel the same after you try this simple recipe (atleast if you stay in Bangalore).

Step 1: Get excited ! You’re going to cook chiken curry !

Step 2: Get stuff

250 gm Chicken (ask the seller to cut small pieces)

1 Garlic bulb/ Garlic paste

2 Tomatoes

2 Onions (medium sized)

Curd (need 1/2 cup)

Chicken Masala Powder (any company’s would do I guess, I had MDH) (2-3 tspoons)

Ghee/Salt/Red Chili powder (If you’re cooking for the first time in your kitchen)

Step 3: Wash the chicken thoroughly

Step 4: Marinate the chicken

Add salt (2 tspoons) , red chili powder (1 tspoon), and 2 cloves of grinded (in a mixer or otherwise) garlic / ½ tspoon of garlic paste (I used the grinded one here) to half cup of curd to make the paste. Mix the washed chicken well in the paste. [this has to be kept like this for next 30 minutes]

Marinated Chicken

Step 5: Prepare the masala

Grind the tomatoes, onions and garlic (4-5 cloves) in the mixer.

Put 2 spoons ghee in a cooker and heat it.

Drop in the paste, salt (11/2 tspoons) chili powder (1 tspoon) and the chicken masala (2 tspoons) and heat it for 5 minutes.

The masala

Step 6: Mix chicken and masala

By this time, the 30 minutes of marinating should be over. Add the chicken to the masala being heated. Heat the complete stuff (keep stirring whenever you remember) till you see the ghee separating from the rest of the masala and the masala sticking on the chicken (This would take around 10-15 minutes)

Chicken mixed with masala

Step 7: Hear the Whistle

Add in water just to cover the chicken and a little more and close the cooker, to wait for the whistle. (This will take again around 10 minutes)

Step 7: Final touches

After the whistle let the cooker be by itself (turn off the flame) for sometime, till the pressure is released. Open the lid, taste your creation, check if you need to add salt (I needed to) and….

Final look and feel (don't worry there will be two bowls full)

that’s it !

2009-07-22T18:30:00.000+05:30

When Dilbert called Suppandi

2009-07-17T19:23:00.001+05:30

(An Ode to Late Ram Waeerkar and Scott Adams)

No burps, only farts - I

2009-05-14T15:03:00.001+05:30

This post is out of an absolute sentiment of ‘giving it back’.
They email, hand pamphlets, call on phone, SMS and do whatever possibly they can; enticing and luring first time customers, to deliver just the opposite of what they promise.
I blog (sometimes).

I’ve been in South Bangalore for around seven months and eaten out like a hungry Mangolian (used Mongolian as it sounds interesting) at more than thirty restaurants/bars/fast food joints here. Any person from the same area would find it difficult to believe and consider me a person with less refined tastes. I don’t completely deny that, though it’s more to save myself from the excruciating agony of getting stuck in ring/hosur/bannerghatta road traffic with an empty stomach that I eat in this part of the city. The search for a good eating joint in south Bangalore has been almost futile with an exception of a couple of places. I’ll take up three restaurants for this post.

Gud Dhani - BTM Layout h tt p://gud-dhani.blogspot.com/

Their blog says “We, at Gud Dhani believe...Restaurant...is not a place one should go on Saturday/Sundays”. I would advice that one should not go there on any day.The first thing
which really puts you off is the lack of space. The feeling is that of being clamped for room, with strange little bamboo doors separating sections.

The walls are done up with a lot of mindless cave art (the crudeness of which I find repulsive. Either keep it authentic or else modernize it, why destroy the essence?] and if that is not enough to kill your lust for food.. the menu is categorized by stupid mix of strange titles, with no theme what so ever.

We ordered kadi pakoda, dakre wali kadi, paranthas and baingan bharva trying to favor a more Rajasthani cuisine, with images of the camel from the adverts, still fresh in our minds. And then was the real dampener “with this the USP stand like a beacon, that is the Food. Cuisines here is made by finest chef from northern India Gives a finger licking taste which linger really long.” ..yes agreed ! the taste lasts as long as you go home and use your own soap (yes, no soap there) to wash your hands off the oil. The paranthas had enough oil to fry samosas for an entire fifth standard and were mediocre in taste. The baingan did not have enough masala to drive me into taking a second helping. The Kadi was edible but ‘just’.

Alas, even devil has a smart looking tail. I liked the fact that the waiters were polite and inconspicuous, the way I prefer. The meal for two cost us around 200 Rs. which would have been decent if the management would have put more effort in finding the USP backing chef and an interior designer rather than spending time in mindless campaigning. If I were Nikhat Kazmi and this was a movie I would have given it 1 star. Go there only if all other places where you can utlize your sodexho coupons are shut down for ever. It’s a confused place with tasteless food.

Tasty Bites (No, Tasty is not a dog) , Jayanagar

I missed it the first time I went looking for it. It’s really tiny and besides a bar (the distinctive Bangalore bar, with a standing counter and mucky seating area, with chicken bones on the floor) and a bakery, and camouflaged sometimes between these. But this only till a point that you eat here once. After that, you are surely going to remember the place.
Lot has been said about it on mouthshut, burp and so on, so will not rant the cheap/north Indian/ homely food story. What I like about this place is the speed, quality, the swarm of lady chefs and Uncle, The Efficient – IV – The Man with the Cap.
He takes orders with accuracy and courtesy (standard welcome note “Haan beta bolo”) in Hindi (also in Kannada/English when required) and then shouts out loud the same to the ladies, who like well-organized ants quickly get on to the task. Though mostly the sabji is precooked, rotis are freshly delivered to your plate.

My favorites here have been kadi pakoda, bhindi dry, baingan bharta, kale chane and palak paneer, though the rice kheer is the real winner. The thick sweet dish tastes of Horlicks a little and should be surely tried.

Since not many seats are available, it is suggested to either be early (before 8:30 for dinner, I haven’t had lunch there) or else get the food packed. A sumptuous meal will cost you around 70 Rs.(including the Kheer which is 25 Rs.) NK Rating : 4 Stars (I thought of giving 3 and ½ but then realized the stupidity of the concept)

Inchara, JP nagar

What caught my attention first was the mystery surrounding the location of the restaurant. You suddenly ‘identify’ it. It is strangely advertised (there is signage all around JP nagar advertising the name, though not pointing in any direction) and oddly located (edge of the residential area).
So when I finally did identify it, it was not without much fanfare. It seemed like a wedding of a former Prime Minister’s daughter was being held there. There was a flood of cars and I parked well 500 mts away from the gate, on the roadside.

It was a ‘mela’ inside too, waiters running around, sounds of bottles, laughter, loud, out of place and sick 90’s Bollywood music (before Rehman came and saved an entire generation). After watching this commotion, the only reason why we still ventured inside was exactly the same commotion, or rather to seek an answer to it.

There was a couples section and thinking of all those times when I would’ve smirked and made fun of such kitsch arrangements, (why did they ever make the word hypocrisy ? Bloody hypocrites!), I found a table there for me and my wife. It had to be a chosen table, for I’ve never had so many mosquitoes feasting on me in such little time. It was only after a bottle of strong beer, four reminders and a snarl that the waiter finally lit a ‘kachua chaap’ near the table. By then, I’m sure all the WBC’s in my body were fighting with the viruses the little monsters would have left in my blood.

The waiter was only keen on dropping beer. Rest of the items had to wait for what seems like a week in an airplane, where it has been announced that it would be landing shortly.

Finally, when it did arrive, the food was pretty ordinary. There is very little that can go wrong in a tandoori chicken but these guys still managed to serve bad tandoori chicken ( the chicken was not as healthy as the mosquitoes they look after). Even White Horse (more on this JP Nagar restaurant later) serves more and better in less money. Among the other ordered items we couldn’y really figure out which was what, so difficult to comment on.

Ordinary food, odd ambience, sorry music and horrendous service. NK rating: 1 star

Bee Attack

2009-01-15T14:47:00.000+05:30

It was a usual night, exhausted after a day of work, driving, food and a movie we (me and my wife) were planning to sleep. Ritualistically, I moved to the living room to switch off the tubelight.

With eyes half closed and fifteen more steps to reach close to the switch, the buzz I heard seemed to be a signal of an ageing tubelight and I mentally put a bullet point in the never ending list of – things to get repaired/changed/buy.

A sudden increase in intensity of the buzz and a feeling of intrusion in my personal space made me open my eyes to a scene which I shall never forget in this and the next couple of lives.

More than sixty irritated and lethal honeybees were trying to burst into the tube. These were hitting their heads wildly in panic against the glass failing to get inside, then circling around in mad angles to hit upon something else to release their disillusionment and not finding anything, returning back with even more fury to the tube. [This was fury in recursion]

I ran back to bedroom to switch off the light so that they don’t come inside. I shouted in muted voice (was not sure if the bees could listen) to my wife about the one way violence. As though prepared for the unexpected (living with me helps), she wrapped herself with a shawl and in a flash stood right next to me. The feeling of panic was changing into that of adventure.

There was a bigger crisis for two reasons; One - the bees were increasing by the second. The open window in the kitchen was the pathway through which bees were in groups of four and five were sliding in. Two - The switch of the tube was near to it and more so, switching it off would mean that we would loose a space where the enemy was holed in/out.

Out of the windows we could see no lights, the whole apartment was blacked out, was this was a conspiracy or is it really that late at night ? There was no time to contemplate.. we needed to act. My wife came up with a solution (the only one we realized we had, we could not run out of the house as we would have to go through the bees again and also were not sure of the unexplored space outside). It was to take out the Hit spray (used as a cockroach killer) from the kitchen.

After a quick acceptance of mutual bravado (I’ll go in, No I’ll..) I sprinted to the kitchen and grabbed the Hit bottle kept thankfully at an easily accessible position (for obvious reasons) and ran back to a location from where I realized in the next ten minutes, that my basic instincts to kill a fellow specie were more than intact. I kept on spraying till all of them dropped down, till the walls were wet, till my fingers got tired, till my wife reminded me to close the kitchen window.
I didn’t feel like Ashoka after the Kalinga war, I felt good and slept well with the Hit spray lying close to the bed.

Relativity is the mother of dilemma. In trying to negate the exaggeration one could underestimate the reality.

Shimmering tiny waves

2008-04-20T01:23:00.000+05:30

On a bright Sunday morning as the shimmering tiny waves cast light shadows on the floor of the clean pool, a man sitting on a white plastic chair pretends to read the Da Vinci Code. There are two permanent wooden benches, but on Sundays there are lots of plastic chairs and tables around the pool, left over from Saturday night’s party. The man cannot read the words as his view of the text is blurred, his eye lenses focusing on two kids playing on the grass between him and the pool.

Though, playing as it may seem at first, the kids (big brother and sister) are trying to accomplish a complicated task. They are trying to take water out of their little football which had earlier fallen in the pool. They press it, jump on it and throw it, each action accompanied with giggles from the little girl and glances and occasional shouts from the man, commanding the elder brother to make sure his sister doesn’t jump in water. One might mistake him to be their father, but the look of duty on his face, more than tenderness, confuses. The little girl helps in clearing the doubt, frantically shouts “daddiiee daddiiee” each word in absolute harmony with a jump, as a large hairy man emerges from the changing room. He smiles, kisses his daughter on her nose and dives into the water leaving her frantic with excitement.

The brother watches the scene with the usual disillusioned ‘and they said sisters bring happiness and good luck to the family’ – look. He wonders if his sister would now be interested in the ball and decides to sit on the ball and starts wondering the use of the dirty puddle just near the pool. Claps are added to the shouting, as the father’s smiling face appears and disappears into the water.

The pandemonium helps the novel man in justifying to himself that its time to finally close the book (without putting a bookmark) and get into some action. He points towards the girl who is now quite near to the pool and shouts out loud, “Trisha, get back, you will fall down.. TRISHAA!, Sonu, drag Trisha back beta”. Sonu, stares in Trisha’s direction and while he starts contemplating, the novel man picks up Trisha, who not accustomed to such awkward way of being lifted, screams wildly.

Sound travels strangely inside water, adding bass most times, or slowing the speed of the waves, maybe the way one hears in dreams, you don’t see lips moving but you know who’s talking. Trisha’s father, who is swimming almost on the pool floor, troubled by these unpleasant screams heads up for the closest point of extreme brightness. “What happened Mishra? Let the kid enjoy yaaar” he says to his friend who looks like that old college friend who never married. The one who has dropped in to stay with your family while on a visit to your city for official work.

I smile and imagine the next scene, a glance at the clock makes me realize that I have been watching them for too long, time for another lap, I stand up, hold my breath and jump in to the shimmering tiny waves.

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Prologue :
The concept of exercise has usually failed to appeal to my hedonistic senses. Running on the treadmill without actually moving forward in space , jogging on road in Ejipura with the constant fear of being run over by some 3/4 wheeler (after 5 am) or being chased by the naughty canines (before 5 am), are not smart options. But since one has to choose between two options - beer + exercise or beer + fat… I chose the former after an year of believing that there was a third option – ‘beer’.
Badminton was the first tryst with the exercise saga which didn’t last long. According to my hypothetical survey, 67% of Bangloreans staying near Ejipura want to play badmintom at the exact place as I wanted. Sadly, the space is fit for 0.3% of us. This results in fierce competition (not in the game, but to get onto the courts). So, even after paying and waiting in queue to get onto the courts (people from my city would never believe this), if one is not playing like Padukone (not Deepika…yeah.. she’s so beautiful) from game one, the people around communicate in most simple ways that you are not wanted. If you are a guy who is paired with another guy in a mixed doubles game, please get the message.

The respite came in the form of a swimming pool. Though, to find it devoid of the dense throng of Bangloreans, made me suspicious about the content of the pool. A week of spying and trying later, when nothing seemed muddled, I fell for it, and have been with it since then, experiencing life in and around the pool.
Here was one such experience.

Moore montage

2007-10-09T15:04:00.001+05:30

No, I am not a die hard Micheal Moore fan, he might or might not be twisting information (“We learn that Michael Moore is still using editing tricks, time compression and juxtaposition to create the emotional reactions that he wants you to have”, "...The biggest anti-Michael Moore website on the internet..." - Michael Moore, moorewatch.com) to drive home his point, but what I do appreciate is that the point he is trying to make, is generally sensible and its OK to use such a technique to provoke the sedentary humans of our age. This also makes me wonder if this technique (of twisting and tweaking and spiced up provocative FACTS) has always been used…the “montage”, adding two scenes/things together to get a fresh thing, could this be extended to the way we talk, trying to convince, the leaders (political and otherwise) the managers (forever) the experienced the news channels..media hmm ? so is montage an integral part of our lives..? and are we oblivious to it/ excuse it and finally on much provocation be moved by it? ..how much is enough? Or correct? Yeah..subjective (I love the word)

..oh yes, but SICKO drives the point home..

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In di another galaxy

Ana ka kin: Oye, is Moore’s montage relevant to us?

Oye:

.. according to the director of a Mission Hospital in Bangalore “Health insurance in India at serious cross roads, either the patients or the insurance companies need to mature real soon”.

The insurance model followed in India (no surprises! - The last time I was surprised was when we won the T20 world cup) is the same as that followed in the US. So, my friend (only friends read my blog) to feel the heat, first watch SICKO and then get admitted in a hospital to try out your TPA (third party associates) and your Insurance policies, or if you are the s/w developer waiting for a sense of purpose in life or someone similar, read up your policy papers carefully.

To kill more time:

http://slate.com/id/2102723/
http://www.moorewatch.com/

A silent world

2007-05-22T10:12:00.000+05:30

Rambling thoughts on sonification (use of sound for data representation) as a mode of communication.

In an email correspondence with Gregory Kramer (“maestro behind sonification”- http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1214931.htm ), he remarked, “There is a strong visual bias in our culture, particularly in how technology is configured. We just don't think aurally, at least not yet. Also, I think the sonification solutions are not yet all that good.”

I think of my scooter and I chuckle! So many times by the sound it produces I can tell that the petrol poured lacked quality, the sound that the door makes, tells me who has come in, the sound of the bucket filling ..such examples from daily life reaffirm my faith in usage of sound for real time communication. Though it is ironical that at the same time we are struggling to reduce the noise, in vacuum cleaners, car engines, doors almost everything. Trying to make a sound proof world. We are trying to make our acceptance of sound even lesser, hence more and more sound will be perceived as noise, which makes the designer’s job even tougher.

Max Lord, in his primer has touched the topic of sonification and comparison with visuals, quite comprehensively I will just add my perspective to it (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why_is_that_thing_beeping_a_sound_design_primer ).

Music is a mélange of different sounds from different sources. One can find parallels between a song and a painting, color and notes, strokes and pitch, hue and timber and so on and yet there is the BIG difference. The painting is in a static state, while the song is in a time period. One could look at a visual and get an impression in a moment, while same cannot be done for music. The fact that the movies are not half as good without sound is because in this case, even the visual is sketched in a time period and sound goes with it, a photograph can easily stand on its own without the sound. What I mean, is that the movie is not meant to convey information through one frame, the viewer has to see all the frames in the time period as it is with a musical piece.

This helps us understand that why using sound for real time application is a good idea and not really for static data.

This leads us into another interesting thought - Usage of sound to communicate real time ‘experiences’. There are some applications which claim to give an aural representation of objects. ‘Voice’ is one of these “The VOICe mapping: vertical positions of points in a visual sound are represented by pitch, while horizontal positions are represented by left-to-right scanning and corresponding stereo panning. Brightness is represented by loudness. In this manner, pixels become... voicels!” ( http://www.seeingwithsound.com/javoice.html ). But the result is usually quite unpleasant to hear. I am not sure how successful it will be if we use such logical rules for sound mixing. We are more forgiving to visuals than to sound. A visual clutter is more easily forgiven than noise, aural clutter. So we might have to be a little more subjective while using sound. While working for a college project at Blind People’s Association, Ahmedabad, India, (with two of my batchmates), a concept of experience sharing was generated. The thought was to transfer the real time experience of a place to another, for people with visual disability. The medium was a mobile phone and the mode used was music. The results were quite pleasant but the software still needed human intervention.

So, instead of sending photographs one could send musical pieces some day. It can be a very rich experience.

Another fascinating study could be the understanding of cross cultural aspects in the perception of sound. Are the cultures, which are more receptive to bright color palettes also more receptive to aural representations?

Are our corporate setups (usually Multinational Corporations) a reflection of the serene and silent European winters?

The intention behind this article was to start a discussion on these topics, so that we can all share and enhance our understanding behind the usage, importance and lack of sound in our designs.

And at last they met !

2006-12-29T15:17:00.000+05:30

“I like talking to visitors, especially children. But an unexpected visitor once got very upset with my refusal to meet her. She threatened to tell Khushwant Singh about me. Go ahead, I told her, I've always wanted to get into his column”, said Ruskin /Ranji/ Rusty Bond.

Two of the greatest Indian authors of our times. So many of us grew up on the stories from Mussoorie and Dehra, the trains, the nights, the man-eater, the sparrows, the hills, the cricket matches, the deodars and the People ; and a little later as soon as we could enjoy Khushwant Singh’s work, never missed anything which he wrote, the wit, the emotion, the surprise, the women, the lust, the politics, the love, the malice and the People. I find it strange, surprising and amusing that in spite of their contrasting styles and philosophy I have read them more than I have read anyone else in my life (though I accept not being a vociferous reader). Both of them are quite rich with years of wisdom (KS born in 1915 and RB in 1934) and I wonder if they have ever met in all these years and if they did, what did they talk about? would they’ve talked about anything? Do they read each other’s work? Would they find the meeting a drag and long to get back to their pen and paper? I wonder and I feel excited…

“I wouldn't feel safe locked up with a bunch of temperamental writers in a room. All that's not for me. Writers should be read, not seen”- RB [8]

“On an average, I read and write the entire day—right from 5 am onwards. It is only from 7 pm to 8 pm that I meet friends. Emotionally I am very strong. I have never cultivated a close friend or lover, for relationships and love affairs consume too much of time and I have never wasted a single minute in the so-called affairs. Even the prettiest woman doesn’t stay here for more than 15 minutes, for, by then, she can read the impatience in my eyes. And I could be dropped by friends but I am least bothered”- KS [4]

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“... I didn’t wave or shout, but sat still in front of the window, gazing at the woman on the platform. Satish's mother was talking to her, but she didn't appear to be listening; she was looking at me, as the train took me away. She stood there on the busy platform, a pale sweet woman in white, and I watched her until she was lost in the milling crowd” - THE WOMAN ON PLATFORM NO. 8 – RB)

Didn’t he give the stories for young people a different meaning altogether? Starkly different from the other morally laced stories told during that period in schools, these stories of eagles, tigers, hills, markets and normal people were left open for interpretation and imagination, RB always trusted the young minds.

“.. I write mostly for pleasure, and the reading should ideally be for pleasure too. I do feel bad sometimes that children have to write questions and answers based on my stories!”

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"I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress Bhagmati when I have had my fill of whoring in foreign lands," -Delhi: A Novel - KS

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Delhi_-_Khushwant_Singh-38001-1.html (review of ‘delhi’)

“My mind is no dirtier than most men's. I am honest and I say it. Fantasizing is a common phenomenon and there's no censorship here.” -KS

He writes about what some might be afraid to believe that they actually think of. Making and breaking personal relationships in the process. Dr. Bideshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, says, “Khushwant's biggest attribute is that he speaks what he feels. He is honest to the extent that he offends even his friends and icons revered by people. It does not matter to him that it jeopardizes his chances in life. I think it is this quality that made Gandhi into a Mahatma.” And yet he has been candid enough not to spare himself of his much acclaimed malice. “I've always been indifferent to dressing. Amita Malik got it right when she put me among the worst dressed men in India. But yes, I am a born joker”[4]

“My earlier work was serious but as I have grown older, I have learnt to laugh at life and myself”-RB ( And his ‘Funny side up’ is just about all this.)

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A textual collage of what they said and wrote :

“Have you ever been in love?
No, love is an ephemeral and illusive concept, it doesn't last; lust lasts”- KS [4].

"I still fall in love occasionally. The last was a nurse a couple of years back, and thankfully she married a doctor." – RB [8]

“Mr Advani, I will never get this chance again. You remember I signed your nomination papers? I did not understand your real agenda. You sowed the seeds of communal hatred in this country. You are a puritan: you neither drink nor womanize. Such men are dangerous.” – KS [1]

And about the great Sardar, his son Rahul Singh says, “My father is a foolish politician but emotionally he is honest”

“ The red oxide of its back had come off at several places and long lines of translucent glass cut across its surface”- ‘Karma’, short story-KS [5.5]

“Small wayside stations have always fascinated me. Manned sometimes by just one or two men, and often situated in the middle of a damp sub-tropical forest, or clinging to the mountainside on the way to Shimla or Darjeeling, these little stations are, for me, outposts of romance, lonely symbols of the spirit that led a certain kind of pioneer to lay tracks into the remote corners of the earth.”-RB

“If 400 million Indians united and spat in a tank, there would be enough spit to drown the
entire English population in India.But somehow the facilities for such a mass suicide had never been provided.”- KS [5.5]

A Poem by Ruskin Bond
Cricket will never be fair
Till bowlers get their rightful share
For toiling in the midday sun
What should be done
Its simple ..
Make those wickets broader and taller !!
That should make it much more fun
For the poor perspiring bowler.

PS:In the interest of the game
the size of the bat will remain the same

“And these are my parting words to you, dear Reader: May you have the wisdom to be simple, and the humour to be happy” – RB

“Chardi kalaa. Keep your spirits high. And don't fight in gurdwaras” - KS

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And so is life…contradiction and connections…bland and complicated…hopeless and empowering…obscene and intricate…beautiful and hypocrite…

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A lot is available online on the two, some better articles/interviews:
on KS
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2005/03/khushwant_singh.html [1]
http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/writers/khushwantS/khushwant.htm [2]
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060903/spectrum/book2.htm [3]
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/19990830/cover2.html [4]
http://sikhtimes.com/bios_021503a.html%20[5]
http://www.languageinindia.com/april2006/khushwantsingh.pdf [5.5]
http://www.boloji.com/ramblings/010.htm

on RB
http://www.hindu.com/yw/2004/12/11/stories/2004121100030100.htm [6]
http://members.rediff.com/ruskinbond/concludinglines.htm%20[7]
http://ruskinbond.rediffblogs.com/ [8]

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(well, I am still hopeful and will keep on wondering..they are in the jury panel for Sulekha writing competition http://www.sulekha.com/penguin/jury.htm also I found, that they once wrote about a travelogue… www.indianorganic.com/aboutus/reviews.htm)

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last year same time, one of the legends sent me my most treasured postcard (i had sent a printed copy of this post to both of them)

What is it with the TOP ?

2006-09-08T19:08:00.000+05:30

It is always so difficult to reach at the top. Height - analogous to amount of success. The higher the better ? Was wondering where did it all start and why ?

Imagine the prehistoric man climbing up the mountain and realizing how tough it was…he was moving against gravity. Yes, reaching at the top was tough.

When he tried to throw a stone at the monkey on the tree to scare it, it was difficult to aim at the top.

The vastness of the sky and the stars and the moon would leave more scope for imagination and beliefs than the effort required to dig up and imagine what was there below. It was easy to bury people and make them vanish rather than throw them in air. Hell was below and heaven was at the top.

A pair of jeans is worn much more than a t shirt without a wash, feet are usually unseen while the face is all important. An endless trail.

The brain being at the top.. does it change the perception ? or we were obsessed with the top even when the brain was not at its present position and we were on four feet.. Ah! just imagine the things other way round.

IT Capital of India

2006-08-03T20:07:00.000+05:30

You tend to prepare for what is in store for you. You know that Ahmedabad burns in summers, and you expect to be burnt by the heat..but there is always a wide river running between the expectation and the reality, howsoever you are prepared, the expectation invariably falls short of reality and so when the skin actually gets tanned in a day in Ahmedabad summer, you FEEL the reality and get prepared to tell others of your version of the reality. So it goes on like that. [someone’s version – you’re expectation – the reality – your version of reality].
The same happened with me in Bangalore. Having prepared myself for the choked roads and hair-fall due to pollution, I thought I was ready. But then the IT capital ( I’ll call it Insane Traffic rather than Info Tech) proved to be beyond expectations. The roads are so packed that it is in days that you get to see the road beneath. Sometimes, early mornings when the traffic is less I get confused as to whether I have taken the right path.
All families of vehicles and animal specie can be found in a stretch of 200m. Trucks – lunas-scooters – scooties (oops sorry girls, kinees) – bikes (almost all models) – cars – bullock/horse carts – dogs – auto rickshaws – busses - and others which I cant classify.
I prepare myself everyday for the 4 km drive from my small little cute place to my large 'universe' of a workplace but there is no day when I don’t let a volley of four – sixteen letter expletives for the traffic.
Another very interesting feature of Bannerghatta road, is that there are a lot of offices on the roadside, so layers of vehicles criss-crossed to take a turn in the office direction and would surely be an interesting site, when seen from a little above. Every office also has two guards who act as policemen every five minutes to stop traffic and let the people of their company get inside the gates. The resultant chaos is something which everybody accepts. The bikes and scooter drivers confident that the car drivers will defend their cars (scared of the bikes scratching their expensive paints), crawl into any possible space like snakes and never stop, even if the speed remains at 5km/hr for 5 kms. It actually increases your belief in the old adage "where there is a will there is a way" or "where there is way there is a will" or rather personally ;) "where there is a well there is a way".

An Ode to my Scooter

2006-03-31T19:18:00.000+05:30

There are scooters and then there are SCOOTERS. And my Prince, belongs to the second category. I’ve heard of loyal horses, servants, friends, wives, husbands, dogs ( never bitches ) etc. etc. but let me reiterate on the male fetish for machines. Some machines grow up to become more important, loyal and trustworthy, than the people, animals and birds around. It will NOT fail you when you need it the most. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that kind of machine is my Prince. Though, I don’t use that name to address it ( the way Basanti does to Dhanno ), we ( me and Prince ) share a mutual respect and admiration for each other and don’t need to resort to banal nomenclature, we’re over it.

( a little melodramatic ..)
The LML NV special UP- 15 J 5990 ( the way we have our employee ID’s) looks like any other scooter of the same brand, and therein lies the modesty and humility of a saint. It is a resilient friend, speeding still at 80 Km/Hr, at the ripe age of almost eight years. The hand – break, the rear view mirror, back light, horn might be missing but it has forgiven me for not taking care. It has forgiven me the countless potholes I drove it into and it has forgiven me for driving it without a spare tyre for the past three years. It has helped me take my ( mostly overweight ) friends across distances, when the bikes would refuse, provided with countless memories which no one can misuse ( sorry, had to rhyme ).
It is this, my selfless, silent friend, one that can never be replaced. We were made for each other, my scooter and I.

The Search

2006-02-10T11:17:00.000+05:30

By the grace of God I had the pleasure of buying a belt ( finally, after four years ), since I would not loose the opportunity of celebrating an occasion like “ LOOSING AN INCH AROUND WAIST”. But little did I know that the process is not so simple.
I bought a belt after much consideration, deliberation and searching almost most shopping malls of Pune, for the color, quality and price I wanted. And was really happy when I got what I wanted…well..almost. Strangely enough, the belt was by some cosmic intervention, perfect for my previous waist size and did not fulfill its prime function ( of holding trousers from falling ) for me at the moment. There were not enough holes in the belt to use it.
The customary bulb flashed and I started looking for the “MOCHI” – one who repairs the shoes. He would have the tools to make more holes in the belt, to make it usable for me. I had been recently told by a friend that one of the rarest professions these days is that of a “MOCHI”. I didn’t know how correct he was until I spent on full afternoon searching for ‘him’. Off course, after a week of keeping my gaze fixed on footpaths ( ‘their’ usual workplace ) I did find one, and I experienced the satisfaction of a pilgrim. It was shortlived, because as soon as he was to strike the blow on the belt to make the first hole, I stopped him as the 'hole - maker' seemed that it would make too big a hole, and too many usability and interface issues would creep in ;) ..
But I was determined to wear the belt and so I kept asking people for Mochis and they felt amused as they realized they haven’t seen any for a long time. But now that I am wearing my belt, you might have guessed that I found ‘him’ finally. This information being one of my few prized possessions at Pune.

The Midnight Strike

2006-01-04T14:00:00.000+05:30

When the mosquito strikes there’s no way to run, no place to hide. And the attack is even more fierce when the mosquitoes are the ones whose last eleven thousand generations have not tasted blood ( the flat had been uninhabited for quite some time now ) the basic instincts are fiercely high.
So when I spent my first night lying on that five hundred rupee mattress ( without a cot ), little did I know that the happenings of the night would inspire me to type something for my blog after so many months.
It all started with a simple zummmm zummmm in my leaf ear. I tried to ignore it and went on fooling myself that all will be fine, I just had to keep my eyes closed for a long enough time ( thankfully the days of counting the lambs lost in forest are over ).
The simple zummms now were accompanied with sharp piercing on my skin at all places. I still ignored. I covered myself completely with my sheet trying to make sure no space was left for these aircrafts to break my shield. The struggle for sleep continued and finally I gave up ( which would happen twice again ), and got up to take revenge.
With a magazine in my hand, I tried to smash these little aircrafts. Somebody looking at me from a distance, through the uncovered windows, would surely have found me weird, smashing thin air with a magazine at midnight.
Soon there was a Kalinga battlefield scene with atleast fifteen small red spots ( in one case I am sure it was a full – thick drop of my A+, haemoglobin rich blood ), plotted like coxcombs all over the wall and bed, with a low res brown black split center.
However tight I tried to make myself covered, the bastards found a way in. The fight continued till I made myself believe that the sound is coming from outside the blanket cover and the piercings are actually left overs from previous bites.
Finally, I did sleep.