Jeeves Around?

Not sure if others tend to agree, but I experience it more often than not. So often the words which just flow out of my mouth just fail to figure when I make vigorous efforts to recall the same. Especially when there is no dictionary at hand or no access to internet or no assistant like Jeeves (of Wooster-Jeeves fame of P.G.Wodehouse creations) to help recall, the feeling just kills by drilling and tricking the brain!! It feels sickly to realise that you are one word short of the already measly vocabulory you own! What of the effort gone into learning the word sometime back that doesn't come back to picture when wanted to?! Same was the case with a word that I could only recall it started with a 'P' and was relatively big one, a word I had used considerably frequently, a word that I had seen in the first paragraph of the latest article that I had read. In fact, hundred and one tips or pointers to the word but for the word I could recall.

On a Monday morning, when I was feeling blue and sad for some vague reasons, that word tricking me for a couple of days flashes to my mind, out of the blue. "PROVIDENCE" was what I wanted to recall, recall I did but not when I wanted to. There is a saying in kannada, "Sankata bandaaga Venkataramana", which crudely translates to "When in trouble, we are reminded of God". Looked like nothing but monday blues and depression could churn the name of God out of my mind!
"Sankata bandaaga Venkataramana". Hence Proved!!

Moments celebrated!!

They saw each other, at once wished to be together for eternity and the rest is history. A history not too old, yet old enough to seek the sort of attention that a history can afford to. Happy Anniversary to the couple and to the history that has bundled in itself all the memories that bloomed along the path. The memories of the hearty laughs, petty fights, cold wars, heated arguments, graceful agreements, love, friendship, sharing-caring, bike rides (of course the bruised feet and knee after those dual trips), car drives, gifts (of course, the ones that were accepted out of compulsion too), Filet-o-fish burgers at McDonalds, hours spent on shopping in the malls, most of time not ending up with anything but fatigue, burnt fingers at the kitchen and what not!
Cheers to the journey!!

A journey that started as follows…
When a girl of marriageable age got hold of a snap capturing an eligible bachelor who was as handsome as handsome could get, wouldn’t she be on cloud nine? Most certainly, she was!

First Impression!!

When she met him a couple of days later, she did realize that the snap hadn’t done complete justice to him, who appeared more handsome in those blue jeans and grey T-shirt, friendly, down-to-earth and amicable. Instant consent. Period.

An era of endless phone calls and smses, mails and rendezvous now and then, alarmed the parents of what task was ahead of them. Engagement followed. Exchange of vows, rings and those hide-and-seek glances overpowering the staring audience.

(You didn't have to sweat,dude!!)

Days went by in a flicker, love intensified, phone calls that were endless however, turned to be their endless-best( only to be concluded with a currency expiry or battery dip) .It was time to rack brains to get the right content and design for the wedding card.



Did I mention of the poems that they wrote and exchanged?? Well, how could they be missed?






She wrote...


Uncommon Stranger


The Dawn


I said...


And he wasn't any less either!!

The gentle breeze played with her locks


Gently whispering in her ears


The lady in white,


A fairy on a moonless night


The moon could only muster an envious smile


A gentle smile blossomed on her face


Her eyes searched a part of her in me


With a hint of mischief, they seem to ask


Are you the one?


Between the silenceI heard the sweet melody,


Not violins, but the sweet melody of silence


I knelt before the fairy,


as she looked upon me with her charming eyes


I asked, "Will you marry me?"


(He probably has no faint hope that she could be treasuring this priceless gesture yet!!)

Wedding ensued. Amidst the blessings of thousands of well-wishers, they entered the wedlock to be the man and wife. Indeed a wedding of sorts it was that bound the souls that were meant to be ‘we’. And thus continued the journey, this time hand in hand.

Today, they are at a year’s milestone with all the charm of newly-weds yet, just the change being the ‘healthy’ competition to burn those alarmingly rising calories!! Yeah, the journey has been such a smooth sail that bubbly couple has turned chubby couple, bubbly yet though!!

Bubbly couple

Chubby-bubbly couple

Even for a smart wife (Ahem!) it is no doubt a challenge to think of a gift to her man, a gift that is not a gadget that he already owns, a shirt or other accessories that could possibly impress him. She gives up on thinking for a ‘surprise gift’, in effect, keeping him from being gifted something unexciting and herself from shelling out bucks to buy something exciting only to herself and supposedly not to the recipient!! In fact, he would be pleasantly surprised to know that she has not bought a gift for him, so to say!!! By the way,weren't those innumerable scratches on her mobile good enough (rather, bad enough) that he had to register one from his side too by dropping that poor thing? Well, this time, it shall be excused. Now, that's a surprise, isn't it? Not often do wives excuse husbands,do they? Surprise! Surprise!Surprise! Gosh!! she is working so hard to surprise him! Ok, one last attempt, she promises to clean the clutter in the room too!! Hopefully, at least the last one does the 'surprise' trick!

What other mode than a blog post could a software engineer wife think of to wish a software engineer husband on their anniversary?

Raghu, it goes to you, my honey. Thanks a lot for all the love and friendship that you have bestowed upon me. Thanks a lot for the wonderful person that you are. Ummmaaaaaaaaaah ;)

Howzat?!!

If these could mean a thing, even a trivial thing....

Walk a New Path

Casanovas on the bus

Is it or it Isn't?

At a scorching hot mid-day, if a woman in ragged clothes with an infant in her arms, making pitiful signs, begs for money on streets or at traffic signals to feed the baby, is she subjecting the kid to child labour? Has the infant already started earning 'bread' for the family when it is yet to bear milk teeth? If that is child labour, who is to be blamed? The infant's father who escaped from bearing the responsibility? Bereaved? The betrayed mother? An easy approach to easy money? Or is it the genuine reason of poverty playing its tricks on the poor family? However,some scenes turn as painful and disheartening as they can get....

Control nahin hota?

I was at the right place at the right time, that is at the time when we would want to discuss gender-based issues at teenage, I was in a fairly liberal girls' pre-university college that posed no hindrance for such discussions,be it with lecturers or with fellow students.We used to have innumerable discussions of such sort, when the students and lecturers alike would express their experiences,personal or what they had witnessed in the daily life. As I said, the topics were innumerable,considering the fact that it was almost close to a decade ago,I would have forgotten all the topics of discussion, well I might not be able to enlist the topics, but surely they have had a permanent impact on my life. Recollecting some of the instances;one of the lecturers was saying that she used to notice a girl wearing a jacket to college everyday which meant even during hot summers.Out of all curiosity, when she asked the student why she had to wear a jacket even on hot days, the girl instantly said that she was wearing a jacket not to protect herself from the harsh weather but from the misbehaving conductors or other men in the bus!! Such discussions were a way of making us aware of prevalence of the wickedness in the world,helping us realise that innocence that was still very much embedded in us at that age could blind us from confronting the incidents with seriousness or caution. Only after having such discussions and listening to others' experiences did we realise that every other day, the guys (and uncles and grandparents too - well, shameless uncles and grand-parents of god-knows-whom,not mine!!) that fall or lean on a girl in the bus need not necessarily be doing out of helplessness in a jam-packed bus!
Another of such instances that I can recollect, something that can't afforded to be forgotten more so for its prevalance is the case of men pissing in public places. Barring the gentlemen,I wonder how some men shamelessly get into the act in public as if with a strong feeling that the whole world is his home! Well, the urge is unbiased to women too, but the urge to control the urge exists in women, but why not in most of the men?
When it comes to such shameless acts or girls, I guess some men can only tell "Kya kare, control hi nahin hota"!!! No cure for this weakness, is it?

Well, gentlemen out there, please note that all the offense intended is for the sinful folks, not a generalisation in any case. We do believe and hope that sane men exist on earth.

SMS mania

You wish to vote for the Indian Idol or Sa re gama pa Contest? You wish to voice out your opinion for the potboiler surveys on the news channels? You want to choose a song to be aired on radio? Want to vote for the seven wonders of the world? Just SMS so-and-so at so-and-so. God!! It amazes me how omnipresent and omnipotent SMSing has emerged to be!
What a Superb Money-making Scheme this giant SMS turns out to be!! I hope it does not so happen that a time will come when a person who manages to call an ambulance after having met with an accident gets his request turned down for calling up while he should actually be SMSing!! People consider it such a hep thing to SMS that the media and telecommunication industry is exploiting this weakness to reap huge profits. Just recently, my dad so proudly said that he had SMS'd to vote for TajMahal to be one of the seven wonders of the world! On the way home, whenever he wanted to ensure that I had reached home or I need to be picked up, he used to SMS me saying "Wher r u? " . Well, a person who considered language and semantics so important also is bitten by the SMS-bug , I suppose. En masse influence it turns out to be, if not obliging,one looks out-of -fashion,not hep, not open to new ideas,not in the "in" generation which makes even people who were quite away from such short-cuts get comfortable with it. Well, it takes a lot from me to type 'you' instead of 'u', 'right' instead of 'rite', 'what' instead of 'wat', 'where' instead of 'wher' etc ,the effort although is reserved only for formal write-ups! When I stood against using the shortcuts to keep myself and my language sane, I was teased,suggested,advised to be crisp and follow short-sweet style for which I too budged for all the huge number of SMS conversations that happen,it indeed is tedious if not followed. Thanks to the SMS-magic,no doubt innumerable people escape from getting ridiculed for not having decent language skills. Of late, it's never even thought if the person has a weak grammar or vocabulary, it's presumed that it's the SMS-style of English which in effect, relaxes the need or compulsion to be right in saying what needs to be expressed. Ruin of the language it sure is,me a potential contributor to it. When time means more,everything else seems to have taken a back seat.

K.. if u wud lyk 2 cmt on d post ,do SMS me @ so-n-so!! :P

What you wanna be?

One of the private kannada channels telecasts a programme offering 1 minute fun-oriented games to people. Over the weekend, I happened to see one episode of it and small kids of age 5-6 years were made to take part in the tricyle race. Every kid that came to participate was asked what he wants to be in future and the answer invariably boiled down to be an Engineer or a Doctor. Realistically speaking, of the 10 kids or so who were asked the question,only one kid said, District collector. I appreciated him, not exactly for his (which could not necessarily be his) career choice , but for his ability to pronounce the words well!! Here comes the crux of the matter,one of the kids' answer was to be a doctor, which didn't surprise me a bit, but when asked what sort of a doctor (specialisation ,that is) he wants to be, he innocently said 'Engineer Doctor'!!! Laughing out loud was the impulsive response I gave,but a little later, I was so depressed to see what elders do to kids. It's so disheartening to see that kids' minds get engraved with career choices of parents even before the tender souls realise what the career they are supposed to like, supposed to mean!! Down with parents,who don't wait for the kids to understand and make their career choices! A kid is expected to accomplish dreams of his parents and like it too,not knowing if it exists,not knowing if suits his interests,ultimately so confused and pressurized!! In the case mentioned above, when it looked like his parents were confused and unable to come to a conclusion,one binding to engineering and another to medicine, how can a kid decide, if he is expected to? I don't mean that being an Engineer or Doctor is not good, but certainly not good if not done with own mind and interest.
On the flip side, maybe, I thought for the lifestyle engineers adopt and multitude of health problems they complain of, a specialized 'Engineer Doctor' does make complete sense!! Kudos to the innovative kid,rather, his innovative parents for thinking way ahead of time!!