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Swimming...Citizen Matters.... [May. 9th, 2008|06:40 pm] [ Tags | citizen matters, humour, swimming ] [ mood | HOT ] [ music | none ] I was happy that Citizen Matters wanted one of my, er, humorous articles, and I wrote one on how my friends and I learnt to swim.... Here it is OK, off to the pool now...! link 5 comments|post comment

Great inter-racial photograph [May. 9th, 2008|08:48 am] [ Tags | flowers, humour, inw, jlr, ntp, photography ] [ mood | happy ] [ music | Aringisai + lots of static on the radio! ] The photographs on India Nature Watch are a source of wonder, solace, interest, information-- and sometimes amusement. Here's a "black and white" photograph with a witty caption... http://www.indianaturewatch.net/displayimage.php?id=47550 What I like is the fact that someone had this thought when he took the photograph! Off to Bannerghatta, where the next batch of the JLRNTP-1 is starting today...I do like meeting people who take the course (mohanvee is going to be one of them) and I hope to get in a little birding, too. Meanwhile, here's one small flower from the raceme of the Queen's Flower: The scientific name for the tree is LAGERSTROEMIA SPECIOSA....to me, that takes all the beauty and wonder and fun out of that tree...I know that scientific names are necessary, but...I would love to admire a Queen's Flower, but I don't think a LAGERSTROEMIA SPECIOSA would enthuse me too much. So a rose by another name might NOT smell as sweet! Here's more info about the tree . You would think they would put up a colour photograph (or a colour painting) of such a beautiful flower, wouldn't you? Oh no, they put in a black-and-white sketch, which brings me back to the black-and-white photograph above.... link 1 comment|post comment

What's this fruit called in English? [May. 8th, 2008|07:34 am] [ mood | must go! ] [ music | none ] Here's what we call "Jamun" in Hindi, and "nAga pazham" ("snake fruit"!) in Tamizh... I liked the way the pushcart vendor has arranged them in a basket of leaves of the rubber tree. You can see part of her scales, a couple of metric weight-stones, and her pretty bangles, too. The poster under the leaf-basket is for a local mobile phone company. The taste of this fruit is tangy, slightly astringent on the tongue. A purple tongue always gives away one's partiality for jamun... link 9 comments|post comment

First Lichi of the Year... [May. 8th, 2008|06:15 am] [ Tags | food, fruit, photography ] [ mood | food ] [ music | food ] The Lichi (it is spelt in many ways..the name originates in the Chinese language) is one of my favourites. Yesterday, KM got the first fruit of the season (which is all too short.) YUMMMM. link 8 comments|post comment

I suppose I should go....? [May. 8th, 2008|04:50 am] [ Tags | citizen matters, decisions, meeting, political person ] [ mood | sleepless ] [ music | paruthi edukkayilEy.... ] As a concerned citizen, and as someone who writes for Citizen Matters , I have been invited to a citizens' meeting which will be addressed by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh . I have, in the past, avoided any meetings where political figures..er..figure, like the plague. The reasons are many....I find many politicians an unprincipled, lying lot, not worth the time spent in getting near them. And the time spent is indeed awesome. No one can ever predict when a pol will arrive to address a meeting; odds are that there will be a huge delay. Today's meeting requirements are that attendees must go some vague house in the vicinity of the hall where the meeting will be held, collect the invitation, and then be in the hall by 11am. To do this reasonably comfortably, I must leave home at 9am. Why can invitations not be given, or attendees' names checked, at the venue? I have no clue, and neither, I think, have the organizers, who must go by the security requirements. The security requirements....for a wait of several hours (I do not know when we will be allowed to leave after the meeting), one cannot take along one's mobile phone, laptop, or even water (water bottles are the new Evil Thing.) Obviously, no food either, because I might be carrying a Bomb Sandwich. Jokes apart, I must say that we faced far less of difficulties when, in the US, we went to listen to Barack Obama (ok, he is not the President...yet!) There was fairly strict security, but most of it was logical and certainly, mobiles were allowed. If I can carry my mobile or laptop, I can certainly spend my waiting time quite usefully. But I will have to just sit and twiddle my thumbs, and all the other fingers, for a long while. Add to this the fact that I am not a professional newshound. Perhaps someone sent from a newspaper would have the "must" factor about this, and would cheerfully resign themselves to half the day being spent in doing nothing much. But I am an Ordinary Citizen...a housewife whose husband has his weekly off today, and with whom I spend less time than I would like to.... So...I think I will finish off the morning chores and decide, in a couple of hours, what I am going to do... Murphy's Law mandates that if I go, I will feel at the end that it was not worth, and if I don't, I will miss something interesting! After all, how often does a Prime Minister of the country address the Ordinary Citizen directly in a city far away from the capital? Decision time approaches...I am off to the kitchen to finish the cooking of breakfast and lunch! link 3 comments|post comment

Volunteering... [May. 7th, 2008|07:23 pm] [ Tags | children, difficulties, musing, voluntary work ] [ mood | thoughtful ] [ music | singing to myself..... ] I have always done some form or the other of voluntary work, but have been careful to let it occupy only my "spare" time and not let it encroach upon time that is devoted to the spouse and the household. But that is changing now.... For the past few years, I have been shaken out of my comfortable existence to not just do voluntary work, but take up the cause of a city that is rapidly degrading. I realize that I have the time and the energy to devote to this challenging and often frustrating task. I have always written about things, and it came as a pleasant surprise to me that many people were interested in what *I* found interesting, and wrote about. So my writing on my own blog started, and satisfied me much more than writing articles for the newspaper, which never brought the kind of feedback and interaction that my blog does. Then I started writing the Bangalore-specific stuff for Metblogs, too, and that was nice. Then Citizen Matters happened, and the writing became a little bit more serious. I concentrate on things that are of interest to the causes dear to my heart. trying to save the trees, improve the roads, introduce more cycling, and preserve the lakes...and reporting about all of it...it's beginning to take HUGE chunks out of my time, and not just my free time, which is what I wanted to do as a voluntary worker... It has not helped that KM's off day has been ...er..involuntarily (!) changed to Thursdays, because of the power staggering at the industrial complex where his unit is. Very often I find that thanks to meetings being scheduled at odd times, or watching plays, I am sitting and writing articles and reviews at times when I was never at the computer earlier. I am NOT interested in writing/reporting as a career, but at the same time, do enjoy writing, and really like the experience of gathering information and views and writing about it all. This, alas, does not happen to be a 9 to 5 kind of activity... At what point should I draw the line and say, no more? I find that when I am committed to write something, I do have a compulsion to finish it within the deadline. If there is no power through the day (as happened today) I have to sit and write in the evenings. The words "have to" have appeared here...and those are not words that I want. When "want to" starts turning into "have to", I have to pause and reflect...but I do enjoy looking around and photographing things and writing about them, and the fit is so good... Can you hear that honking noise? That comes from the horns...of my dilemma. (And that does not Emma's Hindi heart, either.) And meanwhile..here's an absolutely delightful scene that I caught... This was on my way home from the eternal war against the way things are done here (the alleged Uninterrupted Power Supply, the lack of power the whole day at home, the bank, the BSNL internet connection...) I remember a tagline from some insurance ad that said, "Daddy to dolly, everyone jolly". Here, it's Mom, the daughters (twins? I couldn't catch up with them to find out) and their dollies....it lifted my heart after a long and frustrating day. link 4 comments|post comment

I am almost always sheltered from this world.... [May. 6th, 2008|02:39 pm] [ Tags | conversation, driver, metblogs, metroblogs ] [ mood | thoughtful ] [ music | none ] http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/05/05/conversations-with-a-cab-driver/ link 5 comments|post comment

Flash on the Pan.... [May. 6th, 2008|09:38 am] [ Tags | canon, photography, s3 ] [ mood | busy ] [ music | Semmangudi ] No, I don't have that subject title wrong... Every day, as I go about my morning chores, I take out one pan to heat my morning thimbleful (all I allow myself! caffeine! caffeine!) coffee, and I love the effect of the morning sunlight on it. So yesterday I wasted some time capturing the effect...here it is on a towel: Here, with the coffee in it: and here, on the polished granite of the kitchen counter (there's the green of the plants in my kitchen window, reflected in the granite too: There's so much beauty in the kitchen in the morning....I don't feel it's drudgery at all! If only Cinderella had an S3, I think she would not be moping amongst the cinders, but trying to catch the glow of the embers and seeing if a high ISO would help....of course then, like me, she would be behindhand with her work and her stepmother would have something to say about that... link 13 comments|post comment

Mendicants..... [May. 5th, 2008|11:26 pm] [ Tags | bandipur, begging, highway, jlr, photography, road ] [ mood | sleepy ] [ music | sleepytime ] Here's a picture I like against all the rules. The rules are: 1. Don't have a tree in the middle of the photograph. 2. Do not have a distracting element (like the gate-post) at one side of the photograph. ...and some others, too. But... I love that tree, and the steady stride those sadhus (religious mendicants) are keeping up, the casual curiosity of one, and the open road that lies beyond the gate of the JLR property; the gate and the wall stand for what is enclosed,known, secure; the road stands for what is open, unknown, a mystery... and those mendicants, with no worldly possessions, are off on that road...a road, hopefully, to the discovery of the universe within themselves. On the way back, we also saw several Buddhists monks travelling. But these are Jain monks, I think, or Hindu ones...I don't know. Bandipur...always something to intrigue one, and make one think. I do wish *I* could shed my worldly possessions and stride off towards the forests like these monks are doing....! Here's the cropped photo; no gate, only the tree, the monks, and the song of the open road: This may not be a "distracting" photograph, but to me the unworldliness of the road and the monks lacks a counterpoint. That's the difference between the content of a photograph and its artistic composition! link 20 comments|post comment

Extreme usefulness [May. 5th, 2008|04:45 pm] [ Tags | electronics city, photography ] [ mood | grateful ] [ music | powered by the batteries! ] This is a pean of praise to something that is so extremly useful in our lives; we just could not get along without these little cylinders. Could one have imagined, a few decades ago, that one could carry stored energy along in tiny little packs, that would then faithfully deliver a steady supply to it to whatever one wanted to keep working...! I look up at the clock on my wall as I type this. Once upon a time, people ( generallythe male, while the females clucked at him to be careful!) would pull up a stool and climb on it, and wind up the clock each week. Now, I pop in one of these little magic cylinders, and the clock quietly and faithfully shows the right time for more than a year after I do so. I can take along my mobile phone, my landphone all over the house, my little music gadgets, and my MLC...knowing that these, too, will not fail me as long as their little juice-supply has been ensured. In fact, even the power supply in my car depends on them, and for two years, at least, I can depend on being mobile as long as I have them installed and cared for... They power my home, too, when the regular power fails; they light up the processions that wend their way around the city. I still do not know WHY they are classified as A, AA, AA, and so on (yes, I know, I should google for it.) But they are, surely, amongst the most useful of human inventions. If only they could also be disposed of in as safe a way as they are manufactured....or to ensure that they do not die on you precisely when the need is greatest! My little and large batteries...this is my word of thanks to you. You ease my life so unobtrusively... link 4 comments|post comment

Security.... [May. 3rd, 2008|11:20 am] [ Tags | internet, security, worries ] [ mood | musing ] [ music | none..going out now! ] I want to be safe and secure. To this end, I lock my front door when I am away, or asleep. But how secure IS the front door? Once my friend got locked out of her flat, and I called a locksmith, who demonstrated that her front door locks (both the navtal and the yale door lock) could be picked within a matter of minutes! He made a profound observation...Madam, these locks are only for YOUR self-satisfaction! So actually I think shutting the door and locking it is not to deter ..er...determined thieves, but to deter the casual ones, and the rest..for my own mental satisfaction. So..the real security exists (mainly) in our perception of it....and resides in the general network of amorphous trust that exists between the people around me. I am fairly sure that though someone can, if s/he wants, break open my front door within minutes, it won't happen within the apartment building. My neighbours opposite are away, and I do check casually that their door is properly locked... Also, I think that I must assess the value of what I have to be protected, how important it is to me, and what the replacement-ability (er, you know what I mean) and the replacement-value would be, and take measures accordingly. Jewellery cannot be stored at home; it must be kept in a bank locker, for example. Neither should large amounts of cash be kept at home. Credit cards and cheque books should generally be kept locked up even within the home...and so it goes. And sometimes, I do use two reasonably known entities as a check on each other. Right now, the building electrician (whom I have known for several years) is working in my home. And I need to step out to buy vegetables. So when my maid (whom,also, I know very well, including exactly where she lives) comes to clean the flat, I will tell her, "just keep an eye out, Prakash is working", and go out for about 20 minutes and get my work done. Each will keep an eye on the other (or at least, I hope that they will not form an unholy and rapacious alliance to loot me!) and I too will be able to step out for a bit without worry. I use my knowledge of the risks, or lack of them, and construct my security according to that. I know that no security can withstand the determined security-breaker (so many novels and films are based just on this opinion!), but I trust that the security will hold up to a reasonable level. What is reasonable, though? That...varies from person to person. I think internet security is also similar to this...one takes a reasonable level of precaution against being spammed or hacked...and trusts that the rest will go well, too. What say, kalyan? If everyone did this, security firms might not come into existence at all...obviously, this solution will not work for everyone! The best security systems, though, are ones that rely what is unique to the user: fingerprints, for example, or iris-of-the-eye. I can never understand why passports do not have the fingerprints of the holder, it is such an easy and unique parameter to have and the passport holder can never say s/he hasn't brought hes fingers along! And they could be so easily compared, too. In fact I am amazed that such a simple way of eliminating the use of stolen passports (forged passports with matching fingerprints are of course possible) is not carried out... link 11 comments|post comment

Donkey Welfare Concern by Karnataka Politician [May. 3rd, 2008|09:32 am] [ Tags | humour, political person ] [ mood | amused ] [ music | none so far ] I put it into one of my replies to a comment on my spinach post, but it is tooooo good not to make a separate post about... he loves donkeys Vatal Nagaraj once decided to emulate the "rasta roko" which others had done, and decided to do an "aircraft roko" at the airport. No, the effort was not successful, if you are asking! link 9 comments|post comment

I T Companies are diversifying... [May. 2nd, 2008|01:46 am] [ Tags | humour, photography, signboard, yahoo ] [ mood | MUST sleep ] [ music | none, it's 1.50am.....!! ] I suddenly caught sight of this and had to whip out my MLC as the bus passed the sign at speed; so the pic is very shaky and blurred.... This is for mmk, yathin, sunson and knutties... and others whom I may not know! What next? Yahoo! Ice cream? lingerie? detergent? link 3 comments|post comment

Spinach [May. 1st, 2008|03:09 pm] [ Tags | food, green, photography, vegetables ] [ mood | sleepy ] [ music | MSS...bhOgeendra shAyinam ] Of all the multitudinous varieties of greens that are available (I could not begin to list them...there are so many....!), my favourite is spinach. I have a very sweet young woman who brings bunches of spinach to my front door. It's fresh and green and I drool just looking at it....so this time I thought I would photograph it, too. Just look at it...fresh and so wholesome, deliciousness is written all over it! Of course, the bunches generally come attached with what sometimes appears to be most of the soil of Karnataka...washing has to be a careful business, and I take extra care because I am mindful of pesticides, too... I googled for spinach washers and got either industrial stuff or this patent info I usually make either a north Indian dish (Palak, with or without panneer or matar or alu), or a very simple south Indian dish, for which the recipe is as follows: Cut off roots of spinach. Wash thoroughly, and chop not too fine (I generally buy three bunches at a time...what you see in that photo above.) Add some water, and boil with a little salt, just enough, so that the green colour (lovely!) is not lost. (generally, 4 to 5 min.). Drain and reserve the water. Take a little of the spinach and grind it well. In the water that the spinach has been cooked, and mix in two tbsp of rice flour, and set aside. Add 1 tsp oil in a pan, and sputter some mustard seeds, and 2 red chillies. Add the boiled spinach and the ground spinach (which, along with the rice flour, will bind the dish together.) Add pounded jeera and black pepper...about 1 tbsp each. Thoroughly mix the rice flour in the water and add to the pan, and let the whole thing simmer for just a minute or two, and switch off the heat. This is fantastic with vathal kuzhambu and rice....but I could eat it on its own! Spinach is NOT easily available in Chennai, for some reason, the plant (or herb) doesn't grow well there. But in Bangalore...it's just great. Here's the Wiki entry for Spinach And here's an entire cookbook devoted to it! It's obviously high in Chrolophyll , which was once touted as the "fresh-breath" ingredient in toothpastes, prompting one wag to ask this: "Why stinks the goat on yonder hill... That only feeds on chlorophyll?" ...oh well, jokes apart... here, by sheer coincidence, is an LJ friend's post Popeye...you were on to a real good thing, all those years ago! I may not have bulgy arms or one eye or a pipe stuck in my mouth...but...I *LURRRV* spinach! I do also like the frozen variety that I can get abroad, which has all the cleaning, chopping and labour removed...I have never tried canned spinach, though. Here's the nutrition part Waiting for all your comments, including all you lurkers!! Do you like it? Do you hate it? How do you eat it or avoid it? Is there anyone who is allergic to it ? I rarely make food posts....I am not one of those creative cooks, I cook to get by. And, by the way...that colander in the picture, I have had for 32 years, and the towel, for 12 years.... Next time she comes home, I will photograph Chitra the spinach (and lemons and murungakkAi and sweetcorn in season) seller, and introduce you to her, too. Oh, and the cost? Three bunches cost Rs.10...that is...about 25 cents... link 38 comments|post comment

Good to see.... [Apr. 30th, 2008|10:59 pm] [ Tags | metblogs, metroblogs, photography, review ] [ mood | sleepy ] [ music | none ] http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/04/30/calligraphy-exhibition-at-ethos-art-gallery/ link 2 comments|post comment

Bandipur flora [Apr. 30th, 2008|03:26 pm] [ Tags | bandipur, flowers, jlr, photography ] [ mood | happy ] [ music | Puff the Magic Dragon ] Two of the flowers on the Bandipur JLR campus: I wanted to use the backlight on that lovely creeper and its flower; they are trained to grow around the cottages. and this one below is the Pongaemia tree (HongE in Kannada), which is a common avenue tree in Bangalore, also; biodiesel is supposed to be extracted from this tree. It is just about at the end of its flowering cycle now; a few weeks ago, the roads were carpeted with these flowers! link 5 comments|post comment

Gold, Mammals and others at Bandipur.... [Apr. 30th, 2008|01:09 pm] [ Tags | bandipur, dragonflies, flowers, forest, jlr, mammals, ntp, photography, sunset ] [ mood | "clean" tired ] [ music | tired music....yeugh, must change the channel ] First, the gold that I struck in Bandipur. Gold comes in many forms in the forest. Here's a GOLDEN DRAGONFLY: And then there was the gold shower of the INDIAN LABURNUM, with its cascades of petals everywhere: And of course, the gold of the sunset as we finished the evening safari, shot (with some difficulty) through the foliage: Then come ( the mammals ) Had a wonderful time, saying hello to Bomma, Loki, Basavanna, Ganesh, and others, too....if only I had not had my wallet picked on the way to Bandipur, things would have been perfect...but..these things happen! link 11 comments|post comment

Birds at Bandipur..... [Apr. 29th, 2008|02:06 pm] [ Tags | bandipur, birding, birdwatching, crested serpent eagle, jlr, photography ] [ mood | hot ] [ music | some crapola on TV..must shut it off ] Well, since That Mammal is still grimly determined that I will never see its visage (or even a twitch of its tail), let me share all the other wonderful sights of Bandipur.... Here are some of the birds (all pretty common, no Darwinian discoveries here!) that I saw. Very common at this time of the year is the BLACK-RUMPED FLAMEBACK WOODPECKER (Dinopium benghalense...dunno why it's called "Din-OPIUM"!!), which can be seen flying about, and boring the tree-trunks (you can see a small piece falling to the ground from its work, if you look carefully!) Also fairly easy to sight were the CRESTED SERPENT EAGLEs; this one was sitting not too far away for a brief while: ( more...if you like... ) We did see several other birds, but these were the photographs I got! As always, the mammal sightings were great too, but that's going to be another post.... link 10 comments|post comment

What's the significance? [Apr. 29th, 2008|01:33 pm] [ Tags | ghatam, karnataka, photography, riddle ] [ mood | bemused ] [ music | the vodafone ad music ] Can't understand why.... http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/04/29/whats-the-significance/ Is it to ward off any "evil eye"? Doesn't seem likely, either...has the KSRTC confiscated a ghatam from a Carnatic musician and put it up there as a lesson to him? link 5 comments|post comment

Chilli, and other discussions [Apr. 29th, 2008|09:34 am] [ Tags | debate, list, old, shiok ] [ Current Location | listening to ThEin kiNNam... ] [ mood | content ] [ music | kashmir..beautiful kashmir (I am not joking!) ..MGR ] I felt really bad when debbieann and charleshaynes rather suddenly pulled up their stuff and left Bangalore; I was, of course, able to keep in touch with them through their LJ's, but when I realized they were going to be back in Bangalore for a few days, I was very keen to go and meet them. So there was also udhay, themadman and Aadisht , whose LJ username I just cannot remember, even though I had no alcohol...but that's OK, since he seems far more active on Blogger. I also met Biju , and exchanged notes with Vidya . Conversation started with, and kept touching on, the Bhut Jolokia , which Gautam had brought from a friend's restaurant, in pounded/ground form. The smell of it (not too close with those nostrils!) when the little dabba was opened was heavenly; and Charles added it, a teeny bit at a time, to a small glass of vodka, and the experiment was, probably, to see at what point of time steam appeared out of the taster's ears... Charles had also brought along some Red Savina habanero pepper ,but this was cut down and "tempered" with onions and ground. I wonder if there are specific names for all the chilis I scoop up in the local market? I am sure,but there is no consistency in what I get and I settle for the what I can get. In general, the rule seems to be "the smaller, the deadlier"....I wonder if anyone can throw light on these chillies. And while talking to Aadisht, I did wish, once again,that I had been on the Bangalore Photowalk , which I missed, alas, due to the Bandipur trip...seems to have been a great outing. Good going, skthewimp...am going to join you next time. The economics of running a restaurant, and pricing dishes, were also talked about, and Madhu convincingly proved that Darshinis operate on a higher profit margin than he does, appearances to the contrary! There was also a conversation on age, and feeling old. As, easily, the oldest person present, the only point I made was that if one's health was good, age was indeed in the mind. But it tickles me that age is always with a negative connotation, and as one who can say so with authority, that is not true unless one suffers from ossification of either body or mind. Every age that I have passed through has had its difficulties and compensations, and I would not exchange each for anything. But I guess, different strokes for different folks...but was I really so afraid of getting older as some of those present seemed to be? I think not... PS. The rice noodles I had were really excellent. Though it may be causing Madhu a lot of effort, I am happy that Shiok is moving *somewhat* closer.... link 7 comments|post comment

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