*Gasp*

I've been good. No, seriously! I have been tempted to write about this topic many a times but resisted.

But *Phew* enough is enough. Can these people not wear some kinda deo or perfume to work?

If not for themselves, for pity's sake, for the sake of the poor souls who need to sit next to them the whole day and work.

Forgetting your deo/ perfume now and then I can understand, but coming to work without it, EVER, especially after travelling in the hot chennai weather... *GAK*

I am on the verge of getting the cold and my nose and throat are extremely sensitive to any kinds of odour and its driving me and my sinuses nuts.

Bearing up for one hour everyday was difficult enough..but now its all day everyday

grr!! Do y'all think I should get a room freshener and spray them? Would that give them a hint?

God's own pyrotechnics

When God decides to have some fun, She sure shows us mere mortals what pyrotechnics is all about.
Its raining here. Boy! is it raining! and that too along with all the accompaniments in their complete splendor.

Lightning tearing the skies open and wow! during the last thunder I could actually feel the ground under my feet vibrate.
You can almost smell and feel the sky getting reading to unleash the next bout.
It gives me the goosebumps witnessing all this fury. Its also very very exhilarating. :-)
Makes one realize how really small and insignificant one is in the grand scheme of things.

Its all about control

Now before I start I just have to let the world know I BOUGHT A KINDLE at last...Yayyyyy.. consider me dancing around. The only fly in the ointment being I will not get it for another 15 days.. but that's ok.. ooooh! I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Oh! Anyways do you dare to lose control (of your emotions and yourself) in front of your friends or anyone for that matter? I've never really thought much about it until now.
As usual my thoughts were jack rabbiting around and I ended up thinking of this incident.

My 2 very good friends and I, decided to meet up one night and get drunk. And by that I mean tap-hackled, top-heavy, shot-in-the-neck, staggering drunk, just to see what we would do when we get to that stage.Now, we were rather close and very comfortable with each other and knew one other very well and all that. So we were sure we wouldn't mind if we made a fool of ourselves when it was just the three of us.

Well two of us being footloose and fancy free and 1 being a respectable married matron, we congregated at the married matron's house (which is a real dream house BTW). Her husband, being this real cool guy, helped us in procuring the drinks. It was night and we set it all up and sat looking at the bottle. And looking at it and looking at it. Not one of us wanted to drink, at least not the way we had planned to.

We just could not bring ourselves to lose control to that extent. After all that planning we felt rather sheepish about it but we just could not do it. Its kind of hardwired into some of us, I think.
I say that because some people are OK with drinking to excess and making a fool of themselves given the slightest opportunity.

I remember a man very high in my company hierarchy, once drinking and dancing (let's just say there is dancing and there is dancing) at a party. I could not look the guy in the eyes the next day, but he was cool about it.

Are you OK with it?

More and more...

More and more rambles that's what. I keep having all these disjointed thoughts all the time and I tell myself I should write about it here... but never get around to it. So thought instead of rambling in my mind I shall put the whole jumble of thoughts here to pick and choose to write... or not write later.

# Sometimes I fear I am becoming asocial but thankfully you cannot straighten a dog's tail :-). I think I have just come to appreciate solitude more *phew* had me worried

# Can a person feel sad and happy at the same time. I mean throat chocking sadness and real happiness? Coz  that's what I am feeling right at this moment and it feels very strange.

# We always hear so much about how good it is to give, the art of giving blah blah. But you know I have recently (ok, not so recently) realized there is an art to taking them too. I love giving  gifts but sometimes people get so awkward when they get gifts that they end up embarrassing the giver or insulting them. Totally unintentional but there you are. The problem is that it takes the joy out of the process.
A case in point is my bro, he looks so embarrassed and miserable whenever I gift him with anything, that he looks almost constipated :-P
My dad started out that way too, but I like to think I personally cured him off his giftophobia :-)
Now me! gimme a gift , any gift, anytime.. I am always happy to get them .. hehehe

#  Today a colleague told me that he realized I must read a lot when he heard me speak English. Mostly when people tell me I have a decent handle on English, I don't really take it to heart, because I am generally busy being envious about someone else's knowledge and language. But not sure why, today I felt maybe my friend(s) are right, maybe my language is decent (hmm! No I am not fishing, oh! you know me, I never fish, I straight away ask for your compliments :-D )

# I've been reading about the huge furore created over this Madrasi gal who has written an open letter to the delhi boy basically insulting delhites and punjabis etc and there have been a lot of reflex responses to it. All of us have our own misconceptions and I really think they need to get a life.
Anyways I want to clear coupla basic point in all of this. Madrasis do not wear mundu, they wear Vaeshti. While anything in excess is not good, please leave our hair oil bottles out of your altercations. We love them. They are the one thing keeping our brains from leaking out of ears in the peak summers and the reason why most south Indian women have such lovely tresses.
(Yep, I know what you are thinking, I need to get a life too.. )

My Diary

On a lighter note
In those long ago times, I used to maintain diaries. I started coz it was the "in" thing to do. But somehow ended up writing kinda regularly.(somewhat better than my bloging anyways)
Being a person who hates clutter, I had nicely hidden the diaries in my cousin's shelves, from which she threw it all out yesterday :-(
Anyways ended up reading up the entries in there. It was quite an entertaining time.
All those teenage angst and dramatics pouring out spiced with sarcastic comments and gossips about all and sundry.

Here are some of interesting ones

# There was one entry about a classmate fainting coz she was not in the top five ranks (The gal was doing her Masters.. sigh!)

# My friend's handsome brother had told her that I looked cute, which she promptly relayed to me. There was some floating in the ninth cloud with regards to that

# My BFFs and I meeting Sir Richard Hadlee and his team at the Pizza Corner right around the street.

# Choking back my tears, when I landed in Hong Kong for the first time (first time out of the country) and realizing not only was I thousands of miles away from my people but also that the toilets do not have health
faucets .. The latter being more traumatic than the former

# My BFF's fiance asking me about the fall of World trade center on the evening of 9/11 and my telling him that I did not follow the shares market.

# BFF and I "eyeing" this good looking guy in a wedding, not realizing he was the groom :-D

# Coming out of the US airport (after immigration and all that), the first time and then going back to ask the security there, where I would get my I9. (Every one had told me all these horror stories about I9 and its
importance, no one had told me the immigration slip was the I9). If I remember right, the man took my passport, looked into it and gave me a weird look and said "I don't understand". I realized I was saying something wrong , so apologized and came back :-D

Hmm! those were times...

Enough about 9/11

I can understand why USA will celebrate 9/11 with all those fireworks and hungama. But why the heck is India celebrating it right along with them? Weirdos!

Yesterday, I read an interview of an American embassy spokesperson (can't find the link now) and he says he is very happy with mature way India is dealing with their terrorists, even giving them a choice of mercy petition.
Yes! unlike the US which not only almost completely annihilated Afghanistan (Afghanistan used to be one of the most beautiful countries, known for its gorgeous gardens, now it contains cemeteries and bomb craters) but also killed Osama after stealthily entering into Pakistan.

How is it that Sadam Hussain can be publicly hung, Osama shot dead but Nalini, Murugan, Afsal Guru, Ajmal Kasab etc are deserving of mercy? They should not be hung because of the mental torture they faced being in the death row?
Puhleaseee! Were these terrorists thinking of the mental torture of the victims and their families while they were massacring?

Do Human rights commission exist only to fight for the rights of terrorists and murderers?
If Kasab, who is living the life of leisure in our prisons, is let out from gaol because of his youth, with a "go forth and sin no more" pat on his back, is he going to be all repentant and give up a life of sin to become a
sanyasi? or will he laugh at India's naivete before coming back to kill some more?

And coming back to my original question, OK, USA had one terrorist attack in the last god knows how many years and its a big issue for them.
Indians face a 1/1..13/7...7/9 .. 26/11... 31/12. Why the heck are they so enthusiastic about a 9/11 attack that happened 10 years ago.
Do y'all even remember that on 9/11 10 years ago Pak terrorists attacked Kashmir again and many jawans lost their lives?

USA learned something from the 1 attack. Paranoia. But at least they learnt something.
Indian government is still unaware of the attacks happening here.Yesterday a senior congress spokeswoman,in NDTV, brushed off the public sentiment saying that they are just hysterical and over emotional and that the government is still thinking about what to do.

Well Duh uh! Of course we are hysterical. A month goes by without any terrorist act in India is a month for celebration. Indians have forgotten what it feels like to live without a Damocles sword hanging over their heads. The government meanwhile is busy scratching their collective a$$es plotting vendetta against Team Anna.

2 men on our most wanted list, who intelligence were searching out across the globe using the help of Interpol, were living right under our noses in India. Sigh!

My cousin was saying the other day and it sounded quite right to me too.
Why bother arresting these people and then giving them a nice life in the gaols and letting them go a few years later, wasting crores of our tax money.Instead let's not arrest them in the first place. Let any one who wishes to bomb, do so with impunity and get on with their lives. Humph! we can at least save the money spent on the investigation and incarceration.

Anna Hazare's Triumph.. India's Triumph

Anna Hazare broke his 12 days fast on the 13th day (today) at around 10.30 AM or so after the UPA govt kind of agreed to his draft of the Lok Pal bill with conditions attached (see how many constraints I've to put in a simple sentence when I talk of our government taking any steps)

Anyways Anna's triumph is not that he got the government's consensus but the sheer amount of  unstinting support he got from across the country, nay across the whole world . We are talking about millions and millions of Indians.
Chennai, which is generally not known for coming out in masses to support many things, but we had people fasting right along with Anna right down my road, in a park.

This kind of mass approval was last seen probably before 1947 when we thronged out to fight for our independence against the British. While that was mostly an non-violent crowd too, there were still some leaders who were not against violence to gain the freedom.

But now for 12 whole days the entire country came to fight for their freedom from the UPA .. er.. from corruption in absolute peace. Not even when Anna was arrested was their any unrest.
 Some news channels were saying that there were a great deal of rowdy elements in the the Ram Lila grounds and violence was just waiting to erupt at any minute. But we never saw any evidence of it.
What a sight it was! I could not be more proud to be an Indian. :-)

Even better and better is that for the detractors, (sorry to say, some of whom are my own friends) who were saying nothing will happen and India will never improve and all that Bull Sh*t, this is a pie in the face. I am small enough to feel quite gleeful about it hehehe.

Ratnakaradhautapadam Himalyakirtitinim
Brahmarajarsiratnamdhyam vande Bharatamataram 

Meaning :

I pay my obeisance to mother Bharat, whose feet are being a washed by the ocean, who wears the mighty Himalaya as her crown, and who is exuberantly adorned with the gems of traditions set by Brahmarishis and Rajarishis.
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Not another call!

Was at an important meeting at work and the whole one hour I was getting call after call from this number and I kept cutting it. Must have been about 7-8 missed calls. Finally the meeting was over and I get the next call from the same number. Worried now, I hurriedly cut my conversation I was having with my boss to attend it.

The caller: Hello! Is this Sanjana?
Me: Yes! yes! What happened?
The caller: Ma'am I am calling from CitiBank. Would you like our credit card?
Me: X-( grrrrr!

My first weird fone call of this morning is actually a set of calls

1st call: Ma'am I am calling from citi Bank. Would you like our credit card?
Me (Politely): No, Thanks I am not interested

Half hour later
2nd call: Ma'am I am calling from citi Bank. Would you like our credit card?
Me (Not so politely): I already said I am not interested. Could you please have my number removed from your database

Hardly 15 minutes later
3rd caller: Ma'am I am calling from citi Bank. Would you like our credit card?
Me (totally annoyed): Would you guys stop annoying me calling every 10 minutes. I am not interested in your credit card, after this morning I will never be interested in your bank. Either remove my number from your database or let me know who I should contact to get it permanently removed.
3rd Caller: Yes Ma'am. I am sorry for the convenience ..(I am getting a little appeased here).. But Ma'am may I know why you would not be interested in our credit card, we have so many features. Can I take a little of your time to explain them.
Me: (Giving up just cut the call)

An hour or so later I get another call. I am thinking if I should not attend the call, but curiosity got the better of me and I did.

Me: Hello
The caller: Is this Sanjana from ABC school
Me: What?
The Caller: Is this Sanjana who studied in ABC school
Me: Who is this?
The caller: First tell me if you are Sanjana
Me: Hello, this is ridiculous, you call me, you wont even tell me who you are and you expect me to answer you?
The caller: I am SR's mother, you both studied in the same school remember?
(Was totally puzzled. I have not had any contact with SR, who was actually my college mate,  in over 8 years and I had seen her mother probably twice all those years ago)
Me: Uh!.. oh! yes Aunty, Hello, How are you?
The caller: I am fine ma, How are you? I didn't call you for any specific reason
Me: Oh! ( As you can see, I get very loquacious when I am clueless)
The caller: I was cleaning my house and found SR's old phone book and found your number. So I thought I will call and see if you still have the same number
Me: Oh?
(Then started a third degree interrogation of my life the last few years, most of which I frantically tried to dodge and a little of boasting about SR's accomplishments which I probably answered smartly with an "Oh!")
After 15 minutes, she told me again that she didnt have any specific reason to call me and hung up.
I am still a little dizzy.
Can people really be this jobless?

Maybe I should change my mobile number. The problem with retaining a number for almost a decade is that too many people have it.

Bedardi Raja

Hey, How many of you saw the movie Delhi Belly? You must have seen and heard this song, then. But check out this video of Bedardi Raja with Sona Mohapatra in it singing (I think they call it the Grind Mix).  The lady looks so cool in her sari and guitar and a very nice voice too.
The first time I heard the song I was not all that impressed. But when I saw this video.. I Like!

And Life otherwise...

*Phew* Now that's out. How are you all? whats news?

I have had a very eventful (and expensive) few days

 #  For one I've got a brand new Laptop. I am over the trees about it. Great config and even better price. The only fly in my ointment is that the laptop is sitting in Singapore now and will reach me only by next month :-(


#  Been buying books like they are going out of fashion from Flipkart. Like books were not enough they are selling all kindsa electronics too. I almost bought a camera just because of the great deal, but thankfully stopped before going over board.

# Hazel says that her new Kindle was the best buy she has had in some time. Now I am tempted. Especially for a person like me... sigh! do I or do I not

#  Bought coupla great saris.. cant wait to try them on.

#  Looking forward to my trip to Guruvayoor, maybe I will find time to go to the Athirapalli falls. Saw fotos of the falls... they sure beat the Niagara during its peak season.

hmm! old age or amnesia.. not sure, but I seem to have forgotten half the things I wanted to share.. More when I remember :-)

Principles - BAH!

This is a total Rant

Rant 1
Yesterday I had a call from my head honcho saying I had not completed something. Since I was outside of work and this new head honcho had put the fear of god in all of us, I totally freaked.

So I called a reportee and asked him if could verify if I had completed it, he promptly refused saying it was against company norms and all that blah.. well! while it irritated me and got me into trouble, I could respect him for standing on his principles.
Today I ask him to charge an hour extra since we will be attending a meeting at the end of the week and he again refuses because he would be coming in late. OK, Good!
I tell him to come an hour early and then charge correctly and he is now ok with charging extra without working those hours. hmph!!! I ask you, what happened to Mr. I-am-goody-goody?

Rant 2
This is another self processed rules ramanujam. (only I might have to turn into anniyan to eradicate them :-P)
He always acts like he has never veered from the straight and narrow.
To boot he gave me lip when I asked him to do something just so.
Already being in a sweet mood, I started cross checking his records and what do I find?
Mister rules ramanujam is not walking in the quite so straight and narrow path after all.
And so when I started questioning him on it, he did a disappearing act on me.

Hypocrites! Every one of them! Bah Humbug! (There! I sound just like scrooge)

Lucky me!

Sometimes I think I am lucky to have been born in this particular time, especially when I get to hear songs like the ones below, by artists like Chitra, Sudha Ragunathan, MS and KJY.
When they say music has no boundaries or language they (whoever they were) knew what they were talking about.
But its not just the music or the singing but the composition and its simple but beautiful meaning.

For example in the first song below, Enna Thavam Seithanai, by Papanasam Sivan in Kaapi raga.

 The first charanam (stanza) goes
bhramanum indranum manadil porAmai koLLa
uralil kaTTi vAi pottik-kenjavaittAi kannanai (enna thavam..)

Which translates to something like
"Even as Lord Brahma and Indra look on with jealousy in their hearts
you have got the Lord Krishna tied, gagged and begging [...for his mischief] (oh mother! what penance you must have done)"


Enna Thavam Seithanei Yashoda (What penance you must have done, Yashoda)


Kanda naal muthalai kathal peruguthadi (Since the day I saw [Lord Muruga] my love has been increasing)


Asainthu aadum mayil (When I see a dancing peacock, it seems to be telling me that our Krishna has come)


Kurai Ondrum Illai (I don't have any problems) Sigh! MS! Need I say more


Harivarasanam By KJY (And finishing it off with Mangalam)

Sunday Evenings!!!

Is there anything more torturous than a slow Sunday evening with nothing on the telly and no new books and only work to look forward too?
I think I hate Sunday evenings more than even Monday mornings.

And there seems to be a telly conspiracy that only the boring-est programs and movies must be telecast on Sunday evenings.

Weather conspiring against us with drizzles

My family and I are going slowly crazy and if we survive, catch you next week.

Oh! and a Very Happy Friendship day!!!

Random Movie Thoughts!

=> Never claimed to be a fashion Diva, but I do know what's aesthetically pleasing. I don't know who died and made Sonam Kapoor the fashion expert of Bollywood. The woman's dressing is frightening and weird. The oily skin, dark eye make up, goofy hair.. *shudder*. If I wanted to frighten any kid with "poochandi" I will probably show her photo.

=> Have you noticed that the trend nowadays is that as soon as an actor/actress debuts they are touted as the next best thing to sliced bread and they get all these awards and what not.
A case in point is Sonakshi Sinha. She acted in all of 1 movie.  And she must have had about 10 lines of dialogue and probably 2-3 songs in that movie. But her acting was praised to high heavens and according to wikipedia she got a dozen awards for her role in it and was nominated for whatever was left over. Puhlease! are not people supposed to prove their mettle before they get these awards?
Dharmendra, who is called the he-man of Hindi cinemas, got hardly any awards in all his years in the industry. Are these people claiming that these here-now-and-gone-in-a -second actors are better than him? hmph!

=> Saw Deivathirumagal and only then realized it was remake of Main Aisa hi hoon. I kind of liked the hindi version to the tamil one. But Vikram has done a good job, can probably watch once.

=> I am awed at my high tolerance for pain. Saw Singham..fully. When the movie came in Tamil, I had blogged saying that it was an insult to Suriya and Prakash Raj's acting ability. But the Hindi version is an insult... period.

Mr.Mummy

I've always had this fascination for Ancient Egypt in general and their mummies in particular.
Found this superb video of Egyptologist Robert Brier's Mummy project.
After over 2000 years Briers actually mummified a human cadaver the egyptian way.
While this might not be of interest to many people, I was totally astounded and wanted to keep it here for posterity.



And for those interested YouTube has a lovely collection of BBC and National Geographic documentaries on this subject.

Fone etiquette

Just one point I wanted to mention

People should NOT speak with their wives/ Girl friends /Husbands / Boy friends over the phone, while sitting at their work station, if they

a) have a loud voice
b) are going to fight or make love

While it might not bother them, it has some entertainment value to the rest of us.. but is basically disgusting and irritating.
They are, after all, washing their dirty linen in public

Today we (as in the whole floor) were unfortunate enough to hear the fight between this guy and his wife. while he does make love and fight to his wife only after coming to work everyday. It was somehow louder today and I was seriously tempted to stuff his mobile ... ahh hmmm! well you get the idea

Oh! this point actually holds true if they are going to koochikoo your kid too.
Please believe me, its totally disgusting to overhear your workstation neighbour on the phone, describing her kid's cutest poop to someone.
Poop? Cute? Gahhhh! Kill me now!

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Ooty over the weekend

Cursing my uncle and cousin for making me book tickets to, of all the places Ooty and then cancelling, I left for Ooty on Thursday evening and enjoyed myself ever so much. Here are some photos of my trip

Roses at the Government Rose Garden. Missed the Rose show by a week or so, but it was still beautiful. The weather was misty and cool and roses everywhere.. .sigh!

Remember Anbe Vaa movie? MGR and Saroja Devi? The final song in that movie was taken in this place. Its a small hill, totally green and at its top, its soooo windy, it will turn a person around. But lovely enough to make the heart sigh. BTW the white thingy in the foto is not a sheep but a horse :-)

That's me at the Botanical garden. Its beautiful, especially coz of the weather. But seen it too many times and hence boring

The Pykara Lake and Boathouse :- During the rainy season the water level rises to the trees 

When the water level rises in the Lake above, the Dam is opened and the Pykara water falls gushes. 

But because of the low water level, we were able to go right to the falls and dip our toes in the oh so pleasant waters.

Ooty as seen from the suicide point at the tallest spot of Nilgiris: Doddabetta

The heritage Nilgiris mountain railway, otherwise known as the Toy train, has been touting people from Metupalayam to Ooty for over a century and is still going strong. Not very comfortable but worth going atleast once. It requires a lot of patience though, as it travels at roughly 10 KMPH.

And as a grand finale, the Madame Tussaud's of Ooty, Veerappan's wax replica in the Wax world.

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Doing nothing

What a bliss!
When you are kids, nothing is more of a punishment than doing nothing, and the older you get that little bit of doing absolutely nothing becomes a thing so precious, that words fail. But finding the time to do it gets more and more difficult

Its the time for me to recharge my batteries. The time all for myself when I do or not do only the things that I want.

After 3 weeks of non-stop high tension work. This is my "do-nothing" weekend.

Of course its taken me all of today to wind down from the adrenaline rush of the last few weeks and actually get into the groove.
So what I am going to do all the weekend is lounge in my room , see movies, read books, stare out the window,dream dreams, build castles in the air, maybe have pig out on pizzas and most importantly catch up of my sleep.

Woooo!!! the sheer thought of my great weekend plans gives me the goose bumps.

See ya'll on Monday. Totally recharged and raring.... not to go :-D

My Sketches

Know what I did this weekend? I mean other gorging on Pizza and Ugh!!! working.
I was scanning some of the sketches I had done. So obviously I just had to put a few of them here.

Pizza pizza pizza!

Dad and I had a pizza orgy just now.. mmmm! I am still reeling from an over dose.

I dont even like Dominos pizza... But if you are cheese lover then you just have to try their double burst pizza.

And the best part is that there are 3 more slices sitting in front of me tempting me

पेट बर गया पर दिल नहीं  sigh!!!!!

Later added:- *Groan* I am probably going to burst and die! but what a way to go!