And the meek shall Inherit

Rahul is 40

2006-08-28T11:28:00.000-05:00

Our buddy Rahul Garg turns 40 today, which we celebrated with a rockin party last Saturday. The wine was flowing, the food was a trippin and the company chillin. This piece was something that I had written for his roast but with Kunal, his son espousing heartfelt thanks for being a good father etc. and with the kids around, I didn’t really want to serenade the crown about “humps” and “dumps”.

7/11, Bombay Blasts....Again

2006-07-11T21:11:00.000-05:00

8 blasts, 174 killed on the Western Railway Where millions commute to and fro everyday There was blood everywhere, mangled bodies strewn Rivers of blood supposedly flowed People running helter-skelter, chaos reigned supreme No one could be reached, over the phone When they were just trying to make their way home Arre yaar, what are they doing to my city? The 7:

The Homestead

2006-06-11T16:55:00.000-05:00

After a long hiatus, primarily on account of my indolence, I have returned to blogging. And especially when my faithful readers, er correction, I mean one solitary reader viz. my sister in Bombay, pleads with me to write, how can I possibly refrain? So here goes. The past few months have been a blur with relocation to what Firdaus’s would have referred to as the anti-paradise ,

For Nita.....Wherever you may choose to go

2006-04-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

With her warmth, love, compassion and generous heart She engulfs everyone who gets to know her She reaches out to those who need And stands up for the people she loves Not one, is oblivious to her giving deeds During good times, she’s close to celebrate And closer when times are hard Knowing Nita one can never lose She’s all heart, tis much is true So I presume, would have

Bollywood Jhatkas ans Matkas

2006-02-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

Our buddy Prabhakar sent out this hilarious parody of a Bollywood film song, which had me in splits and rolling on the floor.If any of you know this comedian or even know which movie this song is from, please let me know. Check out his expressions and his body movements. Will definately give Salman or Sharrukh a run for their money!Check out the video here, but be careful if you are at work. You

Death,'Born into Brothels' and the SOTU

2006-02-02T07:11:00.000-05:00

Last September, I had written about my neighbor Tom, who was dying of lung cancer and the doctors had decreed that he had about 90 odd days to live. Well, Tom died peacefully, in the comforts of his house, this past Saturday. He did not wish that his wife should witness him dying thereby banishing her from the bedroom, during his final living moments. As Pat, Tom’s wife, tearfully recounted

Bhai Log aur Ek Behenji

2006-01-31T14:11:00.000-05:00

Five of my favourite bloggers, Anand, Dilip, Shivam, Uma and Vikrum have started a new blog called ‘How the Other Half Lives’ which as the About section of the blogs details will illuminate the trials about the lives of the have-nots of our society. This is a small paragraph from the introduction of the blog The vast number of homeless immigrants who pour into India’s metropolises every

FPGEE

2006-01-27T06:55:00.000-05:00

We had a great piece of news delivered to us yesterday. No, the stork ain’t coming visiting again. And no, we didn’t win the Mega Million lottery ticket, although it certainly feels like it. My better half Seema passed the first out of many exams towards becoming a licensed Pharmacist in the US of A. This exam is the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Exam (FPGEE) which is conducted by the

Freakonomics

2006-01-25T21:52:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading this amazing book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and have to admit that it was quite enlightening. Never had I thought about diverse associations like they have made in the book like abortion and crime rates, a person’s name and their social standing, the actual recidivism of the Ku Kluk Klan when compared to the environment of fear and hatred that they

Polly Squeals and Slim Shady Kneels

2006-01-24T17:16:00.000-05:00

Check out this story of how a pet parrot squealed on a guys girlfriend, thereby getting them separated. Apparently the girlfriend, Suzy, was cheating on this guy (Chris) and the parrot (Ziggy) picks up the boyfriends (Gary) name and kept repeating it over and over again. Not only did the girlfriend get shown the door, but Ziggy the parrot had to go too, since he couldn’t stop repeating the lover

Moving On

2006-01-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

On Jan 18th, 2006, at 5:49 PM, I tendered my resignation with my current employer, and have accepted an offer with a consulting behemoth, in hopes of a better future and enhancing my career opportunities. Despite looking ahead, towards a hopefully better future, I cannot but feel melancholic about my departure with the current employer. For the past 10 years, for better or worse, I have

Goodbye, Vinod Podar

2006-01-18T13:37:00.000-05:00

Vinod always, is the life of the party. Vinod always, has been the facilitator of good times. With his quick wit, corny PJ’s and ready smile, he ensured that people around him had a good time, no matter however drab the party, outing or social gathering might be. Vinod is a catalyst, for laughter, mirth and a general feeling of bonhomie that leaves you with the feeling that all’s well with the

Blast from the past

2006-01-15T17:11:00.000-05:00

Reminiscing about days gone by, I often think about my childhood days in Bombay, playing cricket and generally raising innocuous hell in the by lanes of the suburbia. Thinking about those days, my thoughts unfailingly revert to the steady stream of hawkers and vendors who would frequent our society buildings to ply their wares. Now having lived outside India for a long period of time, I no

Sick Bastard

2006-01-09T07:28:00.000-05:00

This just nauseated me, when I read it this morning.Check out the entire article from Mid-day here. Monster, indeed.

Adieu to 05

2005-12-31T06:47:00.000-05:00

Another year draws to a close, and as human, logical creatures and all, we keep track of events and milestones by time, in years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Its around 5 AM in the morning and the house is still as I type these words on my laptop. Today evening I will fritter away the remaining moments of 2005 in a drunken stupor, boogying with Seema and close friends into the wee

The curse of "Vani"

2005-12-20T06:42:00.000-05:00

Five women from the same family in Pakistan's Punjab province have refused to be "united" with their prospective husbands as ordered by tribal elders. The village council has told them to "honour" 1996 childhood marriages, when the youngest of them was just five. Elders ordered the marriages to resolve a feud between the girls' family and a rival one - a practice now outlawed. The

Goodbye Saurav Ganguly

2005-12-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

Having been axed from the third India-SL test matches, looks like it’s the end of the road for Ganguly. Though his performance in the Delhi test match was nothing much to write about, he performed consistently in both the innings. I would rather not go into the performance and cricketing reasons for Ganguly’s exclusion from the team, since I am not qualified enough to comment. Far from being

To be Big B

2005-12-12T21:13:00.000-05:00

Mere paas aao mere doston, ek kissa sunao. Oh Big B….a billion rupee Bollywood industry has been rendered paralyzed and an entire nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo hoo hoo. What you eat, when you pee, what you see, what you don’t see, the tweety bird flannel pajamas that you wear all make front page news in the main stream media. In homes across India the religious light lamps,

Word AIDS Day

2005-12-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

Today being World AIDS Day and everything , and 40 million diagnosed with HIV, I thought this article was pertinent. Check out this moving story of a courageous HIV survivor Kousalya, in rediff here. VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican newspaper said on Tuesday that homosexuality risked "destabilizing people and society," had no social or moral value and could never match the

No God

2005-11-30T06:17:00.000-05:00

Last week, being a short work week, I spent time at home, mostly with the little guy since Seema was busy with her Pharmacy license exam coming up on the 3rd Dec. The week was mostly uneventful, spent attending to the capricious whims of a two-year old. And a little bit of post T-giving shopping, mostly stuff for the kid, and reading. Lying on my bedside ‘Books to Read’ list were Brysons ‘A

Enroute to Godhead

2005-11-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

Reported in the Telegraph:Pilgrims flock to see 'Buddha boy' said to have fasted six months Thousands of pilgrims are pouring into the dense jungle of southern Nepal to worship a 15-year-old boy who has been hailed as a new Buddha. Devotees claim that Ram Bomjon, who is silently meditating beneath a tree, has not eaten or drunk anything since he sat down at his

Crash (2005)

2005-11-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

Watched this amazing movie ‘Crash’, a few weeks ago and was meaning to write about it, but well, not much spare time these days, they are a tic-tocking. As ShoeFiend has lamented so eloquently in one of her recent article about the paucity of time in our lives these days. But I digress. Excellent movie which tells stories about a black detective (Don Cheadle) and his Hispanic partner/

Run, run the ants are coming

2005-11-15T20:33:00.000-05:00

KOLKATA (Reuters) - A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in Kolkata lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said on Tuesday.Check out the entire story here.I'm gonna jump everytime I see an ant cross my path!!! What kind of hospital is this, anyway?

Killing a baby

2005-11-13T09:19:00.000-05:00

Can you believe that such monsters are allowed to become parents? CNN reports.A 4-month-old girl died when her inebriated mother fell asleep on top of her while breast-feeding, prosecutors said. Lorinda Hawkins told police she fell asleep about 15 minutes after she started breast-feeding the baby February 23 because of her intoxication, a criminal complaint said. When she woke up about an hour

Keeping Cox Zipped in

2005-11-12T16:47:00.000-05:00

The Michigan political landscape has been abuzz with the State Attorney General Mike Cox, admitting to an extra marital affair in a much publicized news conference. This revelation came after a protracted battle with his arch nemesis Geoffrey Fieger, a big-time Southfield, Michigan lawyer. Fieger, apparently threatened to out Cox's extra-marital affair, in an attempt to get Cox to drop charges

"Sid"e Stories - Nov 2005

2005-11-08T07:50:00.000-05:00

Its been long time since I’ve written about our sonny boy Sidharth. At 27 months, it seems like now how much more of this do we have to go through. The tough years, they say, are only just beginning!!! Argggggg…..Somehow, now we fully appreciate the adage “Terrible Two’s”, is not just something that that fledging parents have coined for literary gratification. It’s a rite of passage, into

Running a Marathon...well, half a Marathon

2005-11-03T05:32:00.000-05:00

On Oct 23rd I ran the half-marathon in the Detroit Marathon, in aid of the charity organization ASHA, which does yeoman’s work for underprivileged children in India. ASHA raises donations by facilitating several sports/cultural/social events, all around the world and the entire staff of ASHA workers is made up of volunteers, hence no administrative overheads. These volunteers, mostly students,

Can't even wish everyone...Happy Diwali

2005-10-30T05:07:00.000-05:00

Cus some 100 odd families had a much more sense of loss. They were anything but happy, anything but festive. We grieve, for those who lost their lives, near and dear ones, in the Delhi bomb blasts.When will this madness end? This Diwali, for those affected, will be far from happy. I'm sorry, for your loss.

Are you the marrying kind?

2005-10-10T16:30:00.000-05:00

Rene Zelleweger’s lasted about five months. Karishma Kapoors a little more than a year. Tom-Nicole made it work for about 10 years, before calling it quits. Rekha tried and failed at it and Sanjay-Menaka Gandhi allegedly showed strains in theirs. Charles-Diana, Jack Welsh, Brad-Jen and Rupert Murdoch and several others all underwent a public spectacle, taking thousands of lines of print space

Nature's Fury...Again

2005-10-09T06:33:00.000-05:00

I am deeply disturbed to read reports about the 550 odd and 19,000 dead in Kashmir and Pakistan, because of the earthquake.What's with this sudden spate of natural disasters across the world? Just wondering.

You may NOT kiss the bride

2005-09-22T05:33:00.000-05:00

If this report is to be believed, an Israili couple couple was fined 1,000 rupees after an Indian court found them guilty of obscenity for kissing during their marriage ceremony in Pushkar, Rajasthan.Ladoo, president of some kind of organization of Hindu Priests, believes kissing leads to cultural pollution. I wonder, whoever takes someone named Ladoo seriously?Now for some Husband 101 lessons.

Fake Hurricane Katrina...Coming in

2005-09-20T19:57:00.000-05:00

Check out some cool pics (courtsey, my buddy Sahoo) of Hurricane Katrina coming in. Real neat.Update: Apparently these pictures are fake, thanks to the tip from Quizman. Urban legends has the description here. Bakra time, I mean I was the Bakra here. These are beautiful pictures, nonetheless. Thanks to everone for the nice comments.

Odds and Ends

2005-09-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

Our Systems Support guys had to rebuild the image on my laptop and now all my hardisk documents are gone. Vamoos, kaput, Poof...gone. Of course they have a backup, and restoring it will take a day, but well, here I am, my half finished blog article disappeared from my now virgin laptop. So I’ll just ramble on about mostly inane stuff, with no apparent continuity as I flit between topics

Tipping Point

2005-09-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

I love my tall ‘chai tea lattes’ at our local Starbucks and their oversized, comfy, deep sofa chairs. So every time I head over to my nearby ‘vice-den’, coffee place for my caffeine fix, my soul is deeply anguished over the now customary ‘To tip or not’. They have tip jars, strategically placed, near the cash register, for you to drop your change, after you’ve paid for your beverage. To make

90 days to live

2005-09-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

Our neighbor Tom is dying, of lung cancer. He has been battling it for a few years now, but apparently the doctors have told him that he has just about 3 months to live. Three months, 90 days, approximately 2160 hours I don’t know Tom very well, just the occasional hello when we pass each other on the street or the wave out when he sometimes sits out on his porch, taking in a

Football Frenzy

2005-09-08T20:07:00.000-05:00

Ta Na Na Na Naaaaaa…That’s the sound of the NFL's Monday Night Football signature tune blaring on ABC at the start of the football fever. The official season begins today, with the kickoff game between Super bowl Champions the New England Patriots and Oakland Raiders. The game will be on ABC at 8 PM EST, and I can’t wait for the football season to begin. The pre-game and half-time show is

Neil Armstrong on the moon

2005-09-08T07:43:00.000-05:00

I thought this was funny.....

Call center blues

2005-09-07T19:25:00.000-05:00

According to this article in the Mumbai MirrorI deal with those a**holes in America, I live like them too," says 19-year-old BPO exec Yogesh Rautela, 10 months into the job. His credit cards are stretched, his money is spent on “boozing, partying, discos”, he doesn't believe in saving. Somewhere, an FMCG or apparel-maker's Marketing Manager is jumping for joy. Colleges, coffee shops or the

Halliburton to the rescue...again

2005-09-06T19:03:00.000-05:00

Someone, and I don’t remember which blogger it was, while berating the inadequacies of disaster relief for Katrina, mentioned, maybe partly in jest, that Cheney might help Halliburton get the rebuilding contract for New Orleans. How cynical can one get, I remember thinking to myself. This precisely has what has happened now (tip from MWC, thanks V) with Kellogg, Brown & Moore getting a $500

Review: Million Dollar Baby (2004)

2005-09-06T18:39:00.000-05:00

Million Dollar Baby (2004) Watched Clint Eastwood’s awesome movie ‘Million Dollar Baby’ last week and was spellbound and deeply contemplative as the movie ended. A beautifully directed movie, a trite clichéd, but well done nevertheless, along the lines of the greatness of ‘Shawshank Redemption’, but without as many characters. Beautifully acted, dialogues that are really deep and a well

Sania Mirza in the fourth round

2005-09-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

Sania made it past Maria Bartoli and stormed into the fourth round to play Maria Sharapova, the current heartthrob of women’s tennis. On Friday, I watched Sania’s game, whenever the network would cut to the women’s game, while telecasting the men’s matches. Whatever I saw of Sania’s game, I liked. Powerful serves, must faster than Ramesh Krishnan’s, excellent ground strokes, a weak backhand but

Hurricane Katrina comes calling...Please spare a thought for the victims.

2005-09-01T21:08:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Katrina wrought devastation in New Orleans, Louisiana and now hundreds, possibly thousands of lives are lost because of this calamity. One feels for the sufferings of those residents of N’warlenes (al it’s referred to locally) and all those people stuck in this city and couldn’t get out. It is simply a travesty and the chaos unfolds as days pass by. Personally, I have many fond

Sania Mirza and the Marathi Manus

2005-09-01T20:52:00.000-05:00

Rediff.com reports:Sania Mirza continued her march at the US Open, scoring a hard-fought victory over Maria Elena Camerin of Italy in the second round of the women's singles on Armstrong court on Wednesday.The 42nd-ranked India ace won 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 and set up a third round meeting with 43rd-ranked 20-year-old Marion Bartoli of France.I'm eagerly awaiting to watch Sania Mirza in action, on USA

Blog Day

2005-08-31T19:34:00.000-05:00

This being Blog Day and all let me do my bit and recommend five blogs that have captivated me in the recent past Shoefiend: A witty, intelligient advertising newbie in London who writes about all kinda crap . Sujatha: Hell, she's a DJ in Bangalore, and doesnt play Britney Spears or Richard Marx or Backstreet Boys on the radio. Is she for real? Sakshi: Don't quite dig the doggie

US Bloggers Meet

2005-08-29T16:56:00.000-05:00

They are meeting in droves all across the globe, the bloggers i.e. Bloggers are meeting in Bombay , Chennai , Bangalore , Calcutta , Delhi , London and every other imaginable place where two or more bloggers coexist. Hell, even pre-pubescent Porki’s in SriPerambadur have met over ‘kapi’ to discuss “free-market” fallouts and juxtaposition of the new world order in which Salman Khan is bereft of

Eggs, Sperms and a New Arrival

2005-08-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

On my way to work this week, listening to NPR, these stories intrigued me greatly. According to one report:Some fertility centers are now offering egg freezing to young women who want to put off motherhood. Because of uncertainties surrounding the procedure, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends against it. This report was how some women preferred to defer

This just in...I need Cialis,er, I think

2005-08-25T11:51:00.000-05:00

I received this spam comment to one of my article today morning I'm waching blogs all day long and I found yours one which is really nice:) buy cialis (links to a CIALIS peddling site) What the…..? Who now has been watching my “blog”, and all day while they are at it, and watching it enough to discern that I need to buy Cialis? Wow. That immediately raised a few

Review: Sehar, India's answer to Untouchables

2005-08-22T20:11:00.000-05:00

Watched the excellent movie ‘Sehar’ over the past weekend and also the eminently forgettable Oliver Stones epic ‘Alexander’. Bad news first, about ‘Alexander’ the only recommendation that I can offer is ‘Please don’t waste your time’, unless you are a die hard Angelina Jolie fan like me or unlike me, a die hard Colin Farrell or Oliver Stone fan. Either way it’s not worth your time, so lets just

Home

2005-08-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

ET had us at ‘ET go home’, with a forlorn look on his face, pointing towards the sky with his magic-tipped finger. Or when Scarlet O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind’ realizes at the height of chaos of the American Civil war that what she really wants to do is to go home to her beloved home Tara. At end of the novel when Melanie lays dieing, she really wants to go ‘Home’, Home to Rhett Butler and

Travails of the Fresh off the Boat (FOB) Desi

2005-08-16T04:41:00.000-05:00

Long has the desi FOB been the butt of 7-11, Gandhi, Apu and Quickie Mart and horrendous accent jokes. Needless to say, most of them, ahem, are true. From the minute the unsuspecting desi FOB walks into Burger King and places an order for well, ’One Burger King Please’, his days in “Amreeka” are doomed forever as hilarious punch lines or the sad caricature that he is made out to be. Most

Dadda Donkey

2005-08-13T07:41:00.000-05:00

Seemz while giving Sidharth his morning bath was singing him a song'Inky Pinky Ponky,Father had a donkey,Donkey died, father cried,Inky Pinky Ponky'During this song (or maybe just to make his mother stop singing) Sidharth asked his mother for DaddaShe responded "Dadda jogging, Dadda jogging"Hoping that he had added a new word "jogging" to his vocabulary, Seemz quizzed him"So where is

Copyright Laws

2005-08-13T05:24:00.000-05:00

A colleague of mine was asking me about the P2P site Limewire and if there was software out there to convert MP3’s to WAV formats. Thus we began discussing about software for converting from one format to another and iPod's formats and bit Torrents and the like. Just then someone who we work with passed by and asked us what we had been discussing so intensely. Mentioning “Limewire” immediately

Thank You...Uma

2005-08-12T05:02:00.000-05:00

Uma, who writes and maintains an excptional blog requests help from readers for recommendations on Childrens books for a NGO. All that's well and good, and the deluge of response that followed this request was stupendous.The best part of her request is that she has taken the time and effort to thank and acknowledge everyone who responded to her article, some 50 odd people. Nuggets on display, of

The Ghost of Netscape

2005-08-10T19:24:00.000-05:00

This article, by Rich Kaarlgard, appeared in the WSJ yesterday. Normally I do not like to cut and paste newspaper articles, but this one brought back lots of old memories. Does anyone remember the internet gold rush days ? What was that Greenspan quipped, ah yes, irrational exuberance. Now I find myself nodding my head reading about the amazing IPO ride of Baidu.com. Seems like Groundhog Day.

Downfall (Untergang, Der)

2005-08-08T21:27:00.000-05:00

We watched this amazing German movie over the weekend and have to rate this as amongst the best WWII movies right up there with The Longest Day, Schindlers List and Battleship Potemkin. This movie recounts the last days of the Nazi Reich and Hitler’s last days spent bunkered down in Berlin, bouncing between bouts of rage, loathing, loneliness and depression. The story is narrated from the

A Prayer for Africa

2005-08-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

Africa, the cradle of civilization, the Dark Continent, where homo sapiens as we know today are supposed to have originated to occupy the far recesses of earth, is in dire straits today. Famines, riots, starvation, floods, droughts, locusts, ethnic cleansing has left her as the worlds begging bowl, wrought with death and depression. Yet the world doesn’t seem to either notice or care much.

A Trip to Mackinac Island

2005-08-02T19:20:00.000-05:00

Over the past weekend we tarvelled north to Mackinac Island, located between Michigan and Upper Penninsula. We spent Friday night at a city south of Mackinac called Gaylord. On Saturday morning we drove to the island.The Mackinac Bridge, as viewed from the ferry to the island. This bridge is a suspension bridge, supposed to be the longest suspension bridge, and stands over the confluence of Lake

Terrible Two's

2005-07-29T11:54:00.000-05:00

We thought terrible two’s was just an adage used by indolent parents, who can’t reign in their wayward offspring’s while they wrought misery and havoc on poor sods around them. Well, now we have become those parents. It’s like our son was somehow waiting for that magical date when he’d turn two, which happened on 17th July ,and after that, voila, it’s like now everything goes. From a clueless,

Chelsea Clinton Betrothed......…Well, Almost

2005-07-28T12:36:00.000-05:00

Water, water everywhere. In Mumbai, India i.e. Well here are some funny stories for some respite from the deluge for the Mumbai readers and my "phamily" members. Um...wait a minute, my "phamily" members from Mumbai are my only readers. Anyway Enjoy. If Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor from Kenya had his way, he’d be snogging Chelsea Clinton right about now. However his offer was not

Dead Poets Society

2005-07-26T20:55:00.000-05:00

Mid-day reports, a group of poets from UP got invited to Bombay for poetry reading gathering and got treated like dirt by the organizers. At the end of their stay they were ready to kill the organizers, literally. Whoever said poets were soft, genteel souls !!! Check out the entire story here. Where checking out the recently launched ‘Mumbai Mirror’ online articles, I nearly feel out of

Make a Life....Please

2005-07-25T21:09:00.000-05:00

Angelina Jolie, Sushmita Sen, Sen John McCain and Supreme Court nominee Justice John Roberts Jr are my personal heroes. Not because of their politics and views or they are beautiful, talented and famous. All of them have adopted children, some of them in partnerships with their spouses and some as single parents. Adoption, the single most selfless act that one can ever be a part of. Acts which

Dark Clouds are Gathering

2005-07-24T10:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday while driving back from the dentist’s office, I was feeling rather glum, since my wisdom tooth extraction is imminent and the doctor will be doing the extractions of the three molars on 4th Aug, under full anesthesia. This is the first time I will be under general anesthesia, and the thought of getting knocked out has always petrified me. Hey, things can really go wrong and what if I

What If's

2005-07-22T05:50:00.000-05:00

What if There was no concept of money ? Would you still have “free” stuff? Any man who forced himself involuntarily on a woman dies immediately after the act ? Would the number of widows increase overnight ? The entire world was ruled by just one monarch, with divine powers andsuperhuman qualities ? Would his/her

Picnic at Stoney Creek

2005-07-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

After weeks of deliberations and careful planning and re-planning, we hosted the birthday party for Sidharth at Stony Creek Metro Park, a beautiful park not too far from our house. On his birthday Sidharth woke up to the sight of his over zealous parents recite a horrendous off-key rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to you’, and his mood was all downhill thereafter. We had invited about 15 of our

Our baby turns two

2005-07-17T06:02:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday Precious. Its hard to believe that two years ago we got you as this tiny little bundle, so quiet and so serene. And now you drive your mother crazy!!! Thank you, for all the wonderful moments that has bought your mother and me unmitigated joy and happiness. We look forward to these moments for the rest of our lives. Our wish for Sidharth, this excellent song by Lee Ann

Juvenile Sex and Salman Khan

2005-07-14T11:09:00.000-05:00

According to an article titled “Naughty aunty’s lover” in Mid-Day “It was a mistake. Why do you want to reopen that chapter?” said 21-year-old Abrar Khatri. On Tuesday, a sessions court sentenced Persis William (40) to five years in jail for kidnapping Khatri and having sex with him in November 2000, when he was a minor.But Khatri told Mid Day yesterday that he was unaware of the court’s

Statutory Warning: Too Much Info on blogs

2005-07-13T20:32:00.000-05:00

According to this article on CNN, apparently bloggers are putting too much personal data on their blogs which may come back to bite them in the rear in the long run. Well obviously titillation and frivolous beats serious, impersonal rhetoric ranting any day. Else how does one explain the immense popularity of blogs like The Wonkette and The Compulsive Confessor when compared to contemplative and

And Prosperity for All

2005-07-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

Lagaan of the modern day India – Imagine this, the local village hero Bhuvan SMS’s the popular village belle Rukmini, to meet him at the local watering hole, which Rukmini retrieves on her Blackberry handheld while listening to the Podcast of Ajmeri Baba’s daily mystic musings, at the local health spa and cycling on the Nordi-Trac furiously while the creepy Romeo in the cycling row behind her is

Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan

2005-07-10T21:16:00.000-05:00

Its not unusual for us to have our umbilical cords severed from our place of birth, and despite the best of standards of living anywhere in the world, the heart really calls just one place home, the place where you grow up. This may or may not be true for a lot of you, but definitely true for me, a hard core Bombayite. Having spent a good part of my childhood, schooling, and college years in

Comfortably Numb

2005-07-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

I cannot even count the number of times this Pink Floyd song from ‘The Wall’ would have played on my Walkman during my probation days in TCS, Madras. I just loved to hear Roger Waters wail and Dave Gilmour get the guitar to cry, hours on end. ‘The child is grown, the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb’. Those were the days when the rookies like me were thrown in to do the 16 hours

Hazaaron Khwaishai Aisee

2005-06-29T04:56:00.000-05:00

hazaaroN KHwahishaiN 'eisee ke har KHwahish pe dam niklebohot nikle mere armaaN lekin phir bhee kam nikle Mirza Ghalib Watched this movie over the last weekend and the effects are still percolating in my mind as one of the best Hindi movies I’ve ever watched. Yeah, yeah, yeah it’s the arty farty types

Sidharth Tidbits

2005-06-26T10:13:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to paraphrase Sidharth’s antics over the past few weeks, since it’s been a while since I have written anything about him, despite him taking up most of my free time. He is by now quite well settled at the day care and is now spouting his friend’s names regularly when he misses them over the weekends and holidays. Names like Jake, Jessica and Kamini have become a regular feature of his

We are the World, We are the Children

2005-06-18T20:23:00.000-05:00

Children are being imported into UK and beaten to death as reported by the BBC here. “Children are being trafficked into the UK from Africa and used for human sacrifices, a confidential report for the Metropolitan Police suggests.” Its surprising how children tragically are usually the victims for our insecurities and inner demons. This aspect of human psychology never ever ceases

Asexual and Proud

2005-06-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks to V, one of the members from our Book Club who forwarded this interesting article from salon.com to us on asexuals. Check out the entire article here, but you may have to get a free pass to view an advertisement to get to the article. According to the article “A growing number of so-called asexuals insist that their indifference toward sex isn't a pathology, but an "orientation" like

The King is dead, Long live the King

2005-06-14T22:02:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 1984 I happened to watch Michael Jackson do his moonwalk on TV and that performance was so graceful and powerful that I remember not blinking during the entire performance. It was a performance the likes of which I had never seen any entertainer perform, and immediately I was hooked onto the Michael Jackson bandwagon. Of course what happened afterwards with “Thriller” and

Lemony Snicket's: A series of Unfortunate Events

2005-06-13T19:52:00.000-05:00

Jim Carrey is a genius. On a lazy, cloudy Sunday interspersed with light drizzles and after a sumptuous and delectable lunch, I settled down to watch ‘Lemony Snickets: A series of unfortunate events’, starring Jim Carrey. And how well was it worth my time. At the onset of this article let me warn you that being a life long die-hard Jim Carrey fan, any critique offered on Jim Carrey will be

BOL Meet – 5th June 2005

2005-06-07T15:45:00.000-05:00

The second Books On Latte (BOL) meeting took place on 5th June at 4:00 PM and the august gathering comprised of the following luminaries MidWestChic (MWC), Bored, AR Fan (ARF), Brat and yours truly (I have not yet asked my BOL mates if I could use their names in my blogs, hence their alter-ego monikers). Three of the club members could not make it because of other pressing matters or in some case

Will you remember ?

2005-06-06T20:54:00.000-05:00

For Sidharth and my parents.Inspired by Anshul's Time Really Flies post All these years growing upWhen you have Mama and DadaAt your every beck and callLittle sniffles agonized overAnd your diet being discussed forever With every new truant you playedOh, how our day is madeWhen you show us Airplanes aboveWe crane our necksAs if a new discovery, you have made

Trading Spaces

2005-06-01T20:20:00.000-05:00

What’s the statute of use of personal spaces while confined to claustrophobic steel traps and what could really be considered impropriety and transgressions of ones own personal space? These were the thoughts that were running in my head when I boarded a flight for Houston from Detroit Metro on business. There was this decent middle aged, but rather portly, gentleman sitting next to me on the

Raincoat

2005-05-30T20:11:00.000-05:00

Watched Raincoat over the holiday weekend and it seems that Indian cinema is finally coming of age. Over the past few years, despite the proliferation of trash by Bollywood, there have been influx of some quality movies by some new directors. Raincoat is one such movie, which does not resort to humongous sets for song/dance routines nor slapstick comedians hamming away or Ms. Sherawat displaying

2005-05-28T07:15:00.000-05:00

Sidharth...test image in BloggerBot...for Anshul

Bhanu Kamdar

2005-05-28T06:28:00.000-05:00

A few days ago my mind wandered off to my good ole days, when MTV and cable TV were still distant pipe dreams and PC’s and the internet, at least in India, were non-existent. What kept us busy during hot summer months was cricket and haranguing our unsuspecting neighbors. During one of those summer months in the mid or late 70’s we participated actively in a civic Municipal election in Bombay. We

Cool Spelling Bee's

2005-05-27T05:57:00.000-05:00

Check out the article in CNN on Spelling Bee’s here It's never been as cool to be a spelling bee geek as now. Once considered a slightly odd sub-culture of American life, the contests where school children compete to spell words most kids don't understand are now popping up in movies,

Sunil Dutt

2005-05-26T08:58:00.000-05:00

Sunil Dutt actor-minister passed away on Wednesday May 25th in Bombay, India of a heart attack. He was 75 and represented my constituency in Bombay as a Lok Sabha MP. Though I am not a big fan of Sunil Dutt movies, the role that I will always remember him by will be ‘Bhola’ in Padosan, one of India’s best made original comedy film. Despite such stalwarts like Mehmood, Om Prakash and Kishore Kumar

Richard Bach

2005-05-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

One of our erudite Book Club, which BTW has finally been christened as ‘BooksOnLatte’ (BOL), members has prompted me to think about quotations from books that I read. Richard Back is one of the favorite all time authors of mine with books like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Illusions, The Messiah amongst the most popular ones. There are some of the quotes from the books that I go back to from time

Sideways

2005-05-24T16:28:00.000-05:00

Watched the movie Sideways over the weekend and was just wowed by this little gem of a movie. Not the greatest of movies that I have ever watched, but a good movie nevertheless. Directed by Alexander Payne of Elections and ‘About Schmidt’ fame, this movie tells a story about losers, wine and making lemonade when life serves you limes. The performances by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church are

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

2005-05-23T16:41:00.000-05:00

Last week the Detroit Pistons beat the Indiana Pacers in a grueling 6 game series, which was a closely fought series. The star of the Pacers, Reggie Miller, had announced his retirement from professional basketball after 18 seasons with a single team. What was great about game 6 was not the fact that Detroit won, but at the end of the game when defeat for the Pacers was imminent, Coach Larry

Potty Training

2005-05-15T07:57:00.000-05:00

Well let’s see what Sidharths antics were for the past week. As I sit here typing, he his dragging the duvet cover of our sofa across the kitchen floor. And his mother is screaming, while I choose to ignore her berating. Now the doormat is getting mauled as I compose this blog. My eyes are steadfast glued to my PC. With each passing day his fascination for the toilet seems to be ascending

The King's Chariot

2005-05-09T17:06:00.000-05:00

After 50 years the Rolls-Royce is back in India as reported by the BBC here The Phantom was reportedly purchased by Yohan Poonawalla for almost $1 million dollars or approximately Rs. 4 crores. Unfathomable, at least to my middle-class frugal senses. This morning on the way to work, I happened to listen to an interview with this Poonawalla guy on the BBC news service. The interviewer was

Gas Leakage

2005-05-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday we were all tucked in and blissfully counting our z’s at around 11:00 PM, when the phone rang, causing Seemz to jump from the bed to answer the phone call. Her friend on the call was frantic about some plane crash in our area and that residents in Rochester Hills were evacuating their homes by the droves fearing a terrorist attack. My skeptical nature lead me to switch on the TV and

Badminton

2005-05-07T08:11:00.000-05:00

Recently I have taken up playing badminton over the weekends with some friends and its suits-me-just-fine none too heart thumping kind of strenuous games. The crowd that shows up is a good mix of Indians, Chinese and Koreans and it’s mostly doubles that we play, with everybody getting to rotate their partners and opponents pretty regularly. Being extremely sports-crazy, though I do not excel at

Fruity King

2005-05-04T18:52:00.000-05:00

Delectable, mouth watering ripe golden mangos are all that occupy my mind these days and more so on a bright sunny summer day. I miss a lot of things about India, but every summer despite the oppressive heat, the scarcity of water and the humidity of India my thoughts invariably turn to the king of all fruits – the mango. Oh how I miss the sweet, syrup’s mango pulps that could be consumed with

Why it Matters

2005-04-24T16:32:00.000-05:00

India lost the one-day cricket series to Pakistan miserably and an exasperated nation groans and throws its arms up and casts its eyes skyward yet again, for some cricketing messiah to come along and lead us to our cricketing salvation. This situation with Indian cricket has for long been like ‘Groundhog Day’, different day just the same old shit. How many times do we have to suffer the

Food for Thought

2005-04-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

Check out this bizarre story about cannibalism from Germany here. Apparently this guy had a fetish for human flesh and he advertised for someone to “slaughter and eat” and what is even more astonishing that some idiot responded to the ad, and was killed and eaten by Germany’s very own Hannibal Lector. Before killing him, the first night the cannibal cut off the victim’s penis and fried it for

Distinguish Yourself

2005-04-21T20:38:00.000-05:00

Check this series out on Leadership and ‘How to Distinguish yourself’ by Rajesh Setty here. Rajesh Setty is the President and CEO of CIGNEX a software services company and author of the book ‘Beyond Code’. In this series titled ‘Distinguish Yourself’, he has laid out different ways to achieve your objectives in 20 pithy steps, and some of his doctrines are relevant to any contemporary

Go Light your bulb...Swades, We the People

2005-04-19T20:31:00.000-05:00

We watched Ashutosh Gowarikar’s movie Swades over the course of the past weekend and both Seemz and myself were sufficiently impressed with the storyline, narration, technical quality and the ensemble cast of the movie. Definitely a refreshing good variant story compared to the regular run of the mill trash being proliferated by Bollywood these days And for once, the King of Hamming and

Sleeping with the Fishes

2005-04-18T20:53:00.000-05:00

Sidharth sometimes gets up screaming and bawling in the middle of night, maybe because its is too hot/cold for him or on account of a nightmare or for some unimaginable reason that I care to comprehend, at 2 or 3 AM in the morning. But we sure do hear him wail and he lets us know in no uncertain terms that he is not happy. This does not happen often, but the nights that he does get up, I can

Vocabulary

2005-04-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

Well, Sidharth has moved well beyond his go-go-gaga lexicon and moved into actual word formation, but discerning his language takes a bit of work. We have compiled a list of words that he uses regularly and what we think he means by those words. Sometimes we win and other times we lose and it takes a while to figure out what he’s trying to convey. Here is his current verbal glossary: Chee

Murphys Law's for IT

2005-04-15T06:13:00.000-05:00

I came across this on one of the IT blog's and though that it was excellent. These are Murphy's law for IT by Tim Bryce. INTRODUCTION Bryce's Laws on IRM was preceded by Murphy's Laws which originated in the 1940's from the American military. The axiom, "If anything can go wrong it will," is perhaps the best known law attributed to Murphy. The following is a list of "Murphy's Laws" pertaining

The Office

2005-04-13T18:42:00.000-05:00

I need my 30 minutes of ‘suspension of belief’ dose every day, be it in the form of Yahoo Bridge or Seinfeld reruns or Jeopardy ‘Tournament of Champions’. Can’t wait for Ken Jennings, the undisputed reigning monarch of Jeopardy with total earnings of approx. $2.5 million on Jeopardy, to get back into the tournament. Last week while flipping channels, I happened to stumble upon the new NBC