Quo Vadis?

During a recent conversation I came upon the term “gender neutral colours”, wearing such colours is a safety aspect for women on the roads especially at dawn / dusk times when visibility is lower. So if you are wondering what would be a gender neutral and safe colour, I learned that white is a strong contender for the top spot. Recently when I was in my daughter’s school waiting to pick up my daughter, I observed a long line of students walking to the gate led by their class teacher. Suddenly a parent near me turned and said that he was amazed to see more than 75% of the class carrying a pink school bag. I racked my brains to see if there were any other colour options in the store earlier. We were picking up a gift for an infant at our regular baby item store when the shopkeeper showed us two gift boxes and appropriately colour coded for boy and girl separately. I do not want to mention the colours because by now it is a given that you will not mix them up. I have a set...

After a long hiatus and many excuses I have started taking baby steps into a renewed fitness journey.  There is no point in dwelling in the past when I lost weight and was fitter and etc. it is now time to look at the present and gradually in the future about where I want to be with regard to my fitness. Most people take up sports like running or cycling or swimming separately or together when they hit middle age when either under threats from their doctors or close family members or a clear mirror they decide to huff and puff their way to a sleeker new version of themselves. While the intent is good, there are many grey areas that often get overlooked in these fitness journeys. One of the first challenges is finding a good group to do these activities. Chennai has seen a rash of running, cycling, triathlon and other fitness groups and their growing memberships prove that more are seeking to get fit through a mob. Yes the mob mentality runs through these groups where m...

This is a picture of a gutter in a place called Annur near Coimbatore. This gutter brought back some strong memories and my eyes wandered to my ring finger. You would have heard the joke about marriage being a three ring game:  Engagement Ring, Wedding Ring and Suffe Ring. This post is about the second one and it is written after 10 years of it being on my finger.  There are two pieces of jewellery that are constantly on me both have a connection to special women in my life. The first is a cross on a chain that is a gift from my mother and the second is the wedding ring. I seldom take off both however this post is about the times when the ring tried to get away! Instance 1: This happened few years ago during a trip to Tuticorin. This was on a flight from Tuticorin after the inflight meal when the attendants were collecting the trash, the ring fell off into the trash bag. I did not notice and when I did I got frantic and called the air hostess. I asked to look ...

Train journeys can be very interesting and much has been written about train encounters, movies are made when the lead pair falls in love in the train journey and so much more. I have not been in a train in ages getting used to flying for business trips and when possible taking the car, it was due to a combination of factors that I found myself in the Rock Fort Express in the First Ac compartment yesterday. After the pleasant surprise seeing the new rake that was spic and span with working fittings I settled down to the journey. The compartment was quite busy with a few men in the coloured dhotis which indicated that we had the three major parties of the present Assembly represented. My co-passenger a distinguished gentleman was greeted by a few and I tried to blend into the surroundings and make myself as unobtrusive as possible in the small confines of the coupe. Suddenly a young man in jeans and tee spotted my co-passenger and told his dad who came into our coupe. The visit...

This Saturday I had the pleasure of going for a blogger event.  Off late various reasons made me miss a few events and I was happy to sign up as the topic was on food. Food tends to make people emotional.  If you have seen me you will know that I get very emotional about food and though I still believe that the best food is always home cooked I am always ready to try out a new restaurant any day. The invite intrigued me because it wanted 5 food bloggers and 5 tech bloggers & the event was in an IT park so my curiosity levels went up. The venue was the office of M/s Owl Tech blew me away. The exposed brickwork, furniture made from stacking pallets among others made it a good place to be in. I met up with a few familiar faces and some new faces and we settled down to learn about the place and the event. The Ice breaker! Note the table made of pallets. Our hosts for the day Divya Gandhi and Abhiskek N gave us a brief of the machine, a food box that we would see a...

It’s that time of the year when we see harassed school kids and even more harassed parents awaiting a landmark event in their lives the board exams.  This is a short post to these kids. Dear Kids, please pause for a moment and remember: -           The marks that you get in your exam are just  numbers and do not define you -           The marks do not give any indication of how good you are, maybe it tells who has got the better memory -          The marks are not the best guide for your study or your career choices, meaning just because you scored higher is no reason for you to take pure science not matter what schools may think. If you are still not convinced remember the cut off for B Com in some of the top colleges in the city are a dizzying 98/99%. So if you think that Commerce is the easier option for those outside the 90's bracket think ...

We have seen and have now got immune to collective apathy, you know that ignoring what happens around and going on with life has been happening everywhere for long. If you are from Chennai however December seems to be a month when collective apathy is kept aside and people come together for the good of the other. If you have been in the Chennai floods or cyclone Vardah you will know what the emotions behind this post are. This year Chennai added one more page to it's growing list of encomiums, the jallikattu protest. Much has been written about the protest and this post is not about the protest but the day when the protest ended. If you were in Chennai and in some parts of the city that felt the effects of the police action you would remember the paralysing traffic jams that threw the city out of gear. I was affected too, because my daughter was stuck in the van for over 3 hours without food. Though I was upset at the mismanagement of the events by the powers that be, I ob...