Quo Vadis?

  How do you make a marriage work? I was asked something close to this recently and it made me think a little, I got my thoughts together and realised though it's not path breaking maybe it can be shared, so let's hit the post. Well there may be many answers to the above question but the most important word is work. It needs a lot of work and any slack will have its consequences and it needs both the parties of the marriage to work hard and sometimes even harder to make it work. Few tips to follow along the way: Acceptance: you married your spouse for who he/ she IS and not who he / she, you want to become. If this acceptance is not there; then it is going to be a very bumpy ride. Remember the spouse IS always the better half. Giving: giving and taking is business and has no business in marriage. In marriage its all about giving till it hurts without expecting anything in return and when it hurts give some more. Reconcile: fights in a marriage are expected however it is imperat...

If you are from Chennai and unless you are living under a rock you would have heard of the unfortunate suicide of a young school girl, a teenager in her Class 12 at her home. This news hit me very hard probably because I was part of a few conversations where the topic was about the multiple tuitions and coaching classes today’s school kids take up to crack the elusive IIT or NEET exams. When I hear the schedule of some kids I wonder if they have any time to live? Don’t get me wrong, I know that these schedules are carefully planned by the parents with the best interests of their children at heart. These coaching classes are expensive and nearly push some parents deep into debt. From the break of dawn to late in the night the student is on a tight schedule monitored by the parents and before you know it childhood passes them by in a blur. When I remember my childhood so many years ago, I did have my extra tuition classes that were default if you take the Sciences group in Class 11 ...

 Why do I celebrate Onam? So the festival of Onam passed by recently and I was asked why did we celebrate Onam since we are not Keralites? Some even asked me you are not Hindu, why are you celebrating Onam? Before I answer these questions, I pondered about how we celebrate festivals and that inspired this post. There are some broad heads under which we celebrate festivals and here I am being generic and this has nothing to do with religion or region. Let me begin: 1.Family: If you had tried booking a train ticket on IRCTC or any flight tickets before a festival the chances of you being highly disappointed are quite high. Why is this? Because the essence of festivals is to be home with the family, though there are some who choose to travel on festivals, for many a festival is a time to be home with the family and loved ones. 2. Friends: We have heard friends like family and for some friends are family, so friends are an integral part of festivals. You look forward to connect or reco...

  I prefer the window seat in flights because I like to watch the sights during the take off and landing each time. Every time I fly into Meenambakkam there is a special feeling that never fails. The feeling of coming home; to a city that has my heart. Madras, how I love you and get exasperated with you in the same moment. I am sure that I am not alone with this feeling and after two decades or so of being Chennai I miss the Madras of old. Change is constant and the city has changed, some of the famous gems of the past have been obliterated completely like the Moore Market while some struggle on in changed or limited avatars like Spencers Plaza and some have transformed into unrecognizable creations like the OMR. When I have visitors on work and if it is a first time I ask them if they have any interests in their free time and when they hear the options that I throw at them they are amazed. From shopping, to food, to cultural experiences, spiritual experiences, nature spots and...

  I watched Jailer yesterday and strangely my mind went back to Annaathe and I found that there are not too many dissimilarities in the two. For starters both are helmed by super star fan boys and who brought their adulation to the silver screen with varying levels of success. Secondly both movies can be clearly separated into two halves and both halves were significantly different. There are also few others I picked up so listing below my score card for the same.   1.       Title Both movies revolve around their titles and Annaathe was easier to understand, a local big man is called such and it is prevalent throughout the movie. In Jailer it comes to the fore only in a small and actually weak flash back. Annaathe – 1 Jailer – 0   2.      Family relationship bond Both movies were built on a family connect. Despite the cringe daughter age sister and the melodrama, the brother sister bonding was the high light of th...

  This is a long rambling post, one that was put together over a long period of time when I recollected the time I went through the Second wave of COVID. If you do not like long posts stop right here because the post will be taxing, but I decided to put it up because such experiences should not be forgotten. I got vaccinated on the 17th of May, it was my first dose of Covaxin. On the 27th of May I woke up with a mild fever. The symptoms looked like COVID so i went into isolation following the teleconsultation of a doctor. After the usual battle with COWIN the better half landed a slot the following day. To check if she could be vaccinated both of us took a precautionary RTPCR test which returned negative the next day. We informed this to the doctor who was consulting on the phone but she said its symptomatic avoid the shot stay isolated and as primary contact the better half should also isolate. 4 days later the temperature shot up for me dramatically and i visited a doctor who...

  Home is where the heart is. That is why you see homes of so many types from steel and glass to plastic sheets and ropes. Homes are emotional to many and is aspirational to some. For a few there is no place like home, no matter how messy, how odd it may seem to another. For some it is a job as they will only build homes that they can never aspire to live in and make do with tin cans on the site. It has been thirty days to the day we moved in to our own house.   This is not our first house; the first house was intended as a tax saver that has gone not as well as it was planned. Also it was a house that we have never stayed in after a decade of owning it. We wanted a house in the area where we lived for many years now as we found it to be comfortable for a number of reasons but was always outside the budget. After many home searches where we could not find a suitable one that could tick all the boxes in our wish list at an acceptable price, this house happened. As wise mast...

  I have been doing Intermittent Fasting (IF) since the end of October 2020, this was at the end of the lockdown and the effects of IF are visible with the weight and inch loss that has happened these past few weeks. I will not explain about IF or its medical effects but I will share what worked for me. In very simple terms during IF the day is divided into an eating period and a fasting period and for obvious reasons the fasting period is longer than the eating period. So the first question for many will be Why fast? The answer is that fasting is a normal human activity and outside the common religious considerations, fasting helps in a few ways that includes detoxification of the body and giving the body enough time to digest the food. Fasting as a religious practice is common to many religions and fasting brings discipline, it also purifies / cleans up the body. Probably why the wise people used fasts in religious practices to encourage moderation before a feast. IF is bas...

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is something that stuck with me from my MBA needs. We learnt this as part of Organizational Behaviour and how motivation revolved around people finding themselves at different level of needs and so the motivation strategies should be aligned with the level the person is in currently.  If the theory is new to you I will lay it out in simple terms. Man begins with physiological needs, physiological means basic needs to survive like air, water, food, shelter, clothes and reproduction. When a man is not having food to eat will a movie ticket that cannot be sold enthuse him? If you see the image once man achieves his need in one level, he strives to move ahead to the next level. This ascent is natural and ends at the fifth level when man achieves what is called self-actualization where he will be in nirvana and will renounce everything around him. Few achieve stage five, many are content with one of the lower levels and this is normal. What is abnorma...

You walk into a party and the person next to you smells of Hugo Boss but you like Sauvage, you actually cannot stand Boss, what will you do? Remember you do not know the person well, nor do you have any care for his well-being. It is just that you are sure that your Sauvage is always superior to his Boss. Would you then… -           Probably go and tell him have you tried Sauvage? Or why don’t you try Sauvage because of its merits? -           Probably gift him a bottle of Sauvage for an upcoming event so that he can try it for himself and see the benefits? -       Probably call people together and say everyone smell his Boss and my Sauvage and tell everyone which is better? It better be Sauvage. -           Probably go and tell him, you will not wear Boss because you think that Boss is not good and more importantly Boss offends you? -   ...

On a day when we have moved up to third place in the Global Hall of Infamy, when some experts are claiming that the virus is airborne and masks may be needed indoors, we have started Unlock 2.0 In the absence of a viable cure and the highly suspect efficiency of the upcoming vaccines that are to be launched on Independence Day the only option seems to be locking up but it is not possible as it is now about the real type of survival, the fight to put food on the table. COVID then will have to take second place only. The news in Chennai right now is that the traffic is heavy and people are back to work with a vengeance. The heart goes out to all the professionals whose professions have disappeared overnight with little chance of resuming in the old formats. Bookmyshow for instance is now trying hard to sell me tickets to so many events including some happening from people’s homes. Personally I feel we should accept the situation for what it is and with that acceptance we...

We are on the first of July, we are on the thresh hold of what is being called as Unlock 2. Since we know what this innocuous and actually silly term means let us jump into the post. The world has changed, we have changed. The changes will continue.  These days a video channel on YouTube fascinates me, called Living Big in a Tiny House the videos inspire me. The host and presenter is quite likeable and though his lines are so predictable there seems to be some genuine emotions in what he says. In one of the videos he also shared about his climb up to the top from a struggling actor to an Influencer on YouTube with over 3 million followers and making it a full time profession along with his wife / partner. The channel focuses on people who have built small homes on trailers and have downsized their lives to fit into these tiny homes. Most of these home owners decided to give up their old lives and downsized to basic essentials with few possessions. They also changed ...

This post is about something that polarizes people coming from Tamilnadu. This is the famous pongal. I am not talking about the festival, there are no doubts about it, Pongal is the most important Tamil festival. This post is about the breakfast staple “ven pongal” or kara pongal that is loved and hated equally.  I am on the side that loves it with a caveat. I prefer to eat pongal with sambar and at least coconut chutney, a vadai is a bonus. After all how can you eat just a gooey, almost tasteless mash? So if it is breakfast in a restaurant I go for a pongal vadai combination. This does not seem unusual to many unless I am driving on a road trip. I have seen eyebrows raised when I opt for this combination during a breakfast halt. The infamous after effect of feeling drowsy after a plate somehow does not work for me. I love pongal and I enjoy it on road trips. At home knowing my preferences sambar & chutney are usual with pongal. Pongal is an essential carb loading ...