Baby in Mama's stomach

Finally the question as I was expecting for quite some time was posed by my daughter - But how did the baby come in Mama's stomach. It was a while before she posed this question, almost 3 months later after she heard it from the doctor. So far she has not really shown any concerns whatsoever, concerns about how are we going to divide our time between them. I guess, that would happen once the second one is around.

Another question that stumped us - How did you know I was a girl when I was born ? Did I have earrings on me ?

Mysore Zoo

Amazing, never expected this zoo to be that good. It’s rare to come across a zoo in India with wide and varied animals ranging from an ostrich to colorful parakeets, hyenas to rhinoceros. Except for the Panther, all varieties of cats - big and small, lazy and lively are seen in this Zoo. The giraffes of course hold their own among all the significant animals in this zoo and are a big draw all by themselves. Marvelous!

As we were walking along (it takes about 2.5 to 3 hrs), it was quite amusing to see some idiots clapping and calling the animals by their names, maybe expecting the animals to turn around and look at them. One guy went on screaming - 'Cheetah, cheetah' as if the Cheetah was going to say yeah right, you got my name correct. I guess that guy deserved to be in the cage, I am sure he would clap back and acknowledge all those who would ever call him.

One thing we Indians, don't do well is Merchandising, I wish they had a decent store where you could buy souvenir's and memorabilia's. They could also do with a IMAX theatre and show all those amazing National Geographic/Discover documentaries. I am sure there's so much potential for additional revenue which could be ploughed back in the Zoo. The Zoo could also do with better signage and creative visual graphics.
 Couple of incidents with my daughter is worth mentioning here.

1. On seeing hippopotamus being fed some green leaves and foliage, my wife enquired - What are they feeding? My daughter immediately quipped - Salad.

2. On seeing the very still Crocodiles, I remarked - Wow, look at them they are frozen! My wife wisecracked, they are playing - 'Statue' (The game where kids point their index finger at someone and shout – Statue, and the person on the other side is supposed to stay still, no matter what they are doing, in whatever pose they are in, not even bat an eyelid, till the kids say – Relax, the other person can’t come out of stupor and if they do move before that, they stand to lose.) The moment my wife said that, one of the crocodiles yawned and moved a little, immediately my daughter retorted – he’s out!

Clint

Clint Eastwood defining himself on his younger days, these words seems to strike a chord somewhere within me, I like these ...

"...unable to define what he was looking for .... restless, self-sufficient, with a large tolerance for his own company and an equally large indifference toward the good opinion of strangers."

We told her

We told my daughter that we are going to visit the doctor that helped Mama to give birth to you and she had that expression like - OK, so ? Once we were in we were also very happy and proud to inform the doctor, here's the one that you helped us deliver 5 years back. Good to meet up with my wife's gynaecologist after so long.

As they got ready to do the inital scan, my daughter got very curious and was like what's happening, what are they doing to Mamma and she went and stood near her. As the gyn started explaining and pointing to the screen is when she realised and I shall never forget her expression. She came to me and we told her - Mamma has a baby in her stomach and she didn't say anything, it was all too much information for her. She was like - how and really and like super excited, but didn't express much, I don't really know what was she feeling but she was completely quiet and all smiles.

Sach is Life

The method, the mindset, the approch more than the achievement.

Never doubted his pedigree or his achievements, it's just there for a while, I questioned his approach, his mindset and his method that he adopted to reach his achievements.

Khakra-fafda-handwa-thepla-dhokla

The theme of the year so far has been movies and so we went to see 3 Idiots yesterday. It's ages since I laughed my guts out and there were moments when I laughed so hard that tears rolled out of my eyes. What a wonderful way to start a sunday.

Wish the movie had more college incidents where the idiots show their true brilliance, also wish the script had few idiotic entitlement for Madhavan and Sharman. This was all about the genius Rancho, the other two were just his hanger's on. Of course, they have equal screen time, but they weren't really the idiots there. With all the promotions and word-of-mouth reviews, I went into the theater assuming that the movie was about 3 idiotic geniuses. I guess, the movie should have been titled - 1 Idiot.

Finally Kareena's put the khakra-fafda-handwa-thepla-dhokla on the bollywood map. It's time people took potshots at Gujarati cuisine, enough of idli-dosa-kaafee jokes. The actor portraying - Chatur Ramalingam (I think, based mostly on the US bred/returned TamBrahm) was by far the best actor in the movie. There was nothing much for Aamir Khan to display his wares here, roles like Rancho are bread and butter for him, he must have just walked into the sets, done his thing and mostly slept through this movie.

Having seen the IIM-Bangalore campus few time from the inside, could recognise the location instantly and since I cross the campus daily on my way to office through that wretched Bannerghata road, it certainly was bit too much to see Aamir get out of the campus on a scooter and drive straight onto the wide streets of Delhi. But hey well, it's a movie, I shouldn't be complaining?

This was supposedly an all family entertainer but I had quite a few uneasy, embarassing moments trying to explain stuff to my 'nearly-5' year old girl. The movie Avatar, was supposedly PG-12 and I never had any awkward time with my little one.

There's a controversy raging on about this movie, with regards to due credit not been given to the author and the producers-promoters being disingenuous abut the whole thing and I am not really sure who's right here and don't really want to take sides here, not have much to say, but I do get the feeling that it's true isn't it - Success has many fathers?

2010

A quiet beginning to the new year, no major changes, was interestingly reminded by my daughter that it's not twenty-twelve. Apparently she had heard something about the movie in her school few weeks back, came back home excitedly and told us that Earth would break in 2012 and we all would fall down. That made me buy tickets for that movie, wanted to see if she would really enjoy it. My daughter got all excited and was thrilled and awed for some time but finally got scared and we had to walk out of the theatre.

We did go for Avatar 3D last weekend and oh my god what an experience, Ketaki did get bored near the end but we managed to hold on, she got little tired holding the glasses, not sure why the theatre guys didn't think of smaller frames for kids, it was ridiculous having those adult glasses on her.

So it's been all movies in the last two weeks and beginning of the year has been marked by that wonderful, breathtaking, spell binding, outrageously stunning James Cameron's - Avatar. I particularly liked the floating mountains and flying on the dragon thingy.

Quarterly Review : Sep - Nov, 2009

We got my daughter's second quarterly report card from her school yesterday . Here's the final passage from her two page report

General Observations:
Ketaki is a very affectionate child and keeps showering her teacher with kisses and hugs! She initially would like being only with Txxxx but now interacts with other children as well. She is responsible and takes care of her belongings.

She takes on work only when she is convinced about it!
We have seen a marked change in her willingness to write – from not wanting to write at all, she now is much focused and enjoys the activity.

She is very articulate and has tons of information to share. For instance for one of the Show & Tell sessions, she got a rope to class and told everyone, ‘this is R for rope. It is very ticklish and scratchy. I didn’t want to bring it but my mamma gave it to me’! She went on to add that R is also for railway track and apologized for not being able to bring it.

More Palitana Pics

Jain Sadhvi's

More Palitana pictures

Palitana town as seen from top of the hill.

Palitana

The climb to the main temple on top of the Shetrunjay hill, dedicated to 1st tirthankar lord Adinath (Rishabdeva), begins here. About 3300 steps to the top.

One of the many temples on the way to the top.

Home state

How does it feel to travel to a place where almost everybody around you speaks the same language as you do ? I've never experienced this before, well almost never experienced, considering that I once went to Gujarat when I was 8 years old and do not have any memory of that trip whatsoever.

My vacation trip to Gujarat last week, allowed me to experience that feeling of being in sync linguistically with everyone around. This has been a completely new experience for me. We happened to speak among ourselves in an autorickshaw the need for a bottle of mineral water and within few minutes, the autorickshaw driver without being told, stopped near a store so that we can buy water there. Apparently he overheard us, and importantly understood us. It did feel weird though, we are used to conversing in our mother tongue among ourselves, particularly when we want to get detached from our surroundings. 

Some background here - I am a Gujarati, born in Karnataka, brought up in Tamilnadu, worked in Kerala & Tamilnadu and currently settled in Karnataka. So mostly lived in Southern India. Also, India is a union of states, comprising 28 states and few union territories and the states were carved out on a linguistic basis. That brings me to a question - Not really sure why people from the Telangana region are fighting for a separate Telangana state, but Telugu is spoken in both Telangana region and the rest of Andhra, so why the need for a separate state ? Beats me.

Kindle

I think, it's time I went and met an astrologer, need to show my birth chart to check out the trends.  Ever since a very old friend dropped in a - "Hey do you remember me ? " email in Nov 2008, it's been a never ending meeting of people from my past. The last year or so, it's been reconnecting time with friends, family, family friends and also foes. Wow. Exhilarating. It feels great to rekindle dormant relationships, catch up with people and recall memories from the past. Some of them over emails and phone, some in person. Some of them have been forgotten, some of them seemingly lost forever with no means to contact and some of them plainly out of sight.

Why is all this happening suddenly and out of nowhere, people seem to be dropping back in my life, and it doesn't seem to come to an end and frankly - I don't want it to end. It's all been a rush, a heady mixture of pleasure and pain in some cases. Yes, true that I was out of the country for 3 years, but that's not really the case. One friend surfaced after 20 years, another one after 10 years,  a sister after 12 years, me not being in India is certainly not the case in all these instances. That's why I should go and meet an astrologer and find out if I was supposed to renew all these folks back in my life. Maybe that's what it means to discover lost treasures.

That brings me to another belief of mine. I always believed that If I ever have any semblance of a relationship, friendship with somebody, inevitable that we would continue to cross each other's path sometime again in the future and then again and then - well again. There's always a reason, why we form a relationship, friendship with few. There are tonnes of people out there, but we create bonds with few, some special, some general and the very fact that we form something with those few people makes me believe that it would go on.

Unsung Hero

I always believed that statistics can never really truly reveal a person's true contribution, specially in a nuanced game like cricket, but it still provides credence and has it's benefits when one measures unsung, unassuming, nice heroes like Rahul Dravid.

This is a staggering achievement by any yardsticks - "someone digging deeper would unearth the fact that Gavaskar averaged 44 in 23 India wins while Dravid averages 67 in 44 India victories (his average in defeats, 26, gives us a hint to his value). Or that Dravid averages eight runs per innings better abroad than at home or that only one of his 27 centuries was made in a lost game."


Dravid’s record is superb in isolation; in the context of victories on the one hand and defeats avoided on the other, it is stunning.

How to get lucky ..

Read it somewhere, not sure where ...

Assume fate is on your side: Perceive life's setback as business as usual. Believe you are fortunate and you will exhibit behaviour that makes people more responsive.


Get an emotinal grip: Luck limiting emotions, shyness anger and resentment doesn't help. Higher self esteem and be more extroverted.



Keep your mind open to opportunity: Encounters with people, be confident that positive outcomes will result from these encounters.



Think of the world as yours: You won't imporve your luck by sitting at home. Embrace random events that happen to you.



Keep envy in check: Stop comparing your life with lives of others. What looks ideal from outside in reality may not be ideal for you. Stay focussed on your own goals and dreams.


Think like a connector: More people you know, more likeable you are, better are the odds of becoming lucky.



Find an upside to everything: Have a positive view of the past and optimistic view of the present. Remember more of good things that happened, block out bad. When something bad happens, compare the event with the worst that could have happend and conclude that you came out ahead.

How to be happy

Anything that's motivated by personal enrichment, leads to suffering, while everything that enriches the happiness of someone else, makes oneself happy - Dalai Lama

Silence

Words can be construed in silence, can silence be construed in words ?

There's a website called puresilence.org, that set me thinking, silence is silence, what's purity got to do with it ?

Yesterday I worked from home, with nobody around and hardly any soul on the streets, silence was all that I got all day long. None of the distant mindless office chatter, none of the absurd seething ringtones going off, no inane conversation, not getting pulled along for chai/ciggies and yet, didn't achieve anything substantial at work.

My pathetic attempt few years back to write a poem

Alive, but I didn't create you
Dead, but I didn't kill you
Trance, but I didn't push you
You are what you are

Joy, I didn't bring
Anxiety, I didn't create
Sad, I didn't make
I am what I am

Roads, I didn't lay
Dams, I didn't build
Wheels, I didn't invent
But I think, therefore I am                                 

Prize for Nobel Pandering

Whoa, I've never known anybody getting a Nobel Prize on basis of a single speech at the UN Headquarters. What did Barack Obama do to achieve this ? What peace did he achieve, he is only planning to hopefully do something in the next few years and has just kickstarted the process in few areas. This has to be way too early, too very soon. I am afraid the expectations on Obama because of this award would manifest itself into gigantic proportions.


I do believe America is on the right track with Obama at the helm,but this award has to be pandering of the highest order.

What's next ? Award to Michelle Obama ?, now that the complex path of her roots are clear.

One more year older

A year is just a measure, on a calendar, an astronomical event. So what does it mean, getting a year older ? Am I moving towards half life, or has my half life already gone by ? What If I just get stopped right now. Who all would be affected ?

What have I achieved in all these years ? 

Reminds me of an interesting quote - Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Even If I end now, there should be atleast two right things that I would have done. Hmmm ....