I Think ...Therefore I Am Anupama

A Boat Ride To Remember

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:59:00 +0000

Exactly a month ago I was on one of the best vacations in my life, by the waters of the Arabian Sea. There were many things special about it and one of those things was a boat ride to see dolphins. We went far enough to lose sight of the shore and then all that there was, was the vastness of the ocean around us. In a rickety motor-boat we sailed towards where the dolphins were playing. It is something that will stay with me for a long time, watching pairs of dolphins glistening in the morning sun as they swam around in the open waters.

What will also stay with me for a long time is how excited our boatmen and their children got upon seeing the dolphins. I had thought that what was going to be a novel experience for us must be commonplace for them, since they practically went out to sea every day. But they were as excited as us, if not more, upon spotting the dolphins. One of them remarked excitedly about how intelligent those creatures are. It was infectious, childlike enthusiasm that amazed me. Was it their simple lives that allowed them to maintain simplicity in their selves? Had we made our lives too complicated with awe-inspiring technology and advancement? These people were happy and it showed. And I wondered what it took to be that happy.

We visited an island after watching the dolphins and our boatmen’s enthusiasm never fazed as they showed us sea creatures and explained their peculiarities. It was such a good feeling to be around these people who were in touch with the child inside them, who were genuine and who meant it when they smiled. On our way back we were surrounded by that vast body of water again for a while and I suddenly felt small and insignificant. How much I let the trivial thoughts in my head worry me on some days when there were bigger and more beautiful things out there that could instantly reduce you to a speck in a blue sheet. The whole experience was so overwhelming that a spontaneous tears rolled down my cheek. And only one line from the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ kept coming back to me:

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.

I did. And I was glad for it. And I hope I will always feel that way.

This song is dedicated to those boatmen, that beautiful experience, the memory and to many more such vacations...I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack.

I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack on Grooveshark

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin'
Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin'

Don't let some Hellbent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to sellin' out, reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along)
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder, where those years have gone?)

Writers: Tia Sillers, Mark D. Sanders

20 Questions With Amrita Suresh

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:51:00 +0000

This edition of 20 Questions brings you insights from Amrita Suresh, author of 'When A Lawyer Falls In Love', a witty well-paced and funny love story that is receiving favourable reviews from all over. Read on to find out more about the creator of this work herself.

When did you take to writing?

As a twelve year old, I had already made up my mind that I wanted to be a novelist and I’ve been working towards this dream, since then.

Where do you usually write? What is your favourite setting to write in?

I’ve come to believe that writing ought to be like meditation, you should be able to practice it anywhere. Hence, I’m not too particular about any setting.

Do you have any rituals/superstitions as a writer? Something you like to do before you start writing? A favourite pen?

I read somewhere that Chetan Bhagat likes to read 20 books before he starts writing his next novel. Personally, I’m not superstitious about anything that concerns my writing.

Typing or writing on paper? What do you prefer and why?

Jeffery Archer says that he is most comfortable writing rather than typing and the same goes for me.

What was your first piece of work ever? Do you still have it?

I used to write these poems as a ten year old and some of those poems are still with me. They make me feel nostalgic…

Who are your inspirations as far as writing is concerned? Any writers you would highly recommend to readers?

Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard based professor has written this book ‘Stumbling on Happiness’. It is both informative and hilarious. Basically, I am partial to humour writers and so I like Dave Barry, Bill Cosby, Martha Beck and Eric Weiner. Among Indian writers, Chitra Divakurni Banerjee and Advaita Kala are pretty good.

What inspired ‘When a Lawyer Falls in Love’?

Being in college, I remember thinking that I ought to pen down the magic there is during an inter collegiate festival. So attending college festivals like Saarang and Mood Indigo of IIT Madras and Mumbai respectively, made me sure that I wanted to write this book.

We all know that while the author is solely responsible for an idea, the execution of the idea is impossible without the support of people who believe in the idea and the author. So who are the people behind ‘When a Lawyer falls in love’, other than yourself?

I would like to specifically thank three people. Firstly Archana Suresh, my sister and the true force behind getting this book on to the national platform. Shobit Arya, my publisher from Offshoots, (an imprint of Wisdom Tree) for making this miracle happen and my husband Raj Konduru for being the wind beneath my wings.

Did the story of ‘When a Lawyer falls in Love’ come to you easily or did you find yourself stuck with writer’s block sometimes?

I’ve come to believe that writing a novel is like a tight rope walk from one tall building to another. As long as you are looking ahead and walking that’s good, but the moment you look at the ground below, you are petrified. I think it’s very important not to take long breaks of weeks and months while writing a novel, the flow gets lost. That worked for me. Fortunately, I didn’t go through any phases of writer’s block.

What is your personal most effective way of getting over writer’s block, if it ever strikes you?

If writer’s block ever strikes me, I usually read something that I am interested in. Taking a break and then getting started on one’s writing has worked for me. The important thing is to keep those creative juices flowing.

Do you agree that there are always autobiographical portions in any writing? Are there any in ‘When a Lawyer falls in love’?

I don’t necessarily agree with that although I have read works of many authors who base their writing on that premise. Having studied in a convent school and college all my life, the co-education kind of life described in the book is purely a figment of my imagination.

Can you describe the journey of ‘When a Lawyer falls in love’ in short? How do you feel now when you look back on the entire creative process?

When I wrote the book, I went with the flow. I think that when there’s a certain innocence in the writing, it strikes a chord with the reader. That and the humour in the book are the book’s biggest USPs. The creative process was enjoyable more because the writing came from the heart!

How easy or difficult was it to get the book published?

Let’s just say that the team at Offshoots (an imprint of Wisdom Tree), has been God sent. There is no denying that it is difficult for a first time writer to come onto the national platform and I hope that this book serves as an inspiration to many young writers out there to come forward with their work.

Do you agree that any author also has to be a good marketer? Or are there mechanisms that can take care of the marketing bit, allowing the author to concentrate solely on content?

It is absolutely imperative to market one’s book. I am fortunate to have an elder sister and husband who are taking care of that aspect. Courtesy them, I have the liberty of just concentrating on my craft. In this day and age of social media and news at the click of a button, it is very important that different channels of the media be targeted to let the world know of one’s work.

What is your advice to writers out there who might be looking at getting published? Any helpful pointers?

In my experience there are no short-cuts. Young writers need to do their research on publishers out there – be it by joining their groups on Facebook or just reaching out to their editorial teams through mails. I remember sending the first few chapters of the book to potential publishers to give them a preview of my work. The effort boils down to two words- discipline and perseverance. I’d advise writers to keep polishing their craft and hang in there. They must not give up!

What is your message to anyone who is considering picking up the book for a read? What can he/she expect?

If you are in the mood for a few laughs and want to refresh memories of your college life again, this book is for you. It is definitely an easy read and one or more characters in this book will remind you of people you’ve met in your life.

Who is ‘When a Lawyer falls in love’ dedicated to?

This book is dedicated to my mother, Mrs. Renu Merani Suresh, my sister, Archana Suresh and AR Rahman. My mom and sis have put up with my writer mood swings for many years now (laughs) and Rahman’s soulful music played a big role in driving away the blues when I was looking out for a publisher : )

Do you have more stories to tell us already that we can expect in the form of books soon? Are you working on something?

I have some ideas that I am working on. As and when they crystallize, you will hear from me again in the form of a book : )

Apart from writing, what else keeps you busy? What are your passions/interests?

I have been an ardent dog lover for as long as I can remember. As an active member of Blue Cross, I try and take time out to pitch in with any help for stray. I was so glad when Mrs. Amala Akkineni, founder, Blue Cross Hyderabad agreed to launch my book in October 2011. Apart from that, I love reading, cooking and indulging my little niece.

What is the one thought you would like to leave people with when they think of Amrita Suresh, the writer?

I would like to be remembered as a writer who was entertaining at the same time who created characters that lingered on in one’s mind, long after the book was read.

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So that was Amrita Suresh and her book 'When A Lawyer Falls In Love' can be ordered here.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know Amrita as much as I did. Until the next edition of 20 Questions, keep reading...

In My Own Defence...

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:20:00 +0000

…I believe in magic. And angels. And butterflies and bigger pictures. Universal plans. Maybe I do it just to keep myself occupied, happy and sane. Otherwise God knows this world can drive anyone crazy.

And it is because I see all these things around me that I believe in them. From the very beginning we have been instructed over and over again in our classrooms to believe in things we cannot even see…atoms, neutrons, protons, electrons…just ideas. I spent four years studying engineering and solving problems based on our imagination of an electromagnetic wave, of vectors. In fact, just this morning I was in class again trying to imagine infinite dimensions and acting like it was the most natural thing to do. I based my understanding of this world on mere concepts. We studied pattern recognition in artificial intelligence…I am sure Nobel Prizes are being given out for that kind of thing. But patterns in real life were not meant to be recognized. Isn’t that unfair?

Today, I am fondly remembering an angel who came up to me on an afternoon when I was down in the dumps, wondering why an insignificant person’s remark about my abilities had left me so deeply affected that I couldn’t get myself to so much as pick up my camera again. It was after more than two months that I had picked up my camera and I still felt dead with that machine in my hand. But I was forcing myself to click that day. And a pair of bicycles on St. Marks Road had caught my fancy.

It was while I was shooting these cycles that a man walked up to me and started asking me questions about my photography. And I thought, could he not have chosen a worse time? Of all days he picks the exact day when I am feeling the worst about my ability to capture anything decently well. But I made polite conversation and he left me with his email id so I could forward my Flickr “portfolio” to him. And I did, for whatever reason.

But his reply said very little about my photography and a lot about life. He did call my pictures visceral and I remembered why I had taken to photography in the first place. It was something I did for myself. I don’t even know why he was telling me all these things. He had read my blog and he said, “I remember you writing about coincidences...and I truly believe in them...sometimes it happens to me too...and I wonder how everything connects…only if we could SEE...right...and you do.” He closed it with the following words:

And remember there is always happiness and it is a beautiful world..and beautiful ppl..who will remind you all is well..till then aurevoir..

And I cried. Sobbed. Why had this man even come up to me to talk? And why was he saying all these things without an iota of an idea about what I was going through that day? Why did he pick coincidences among all other things I had written about on my blog? Why exactly had he turned up that day when I was inches away from packing away my camera just because somebody I cared nothing about had been so horribly insensitive? I am sure it was mere coincidence but it saved me that day. A part of me would have surely died had this person not said what he said. Because the world IS beautiful…and magical…and so are people, except for a few. And there is always happiness. And I had forgotten that.

He never wrote to me again. Ever. In the last two and a half years I have read his mail every time I have felt low because there is something magical about a stranger sharing such a beautiful thought with you for absolutely no apparent reason. I don’t even know why I connect with that mail so much but I cry every time I read it, no exceptions. It reminds me to always look at beautiful things in life and wait for happiness, because it is around. And to believe in people and their goodness.

I opened his mail again today because I needed someone to tell me that all was going to be well…that in fact all was well. And the words of a man whose face I hardly remember were all I had, but it worked…it always does. Because there was no past to our encounter and no future. In a few moments of two human beings interacting with each other, he chose to tell me the purest thought there was and that is why I know that it’s true.

In a world where fanatics are out to slit each other’s throats and humans are systematically destroying all means of sustaining life on this planet in the future, if it is people who believe in finding magic in everyday life who are labelled as crazy, then yes, I am crazy and proudly so!

But I know that there was a reason that man was standing on that pavement that day. He was sent. And he committed an act of kindness that fills me with gratitude every time I think of it.

And that is exactly why I believe in magic. And angels. And butterflies and bigger pictures.

The Ride...Of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Not very long ago the road to my workplace was a smooth one. People in Bangalore used to ride/drive better too. And riding was not as big a pain. In fact I used to be able to glance at a lake for a few moments or watch Brahminy Kites swoop down without worrying about the vehicle ahead jamming its brakes and me ramming into it. I used to actually enjoy the 17 Km ride.

But then somebody decided that better infrastructure meant a higher number of stupidly designed flyovers all over Outer Ring Road (not a single two-lane flyover but two separate ones, one for each way...genius!). Today, almost three years later, the road to work is still dug up and seems to get worse by the day instead of getting better. It is rife with potholes and gravel for most part of the stretch. To add to that, people seem to continuously lose sense of how to drive on the roads and make the situation worse. One does not reach work in an hour now and the journey is difficult. It is exhausting. But one gets there. Slowly. Eventually.

Life isn't any different. Some have the privilege of having a smooth way paved for them and reaching their destinations soon and well. But then sometimes the road deteriorates. New speed breakers crop up overnight and big potholes appear out of nowhere. There are stretches of gravel and one rattles on. The ride is dusty and slow. But one gets there. Slowly. Eventually.

And thats what matters.

Doubts And Dead Fish

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:49:00 +0000

The Moray eel was hiding in its cave when we arrived with dead fish. We went about playing with the sea urchin and making crabs scamper and then got down to trying to coax the eel out of its cave. And we kept throwing dead fish at it. The crabs got the free food and the eel stayed in hiding. And then we put fish on the line and put it in the cave, in the eel’s face. And it disappeared inside to never reappear. If only we had waited a while…we could have seen that beautiful creature.

The voices of our heart hide in their cave, deep inside. It is possible to hear them if only we would wait. But they throw dead fish at them and try and coax them out. Hypotheses, conjectures, doubts. We let them be strung onto a line and stuffed right in the face of those voices. And they disappear. You can keep your ear out for them but it is not until the waters have calmed and the ripples have disappeared that they will reappear.

If only we had waited…we could have heard them tell the truth.

Book Review 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:00:00 +0000

In 2010, I had managed to read 20 books and at the end of the year, I had made a reading list for 2011 that had 26 books on it. The course of life changed somewhere in the middle and that list went for a toss. Nevertheless, here are my thoughts on all that I managed to read in 2011 (a measly 12 books that is).

2011 had me reading:

Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton
Tough Choices - Carly Fiorina
All And Nothing - Raksha Bharadia
The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Zoya Factor - Anuja Chauhan
Train To Pakistan - Khushwant Singh
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin
Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison - Mike Wilson
Snapshots From Hell - Peter Robinson
Super Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Paths Of Glory - Jeffrey Archer

And here is what I thought of each of these:

Consolations of Philosophy

Alain de Botton

I got introduced to de Botton through The Art Of Travel (highly recommended, btw) and chancing upon CoP at Landmark had picked it up on impulse. For someone who is not initiated into the works of classical (or even modern) philosophers, CoP was a good introduction. In retrospect and after a discussion that took place on the beaches of the Indian west coast, I realize that my primary take-away from this book was to get to know the schools that philosophers like Epicurus, Nietzsche, Seneca among others belonged to, the essence of their work and perspectives on options to deal with situations in life. I may have missed the point of the book completely but I was still very happy to read it and learn from it primarily because it was all so new and any information was better than no information. I am now hoping to read more of philosophy-related works and understand it all better but I still enjoyed the first read of last year well.

Tough Choices

Carly Fiorina

An autobiography of Carly Fiorina going all the way until she was fired from the HP and apart from being a very good story by itself, this book is filled with business lessons, especially for women. Fiorina tells it fearlessly so we may all learn and there are valuable pointers in the book about how businesses work and how one may negotiate the dynamics of it all. I am, in fact, hoping to read this one a second time someday and would highly recommend it to you all.

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society

Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

A warm book with a beautiful story inside! A wonderful epistolatory work set in the post World War II London. The book contains letters exchanged between an author and the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on the Guernsey Island and give an insight on the effect that war can have on the lives of people. Even with that backdrop, the book remains light and warm but catches you unawares at some points. For instance, I remember this section in a letter from this one guy to the author where he expounds on his favourite book and why he loves it so much and then brings it to a quick wrap by saying he must go and feed the animals lest they stay hungry for long. It was instances like these that made me break into a sudden sob by their beauty…by how literature can affect lives, their lives…how they found something larger to connect through or disagree with in books and for a small time they were not ordinary village-folk but connoisseurs of literature. The simplicity of those folks and how genuinely they shared their lives with this lady is heart-warming. And unlike 84, Charing Cross Road, here the author actually meets the Guernsey folks and the story ends on a rather happy note. Beautiful story that mixes emotion and history well.

The Zoya Factor

Anuja Chauhan

Straight out chick-lit that I loved! And I am not even a cricket fan! But this story is adorable and filmy and fun and I had good fun reading this one. Way better than the chick-lit stock available in the market otherwise. I am not revealing any bits of what the story is about but really good read if you are in the mood for something light and nice.

Train To Pakistan

Khushwant Singh

This one had been pending since long and I am so glad I finally read it (I say that pretty much all the time after reading famous books that I hadn’t read!). I own a copy that has pictures taken by Margaret Bourke-White interspersed with the story at relevant points and that heightened the sense of the story being closer to fact than fiction. The story tells us of the time when India was divided into Indian and Pakistan and how it changed lives. The horror of partition stays subtle in the story but doesn’t fail to make its presence felt through the emotions of the characters. It is good education about the Partition and what it meant for a border village that had never known animosity. And the way the story ends, it broke my heart and proved how humanity always wins. So beautiful!

I loved Khushwant Singh’s style of writing this book. I haven’t read anything else by him to be able to comment or compare but this book dwells on the details – of scene, of emotion, of characters. It has its own pace and doesn’t get very racy even to the end, letting you absorb the scenes before moving on.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Daniyal Mueenuddin

I had always wanted to read a book by a Pakistani author and this book was a start somewhere. Mueenuddin had drawn a lot of critical acclaim for this book and it was good to be able to read it, thanks to my friend LK. He has a writing style that flows well and scores on the details. In addition, he seems to be a good observer and his narration of the life in small villages comes through equally well as that of life in the higher echelons of the Pakistani society. At no point did I feel that he didn’t do justice to the characters and he treated them all equally fairly. The stories give one a glimpse of life in Pakistan and various aspects of it through the extended support system of one central character. So there are stories spanning the lives of his servants and their dreams/desires and then those of his family members and their lives. While the stories have a fundamental human appeal that anyone can relate to, not having a common thread, even in the form of a single character, would have made them look like dispersed fragments. But his current arrangement makes it all happen in one household or his farmhouse or to someone who has worked for him and makes the flow of the book nicer.

I did think that the theme of promiscuity made its appearance more than others and more than necessary so much so that towards the end I was very close to creating a stereotype in my head. I realize the same stories could have been set in India with no change and it would have still made sense but to what extent one aspect should be highlighted is a personal discretion I guess. Maybe the author was trying to bring out the fact that people can be promiscuous irrespective of which stratum of the society they come from but for wholly different reasons. But I still feel there are many other aspects of life that could have been given equal position in the stories. Nevertheless, made a start on writing from Pakistan and I’m happy about that.

Unaccustomed Earth

Jhumpa Lahiri

Again a collection of stories that I borrowed from LK too and in this case, fragmented. All stories in this book deal with identity somewhere and focus on lives of Bengalis in the USA. Towards the end, this theme got to me and the stories started becoming routine in some sense since I already had an inkling about the possible setting. And then at some point I was just looking at finishing the book. It wasn’t boring but the setting became monotonous. Yet, until that feeling came, the book was a good read primarily because one doesn’t have to be a Bengali in the USA to identify with what’s being talked about. Members of communities in India who live outside their native states are likely to feel similarly, although not to the same degree. And hence, that basic idea running through every story made it possible to relate to them. And I definitely liked Jhumpa Lahiri’s style of writing…not as detailed as Khushwant Singh or Daniyal Mueenuddin but she highlights key points of a scene or a character and makes it possible to pin imagination onto those points. A minimalist style of description, if I may.

The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison

Mike Wilson

Got my hands on this finally, thanks to a friend again. A very detailed biography of Larry Ellison and Oracle written in an easy, flowing fashion. Wilson made the book enjoyable with his writing and the book is a good look into the life of a man who isn’t very different from the company he founded…an Oracle. Ellison’s ability to see many years into the future constantly helped Oracle stay in the game and the book narrates the story of the man and his company together well without getting dry at any point. A rather enjoyable and recommended business biography.

Snapshots From Hell

Peter Robinson

Thoroughly enjoyed this book gifted by a friend. I read this just before starting MBA and it helped have a perspective on a few things before starting out. The book is autobiographical and Robinson recounts instances from the first year he spent in business school at Stanford. Not only does he recount incidents, but also actually describes some cases and conclusions, which make it additionally enjoyable. This book is a good way to look at life inside Stanford and get inspired or change your mind, as the case may be. I found it to be a very good pre-MBA read but even without that condition, it would make for an equally good read I think.

Super Freakonomics

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

I’ll keep this brief. Not as mind-boggling as Freakonomics, maybe because somewhere we all know what to expect. Still very interesting and looks at some more social phenomena from a Microeconomic perspective, in that how one single thing made a difference to female foeticide in India, the economics of prostitution, whether baby car seats are really better than seat belts and the like. Recommended.

Paths Of Glory

Jeffrey Archer

This is a biographical work about George Mallory’s Everest expedition and a very good read. Very different from other works of Jeffrey Archer and filled with charm since it is set in the English society of back then. Also, there are letters, exchanged between George Mallory and his wife Ruth when he would be on an expedition or serving in the army. Those bring in more charm to the book. So there is adventure and till the end you keep hoping it ends in triumph, there is a love story that has old world charm to it and it’s a story of passion and pursuing dreams. Highly recommended.

So that was that for 2011. The 2012 stock is likely to be more practical keeping in mind my time constraints and factoring in all the course books I am reading. But I am hoping to keep it up somehow and stay the course of non-academic reading to balance it all out.

Wishing you all a year of good reading ahead. May you find new insights and experiences through the eyes of another who penned it down for us all!

How I Met 2011…and 2012!

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:05:00 +0000

Sometimes you meet some people and you like them instantly, you don’t even know why. And then we try and capture that feeling into phrases like ‘good vibe’, ‘positive aura’ etc. But deep down we don’t know why we feel that way. And in time, those people end up living up to that image we have of them.

That’s how I met 2011. I will never be able to explain why it exhilarated me so much to step into 2011. And I will try and justify it by saying things like ‘I had a good feeling about 2011 from the start’. But I did. I just loved 2011 when it started. I knew it would be a good year. And the year lived up to my feeling about it…and more.

And it’s surprising why I felt so positive about it because I started the year with a not so great CAT score to apply to the PGSEM course with. But somewhere I had a feeling I would definitely start the course this year. And so I gave myself in completely to preparing seriously for the PGSEM test. It was like being back in school when I used to study for the sake of it and not with a goal in mind; that’s what works best for me usually. I really enjoyed those few weeks of preparing for the PGSEM test and did fairly well in the test too.

The year also started with an awesome trip to Sri Lanka in January with my best friends. It is amazing that we have known each other for so long but never really travelled together and Sri Lanka was a great vacation as a first trip with them! One of those trips where my heart broke while leaving the place...just so good!

The March interview call for PGSEM and the subsequent turn of events only conformed to the goodness that 2011 was supposed to bring. It was April before I knew it and by the time the admission process closed. The realization that travel would become a luxury in the coming months sent me on the April Get Off trip to Sholur. It was great like the other Get Off trips I’ve been on and gave me some time to enjoy the place at which I was in life before embarking on newer journeys and moving on. Met a great set of people on the slopes of the Nilgiris and had a peaceful mountain holiday before joining the MBA fray.

May saw me participating in the residential Orientation on the IIMB campus and also simultaneously making a mad dash to try and read up a little outside of an MBA curriculum. And then it was back to college life with our freshers event thrown at us even before classes began. Since then, life has been a series of discoveries, learning and enlightenment from some of the best in the field. It is a privilege that I hope I never take for granted but it’s been great, with a long standing dream realized.

In September, 2011 brought along an opportunity to realize another dream – writing for a magazine – and I started writing for the Chennai-based RITZ. It has been such a Godsend, the amount of creative freedom being a freelance writer allows me; I suggest my own story briefs and then get to work on them, meeting new people in the process and listening to beautiful stories every time. It lets me write the stories I want to tell and in the manner that I want to tell them. It lets me discover the world around and look for nooks and crannies where a story might be hidden. And it lets me live a dream I’ve had for the longest time. It fills me with gratitude to think how this even came about and has become such a great part of my journey as a writer!

2011 was also the year my biological clock did a flip and became friendlier towards early mornings. My birthday was a milestone last year in terms of how I suddenly found the early morning life possible, even easy…something that had never happened in all these years. I started running a little bit in an effort to keep fit and have been running barefoot since November. It really is such a positive change and feeling and I am glad it has finally come by!

I got back to writing letters again in 2011, something I had missed and been irregular with for a few years. And am I glad I did! It has been the best part of the year that passed, finding envelopes bearing my name in the letterbox and reading stories from faraway lands. And it’s been special for more reasons than one.

What has also been special is the way the year ended. The holiday season of 2011 was one of the best vacations I have ever had in life, and that is not even a hyperbole. It leaves me with a warm feeling how I was surrounded by only the most special people in my life this vacation, be it family, friends or more. Some of these people I have known for more than 12 years now, if not for life, and it is a strange sense of contentment and comfort to have them back and around in such special ways. It was a joy to see ONM get married to the love of his life and to be a part of the occasion, even if in a small way. It was great that my best friend of all these years moved to Bangalore and now is staying with us for a month before she gets married; she has been family for long anyway and I could not have asked for a more wonderful time to spend with one of the sweetest people in my life. My kid brother came down for a vacation too and I hope he found a friend in his elder sister after nearly twenty years of playing our defined roles; special time with our most loved kid in the house. And then life came a full circle on a gorgeous West Coast vacation that brought together many dreams and put them together in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think I have ever been this happy although I am generally a happy person by disposition. It must be obvious by now that I am at a loss for words to describe how great the last two weeks were!

So it’s been a year of many dreams fulfilled and I end it on a high contented note. Those were a good 365 days spent laughing, learning, living and loving. 2012 came on a quiet note for me and I met it like one would an old friend that one hasn’t spoken to in a while but is very comfortable to be around. It hasn’t opened its bags yet but I am certain there are gifts and souvenirs in there for me. More than that, I am looking to have a nice long meaningful conversation with 2012 and for the year to regale me with new stories and a new life. Welcome home old friend…

And wish you all a happy new year!

20 Questions With TGC Prasad

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:16:00 +0000

Today I bring you thoughts from author, management consultant and international speaker Mr. TGC Prasad, who has already authored books like Unusual People Do Things Differently and talks to us about writing in general and his new book 'Along The Way' as we ask him 20 questions.

When do you write?

I usually write either early in the mornings or late in the night. I need uninterrupted and quiet time to focus and write. I don’t take calls, I don’t prefer doing any chores, I don’t like getting up from my seat when I start writing.

Where do you usually write? What is your favourite setting to write in?

I usually write in my study room on my desk. That is my favourite setting.

Do you have any rituals/superstitions as a writer? Something you like to do before you start writing? A favourite pen?

No, I don’t have a superstition as a writer. I pray for couple of minutes before I start work. It helps focus.

Typing or writing on paper? What do you prefer and why?

I prefer typing on my Mac. It is easier, and I’m faster on the Mac than on paper.

What was your first piece of work ever? Do you still have it?

I don’t quite remember, may be some report. I don’t have it. Actually, I haven’t written before that fine day when I started to write ‘Unusual People Do Things Differently’…

Who are your inspirations as far as writing is concerned? Any writers you would highly recommend to readers?

The simplicity in the writings of R K Narayan and the detailing of C Rajagopalachari are fantastic. I recommend these two Indian writers. On the business side, books of Peter Drucker, CK Prahalad, Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, James Champy are fantastic.

What inspired ‘Along The Way’?

I wanted to affirm that I could write fiction. Secondly I wanted to write something hilarious which people could read and laugh, especially software engineers who lead quite a stressful life with all their deadlines and late nights…

We all know that while the author is solely responsible for an idea, the execution of the idea is impossible without the support of people who believe in the idea and the author. So who are the people behind ‘Along The Way’, other than yourself?

I must thank Rupa Publications for agreeing to publish the book.

Did the story of ‘Along The Way’ come to you easily or did you find yourself stuck with a writer’s block sometimes?

The story of ‘Along the Way’, came very easily. I didn’t have any author’s block.

What is your personal most effective way of getting over a writer’s block, if it ever strikes you?

Sometimes, if I do get stuck, I start working on flow-charting of the story and then it gets going again. But I don’t stress myself hard over it. I take it easy and relax for a while and let the mind heal. I probably read, watch movies, go on drives, eat good food, enjoy my walks and all that. Why push yourself when you are stuck? The mind is a reservoir, you need to know how to tap it and at times give it enough rest so that it can connect the dots perfectly.

Do you agree that there are always autobiographical portions in any writing? Are there any in ‘Along The Way’?

I don’t agree with that. Fiction is about imagining something and writing about it. Many times authors take inspiration from certain events, places, people, scenes and what have you. ‘Along the Way’ is inspired by my long innings as a management expert in software and consulting domains.

Can you describe the journey of ‘Along The Way’ in short? How do you feel now when you look back on the entire creative process?

It has been immensely rewarding to write fiction. In retrospect, I know the improvements I could make in the book. There is always a next time.

How easy or difficult was it to get the book published?

I wrote a hundred pages of the manuscript, sent it to Rupa and they sent a contract. It was as simple as that…

Do you agree that any author also has to be a good marketer? Or are there mechanisms that can take care of the marketing bit, allowing the author to concentrate solely on content?

An author has to be a great marketer too; otherwise people will not know the existence of the book. I believe it is a joint effort between authors and publishers, and they have to work hand in glove. But only marketing without content doesn’t help. With great content and smart marketing, the book is bound to take off. So, it is a combination.

What is your advice to writers out there who might be looking at getting published? Any helpful pointers?

Choose a topic, which interests publishers.
Keep your book short, not too long.
Write in simple language that everybody can understand.
Go to book launches and meet potential publishers and take cues from them.
Be networked. It is important to do that, as much as writing good content.

What is your message to anyone who is considering picking up the book for a read? What can he/she expect?

If anybody picks up ‘Along the Way’, they can expect a breezy romance told in the most hilarious way in the software industry setting.

Who is ‘Along The Way’ dedicated to?

To my son and wife.

Do you have more stories to tell us already that we can expect in the form of books soon? Are you working on something?

I am working on ‘the case of the missing wedding ring’, a wonderful story in the first person narrative of a 19 year old autistic girl.

Apart from writing, what else keeps you busy? What are your passions/interests?

I do management consulting and I am an inspirational speaker. In the last quarter, I must have spoken to employees and senior management of atleast 25 companies like TCS, Goldman Sachs, SAP, Aricent, Macmillan, TESCO…

What is the one thought you would like to leave people with when they think of TGC Prasad, the writer?

The books which I write will be on various topics…business, entrepreneurship, hilarious fiction, romance, autism…I don’t stick to a genre, I write from the heart on subjects which interest me.

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I hope you enjoyed the interview and are looking forward to reading the book. Copies of 'Along The Way' can be ordered here. Keep reading!

Happiness Is...

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:26:00 +0000

I may be getting addicted to writing silly poems...here's one more :)

Happiness is…

A cane chair under a tree,

A copy of Tuesdays With Morrie,

A cup of piping hot tea

And good company.

A walk in the drizzle in June

Or in the light of the full moon

Or on a lukewarm winter afternoon,

With the radio playing my favourite tune!

A letter in the letterbox,

Writing a reply until the small hours of the clock,

Late night heart-to-heart girl talks,

A cup of warm milk, a blue sweater and my favourite socks.

Breakfast in town on Sunday,

Homemade food cooked my favourite way,

A little banter, a little play

With friends and family makes my day.

Happiness is when the heart sings

And finds the biggest joys in the smallest things,

In the lovely gifts that life brings.

That’s when happiness takes wings : )

What The Water Gave Me

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:42:00 +0000

It’s 2 AM and the world around me would have been absolutely quiet on another day save for the sound of an occasional water tanker coming by or leaving…or maybe the dogs howling. Today, it’s the sound of steadily falling rain. The dogs must be curled up in the cold somewhere so all I can hear is that one sound with some pitter-patter once in a while.

It’s magical, hearing this sound at this hour. Opens up your soul and stirs emotions deep inside. And that is true of the sound of water in most forms, it has the power to connect with you at a deeper level than you can imagine.

I am immediately reminded of my many trips where the rain faithfully accompanied me. I remember Pondicherry, conversations about nothing in particular, seeing the ocean through the falling rain. I remember conversations with myself while I walked around Hampi in 3 days of rains… lunch at the Mango Tree as my umbrella dripped water at the door and I sat by the river listening to the swollen river rushing by. And then there was staring at winding road leading up to Ooty from somewhere in the mountains…six travellers sitting quietly and listening to water drip from the mountain trees. More recently there was staring at another view of the same mountains through the rain while sitting around an old British house in the middle of nowhere.

River sounds are a different feeling altogether from rains. I am thinking the calm, almost still waters of the Cauvery in Doddamakali one April; you had to strain your ears to listen to the river’s murmur but it was there. Cauvery talked better in Dubbare, gurgled and laughed with my family, while I quietly sat and listened. And there were the boisterous waterfalls…Iruppu, Abbey, Hogenakkal, Bhedaghat…the very sound, that rush exhilarates and makes me break into a stupid happy smile.

The strongest emotion, though, is always elicited by that all encompassing water body – the sea or the ocean. The whole that holds parts, the whole where we float. On a calm day, nothing calms me down better than watching a lazy wave roll over the sea to reach a shore only to playfully lap at it. It is medicine…on the beaches of Mt. Lavinia or Galle, Hungarkatte. On a windy rough evening, nothing intimidates me more than watching a rough sea spew water angrily at the shore and to hear the waves break upon hitting land. It is raw power that hits deep inside and can shake you up. I never saw it but that’s what the night sea at Kaup beach sounded like…agitated.

Maybe it’s our primal instinct, from thousands of years ago as we evolved from creatures that came from the waters to Homo Sapiens. But there is certainly something about water that evokes emotions like no other entity on earth…deep fear, immense attraction or just a mild liking. I think it’s best left unexplained and only experienced.

Closing while the rain continues to fall steadily tonight with this beautiful beautiful song about water.

Vinyl Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:35:00 +0000

My birth was marked with the purchase of a Gramophone record. Of the 1963 film Dil Ek Mandir. The record had the song Juhi Ki Kali Meri Ladli on it, my father’s song for me. My father bought that record the day I was born and put the date and his signature on it. And he told me that story forvere after. That is how my association with Vinyl records began. And that is how early my association with music began.

Image courtesy: vinylmelody.com

We used to own an HMV gramophone record player earlier. It used to play at three speeds – 33 and ½ rpm, 45 rpm and 75 rpm. But by the time I was 6 or 7, it had been used well enough to go into repairs…and never return to play. We still have the speakers I think, charming wood finish ones with the well-loved HMV logo on them.

So my father went and bought a Videocon 3-in-1 deck in the late 80s. It had a cassette-player, radio and a gramophone record player. It also came with the facility to record straight off the radio and my parents could then record many sessions of Bela Ke Phool, Binaca Geetmala and the likes from the radio.

And that’s how memories of music started to get woven into the fabric of my memories. The earliest memory was that of Boney M’s Brown Girl In The Ring playing from a small 45 rpm record while I danced to the tune. There were also Sunday afternoons every few weeks spent cleaning the Vinyls. Anything could be playing – an old Hindi film soundtrack, ABBA or some ghazals. All the Vinyls would be restacked, the big ones and small. Stories about how some of them were acquired would be retold. There was the story of my record. There was also the story of how my father once took my mother out to dinner in the early days of their marriage and Ustad Ghulam Ali Khan’s Hungama Hai Kyun Barpa was playing in the restaurant. My mother liked the song so much that she requested my father to buy the record. That is how that record landed up in our collection. Some of the records in the collection had scratches on them from being played too many times. Some of them would make the needle jump. Some were even bent a little. And yet, we were and are immensely proud of this assortment of Vinyls that we had…pure unadulterated sound wafting through the house with every rotation of the record.

There was something magical about holding each of those records, there was something precious about pulling them out of their jackets, there was something elevating about the art on those jackets…it was old world but there was something eternal about the feeling.

And that is why it is extremely heartening to see renewed interest (rather renewed coverage of interest that never died) in Vinyls, most recently covered in The Economist and Forbes. I really hope they outlast CDs and digital media and vindicate all that is old world and pure. That’s my Vinyl dream.

No Name Face

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:28:00 +0000

He didn’t even have to look today evening. Or maybe I didn’t see him see me. But my glass of tea was ready when I reached the counter. It always is. Because the guys at the counter know that’s what I always order…at least they believe so. So on an odd day when I feel like coffee I don’t bother; I can’t bear to tell them they went wrong with their assumption or took me for granted. I quietly pick up my glass and pay. Sometimes they make conversation…small talk really. Have I had lunch, it’s raining very badly, they finished lunch long back, have I finished work. They seem to mean it. What else can we, with half a minute on our hands and with a constant stream of parched employees flocking the counter for their preferred beverage, talk about? Lots if you ask me but we just keep it this way. I don’t even know their names and they don’t know mine. We are no name faces.

There are the security guards. They seem to change every day and a new guard seems to check my bag as I wait to enter the facility. But they catch me unaware sometimes with questions like why am I so late today? I mumble something and move on, mostly pleasantly surprised that they seem to care enough to remember who comes in when in a building with 10 floors and more than 2000 employees.

The guys at the snack counter always, always remember that I need my salads/chats without onion in them. Or that 90% of the time I eat Chopsuey Salad. The lady clearing the salt and pepper shakers off the lunch table during the late lunch hour smiles as she picks them off my table and watches me eat with my book for company.

There are so many such faces – the lady at the grocery store, the guy who runs the bakery (and asks before I utter anything – ‘Maggi?’), the breakfast counter folks at college (who have, in 4 weeks, already started to ask me if I don’t need Frooti that one odd time when I don’t buy it and also know that tea goes with both my breakfast and lunch orders), the guy at Snoways laundry in JP Nagar (who knows we almost always pick up our orders late and even lets us enter the store to look for clothes we gave in a few weeks earlier).

No name faces. They populate that space in our lives that is truly no man’s land. No names to call anyone by. No relations. But they know something about us that the closest of our folks miss sometimes. Even if it’s just a habit. They seem to care when they are least required to. What does one call that space and residents of those spaces in our memories? It is an understatement to say that they don’t matter to us. Recall that time when the laundry guy or the guy at your neighbourhood store changed and you were left looking around even if for a few seconds for that familiar face. What does one call those people, those relations that make a difference in inexplicable ways?

Lifehouse did me a service by calling their album No Name Face. Because that’s the only term that fits. Unpolluted by a term to call each other, I will always remember these folks by their smiling faces, for what they did and how they showed their care in small ways down this difficult road called existence.

Dedicated to them all, Somewhere In Between by Lifehouse from…No Name Face.

A Lustrum In Life

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Somewhere…

In taking my first flight

And reaching the city of my dreams

Running behind jam-packed buses

And then owning a set of wheels,

In moving away from the comfort of family

And being a paying guest,

In all the madness of that first year

And then moving in to my own nest,

In the middle of all that travel,

In a coracle, on a raft, or the Getoff Bus,

In the jungles, under the water or on mountaintops

With views and stories that inspired us,

In capturing life through the lens,

In learning a new art,

In getting onto the stage for the first time

And playing my part

In the perfect notes of music,

In a good walk on the street,

On days of perfect weather

And having dear friends to meet,

In conversations with strangers,

In adventures, big and small,

In fulfilled dreams, in hopes for the future,

In knowing there’s more to life, that this is not all,

Somewhere, in the middle of all that,

A lustrum went by in building home,

Existence became living,

This New City became my own.

The day came and went and I completed five years of being in this beautiful city on the 1st of July 2011. In the business of living I couldn’t take out time to celebrate the milestone enough but this silly poem is my tribute to life in this place, to home. Here’s to many more years in this wonderful place living a wonderful life…cheers!

Diana Cut

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sat, 21 May 2011 19:29:00 +0000

“Diana Cut.”

My mom was quite amused with the name. She almost flushed red in her cheeks. This whole business is still very new to her. The business of getting a hair cut. To have your hair cut so short that the nape of the neck is visible.

She thinks we know this business well. After all it was we, her two daughters, who wore their hair short for a good eighteen or nineteen years of their lives. She forgets that we never really had to choose. It was always our parents – initially dad and later on, mom – who would accompany us and finish the business with one quick decisive utterance: ‘Boy Cut’. Anyway, we feign expertise while panicking inside to find a way to get this right. Mom has asked that we choose how her hair should be cut.

The salon where we usually go has a 45-minute wait after which they will close. But this can’t wait. Mom is travelling in two days. So we start walking around and spot this swanky new salon that’s opened up down the road. The brightly lit lavender-coloured board is certainly a bit tacky but we decide to at least peruse the place once.

It looks ok. So we tell them our mom needs a haircut. They seem perfectly fine with it and ask her to come inside. A lot of women in Bangalore get this done regularly. For them this is daily business. For mom it’s not. After having to bear with a bad haircut at places of her choice twice or thrice she has entrusted this responsibility to us. She insists that I accompany them and tell the girl how exactly to cut mom’s hair. I hate to tell her that I usually just leave it to them to give me a cut that’ll suit my face. More often than not they do wonders with it. With mom, it’s different. I fight the strong urge to say ‘Boy Cut’. I just end up saying the same thing meekly – just give her a cut that’ll suit her face. And the girl puts an apron around mom.

My mom always had long hair. In her younger days she used to have a thick plait follow her everywhere and used to care for her mane with Reetha, Shikakai and all the traditional recipes. Then her hair thinned down a little. Change of water when she moved after marriage, she used to say. But she still had long black hair for as long as I can remember.

And then they fell out. In clumps. Found on her pillow every morning. As if it weren’t enough for her body to be physically strained battling Breast Cancer. As if the pain inflicted by chemotherapy weren’t sign enough of suffering. There had to be more emotional trauma than what she was already undergoing. She went completely bald in less than a week’s time after chemotherapy began.

Two days before her Mastectomy she had asked me to take a picture of her with her long and healthy hair. Before she lost them all. And then I saw her only after all her chemo sessions were over. She was wearing a scarf on her head when I met her. Only when I had settled down in the house and freshened up, she removed the scarf. Still a little hesitant. Like I was an outsider. Like she didn’t want to see me react to her having gone completely bald. Frankly, even though I knew it in my head that she would be bald when I would meet her, I don’t think I was prepared to really see her bald…the image of 24 years somehow intact in my head.

Strangely, when she removed her scarf is when I realized that the image of 24 years that I was so scared would get shattered was still the same. When I looked at her that evening, all that I could see was her face. Not her hair (or the lack of it), not her body. Just her face. And her hesitant smile. As if searching for acceptance of this new image…which for me had never changed.

Beauty is made out to be many things – soft and supple skin, smooth and healthy long hair, luscious red lips, perfect noses. And it is very easy to lose this beauty…by roaming about in the Indian sun without sunscreen, by growing old, by having acid thrown on the face by miscreants, by falling prey to cancer and then undergoing chemotherapy. It takes from a few minutes to a few years to lose it all.

Real beauty is that which remains when one is stripped down to the bare minimum in terms of appearances due to various reasons. When there is no pretence left of any kind. Like my mother that evening when I saw her bald. Her skin was lifeless and her eyes looked tired. She looked battered and there wasn’t a single strand of hair on her head. The fight with cancer seemed to have somehow left her with enough energy to just sit straight. But there was dignity in her smile that seemed to say that it was all over now and she would be well soon. Even through her tired eyes I could see her triumph. She had fought valiantly, silently bearing all the pain and come out victorious. And there was grace in having accepted God’s will to give her that pain and then to go through it with His help. It seems like an odd thing to say about my mother and her fight with cancer but it gave me the opportunity to witness real beauty and be inspired to fight on in the gravest circumstances in life…with a smile.

Mom’s decided to wear her hair short post her recovery. I have never asked why. So there she is sitting in the newly opened salon with her hair freshly cut in ‘Diana Cut’ as I watch from the corner, half-guilty of cramping up the space, somewhere embarrassed that my mom even asked me to accompany her inside. She looks at herself for a few seconds before turning around to face me. That searching look from two years ago has returned to her face…as if she were looking for acceptance all over again, approval. I try to see her whole head but I can only see her face again and nod in approval. She will always be more beautiful than good skin and long hair can make her seem. I think somewhere in the moment, she knows that too.

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This post was written for the Indiblogger Dove Real Beauty Contest and I personally found some of the blogs on Yahoo Real Beauty (the Dove Real Beauty page) to be quite interesting. If your idea of beauty is more than what meets the eye, you should definitely visit the site and also consider participating in the contest. Let the world know what beauty should really be about!

Sri Lanka On A Shoe String

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:16:00 +0000

This is a detailed trip report for a budget traveller interested in Sri Lanka and is a long post. For a quick summary, skip to the end. For stories and details, read on.

I believe in impulse. I don’t mean to undermine the importance of prudence but I have always found the best life experiences to lie on the other side of an impulse. An impulse coupled with instinct that is.

Sri Lanka was no different. It was on a rainy evening at dinner trying to pacify my mildly upset best friend that we came up with the idea of going to Colombo. It was quickly followed with a disclaimer that Colombo wasn’t really abroad but at least we would cross the Pak Strait. Boy were we wrong!

As impulsively as we had chosen the location, we chose the date too. It was to be around the 26th of January. So we chose the block of 26-30 January for our visit.

Sri Lanka is a land where people only remotely look like Indians. If you ask me, you can clearly tell the difference from the facial structure. The jaw line and the eyes will almost always tell you which side of the Pak Strait someone comes from. But the difference is not just jugular. The Sri Lanka I saw is a land of gentle people who are ever ready to help with smiling faces. It’s a land with clean roads and calm people. Not once did I see anyone angry or screaming at anyone. The traffic is extremely disciplined and pedestrians are given right of way. The roads are filled with cars we don’t see in India but Maruti-Suzuki seems to be quite a favourite there too. The whole time one gets a feeling of being in India but a better India, an ideal one, a utopic one. And that’s how Sri Lanka is different from India. Oh but yes, it is a cricket-crazy nation too. And maybe that’s where the similarity starts.

In this trip report I hope you will discover how to enjoy a small part of the lovely country without feeling the pinch on your pocket.

REACH

The Spice Jet Chennai-Colombo connection booked a little in advance cost us INR 4008 per head with return tickets (yes, believe it). We chose the Shatabdi express to reach Chennai from Bangalore (INR 508 per head) and the AC III Tier of Sanghamitra Express for our return (INR 485 per head).

Travel Cost: INR 5073

After a collective discussion on which towns to hit to optimize our 4-day sojourn, we froze on Colombo-Bentota-Galle. Basically the Western Coast. Eventually Bentota was replaced by Hikkaduwa, which sounded more interesting from what I was sampling in the Lonely Planet. The rest of the itinerary was broadly left to me and I followed my religious scripture – The Lonely Planet – with blind faith.

REST

From my past experience in India, I know that even the budget listings of the Lonely Planet can be blindly bet on to be out of the ordinary in some way or another while remaining reasonable. Not to mention safe since the whole content is written with the Western travellers as the target audience. So I stuck to the same listing for Sri Lanka as well. After sending emails to a few places I got confirmations from two places and they were gracious enough to just block the room based on my email; no advance payment required. One of the places even offered an airport pickup which we were glad to take given that our flight would land at 2 AM in Colombo.

We chose to stay in Mt. Lavinia instead of Colombo. Mt. Lavinia is a suburb of Colombo with quieter beaches and more reasonable stay options.

Mt. Lavinia Stay: Tropic Inn

Cost: USD 42 per night for a triple room with AC (approx. INR 700 per head per night)

Airport Pickup: USD 31 one way for 1-4 persons (for us it came to approx INR 500 per head)

This place calls itself a hostel for God knows what reason. With its lovely wooden floors and banisters, the almost 3-star rooms and an Esteem-like car for airport pickups (with a Tropic Inn logo on the outside and stuff!) this place is anything but a hostel. And yet, they have maintained hostel-like prices. It was a steal for the price it came at and the beach was half-a-minute’s walk away. The neighbourhood quaint and the hotel staff extremely warm and friendly (a characteristic of Sri Lankans in general, I noticed).

I would strongly recommend this place for staying if you are not keen on staying in Colombo.

Hikkaduwa Stay: Poseidon Diving Station

Cost: EUR 18 per room (approx INR 600 per head)

There are many places lining the Galle road in Hikkaduwa and most of them are reasonable. Hikkaduwa by itself is a much more interesting, fun and reasonable option compared to the next door neighbour Bentota, which is lined only with 5-star resorts and targets the tourist. In Hikkaduwa I was looking at Why Not, a guesthouse, for our stay but Poseidon responded first.

Poseidon is a good place to stay in especially if you are in Hikkaduwa for the marine sanctuary or scuba diving. It is filled with people who are passionate about only one thing – diving – and want to make sure everyone sees why. They will make sure you have the best experience ever not just while diving but throughout your stay. The rooms are basic but comfortable. There is no AC and no hot water but somehow when you get there, that’s perfectly fine. The open restaurant, the bookshelf, all the diving gear around, the various boards telling about the marine life you might spot while diving and of course the travellers from all around the world make this a wonderful place to stay in. This is the one place that I couldn’t bear to leave and I am sure my friends will agree. Our hearts broke somewhere while leaving.

Stay Cost: INR 3000

ROAM

The public transport system in Sri Lanka is very well established. Buses are the best way to travel as autos (tuk-tuks) cost almost the same as taxis (LKR 40 per km) and can drain your commute budget. The buses are clean and well connected within the city as well as inter-city. And they are very easily available from the main road (Galle Road).

REPORT

Day 1:

A lazy day spent around the Mt. Lavinia beach. The place is seriously addictive. We directly jumped to lunch after getting over sleep-deprivation and walked into this place with beach chairs sprawled all over. We wanted to sample Sri Lankan food which we couldn’t exactly spot on the menu. So we asked the waiter if we could get some Sri Lankan food and he said he could bring us plain rice with one non-veg curry and one veg-curry. We were only too happy with that and ordered a pot of tea while we waited.

Sri Lankan tea is amazing. I now know why Ceylon tea was all the rage at some point. Such a joy of flavour. We ended up having two pots within 2 hours. All the while lounging in a drizzle or standing on the shore with waves lapping at your feet. Remember to order small pots if you want just one cup even if the waiters push for a big one. A small pot serves 3-4 cups of tea.

Evening Big Pot of Tea: INR 35 per head

Lunch was incredibly delicious. I had never had such good Beetroot gravy with no trace of sweet in it. I am told the non-veg gravy was a killer too. So I recommend that you custom order food instead of ordering it from the menu. You’re likely to get it cheaper and authentic Sri Lankan.

Lunch + Beer + Tea: INR 200 per head

Tip: Avoid eating in the restaurants attached to hotels since they tend to me expensive. And vegetarian food is available aplenty in Sri Lanka, you just have to ask for it.

Darkness fell soon and we decided to stay back in Mt. Lavinia instead of checking out clubs in Colombo (so party deprived Bangaloreans are with the 11 PM curfew!). We had dinner at the Lion Pub on the Galle road and some Lion Lager to go with it. We had asked for rice and curry again (ate the same combination pretty much throughout the trip but never got bored of it.)

Dinner + Beer: INR 640 per head

At Lion’s Pub, we were entertained by the members of the group Ranamonaru (Sinhalese for Peacock) who came and sang 3 songs at our table. The foot-tapping music made the wait for food shorter and the evening nicer. We soon retired to our extremely comfortable room at the Tropic Inn.

Day 2:

We had decided to explore Colombo and since we were going to be out all day and moving to Hikkaduwa in the evening, we decided to check out and keep our luggage at the hotel to save money. The hotel staff had no problems with it and we were also able to freshen up before leaving for Hikkaduwa this way.

While in Colombo we visited the Gangaramaya Temple – a beautiful Buddhist temple, the Pettah Market – the local market that is a local-atmosphere junkie’s delight and Galle Face Green – the lovely seaface in a rather upmarket area of Colombo. All these are not very far from each other by buses. In case of any confusion regarding which bus to take for where, just ask the locals. Most of them speak good English and would even be glad to lead you to the right bus.

Bus Cost Mt. Lavinia-Gangaramaya-Pettah-Galle Face-Mt. Lavinia: INR 25 per head

Gangaramaya Temple Entry: INR 40 per head

Do not forget to drink some King Coconut Water wherever you find it. You can easily spot the golden yellow coconuts and vendors all over town, especially in the Pettah Market. And you have to buy one to know just how much water a coconut that size can hold.

Miscellaneous Food Expenses (King Coconut Water + Mangoes + Flavoured Milk etc): INR 30 per head

Make sure you find a good place to eat before hitting Galle Face since this area has only 5-star hotels. We had to eat at this small bakery and make do before we ate some Maggi back at a small shop in Mt. Lavinia.

Lunch At Delights Snack: INR 40 per head

Maggi: INR 20 per head

Before leaving Mt. Lavinia we wanted to have tea on the beach one more time so we headed straight there and ordered ourselves a small pot this time.

Evening Small Pot of Tea: INR 22 per head

That’s when the trouble started. It was past 5:30 when we hit Galle Road to catch a bus to Hikkaduwa, something we had presumed would be easy. We completely looked through the fingers at the approaching dark clouds and were struck by rain that evening just as we left the hotel. It rained every evening while we were in Sri Lanka but it poured that day. Rush made it worse with all the buses being filled to capacity. And our moods started to dip.

Eventually a middle-aged man decided to wait with us and help us out. He had a very paternal look about him and he was very sweet to us. He waited in the rain until he got us onto a bus and we couldn’t even thank him properly. And that is where Sri Lanka is different from India. This wasn’t the only incident of people going out of their way to help us.

This bus journey was hellish though. The conductor kept loading more people onto a full bus and more than once we considered getting down. We all had become one mass of people and even air couldn’t have got in I am sure. It was extremely uncomfortable. But we were the only ones remotely cribbing. Each and every other person was sitting/standing/getting squeezed to death with a calm expression, even a smile on his face. I felt stupid at the end of it all really. We were just travelling at the wrong time and we just couldn’t take it. So used to luxury we had become. The locals were being gracious as ever. They took our bags into their laps and even offered us seats whenever possible. Their simple helpful nature touched me no end.

Bus Cost: Mt. Lavinia-Hikkaduwa: INR 33 per head

Tip: Take a taxi out of town of plan for non-peak hours to travel. Check on local weather as well.

Anyway, 2.5 hours later, the ordeal ended as the bus dropped us right outside Poseidon Diving Station in Hikkaduwa. We were only to glad to be shown to our rooms and settled down quickly before ordering dinner. A guest was celebrating her birthday and we were invited to join in as well. It felt so welcome, the casual way in which the Poseidon guys treated us. No airs. We retired peacefully that night, happy to be in a place like that.

Day 3:

We were to go Scuba diving after our complimentary breakfast and we were quite excited. Immediately after breakfast we were shown a training video on scuba diving and then shown how to get into our gear. We got ready and strapped our oxygen cylinders to our backs (it felt like a tonne of metal on the back but they said you won’t feel it in the water) and felt very professional-diver-like.

We had our own challenges in the trial dive since we had never even snorkelled before and took quite a while to get used to breathing through the mouth as required. Our trainer was determined to at least take us to the first set of coral reefs and he did. It was fascinating to see discovery channel right in front of my eyes! Unfortunately he declared that we weren’t ready for the deep dive yet and would have to make do with snorkelling. My friends did go snorkelling in the afternoon and saw more beautiful fish and even a table-sized turtle! Totally recommended.

Scuba Diving Trial Dive: EUR 35 per head (approx INR 2200)

Tip: Try snorkelling before even thinking of scuba diving. It is quite intimidating to directly go to scuba and snorkelling is much more fun.

In Hikkaduwa, I would recommend walking along the Galle Road and checking out the various quirky stores and cafes along the way. The souvenir shops here have good variety and you can easily find something nice for yourself no matter what your budget – starting with refrigerator magnets to marble Buddha statues. All that is if you get time from the beach and the sea. Our day ended with some souvenir shopping and good dinner.

Day 4:

We were to leave for Colombo that night to catch the 4 AM flight and wanted to pack in the maximum things in this day.

After breakfast we headed to Galle in a bus from Hikkaduwa. Galle is a perfectly preserved Dutch fort-town and it is the next level of the Pondicherry French Quarter experience! We had a lovely time walking in the town and mailed ourselves some postcards from the post office there. We wanted to be back in Hikkaduwa for lunch and our friends at Poseidon had arranged a tuk-tuk ride to take us around a few more places in the afternoon.

Bus Cost Hikkaduwa-Galle-Hikkaduwa: INR 20 per head

We realized that we might not have enough time to come back to Poseidon so we switched the tuk-tuk for a taxi that would show us a few more spots and then take us straight to the Colombo airport. What they called a taxi was a vehicle bigger than an Innova and super-comfortable with its AC and its space. We felt like the royalty. After getting some pictures with the Poseidon folks we left Hikkaduwa.

Poseidon Expenses for 2 days (stay + food ): INR 2000 per head

First stop was a Turtle Conservatory. We were told about various species (5 in all) and how all 5 come to nest on the Sri Lankan shores. We were also told about the reasons why they are facing extinction. The man running the conservatory lost all his family in the Tsunami and now runs the place in his sister’s memory. In addition to the entry, we could make a donation and release a newly hatched turtle into the sea, he said. So we gave him INR 200 (LKR 500) and released a baby. Hope it found its rightful place in the sea.

Turtle Conservatory Entry: INR 100 per head

The next stop was a Moonstone Mine and we saw how Moonstones (including the Blue Moonstone found only in Sri Lanka) are mined and made into jewellery, the whole process. The path strategically led into a swanky showroom and the dealers did a good job of hard selling the moonstones to us. My best friend and I ended up picking up stuff for ourselves and not even feeling like we had been pushed to buy it. And I have to say, at the end of the day, it’s a beautiful pendant that I got!

Tip: Do not buy cinnamon products from the Moonstone Mine areas. You are likely to be shown a better cinnamon making process on the river safari and will get stuff for cheaper from genuine people.

The last thing we did before getting onto the road to Colombo was to go on a river safari where we were on the vast river Maduwa and meandering around its 62 islands. We saw how cinnamon bark is prepared for being used as a spice and visited a 300-year old Buddhist temple too. It was quite an experience, the 1.5 hour safari!

River Safari: INR 500 per head

Taxi Cost Hikkaduwa-Colombo with 3 spots: INR 1200 per head

Tip: The 3 spots mentioned above are worth visiting and a tuk-tuk or a taxu makes most sense since they are scattered around. I would not recommend a bus in this case although the transfer to airport can be by bus.

The taxi dropped us off at the Colombo airport post this and it was a long 3-hour journey. The vacation seemed to have ended too soon and we were already going to be checking in to leave for home country. It had been a great vacation nevertheless and hadn’t burned a big hole in our pockets. What else can one ask for from a vacation across the Pak Strait?

SUMMARY

Destination: West Coast, Sri Lanka
Itinerary: Colombo-Hikkaduwa-Galle

Best Time to visit: November to April (West Coast), April to November (East Coast)

Travel Expense: Approx INR 5,000

Trip Expense for 4 days: Approx INR 10,000

A Weekend In The Blue Mountains

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:32:00 +0000

I have been travelling with Get Off Ur Ass for 4 years now. And I have never regretted signing up for any of the Get Off experiences…not one. Starting with the Barapole Rafting Trip, where I travelled with 25 strangers, to the Tusker Trail Trek, the Jenukal New Year Getaway, the Getoff Bus Roadhawk Adventure or the phenomenal Getoff Traveller’s Meet 2010. There have been smaller review trips as well but I haven’t travelled with them as much as I would have liked to. So it’s not a surprise that a Get Off trip was my first choice when it came to deciding how to spend the extended Easter weekend. My only choice really.

It was the Nilgiris again this time. A remote campsite tucked away in the Blue Mountains near Sholur. A place I had seen before but hadn’t been able to spend enough time in. A quaint British house on a small plateau on the slopes of the Nilgiris and the prospect of camping in paradise. It was an invitation that was hard to turn down.

So we headed out early on Friday from Koshy’s, the meeting point for the travellers…some old, some new. After initial introductions and paperwork, we all settled down in one of the two Tempo Travellers that were waiting to whisk us away from the city and headed out in the light Friday morning drizzle on Mysore Road.

The first stop was Kamat Upachar on Mysore Road. After a round of filling South Indian breakfast and good old filter coffee, we resumed the journey towards Sholur. The Sun and the rain played hide and seek but the weather largely remained agreeable. Conversations flowed and ebbed in our vehicle but I was in dreamland with the cool breeze fanning me to sleep. I only woke up at the next stop – the Dreamcatcher Café.

The Dreamcatcher Café is a new travel café that has opened up a little before Gundlupet right on the highway. The place has a very different feel and character among a string of retail coffee shops that have sprung up along the way. Dreamcatcher is an experience. It’s a well-deserved break for the traveller. Do stop by the next time you are on the way to Bandipur or beyond. You won’t regret it.

After taking in the ambiance of the café well and treating ourselves to some beverages, we moved on through Bandipur and Mudumalai national parks. The RTO check post stop in Thorapalli took about an hour with all the weekend traffic and set us back in our schedule a fair bit. Negotiating the tricky turns of the ghats from that point on slowed us down even further. It helped that the landscape was either the blue-green slopes of the mountains or sheets of stark green tea leaves. My glazed out eyes from all the urban architecture (read glass and steel) welcomed the change and took it all in…when I wasn't sleeping because of the gentle swaying of the vehicle and the cold breeze of course! We reached our destination only around 4 PM, feeling slightly famished.

The view of the property, the campsite and the simple hot meals served in the cottage refreshed everyone enough to be able to pitch their own tents on the plateau. We all chose to have our tents open towards the valley and the breathtaking views of the mountains. And we spent the next two days watching these views change dramatically – sometimes by the minute, walking in and out of clouds, sleeping to the sound of raindrops falling on our tent vestibules, playing with the resident dogs and cats of the estate, trekking and walking in the mountains, exploring new trek routes, watching the many varieties of birds around, and talking/playing rummy/playing dumb charades around the fireplace or in the verandah of the erstwhile office. A regular supply of tea kept us happy even when the sky turned grey. A treat of pakoras or fruit salad now and then was the icing on the cake.

The return from Sholur was draining. It was the same road and the same distance we had covered two days earlier but the physical strain of the two days combined with the feeling of leaving pristine nature behind and returning to the daily grind weighed at least me down a little. A late lunch at the Dreamcatcher café helped a little but then the rush of the crowds returning home via Mysore Road and the 10 hours of travel got to me. I had started missing the place already as the twists of the mountain roads got replaced by the straight line that was the road to Bangalore.

Nevertheless, I was glad to have been part of another Getoff experience and with the mountain air clearing my head. Until the next Getoff trip, I will have to make do with memories of this one.

Dreams Come True...Again

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:09:00 +0000

The sight of the long grey wall and a thicket of trees always made us slow down. We would look at the wall dreamily and ride alongside until we saw the gate marking the entrance to the place we hoped to end up in. How we wished to drive in rightfully into that place someday. To be able to call it our own. Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering. Our first real goal in life. Two teenage girls chasing a dream.

That was way back in 2001. My best friend and I would drive by this college almost everyday since she lived on the other side from our junior college. It helped that her elder brother was studying at VRCE as well. Back in 2001, it was the most eligible place to study in given its REC status and the fact that it was right in the middle of the city as opposed to other colleges that were located on the outskirts. I'd like to believe every student in Nagpur hoped to get in to VRCE (except for the IIT and BITS-Pilani crowd of course) somehow...I know we did.

And hence for me it was a big moment when I walked down from the balcony of the VRCE auditorium on the day of admissions to the admission desk and secured myself a seat in the Electrical Engineering. It was the first time in life I really really wanted something (I did want to get into BITS-Pilani too but I don't think I had wanted that long enough) and I was getting it. All those nights of hard work had finally culminated into the big moment when my form got stamped by the college staff. I was in.

My best friend got through to a private college first. I was quite crestfallen. But in the second round she came around to VNIT too (VRCE was in the first lot of colleges that got converted to National Institutes of Technology and that too before we got in! That gave us the additional edge of studying in an autonomous university...it was the best of all worlds). We had shared the dream of entering this college and we made it! That was in 2002.

.........................................

2011 was deja vu.

More than 4 years ago I had spotted the PGSEM notice in my office. It was the institute name that caught my eye...IIM Bangalore. From a desire to get into one of the 6 IIMs, I suddenly narrowed my preference down to just IIM Bangalore (of course an IIM Ahmedabad admit would have been a different ball game altogether...just that they don't have a course like PGSEM). Bangalore's brilliant weather and culture could have had a lot to do with it.

The PGSEM requires a minimum of 2 years of work experience so I waited for the time I could apply to the course. When the time actually came I found myself confused by the multitude of possibilities that the city had shown me in terms of things I could do in life...copywriting, travel-writing, theatre and all that I can't think of. I floundered despite wanting to study business ever since I can remember. And I missed applying.

It took me two more years to clear my head and get back to focussing on what I had always wanted. But all this while, all these years, I had the privilege of living in the vicinity of IIM Bangalore and driving past often. I would find myself secretly wishing I'd get to enter those gates beyond that long grey wall and into the thicket of trees rightfully someday...as a student. It kept the dream alive deep down inside.

It is a big moment for me today as I sit here writing this post with the admission offer letter from IIM Bangalore next to my computer. It is a culmination of a dream of 4 and ½ years. It is the vindication of the power of sustained dreams. It's just that this time there is no one to share this dream with. It is a solitary journey through those gates this time. But I am ready nevertheless. To walk past those gates rightfully and claim what is truly mine in this mortal body and material world...my dream.

I Know I'm Just A Whisper

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 22:27:00 +0000

It is the way this song – Can You Hear Me by Poets Of The Fall - starts and progresses, what it says that drives me into an eclectic moment when I feel lifted by the music. It stirs something deep inside of me. All that had comfortably settled at the bottom. Much like stirring murky waters, I find the dirt rising and I find myself thinking about all that makes me unhappy about this world. I find tears clouding my eyes. It hurts badly somewhere deep inside.

We are killing the planet. We are killing each other. The planet is indulging in its own sweet revenge. For how long can it stay the victim?

We had got a gift. A green planet that had no equal for many hundred light years around, or at least that’s what it seems like. We had companions, human and otherwise, and we had a symbiotic system. We had each other. And it could have been our happily ever after.

But we decided that the land wasn’t enough for ourselves. So we usurped the skies and the seas and put our carriers out there. We started invading territories – of birds, fish, animals and even other humans. It was like the human race had this rage accumulated from its past collective incarnation and it was dying to come out. And we started killing and maiming. For the most trivial reasons.

We killed for conquest. We killed in the name of religion. We killed simply because the humans on a new land were not as civilized as or similar to ourselves (thinking about the brutal treatment and massacre of the American natives by the Spanish simply because the natives were found to be so uncivilized that they couldn’t have been human and deserved to be killed) We killed animals either for consumption, vanity or entertainment. We killed the green cover that was the key to sustaining this planet.

And then we got down to more detail as we became more advanced. Now we kill for land, we kill our own kin, we kill because we don’t like being inconvenienced on the road and we still kill for religion. As long as we are killing I don’t think we care about the whys, whose and the whats.

Weren’t we supposed to be the most evolved of all of God’s creation (of all creatures, for atheists)? Weren’t we supposed to have had the rationale, logic and discretion that would help us make good decisions? Weren’t we supposed to have protected the weaker ones? How is it that it is the lesser evolved beings that continue living in harmony with nature and obey/follow its cycles whereas we, the more intelligent ones (?) have done whatever wrong it is that we could have done in this collective human lifetime? Or is it just that this planet ‘is self-destructive in 5 billion years’?

I can only think of one solution that the creators of this song seem to be perpetrating too. Compassion is the answer.

So let’s love. More. Let’s eliminate hate from our hearts. Let’s accommodate and include. Let’s look at another as a fellow human being and not judge him by his choices be it his choice to be Hindu/Muslim/Christian/Sikh/Catholic/Protestant/Sunni/Shia/Brahmin/Vaishya/Shudra/Parsi/Buddhist/Bahai or his choice to be straight/gay/lesbian or his choice to conform/rebel or any other of his choices. Let’s understand that if animals weren’t meant to play a significant role in our survival, this planet’s survival, they probably wouldn’t have been around in the first place (and no, I don’t consider them losing the battle to machine guns and bulldozers as an example of ‘survival of the fittest’…let’s talk survival Man Vs Wild, unarmed and then we’ll see who really wins). Let’s love everything about this planet and preserve it as we would our own children and our own loved ones. Let’s let love and compassion be the guiding principles in a day and age when logic and emotion seem to have all but disappeared from the planet…only anger and madness rule.

So let’s love. Let’s be compassionate. Let’s remember the reasons and the differences that make us human – our rationale, our reason and our ability to sympathize. Let’s all be part of the solution.

Let’s save the planet. Let’s save each other. Let’s save ourselves.

I know I’m just a whisper in cyberspace or any other space for that matter but as Marko’s powerful voice conveys in the song below: Love will find an answer.

The Big Orange Shoebox

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:32:00 +0000

I was about to hit shutdown when I noticed. This big orange box next to my computer table. It used to hold my new Nike floaters until Sunday (yeah, that was just for showing-off that I bought a pair : ) ) but it’s been promoted since.

I stopped dreaming about pursuing anything creative back when I was 13 years old, thanks to some extremely encouraging comments from my art teacher, who insisted that the only art we could ever make was with water colours. And I begged to disagree. The medium prevailed over the message. And I took all those little dreams and put them away in a shoebox somewhere, for posterity I thought.

But then I had these spurts where I discovered, among other media, oil pastels and collages. And I pulled my box out for a fleeting moment, debating over whether I should open it or not. Much like Schrodinger’s Cat, I didn’t know if my dreams were alive in there with the vial of radioactive criticism that had also found its way in. I decided I could live with uncertainty and put the box back.

It was many years later that I started creating, for the first time in life. Not imitating, but creating. The box was old and frayed and I opened it to find my dreams and their little heartbeats intact. And that’s what its holding right here in reality…my dreams and my baby steps as I rediscover the joy of a creative pursuit…and my art supplies.

This big orange shoebox.

Book Review - All And Nothing by Raksha Bharadia

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:32:00 +0000

In my book, it’s a good sign if a book gets me engaged enough to finish it in one reading. It is not the only parameter of course and not necessary either for a book to be good. But if it has managed to make me finish it off in one reading, it’s a good sign.

All And Nothing did that. 6 hours and I kept flipping the pages. Every chance I could get in office and then at one stretch once back home. I could not put the book down! And what a worthwhile 6 hours they were! For more reasons than one.

Image Courtesy: rupapublications.com

Let’s give you the blurb just to warm things up here:

All and Nothing tells the tale of five individuals. Tina is a talented artist, desperately in love with Aditya. But he cannot let go of his past. Their marriage sours and Tina teeters on the edge. Kriya is a fashion designer, chic and successful – but tormented; Poorvi, is a socialite and feminist – but discontented; Manas is a struggling copy writer, besotted with Gayatri – but plagued; Upasna is a willing victim of domestic violence.

Then one day, Tina summons her friends to share their stories from the beginning.

All and Nothing is a story of relationships. And scorn as we may at the word and its complications as much as we like, we cannot deny that they are the core of our lives. The foundation that defines our personality, our character. Some relationships go to the extent of defining our dynamics in many other relationships. Such is their power and presence. And the way Raksha has used this premise to weave five beautiful stories together is commendable. The fabric of her book is just as complex yet beautiful as relationships themselves.

There are these five individuals with five different backgrounds and moving in five different directions. Yet there lives are tied somehow. And that knot is where Raksha’s book remains, giving us a glimpse of the universes that lie behind or beyond. But each of them stuck in the present and unable to move forward.

A man who’s most cherished relationship in life was destroyed and who walks with its shadow every minute, his wife who can never become the body that casts that shadow; how they will never meet in the middle. A woman walking in the shadow of her father’s fame and never being able to cast the same shadow due to a lack of talent that she, and worse her father, is painfully aware of; how it makes a monster out of her. A woman disillusioned with her wealth but unable to crossover the class divide, her struggle for status in her then chosen life and the issue of female foeticide. A relationship that is struggling with the threats that marriage brings along; how its strength is tested. A woman lying to herself that all’s well with her world even as she hides bruises and black eyes; how she has an epiphany and finds her voice. All and Nothing is a story of all these and more.

What is beautiful about the book is that despite having a few social issues as inseparable parts of some of her characters, the issues never ever become bigger than the story. The people remain real and the story immensely realistic and possible so that the reader’s primary concern is always the character – Will he be ok? Will she go through with this? Yet, the reader cannot but think about his stand on these issues, just so he can side better with the characters. That’s good storytelling at work.

The language used throughout remains simple. Notice the use of simple and not shabby/incorrect/callous like most books in the Indian Fiction sport these days. It was delightful to read an Indian author who’s managed to keep her book simple to read and yet one that upholds the dignity of the English language, and one with influence from Bengal at that! There is some use of vernacular (not restricted to Hindi) which I thought wasn’t exactly necessary to bring in a bigger connect. It doesn’t hurt exactly but somehow for me it didn’t flow either. But it doesn’t come in the way. I could continue with the pace I had picked up and get back right into the story.

The characters have been sketched well and the structure adopted for narration was quite interesting. The back and forth between the past, present and the future is done without letting the reader feel the shift. If I were to draw an analogy I would pick the hourglass – the five seemingly individual stories, like scattered grains of sand, start to slide towards each other rapidly until they all reach a bottleneck of sorts and meet, almost stopping for a bit before picking pace again and going their own way, beginning to look disconnected again. Indeed, the pace of the book is rapid in the first two parts; you’re almost racing on until the third part when it comes to a standstill and only a day transpires. Medium pace resumes in the last part as the author sets out to provide appropriate closure to each person. But at no point does the book let you go.

Raksha has a gift for narration and good description, almost to the point of getting into so much detail that you start thinking she has forgotten the book and has started talking about that event alone; but she catches you at that exact moment, zooms right back out to the story and you see the relevance of it all. I really liked that about the book.

I can’t really point out too many negatives about the book except for one or two technical details here or there (...as the first light of the morning sun bathed the Gateway and the statelt façade of the Taj…I can’t imagine the façade of the Taj on the West Coast being bathed by morning sunlight…I could be wrong but that’s all I can think of when I read this and reading is all about imagination). Raksha seems to have chosen her settings very carefully - Kolkata, Mumbai, Kathak…things she is more than familiar with and hence cannot go wrong with. Overall the impression that this book leaves on the mind is very positive.

My only concern is that such a beautiful book that brings out the psychological ramifications of relationships so well as to seem the work of a psychologist or someone who’s observed people a lot, might just be lost in the high quantity-low quality Indian Fiction section (the mass category) and not get its due. God forbid if that happens, this will go down as one of the most underrated works of our times for sure.

Dear Dude-On-A-Random-150cc-Bike-With-An-Ugly-Red-Skull-Cap-And-A-TN-License-Plate

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:46:00 +0000

Dear Dude-On-A-Random-150cc-Bike-With-An-Ugly-Red-Skull-Cap-And-A-TN-License-Plate,

First of all, get your goddamn helmet on and learn to stop at a red signal. I don’t usually talk to or waste my time on people who don’t even have respect for rules. It is because of you guys that the world is in chaos and honestly, you are almost a burden on this planet right now.

Second of all, stop honking for no good reason and driving people crazy. What am I expected to do? Run into the guy crossing the street just when YOUR signal went green? I’m sorry it’s 10:30 pm and all that but we are all trying to get somewhere; in fact, you’re the one who’s not…the way you continue to amble down the road a while later. There are enough insane people on the roads and you’re just adding to the number. Get that right.

Image Courtesy: http://www.patsyclare.co.uk

What rank were you in class? 7th from the bottom or something? What is this desperate need to be first everywhere? Like you’re doing it to win your parents respect back. Get a life. Learn to wait. Accommodate (if you know what that means, with your poor academics).

Your status message (pardon the FB jargon) under your registration plate says ‘I’d rather walk alone’. You should. You should take that literally in fact and start walking instead of riding some random 150cc bike I couldn’t care less about and being an absolute jackass on the streets. Really. Do you even know what that means? Whatever it is that you’ve put on the behind of your bike?

TN37. Coimbatore. I’m sure you went to PSG. Please do yourself, your college, your city and your state some service by being nice to people rather than shouting at them in your defence. It makes me associate all those entities with people like you and you can be sure that is not a very positive thing. The next time I see a TN registration plate cut by rashly, I’m gonna go ‘Of course! TN!’ just like I do on seeing DL registration plates. And it’s all because of you. So please. Stop and start showing some respect for the legacy of the state you come from.

And please shave. The combination of that shabby look along with that ugly red skull cap makes you look like the hero of some cheap South Indian movie. The kind you watch in shady theatres…places where decent people would never bother to tread. And that’s why people like you in general should wear full face helmets at all points in time, not just while riding…so that people like me can keep from throwing up.

And you dare to talk back and defend your pathetic self to me after driving me so mad with all the above that all there is left is for me to kill you? You disgust me.

Not The Best Regards,

A Friend In Need Catches The Worm

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:17:00 +0000

I bought a new hard disk today and was sorting stuff on my laptop before I could transfer it to the disk. And I found a weird little piece of writing.

There was once this debate at work, a block-and-tackle rather, with some very amusing topics. The rule was that each contestant had some specific time and was supposed to come with views both in favour and against the topic given. In the allotted time and when he would begin speaking, the judges could call out block or tackle whenever they pleased and the contestant was supposed to change his stand and start talking as called out immediately – against the topic to block it or in favour to tackle it. And my topic was ‘A Friend In Need Catches The Worm’!

Here is some of the material that I wrote down back then:

Block

A Chinese proverb goes – “With money you are a dragon; with no money, a worm”.

In today’s money-minded world, no matter how good a friend someone is, shelling out moolah for a friend who needs it has become a rare occurrence. He will remain your friend all the same. In that sense, a friend in need does not catch the worm.

Ambrose Bierce, American Short Story Writer, said – “Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.” As you embark on that final journey of life, your body rests in the ground and becomes one with and nourishes the earth and all that lives in it – at that moment as worms get their share of nourishment from your mortal remains and your soul takes flight, a friend even if he feels that what’s left of you needs to be saved, does not catch the worm. He can’t…and as a duty towards the planet, maybe he shouldn’t.

“Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm” said Russian Author Ivan Turgenev. There are occasions in life when you want time to fly by for example when you are having a really bad day…but time worms along. You need emotional and moral support and most of all for that time to pass. At such times, your friend can support you but he will not catch that worm of time and turn it into a bird as if by magic. He can’t and he won’t.

Immanuel Kant said, “If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.” A worm also means ‘something that penetrates, injures, or consumes slowly or insidiously, like a gnawing worm’. Source? Dictionary.Com. When you have worms like self-doubt, low self-esteem, inferiority complex gnawing at your conscience despite the fact that you may be one of the most talented people around, and you refuse to let them go, nurture them and feed them the delicious bits of your confidence, your friend - no matter how much he wants to help you in such times of need – will not be able to catch those worms.

Oh that feeling! Your stomach does somersaults, you feel weak in the knees, and your head swoons – either you are in love or you have worms in your guts. Your friend will not be able to catch those worms for sure!

Tackle

American Computer Scientist Alan Perlis said, “In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.” While I am still figuring out what that means, I do know that in computer science jargon WORM stands for Write Once Read Many. In any class exam, we have seen the scenario – the brainy guy writes all the answers and becomes a friend in need for the others by letting them read his answers and copy, by catching the worm, by allowing Write Once Read Many. Indeed, a friend in need catches the worm!

Someone has said, “Even if you've been fishing for 3 hours and haven't gotten anything except poison ivy and sunburn, you're still better off than the worm.” Imagine you are out on a fishing trip with friends. Naturally, when you are out of bait it would only be a friend in need who would catch the worm with you.

A worm refers to ‘computer code planted illegally in a software program so as to destroy data in any system that downloads the program, as by reformatting the hard disk’. Source? Dictionary.Com. And in such cases isn’t it friends in need like IT-OPS who catch the worm and solve our problems?

Another interpretation of a worm is ‘A person regarded as pitiable or contemptible’. And yes, when you are hanging around with such a lot you need someone to warn you, it will be your friend who will catch the worm and guard your best interests even if it means the risk of getting you upset momentarily.

“A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm,” declared American Author Bill Vaughan. Remember the time when you were young and your mother absolutely forbade you from playing in the dirt and touching unidentified crawling objects? You were curious about those creepy crawlies yet could not muster the courage to catch them, and only your best pal accompanied you and caught the worm.

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How I miss my debating days! : (

Less Is More

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:58:00 +0000

Too much hurt,
Too many bridges burnt.

All that pain.
In vain.

I want to erase
Every single phrase

Uttered without thought,
The misery it brought

Still makes me shiver.
Like arrows in a quiver

The words were shot,
With malice they were fraught.

They were angry at the world
But their fury unfurled

At this sitting duck.
Oh what luck!

To be part of their life
At that moment of strife.

Not they’ve embittered mine.
This is fate’s terrible design

To bring us all together
To hurt each other.

So when its about
Whom to trust and whom to doubt

With your well-being,
Your thoughts and your feelings

I’m increasingly sure,
That less is more.
Less is certainly more.

Well, This One IS About The Bike

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:14:00 +0000

If Lance Armstrong doesn’t have a problem, I can look at writing a book ‘It’s About The Bike, My Journey Through Life’ and only hope that it won’t sound like a spoof of his book. But that’s too much of an assumption. So I’m just going to write a blog post about this and end the story. I won’t have to hunt for publishing houses yet I guess.

So this one’s about my bike, a Hero Honda Pleasure that I am in possession of since the 3rd of August 2006. For the record, and this is for each and every one of you who has said ‘Why should boys have all the fun eh?’ after hearing my bike’s make, I didn’t buy it for the tagline. Heck I wasn’t even aware of the tagline for a while until it was rubbed in my face. I bought it because Hero Honda was the one who promised delivery within 3 days unlike Honda who said there was a 2 months waiting time for the Activa back then…I mean yeah, if Honda can send a chauffer-driven car for my commute to office everyday for 2 months, why not? Plus I test rode the Activa, Pleasure, Bajaj Wave and Scooty Pep and frankly the Pleasure is what I liked. The Activa has too much power for its small head and the Scooty Pep just feels too small, almost 60 cc-ish. The Wave was okayish too. The Pleasure is perfect for the power and its size, and riding comfort too.

It’s a separate story that the Hero Honda Pleasure is capable of letting a girl go beyond the boundaries of traditional city riding. So yeah, why should boys have all the fun?

My bike, any bike, represents a few important things to me. It stands for independence, which is necessary for any city girl to have these days. It’s nice to have a guy or friends pick you up or drop you off places but most cityfolks are not that nice, trust me. Plus its just inconvenient and a waste of time to depend on others all the time, which includes that race called the Autowallahs. So you’ve got to have your own ride!

A bike also represents the spirit of exploration. It’s incredible how many lanes and by-lanes I have discovered in Bangalore simply by virtue of riding around on my own, places autorickshaws (ugh, that word itself gives me nightmares these days) won’t go because they’ll take the same old routes to any place in town. It’s the one thing that’s enabled me to know Bangalore so well in just 4 years.

Having a bike lets you do more with life by virtue of the independence and flexibility that you have. So you can catch up with a friend for breakfast, go to work, meet friends or go for a play reading or whatever in the evening and maybe catch the late night movie too before you go home! If life must be lived, it must be lived fully and having a bike takes off at least one excuse to not do so.

In the four years that I’ve had my bike, I’ve made it do some crazy stuff. The first was when I rode it all the way to Doddamakali from Bangalore, 130 km away. What made it really crazy was the condition of the NH209 back then. Let’s just say any kacha road could put that National Highway to shame. To add to that, the last 4-5 km of the ride were down a spiralling gravely mountain path. And yet, my bike made it. And it made it all the way back on the Mysore Highway (the State Highway chosen over the National Highway because there was some tar on it) at 80 kmph without getting overheated or anything. (yeah snigger all you boys; on a 100 cc, 80 kmph falls in the red zone unlike the monsters you own and ride at 120 kmph or whatever). What a ride that was! Unforgettable.

Then there was the ride to the Big Banyan Tree. It’s not too far from Bangalore as such but the road beyond the Banyan Tree to the Manchinabele dam is quite gravely again. I had taken my mom on that ride and we rode on a nice June weekday on the NICE road. We spent some peaceful time at the Banyan Tree wondering at the ecosystem a single tree can support before attempting to reach the dam by a non-existent road. Good sense prevailed and we gave up before we could roll off the curves over the gravel. Anyway, my bike brought us back safely too.

I rode to Dobaspet from Bangalore last year to attend the Get Off Travellers Meet. This place is near Tumkur and by my odometer it was about 85 km odd from my house. The road was good for most part except for the last 2-3 km odd which were, again, an off-roading stretch. There were some folks who had come on their Enfields and the rest had brought their cars or taken the Tempo Traveller. It was a proud feeling to see my small (literally) bike parked amongst all of these vehicles and I think I generated quite a bit of amusement with my stunt. By way of a disclaimer, the bike rode perfectly well for the whole stretch and was probably a more comfortable ride than the other thumping machines. I came back all the way without so much as feeling tired of riding about 90 km!

And then there was yesterday. We were trying to figure out conveyance for Fireflies and frankly it was getting exasperating. For a fleeting moment I imagined myself riding to the venue but dismissed the thought when I thought about the 4.5 year-old bike that has not been serviced in 3-4 months. But when a friend suggested that he could bring his bike and we could ride together, there was no chance I was going to let that suggestion go! And so I brought out my little warrior and the 4 of us set out on two bikes (the other one a Pulsar for the record). At my own steady low speed, back again on the NH209 (this time with tar on it), I rode with the low beam illuminating the pitch darkness until Kaggalipura and then rode on the kacha village roads and gravel to reach the Fireflies Ashram. It was easier than I thought to get to the Ashram! With the bike resting on farmland for the night, we enjoyed the dusk to dawn music festival and had a pleasant ride back in the morning with spring punctuating the roads.

Even after 4.5 years of wear-and-tear, my bike continues to be an adventurer and remains a faithful companion for my crazy endeavours of the road. Life in this city would have been totally something else without this companion and I have my bike to thank for giving me such a memorable 4.5 years in Bangalore. Here’s to many more days of riding, exploration, adventure and independence! Cheers!

Attraversiamo!

noreply@blogger.com (Anupama) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:49:00 +0000

I saw a cat today. A kitten, to be more precise. It was crossing the street from a college towards a house just as I took the turn to my house while returning from work. It had crossed more than 3/4ths of the distance when it came right in front of my vehicle. It must have been blinded by the headlights or something; it froze for a second and then ran right back to where it came from…the farther side of the street.

I borrow the phrase from ‘Eat, Pray, Love’…Attraversiamo! It means 'let’s cross over' in Italian. The kitten had about two more steps to take before it would have reached the other side…where it wanted to be. But in the face of crisis, it ran straight back to where it felt comfortable…back to the starting point. Many of us do the same thing in life.

We set goals and decide on destinations – geographical, spiritual, physical, career-wise – that we want to be at. If we are able to overcome the fear of uncertainty that sometimes comes with getting to these places, we even begin the voyage. And just when we are about to get there, two steps away from the destination, knowing or now knowing how close we were…we run right back to our comfort zones, the starting point in the face of temporary setbacks and hurdles that can be overcome with perseverance.

Attraversiamo! Let’s cross over. Let’s have some faith in the unknown and its possibilities. Let’s finish a journey that’s been started. Let’s persist and reach where we want to be instead of running back to comfort zones. Setbacks are part of every process, more often than not.

Let’s get back after a set back.

Who knows what awaits us on the other side? It could be better or worse than what we had expected it to be but would you prefer stagnation to surprise? Let’s cross over and find out what’s in store.

It’s what the sun is doing today. This brilliant day of Makar Sankranti…crossing over from Capricorn to Aquarius bringing more sunny days to the Northern hemisphere. And we should follow suit.

Maybe the kitchen window in the house across the street is locked or the milk vessel is in the refrigerator. But the kitten will never find out waiting in the cold outside a Dental College.

Attraversiamo!