From Mutiny.in, one of the blogs that I read, a write-up by Saurabh Garg:

I got this SMS from a friend

While v celebrate 61 years of independence, i hav just
one ques fr u - after spending more than 2 decades in this 61-yr old
country, r u a proud indian or an apprehensive indian? I first heard
the latest rabbi song ‘bilqis’ 5 days back on india’s
independence day and am still haunted by it. And i am still looking fr
n ans to the ques raised - ‘jinhe naaz hai hind par woh kahan
hai?’

And since its 9:30 PM, I am in office and don’t have anything
important to work on, I thought why not some self-reflection. Please
beware that this is going to be a rant where I go on a mental trip and
hopefully get an answer. And to put things in context, the song that
Sonali is talking about is this. And while I am writing this, I am listening to it.

So the question asks me if I am a proud Indian or an apprehensive Indian. In one line, a short and sweet answer is that I am a proud Indian.
And more than apprehensive I am confident, curious and motivated, all
three at the same time. If you asked me why, I would have no real
reasons except for the statement that everything India is, defines me (large, full of contradictions, basking in the past glory, struggling to cope up with realities of world fast changing world) and everything I am, defines India (young, mediocre, forward-looking, ambitious, trying to prove a point, wanting to lead the world).

Echoes pretty much what I feel about Des. Especially what India means to me, and what I mean to India. Just to get you thinking. How do you feel about being Indian?

Don’t know what to gift a dear friend for his / her birthday? Thinking of buying an expensive shirt / perfume / watch which might never be used?

How about spending exactly the same amount of money, and gifting a donation? How about using the money you would’ve spent for a momentary pleasure to sponsor a year’s education of an underprivileged child, lets say?

I am not going to exalt the merits of charity or advantages of doing good to the society. Some like to do it, some don’t care. People should be fine either way. But for those who like to contribute, and especially for those who have friends who would appreciate such a gesture, there is www.Giveindia.org.

Very simple in design, takes a minute to create an account, and you can choose different causes to donate; old people, children, education, upliftment, food, water, rehabilitation etc. Choose your cause, enter your amount, and gift the donation to someone dear. My favorite choice is Children’s Education; you can choose your favorite from the many options available.

How is this different from the thousand other charity websites out there? First of all, Giveindia is just a portal, a funnel or a filter that makes sure money reaches the right hands. It is also an NGO (or so I think) but it validates and verifies all NGOs associated and registered with it. And the abundance of choice and ease of transaction add to the experience.

Give it a try. Giveindia.

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I realise, I am a sucker for change. I get bored too easily, and I am always looking for what’s next and what’s new. Not in everything I do, but definitely in things I’m passionate about.

Music, web design, books, quotes, even people. If I find it interesting, I consume voraciously, and before I know it, I want more. And I want something different.

Flippant? I don’t know. Maybe. As Horsie put it, ‘Tu manager nahi, artist aadmi hai be’. I get tired of doing something that isn’t stimulating enough. God knows where this will lead me to.

Anyhew. Point being, I changed my blog theme. Again. I like this one, I must say; at least for now. Has a clean feel to it, lot of customizable areas, I can be creative (changing headers, a third widget space above sidebars, easily codeable navigation bar). Hopefully will stick with this one for longer.

I usually don’t blog about food or my foodie outings, but this Saturday was an exception. A fricking mindblowing stomach gratifying monster of an exception.

Let me put things in perspective. A week of ok-ish food, and a very early and miniscule dinner on Friday evening left me with a craving for a good meal, desi-style on Saturday morning. (North-Indian, South-Indian, whatever-Indian. Doesn’t matter). And when two of my friends made a plan to go restaurant-hopping in Little India in search for a good meal, I was already smacking my lips and heading right to nearest taxi stand.

After a mistaken try at a shabby restaurant named Gokul (not worth going into details, let me jump to the more important parts here), we sauntered into this quiet south Indian place named Madras Woodlands. Not too much of a groundbreaking name, I’d say, but the food was oh-my-gawd awesome! All of us hungry souls straightaway went for the unlimited meals, and we were in session.

A tangy start with a vettha-kozhambu (spicy and hot sambar variety), with veggies, appalams (popadams) and steaming rice to boot, followed by the mullangi (radish) sambar cooked to the right tenderness; then came the fragrant rasam and more mounds of rice. The grand finale was when after a nice bowl of payasam I was just digging into my curd rice, and the waiter came and dropped mor-moloagais (chilli peppers soaked in buttermilk, dried and then fried). By god, that was a stroke of genius! and I’m totally sold on the restaurant.

After the humongous lunch, we all had to go back and rest for the afternoon. The food had gotten the better of us, and we all woke up and decided to meet for, wait for it, here it comes, a dinner meal :D

This time it was Gult food at Sankranti. The restaurant had opened only two weeks before, and since the four of us were in mood for experimentation, we repeated the sauntering and ordering of four unlimited meals. And this time, it was full steam, hot and spicy Andhra fare, no holds barred. Each one of us topped about seven courses: Masala rice, followed by Gongura, Allam, Podi (Gunpowder plus ghee), Pappu (dal), Charu (Andhra rasam), Perugannam (curd rice). After stacking empty plates and cups, we polished the meal off with a mango and left the poor waiter and manager in wide eyed bewilderment. (I’m lovin it!)

Even though none of us had the energy nor the inclination to even move after that meal, the experience was worth every morsel of rice that we demolished. To those who planned to have pizza / noodles / chinese indian / naan sabji on that day, can please go sit on their respective thumbs and watch us dig into another mound of rice. Or join in.

Next weekend, destination Mumbai Makaan and its steaming vadapavs. Yum!

p.s: Also caught a gult movie after the double meal ordeal (just for the heck of it), which was called Vivaha Bhojanam (Marriage Food) and hence the title of this post. Quite a befitting end to the day, I say!

[image source: www.sailusfood.com]

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Chanced upon a video of a talk by Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD. It was a talk about a program started by AMD called 50*15, where they aim to connect 50% of the world’s population to the internet by the year 2015.

It is a fantastic overarching theme to have as a vision, something that will set direction for the computing giant for the coming years, and more so because it involves other companies, even competitors in delivering a stretch goal that will benefit all of them, and the part of the world that is still hungry for information and enlightenment.

But what struck me most, was Hector’s relationship with his father and the way the old man egged his young son to perform better, in all aspects of life.

“For a civilization to progress, every generation has to perform better than the previous one.

A seemingly simple statement, but with great impact on young Hector’s mind. In his teenage years, the importance of this did not hit him, but when he set out on his way to a great career, his father reminded him of this one statement, coaching him that it’s not a job that he has set out to do, it’s a transformation, at an individual and societal level. Hector’s father again repeated the same mantra on the day of his marriage, reminding him that he had to be a better husband than his dad, and again, on the day Hector had his first child, reminding him that he had to be a better father too.

For a civilization to progress, every generation has to perform better than the previous one. In every aspect of humanity. In understanding, in treating fellow human beings, and in living as a whole.

Touche.

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What an evening, and whatay performance. I caught the last Singapore show of We Will Rock You (also known as WWRY), a musical by Queen and Ben Elton, based on Queen songs. Just one word to describe the experience: mind-blowing (no, it’s not two words. It one hyphenated word).

The storyline, the cast, the history are all wiki-able. But the experience was beyond any live performance I’ve seen in perfection, fidelity, energy and the heavenly music. I am a huge fan of Queen, and this was a dynamite package that left me begging for more.

Brilliant performances by the live band, with almost all of Queen’s hits, and I couldn’t care less about the slightly below par story-line. The grand finale with ‘We will rock you’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ performed as an encore played a fitting end to a tribute to one of the best rock bands ever.

Thank God I walked into the ticket counter at Orchard and bought the ticket on a last minute impulse. It’s been 2 days and my pod is still looping Queen songs :D

(And in case you are wondering, Galileo Figaro and Scaramoush are words from Bohemian Rhapsody and the names of lead characters in WWRY).

Each one of us is a story waiting to be told, and some of us are already writing our own screenplays for the retrospective grand finale. Each one of us is a brand screaming for attention, a 30 second advert about all that’s best in us. Each one of us is a legacy waiting to be handed over, once the acting is done with. Like some old manuscript from the past, that lives only in words, ideas and visuals.

Each one of us is nothing but a collection of memories. It is up to us to give those memories enough meaning that we don’t feel a life wasted when we, or for that matter, others, look back at us.

Don’t worry about petty things in life too much. We aren’t getting out alive anyways, and decades aren’t as long as they seem to be.

Daily dose of comics: Brevity, Dilbert, Pearls before swine, Wizard of Id, BC, Peanuts. Check.
Seth Godin’s blog, Dilbert blog, Boing Boing, Freakonomics Blog. Check.
2 episodes of Scrubs. Check.
Geek inspiration from DI Blog, Engadget. Check.
Brand matters from PSFK and Remarkable Communication. Check.
The daily post at www.harishnarayanan.com.

Check :)

Some SMs I’ve had on Gtalk over the past months. A good reflection of what I was thinking then.

==========

heart of child, scorn of a woman
effervescent as a wave, dense as the night
light as love, intense as pain
what is it that she seeks, an answer to her own might?

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schadenfreude secrets /
Camouflaged closets /
Silhouetted Souls, and /
A billion black-holes…/

The question is, why?
Why?

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what do we fight for, who’s to be slain
who’s to the silence betroth, who shouts in vain
a rebel without a curse, a fugitive without a claim
an unknown horizon, an emptiness of disdain.

What am I here for?

=========

Home to only wandering souls,
of a million and more dreams; //

Majestic in its silent power
and more so, in its screams; //

Maya nagari, the chimera of hope,
The deadly sweet poison, in wide Cinemascope; //

..*Bombay*..

==========

beetee lamhon ki daldal mein, yaadein batorne chale,
dar dar bhatakte, apne hi pad-chinhon se unki kahani poochte,

zindagi ke kitaab mein, bulandi ke panne jodne chale,
jab hum hi nahi rahe, to yeh daastan kise sunate?

=======

The best Government is Fear.

==========

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

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As we are reduced to nothing but shadows of our earlier boisterous potent selves, we should remember this. Nothing is different. It was all in the belief, that anything is possible. And achievable.

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Here I am, again on a Sunday night, loads of emails to go, no work done over the last two days, time wasted brilliantly with absolutely inconsequential trivialities. Why do something now, that can be done just-in-time later, seems to be the question.

Maybe the answer lies in the fact that I never procrastinate things that I hold dear, that I am passionate about, or that make me play the part of creator, and not that of problem solver or vicarious participant. This thing is I have no clue how to make money out of these things. Yet.

I have to write about the Chennai trip, the great Indian marriage, responsibility and simple pleasures in life (read rasam rice and dahi vadas). I have to catch up on tons of work, and keep up the oft broken promise of writing often.

But at least, I am reading a lot nowadays. Bless RSS and RSS integration with browsers. And bless India and easily available books. And I shall conclude this post later, when I think of a logical end to this situation.

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