THE SEASON OF GIVING This is the season of giving. There is a sense of happiness and probably because it is close to being the start of a new year, there is a certain sense of generosity. Forgive and carry on, so to speak. It is also very colourful, with bedecked Christmas trees, shining and reflecting a lot of sparkly light. I can only speak for Hyderabad, but everyone is participating. And lending light and joy and a moment of happiness is exactly what Cherish Orphanage for Boys and Girls along with Sujai A Persa Adla Trust did on Friday afternoon. The room near the peadiatric ward was teeming with people. the volunteers from Cherish were putting up balloons and setting up their equipment for they were to sing later. There were a lot of wires. And many volunteers, both girls and boys walked around, helping where ever they could, including fetching chairs for the visitors, who were children from the paediatric ward at the MNJ Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centr...
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WEDDING BLUES (ARGENTINA WON) As I have repeatedly said I do not like to attend weddings or anything related. It is too pretty, too much of dressing up and way too flashy with all jewellery, glittery smiles and disco strobes. During daytime it is too much of visible makeup. Sometimes the food is fantastic, sometimes worse than ordinary. But food is one of the major reasons for attending any such mammoth effort to get strangers together and then feed them. After having attended two specific functions of two weddings in Hyderabad I was congratulating myself on my ability to smile through both the occasions. I travelled with M to Bangalore to attend his friend's daughter's wedding. Shruti wed Felix in an Arya Samaj wedding, with a few Tamilian functions like 'unjal' and such. This is a function where the groom is brought back to the mandap from his sulk to move to Kashi, after promising him his bride. The two are then made to sit on a bedecked swing, while lovely rhythmic...
THEY TOOK AWAY MY PAIR OF TINY SCISSORS Oh, but I must write about it. As you would know I am obsessed about arriving on time, for any occasion. If I am early for an interview, I while away my time drinking tea or simply look at the world. Murali is a tad too cool about these matters. He leaves for a meeting, and for a 4 pm appointment he will leave office at 3.35 pm or worse at 3.45 pm. He'll get in and tell the driver that he has about 15 mnts to reach the other end of town. Ironically Murali has high BP! Though I would like to reach the airport very early, if I am travelling with M, it gets a bt difficult to convince him. The airport has grown, has a lot more to ogle at and I think window shopping to banta hai. Plus he has the lounge pass. Apart from the number of eating joints which have opened, now at the airport they have extended the gates and that part of the terminal has been further stretched to go beyond the Idli joint which was the last stop earlier. Know this because...
AND THE QUEEN WAS IN THE PARLOUR All us girls go to the beauty parlour. While I confess to that, I am not going to tell you what all we do there. A little snip here, a little thread there, some hot stuff, some cold stuff maybe. I will also add that it is all not so pleasant. Probably you guys have a less painful time trying to look good. But if what I read is correct then young men these days go through as much trouble to look 'presentable'. When I was very young, once upon a time, my father would take me to the salon for my hair cut. And I have this memory of dozing off as the barber used the clipper on the nape of my neck. I still have a tendency to doze off, even now. There is always a hunt for a good parlour/salon where you are on name calling basis, as in know the person's name and greet her as you walk in. Because, in my opinion, it is extremely daunting walking into a parlour. Clients who sit there, getting their stuff done or those waiting for their chance, lo...
MISSING PEA AND CROATIA WINS The World Cup in football happens every four years, so devotion to watching game to banta hai. Now with quarter finals on and Brazil vs Croatia happening, TV time was big. Murali fixed my drink and from then on eyes glued to TV. One has been watching nations with phenomenal footwork and that is what makes this game watchable. Even as there is energetic footwork, there is a delicacy, as spiked footwear pushes the ball, even as other spiked shoes interfere with this delicate foot work. So, if you want to watch the goal happen live, eyes on TV. The ironies of life are many and one of them is that the sparkling, much talked about goal, that famous back flip, those trot-worthy dribbles, never happens in the 90 minutes you have been watching, unblinkingly. Extra time happens and you are a bit distracted because you have knocked back one too many and you are hunting for that green pea which slipped out of your bite and you look down, ...
KANTARA AND SUCH.... Finally I got to see Kantara, the much touted, publicised, that-which-made-so-much-money. The cocktail circuit talk was only about Kantara and if you had not seen it yet, then there was no ice for your drinks 😀. Since you guys know that I am attached to the visual medium, I end up watching all kinds of films. And some movies like Kantara have to be seen. Was the movie good? Watchable? Most definitely. And that is where the saga of Kantara movie ends. It is a well made film, a movie about the struggle between the forest officials and the tribes living within the forest, in this case since time immemorial. It is about one 'wastrel' son, who turns to be the saviour at the end of the day. It is about how good wins over the evil, only the hero needs to have paan stained teeth and an urge to bellow every now and then. Interspersing the unfolding ordinary drama with a certain mysticism, by using the Bhuta Kola, a worship of Goddesses...
FOOTBALL AND KATRI....... What's not to like about football? Plus this is the FIFA, held once in every four years and the best of footballing nations play to win. While in the comfort of our own home, we can watch adult, fit men running around at high speed behind one small ball, trying to make a goal. These days the looks of the footballers has changed with dyed hair, tattooed arms and legs and a new found aggression. But the physical abuse continues. There is extraordinary violence, though there are a zillion cameras pointed towards the players and extremely active referees, giving out yellow cards like hard candy. While Murali and I would watch football in the days of yore too, I became more than a mere viewer when we brought out a football supplement during the 1992 FIFA. I was in Newstime then and spent late nights with the boys watching the game unfold, learnt some technical details and the passion for the game stuck. New rules have been set, but I am watching and learning. ...
KANJIVARAM SILKS AND A CALM FLIGHT TO HYDERABAD I have visited Kanjivaram earlier and done the rounds of temples, but typically one rushes through the worship, ready to visit another god. It really does not matter if it is Lord Shiva or Lord Vishnu. I had never bought any saris though. I don't wear this all-cover-beautiful apparel, but love to watch friends drape them and buy them. And so there we were, the eight ladies in this town of magical weaves, colourful and silken. We had the much deserved hot cup of coffee, since the road from Tiruvanmala to Kanjivaram does not have any facilities or a decent tea shop. A single road which got crowded as we approached this town, with little villages on either side and paddy fields abounding. We set out to see the three major temples of this town including the Varadaraja Perumal temple, where we touched the golden lizard and for some reason felt very happy. There are 48 steep steps from the bottom to the top where the Lord sits in al...
HAD TO PAY FOR PRIME MOVIES..... Yesterday I watched four movies and a wide range of them. Was to visit with a friend, but felt a little under the weather, so instead watched another film. Good movies with brilliant performances. Maybe because I am watching so many films in so many languages, one gets to see and lot of different actors and boy! are they good. Where were they all this time? By the way, I did not know till now that we were paying for Amazon Prime Movies. It suddenly sprang on the screen asking me to pay just as I clicked on Prithviraj's Kaduva, I was asked to get a membership. Good old Murali tried to do everything and could not and then our trusted driver Raju, who I think is a genius with all stuff electronic pressed a couple of buttons and then declared that I had to renew my membership. Which was ok by me, except that till then I did not know I was paying for Prime. So I did the needful and continued watching movies, till I wanted to see Top Gun: The Maverick. I...
LAW MAKERS AND AN EPIC City police chief C V Anand has only the city denizens in mind when he talked about the action plan to improve the flow of traffic. He would follow ROPE (Removal of obstructive parking and encroachments) he said because of the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads since Covid times. If your public transport was in place and your pavements well paved why would people buy so many cars. Unless of course you were vulgarly rich, like many are in Hyderabad and those who need to commute to work. ROPE is already in practice, when I saw a traffic truck standing near Himayath Nagar and remove all the small time vendors who were selling lunch to hungry persons, for this kind of eating out is definitely easier on your pocket. And they selected 1.30 pm, peak lunch time to remove these people from the pavement. There is a necessity to organise the traffic, especially since we are an unruly bunch and really do not respect any rules or regulations. But I do hope A...
HECTIC DAYS...... Returned from a ten-day holiday to Masai Mara and Dubai, wild jungle to concrete jungle, so to speak. Returned to several rounds of washing. Must learn to pack less most definitely. And carry less luggage. I am planning to do that in real life too, starting with my hair, cutting it so short that sometimes the scissors just snip at the air. It is difficult to give up things, but koshish jaari hai..... Even as settling down was happening, there was a workshop I had to attend. A much planned event, it was a workshop with Creative Bee. The founders of this beautiful place are Bina Rao, the head of design and her husband Keshav Rao, the dye master. Together they design for various labels, keeping their principle intact of producing handmade textiles with the help of their rural partners including hundreds of women. In this direction they also conduct a lot of rural training programmes, teaching the populace about their eco-friendly production processes. And this is pr...
NILOUFER CAFE AND THE BUN MASKAA Each time I have coffee, I am reminded of the cold coffee I had at the Niloufer Cafe in Himayathnagar. Went there the other day with a bunch of girl friends. Busy place, but we found seats for the seven of us in one cozy corner which remained so for exactly 33 seconds, till the table next to us with 20 women started talking. All at once. A request later we were shifted some 10 feet away and we started stretching our legs while reading the sumptuous menu when we realised we were not alone, once again. There were a bunch of women in a glass cabin, where our chairs were and they too were loud. We needed distraction and so placed our orders. And when the food started arriving, amidst the chaos of being served and serving ourselves, we started eating and then we started talking.😊😊😊😊😊 When we decided to visit this cafe, I seriouusly thought I would get my bun maskaa and maybe a vegetable puff or two along with the parde wali chai. But the menu...
MY MIND IS NOT MADE UP....... My latest writing project just got over and so I am at a loose end. Well, not really. I have a couple of projects in my mind but that also means the rains can't have a mind of its own. Brilliant sunshine in the morning and there I am singing with the finches (do they sing?) and then it gets cloudy, humid and pours incessantly for 15 minutes and then stops. I seriously have nothing against the rains. So what if our CM, KCR garu has got us both the Krishna and Godavari waters to our taps. It is the rains which puts the smile back on the farmer's face, at least for a period of time. It is only then that greenery takes on a new hue. (A poet friend the late Prasad wrote, `pacche rang ki pacche essi nattu').While I will not deny that there is a certain charm in this season, of having a roasted corn, even as the warm embers of the coals dry up your face. Or having a hot cup of ginger tea from a roadside stall while you are inside the car. Or having ...