Monu's Photoblog

Rahul...Nam toh sunah hoga ?

2011-11-12T23:15:00.002-08:00

As far as I can remember, I try my best not to get attached to stray animals...And the reason is simple : once we get attached, then we have to fulfill the responsibility of taking care of them, and living in a rented apartment where the house owner and/or the neighbors may not like having strays just complicates the matter. So when I first saw the old smelly stray dog which used to sleep on the terrace of our building, I did not give him a second look...he never seemed to expect any food from us, and was content to just sleep on the terrace whenever he felt like it.

One night, while sitting on the terrace and enjoying the cool wind, I broke my rule...The dog came up to me and stood near by my leg as I was talking on the phone , and by habit (I had 2 dogs back home), I started stroking the head of the dog. To my utter surprise it gave out a sound which can be at best described as a sad but content dog purr, albeit a few decibels more than any cat or dog I have seen, and the sound seemed to have a tinge of sadness in it ; perhaps at being ignored for so long.I am not trying to be dramatic here...you have to hear it to believe it. That sound touched me as I was surprised to know that a few strokes from my hand made such a difference to the dog. Well to make a long story short, I started to feed the dog once in a while.

By luck, couple of kids adopted him as their pet and named him Rahul. So I was relieved to know that he had got people to look after him. With his new found owners, Rahul seemed to get renewed energy, and the battle scarred veteran started reclaiming the street from other dogs. Somehow the bigger younger dogs seemed to respect Rahul who, due to age, did not even have a decent loud bark...rather it was a sharp yelp or howl.

The building in which Rahul's new young owners lived, also had my friends living in the ground floor. One weekend night, after our usual barbeque party by Anish, my friend, I started to walk back to my room which was half a kilometer away. The time was around 1.30am and being a cool night, I was planning to have a enjoyable walk back to the room on the quiet deserted by-lanes. As a reached the first corner, I noticed that Rahul was walking few feet behind me. As he had a new home and was always well fed, I knew he not looking for food...It seemed that he knew the time was late and wanted to escort me home. I continued walking through the lanes and Rahul trotted behind me, stopping by once in a while to smell something on the road, and when noticing that I had walked farther away, coming up fast to close the distance.

Now, as city dwellers, especially two wheeler riders know, at night each by-lane belongs to its own set of dog groups who bark or give mock charges to any one using the road at night time. So as expected, as me and rahul walked towards my home, many such groups of dogs came up barking towards us...Rahul seemed to completely ignore them and just kept walking behind me, never turing back to even look at the other dogs who barked or growled just inches from him, and I never had to shoo away any of the dogs away. Once I reached the gate of the building in which I lived, I saw Rahul trotting back to his home, content in knowing that I had reached my destination.

For your information, Rahul has even followed one of my friends into the Perungudi suburban train station, and actually boarded the train. Luckily my friend was able to shoo him away from the train quickly, as these trains stop only for a few seconds at each station.

Years have gone by, and recently I came back to live in the same lane by chance. And by surprise, Rahul, who was not seen in the area for a few months (as told anxiously to me by his young owners ), came out of nowhere and has started sleeping on our door mat at nights...as if continuing to watch over his old friends.

Mothers : The True Unsung Heroes In Our Lives

2011-05-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

... It was a normal humid morning in March and the boy who had woken up early to study felt bit feverish...To make matters worse, the couple of boils on his face seen since yesterday were still there when he checked in the mirror. Since it was board exam time which is/was one of the most sacred periods in the Indian Education system, he and his parents decided to see the doctor as the boy had a exam that very afternoon.

The doctor after a quick look at boils smiled and told , "Nothing to worry, its just Chicken pox"...The boy remembered some time back when another doctor had told cheerfully "Nothing, just a hairline fracture" and thought "What was so good about Chicken pox and a hairline fracture ? Of course at that time he could not appreciate the fact that compared to the extreme cases of health issues seen by doctors everyday, such non-threatening aliments were 'normal'...

The boy returned home with his parents and the mood was somber to say the least. All 3 knew that he would not be allowed to write the board exams...Times were such that normal parents feared even over exposure to the sun would cause some performance reduction in their kids board exam. So there was no question of his being allowed to write the Exams as Chicken pox was top on the list of contagious diseases that would freak out parents of other kids taking the board exams. The boy's aunt who was a school teacher also confirmed that kids with such contagious diseases will not be allowed to write the Exam. Since there seemed no way out, the boy decided to get some sleep as there was nothing else to do and felt a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulder, what with the rigorous study schedule that he had to follow to keep up with others...He decided not to think too much about losing an academic year, as there was lots of time left for that.

But you know Mothers...they can never think bad about you or tolerate seeing anything happening to you.

So the boy's mother went out alone, took a auto-rickshaw and went to meet the School Principal. The Principal told that if the External Exam In-charge agreed to allow the boy to enter school premises, the school Principal would open a separate classroom in another wing of the school for the boy to write the Exam. Quick discussions followed, and to make a long story short the boy who was sleeping peacefully was woken up an hour before his Exam, to be told by a joyous Mother that "Wake up and get ready, you have a Board Exam in 30 mins".

So for the next few days the boy would reach the school after all the other students had entered into the exam halls and started writing their exam. He would then quietly enter the school premises and hurry to a building in one corner of the school. He would sit alone in a room with no invigilator, but just an elderly school peon sitting outside his room, who gave him extra exam sheets, water etc. The boy would hurry through the Exam knowing that he had to leave the school 15 min before the Exam time was officially over for others, so that no one saw him or came near him, thus minimize the risk of the Chicken pox spreading.

The boy could see his friends daily sitting far away in another block writing away with gusto , but he never felt bad that he was left out of his group, or that with his unique schedule, he was losing 30 min for each Exam. Heck even the 'discomfort' (to put it mildly) caused by having full blown attack of Chicken Pox didn't bother him much when compared to the other option of missing out an entire year. The thought of using unfair means never crossed his mind...Even if he bought all the textbooks and guides into the Exam room , no one would have found it out as he was always alone in an entire block during any of the Exams. For the record, the boy never shied away from copying in Exams before and after this period ;-)

He was just glad that he was able to write the Exams at all , thanks to his Mother.

The results came and everyone was running around with happiness of getting good scores but most of them also had a tinge of sadness in not getting even better scores... Of the maximum mark of 600, only something around 530 or upwards was considered worth mentioning.

The boy was very happy and content with his marks of 480/600...the exact marks required to get a distinction for his Board Exams !

Many years after the incident when looking back, he was surprised the tension caused by those board exams days, and wondered whether the world would really have fallen apart for him if he lost an year...And although he hears/reads about heroic deeds done by Mothers all around the world , be it running into a burning house to save a kid or fighting an alligator to save her child, just as her own kid is the most precious thing in this world to a Mother, to him his Mother is the best Mom in this world and this blog is a miniscule way of showing his love for her...

Dog Fighting and Modern day Hunting : Sports or plain Cruelty ?

2011-04-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I walked with my GreatDane around my home.I felt happy and content that I had at last got a dog of my own after years of waiting. But come to think of it now , it was never about 'I got the biggest meanest dog on the street' kind of thing. On the contrary, I used to walk my 2 GreatDanes during the 30min city scheduled electricity cuts, when even the street lights were off, as somehow I felt odd walking with 2 big dogs in the small suburban area where I lived, where people had hardly ever seen something as big as a GreatDane dog. Somehow I felt that walking with them during the day time or when people were walking in the streets was pompous in nature. But yes I did like it when the street dogs came running up for a challenge and then ran away when the saw the size of my dogs up close...It fed my ego and it felt good.

So when I heard about dog fighting back then, I always thought it was an awesome way to see which dog was the king of the street or something like that and wanted to know more about it but then the internet was still unknown to me. But I always thought there was nothing cruel in it because after all the dogs quickly give up in confrontations with hardly any bloodshed. But this weekend while watching videos randomly on Youtube I came across some real information about the world of Dog fighting. Especially about the Pit Bull...These dogs are breed to fight till the last breath by owners who say they 'love the dogs' but who also kill the dogs which give up in the fight, just to 'purify' future generations of fighting dogs from the weaker ones. Shocking was to discover that even 10 week old Pit bull pups are put in fights !

Hope this gets eradicated completely in US and all over the world in places like in Japan and Italy where its common. A 50 min documentary on this topic is shown below...Not for the faint of hearts...

And the price for this 'sport of game dogs' is paid by the kids who get mauled or killed by some fighting dogs that gets loose, and more so by the countless harmless pit bull pets which get banned or euthanized due to the stigma,fear and hatred associated with the breed.

Some facts about the dog Helen Keller had : http://www.dontbullymybreed.org/

A quick search on the internet will show up similar 'bloody sports' like bear baiting in South Carolina where hunting dogs are trained by having them attack a chained Bear whose teeth have been removed and the nails filed down so that the Bear has no defense against the batch after batch of dogs which attack the same Bear all day long to get their hunting training. And modern day hunting with packs of dogs, all terrain 4X4 vehicles and modern machine guns all going after a single scared Bear hiding up in a tree or a wild Hog running for his life is somehow not sporting.

Check out an old blog of mine on the old fashion way of hunting.

Maybe its all hypocrisy coming from a person who eats meat and chicken from animals mass produced like 'vegetables' but somehow I feel that the fun in any challenge is when the odds are at least evenly poised if not stacked up against you.

New joys, new challenges , old earthy smells : Ah New Year it is then...

2011-01-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

For a third time I found myself traveling to Bangaluru for New Year celebrations...One of them was spend with close friends at a huge garden party organized by some residence association in which we all danced all night long (subsided booz @ 50Rs being the highlight with a close friend spending most of his time at the counter bribing the bar tenders to give him more)...Another New Year eve was spend enjoying the crowd atmosphere at Brigade road but felt sorry for the ladies who had decided to take the same walk or those who came out of the pubs at that moment.An example being a luxury car being escorted by the police through the crowd with a grim faced guy at the wheel and a crying lady alongside him...The window on her side shattered by "New Year well wishers"...I wish blank noise team chooses this as a venue on next New Years eve for their cause if they havent already

This time the weather was not too cold in Bangalore when compared to Chennai , where chilly mornings and rainy weekends are too frequent to be appreciated these days. If you have lived in Chennai, then you an understand this fully...Whether 2012 is coming or not, climate change is yawing at our faces, utterly bored to see that we are not reacting to it at all...

After a cold shower at 11.30 pm (yep in Bangaluru which I wouldn't have dared 2 years ago) and a quick homely dinner, me and wify dearest decided to enjoy the New Year fireworks and festivities from the cozy confines of the flat's terrace 3 stories high. All around us we could hear the load crackers which didn't seems too out of place given that Diwali had recently passed. The sky was getting lit by amazing fireworks and most of the buildings around us had groups of guys shouting New Year wishes...For a moment I wanted to run down and get my camera to capture the fireworks but somehow I got a feeling that this moment was to be enjoyed instead of being digitally captured to show off amateur photographic 'skills' in the social networks. So we touched our glasses of chilled soft drinks and shouted the New Year wishes and spent time soaking in the energy around us...

As an icing to the New Year cake, next day we saw a wonderful movie 'Marykkundoru Kunjadu' which I feel is funnier that last year's comedy hit 'Pranchiyettan'...In a period when Priyadarshan and co are killing classic mallu comedies by remaking them in Hindi with people like Akshay Kumar ( His first and last piece of natural acting being the blushing embarrassed face he had when Raveena danced in front of him in 'Tip Tip barsa pani' song ) who think making faces is 'act'-ing funny, it is refreshing to see Mollywood dishing out such good movies...And speaking of movies was very happy to see the selfless Munni triumphing over the narcissistic Sheela (based soley on the respective Song's lyrics)...

Hmmm let me stop before I jump yet again to some other unrelated thread...

So wishing you all the very best in enjoying and facing the stuff that the New Year throws at you, and may you enjoy each moment of the life ahead while the Earthy smells of the world keeping you in the state of Do good - Be good , 'cause after all, we are all in this together...

Back 2 school for the ultimate post graduation : The Roman Catholic Marriage

2010-10-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

The bell rings sharply at 5AM in the campus on the cold mornings of September in a small town in Kerala...and worse still, it rings repeatedly in a stern shrill tone that commands due acknowledgment. The students get up with sleepy faces and look at each other wondering 'This can't be happening to me' , and then 5 seconds later are jolted back to reality only to join the race to occupy the limited bathrooms lest they have to stand in long queues.

By 5.45AM the 150 odd students are assembled inside the chapel (in military line formations strictly monitored by the nuns at all times) on the 4th floor for the morning prayer followed by the Holy Mass while the wardens go through the rooms just in case some naive soul decided to sleep a wee bit longer. After the mass, the students come down to the cafeteria for breakfast and are inside the class rooms by 8.45AM. The classes go on till 12 pm followed by a 45 min lunch break. People hide in corridors during break time speaking in hushed tones on their phones because mobile phones are banned in the campus till 10.30PM.Then more classes follow till 4 pm when groggy eyes light up for the much awaited 20 min Tea break...

The final sessions of the day last till 10PM.This is followed by the "introduce yourself" sessions till 10.30 pm so that people get to know the fellow students who are slogging along with them. Finally by 10.45 PM, everyone retires to their rooms (shared between 3 to 10 individuals depending on the room size) and the nuns lock up the iron grills that separate the boy's and girl's sides of the campus.The break times are not filled with loud voices or much movement and the air reeks with love in the 'campus' as most of the 'students' have come to the course in pairs and all break times are judiciously utilized to talk to their partners.The same cycle goes on for 3 days. (I heard fellow students at the Bangalore campus get away with a single day course...lucky rascals)

As you guessed from the title, the 'students' here are people who have decided to get married and have come to attend the mandatory 'pre-marital course', whose completion certificate is a must to get married in a Catholic church in India. For me, a person who had very limited time before the D day of my marriage, my parish priest bend the rules and conducted my marriage based on the promise that I will attend the 'pre-martial course' post marriage.

The first week after my marriage consisted of endless visits to the houses of close relatives as per the custom followed by a quick 2 day getaway to Munnar (where I came down fever, the gory details of which are coming up in a future post). Then just a week after my marriage, I was sitting inside a classroom of 150 students for 3 whole days learning what the Church expected me to have learned before I got married.

Now I went to this course with a biased mind.I had resolved before hand that I wont give ear to any the selling of religion or how 'our religion is the best' kind of stuff. But Boy was I wrong !

Those 3 days zipped by very fast, and contained well crafted sessions of various topics like

- Monetary budgeting after Marriage
- Work life balance
- Maintaining Family ties and the addition of your spouse to them
- Elaborate FAQs session on physical relations (it was a detailed and well handled fun session)
- Handling differences, respecting your spouse and accepting their quirks
- Past is past (dont ask or brag about old relationships)
- Abortion is not acceptable (the only session with pronounced religious bias)
- Chance to prepare for a proper confession (Christian belief that one's sins will be forgiven by God if one truly repents doing them, and will strive not to repeat them)
-Divorce is not an "option" (Divorce is not acceptable in our Church unless due to grave issues like mental illness, impotency etc )

My worst fears were left to rest as never did I feel that Christianity was being sold to me... instead it was explained how old customs help family life in the modern world. An example is how the habit of daily family prayer helps to break the ice during quarrels when the spouses are giving each other the cold shoulder. The classes are (predominantly) not taken by priests or nuns but by highly qualified doctors, psychiatrists, marriage counselors who know first hand about the common pit falls today's marriages could fall into.

The highlight for me was during the self introduction sessions when people introduced their would-be's to the whole class . Every couple who came to the stage stood 2 to 3 feet apart and then introduced each other with expected shyness as they were still not married. So I decided to spice things up by going there and then holding my wife in my arms to introduce her. Of course this joy was short lived as the organizers came rushing to separate us stressing that majority in the hall were unmarried and hence we should not be flaunting our marriage status.

All in all I had good time there with the celebrity status in campus bestowed on us due to the fact that we were already married but still came for the course while all others had come for that coveted course certificate. I am equally sure of the fact that that there was hardly anyone who wanted to attend the course in the first place if it was not mandatory as I am sure of the fact that in the end there was hardly anyone who felt the 3 days spent there were not useful for their future life.

In the end I have found new respect for the Church for the very fact that they take marriages so seriously and ensure that newly weds enter into it with the right mind set.

Las Vegas : Spectacular Bellagio fountains & Over hyped warm America Apple Pie

2010-07-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

Man, i really like Vegas - Elvis Presley

...Tired from a week of hard work and followed by a 6 hour ride, i was walking half asleep at 1AM through Fremont street in Las Vegas trying to find the Subway outlet suggested by my '8 time Vegas veteran' friend. Suddenly the lights around me switched off , and just when i thought "So Vegas does sleep after all", 550000 watts of sound coupled with 12.5 million LED light display started 90 feet above me with a bang, as if to tell in pure Vegas style " Welcome to Vegas Honey"...

The following 2 days were spend doing the usually things in Las Vegas like going from Casinos to casinos, visiting the night clubs and walking up and down the strip. One gets reminded about the time only during early morning to noon when the city is bit calm and quiet as the people recuperate from the long nights. But then to those people who dont leave the Casinos, i don't think there is any sense of time is...especially the elderly people hogging the slot machines...

The highlights for me were

- Spending around 3 hours looking at the Bellagio fountains
- World buffet lunch at the Rio for which i stood around 1.5 hours in the Q to get in, and losing all appetite when i saw around 250 dishes...will do it again for sure...
- Traffic jam on the strip when the July 4 fireworks started at Caesar's Palace
- Seeing a famous night club filled with 60% of my brothers from India
- The girl at the club who told she made 3000$ that weekend by dancing
- The lady who took me to dinner at a country music place at Harrahs
- The old lady at the restaurant who gave a wonderful surprised smile when i came back from the exit to tip her 5$
- My friend who woke up at 1am daily to go out and gamble and came in morning only to sleep out the whole day...
- Seeing sunrise when we came out of a club and realizing that we were inside all night...
- and of course getting a chance to try the "Warm American Apple Pie" and finding it not living up to the hype that i had created for it myself in my mind...

I guess its accepted for even the most money wise people to lose money in Vegas...Somehow the money is not lost in vegas but rather spend enjoying life...

Someone famous summarized this,

"I did my time for the rape.
I paid my money to Las Vegas.
I paid my dues...." - Mike Tyson

Just know your limits, leave the credit cards in the Hotel room and even thought you have heard the famous guilt freeing phrase a thousand times 'What Happens in Vegas...Stays in Vegas', remember that certain things do come back from Vegas (remember the FIL's advice in Hangover ?) and am sure you will have a great time in Las Vegas...

Kiss...I mean Run...its an Earth Quake !

2010-06-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

We friends decided to go shopping on Monday evening , probably owing to the inertia of the long weekend of partying in clubs and night hangouts. I was surprised to find many people at the shopping mall on a Monday and my wait outside the shops while my friend selected what to buy, was not too boring. So after a longggg wait for the friend who wanted to finalize 6 out of 15 T shirts he selected, we went to an outlet of California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) which is supposed to have great pizzas.

Half way through our Pizzas (i will give 6/10 to them), the whole place started shaking.This was the 2nd Earthquake i had felt so strong while the many others were just a jolt or two in office,wherein you just smile at the guy sitting next to you and continue with your work.

At first we felt the table shake, then the plates and glasses on the near by tables added to the clatter..Only the young doorman looked worried while I guess the 'experienced' Californians expected the shaking to stop pretty soon. Only one friend at our table was not feeling the quake while the rest of us were looking at the exit and waiting for a sign when we know its time to make a run for it. Once he also felt the shakes we all stood up in unison and made a run for the door. Being on the first floor of a big shopping mall made me uneasy as open ground was no where near.

5 seconds later we all were standing outside the restaurant, standing on the edge of the railings at the first floor balcony and looking at all directions to see if the shaking had stopped or not, as the quake was not strong anymore. We could still see the lamp posts in the parking lots shake and also felt the vibrations in the iron railings running through out the perimeter of the shopping mall. We were standing at a place overlooking the open center podium of the shopping mall, looking in all directions for signs of damage when a friend smiled and pointed out something in the center of the Shopping mall in the floor below...Slowly my eyes also found what he was pointing to...a couple holding each other tightly and sharing a passionate kiss at the center of the shopping mall floor, when the whole world was shaking around them...

It was not like in movies where in all the shopping mall started to clap and the couple suddenly broke away from the kiss only to look around sheepishly... In reality people just returned to their life and we returned to our Pizzas before they got cold, giving the couple their 'privacy' at the center of the shopping mall floor.

Sometimes Life is much more beautiful in its plain simplicity...

PS : The quake was put at 5.7 on the ricther scale and was an after shock of the Easter day quake of 7.2 magnitude. Click here for details on California's quakes.

Memorial Day : Remembering all Soldiers

2010-05-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

Well for a change, Monday is a Holiday...Hurray !!!

The long weekend is about to come to an end with me having done absolutely nothing (and having had a blast doing it). Three days spend alone at home sometimes going to bed at 6 pm, waking up and eating dinner at 3am, watching movies till morning, listening to songs (and shamelessly trying to sing along out loud), going to the gym at noon, all without ever considering what the clock showed. Its been a really long time since i spend so much time alone without ever having to consider the clock, and I have made a promise to myself to do this once in a while...

Last night i was watching Twilight movie, and just as i saw the new town with the dull sky and big trees, i got reminded of seeing such a town in my all time favorite movie - First Blood.

Immediately, i stopped seeing Twilight and went for First blood.

The opening sequence reminded me when i had come to San Diego early this year, and used to walk to my room back from office (1.5 mile walk) in the cold late evenings,i always had this image of Rambo in my mind...Alone in a new place, walking in the cold with cars zipping past,almost no pedestrians in sight, and trying to pull tight my jacket collar to keep my neck warm...

Finally i came around to think about the reason for having Monday off here in US : Memorial Day, to commemorate the death of US soldiers. (Similar to Army Day in India on Jan 15th)

Went on to listen to songs related to soldiers n war like Como Estais Amigos (Iron Maiden , strong lyrics), Winds of Change (Scorpions), Buffalo Solider and lastly to the haunting song from We were soldiers

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me (Scottish Version,Translation in below video..)

What ever may be the reason for the war,where ever it may be,who ever may be fighting it, in all cases people at the either ends of the gun barrel have no personal enmity...They strengthen their hearts, and do what is required in the belief that all this blood shed is for the greater good.
So dont blame the hand that pulls the trigger in the battle field, but maybe blame the hand that sends them to the field.

All across the world, lets pay tribute to the soldiers, maybe walk up to one and say a big thanks for what they do for the country...hope none of them ever feel like our dear fictional John Rambo when they comeback from the battlefield to lead a normal life.

As Col.Jessup said in Few Good Men,

"You want me on that wall,you need me on that wall ! "

A big standing Salute to all Soldiers of this world !

(The Videos and songs listed here are what came to my mind while blogging this, and are not intended to mean any disrespect to any Soldier)

Perceptions : Miscellaneous incidents from life in San Deigo

2010-05-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

Perceptions sometimes get changed in an instant and a few occupy a permanent place in a cozy corner of one's memory...

Helpful Lady @ the Airport -

I was waiting for my connecting flight to San Diego from Los Angles and it suddenly struck me that i still didn't know if anyone was coming to pick me up in San Diego. As i hadn't yet used dollars with me, i didn't have any coins for the pay phone. All around me were people hurrying about to catch their flights or busy minding their own business. I tried to make some eye contact in the hope of asking for some help but to no avail. As luck would have it, i couldn't see a Indian around . I wish i saw that proverbial Malayali who is supposed to be in all corners of the world.

So i decided to buy a burger and went to a nearby shop. I ordered the burger combo and asked for the balance in coins but the girl at the counter had only 1 quarter with her. Wondering what to do next as i slowly walked towards the soda machine and filled by glass (way too big for a new comer from India) with diet coke. As i was moving towards a vacant table, a lady dressed in boardroom formals with a sleek briefcase, a laptop bag and a big shiny leather overcoat called me from behind and asked if i was the one asking for quarters at the counter. When i told yes, she gave me 3 and hurried away...I made my first call later in San diego with those quarters...

Austin 3:16 @ Office -

It was my second day at office and since everyone here had individual rooms, the office corridor looked more like a hotel one to me, being more used to seeing at least 50 people in any direction if i stood up in my India office. As i was standing in front of a office map of room numbers trying to find the conference room i was supposed to be inside 10 minutes ago, i heard a booming voice from behind... "Are you trying to find someone ?"

I turned around to see a guy looking like Austin 3:16 (yep - dark Tee,blue denim shorts with frayed edges , shaved head and a french beard) who then patiently explained the 'route' i had to take to reach my conference room.

'Little Man' @ Vons :

I was on my way to a popular grocery store called Vons and was walking through the big and pretty much empty parking lot when i heard some one call out to me...I turned and looked around but didnt see anyone as it was dark. As i was about to continue my walk towards the store, i heard a loud "Over here" and saw someone waving to me from a dark corner of the parking lot. It turned out to be a guy leaning onto his sport car's door wearing a bandanna on his head with chains all around his neck. I could make out 3 of his friends in the dark close to him and mugging scenes from Hollywood movies flashed through my mind for a second.

The guy called out : "Little guy, do you have any smoke on you ?"

I replied no and walked on...

Among all the customers entering/leaving the Vons store that day, the 'Little man' had the biggest smile for being called so.

...We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are....
- Anais Nin

...

Persistence hunting : How our ancestors used to earn their 'Burgers'

2010-04-11T00:49:00.000-07:00

...the 8 hr chase has come to an end...the hunter pays tribute to his quarry's courage and strength ; with ceremonial gestures that ensures that it's spirit returns to the desert sands which it came from..

... while it was alive he lived and breathed with it and felt its every movement in his own body...and at the movement of it's death he shared it's pains...

...He gives thanks to the life he has taken so that he may sustain the life of his family waiting for him...

Having seen Avatar in all its 3D glory in the theater some time back, I was seeing it yesterday on DVD by chance. The story as such is like a 70s Hindi movie but then its the whole colurful 3D package that the audience loved...Anyway while seeing the movie, specifically in the scene where the hero completes a successful hunt and thanks the animal for sharing its energy, a faint memory of seeing something similar in National Geography cropped up in my mind...some good old web search (yes it was google) brought me to what I was looking for...Persistence hunting.

To someone who had ordered Jake's special Cheese Burger for lunch, the video was a reality check and reminded how we take the daily food for granted...Philosophy about earning ones own food is good but not the topic I had in mind ...

Persistence hunting is a hunting style where the hunter chases down his prey till the end...its practiced by only one tribe in the whole world even now and the video is worth a watch...its a good one...of course as an icing, you have Sir David Attenborough narrating the scene for you...

Chennai Memories & favourite part of Polladavan Movie

2010-04-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

After being away from Chennai for around a month, for the first time I thought for some time about my Chennai friends today...Actually I was seeing one of my most favorite portions of the Polladavan movie (guilty of the habit of watching specific scenes of movies repeatedly when bored ).

The scene has great comedy, superb background music, showcases the tensions of nonreciprocating love and comradeship (Disclaimer : YMMW).

Now i have watched this portion of the movie many many times...but today it brought back the memories of Chennai weekends...dont ask me why...maybe its because of hearing Tamil, or maybe becuase it was seeing friends spending time together...

We used to have a gang of 10/12 guys who used to meet on Fridays and Saturdays and do nothing except hang around and talk about anything and everything under the sun and after mid night, we would go to Gopal Chettans Tea Shop and have sizzling omelet and hot Tea..The talks would resume once we are back and continued many a time till the wee hours of the morning...

Times have changed and some of us have moved to other places but i am sure that every once in a while we all think about those weekends spend on top of terrace or on the wall overlooking the vast ground, laughing and pulling each other legs while waiting for the Kerala Barbaque 'in Velachery Style' getting ready...Well that's another post in itself...but later...not now... for tonight my dear friends, is dedicated to going through the photographs of those weekends...

There's a saying that revenge is dish that tastes best when its cold ... I think such a person just has to try the dish of nostalgia and i am sure he will be hooked for life

2010-03-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

Its yet another normal workday coming to an end (its 10 past 12,so its over I guess) and apart from the fact that i slipped and fell twice in the bath tub in a span of 1 min (first one was accidental and then second when when I tried to reproduce the bug), I had one of the best dinners of my life...it was nothing special other than 3 room mates getting together and cooking a normal dinner with no special occasion to speak of.

If you have read my old blog on cooking, you would know I am not even a average cook. But as my roomate upon hearing my shaky confession (that i have never cooked a vegetarian dish ) told with a serious face on day one , " Once in US everyone learns to cook..."

Well today we cooked Rice,Alu fry and Shahi Panner and in a span of 3 weeks I have got hands on exp on the following items :

Alu fry
Shahi panner
Panner masala
Bhindi curry
Mix veg
Mushroom curry
Egg curry
Pasta
Chinese Noodles with soya sauce
The humble Rice & Dal (which is highly under rated when its freely available)
Veg biriyani
Gobi masala
Cabbage roast
and last but not the least , the daily ritualistic Masala Chai with ginger,cardamom and masala...

This blog started as a notepad list of the items I have cooked in such a short time and when I saw the number of things in it, I thought about blogging it.

For someone to whom cooking equated to chicken curry (made with no specific plan, other than adding all the masalas that one could lay hands on) its been a fun ride which just seems to be getting better each day...this may not be the case for the guys who have to eat up all this...a.k.a. my room mates...

PS : I do ensure there is milk and cereal in stock before I start cooking

....

America's Finest City is really Munnar with beaches

2010-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

(Having been in US for only two weeks as i write this , and having not been to any place other than San Diego, i have no reference to validate the city's 'Finest City in America' tagline. But many friends who have worked in other states confirm its true and since this tag is very popular it must be true indeed.)

The climate in Munnar in and around summer consists of cold chilly winds along with bright sunlight where you feel cold in the shadows while love the warmth of the sun when in sunlight.San Diego has similar climate (at least in feb- march but its getting warmer now). Plus the city has great beaches, so for someone who lived in Munnar for 4 years, this place is a blessing compared to the more extreme temperatures of other states.

Lesson #1(in US) :
The first and most important thing you learn in the US is being independent in all aspects.

When i landed in San Diego airport and reached the entrance,there was hardly anyone around to be seen . I had four quarters (how i got them will be told in another post) with me so without reading the instructions on the payphone i put in the coins and dialed my new colleague's number whom i have never met till them. Needless to say i never saw those 2 quarters again and nor did i get my call connected ! Now stuck with just 2 quarters i dialed first, then put the coins, and was relieved to hear my colleague on the other side, who gave me the directions for the hotel which was to be my stay for a week.

Standing at the entrance of the airport with the cold chilly wind blowing fast and the sunlight vanishing behind the horizon among the gray clouds, i felt a bit alone...There was hardly anyone around at the entrance so i asked the security guard about the cab and then got one. I had noted only the address and not the name of the hotel so when my cab reached the address i was not sure if it was the correct place. Coming from a country where one is used to see std/isd booths at every nook and corner, the rarity of seeing a pay phone was a discomfort indeed when you dont have your own phone.

Lesson 2 : What you took for granted in India like payphones everywhere,cheap phone plans,cheap taxis,cheap and more importantly robust public transport connecting even the remote nooks and corners of the city were blessings indeed.

Lesson 3 : You seem to have lot of free time in your hands when your new to a city, but more so when your new to US.

Will keep posting about what i see around here and give my lessons learned gyan as i really feel the need for a outlet of my thoughts after coming here so God save any readers of this blog :-)

Music is what life Sounds like...

2010-02-13T04:45:00.000-08:00

May it be the Mortal combat title song which takes me to my school days when 45 of us bunked school and went for the first day show,the day I felt my body wanting to break into weird dance steps on hearing Chikubuku raile (Gentleman) for the first time which also incidentally introduced me to Tamil music n AR Rahman, Hotel California (Eagles) which brings back misty evenings of Munnar college life into memory, Pachey Riramey (Alaipayuthey) which was the only song allowed to play in the hostel on the eve of the first semester Exams during Engineering(allowed only once every hour throughout the night)..., Har ghadi badal rahi hai (KHNH) while I was sitting on the wall of PWD hostel during the preparations for the last hostel day of their's and then the fact hit me that college life is over and everything around me started moving in slow motion for a while...songs have a way of stirring up old memories...

The below list of songs hold a special place in my heart and are related to particular phases of life. Whenever I hear them, each one brings back a distinct warm memory to my mind and a barely visible smile comes to my face for a second or so as i relive those old days for a few seconds...

Ore Nyabagam (Minnale) ;
Ente Ellaam (Meesha Madhavan) ;
O Hansini (Kishore Kumar) ;
Vaseegara (Minnale) ;
Fear of the Dark (Iron Maiden) ;

Most of such songs are the threads that instantly take us back to those memorable occasions and reminds us of those special faces and those golden old days when life was as carefree as one wanted it to be.I am sure you have your own big list of such songs too, so do take some time to go back to them...

Someone wise had once said Music is what Life sounds like...and i couldn't agree more...

How to Save the Tiger

2010-02-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy : http://www.saveourtigers.com/

2010 is the Year of the Tiger as per the Chinese calendar and as you rightly guessed, this blog is the result of the recent Aircel-WWF ad campaign for the Save our Tiger initiative.

So I am doing my bit now to help out those stripped majestic creatures whom we call with pride as our National Animal - the Tiger

My fascination for tigers started by reading shikar books by Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson...the jungles and incidents they described in such vivid detail created a visual effect akin to seeing Avatar on screen in 3D ;-) ...

So this post is also a dedication to one of the first Tiger conservationist in India : Jim Corbett (in pic with the leopard of Rudraprayag which killed 125 plus people till it was slain by Jim Corbett )

Lot of people are spreading the message to 'Save Tiger' via social networking sites and twits and I was doing the same but then it felt like I was shifting the actual responsibility of saving the tigers onto others. Now spreading the news of this danger of losing the tigers is a good thing but I wanted to do more and checking the various sites gave the impression that many people do want to help but dont know how to help , other than spread the word for now.

We all know that the presence of a tiger shows the health of the jungle, ie a single healthy tiger validates the presence of around 100 sq.km of healthy jungle environment (which in turn ensures the survival of countless flora and fauna in the same area) . So instead of telling people to save the trees, the undisturbed grasslands in the forests, the pristine mountains or to tell them not to kill deer,wild boar,wild buffaloes etc, its simple to tell in one single line : Save the Tiger !

Direct threats to Tigers :

1. Disappearance of forest area and human killing of the tiger's prey :

The biggest threat to tigers is the disappearance of prey which has resulted in the existence 300,000 sq.kms of tiger habitat which hardly has any tigers as there is not enough prey for the tigers to survive and breed successfully .

2. Direct poaching.

3. Getting killed in conflicts with humans when tigers accidentally enter human settlements which exist very close to the reserve forests.

People can Vote while Tigers cant !!!

So any effort done to save tigers should directly address the 3 points above and according to me , the best step is to help the people living next to tigers. (See video below)

I had attended a workshop by Kids for Tigers , as this initiative was being sponsored by my company, and the organizers thought the company staff should also know about saving tigers.

During the session, we were told that the main aim was to bring in the love for the tiger in the kids because even if one of them reaches a high (political) position, then the tigers will get saved. After all, all the tiger reserves in India got created because Indira Gandhi loved tigers !

But its too big a risk to wait for the kids to grow up with the love for tigers intact in them :-)

So what can we do ???

1. Go green : http://www.wwfindia.org/help/greenliving_tips/

2. Save greenery anywhere you see it.

We are not concerned about a woodland being cleared or a small hill being flattened if it happens 50 kms away until the same thing causes the water level to fall in our own backyard.

Already most of the cities have outsourced the food and water supplies to others, so just imagine what will happen if the goods carries and tanker lorries start coming back empty handed...

As we become more and more independent on our food,water and livelihood requirements, the less will our eyes stray towards the forests...

3. Get involved with NGOs :

Organizations which work for the welfare of the people who directly protect tigers (forest rangers) and for the welfare of the people living near forest areas.
Because even if we all urban people show our love for tigers online, it wont matter if these key people don't have anything to gain by protecting tigers !

NGOs help in collecting news from various sources and spreading awareness so that you and me can try to pitch in, which will only happen when we know about some issue...

4. Read more on how to help the Tiger by googling and visiting sites like

http://www.wpsi-india.org/wpsi/index.php

http://www.wcsindia.org/

http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/finder/tigers/year-of-tiger.html

http://www.saveourtigers.com/WhatCanDo.php

5. Last but not the least, Spread the word by sharing links via twits and other social networking sites, forwarding emails to friends, bringing up this topic when chatting offline.

So lets come out and do our bit so that the Tiger continues to roar in our jungles for ages to come...

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? - William Blake(1757–1827)

Motor Cycle Diaries

2010-01-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

( This post is a way to Thank some great people and dedicated in no particular order to - Nit, Adda, Ak, Amalu, Biju, Albert , the Friend mentioned below, Mada, Binu, Neha & Undappan )

Everything was going fine until his friend said : "My office cab is only at 11 pm and i will reach very late by then...to take a bus now would mean i will have to walk alone on the streets..."
As chain snatching by bike borne youths was rampant , he offered to catch a bus and meet her mid way at the bus stand and escort her to her home.He was glad that buses still ran this late and he could help her out.But while escorting her to her home a silent thought troubled him...what if next time the bus service is not there...what would he do...there was only one way out... and he had known that fact for a long time now but never faced it...

His earliest memory of trying a hand at cycling was when he was in the 3rd standard and it was of going down a slope, only to lie at the bottom in a heap...that was the end of cycling as the thought of taking a risk and being ridiculed again put a damper to his spirits.High school was walkable from home so he never 'needed' to ride...

As years went by, the fear of trying a hand at cycling at an older age stopped any momentary wishful thoughts of cycling that dared to come up.While friends rode on cycles he didn't feel missing out on anything...he had given up hope and resolved to be four wheel driver for life ; albeit when he got the car that is ;-)

4 days to be on Road :

In College, his friends pushed him into giving cycling another try...and in 2 days he was cycling on an open ground...confidence and friend's motivation brought him to the next stage : Cycling on the open Road. As expected, within 5 minutes on the road, he banged into a kid walking by...the kid was sore but by Gods grace nothing was broken, so he and his 'personnel escort service' (comprising of 2 guys on cycles in the front and two guys on cycles at the back) moved on...Since the winding mountain roads of Munnar were dangerous, the strategy was if any big vehicle came from the front or back the respective escort team of two would shout out to him...it was a peculiar site for onlookers who didn't get fully get what was happening seeing 5 guys cycle in military formation...

In total he rode the cycle for around 4 days but the next stage of progressing to bikes didn't materialize...his college being on a hill station made parents reluctant to get him a bike...so again riding took a back seat and confidence dropped back to being low...

Kinetic : Open ground -> Estate Roads -> Hill Stations National Highway

When all hopes of progressing to a bike were lost, out of the blue, a dare devil friend of his accepted to sit behind him on a kinetic honda...so with the 4 days of cycling few months back still fresh in memory, he gave it a try...and found it more easier that cycling ! Seeing that he was getting his confidence his friend urged him to take the kinetic out of the open ground and through the small tea estate roads where traffic was almost nil.They reached the main road connecting the hill station some 20 kms below and his friend urged him to move on.Driving on empty roads was one thing but the mountain national highway was a different ball game. Also it had started to rain by then but the thrill was too much to give up now...So he continued to drive to the town below. Barely 3 kms from the town, he rammed the kinetic on a boulder and both of them fell...his friend jumped up, put up a brave face and told him that if he stopped now, he will never lose the fear...so they rode on.

When they reached the town, his friend who wanted him to start driving solo, got down and told something about a pending errant and left hastily...Now it dawned to him that he had to drive the kinetic solo...this brought up the memories of the kid he rammed and of the numerous 'final destination' kind of accident scenarios in his mind...at last he drove the 2 kms alone and reached his room being wet,tired,shaken but feeling on top of the world...his room mates didn't believe that he rode all the way from the top for such a long distance and they actually came out in the rain and made him ride in front of them to make sure he wasn't lying. It was one time when he didn't mind going back into the rain and he proudly gave a demo ride for his friends...

Mattupetty Trip

Within 2 days of handling the kinetic, confidence and adrenaline based bravado made him take the kinetic from Munnar to Mattupetty dam...On the way, seeing his swaying style of driving, a loaded truck actually stopped on the side and let him pass through thinking that he was a drunkard on wheels while actually he was trying to keep the bike in a straight line !
Even now that day sends shivers down his spine and he never forgets to thank God for bringing him back in one piece through the 30 odd km journey through the winding mountain roads of Munnar.

Free License

When we went for the license test he got cold feet as he knew that he couldn't take the mandatory '8' with the bike so he actually had to give it in writing to the authorities that although he applied for two wheeler license, he did not want it and to grant him only the 4 wheel license, the test for which he passed. Lady luck loved him so much that in spite of all this, the dept goofed up and gave him the two wheeler license as if urging him to get on a bike asap !

Chennai - Own wheels at last

A job in Chennai followed and office being nearby gave riding a back seat...One day he and another friend who needed to learn riding bought a old kinetic honda for 3 grand, did all the repairs and then forgot about it ! It stood safely in the garage gathering dust...

And then the phone call happened...

He knew that it was odd to ask for help to learn to ride again at this age , but then as the adage goes 'Better late than never', he asked his roommate to help him out. The roomie used to go for badminton practice every day at 5 am and told him to come along...His friend would drive him to a 5km long road which was still not fully open for traffic where he would practice...the freshly built 50 foot wide road with hardly any traffic was like a dream runway and he quickly got back to riding with confidence. Then he started riding the kinetic at 5 am on the by-lanes near his flat and then slowly started to ride during day time. His arch nemesis , came back in the form of a cycle born kid who rammed into his kinetic one day but luckily nothing was broken except the front indicators.

Since the kinetic didn't have any RC book or insurance, the next step of driving it through traffic didn't work out...The rampant police checking in his locality to catch bike born chain snatchers only made matters worse so the riding was done in near by areas only...

An old rusty motorcycle of a friends was the next step...his friend told that there was nothing wrong with the bike except that its brake was almost nil and it had no horn ! Excellent choice for a learner was their opinion. Good sense prevailed and he got the brakes corrected and followed up with a week of lessons near a railway station.

One day while riding near a deserted road near a railway station at night, he switched on the headlights, put the bike in 4th gear and raced like hell...

It was a moment worth all the effort till now.

His only wish is to spread the word that its never too late to try your hand at your dreams as you have 100% chance of missing the shots you don't take. So got out and Face your Fears !

And as for him, he has miles to go before he sleeps....miles to go....

TAJ : My Hostel in Munnar

2009-11-21T22:08:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer :People who have not studied/lived in Munnar, may not be able to gauge or enjoy this post in its full meaning...so kindly bare with me...

Nostalgia is a wonderful feeling to have,especially when you are back somewhere special after a few years. I had visited my old college hostel recently and as you rightly guessed, this post is an after effect of that.

All these years , anyone who has been patient enough to hear me out, would know that i simply go on and on about my college life in Munnar, especially about my Hostel life.Ravi a colleague of mine (now in Pune) sat with me for two hours at 1 AM in the freezing cold of Munnar at the hill where my hostel is situated, hearing me go on and on about my hostel life with utter patience...hats off to Ravi who also showed what listening skill truly is.

We were the first batch to enter in CEM and since there was no college hostel, we lived in a bungalow nestled above the CSI church in old Munnar, christened as 'TAJ' by us.
Now there are numerous incidents related to my college days in Munnar, hostel life with my 25 odd hostel mates etc which cannot be done justice to in one post...So this one is just to introduce you all to my Hostel.

In recent times, the Hostel movie series of the blood and gore genre has given a slight edgy effect to the term Hostel...And the place i am about to show you has all the required elements of a thriller.So let me guide you up the hill to my hostel were i spent the best days of my life...

When you start to climb up, you first run into a old gate made up of railway track rails used by the British when trains used to run in Munnar...Rust proof gate ;-) (As of now this gate has been replaced by a bigger concrete arch).

Note : Click on picture to view bigger resolution ones.

Going up this small hill on this winding road , you reach a majestic looking old stone Church build in 1910.

Pic : CSI Church...and on the left a glimpse of my Hostel...

From here, when you are standing in front of the church, you get a view of the part of Munnar known as Old Munnar...

The well tarred road now turns into a small winding trail behind the church, leading up to first,the house of the resident priest and then further up, to a small bungalow which was my hostel.

Going further you reach my hostel at last...TAJ !

Climbing further brings you to the spooky looking storage shed of the Church which has been the source of fuel (in the form of old furniture stored here) for our numerous mid night camp fires at center of the cemetery...

Further up the hill side is occupied by the church's cemetery...graves scattered lazily across the wilderness giving each 'occupant' a permanent view of the beauty of Munnar

One such occupant, Theodore Edward, holds a special place as i have spent many hours studying at the foot of the tree shown below...

Usually within 15 min the book gets closed and the rest of the time is spent taking in the fresh mountain air and looking lazily around at the wonderful green spread...so the study place usually ended up as a chill out space for me...

Pic : View of old Munnar from my timeout place...

Pic : View of my college...the top building in the middle of the pic...

Pic : View of the big tree were i used to chill out with the grave of Edward on the left...

Hereon the trail straightens up and as you walk further you are surrounded by tall majestic trees...

Climbing further up will bring you to the top of the cemetery...Here you will see a flight of steps leading to a small clearing where we used to have our camp fires, which usually required no reason at all to have, except for the heck of it...

Walking past the steps and clearing you will see a grave with the area around it raised above ground level (as if on a platform) and surrounded on all sides by a small hedge which makes it stand out...you also notice that its at the top of the cemetery beyond which there aren't any more graves giving the impression that its the first one here...Well my friend, you have now reached the resting place of Eleanor Isabel May...She was the descendant of Edward Brabazon, First Baron of Ardee...but to us she was and still is the first and last lady of TAJ...

Her grave holds a special place in our hearts and we make it a point to visit her whenever we come to our Hostel...

Further up is the hill top with shrubs,rocks and trees...second spookiest place after Anachal on which i blogged a long back... Nothing else.

Nothing else is present on this hill... Now this 'nothing else' makes full sense only when you, who are used to well light city streets, are walking up this trail past the dark menacing stone church on a freezing rainy night with strong winds making howling noises, the trees swaying back and forth, and all you want to think of is the faint light you can see somewhere up (the hostel's porch light), while you try not to think about the cemetery to your right as you slowly climb up trying not to slip on the muddy trail...

Its not a pleasant trip mind you because even though you think there are no real ghosts, some hostel mate may be standing hidden somewhere,braving the rain, waiting just to spook you...and all you can do is to wish that it turns out to be indeed an hostler, and not a bored resident of one of the graves...(I have to thank such nights from which i learned what sprinting truly meant, which helped me in my recent 7km Chennai run.)

Thus you come to the end of a small trip across one of the pristine hill sides in Munnar which we 25 odd guys used to call as our Home away from Home...TAJ !

Pic : TAJ Rulz - Our Hostel Emblem

Last but not the least, TAJ RULZ !!!

- A proud TAJian

------------------------------------------

Diwali 2009 - St.Thomas Mount

2009-10-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

Another Diwali has come and gone...Last year i got a chance to take
a picture of a touching scene right in front of my flat which showed
the true meaning and extend of sharing and i had blogged about it...

For the first time i got a chance to celebrate at Chennai...This Diwali me and friends decided to go to St.Thomas Mount as frankly we got tired of bursting fireworks n cooking and had nothing else to do...

First thing i noticed was the empty roads and closed shops...even the corner tea shop was closed which is a rare thing.On reaching St.Thomas Mount i was surprised to find that here too the crowds were very less, so we spent the time taking pics of the sunset which was clear from the height we were in...The view from there never seizes to amaze me as there are not many natural vantage points from were you get such a view...
(The man made vantage points a.k.a "High rise buildings" don't allow such an access to reduce suicide attempts).

The view from here shows you a big chunk of the city...On the left you can see Valasaravakam,Koyembedu, Vadapalani..Then in front comes TNagar,Mylapore and then to the right you can see Besant Nagar,Velacherry etc...
If you know Chennai you can understand its an impressive view...

Once it started to get dark, it was like a magic wand was waved across Chennai city...
The entire sky in front of us was lit with Diwali crackers especially the 'rockets' which fly into the sky and burst at varying height and in varying colors depending on their make.

It was the best Diwali gift given by the entire city to us...
Everyone bursting crackers and creating a never ending splendid view of a brightly lit sky...
At any time you could have around 50/60 rocket bursts clearly visible (not counting the smaller or distant ones)...It was one of those moments when you just fall silent and become a mere
spectator to the grand view in front of you...It was priceless...

The evening ended with me and friends donating blood as there was a blood donation camp running there... So all in all it was a pretty satisfactory Diwali...

I have added a low resolution video and a crappy photo shot from a cam with no shutter settings nor did i have a tripod...So these don't do justice to the event at all but i cant help but try to share these in the hope that you 'get' what it must have been like while standing up there and see an entire city go up with joy of celebration...

Chennai Marathon Sept 27th

2009-09-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

For some time now i have been trying to be a regular visitor to the gym...and have lost few kilos in the process...but one thing that bugged me was the jogging part...Chennai traffic and road conditions make it a tough task to jog on the roads unless you wake up at sunrise and even then you have to take care of the speed devils sitting behind the wheel of the numerous company cabs...So all this left the good old treadmill at the gym,which never gave that feeling of completion at the end of a run which ones gets on a ground or on a road...People told me that jogging on the treadmill is not as effective as on the road as the treadmill is always in motion thereby helping us. So when i read about the chennai marathon in which there was a 7km run for the normal janta, i jumped at it.

Basically i wanted to see if i could keep jogging at that long a distance because in gym i stop at 2/2.5 km at max.

Sunday morning myself and set out for the Marathon.The main route to the starting point, and the only one we knew, was blocked due to traffic diversions for the 21km run which had already started...Numerous diversions later we found ourselves at the island ground. By sheer luck we escaped the heavy showers, which seemed to be a blessing in disguise for many who were fearing what the wrath of the Chennai SUN will do to the runners. We had barely took shelter in the medical emergency tent when it started to rain heavily. Ah, it was sight for sore Chennai eyes...

When it was 7.30 the rain stopped to a light drizzle and we started following the people in front of us...once we reached the road we found people started moving faster and then we knew the Marathon had started. I switched off my mobile and along with the camera placed it inside my friends backpack wrapped in a plastic bag to escape the rain. Little did i know that the mobile part will be regretted later on.

Within 5 minutes into the run i got the runners stitch and thought i was a goner.My friend who is a good runner was already out of sight and so was my mobile ! So the only thing left was to keep on running. The atmosphere was really cool. I could see the 21km run guys returning to the finishing line having covered 21kms in 1.5 hours. The road sides were filled with people who had come to cheer the runners and also included many would be runners who decided not to run at the last moment. Runners were in all shapes and sizes - friends, families,people from the big companies in company Tees , school kids in big noise groups led by their school bands, and people like me who came on the cold wet morning to prove a point to themselves, that this is doable. Since the run was open to all people there were lot of boisterous groups of slum kids running around fighting with each other by splashing the water from the bottles placed at intervals along the course by the organizers. Mid way through the run i felt really thirsty (my bottle was also 'cleverly' placed in my friends backpack) and saw a organizer distributing bottles around 200 feet away. The same moment i saw it, i heard a roar of delight from the kids behind me who were looking for new ammo for their water battles. I am sure those kids would have never seen a heavy guy like me run like i did at that time, knowing full well that if i was late there was going to be no bottles left.

I was able to complete the 7km run in 50 minutes which included around 10 minutes when i would have walked fast to catch my breath. What keeps one going is the numerous people in front of you and many constantly zipping past you that there is no dearth of motivation - especially if a couple of goodlooking gals zip past you with ease which also hits your ego. Once i reached the finish line i started looking for my friend. Instead i ran into the company HR to whom i was to report to in the morning to collect my marathon number tag. I informed that i was late due to traffic and rain,collected the company Tee and cap that i should have been wearing during the Run and made my way to the parking lot for a long wait for my friend.

The journey to the marathon in the cold pleasant morning through empty roads of chennai, the friendly people who were very helpful in giving the new directions and shortcuts due to the traffic restrictions, the energy of people of all ages who took part in the run, the scores of people standing in the rain and cheering the runners was an unforgettable experience - the icing was the personal satisfaction of completing the 7 km Run and still be on two legs.

1st day show of Mohanlal movie Sagar alias Jacky

2009-03-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Movie ticket bought in 'black' - 100 Rs
Egg puff(2) - 16 Rs
Sprite - 12 Rs
Seeing Mohan Lal's latest release 1st day in the super stars home ground - SreeKumar theatre,thiruvananthapuram,with a sea of liked minded fans - Priceless

This idea has been borrowed a zillion times from a famous tv ad by many, but to put in perspective the importance of this occasion i couldn't think up of something else.

Thursday noon saw me standing outside the Thriruvanathapuram railway station having completed a 15 hr train journey, for a visit to home town.I had already made plans to see the movie Sagar Alias Jackey with my friends on the coming Saturday. On my way to the bus stop to catch a bus to home sweet home, I had to cross the Sree Kumar theater and the sea of fans thronging the theater premises attracted me to there.

Fans of Mohanlal were taking mini processions (separate ones by each fan club) around the theatre premises with some using decorated auto rickshaws and other vehicles to carry the banners and posters.

The energy in the air was electrifying - all around me were fans of the stars braving the heat,the crowd and the angry policemen for one simple reason - to see their super star on the screen on the first day.

Thinking that i could be able to book the tickets for the weekend i stood their for some time. When i entered inside i escaped barely from a couple of stampedes when the policemen did mock charges waving their latties to control the crowd.I decided to stay outside and click some pics. Out of nowhere a guy approached me and asked if i wanted tickets in black. It was like asking a kid standing in front of the candy shop if he wanted one. Of course i said and paid 100 rs for a 35 rs ticket. After all i have paid 120 per movie in Chennai multiplexs for so many movies and to get a lal first day ticket in Sreekumar theater didnt require much thinking.

Now that i got the ticket in my hand, the only question was how to get in ?

The gates were locked and the security guy told that they will not open as already too many people were inside. The only option - jump the wall waving your ticket so that the police don't beat you. Now i had a heavy backpack as i was straight out of the railway station. Those who know me know that i am not the skinny type ;-). So i climbed the wall over the pointed Steele bars (which reminded me how mercilessly i used to laugh when i saw guys getting hurt in similar situations in movies).

Once inside it was pretty simple - hold onto your purse and mobile like your life depended on it and flow with the crowd to get inside.

Pieces of papers were flying around, guys running around waving their shirts screaming. The noise when Mohan Lal name was shown in the openinig credits and when finally the star came was awesome. This picture is the entrance scene.

Although i had my camera in my bag, i decided to use my cell lest they book me for piracy or something.

The movie is aimed clearly at the fans. The story is average with no importance or depth to any other characters other than the super star's. Bhawana is not an actress who can make us believe that Lal's character will fall for her. Jothirmayi's item song is below average.Compared to this, Big B had better characters,music and even punch dialogues. But compared to 'Bilal', Sagar Alias Jackey wins hands down. Only problem is Lal has little to showcase his acting skills and there is no emotion on his face.The character neednt have been so serious.
The visuals are great, the camera work superb and seems lots of money has been spent on it seeing all those cars and planes.
So if you are a lal fan, go with a gang of friends and have a blast.

Catepillar Photoshoot - Euploea core or Common Crow Butterfly

2009-01-18T22:13:00.000-08:00

It started with my dad waking me up early morning saying that there was something interesting in the garden which was apt for a photo shoot...Now people who live away from home will know how satisfying the sleep in your old bed feels like, so naturally I was reluctant to get out of bed.

15 minutes later (come on, it was a cold Jan morning, so it took time to come out), I was standing in front of a potted plant in our garden with sleepy eyes. My dad told me that this plant was missing leaves for a few days now, and he was surprised as this plant was normally not attacked by the usual pests which attack the other plants in our garden. He then showed me the 'culprit’. It was a long caterpillar which was happily devouring the leaves one by one.
(Click on the pictures to see full size)

Now i am not exaggerating when i say devouring because that’s what it was precisely doing...you should have seen the speed with which he ate...In proportional ratio, if he where my size, he would have beaten me hands down, or shall we say 'legs' down...

So i took out my camera and a chair, and started clicking...Taking pics was difficult as I didn’t have a prime lens with me. To those unfamiliar with SLR cameras, these are inexpensive lenses which effortlessly focus on a single object while blurring the background. This makes close up shots a walk in the park...

The way he went about eating was simple. He will go from branch to branch to look for the fresh young green leaves. Then he will get under them and nibble at the point connecting the leave with the stem...(It reminded me of Kalidas tale of cutting the same branch on which he sat). Well, the caterpillar did this till he had chewed through half of the stem and the leave was hanging down. Then he will stop this and start eating the leave from the bottom to top...This he will finish in 10/15 minutes and then move in search of the next leave.

Next day morning when I checked the plant, he was hanging upside down under a older dark leave which was not in his normal menu...I gently blew at him to check if he was alive and he immediately curled up as if cursing me for the disturbance... I suspected that he may be starting to enter the next stage of Pupa. I had to go to church at that time. So I was back after 1.5 hours at the same location and he had turned into a Pupa ! That 4 cm long fat caterpillar of yesterday had turned into a pupa shell hardly 1cm long. The shell was wet and light in colour and looked bit transparent. So i started the 2nd photo shoot. That evening when i checked him out, his shell had turned into a beautiful shiny golden colour and looked like a drop of molten gold that had solidified...Unfortunately I couldn’t stay back to see him come out which takes around 2 weeks as I had to get back to work.

Later that day i was reading online on this transformation of pupa(Chrysalis) to butterfly and saw a picture of the same kind of catepillar that i had in my garden ! Further search provided the valuable information - the caterpillar was of the common crow butterfly. It was so satisfying to be able to know what exactly one was clicking all this time...

On that’s what I call one fine satisfying photo shoot !

I added the pics i took into the gallery section of this butterfly in wikipedia . Check out the pics in the end with the location as thiruvananthapuram,kerala.

What qualifies a Guy as a M.e.t.r.o.s.e.x.u.a.l...?

2008-11-10T04:41:00.000-08:00

The Metro sexual man - " a single young man with a high disposable income , living in or within easy reach of a metropolis – because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are and who has clearly taken himself as his own love object ..." - wikipedia

Like many of you, i too heard the term Metrosexual, when it was first associated with David beckham but didn't give it much thought as i thought it was yet another scam term to imply that men are spending more money on cosmetics...
At that time, men using beauty products was not commonly seen ( at least outside the 4 walls of their house)...Recently i read a nice blog in which one of the things that struck me was the fun poked at the use of Cuticura talcum powder, which was till a few years ago , one of the sole well know beauty/ personal hygiene products in India...And now we have Shahrukh on TV telling guys not to use girly fairness creams and instead,use products made specifically for men...

All this made me look at the present day scenario...and what a great place to begin than my very own room which i share with 5 others. I went and collected vials,bottles and tubes of all kinds (except the soap,shampoo n tooth paste ones) and placed it together on the table ...
The initial number of items was a bit shocker but then i saw that most of them would come under hygiene products rather than 'beauty' products per se...Out of the 20 or so items only 3 could be called as 'beauty' products while the rest were sunscreens, aftershaves and deodorants. The odd ones were a shoe deo and a sprain spray for sport injuries...The fact that we all had a tally of around 25 pairs of foot wear in the house reminded me that the situation wasn't that bad...

And to remind me that ours was still a true bachelor pad, i took a look around me and got satisfied...

So are men suddenly turning towards beauty products and that too in large numbers ?

Well there are many who would have tried a simple facial or the more adventurous ones a pedicure or manicure...Even the local barber shop at the corner is giving the former...

My barber used to try regularly to tempt me into doing a facial or face massage.I used to refuse the offer but things changed after a trip to home town during which many commented that i had grown dark due to the Chennai sun. Then it got really personal...I forgot what thalaivar Rajnikanth told in the movie Sivaji regarding the quest for fair skin

So the next time i went for the hair cut,without the barber asking (he must have given up on me or accepted that my naturally handsome face was already perfect), i told hesitantly the four dreaded words ...'i need a facial'. The barber got very happy and finished the usual 20 min long hair cut in a jiffy.I thought i knew what i was getting into...i mean, i had seen guys of all ages sitting with creams on their faces during my previous visits to the hair saloon and it didn't look too difficult.

Now i know people of all ages read this blog so I wont get into the gruesome details, but the highlights were

The pure pain i endured when he gave first degree burns on my face with hot steam

When he scared me to death by acting like Sweeney Tood , by opening a tool box full of sharp tools and then approached me with a smile usually seen on Project Mangers during annual reviews. He was brandishing the sharpest weapon from his collection, saying that this will remove the 'blackheads'...heck i thought he meant my head...Anyway he then proceeded to scrap the entire skin off my nose, while i tried to hold a straight face as if lost in the world of the 'jatka' movements running on SS music channel.

Luckily i survived without much injuries and after wiping clean my face, the barber pointed to the mirror and told with a ironical smile, ' Parungey...Hero mathiri aayitten' (Look, now you look like a hero)...although we both knew my face and physique were more apt for the baddies who get bashed up in South Indian movies.

I did try it another time and it wasnt that bad...i had the most wonderful sleep in the cool AC room, with cold cream on my face...i think they can make more money if they package this as a relaxation, stress relieving treatment...Of course i told him to leave the blackheads alone this time, and he continued to give me condescending looks through out the next hour or so...

The thing is, it didnt change my looks...the 'glow' unfortunately lasted exactly till the time i washed my face, (i completely forgot i just had a facial).To see how my peers were in this 'race for beauty', i tried to enquire and found that although many had tried it once or twice, none of them did it on a regular basis.

As for the more extravagant pedicures and manicures, no one had tried them, and one guy commented 'who will pay so much to cut nails man' and then proceeding to bite his nails to prove the point (his GF was not in office that day)... Of course there are others who apply kadala maav (channa paste) on their faces at weekends and those who apply pure fairness creams religiously, but these are a rarity..

So i guess as long as we men are clean,hygienic, iron our clothes and apply deodorants (mildly, not like the AXE ads) i guess its okay...Society doesn't want us with flawless skin...that burden in most cases, still falls on the fairer sex :-)

Oh, that reminds me, i have to buy sunscreen with SPF 30+ , for the trip we roomies are planning this weekend... ;-)

Aap, Mein aur Bagpipper...of course i mean the club soda ;-)

2008-11-02T05:36:00.000-08:00

"It was a late evening in 2002...having got some funding and even more importantly, official leave from college on the pretext of inviting various colleges to our yearly college fest, 5 of us friends found ourselves at the thallaserry side of the Mahe bridge...with excitement building up we started crossing it...On reaching the other side we were officially into Mahe and it was like what Alice would have felt when she came out of the rabbit hole into the Wonderland...or maybe when one enters Las vegas...It was a sight for sore eyes...All around us were flashing colorful neon lights on top of shops of all sizes ranging from multi storied buildings to small sheds where the owner cant even sit...all selling one single thing...Liquor ! That too at the cheapest rates available in and around the state of Kerala, in bottles of all imaginable colors and shapes..."

Some call it heaven...some call it hell...i call it necessary evil to get some friends to talk... :-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monujoy/486778654/

For good or bad, social drinking has become an integral part of life...when old friends meet or when new friends are being made, the eternal bottle has become the epitome of an ice breaker.

Below are the random memories that come to my mind :

Cemetery Meets

The fondest memories of mine are the weekend get together we used to have in our hostel...Imagine a hill with a church and two bungalows as the sole buildings on it. In one the local priest lived with his family and in the other, we 40 odd guys lived. Behind the 2 buildings was the rising hill and nestled in between was a cemetery. It was here that we used to have our meets. Either there used to a specific reason for this like discussing on the ‘socio-political’ atmosphere in college or we used to simply make one up just to have it !

No meeting was complete without the accompanying camp fire, the wood for which came from a small ‘locked’ shed of the church which was full of old broken furniture…we had even torched one of the wooden cots given by the college for this !

The local brands guzzled with gusto in those days will surely send chills down the spine of the same guys in the present times and the parody songs sung around the fire in pitch black nights in freezing temperatures still ring in our hearts…

My first and last Outdoor catering assignment:

In the brief time I spent in the Hotel Mgmt institute in Kovalam, I got only once a chance to take part in an outdoor catering assignment. So on a weekend me and my friends went to Ashok beach resort, the only 5 star hotel in Trivandrum at that time, for a banquet function arranged for some all India medical conference.

The jobs where simple: dust the cutlery in the storage room, man the food counter and man the bar counter. Since I was a non drinker, the guys told me to choose the other two jobs. The next six hours saw me dusting the cutlery from the huge storage rooms and placing them for the dinner. After 6 hours of this, I asked for a change and got the serving counter. Boy was I in for a surprise! I don’t know if it was the nice atmosphere of cool windy evening in the beach resort, or was it the chance to be with old friends, or whether it was the free liquor, but people were attacking the bar counter with a vengeance. All around you could see passed out people and busy servers like me collecting glasses from them or serving them fresh ones.

Once we collect the glasses, we pass through a long corridor and then enter into the cleaning room where we deposit the glasses. Now there were lots of half empty glasses placed by guests all over the banquet hall and in the garden adjacent to it. Our manager had told us that no glass should be seen unattended and the guys took it literally! Guests would have a sip or two, put the glass down for a second and turn around only to find the glass gone. The long dark corridor turned into a free for all party for all the servers who ensured the glasses always came out empty into the cleaning area.

At the end of the day, it was time for the payment and the manager told us to stand in a queue to collect the pay check but there was a catch. The procedure was simple: walk up to him, blow air to his face and collect the money :-)

Luckily he wasn’t smelling for ice cream (no empty ice cream cartons left the food counter where I was present) and I successfully passed his test and got the first hard earned money of my life: 125 bucks for 12 hours of work!

First and second Semester results are out !

Being the first batch of the college, not having seniors resulted in us not understanding fully the hardships of having back logs. Result? Mass failings in the first and second semester exams ! One of the well meaning teachers of our college came to the hostel that night to see how we guys where handling the harsh results of the first year of the course and to help alleviate the tension if any. Instead the teacher entered to find a big party going on and to top it one of the guys offered him a drink to join the festivities!

This also marked the beginning of the trend of purposefully ‘leaving’ the last paper of each semester. We used to mark big red tilaks which where symbolic representations of the fact that we were undertaking mass flunking…At this time when I write this, I sincerely thank God that he ensured we all out grew these things and completed the degrees in time…but still when I see a group of guys walking with tilaks, I cant help but go back to those days in the college rest room were we got ready with our tilaks.

Spirit Day:

A hartal called by some party found all of us sitting in the hostel with nothing to do. No CD shops to rent the vcd player and tv, no beverage shops to buy liquor and even the 2 sole theaters in Munnar where closed. A local person from Munnar known to us said he can get Spirit (a form of Arrack) for us. He kept his word and got us 5 liters of it !

Due to shortage of big tumblers, it was diluted in 2 buckets with 30 odd eager hands holding glasses waiting expectantly. The evening found almost everyone passed out in their rooms…

I can remember lot more incidents but that’s for another time…

I would like to stress that none of the guys turned into chronic drinkers and with the current work pressures, the daily drinkers of yesteryears now drink 2/3 pegs on weekends and talk with gleaming eyes about those golden days …

Note:

I am sure that any one who doesn't know me very very well, wont believe that i don't take liquor...And you too, after reading this blog would be of the same opinion... I don't blame you...My colleagues give knowing smiles when i don't take one, thinking i don't drink in official settings...new friends think i drink only with my close friends...some think i stopped after years of 'enjoyment'...During college days, our neighbors use to say that my 'plum' look was a direct result of guzzling beer...heck, even my current house owner in Chennai asked my room mates on the first day itself " Our Monu looks like a pal of the bottle,eh?"...

My decision is not due to religious pulling nor is due to some high moral thoughts...i am over weight and have perfected the art of making bad habits, so i don't want any new ones...period.

The Joy of Sharing

2008-10-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

Festive atmosphere for Diwali is at its peak... (inspite of the huge downpour in Chennai as i am blogging this)

Festivals are a chance to share happiness with one another and two days back i saw something that reminded me of what sharing truly means...

As someone said, a picture is worth a thousand words...

My experiments with Cooking

2008-09-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

Waking up early on Sunday morning with no scheduled plans can be a blessing in disguise…Like today it prompted me to “dust” my old blog and write a fresh post...As always I was hungry and so the topic was easy – Cooking !

Ah…Cooking…the word that supposedly instills fear in the minds of the both men and women of today’s generation alike...Men have to answer “Didn’t you cook anything when you where a bachelor” and women have to answer “Didn’t you learn anything from your mom”…

Well my tryst with cooking started quite early…at the age of 5 !

Me and my friend Bhanu where alone at his home and we got hungry…Since he was older than me by a year, the responsibility of finding food fell on him…After ascertaining that there was nothing edible in the kitchen, we both decided to cook Maggie and Omelet. For the Omelets we poured oil into the pan, added the beaten eggs and then realized the oil was too much...What to do? We took the small round sieve used to remove tea powder and sieved the oil and egg mix :-)… That was the first self cooked meal of mine…with Bhanus help.

After many years Bhanu, who always had a flair for cooking, joined the Hotel Management Institute in Kovalam and next year I also followed his ‘food’ steps. He is currently a head chef with Le Meridian hotels.

Life at IHMCT, one of the top 5 catering colleges in India, was an eye opener. The college believed that to be good managers and chefs of the future, everyone must know the hardships faced by each staff of a hotel. So everything in the college was done by the students…For a guy like me who had never cleaned a single plate @ home till then, standing at the mess hall exit, collecting the soiled plates of the entire college and loading them to the huge dishwashers was an unforgettable experience…It taught me that no job was inferior.

The cooking classes where the hardest for me…I had no natural flair for cooking…We did cooking in 2 member teams and my partner was a girl from Tibet called Pema. When the chef told us to start cooking I looked helplessly around…We had to cook a continental meal – 4 Breadrolls(buns for non-chef'y' crowd), a soup,a meat dish,a veg dish and a desert !
The fact that what we cook was going to be our lunch was even scarier!!!

With the though of taking the easy way out, I told Pema I will do the dough for the breadrolls.
But no matter what I did, half the dough was always stuck in my hands…The chef came and asked if I had any clue about what I was doing…In the end poor Pema had to cook most of the meal and this (obviously) continued for my entire duration in IHMCT. The patience she showed with me made me thank the fact that she was from Nepal and I also thanked Buddhist monks and their patient way of life. Pema, if you ever read this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart :-)

I wont spend too much time on the life @ IHMCT which is an entire topic in itself, but one particular incident I remember in catering college was the mid term exam…

Imagine a hall the length of 5 normal college class rooms…having two long rows of steel stands for the gas burners…Everything spotlessly clean and shining…Everything in perfect order…all utensils and ingredients arranged perfectly…
The exam began with everyone making the standard veg soup…60 students cooking silently, the only noise coming from the occasional vessel clangs. I some how made my soup and while transferring it to the soup bowls, the pot handle slipped from my hand and the entire soup fell on the clean spotless floor…the only noise in the hall was the clattering sound of pot as it rolled round and round till it came to rest…Everyone stopped and looked at the pot and when it stopped rolling, they looked up at me with astonishment as if I had dropped a nuclear bomb…It was one of the few instances in life when you wanted to be invisible for the right reasons…

I didn’t complete my catering course (and because of this even now you can go to any restaurant and eat food fearlessly) and joined my Engineering course in Munnar…There I didn’t play around with cooking much…

Chennai life was (and still is ) at the hands of the ‘akka’/ maid who comes to cook for us…Her cooking principle is simple and easy….make a gravy with tomatoes and then each day add different things into it – green peas, channa,potatos,egg,sprouts and on (un) lucky days we get just the tomato gravy in its full glory.

Recently I successfully cooked Chicken ‘potato’ roast …After I started cooking the chicken, I realized that the onion puree was not enough. So I took 3 unboiled potatos, crushed them in the mixie and added that as the base…My room mates didn’t notice anything while they ate and I told them of this the next day…No one has been harmed till now with my experiments with cooking and I am still going strong :-)

Orkut Posts : Which God is worth worshiping / Or is any God worth worshiping?

2007-09-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

I have not been getting time to blog something...and i am fairly active in sites like Orkut...as they say, if you are stuck with lemons, make lemonade...so i am starting to ctrl+v my orkut posts....yeah , i know its a lame excuse from blogging seriously...but then what the heck, right ? :-P

Which God is worth worshiping / Or is any God worth worshiping?

Belief in anything that makes you a better person is good...if belief in God helps certain people then that’s good and worth worshiping…

All this is subjective in nature…
Whats acceptable to one is not enough for another….what one person thinks is correct is wrong for another…Similarly which belief is worth worshiping and which is not is subjective and I am sure whoever created the human mind meant us to think in these lines also…
If certain people take words, incidents in holy books for their literal meaning and then turn into fanatics or question the logic behind all this then it can’t be helped...

Bottom line is that the strength in human belief and hope is immense...

Religion and God are all part of an effort to channelize this inner strength for the good of man kind...Well meaning and far sighted ancestors may have taught the concept of God and religion to their kids with all this in mind…whether their concepts were created out of thin air or from reality is not at all important in the broader context…

The fact that these beliefs help many people to continue to live their lives with inner peace and this is reason enough for many to continue worshiping.

To each his Own!

Tidel Park , Chennai

2007-05-20T23:49:00.001-07:00

Tidel Park, originally uploaded by monu joy.

This is the place where i work...for a very long long time i wanted to shoot this building during sunset...only recently i got the chance to fullfill my wish...

Tidel Park, originally uploaded by monu joy.

A more calm and serene look....

Is this the real me ? Oops :-P

2007-05-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	High
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	High
Lust:	High
Pride:	High

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Saw an interesting quiz and took it....the results are interesting but not the whole truth mind you :-)

NameSake - Movie Review

2007-05-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

Rating 4/5

It’s a down to Earth movie without the ‘acceptable extraordinary’ situations usually seen in mainstream Bolloywood movies. The India-born, Manhattan-based director Mira Nair sketches characters in such a way that you can relate to almost all the characters at the same time….i.e., you will be thinking that you would do the same thing if you were in his/her shoes….

The story revolves around the arranged marriage of Ashore (Irfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) , the initial struggle of a newly wedded Indian bride in Manhattan, the pet name Gogol given to their son(Kal Penn), the struggles of the son in later life in accepting the name and who finally accepts it with a sense of pride, the understanding and humble Father who wants to tell his son many things but leaves for him to discover them by himself ,the parental acceptance of the 'distance' teenage/adult life creates between them and their children, the husband who teaches his reserved homely wife to be independent and the sheer thoughtfulness and practicality of his final lesson for her, the son who gives up his blonde GF for a Bengali girl only to find 1+1 is never 2 in real life, the pain of infidelity, the fact that there is so much more we don’t know about our parents which ironically ,we realize only after their demise .

Plus

- Identifiable characters with whom one can empathize.
-Great camera work and shots of Kolkata city.
-Greating acting by Irfan,Tabu and Kal Penn
-Bengali beauty Moushumi played by Zuleikha Robinson ;-)

Minus

-If you cant relate to the characters, you may get bored :-)

Tara Rum Pum

2007-05-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

Rating : 2.5 / 5

When asked to give some advice to young people, Warren Buffet said: “Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself”…

The movie Tara rum pum (TRP) is an average one at best, albeit with a good message in it…. TRP gives the message of “think before you swipe the card ” which is so important in today’s world where people are earning six/seven figure salaries straight out of college and spending it just as fast.

Its from the same guy who gave us Salam Namastey(SN), which also had a great message in it…SN highlighted the struggles of being pregnant and single, the responsibilities of fathering a child and then supporting the would-be mother… ‘Live in relationship’ was a bold theme…

Coming back to TRP, the racing scenes are average stuff with the bad guys giving clichéd wicked smiles every time they are on screen. The songs are average too.

Plus

Nice message of “think before you swipe the card”.
Saif looks well and great (he was hospitalized some time ago)
Rani looks good in the second half.Just like Manisha Koirala, she too looks best without any makeup...

Minus
The scene of the hungry son eating leftovers from the garbage bin was a bit too much for me.

You,Me and Dupree

2007-04-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

Rating : 3.5/5

A good movie showcasing that serious things about life can be told with the help of comedy…The movie will appear more realistic to guys as its made with our perspective. (The scene where one guy runs to collect the porn collection thrown away by a friend fits the bill) In the movie drupe burns down the house by being careless with candles… One of my close friends started burning newspaper in a non ventilated room saying ‘its so cold’… The character of Owen Wilson is a person who does not want to take life seriously. He lives for each day and does not worry about the future.
Everyone would have seen a person similar to the character of Owen Wilson. Someone who thinks about everyone else except himself, someone who is happy to take each day as it comes and does not want to ‘spoil’ today’s joy with the uncertainties of tomorrow.

For me the movie also had some personal connections as I happen to know 3 real life duprees !!! The character of Matt Dillon is impressive simply because the movie shows some negative streaks in its main lead. The character has jealous feelings, gets angry at the father in law and resorts to frequent outbursts.
One can relate to Matt dillons feeling of wanting to help drupee as Matt knows that deep down drupee is just a honest fun loving kid who refuses to face the facts of life. The character of Kate Hudson is realistic in nature. It shows the problems faced by the Wife once the honeymoon period is over and work takes a front seat instead of time spent together.

Plus:
Hilarious scenes which most guys can relate to…
Not a mushy love story
Great star cast.
The ending takes a dig at the motivational speakers who are now sporting up like wild mushrooms.

Minus:
Ending could have been a bit less dramatic but then it’s a movie right?

Politics against People who save lives

2007-03-21T23:05:00.001-07:00

Pic source : msnbc.msn.com

I always blame Indian politicians for giving false promises just to keep their vote banks happy and excited for a few weeks before the election….well guess what ?

Uncle Sam isn’t quite behind in this department either…

E.g.: The Hometown Heroes Act of 2003

The Public Safety Officers Benefits' Program became law in 1976 aimed to provide death and disability payments primarily to police officers killed in the line of duty. Firefighters were added in 1984 and emergency medical personnel in 1986. In 2002, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, police and fire chaplains were added.

The Hometown Heroes Act of 2003 extended the same benefits to victims of heart attacks and strokes on the job.

The goal of the bill was fairness. "If you go in a building and a beam falls on your head, or if you go in a building and come out and have a heart attack and die, either way you're dead,” he said. "… If a soldier dies in battle, we don't check to see what condition that soldier was in when they lost their life."

The death benefit, which is adjusted each October for inflation, is now $295,194.

( Note : Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that firefighters face up to 100 times their normal risk of heart attack while working at a fire.

A Harvard study of 449 heart attack deaths among firefighters nationwide found that 32 percent died when they were involved in fire suppression or other activity at a fire. But less stressful duties were associated with higher-than-expected risk of heart attack as well: 13 percent occurred while responding to an alarm; 17 percent in returning from an alarm; 13 percent in physical training; 9 percent in emergency medical services and other nonfire emergencies; and 15 percent in a fire-station or while performing non emergency duties. )

President Bush signed the law in a ceremony on Dec. 15, 2003, and both he and Vice President Dick Cheney have used their support for the law as a sure-fire applause line in speeches before fire and police organizations.

Justice took nearly three years to write rules for the program, and began deciding claims only in recent weeks.

The law says that the presumption in favor of the claims can be overturned by "competent medical evidence," but didn't specify what that meant.

Justice Department began asking claimants to provide 10 years of medical records.

ie, Claims can be rejected for medical conditions that occurred up to 10 yrs ago.

The U.S. Justice Department has denied all 34 claims that have been decided, and has yet to act on more than 200 others.

Probable reason:

The administration was holding up the payments as "some sort of political payback" for the union’s support for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

Walk the talk is always a difficult thing right?

Source : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704748/ (suitably edited for Blog use :-P)

Iron Maiden @ Bangalore

2007-03-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

"The roads filled with black tees having smiling eddy (the skull faced mascot of Iron Maiden) in different poses (one Tee had LEDs for eddy’s eyes), the long queue to enter the grounds, the jam packed time I spend in the front rows were I couldn’t move a finger, the long queues for water in the back which turned to free for all stampedes - the water cans being held high with loads of thirsty mouths below, the air filled condoms flying high in the air, fans of Iron Maiden who had waited up to 17 yrs for a live show coming with their entire families to enjoy, dads having giggling head banging kids on their shoulders , couples jumping together to the beats in each others arms, the sound vibrations that ran up to your knees from the ground below,the 'i will break ur nose if u do that again' warning we gave to some college guys, the sea of mobile cams trying to capture the snap of a life time, the guy who colored his hair yellow and moved proudly through the grounds, the weed smoking girl who kept screaming behind my ear as if there was no tomorrow, the look of sheer ecstasy on the fans and the ‘gosh, I am so f***ing lucky for not missing this ’ smiles on the fans leaving the grounds were all experiences of a life time... "

Dreams do come true……last Saturday on March 17th, Iron Maiden, the first (quality) rock band to perform in India gave one hell of a performance in Bangalore…

The train from Chennai to Bangalore on Friday had loads of head bangers wearing characteristic black Tees. All rock fans were moving towards Bangalore for the Saturday’s performance….some had waited more than 10/15 yrs to see these guys perfume live….

I entered the palace grounds at around 4 pm and had to wait around 3.5 hrs before I got to see Iron maiden perform.

In spite of frisking by the organizers in the entrance, liquor and cigarettes (99 % weed ones) were being used freely and the smell of weed was over whelming.

The crowd was fully charged with everyone having done ‘something’ to their hair/face…The girls in the crowd were very vocal and putting even hard core head bangers to shame….

The sole downers of the show were the 2 of the 3 opening performances which were a torture because they were first of all prolonging the wait to see Iron Maiden perform live and secondly because they were literally a torture to the ear drums….

The first was by a college band which won some god dam competition and frankly I don’t understand the logic of showcasing such crap in a show of such magnitude.
Its like allowing a karting winner of some obscure local tournament to drive just before an F1 race began…..I mean I agree that local talent needs to be nurtured and all but not at the expense of hot sweaty fans waiting for more than 3 hrs.

Predictably, the college band got lots of boos and swears words, not to mention the sea of middle- fingered hands swaying to their ‘music’…I pity those guys and applaud their thick skins.

The 2nd performance was by Parikrama and was decent enough, giving the fans something to cheer about.

Next to come on stage was Steve Harris’s daughter whose performance was also average.

At last the Gods of Rock came on stage with a bang, starting predictably, with tracks from their latest album.

The 1500 ticket people and the 900 ticket people were separated by a barricade and two rows of security and police personnel. Here and there, the 900 rs fans tried to jump the barricade only to be hit by the lathi welding cops…..but as soon as “the Trooper” track began, all hell broke lose. Fans started jumping from every where and the cops finally gave up and allowed everyone to move forward….

The band members, mostly pushing 50 yrs were a joy to watch…..the sheer energy of Brue Dickinson and the wicked laughter of the drummer(caught by a camera up close), Nicko McBrain were priceless….

The arrival of the military tank and the 14 foot eddy were other highlights of the day.

The song everyone will remember that night will be “Fear of the Dark”, rumored to be inspired by Steve Harris’s childhood fear….Almost everyone in the audience was mouthing the lyrics and taking part in the background vocals…

All in all, it was an experience of a life time….and from what Bruce promised in the end, the fans that waited for as long as 17 yrs to see them won’t have to wait for even 17 months before they saw them again :-)

I am a man who walks alone

And when I'm walking a dark road

At night or strolling through the park

When the light begins to change

I sometimes feel a little strange

A little anxious when it's dark

Fear of the dark, fear of the dark

I have a constant fear that something's always near

Fear of the dark, fear of the dark

I have a phobia that someone'salways there…

Munnar Tales : Mattupetty Bus

2007-03-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

(Pic Courtesy - KSRTC)

While studying in IHMCT (One of the top 5 Catering Colleges in India ) in Kovalam-Trivandrum, during one session everyone was asked to speak what they could change about their past....i said that i always wanted to study in a hill station...3 months later, the dream came true and i was sitting in the matupetty bus as i got my engg seat in CEM....the trips from tvm in mattupetty bus are unforgettable for me for various reasons.

In my first trip i met Jayesh Babu (EC),Vijayan(EC)and Suresh/Don (CS).....the journey from adimalli to munnar in the early morning was spell bounding....the lake near blossom park was fully covered with mist some inches thick…as if a blanket was floating on it...at that moment standing with two over stuffed suitcases in the middle of the road, I knew, as the cliché goes, life would never be the same again....

Matupetty trips were always awesome...The bus starts from trivandrum at 10 pm me and jayesh will be sitting usually in the front row...Chandran,George,Charles etc would board the bus at around 1 am..... these guys wont have seats so they would stand....in kottayam, piles of newspapers will be loaded in the front of thw bus meant for adimali and munnar readers....these guys would sit on these piles and ensure that me and jayesh did not get to sleep....;-))))))....

In later years the bus became almost a college bus whenever vacations ended...full of CEMites...tourists in the bus were always troubled with the constant chattering , espically on the return journey from Munnar.

As the last semester was going on, each trip to and fro in matupetty bus reminded me that these wonderful journeys were coming to an end....so, i would stay awake from adimali till munnar on those last trips so that i could etch in my memory as much beauty as I possibly could....ah, those were over whelming, bit senti moments... ;-)…

Recently after a gap of 2 yrs , I found myself back at the Trivandrum bus stand where I used to board Mattupetty bus for 4 years to see off a friend….the time was around 10 pm and the Mattupetty bus was about to leave…the driver started the bus…a dad walked up to a open window and told his son to call home when he reached Munnar…the son felt as if he was being treated like a child and said ‘No’ and that he will call later in the evening, ….if possible….I knew what the son was feeling ….i have had numerous such conversation with my parents, especially my mom….but that day to my surprise, I could also relate to the feelings of the dad who just wanted to ensure that his son reached safely…

Now I am not married or having a child, so I couldn’t actually relate to the dad …..

Guess I just grew up….. :-)

Movie Review : the Pursuit of HappYness

2007-03-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Rating: 4.5 / 5

I watched this Will Smith starer yesterday. Great movie....someone called it "Rocky with a briefcase" :-)

Anyway, the movie highlights the situation of US's homeless population and it teaches about financial responsibility and 'living for your dreams no matter what' lessons very well.

For Malayalam movie goers, who have seen Mohanlal, Mamooty,Dileep, Jayaram and host of others stars , struggle on screen to make ends meet, the story may not be a novelty.....but its a first for Hollywood...and a great watch !

Plus

Will Smith gives a great performance
His kid (also in real life)
Great message conveyed through the movie of never giving up on your Dreams...
Highlights the plight of the homeless

Minus
Mallus have seen all this before :-P

(Cant think of anything else)

Bangalore Stray Dog Issue

2007-03-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

The last 2 weeks have brought the stray dog problem, affecting Bangalore and urban Indian cities as a whole, to the lime light, albeit for the wrong reasons...

(Photo courtesy: BBC)

2 kids were killed by strays in Bangalore which caused the Govt to start a 'removal' drive in which around 1000 dogs have being caught.....the problem is, there is no place to keep them .

NGOs have no space left to keep new dogs and hence they are kept locked up without food and water and there have been reports of hungry dogs resorting to cannibalism...

Animal lovers in Bangalore are trying hard to stop but this knee jerk reaction done with an eye on the vote bank cannot be stopped i guess...

Even Mahatma Gandhi has recommended the removal of strays rather than cause problems to humans and making the man's best friend suffer in the process.

Gandhiji says : “The destruction of bodies of tortured creatures being for their own peace cannot be regarded as himsa, or the unavoidable destruction caused for the purpose of protecting ones wards, cannot be regarded as himsa.

Which of the two is better – that 5000 dogs should wander about in semi-starvation living on dirt and excreta and drag on a miserable existence, or that 50 should die and keep the rest in a decent condition?... .”

Source: http://www.karmayog.com/dogs/gandhijiletter.htm

We have to accept the fact that a huge number of stray dogs are there on the streets due to inadequate garbage disposal and slum/street dwellers both of which provide food to the strays.

But killing them wont help in the present scenario...Killing dogs was started by the British in the 19th Century (around 50,000 killed per year) and still there are dogs on the streets...

It’s been well documented and proven repeatedly that Animal birth control (ABC) pgms are the only solution to this problem....

For details on stray dogs visit: http://www.wsdindia.org/FAQs/faqs.htm

So if you are an animal lover who feeds strays in the neighborhood, in spite of your neighbors protests, hats off to you! If you are able to take the next step of getting them sterilized by contacting NGOs lie Bluecross / PFA , the battle will be won one day!

Am myself going to join bluecross as the money i spend will help their ABC pgm and hopefully similar things wont happen in Chennai or Kerala...After all, breeding Great Danes has given me decent money and its only fair to spend some of it for their need cousins on the streets...

Movie Reviews : GhostRider and Nishabd

2007-03-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

Location: Seetha Devi / Devikulam Lake (Amit, me and his brother)

Hi,

i am not able to restrict my desire to do some posts besides the pictures i take...so startying Movie reviews :-)

Ghost Rider : 2.5 / 5

In spite of reading 'n' number of bad reviews about this movie i went to see it because of my room mate...well, since everyone knows that Nicholas cage cant act, this movie ain’t a complete loss of money....

Plus

Nicholas cage turns into a skull faced super hero which means you dont have to watch him act!
Eva Mendes
Some animations done by a chennai firm

Minus

Stunts are too short (maybe due to cost constraints)

Nishabd : 3/5

RGV tries his hand at 'Lolita'...
I had read that this movie was shot at never before seen locations of Munnar....having lived there for 4 years this caught my curiosity...

The lake shown in the beginning is known as 'Seetha Devi Lake' or 'Devikulam lake' and is a well known destination of Munnar Engg College students. The song 'Ariyathe parayathey' from Udhyannanu tharam and the song 'Aa raha hoon mein' by Bombay Vikings were also picturised here in the past.

Plus

Munnar :-)
Kudos for touching a sensitive subject.....Big B did the same with KANK
Reminds us that elder persons also have the desires to leave the disciplined, 9 to 5 job oriented, no fun, life and live as a kid with no responsibilities and no 2nd thoughts.
Not too much melodrama....
Tense situations enacted naturally. Revathy and Naser have done good jobs.

Minus

Due to the 'tint' given to the movie , the beauty of Munnar is subdued...maybe RGV did not want the viewers to give more importance to the beauty of Munnar :-)
Can’t understand why the girl has to be provocatively dressed for a man to fall for her.
The last dialogue was faltoo - "I went to die today....her thoughts are eating me hollow from the inside, i can’t live like this...i came back because i couldn’t die....i want to live for some more time....so that i can think about her a bit more" phulzzzz...

Spooky incident @ Anachal Farm House

2007-03-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

Location : Anachal Farm House, Near Munnar.

Hi,

Recently I read a spooky story in a couple of blogs
http://axetrac.blogspot.com/2006/10/curious-incident-of-witching-gale.html
http://greatbong.net/2006/10/24/something-that-happened/

So decided to add my experiences as well….

The first one is regarding the house in Anachal…..Brrrrrrrr……….haha wish I had played some spooky background music when you read that….

Background :

It was study leave and me and my friends, decided to spent those days preparing for our exams in Munnar itself in our hostel (a 4 roomed bungalow on a deserted hill with only a church, a cemetery and the house of the church priest)….of course since the holidays were very long, we ended up renting cd player and watching movies all day long…..the college authorities got to know of it, Anto Sir came and told us to leave the hostel the same day and come back only on the eve of the exam… :-)

Me and my friends decided we weren’t leaving Munnar and it being a tourist attraction, hotel rooms were very costly for us students……so we deiced to go and live with our friend OA (Abhilash) in a place near munnar called Anachal.

The Farm House :

The piece of land on which the house was situated was in a deserted location…you had an uphill walk of 10 min to reach the gate of the plot and once you hit the road, you have another 15 min walk to reach the nearest shop/house.

Now this plot itself located in a densely wooded area prone to frequent rain and thunderstorms…

OA and Spooky Tales :

Our friend OA gave us with the best hospitality and that’s for another blog post….this one is about the other inhabitants of the plot.
ie, Spirits or Ghosts :-P…..

Me and OA used to sleep in the front room and the others in another bigger room... We often used to chat up after lights out and once during a chat I heard some sounds outside…I whispered to OA but he was already asleep….so i decided to leave it as the sounds had stopped….later when I asked him, he said he too has heard the sounds frequently (with the strong winds and the large canopy of trees it was natural I guess…but these sounds…they were different)…..i asked him what did he do when he heard them…..he replied “just ignore them and sleep” as there was no other option….Now OA is a simple guy with very few words and a big smile on his face….always…I have never seen him angry…..

He told me that the plantation workers lived in a room of the house for a couple of weeks and they were so scared by the late night sounds and curious incidents that they painted the crosses to ward of spirits….

Well now I was listening with 100 percent attention as I had noticed those crosses when I came to this place…

As I was now familiar with the sounds, I asked him about the curious incidents….

He said this happened twice and both times it was well past mid night….it seems people coming alone along the road into the plot did not reach the house….when search parties went to look for them, they were found walking around the old well at the edge of the plot as if in a trance…the people had to splash water on their face to wake them up from the trance and they said that all they remember is that they were walking towards the house but the journey was not ending…..hmmmm….

Well these incidents awakened the dormant fear of the dark in me which, till now subdued by the densely populated city, had re awaken in the deserted farmhouse with a vengeance….

The Incident:

Since we did not do cooking, having food meant a walk of around 25…
One day we left for dinner….The 10min walk to the main road is through a natural dry leaves covered path snaking through the plot formed by inhabitants of the house….When you walk, you end up rustling the leaves and we were always wary of snakes during the walk……

Well that day after reaching the main road, as we were walking towards the town I got the natures call and decided to return back to the house telling my friends to get my dinner for me.

Now as I entered the plot , I realized that I was going to walk alone through this path for the first time…..of course since I had been living right next to a cemetery for a year, I was not scared by spirits or ghosts stuff…(or so I thought)….

Well down I came, rustling the leave covered path, humming a song on the pretext of enacting a ‘calm person’ which was a really façade to hide my nervousness….

After some 15 min I was sitting on the veranda…the courtyard was dimly light with the feeble power of the lonely 100w bulb and the boundaries were so dark that you couldn’t see anything beyond….Suddenly I heard the familiar sounds of someone returning from the path uphill…..i wondered why my friends were returning so soon and waited for the familiar sounds of animated conversations to float in…then as the sounds drew nearer(that night there was no wind at all….absolute silence albeit with the sounds of the forest), it became apparent that there was only a single person returning……As the footsteps reached the boundary of the courtyard I shifted my position to see who was about to walk into the light of the faithful bulb….. But no one came…..the sounds stopped…..

Now me and my friends had been sharing ghost stories for the entire week (the spooky location kindled our memories and imaginations ) and I deiced that it was one of my friends playing a prank on me…..i started calling out the their names and telling them to come into the light where I could see them…..but no response……so I walked up to the spot where the light lost the battle with the dense darkness and stopped to listen….nothing….i walked into the dark path….still no sound and no life form….suddenly I heard the foot steps of someone behind the house ….as if the person had stopped at the courtyard entrance and decided to circle the perimeter to reach the rear of the house (my imagination was going full throttle)….now at that precise moment the winds returned whose absence I had totally forgotten about…My already rattled mind told me that now I couldn’t hear the footsteps clearly and hence cant pin point the location of anyone….in a flash I was inside the house, the door bolted firmly…..after half an hour my friends returned…and boy did I have a story of my own to tell them…. :-)

PS: many of my friends have heard the sounds n foot steps during our 2/3 week stay at that Farmhouse and I heard the present occupants still do…

Being a Left Hander :-)

2007-02-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

Being a Left Hander:

I am a left hander or as Rocky would say ‘south paw’…my parents did not force me to change my natural inclination to use the left hand and I am thankful to them because I have met lots of people who are natural lefthanders but write using the right hand because of parental compulsions.

Let me high light some of the hassles faced by us south paws…..

Exams: Teachers think you are sitting and writing in this way just to look at someone’s answer sheet....in one exam the invigilator got convinced that i was writing with left hand just coz i could look into someone else's exam sheet.... ....only when he saw me writing very fast for around 5m did it convince him that i was a leftie!!!

Sitting in the examination hall is also a pain in the a** …During pre-degree we had 3 guys sitting on the same bench and I had a lot of trouble explaining to the teacher that I wanted to sit at the leftmost corner for others comfort and mine.

I use the 2 chair formula whenever possible, but during exams only limited chairs are allotted in the hall, so in the end when i need comfort the most, i lose out.....people see me doing stretching exercises in the exam....

Food: When eating with someone new I always get the question "Left hander, eh? what’s wrong with ur right hand ? " … nowadays though, people are more accepting ......

i have had well meaning waiters/unknown persons/ people over 50, come up to me and ask what happened to my right hand ...some people stare at my right hand to as if scanning for any visible signs of deformity/ surgery...its worse during marriage receptions....you get lot of older generation crowd who cant believe that my parents let me eat with my left hand! Some even ask my parents y didn’t they correct me when I was small...of course I never felt bad...

Also while taking seats in a party/restaurant etc i make sure i sit on the left most corner....

Using Scissors: Difficult.....but now i have mastered it a bit....

To be honest, even when I see a left hander writing/eating, I feel odd for a sec or two and then realize it’s just another leftie :-)

Munnar Hills

2007-02-22T22:48:00.001-08:00

Munnar Hills, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Location : Cemetery , CSI Church (from where, the picture was taken)

This is the view from the cemetery just above our hostel…..my Engg college (CEM) is situated at the middle of the first row of thickly wooded hills. The glistening hillside behind was spectacular that day and I immediately shot it!

The cold mountain air, the crystal clear sky, the shinning tree foliage….ah! Those were the good old days!

Munnar Hill Side

2007-02-22T22:31:00.001-08:00

Munnar Hill Side, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Location : Mulakkada, Old Munnar.

I lived near this place for the last 1.5 yrs i spend in Munnar. We used to live in a two roomed row house which had no space after all the beds were placed inside... :-)

The road leads to ' Letchmi Estate ' and is not advisable for travel during the night due to random Elephant sightings!

The villagers’ burn rubbers tires and throw at the elephants so that it sticks to them and burns....sad what man can do to such gentle creatures.

Anyway this road was used for my random ' from today i will begin jogging' mornings jogs....It used to be so cold that the moisture in the air you exhale condenses and wets ur nose....i agree, its not a nice feeling....my friends used to kid that only i could jog at such temperatures.

Munnar hill side after 5 minutes

2007-02-22T22:20:00.001-08:00

Munnar hill side after 5 minutes, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Location : Mulakkada,Old Munnar

This is the same hill side shown in the post above. The picture was taken after a gap of 5 min and just look how the colour changed !

On another day i saw 4/5 distinct colour changes but i could not take pics as my room mate,Gymman, was helping with a tough Electronic paper the day before the exam...

Old munnar

2007-02-22T21:39:00.001-08:00

Old munnar, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Location : Old Munnar

This is the view of the ‘old munnar ’ area taken in front of the CSI church.
This small town was our ‘hangout place’ during weekends.

Fact : there are no theatres in Munnar at present !!!

When I joined my college (College of Engineering Munnar, CEM) there were two theatres. One of them was converted into a hostel to accommodate our juniors (we were the first batch) . The second theatre, Pankajam, was recently broken down . Not sure if a new one is coming up.

Now to a random tourist, I know, this ain’t the matter of life and death ; but that’s not the case of college students living here for 4 years :-).

Luckily, due to lots of trekking / picnicking options in and around Munnar, we never missed the things people take for granted in a metropolitan city.

Leaving munnar

2007-02-22T21:37:00.001-08:00

Leaving munnar, originally uploaded by monu joy.

This is the road after the Gap connecting Munnar with Theni.

Munnar rock climbing place

2007-02-22T21:35:00.001-08:00

Munnar rock climbing place, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Location : Gap Road,Munnar

This is the rock face i wrote about in the previous post on the way towards 'Gap'

Classic munnar

2007-02-22T20:43:00.001-08:00

Classic munnar, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Date : June 11,2004
Location : Gap road near Devikulam.

This picture was taken during a trip to Gap which is a place of great scenic beauty near Munnar. A road was build through the mid section of a huge rock and hence the name ‘Gap’. The steep climb up is of great beauty as on the left side you get the view of the ever rolling tea estates of Munnar. On your left is a large flat rock face frequently used for rock climbing. The road connects Munnar to Theni in Tamil Nadu (90 kms). At the top the road is flanked by the rock face on both sides. After this, the road begins to descend and you get another spectacular view on your right side, this time consisting of large agriculture tracks and semi wooded areas.

During my college days we frequently used to take this route to watch the sunset @ Gap and also to visit Anaerankal Dam (means, the dam where elephants come!)

Munnar's Beauty

2007-02-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

Munnar Tea, originally uploaded by monu joy.

Hi,
With this post i am starting my entry to the ever growing world of blogsphere....initially i had toyed with the idea of starting a text blog.....was in a confusion whether to start a named or an anonymous one as both had their own pros and cons.....in the end decided to start a photo blog since this would be the perfect union of two of my passions: Photography n Connecting with people!

As my first entry, i am posting this picture of the beautiful hill station of Munnar….i have spend around four years of my life here and as the cliché goes, “Life was never the same again ” !

Location : Munnar – Devikulam road, Munnar,Kerala
Date : 25/4/2004

This picture was taken at the end of a great bikers journey through the hills of Munnar…My friends Binu , Naveen , Mahesh were with me. We were merely passing by and the moment I saw the setting sun bathing the ever green sea of Tea Gardens with its golden light , I knew I would be getting great shots here….i took a lot of pictures here with my friends, many of which were so good that people asked whether I retouched / edited them !