STUPID

Red: Seriously I mean how often do you look at a man’s shoes?
Dialogue from movie ‘Shawshank Redemption’

I never thought that this dialogue will be so truthful until I went through it! Yes it was my shoes on that strange day in the picture. There was nothing different about the day altogether other than I was stupid as I could be! I was walking form my desk to the lab which is like a 6 minutes walk rite across my office. I usually walk fast with big long steps and people have already told me that I walk like I am on a time frame to reach some place. Yes, they some time do have to run with me when I have something on my mind and I am just walking fast … On that day I felt a little different walking. One step was too comfortable and the other was little tight. I was wearing two different shoes, each from a pair I had. One of Boots from bata, about a year old and the other was wood land, about three years old. I looked at my shoes and smiled at myself which grew to a proper big laugh by the time I reached lab. Lab lady was looking at me which a ‘?’ on her face as I am not usually a smiley face.
The day went un eventful other than I forgot my laptop battery in the lab, took a permission from my manager to go home and change shoes but told her that I have a FEDEX package to collect as I was a little shy to say I am wearing shoes from two different pairs. Unfortunate for me that the day was ‘Columbus day’ UPS and FEDEX were closed!
Again through the evening I made a vegetable stew which came out really tasty but I forgot the half kg beans I washed and cut left on the table fresh-raw and I forgot to add salt in the stew!

What more to say, there are these days in our life where nothing just works for us, it just goes from wrong to worse and I was really feeling silly but I was so happy that after each I had my mind laughing at me again and again …stupid, no other word would come to my mind

Wonder ring.........

I am on the wrong side of 20’s! I am not sure why there is a wrong side and right side but any way I hope you got what I meant. The only news I get these days from my friends and colleagues are marriage invitations or engagement announcements. Believe me! Half the crowd in my batch (School, college or office) are settled with their better half and half of them still call me up and say ‘I’m lucky’! The other half says the girl I am going to marry is lucky. I am sure you figured out which half says what!!! But I am not sure which part would be true. It must be the phase of life where all the fuzz around is about getting married / engaged. The term ‘Getting engaged’ has altogether a different meaning in US! My colleague who has been living with his girl friend proposed her last month. I have seen and heard this thing ‘proposing a girl on knees – Will you marry me ?’ only in movies, never in real life. My colleague’s voice is just like the character Diago( The lion in the trio) in ICE Age, so I will address him Mr. D. Things went like this, Mr. D told our team that he is going to propose his girl friend on Friday and looking for some ideas. So my team [Team has three ladies, 50ish (my manager), 40ish (My DB admin) and 24ish under writer] was giving him ideas, where to do it, how to do it and lines! While watching an English movie I have seen all this but never thought that it is this serious and people do value the words, place and ‘ how you do it’!
As I never had the courage / opportunity to propose a girl, never thought about this long and hard! Given a chance, going over knees with a ring in the hand, in front of a big crowd, asking a girl a question which is going to decide the whole life of two individual is something daring to do! I guess there are things which look easy until you get to the spot. You sit on the co-passenger seat and driving looks so easy. It is just reading signs and turning the wheels. Once you get behind the wheels you realize that there are maniacs out there on the road who will drive you crazy or make you drive crazy! So the proposal which happened so close to me was like this.
Thursday Morning:
‘Mr. D turns up with rashes all over his wrist and hand and we were like ‘what happened?’ He had planned to have the proposal thing at his porch on Friday evening. The front porch shade lamps where long gone and he cleaned it up and fixed with a new bulb ( Who want to propose in half dim light and miss the initial reaction ( if you can call that initial after living for more than 5 years together!) Poor MR. D got an allergy with the dust from the shade lamp and he ended up with rashes on Thursday morning.
Friday Afternoon:
My Boss came around wishing Mr. D best of luck. B was showing off a nice ring to our entire team. A big discussion went on what flowers he should get and there where different theories going around.
To give plastic flowers or real flowers! Plastic flowers last forever and the girl can cherish the moment every time you look at them. But plastic is not natural so do you want give that! Finally it was settled on natural flowers because flowers are flowers only when they are fresh and blossomed. Then it was about the color, Blue for safety, white for peace, red for love and went on. Also they were thinking about Orchids or roses as Orchids last longer. Then it was lines. I had to run for a meeting and I missed that part of the discussion.
Ussssshhhhh. I never knew that this much planning has to go for a moment in the life (the biggest moment for the girl) So Mr. D was showered with advices (I hardly had any other than ‘Best of luck’) for the day and he went home early. Next Monday morning he was in all smiles. But he had MMSed his Fiancées’ palm with the wonderful ring on, on Friday evening itself, which mean he got a YES, ‘I’ll marry you answer!’. Afterwards when he talks about her, the word ‘Fiancée’ comes out of his mouth after a big hard struggle. We all know that the ‘girl friend’ when updated to’ fiancée’ and ‘wife’ changes the way things works. I am pretty happy that in my world, I don’t have to be on a spot, go to knees, hold the girls’ hand out and ask the question ‘Will you marry me’. I would love to do that to ‘someone’ once found but I bet I will have hell lot of butterflies up in my stomach if I am going to do that!
(I hope that things in my world don’t change :D)
After what I heard and saw here, proposing a girl is a very big thing!

Instant Sleep Syndormzzzzz……ISS

How much time one takes to fall asleep from a fresh mind? You might be surprised if I say that I take mostly 2 minutes to sleep anywhere, any position! If someone comes around and tells me that I have 10 minutes, I would be first checking if I can find a place where I can sit and doss off for five minutes. Yes you got it right, I am the one person who stands & sleeps in train, before the train even leaves the railway station, sleeps before the flight even leaves the runway and sleeps even before the KSRTC bus leaves my stop. Best part was during the monthly commute from Bangalore to Trivandrum in Volvo. The bus comes around Madiwala and leaves to Hosur. I have hardly seen anything after BTM bridge which is like 2 km from Madiwala, By that time I would be fast asleep watching some amazing dreams dancing with the current bollywood heroine or playing the last ball sixer for my cricket team (In dream you never know what u end up doing!)
The other day, my roomie and I was discussing something about a movie which we saw. He was so much into it that he went on describing the cast, the script etc etc. I reached my bed by the time he started about the Movie screen play. Next day he told me that he went on for another 20 minutes before my ‘hmms’ died out. But truly, I remember only the movie name, rest was just ’hmmms’ from sleep. I am surely happy to have this trait from my mom because I see lot of people struggling to sleep at times. They do so many things to get sleep and they wakes up right after 6 hours and wander around the house like orphan-ghost ( Anaada prethanghal) while folks like me sleep happily until one of the life’s primary needs like hunger / nature calls disturbs me! This trait is carried through my mom’s family. She had started watching Jurassic park three times, but by the time the helicopter reaches the park and the old man gets out of the helicopter (an amazing water fall scene), my mom would be sound asleep. The best part is when she falls asleep while talking to someone( I realized that even I can do that last week). It had happened so many times with me, I will be enthusiastically narrating the current day cricket match about my imaginary swinging Yorker or about the big sixer I hit, and I wait for her response ( a too good, or great ‘ Kollameda’), will leave me waiting for a while and I realize after a while.

I have seen people do these the following things to get some / good sleep

1. To take a bath at mid night so that they can sleep for couple of hours
2. They smoke so that they get sleep
3. They watch movies until their eyes swell up and sleep
4. They take sleeping tablets to sleep
5. They take shots (Taquela) / alcohol to get some sleep
6. They burn out their bumps in gym for 3 hours so that they get tired and sleep for couple of hours ….and folks like me fall asleep talking to people, listening to seminars and lately attending client meetings …I was lucky to keep my phone in mute for the last call otherwise someone would have caught me snoring on the call.
But if I am ever feeling sleepless, a glance to my office inbox or a sneak view of my current certification material will make my eyes heavier.
One of the biggest problems created by this ‘instant sleep syndrome’ is tears. I get a lot of tears the moment I feel sleepy. In my school days, this was a standard question I used to get.

Teacher : Why ‘R’ whts so senti about my class, why are you crying ?
Me : Nothing mam, something fell on my eyes (trying to give a fresh face)
Fellow classmate: No teacher, he get tears when he feels sleepy …
followed by cracking laughter sound in the class…..the drill of staning on the desk, wahing up my face or sit next to girls bench continues. ( Now even if I sleep in the call no one asks me to sit next to girls L )This ISS continued to my engineering classes also, where my teachers found me very sentimental about their subject and they instantly threw me out of their class. I don’t know how I got so sentimental in mathematics class as well! But invariably mathematics teacher found me crying In his class like ‘My titanic sunk!!!’
Guess what, the trait still follows me and now a day I get sentimental in client meetings and clients are often moved with my involvement in the escalation P1 and L1 meetings. May be they haven’t seen a man crying when there is an escalation in his project!

The KD story ......

If you are wondering what KD stands for, it is ‘Kaama Devan’ which roughly translates to ‘Eros’ in Greek philosophy. It all started when one of my friend ‘Youth’ took a 7 day wonder diet. He took this diet and lost 12 pounds in one week. So everyone (who got some extra pounds to lose) got inspired and took the challenge. For more details on the diet plan click here

I was wondering about the Americans ads about diet – healthy diet – happy diet etc. I never thought that people are so mad about diet and their looks until a small tummy which looks like tortoise on a pillar started to appear on me! But earlier this week I saw to what extend people care. Our so called crazy4, except ‘me’ started the GM-Diet plan. I am an underweight - mal nutritional guy who will die if I skip a lunch :D (Most of my friends do agree to this ;)). These three folks out of crazy 4 D, P and A), they just live to eat! So I thought this would be an eventful week. The first day was full of enthusiasm on dieting. There were animated discussion about the things they are going to eat, a list of things they would eat and how wonderful they are going to look after one week.
The first day we ended up visiting Stewlenords/ and bought vegetables for the wonder soup. Also picked up 6 packs of soup mix from Shop N Stop to make the soup! First day, they can have only fruits and vegetables. The after effects were visible! My friend P ran into the car with a bag of apples munching into it yelling out how tasty an apple can be! Then they prepared the wonder soup with little customizations, as they put only 4 onions in place of 6 and added three packs of soup mix instead on one. But believe me; the soup did taste really good for us. US – Me and ‘B’. We were not in the diet plan in the first place ( Intro for B - best Chappathy maker I have seen as he make very soft tender chappathy, which even I can eat 8 or 9 one go) So the wonder soup was more of an appetizer for us and the whole dinner for the KD’s. The dialogue of the day came from A!

‘A’ looking at the bag of potato chips. : Can we have an exception for two potato chips?
D : No, rules are rules
P : No way, you only told us that there will be moments of hunger which will test out patience, so no to anything fried.
A : Don’t listen to all the crap I said then, now the lays chips looks so crisp. I am ….
P: No, we are all together in this, don’t you stand for your word?
A : Nee onnum nannavillada ….@#$%^&* and drank a glass of water and went inside.

(Cursing that you guys will never improve on a lighter note looking at US who are eating away chappthy+ curry + curd with side –baked potato fry when the three are eating only fruits and vegetables for the whole day!)

Day 2.
The initial enthusiasm is missing, three of them A, D and P are just waiting for the breakfast. The diet doesn’t allow them to have tea. So they came to the cafeteria and had boiled potato with some pepper and salt. Second day is the toughest as it is a vegetable only day. By 3 O’ clock in the evening, I could see what a day’s fasting can do to ppl. Three of them where looking like tired plants on a desert. Their cheeks were already sagging. At dinner time, they had again started with cut vegetables (were eating just raw + boiled broccoli with pepper) and the wonder soup. Wonder soup which tasted good yesterday was not so tasty for them today. Even fruits where not included. Between this,
D: From today I re-define ‘Dried dates’ as fruits, so I am going to eat them and started munching into a pack of honey dipped dried dates
P:I cannot stand this torture, I am going sleep! Oh my god, just get us to 12 O clock, at least I can start eating some fruits and give rest to this boiled vegetables , cabbage and lattice

Day 3

They had baby carrots for breakfast and were just praying to get over the next day. It seems that by end of day 3, guys were already into a mode where they are getting used to ‘Starving’. Three of them were cursing about how bad the wonder soup taste and still having it as it was their only option other than vegetables. Three of them looked energy less and were roaming around like zombies.

Day 4

This was an anticipated day for P as he loves milk. He was planning all along about how to distribute the rationed 8 bananas to the entire day so that he won’t feel hungry. The three glasses of milk were a little compromised by taking big glasses. Folks were feeling a little relived as they got through the toughest day where they were eating cabbage and carrots for the whole day. I wonder, rabbit eats these two their whole life and still they are so energetic!

Day 5

By day 5, D had lost 8 to 9 pound, P lost 9 pounds and A lost 7 pounds. They were very happy about their wait. Day 5 is the feast day and rice looked so delicious to them. Again there was a debate whether it is one cup of uncooked rice a day or one cup of cooked rice. Finally they settled for one glass of cooked rice. The tomato part was again compromised with fruits

Day 6

Again a vegetable day and folks were tired of things. They wanted to lose 12 pounds and from 9 pounds, 3 pounds didn’t look that good. So they left the vegetable day to fruits and a little bit of bread. Also D and I had to travel out of state which disturbed the whole balance. D was again tested as we went into a ‘Karakudi Resturant’ famous for Tamil style ‘ Naatu kozhi curry’ (Country chicken curry) But he held his restrain by eating only rice and a little bit of curry without taking any meat. But he consumed a lot of fruits. ‘A’ was settling with a proper pulishery (Curd curry) and one glass of rice and hibernated rest of the day in his house. P rigorously followed the plan and had only vegetables and one cup of rice

Day 7

We all were sitting in a Mexican restaurant munching into cheese quesadillas and fried chicken wings. Three of them were convinced that the ‘Wonder Diet’ will work out with 10, 9 and 9 pounds reduced from their body. There was a visible change in each of them, but a little tiredness also. So after 7 days, the folks didn’t turn to a KD, but they did turn some faces around and made them ask
’What happened? You are looking different!’ !!!
Also at least three or four folks started following the diet plan looking at the KD’s change
Following a diet plan and getting out of it when you feel like, looks funny. But looking at our life style, the kind of food we eat, I am pretty sure that we end up following stricter diet rules by the time we will be 35 to keep us alive until 50. It is not always the food, but the life style which makes us so vulnerable. Less water, more of sugar, carbohydrate, and no or very less exercise, a lot of oil….I guess this is enough to reduce once life by 10 years! It is not so long before each of us will hear what to eat and what not to, from a dietician or a doctor! One thing I learned is following a diet is not fun! So if I can take control of what I eat now (How much), I can at least taste these delicious food items until I recognize taste!

Fried Chicken Masala!!!!!

Fried Chicken Masala
Utterly bored on a Saturday and I decided to try out a recipe of chicken, aimed to get this to blog as well. So did snapped up the ingredients and step by step process
You might have heard and tried this recipe many times. But I am just putting it down from top from my head as how I managed to cook it. I don’t take any responsibility if any one tries this and ends up with a bad stomach. I will look for some people to write some feed back as comments for this recipe if they are out of the rest room after trying this
Ingredients
Chicken breast – three large pieces
Egg -2 (for marinating)
Tomato – 4 (Medium)
Onion – 4 (Medium)
Green chilly -4
Garlic – 2 gloves
Ginger – 2 inches
Coriander leaves – for garnishing
Chicken masala – 4 and a half table spoon
Oil – 5 tea spoon

For the whole process, a medium to medium low flame is advised.
Fry four table spoon of chicken masala in a dry frying pan at medium flame for 3 minutes. After three minutes of frying you can judge it by the flavor of masala in the kitchen, also looking at a little darkened brown color. (I had the chicken breast from ‘Shop and stop’ and had to defreeze them under hot water for 7 minutes). Clean the chicken breast and cut them into cubes of size 1 X 1 inch. Mix two table spoons of chicken masala, the chicken pieces, a little bit of salt and the content of two eggs. Once properly mixed keep it intact for 40 to 45 minutes. In the mean time, cut onions (small square pieces), Green chili, garlic, ginger, tomato and coriander leaves. After 40 to 45 minutes marinating, microwave the chicken mix for 6 to 8 minutes. It is advisable to do it for 6 minutes and do it 1 minute at a time to judge the tenderness of chicken pieces as it differs from chicken to chicken
In a medium big hot pan, pour two to three tea spoon of oil and put onions. Add a tint of salt for quick seasoning. Once the onions are transparent, add ginger, garlic and green chili and fry it for two minutes. Add the rest of chicken masala to the mix and fry it for one minute with constant stirring. Add cut tomato now and keep stirring until the whole mix is homogenous with the masala. Add quarter cup of water and keep idle for 4 minutes with intermittent stirring to make sure that it’s not burned. Now on another bit copper bottom vessel, add two table spoons of oil, keep it in low to medium flame for 2 minutes, add the chicken mix from the microwave. The chicken pieces covered with masala mix will be partially cooked. Fry the chicken for 4 to 6 minutes, with constant stirring to make sure that no side is over burned. Now add the ‘masala paste prepared with the onions, tomato, ginger and garlic’ to the big vessel and strip to make a homogeneous paste. Once the a uniform mix is obtained, add coriander leaves and close the vessel for 2 minutes with low flame. Mix well before serving.
This curry would be great with soft chappathy, Kerala parota , Rotti, Nan and with White Appam ( Vella Appam)

Mood Swings

Hopefully the worst crap I have written up until now!
I thought I am a happy go lucky person. But lately I realized that I am having mood swings every now and then, on silly things. May be because I do not have much on the ‘To do list’ as cleared my certifications after 5 attempts spending around 500 $ on it! Also it looks like my client won’t throw me out until December and my parents are struggling to find a bride for me in this ‘Recession hit time American times’. So no urgent matters to be afraid off!
So when mind is empty, doesn’t have any particular goal, playing games/guitar or watching movie feels boring, there come the weirdest things to fill up one’s mind. It starts from ‘No one really bothers about me and it extends up to ‘why am I here and what am I doing’ kind of thoughts! I have read the proverb ‘An ideal mind is the devils workshop’ but at that time ‘devil’ meant only bad thoughts to me. But now I am finding different version of devils’ work including the thoughts in mind and some hard rules which are set while devil is writing the scripts for them in my mind. I am not sure how many of you, who are actually reading this will understand this crap. I am not sure, but this happens to most of the people at different stages of their life. Nothing can be empty as per natures rule and when my mind gets empty, it gets filled out with craps thoughts. Some of them are
1. Who am I? (No, this is not stolen from the famous Jackichan movie, but a wondering thought which comes around irking me now and then. This just circles around and tries to find out the source of this thought. The hardest and longest search for it found out that it originates some where from the back of my eyes, but still unable to pin point the exact location.
2. Where am I ? : Now when I look around, I am in a pool of total strangers whom I know for may be couple of years. All they know about me is what I have told them and what they have seen me in bits and pieces in last two years. For the people whom I really matter (not putting down any of my friends, but my family) I am just another phone call for some time now. All it takes is to check if the phone call had come at the stipulated time, if not they will be worried for sure but that’s it!
3. Who all will think about if I am gone! (Gone in the sense, not dead, but gone from the mod where I can communicate meaningfully. It can be a coma, mentally unstable / dead). Yes my parents will lose me, my siblings will and a first circle of relatives. Also my best friends who will be less than 10 in count. For the rest of the world, its just another person / another news in paper. Do we really worry about anyone else other than those who are really close to us? Even for the people who I mentioned, it would be a reality and they move on, as I moved on when I lost my best friend, my grandpa and many others. They just remain as a string of memory which will come along with some sparkling thoughts / situations where I miss them
4. Why everyone is busy when I am bored? I look at the long list of contacts in my phone and in Gtalk / skype and browse through each, thinking to call them / ping them. Then it comes to a state where, why should I bother people who are happy with their life and burned them with my ‘Empty life’. But most of the times when I call people or people call me, they would like and to talk, talk and talk and they seldom ask what’s happening with me. I am not sure its because the wrong expectation I have set or they just think about me only when they want to talk. ( I already told that this is crap and no need to take it in the literal meaning, but these thoughts does cross my mind now and then)
There are times when you just want to be all yourself. Not bothering to answer anyone, do nothing, but just feel floated staring away into nothing. At this very moment, everyone will try to contact you and you are left with two choice, to ignore all of them and be in your world or to answer them ignoring the mood swing. It is more like a constant tug of war in which either side wins at different circumstances and I guess that’s why we call it mood swings as it swings from one end to the other and it swings rite back when we are at the peak on any of the sides.

Vishu 2009 @ middle town

We were lucky to have a small gathering and enjoy ourselves with songs and great food....Thanks a ton to our camera man Bazil who has put together this lovely video.....