Balance Sheet 2007

Hmmm....

The earth dutifully finished another round of its infinitesimal jog around the sun. Being present on the completion of 21 such rounds and witnessing the crazy celebrations for the change of the calendar, I try to look back the logs of 365 pages for 2007. Learnt a lot, suffered seriously sometimes, got into lot of dilemmas, made new friends and importantly gained few kgs. My breaking up in the quarters of 2007 is as follows.


Q1: Learnt basketball (not the pro way) just a few shoots (here and there) with 3 pointers and under baskets. Thanks to this game, I daily left my desk by 6 and was not a over enthusiastic IT employee. Started blogging; learnt a bit of the blogsphere, tortured the languages, went crazy. But found that blogging is really fruitful time pass. Got my degree and became and Engineer officially, but think I haven't justified my 4 years of college study. It seemed that I studied just to survive. May be that’s the aim of the education I suppose. Made a visit to Mumbai, the commercial capital of India. Met my school mates (just a guy and a gal). Slightly fainted in the buzzing crowd, visited the landmarks and made a point not to marry a Mumbaikar. The books: The Company of Women (Kush Singh), The Detective (Hailey), JackDaws (Ken Follet). Was an enjoyable quarter.

Q2: Started getting sucked into office work, continued playing basketball, blogging. Out of peer pressure completed Sun Java Certification in Java Programming (used the question bank of course). Read The Hobbit and the epic Lord of the Rings and was really impressed by Tolkein. Such a large world inside a small brain. Few colleagues (friends actually) departed. This was the most laminar quarter.

Q3: This quarter started with the maddening release of the last part of the Harry Potter Series and buying of my first camera mobile (Sony K550i). Waited around 6 hours, chased bicycles and vans awaiting my copy of the book. Finished the story with the known end. I could have saved Rs.600 if I had waited few days more for the e book(silly me!). Faced my first appraisal at work with pretty ease. Started worrying about my relatively faster years. Half heartedly decided to write CAT (the most advertised and hyped exam in INDIA) and joined a test series. Faced problems at work due to my punctual exit at office. Completed 22 units of life and oracle introduction exam on the successive days. Began to build a hope and castles in air with CAT in mind (though suffered in the test series). Books: Bourne Identity (a real thriller), Bourne Ultimatum. Really the most decisive quarter.

Q4: Problems due to my punctuality at office persisted. Wrote the Common Admission Test on the D day as they call. After checking the answer keys, my hope still continued to flicker. Applied for many B schools (they rob us with the application fees). Forgot all about friends, blogging, time pass etc. Finished the Bourne Series. Watched a lot of DVDs. Started reading books at greater frequency. The highlighting point was the initiative of morning jog to reduce the nascent expanding belly. A quarter of performance.

BOMBAY TRAFFIC

SUNRISE

Taken at Kanyakumari , Tamil Nadu , India ( Southern most tip of India)

One more peg

Sitting by the window in the hall,
After a long time I witnessed the sun fall.
The day ended,
Though I didn't feel tired,
As I was fired.

With my past gone and present bleak,
I felt as if I was dropped from a peak.
So I started to think,
And I felt the need for a drink.

So I went for the vodka in the racks,
And for some ice to have it on the rocks.
Pouring out the colourless elixir,
I took the spirit as healing dose,
And found my spirits rose.

Thoughts of my lady came,
Alas she left me due to a fight,
But she used to say
'2 pegs are enough for a night'.
Now that she is here no more
For me to beg,
I said myself 'one more peg'.

Television was on,
And I browsed for sports first,
Which was the least worst.
To the dismay I saw my nation lose,
With the clips of fans shouting boos.
I kicked the near by keg,
And said myself 'one more peg'.

I forgave the team,
And changed the screen with remote beam.
A fair lady was talking,
With people behind her running and firing.
Shouts and screams were shown,
And the language for me was unknown.
The report ended showing a bleeding leg,
And I said myself 'one more peg'.

Switching off the Tv and keeping the remote,
My eyes caught a file,
Which was on the table for a long while.
The bills and report gave me a shiver,
As the doctor has diagnosed a cancer in my liver.
Thus for my health,
Again I said myself 'one more peg'.

Sorrows and memories were displaced,
As peg after peg came and replaced.
A feeling came over my guilty,
And I was about to defy gravity.
But suddenly I coughed blood,
And fell into an abyss and drowned in a flood.

Trying to shout 'help'
I got up with sweat,
And my pajamas were wet.
The vodka twinkled besides my lady again,
And thus asked her in vain,'One more peg'!!!!

fist

My Logo

I was really bored with changing my profile pics in orkut. So I just thought why not make a ambigram for my name and i ended up doing a logo for my name which is also a ambigram. Try to identify the letters R( top most italicized), A(bottom of R), J(clearly visible at the bottom), E(the pic looks like E), S( remove the middle line of E ) H, ( remove the middle line of E and tilt ur head 90 degrees clockwise). Still if u dont get the letters ..... ....... ....... ......

Is this life?????????

I just was think about life and got this messy stuff made out of pics from google and with the help of paint. Really asking is this life????????????

My Tasty CHENNAI

We eat to live for sure. But as a Chennaiite I would surely like to live for eating. I can surely say that Chennai is a place where one can satisfy all his gastronomical desires. Featuring various type of people and classes, five star hotels to kaiyeandhi bhavans (road side food carts) and a wide range of cuisines Chennai is the place where anyone can satisfy both his/her palate and stomach. Though most of the items are inherited from various regions by the immigrants in Chennai, but gradually they had been changed and adopted to suit Chennai’s style. In the following lines I have tried to draw out my experiences and some features associated with the popular food items of Chennai.

Filter Kaapi:

The smell and taste of filter coffee definitely constitutes to a perfect morning in Chennai. Though coffee is mostly favoured in the morning time, chennaiites consume it whenever they feel like having it. Most of the Chennai homes (especially the Brahmin households) start their day with consuming coffee and reading newspaper. It may seem that people take coffee in the morning for digesting the daily news published. Some even go to hotel early in morning for just drinking coffee.

Of the many coffees that I had in my life, I cannot forget having coffee in an unknown Iyer’s home. I and my classmate were roaming around Arumbakkam randomly selecting some houses and conducting questionnaires on behalf of IITM. As a last house of the day we knocked into a independent home. A lady came out and we explained our purpose of the visit and she reluctantly agreed to take part in the survey. As we were carrying out the survey at the doorstep, the man of that house came home and asked us to come inside. He then called some female name and ordered coffee. I thought that the lady would bring in coffee, but to my surprise a beautiful good looking girl bought us standard filter kaapi in stainless steel tumbler. Realizing that my friend had began the questionnaire with the guy I just kept quiet sipping the coffee and looking at the girl. I couldn’t judge whether the coffee or the girl was nice. But I found that even after stepping out of the house the coffee was still in my taste buds rather than the face of the girl in my memory.

Barota:

I shall assume that there can be no person in Chennai who doesn’t know about barota. It is almost ubiquitously present in Chennai and one of the hot businesses to do in the city. One may say that Chennai has the highest number of barota hotels (barota-kadai as they fondly call in Tamil), and the count is increasing day by day with new hotel popping out in each streets. I think (my guess) the name ‘barota’ and the thing itself must have originated from Punjabi ‘barata/parata’. Barota is the most common and sought after breakfast/dinner among the locals and bachelor youths in Chennai and also with the other classes also going for it sometimes.

One just needs a lengthy room facing the road, few tables and stools, Cudappah stone and cooking fuel to start a barota shop. Most of the barota shops have their cooking area at the entrance of the shop so as to exhaust out the smoke to road and to advertise themselves. One can see a barota master (man who is quite a bit experienced in preparing and rolling out the dough) making out the raw barotas with speed and perfection and frying them over the hot stone. After a set of barotas are fried over, a stack of them is made and firmly cupped together so that they become chewable. The popular side dish for barota is a gravy named saalna and it has both veg and non-veg varieties and its preparation varies from place to places. Also chilly chutney or kurma can be used as a side dish. If idli-saambar was the favourite naastha item of the past, but at present its barota and saalna.

Idli-saambar:

For many decades idli-saambar was and still is the brand ambassador for South Indian / Tamilian cuisine. It has its magic spread from restaurants in the West to the kaiyeandhi bhavans in local Chennai. Most of the credit of spreading idli-saambar’s fame to worldwide goes to the Tamilian settlers around the world and Hotel Saravana Bhavan which has established its branches in U.K., U.S., Canada and in the gulf countries.

Simple in cooking and easy to eat, idli saambar is the staple morning breakfast in most of the households of Chennai. The common style of eating idli is too squash them into pieces then sink it in saambar and consume it. If the saambar available is limited then people just gently dip pieces of idli in saambar and take it. Alternatively idli can be taken with chutney, or molaga-podi or any spicy gravy. The famous places for idlis in Chennai is Ratna café in triplicane where they have the tradition of serving 2 idlis and 1 mug of saambar (saambar is made bit sweet by adding jaggery to it), and hotel Saravana bhavan where mini ghee idlis are a famous.

Bajji:

As the sun began to sets, the kadais in tea shops around Chennai begins to boil. Slices of vazhakka (kind of a banana), onion, potato and bread are soaked in watery flour (bajji maavu) and fried in the kadai to get red hot bajjis the favourite evening snack in Chennai the most popular being vazhakka bajji. Accompanied with chutney, bajji makes a nice time pass in the evenings. Most of the tea shops serve oily bajjis with which they give newspapers for taking the oil out of them. This style has even been referred to in a Tamil film. Supplements to the bajji are bonda, masalvadai, medhu vada and samosa which are also quiet famous among snacks.


There also other famous food items such as biryani, dosa, vadakari etc which I haven’t been able to describe.