Quo Vadis?

A year ago I had posted this: http://jollyrogerrocks.blogspot.com/2006/12/miracles-happen-miracle-happened-last.html Today I write about another miracle that happened on similar lines. Those of you living in TN or in the capital Chennai will know the effects of the depression off the coast the last two days. It was pouring cats, dogs, monkeys, donkeys, partridges… er I think you got the general idea. It was pouring so much that it looked like we would have a wet Christmas. Yesterday was the day when my gang planned to go Carol singing, despite the fact that a minority of us had to report to work today. Anyway the showers were so heavy that the roads were flooded and many houses had the electricity supply suspended to avoid electrocution mishaps. Things looked very bleak with a few parents pulling their kids out of the carol rounds citing the inclement weather. Gamely we went ahead with faith in God and the experiences of the years past. We were sufficiently shielded from the elements w...

Had been to a wedding last Friday. It was a mixed Hindu wedding with a Bengali groom and a Tamil bride. So with high expectations of good food, D and I went for the wedding. The auspicious time or muhurat was between 5PM and 7 PM a novelty by itself as it is customary that people get married in the early hours of the day after having a reception the previous evening. I have always found this puzzling, why have a reception when the couple are yet unwed? Whatever be the reason weddings here are so boring it ends up becoming a chore unless you are actually getting wedded when you have no escape. Here it is a simple meet, greet, eat, beat (it) process where the anxious guests sit on tenterhooks waiting for the usually delayed arrival of the couple. People growing up on a diet of weddings from the Rajshri stable or from the many never- ending “saas bahu” soaps may have different ideas of weddings. But the reality here is harsh. Weddings seem have a big disconnect and very often there is no ...

It’s been awhile since I last posted. Lately it’s been those days when life has been standardized to a robotic routine. Wake up late, hit the washroom, gobble your food and dash to work, run around town hopelessly looking for business, routine boss blasting and boss bashing, meals in between and back home rather late after squeezing in a few choir practices or some extracurricular activity before a late crash into bed. Days pass by with such monotony that weekends and weekdays have blurred into insignificance as on my last sat off my boss hauled me out of home and sent me to office simply because he was bored and had nothing else to do. With Christmas around the corner add more activities to the list a night mass and carol concert to be prepared for, (one big concert in Fort St. George was successfully completed last night to a tumultuous applause) carol rounds looming ahead (scary since we end our rounds late and work beckons the next day), shopping, more shopping, decoration etc etc....

“The pornography of politics gets a new variation as Deve Gowda looms over the ruins of a coalition experiment. The reckless patriarch with his dynastic impulses is not alone. There are a few others who excel in political harlotry in the name of social justice. They are united by the depravity of power.” The opening lines of an article by the India Today in its latest issue. Unfortunately I could not scan the accompanying image which was a delightful combination of the faces of Deve Gowda, M.Karunanidhi and Devi Lal (I think). There is nothing much to be said about the farce that is played out before us in the political scene. Every politician worth his salt wants his son / daughter to take up the family business. Frankly I think that is a normal paternal attitude and I fully support it. Why would I decline the directorship of a firm my dad runs or a kingdom he rules? (Pity he does neither!) Hereditary accession to the throne is historical and has been handed down from the early days. ...

Was tagged by Chriz , so here goes... 1. Name one person who made you laugh last night? Steve Martin in Pink Panther 2. What were you doing at 0800? I was pondering the meaning of life. (just shitting man) 3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago? Began browsing 4. What happened to you in 2006? Life 5. What was the last thing you said out loud? Lisa! (trying to find my dog) 6. How many beverages did you have today? 1, H2O 7. What color is your hairbrush? 1 blue,1 green. 8. What was the last thing you paid for? Petrol 9. Where were you last night? Home 10. What color is your front door? Brown 11. Where do you keep your change? In my wallet and often it becomes a pain in the butt. 12. What’s the weather like today? Cool. 13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor? Vanilla 14. What excites you? I aint telling u 15. Do you want to cut your hair? Yup, I was trying to find my face yesterday and failed. 16. Are you over the age of 25? Y...

The fires in Kolkota have consigned two other news articles to the back pages. Two articles that caught my eye before the violence in Kolkota took over. The first article was about the wife of an NRI in the USA who was beaten up and thrown put of a running car due to the lack of dowry. The second was concerning the conviction of the accused in the Uphaar fire tragedy. If these articles have passed you by here’s a quick read. Article 1 Dowry or groom price for the unknowns is prevalent in some cultures. I know for a fact (courtesy my classmate from Uganda) that in Uganda the grooms pay a price for their prospective brides. Often this payment was made by giving X heads of cattle. If such a practice was present in India women would not have to suffer thus. From female infanticide to husband abuse the root cause tends to be dowry or rather the lack of it. Personally I think that a groom who demands dowry is like a prize stud bull. They do nothing and have to do nothing except reproduce and...

Was just bored sitting in my hotel room in Hyderabad, I had exhausted my call list and my next appointment was a couple of hours ahead, looking through a folder of snaps on my laptop taken last month and voila, I had a new post. Last month on Gandhi Jayanthi to be precise my gang of friends from church (we actually grew up together for the better part of a decade) decided to go on a picnic on the holiday. Picnics and timeouts are so rare that even a single day outing was a real godsend and so we decided on a single day trip to the Golden Sand resort outside Mahabalipuram. The van left late as usual and we had the medley of songs and loud jokes spicing up the journey and we hit the venue 2 hours behind schedule. I must digress to mention that D got up early in the morning and made yummy biriyani for us for the trip and we had a good quantity of junk food too. So when we landed there the first shock that awaited us was that the prices had gone up 50% since our telephone call two days ago...