26/11

10 terrorists, 7 locations - including 2 landmark hotels and a busy railway station, a 3 day siege, 190 people killed, hundreds more injured and yet the home minister feels its just "a stray incident in this big city". The CM deems it fit to visit the ravaged hotel with his actor son and a film director. An attack which brought the city to its knees.. and yet it wasn't the first one even if it was the most horrifying one. And its aftermath sees the usual finger pointing, a few resignations here and there, grand declarations, a whole lot of chest thumping, studio activists with the ever ready sound byte about the resilience of the city, the spirit of the city.. and an angry, terrified but finally helpless common man.

And then as the wounds heal, life returns to normalcy all is forgotten except probably by those whose wounds run too deep to fully heal. The facade of solidarity now discarded for divisive votebank politics, ambitious anti-terror plans are stalled for a few votes. The parliament stands divided when now more than ever it has to be united.

Every time we think the worst is past us, that the government has finally woken up, there is yet another attack. The serial blasts of 93, Kargil war, the attack on the parliament, blasts ripping through local trains.. the list is long with each attack more audacious than the previous. And yet successive governments choose to sleep over the issue of catastrophic failure of the intelligence and security agencies in all these cases. The heroes of 26/11 will be lauded but were their deaths necessary? How many more incidents should occur before the government can finally wake up to the reality of terror attacks? Before dedicated units are setup to ruthlessly counter the terrorism, their hands not tied by either politics or religion? And till when will the common man continue to be a silent spectator to the entire circus? Maybe he has forgotten that he controls the circus.

Vote sensibly for the right person and the right party. If there is no sensible person standing then choose the "i do not want to vote" option at the polling station (if these votes are in majority then a re-election is held with new candidates) but most importantly VOTE.

PS: Why is Raj Thackeray so silent over the attacks on his beloved city?

The swan song

A nice article from a friend's status msg
Losing my religion

Shot!

U of M flu shot

Afternoon nightmare

Agreed the day till afternoon had gone all wrong but that doesn't mean I should have my pet nightmare back. In new modified circumstances.
Started with me in some unknown jungle with some unknown ppl (except 1). Looked suspiciously like a mix of LOST and SURVIVOR (All that I've seen of it is the ads so wonder how it pooped up in my head). We weren't really lost, we were just actors. And one character lets call her Kate (There is only 1 female character in LOST) was complaining about the different makeup she has to put in 2 different shows she works in - one tanned and one bleached.
The rest of it is hazy till the point where "Kate" wakes up with a blackened face. Which she blames on the strong chemicals in her makeup. That's where the dream turns into a B-grade horror flick. Her skin turns from black to blue, water oozing out of it.. her gums (there is my pet nightmare :P) swell up n turn blue.. the last thing i remember before waking up was her gums turning into some kind of a blue sponge with teeth dangling from its edges.

Psycho eh! I'm just glad it wasn't me watching myself in the mirror in the dream.

Life in aminated motion

I love animation. In all its forms. I guess I never grew up after all and cartoon network is to blame for it. It was the one channel I couldn't stop watching no matter what. It started with Tom and Jerry (which still continues) continued with "chaddi wala phul" Mowgli (One of the primary reasons I hated the dance classes was they they would clash with Jungle Book), Chip n Dale.. basically anything and everything being shown on Doordarshan. Cartoon Network was a luxury available only in vacations.

Things I loved on CN:
1. Tom n Jerry
2. Roadrunner Show
3. Johnny Quest
4. The Centurions (The show was boring but I loved the name of one of the characters - Ace McCloud!)
5. Swat Cats
6. Ninja Robots (It wasn't very popular but I loved it anyway.. that was the first anime i saw even though I didn't know it was an anime at that time)
7. Laff-a-lympics

Then Animax happened. And I loved it.
I won't go into the history of why anime (thats what Japanese animation is called) is distinct from normal animation. You can read it up on wiki if interested.

Must watch
1. Bleach
2. Rouroni Kenshin
3. Death Note
4. Naruto
5. Samurai Champloo
6. Trinity blood
7. Kare Kano (first time I saw an anime where everyone is absolutely normal.. no magic, no machines, no demons, no swords... a simple love story set in a school.. it was kinda cool)

But currently I'm totally "Bleached" :D

A nice quote

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

-C. S. Lewis

Terror trouble

I don't understand terrorists. I don't understand what drives them to mass murder people. Its not as if they are crazy, insane people. Perfectly sane, well educated people develop bombs designed to cause maximum damage. Robbers, murderers, assasinators harm people because they are directly blocking the way to their target. But how can arbitrarily bombing any market place or hospital achieve anything? People get scared, governments shaken but I doubt if the terrorists get anything other than scaring people. Governments don't fall on their knees begging them to stop. If at all it hardens people against them and worsens the divide. If an educated person decides to bomb a busy street full of nameless, faceless people he had never before seen in his life, its a mockery of the education he received. Education isn't just about becoming the best professional but more importantly about becoming a good person.

An exercise called cycling

Goodbye :(

Our parents weren't kidding when they said cycling was the best exercise. After a lot of bugging by my roomie I finally decided to go and buy one.. under the pretext of making commuting to my job easier (Anything that lets me leave my home later than I can works by me). Also I felt I should do justice to the "bike-friendly city" that Minneapolis is with its well defined bike routes on all roads. Its actually scary to ride in the center of the road in downtown with the pavement being 2 lanes away on either side and cars and buses zipping past you. Especially when the last time you have ridden a bike is in your pre-teens.

I got a glimpse of the time ahead when I crashed into the helmet rack when trying out the cycle in good ol' Walmart.. symbolic isn't it? Then there were the gears... 18 levels of it! Cost was the primary factor in choosing the bike over comfort/tire thickness/lightness etc. Which was not the wisest decision probably as I later realized. The public buses here have this cool facility to put cycles onto a foldable rack in front of the bus (keeping with the bike-friendly nature of this city). What I didn't realize was that I had not factored in the weight of the cycle while buying it... and I was no weight lifter. I can barely lift 2 galleons of milk!

But well that comes later.. after I get beyond the point of riding the cycle. Couldn't muster it outside the store to ride to the bus-stop so I walked it down (with my friend). Both of us jointly weight-lifted it onto the cycle rack on the bus and got down a good 15 blocks away from home (the bus wouldn't take us any closer). Now it was do or die since walking 15 blocks with a cycle would look absolutely comical. In spite of that I was almost ready to do it if not for my friend who immediately got onto her bike and dared me to walk it alone :D. I will eternally thank the man on the bus stop who gave me instructions on how to start the bike.. one leg at a time :P. It is said we never forget how to ride a bike but I think we can forget how to start and stop it. After a few eventful days which involved me getting the pedal to the perfect angle with one degree precision in order to start the cycle and mentally preparing myself to get down one block before I actually got down, I felt confident enough to take it to work (which would also give me 7 more minutes at home :D)

Sun rises, alarm rings, I snooze it, alarm rings again, I go to snooze it but decide against it and wake up, get ready for work, ride cycle to the bus stop, bus comes, I lower the rack, go to lift the bike and I almost fall down. It is very difficult to lift a bike above your head. After wrestling with it for a couple of minutes I managed to put it on the rack. I could almost feel everyone's eyes on me when I got into the bus. That's when I had almost decided to never get it to office again. But then, thinking about the 2 jeans which I had stopped wearing, I realized cycling to office was a 20 minute workout involving the cycle and weights (the rush to get ready takes care of the treadmill part :P)

For lazy bones me, that was not a bad place to start the whole fitness thing, was it? :D

Chanda re chanda re...

I never noticed before, but today i could see the moon from my bedroom window. It was a favorite pastime, staring at the moon (i always tend to space out looking at it :D). Its beautiful no doubt and for some reason I prefer the full moon to the crescent (no im not a werewolf)

The moon signifies different things to different people.. to me it signifies independence...

to be continued..

In the summer time when the weather is high..

Minneapolis summer = Temp 20 degrees max in month of May.. kinda weird but after a winter of -40, its understandable.
Now I can sympathize with prisoners freed from jail.. I was freed from my apt n winter jacket after all! After the winter I do believe that you need to go through a harsh winter to appreciate the beauty of spring.. nature waking up from hibernation. There is a moment when you get overwhelmed by the explosion of colors before getting used to it. But I'm loving the absence of snow and presence of color and hoping that some of the color seeps into my life too :)

Hey there Delilah - Plain White Ts

perfect song isn't it for those who understand the situation

Office quotes

"When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it!That alone is the secret to success."

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."

No idea who writes them and when, but these stuck out of the couple I had seen.

Illusion n Dream

Dreams- the window to our inner world, which shows us everything that we wish, we crave, our deepest fears and the things we refuse to acknowledge even to ourselves. The eyes to this world open when we stop "seeing" the world outside. Mine have been opening to this world with alarming alacrity since I've come here. And they are so real I almost wish I'd never get up. Thankfully I've stopped dreaming about my teeth falling off for now.. that was the scariest series of dreams I had seen, other than one about falling off the tilak bridge at night and getting lost at a monster train station. I used to have some pretty scary ones when I was a kid which is why I started the bedtime prayers (and that is the only time in the day when I seriously pray)
Almost all of my dreams are in India and most of them have my parents or friends.. Maybe I should go back in summer, weather be damned...

But its strange how the dreams are so normal.. I mean aren't they supposed to be fantastical, totally out of this world? After all who would dream about punching and filing papers and computer mice in a dream. But thats what dreams are supposed to be, our wishes materialized in our fantasy world when they couldn't or haven't happened in the real world. And rite now my deepest wish is to eat gola on SP katta with everyone, not flying away to some fairyland or saving mankind xena style.

Its interesting to analyze a dream, to figure out from where each disjointed part came. Like putting together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without a reference to look at. Sometimes they fit, mostly there are huge holes in it. Its even more interesting if some part of it becomes a reality giving that feeling of deja vu which we dont understand why. I dont believe in wishing for things to happen and I dont believe that dreams become true. We have to make them come true, give it your best shot and leave the rest to fate/luck/chance. And pray, but not without giving it your best shot first.

Dreams are nothing more than wishes
And a wish's just a dream you wish to come true

PS: Whats the difference between wishing and hoping?

Hope in the times of darkness

I dunno how well the idiom "the darkest hour is just before the dawn" applies to real world, but I sure dont want time to get stuck at the darkest hour. But its strange how I have developed 2 different outlooks, the new 1 being 'pep-me-up' (developed and maintained by constant interaction with friends) and the older one being 'push-me-down' (developed by... dunno who.. must be me through constant non-interaction with friends) :D Hope that the system stabilizes soon!!

Random question: Do you have to be cold hearted to be strong?

A few recipes

I never thought I'd do this... write a post about how to cook!!! But this is one post I hope mum reads (that is, if she knew my blog existed). I feel I learned more in cooking than in studies.. hehe! But few of the cliché statements in cooking are true.. it is definitely more fun when someone is there to share the food you cook rather than you eating it all alone. I'll start with capsicum dal, simple recipe.. which apparently everyone likes (no idea why!!!) Anyways here goes..

CAPSICUM DAL

Ingredients:
1 cup tur dal
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds (rai)
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds (jeera)
2 green chillies
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
3-4 teaspoon sambar masala
1/2 teaspoon tamarind concentrate
1 tablespoon garlic paste (or equivalent chopped garlic.. no mixer here :D )
1 chopped tomato (or 3-4 tablespoons diced tomatoes or puree)
1 finely chopped onion
1 capsicum, cut into medium sized cubes
3 tablespoons of oil (actually take how much ever you feel is necessary to fry dal)
Salt, to taste
Finely chopped coriander, for garnishing


Procedure:
Cook the dal in a cooker. The normal way one cooks plain dal. You can add salt, pinch of asafoetida and turmeric but these are not essential. Take oil in a fry pan, put mustard and cumin seeds, green chillies and wait till the mustard starts popping. Now add the chopped onions. If you are using chopped garlic, add it along with the chillies before the onions. If you are using the ready paste, add it after the onions to prevent getting burnt with the oil and making a mess of the gas stove (I was burnt the first time with oil spray :D and I will not mention the condition of the stove. It was lucky we cover the stove with aluminum foil).
Any ways, after the onion becomes all soft n golden, add the tomatoes. Fry it for a bit and then add all the rest of the masala. Then go the capsicum pieces. Keep doing timepass (pointless stirring) with it till the capsicum is almost cooked (or at least till the point where it stops looking raw). whew! Almost there now..
Add the cooked dal and again do some timepass (dont ask me why, the dal just seems to taste better after it). Then add water according to how thick you want the dal to be. Then the tamarind paste and 1 cube of jaggery (I guess I forgot to mention it in the ingredients... tells you always to get the complete picture before starting anything new) and salt to taste. Bring the dal to a boil. Garnish with coriander. Voila!! Its all done!!



Wow! I wrote a recipe!! Had I read this simple recipe 6 months ago, I would have been intimidated by it :D
Shows you how much life changes :)

The year that was.. 2007

The turning point of my life.. year 2007. It started with sem 8, the last semester in VESIT, unarguably the most exciting semester after sem 1. Life sure does come a full circle. It started with freshers and ended with the farewell. It was one thrilling ride, SPHURTI, UTSAV topped with the Farewell party. But everything had a tinge of sadness, of a wonderful journey coming to an end after which everyone will catch different buses to their respective destinations. MU decided to make our parting sweeter by giving a wonderful result after a long time. After all, they had screwed up so many students passing certificates for no rhyme or reason.

Everyone got ready to prepare for their next destinations.. job, IIT, IIM, MS. After lots of sleepless nights I decided to come here, the polar opposite of Mumbai, for MS. Vacation was maddness, visa interviews, inventory lists, meeting everyone, saying goodbye to everyone and finally on 6th august.. take-off! To a new world.. my next destination.. independence and a whole truckload of responsibilities.. new friends and harsher climate and offcourse.. first snow!!!! :D :D

Highlights of 2007 (in order of importance) :D
1. Longest time I have stayed away from home
2. Decided to pursue MS
3. Realized some friends are for life :)
4. Graduation
5. First time in a foreign country
6. First time I travelled by a plane
7. First snowfall I experienced
8. Learnt cooking
9. Got my own laptop
10. Maintained a diary without giving up

Many other highlights too which if I list will be too much :P

And now to ring in 2008! Wonder what it'll have in store for me??