My Broken Marriage

It was a very cool day and we were seated in a corner of a famous restaurant in Chennai. It is the first time I’m meeting her and her family. First time in my life , I’m part of a bride seeing ceremony , the very process I had considered irrelevant to the current world and later on had to convince myself that this is the way of life , hanging on to optimism all this way. I was dressed in my usual unconventional way , not giving any consideration to the attire aspect at all. She was dressed in a bright short kurta and a jeans , without any makeup or special care , as this was my clear instruction. I had made up my mind to speak all about me , anything and everything and let her decide whether she can accept me , whether she can spend the rest of the life with me. After a few minutes of being put up in an rather embarrassing position , with the rest of the family members seated around and watching us with teasing eyes and giggling amongst them , I started the whole thing by offering her an ice-cream. We moved away from the crowd , a few meters separating us. We started from the usual talk about families and after a few minutes into this chat , I let her know that I cannot talk to her freely and frankly(dhil kolke) , with the whole crowd following us literally. I was looking for some private moments with her where i can talk about everything and anything about me.We went towards my car and we left for the cool & relaxing ECR and after a few minutes of tense driving by me , reached the Muttukad boating site at around 11 AM.

We spent close to 4 hours there , most of the time talking about our individual lifes , till this point. I talked about everything , my childhood craze towards dance , my capabilities at grasping new things when I was a kid , my love towards tamil and how it transcended to me writing poems on a daily basis and where I stand on that skill today. We spoke about our individual views on issues ranging from the problems faced by the Indian society , movies , personal likes , sex , glamour in cinema , aids, the confused Indian teens , personal likes & small things like eating panipuris on a road-side shop & what not. At the end of the talk ,above everything else I felt that she fitted well into one of the key qualities which I was looking for in my life partner. The maturity , attitude towards life and the openness to talk & communicate about issues which people generally prefer not to discuss even as couples and listening to the partner when he/she was trying to tell something. We again spoke over the phone the same night and finally came to the conclusion that we will make a good couple if not a great couple.
I wanted the marriage to happen atleast after a gap of 4-6 months so that we try to understand each other to the extent possible during that time. Understanding human nature , being the toughest thing in anybody’s life , if can’t be done within 6 months , can well be attempted at. Our marriage was fixed to be after after 6 months. This was one hell of a time , knowing that the void feeling that was creeping into me day after day for the past few years , was finally going to go and the sheer feeling of having a woman in my life had put my life on top gear. Day after day , our talk kept on breaking boundaries after boundaries , throwing open our minds to various new things into our lifes and simply the feeling of the areas which we might explore as a couple after our marriage kept me flying day after day. This started showing on my behavioral aspects too. I , who was perceived as a serious faced chap till the time somebody really started moving with me and got to know me , was undergoing an total makeover on my outlook , helping me to pose a happy face all time around.

But on the day of marriage , just before a couple of minutes before the time when i was about to leave my bachelorhood behind me , i came to know that she was not intrested in the marriage at all and she was totally forced into this. I did a fast run through of the events starting from the day i met her till this time. Everything seemed to just evoporate in front of my eyes. I got into the room where she & her family were put up and had an interaction with her (CA in business terms). Finally it was my simple appearance and my bespectacled face which failed to impress her. Being a guy who does not really give importance to external aspects of a person , this was a huge shock for me. I could not really comprehend the situation for a couple of minutes and cursed my inability as a person , for being unable to see this thing coming and kept wondering as to how she was being able to show an totally different face to me inspite of all these things happening inside her , starting from the time when we had met & talked for the first time till this moment. Having this inside her mind for so many months and still she was talking to me as if nothing unusal was happening. Total deceivement , one can say , but to me it was a total loss of trust on a system which never succeeded in convincing me , till the time i started to feel that it was not possible for me to lead my life single anymore and having seen the method seeming to work fine in a few of my friend's cases. Everything seemed to come crashing on me and the void feeling inside me started to grow bigger. How can a person who has been all alone for 27 years in his life , without the least presence of a woman in his life , can be expected to accomodate a new woman into his life all of a sudden. An thought provoking question in fact , one still unanswered by me.

"Abhe yaar!. Ut na yaar . Time Saade aat baje bhaj gayi bhe. Office ke liye Nikalna hain", It was one of my roomies waking me up early in the morning. Ohh!! Everything was a damn dream , rather an nightmare!. Hope i never come across something like this in my life.

The way I do it

Having become a seasoned sambar maker , thought of sharing my sambar making experiences with you guys. All my room partners are Marathi Manoos and the first day when I offered them to make sambar for dinner , they were really happy as we were having plain dal/Rice for the last couple of days. Finally i started with the process of making sambar . First the sambar dal was cooked for around 45 mins , as we did not have a cooker. Once that was done , i started with sambar and in the process of making it , after a few minutes , first i felt it would really be thick , so added some water & after 5 mins changed my decision and added some more sambar powder. After a few iterations it really looked like the valva of a volcano from the top , with the various layers hidden inside. Finally it was more of watered down version of sambar powder on dal & eventually my RPs liked the taste of it (what else can they do , it was around half past ten @ night). Thank GOd , it did not have any master-effects on my stomach & the day passed off.

Next time i assured myself that this time it is going to be great and after a bit of analysis , came to the conclusion about what i really missed in my last attempt . It was the missing vegetable which i concluded , for the lack of taste. I went ahead with 200 GMS of Ladies Finger and to improve the mix , i boilded it with the dal. This resulted in some sort of viscous mix , which after the next few steps , resulted in a more unrealistic version of sambar. No need to mention , this was again accepted by my RPs.

Stung badly by my inner voice , i decided to act in a more prepared manner. I went to one of my friend , recorded the recipe in my mind & saw him making sambar from the scratch. It was the judgement day and here is how i went ahead with the recipe. The recipe is for you here

Take three handfuls of dal , clean it by rinsing thrice or more. Put atleast twice the amount of water for the dal to boil. Put this in a cooker & let it go on till you hear a minimum of 4 whistles. Keep it aside and take a clean vanali , without any traces of water on it. Pour some oil , let it for few more minutes till it starts boiling. Add some seeragam , rai , vendayam, chopped onions & green chillies and keep stirring till the onions start turning a bit brown. Add some ginger paste , imli water , two heaped spoonfuls of Sambar powder , salt & chilli powder to taste. After a few minutes add the boild dal & the vegetables. Keep it on flames , till the mixture starts to boil and the moment the raw smell of the mixture is taken over by the sweet aroma of Sambhar , turn of the burner. Add some chopped coriander leaves for seasoning and your easy make sambhar is ready. Mind you , after this occasion , i started making real good sambar and have received rave reviews from my RPs.

P:S : Following this amateur recipe might lead to various unpredictable effects on your stomach and the author or his recipe cannot be held in any way for those incidents.

Rakhi Sawant : Good Fodder For The Media

In the last couple of days , i have been seeing various newspapers and their electronic versions , oozing with pictures of Mika kissing Rakhi or otherwise and the surrorunding controversy. What actually has it yielded , more controversy & the associated publicity for Rakhi , who was already getting embroiled for performing sleazy steps at a function in Maharashtra and a lot of people ( including me) came to know that Daler Mehandi has a younger brother by the name Mika. Whether these girls are really under-paid not to afford clothes that really give you a feel of wearing something or is this how fashion sounds these days , frankly i don't know & these people seem to have taken openness by it's literal meaning. But one thing is sure as hell , Indian media's reach among the teens & pre-teens via the paper mode is so prevalent that whatever would have been read by you/me could have been very well read by an fourteen year old. If you people remember , sometime back there was a proposal from the I&B minstry about bringing in a scheme , wherein papers would be given some sort of certificates like the one which is already in place for movies. An A with a circle around it for 18+ olds , U for everyone etc. Under the current context , i see that proposal as something close to being logical but can only ridicule that for being not practicable. For the kind of dependency politics has on media , the government stands to lose more than to gain by this step.

What we can do about this , we can ask these people to be more sensible , as their behavior as such has an impact on the society. In this case we might get ourselves labeled as someone from the neolithic age , whereas we are not & seeing from a logical sense , are more responsible and matured than them. So the first option more or less seems to be ruled out. The second one is to ask the media to be more responsible and insensitive to such stunts , which i personally believe can afford. Might be who knows , Rakhi might have Called Mika the very next day and they might be laughing on the phone about the whole episode!. God only knows the pattern of their operations and let us better keep all our senses insensitive to these things.

Fun @ Work

Yesterday we celebrated Fun @ work in our office. Putting that simply, no one is expected to work. The theme of the day was to wear your traditional dress and flaunt it around. The day started with a gloomy look, hardly anyone following the theme. The exception being one pretty girl dressed in a sharara( am I spelling it wrong?) , which added more beauty and shine to her already shining face. I had brought my Weshti to office ( henceforth referred to as WT) , as I was really scared at how the stray dogs in my area might behave , after seeing me in WT and was not ready for a public strip show. It was safely tucked inside my bag and most of my colleagues had done the same. Well I started taking a survey of how many people had followed the theme (the unsaid thing is that sampling was carried out only for female population!!). The other theme was already underway , people crossing the same cubicle repeatedly , trading stealthy but charming stares , making acquaintances etc.
The real story of me wearing a WT starts now. Having been imparted with that knowledge only the day before , I had just memorized a few key steps as told by my room mate ( he deserves a beer!!), just like how any recipe will be jotted down as bullet points. As the judgment time came , I missed the order of the last two steps and was fighting with my WT for quite some time. Finally after a number of attempts , I finally succeeded and the key thing Is that I never had to adjust it till the EOD. Then the rest of the day I had to carry my suave looks around. To be honest , I never thought there would be a good response for me on a traditional outfit , but the response was really good, from a few girls too!!. That was enough to sabotage a few days of sleep for me. Then finally our manager , who leads our group , always known for leading any initiative from the front , entered into office. I was taken aback , I expected him in a pucca traditional dress & he was dressed to the full in formals. But as everyone else he had the whole armor hidden in his bag and when he came for the rounds to see the level of compliance, I was flabbergasted. His looks wore tradition from top to bottom. It was very much a traditional Maharashtrian dress , his head adorned by a Gandhi toppi.

Finally in the evening, the real celebrations started. To start with , people who did not comply to the theme were singled out & the rest of the group started giving punishments , like asking them to sing a song( the punishment was supposed to be for the erring ones and finally we turned out be the sufferers). Then there was a cat walk for all the lady participants & Voila! , this is something I was expecting. There was cat calls all around , we as a bunch of guys were making the event more colorful. The whole event was happening in the terrace and we guys were immensely enjoying the girls walking the ramp. Then we had a real boring session of Fish pond , which defied the very meaning of a fish pond , by becoming more formal & without any real teasing chits. Finally we had the Mr & Ms. Traditional. Our manager was adjudged as Mr.Traditional and when it came to Ms.traditional, the crowd was really good at showing their fondness for all of the participants. Finally it turned out be the pretty girl who I had mentioned in the staring , who won the accolade and her face shone with more prettiness and charm.( Not to mention that a few nights of sleep are gone and hence the ill effects of the same on my work).

Finally we had two Vadas and a piece of cake delivered to our desks & I had to be content with the same. Finally my inner mind reminded me about the dogs in my locality and then I promptly went to the wash room and got back into what I was in, in the morning

Religion as it appears to me

My heart was burdened with so much of pain, when I read the news that the abducted Indian was executed in Afghanistan. If they do it in the name of the Almighty, then the very purpose of the religion is meaningless. What had that innocent man hailing from a remote village in Kerala do? An insane reason that he was working for an Indian company working on assignments in afghan, or was it a part of the purported message to the outer world. In any case, I really sympathize with the family of the bereaved. When I came across the same news in the morning, there was a small note that the news has not been confirmed officially and I hoped for the inevitable not to happen. Might be I could have overlooked this piece of news like others which are flashed across innumerous websites. But instead of spending a few minutes of my time in simply gazing at the news item, I was left to wonder what meaning the words civilization and modernization adds to our life. We still have some barbarians living amongst us, guided by a bunch of insane minds and to top it all they say they do all this in the name of God. We humans are always used to putting the blame on somebody else and in the recent times we have resorted to putting the blame on the God Himself. We do talk about sophistication, modernization and all the other fancy terms, but tend to ignore the underlying fact – they don’t seem to apply their minds in cases like these, where your heart is in sync with a cause of total irrelevance to the mankind. You might argue that simply due to the environment where they were born & groomed might be the root cause; we are simply overlooking one key fact. They believe they are guided by a religion and a religion if followed truly is essentially a beacon. It does not see who you are, where you were born etc, it guides you towards the right path. And any such tool is of extreme use, only when the hands which hold them are pious and pure enough to appreciate the meaning and the purpose, which is severely lacking in cases like these. Preaching values of humanity and compassion will be the theme of any religion and let us hope(the best thing which can be done by me and you) that these minds be capable of seeing others pain as their pain and suffering and start really appreciating the meaning of the religion and it’s very purpose.

The Indian Notion Of Peace

Whenever any bomb blast happens in any part of India , the Indian goverment is quick to find a way out. They immediately point their hands towards one of the three key terrorist organizations operating against New Delhi ( JEM,LET& Hizb M). A statement is then read out to the press which strongly condemns the incident , followed by a similar statement from the Pak establishment. Then there are special teams formed to investigate the crime and things start at a snail's pace. There is no point in talking or making peace gestures to an country whose national policy( unofficial but obvious) is to de-stabilize the Indian establishment. Take the last natural disaster that affected both India and Pakistan. India was quick enough to announce a relief package worth 25M$. Ah, that being a real big amount , most of the Indians are left to wonder as to how this money will actually be spent. Might be 5M$ will reach the needy (Read those affected and not those in power) the rest might be siphoned off into the hands of the terrorist organizations. And when the New Delhi blasts happened, the govt was still opening borders and shaking hands. Why should we continue doing this?. The govt has no rights to assume a moral role and offer an relief package of this sort. The time I’m writing this , someone on the border or in some other part of the country might be conspiring against Us. Think of the effect terrorism had on our country, particularly J&K , where peace is less felt. Months after terrorists attacked the parliament , India was on the brink of an wat with Pak & the news which was doing the rounds few months back was that a group of corporate heads, mainly from the US had succeeded in convincing the Indian movement not to go ahead with the war. It is not that the US does not understand the pain of terrorism, but their version and definition differs. Terrorism which originates from the lands of their allies does not confer to their definition. My take here is that Indian govt should have taken a strong position at that point of time. It was very much obvious how shaken the Pak govt was at that time. Better late than never, we should start taking some measures in this regard. As to what these measures can be, me being a common observer and not an astute policymaker, cannot offer that great a solution or anything of that sort. The least that i can do is to suggest that the establishment take clues from what other nations who have been plagued by terrorism have been adopting. If we don't send proper messages at junctures like these , we will be taken for granted and in our case the opposite party is very good in sending mesages, the last being that they are not terribly affected by the earthquake as was portrayed by the media , by organizing the delhi blasts.

Media- Do we really have one

i have been really wondering on how the Indian media has been reacting to whatever has been happening in Indian cricket in the months gone by. Traditionally famous for "making the readers sway when news/controversies rain" , we have been seeing them taking an all about turn , when whatever greg said & did really started showing on the outcome. From a stance where they were hell bent on painting a tainted picture of greg to a situation where they have been showering praises on the same person, citing the reason he was integral to this turnaround. Where does the media stand in terms of analysing a given situation. as in the first case they were emphasizing that the fans(really read " A partisan Crowd") were really outrageous at the ouster of the former Indian captain from the team. this never reflected the feelings of majority of the cricket fans in the country and the media had to some extent extrapolated the feelings which were at a regional level.The point here is most of the readers are anticipating a time when the media will start reflecting the ground realities and start focussing on the real thing. One cannot be fit and in form if he cracks a century out of a century games. the former captain frankly is hitting sixers in an empty gorund, without any real takers on his side and wishing that something fruitful happens as far as his career is concerned. Greg has taken a real good step in breaking the myth that senior citizens in the team are invincible and has really taken away the complacency factor from the team. When have we last heard about the Indian team participating in a Fitness camp and all the members of the team participating in the same. A team without the coach having proper powers and the authority to call the shots is on a soujourn without an destiny. The Indian team seems to have taken the right path and let us expect the media to project the proper message so that the same mesage is properly sent and received by the people who have always got themseleves used to praises & praises even in times of real bad performance.