The Birthday Cake Story

The woman had planned for her husband's birthday celebrations: their first birthday together after marriage...
But the husband had to go away on the same day for an emergency...
Naturally all the plans were cancelled...
But eventually they did decide on a date when they could celebrate it...
The celebration began two days earlier by hiding gifts and cards...
Ofcourse the celebration couldn't end without the cutting of cake...
So she was all set to buy the cake from the most delicious cake makers of the city...
She hired an auto to the place and thought: coming back wouldn't be a problem as her friend had promised her to drop...
She finished her shopping and felt happy as she had found her flavour of cake...

She came out holding or rather balancing the big cake box in one hand and another heavy bag in another...
Her friend who was supposed to drop her got an urgent call and couldn't help...
So the woman stood waiting for an auto...
5 minutes passed, none of the autos were empty...
10 minutes passed, autos were empty but none of them were ready to come...
Those who were ready to come were on the other side of the road...
But thewoman couldn't cross the road as it was very busy and courage had left her as she was holding those two bags especially one with the cake...
But the woman couldn't cross the road as she was holding those bags...
20 minutes passed still no sign of an auto...
Her arms started hurting, she felt thirsty as she carried no water thinking she would be back soon...
Her legs ached and her stomach felt sick and hungry...

After these frustrating 20 minutes, came an old watchman from the next building...
Her felt sorry for the woman and asked her where she wanted to go...
He then helped her cross the road by blowing his whistle all along...
Leading her to the other side of the road, he caught hold of an auto and convinced him to come...
The woman thanked the watchman and left..
On her way back she felt thankful and good about the watchman: atleast there were still people who offered help to strangers...
The woman and her husband happily celebrated the birthday next day...

Hotels of Hyderabad

Me being a foodie, have been wanting to write about the hotels of Hyderabad from a very long time...
Especially, my favourite canton soup at 'The Minerva Coffee Shop' and also the real flavor of some chinese food...
Next is my all time favourite rava dosa at the 'Chellam' restaurant...
The king size buffet at 'Ohri's Jiva'...
Very delicious methi paratha at 'Kamath's'...
Hara bhara paneer kabab at 'Angetti'...
And ofcourse last but not the least, my hubby's 'Tuppada dose' though the receipe comes from his Gaga...

There are other hotels where its hard to find some good food but one has to visit those hotels once atleast to have a glimpse at their interiors....
The train model at 'Saheb Singh Sultan'...
The traditional south Indian temple interiors at 'Athithi Inn'...
The dhaba style ambience at 'Angetti'...and so on to go.
But all these places change your mood for good!

Parva

Have been reading Bhyrappa's Parva n it's amazing...
I had never known the story of Mahabharatha so well as i do now 'coz of this book.
It's the magic of Bhyrappa again.

Chaos in Birla Temple

Me and S visited the famous Birla temple yestarday.
Though he had visited it lot many times, for me it was the first time.
I had just read the name of the temple in one of the A.P Tourist guide but didn't know that the whole temple was built in white marble!!!
The temple resembles more or less like the ISKON temple in B'lore but only that its marble built.
It's a marvellous structure with very explicit carvings and spread around a vast area.
But there were certain things which irked us both whlie entering the temple.
Firstly, it was the security- which required us to surrender our mobile phones in the counter.
I had seen temples where they asked people to switch off their mobiles but never had i seen this kind of security anywhere.
And the result of such security was obviously people "loosing" their mobile phones.
As we walked up to the main temple what we got to see was the endless Q of people, and ofcourse it took us more than 45 mins to atlast see the GOD.
Now comes the most interesting part- before we could God's darshan we received 'thirtha' and next stands a 'priest' literally streching his hands and snatching the money from my hands which i was supposed to put in the Hundi.
Me, on the other hand, thinking that there is no hundi royally gave all the money to the pujari.
Only after all this drama were we allowed to have the darshan.
And there was the 'HUNDI' for which i didn't have any money left:)
So the meaning here is simple and needs no explanation.
The preist did not have just one or two notes, there was bundle of it.
S being completely enraged with it, decided to lodge a complaint againt the pujari at the office.
We went to the office and they wanted everything in writing, so we did.
While this was happening, i saw a man enter the office, stand near one of the security personnel, sneake a Rs.50 note, speak to him in Telugu and vanish.
And what was that all about nobody knows.
After we gave the complaint in writing, the priest was called for and enquired for which he tried giving lot many excuses.
Later, even after so many arguments,we felt that it didn't lead us anywhere.
It's just for that time being he would be enquired and left unpunished.
So we decided to leave the matter then and there and were out of the blessed temple.

Sikkim

It' been one month since me and S are back from our Sikkim trip, still i haven't been to able to start writing anything about the place and now i have lost the interest too though it's great and SACRED place as they say it....

So above is a picture of Mt. Kangchenjunga as seen from Pelling...and next is the beautiful Changu lake near Nathula pass... ...

"DOR"

Two women from different parts of India...
One from Rajasthan...
Another from Kashmir...
Both married to the man they love...
Both know what they want from life...
Both have integrity and zest for life...
But the way they express these things is the only difference...
One abides by the society's norms and enjoys what she wants...
Another fights with the world to get what she wants...
And still they are happy in their world....
But that's short lived...
Both of their husbands travel abroad to earn more money...
And eventually one of them gets killed in the hands of the other accidentally...
The killer goes behind the bars to get a death sentence...
The news reaches his wife...
Her husband can escape the death sentence only if the widow of the killed signs a letter stating the incident as an accident...
The wife of the accused travels to Rajasthan in search of the widow...
But she finds her so innocent that she decides to wait for the right moment to tell the truth and get the signature...
In the course of time they become very close friends...
The widow (who had lost all her freedom) starts to enjoy her life again because of her friendship...
Truth unfolds at the end and the widow resents her friend thinking that she deceived her...
But she realises at the same time that her friend's entry was like a second life for her...
And finally as usual with all the movies, its a happy ending where the widow abandons her husband's house and goes with her friend...

As always with Nagesh Kukunoor, DOR is a very touching movie....
The widow played by Ayesha Takia looks as innocent as a child...
Gul Panag as the wife of the accused is equally good...
With very strong music, dialogues and acting from all the actors, this movie proves to be one of the best of Kukunoor's films.

The Witch of Portobello

I bought Paulo Coelho's "The Witch of Portobello" with great xpectations remembering his success with 'The Alchemist'. Ofcourse my xpectations were fed with a great start with the story of Athena or Sherine as the author calls her some times...First hundred n odd pages were very good as so many people try to describe the character of Athena...But as and how i turned rest of the pages everything started going above my head all of a sudden...

Only way i could relate with the character and the story was by drawing similarity with one more book i had read earlier of S.L.Bhyrappa i.e.'Anweshana'.

In both the stories, the life of the protagonist is narrated by someone related to him/ her. Both the protagonists are in constant search of their soul and integrity which is above any normal human understanding.In doing so, they go from one place to another, they try out different things never sticking onto any one thing or any one person. In the course of time they hurt all around them...only difference is that in W.O.B she survives all the difficulties and finds ultimate realisation but whereas in Anweshana he loses his battle...
Like Anweshana, W.O.B also conveys certain hard core truths about the life. So if i look at W.O.B through the eyes of Anweshana i must call it a good book but otherwise not.

First impressions on Hyderabad

-> The cost of living is as high as its summer temperature. I go to buy something,i see the price and keep it neatly on its own place as everything is exactly double priced as compared to my hometown. But still there are certain which i HAVE to buy:( while i curse the city and make the shopkeeper rich.

-> Less of traffic compared to Bangalore (not that B'lore is my hometown but having seen the traffic there thought its the best place to be compared with). But ofcourse the traffic woes here are of a different type- as you find very less people who follow the traffic rules and signals (which seldom work)!

-> Lots and lots of restaurants serving good food yet i have heard people wait for hours infront of these resautants just for a meal.

-> The youngsters doesn't seem to be as spoilt as they are in other big cities. They are much decent and sober. But ofcourse the look in the eyes of majority of men are disgusting; or may be that's the reason why people wear some decent clothes.

-> One thing that's worth mentioning is the sweet that you get here called Kabani ka meetha. Made out of dates it really is a feast for sweet lovers.

-> One more thing i really enjoyed here is the long ride next to the Hussain Sagar lake during the late hours. Watching the glittering lights of the town as you pass by the lake is very beautiful.

My impressions about the architectural and historical places are yet to come as i haven't been to visit those places yet.

The Treehouse Experience

The rushing Kali river stretching far and far across...
The soothing sound of thr same as it calma down and reaches below...
The chilling winds as you stand by the open windows...
The fear that churns your stomach as you look down the same windows during night...
The loud scream of the rafters as they challenge to cross the white water...
The mighty pride of the man for having challenged the nature, yet the pettiness he should feel infront of the magnificant nature visible till the horizon and for having meddled with the nature's beauty and freedom...
The strength and silent suffering of the tree that holds the house just to safeguard the people inside...
The trees nestling the truly amazing Hornbills...
The woods being used for sheer pleasure and entertainment of man...

From Ms. to Mrs.

From childhood to adulthood...
From innocence to maturity...
From mischief to responsibility...
From flirtatious to commitment...
From being an atheist to performing religious ceremonies...
From arrogance to patience...
From adamant to obedient...
From self-centered to sharing...
From being individualized to togetherness...
From S.....i to S.....a
From Dvg to Hyd...
That's the journey travelled from being a Miss to becoming Mrs.

Back after two months...

Back to blogging after two months' gap and much has changed since then in my life...

One more Bhyrappa's tale...

I just finished reading one more S.L.Bhyrappa's book- "Nirakarana"...
Though the title attracted me a lot and at the same time even the prologue but it wasn't such a good book altogether...
First thing that influenced me to read that book was the fact that it was Bhyarappa's and the next factor was the plot- the protagonist deciding to give his children off for adoption because of the fact that he cannot look after them or rather there is no one (a wife) at home to look after them...
But this process of selling off the chidren gets over within just 25 pages of the book...
Next comes his quest for realising the ultimate truth and his theory of detachment for which he goes to Himalayas only to realise that he is not capable of doing it...
That part was really boring indeed, i can imagine that protagonist's condition there in the himalayas!!!
When reading that part itself was so boring being there actually could be unimaginable...
At the end though, the story comes back to his children and his return to the normal human life discarding the life of a 'Saadhu'...
Whatever, it was an exceptional story....Cannot be termed as completely bad or completely good.

Happy Holidays

My school kids will be back to school this week after a long hoiliday...
Ofcourse they will all be feeling homesick once they are back...
But as for me it's the starting of holidays:))
So it's time to have more fun, watch more movies, read lots of books, have frequent fights with my mom and sis plus not to forget more shopping for the next month's Big Day...
Life couldn't be much better...
Only thing missing is sleep as i seem to be insomniac (both initial and termination):(

A lizard in the tank...

4 days ago a lizard fell into our watertank (It's just an assumption that it fell 4 days ago because nodoby knew when it actually fell:)
My mother being obsessed with checking the water level of the tank every now and then found out about this and was too worried as the water level was almost 3/4th and would go wasted because of the lizard.
She even tried her hand at taking out the lizard by tying a mug to a rope and suspending it into the tank in a way as people do to lift water from a well.
But,the more she tried the farther the lizard moved.
Completely exhausted she quit the task.
Only relief was the fact that there was much water in the over tank for us to manage for 2days.
For drinking purpose ofcourse we had to rely on our much favourite "Bisleri", the so called mineral water.
But the lizard contuined to be in the 'back stroke' swimming position in the tank.
Nothing could be done the following day as a worker who was supposed to come didn't turn up.
At last yesterday was the D-day for the lizard.
Again my mother tried her best to take it out and finally she got it.
Later came the much more tiring cleaning up process of the tank.
For this all the water from below had to be pumped up and the tank had to be cleaned thoroughly.
As usual our BESCOM people had to repair an electrical line at that time so there goes the power line OFF.
So we had to wait till the power came.
It was 8 in the night when power was ON and the water was pumped.
Then followed the cleaning process which went on for nearly an hour.
All this done, my mother was still under lot of tension...reason- what if the water didn't come the following day (as there is water problem here we get water for every 4-5days).
That was actually a valid tension as there was literally no water anywhere.
Today,releasing all my mother's tension was the rushing water that filled our tank and that ended the story of a lizard.

Cup of Tea

...life is like a cup of tea...
You sit by the window, lift the cup and take careless sip only to realize somebody forgot to add sugar...
Too lazy to go for it, you somehow struggle through the sugarless tea till you discover sugar crystals lying at the bottom...
That's what life is- shaken but not stirred...

...if Shakespeare had never existed would the world have differed much from what it is now? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men?...by Virginia Woolf

...if i love myself despite of my infinite faults, how can i hate anyone at the glimpse of their few faults...

...once i did bad and that i heard ever,
twice i did good but that i heard never...

...if you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing...by Benjamin Franklin

...if you can dream- and not make dreams your master;
if you can think and not make thoughts your aim...by Rudyard Kipling