Like headlines on a newspaper, the text on a snack pack caught my attention.
Trickery and deception happen everywhere, it seems! Thanks to Pistachios for reporting the story of 'Chili Con Lemon'!
DeeDee moments
On our drive to school this morning, as my daughter and I were talking, somehow the topic of 'crying wolf' came up. I found myself narrating to her the anecdote behind it - how the shepherd boy cried wolf and fooled the villagers who rushed to his rescue; and how finally when the wolf really attacked him, no one came to help him....
Me : "So, what do you understand from this?"
DD : " That he should not have shouted 'wolf wolf' so many times, the wolf heard him and came to bite him; If he had not called out, the wolf would not have come."
I had one of those comic book moments with a crazy spiral and a bunch of yellow stars drawn over my head!
Me : "So, what do you understand from this?"
DD : " That he should not have shouted 'wolf wolf' so many times, the wolf heard him and came to bite him; If he had not called out, the wolf would not have come."
I had one of those comic book moments with a crazy spiral and a bunch of yellow stars drawn over my head!
to-wel or not to .........
It's our first winter in our new home i.e. the 50 yr old house that we have newly made our home. It's brrrrrr..... cold and everything gets cold by evening- the couch, the countertops, the carpet. The tile kitchen floor has converted my mom to someone who wears indoor footwear, which she had resisted all along. Amidst all this, my dad's biggest concern is over towels. Yep! bath towels that don't feel dry and crisp but are damp and cold to the touch bother him to no end. So he's taken it upon himself to put them out to dry on the clothesline in our backyard. As soon as my mother saw the backyard in this house, she exclaimed with relief, 'Ah, I can now hang my sarees out to dry and don't have to worry about detangling the twisted knotted heap that they become in the dryer'. So we had a clothesline tied for my mother to use. But I didn't realize it'd get used this much, that too by my dad. He's confounded over how towels that are machine washed and dried, that come out hot and fresh and then get folded and put away get cold and somewhat limp. He constantly fusses over their semi-dry state, and hangs them out to dry in nature. Every couple of hours he moves them over on the line to accommodate the shifting sunlight. Yes this is winter in glorious California and we do get some sunny days. But the sun is just there, the wind is so chilly, there's hardly any warmth even in direct sunlight. So, after a few hours outside, the towels come back feeling pretty chilly and that irks my dad again. Between his morning and late afternoon walks, between the times he spends with some friends he's made here, going up to the community centre or saying his prayers, he can mostly be seen fussing over his towels.
Many times when we are looking for my dad to join us for lunch,and he is not to be seen, My mother jokes' He must have gone in search of Surya Bhagavan( Sun God)' or ' I saw him last near the fence moving the towels to the far end, by now he must be in the neighbor's yard '. I laugh very hard imagining my neighbor's amazement if he ever caught my dad in his backyard or picturing my dad enthusiastically hanging clothes on a line right next to a puzzled Mr.Golden Sun - as if from a colorful page out of a children's story book. Thank God for the earth's rotation, he gets to sleep while he loans the sun to the remaining half of the globe. If those towels ever came to life, they'd give him a hug for all the fussing and pampering.
In the beginning this obsession with drying towels annoyed me. Later I started finding it very funny. But in a month from now when my parents will travel back home, that empty clothesline will make me very sad, I'll miss you dad - But I'll be glad to realize you , your towels and the Sun God will all be together.
Many times when we are looking for my dad to join us for lunch,and he is not to be seen, My mother jokes' He must have gone in search of Surya Bhagavan( Sun God)' or ' I saw him last near the fence moving the towels to the far end, by now he must be in the neighbor's yard '. I laugh very hard imagining my neighbor's amazement if he ever caught my dad in his backyard or picturing my dad enthusiastically hanging clothes on a line right next to a puzzled Mr.Golden Sun - as if from a colorful page out of a children's story book. Thank God for the earth's rotation, he gets to sleep while he loans the sun to the remaining half of the globe. If those towels ever came to life, they'd give him a hug for all the fussing and pampering.
Nothing in particular-isms
Facebook's autocomplete feature on proper nouns is horrendous, especially on non-western names. I don't know whether it's the mobile app that's acting up. A relative of mine, a few years younger than I, sent me a message to get in touch. I responded to her asking her to call me by my first name rather than a respectful 'akka' ( big sister). After a couple of days when I read her reply I was kind of surprised why she still stuck to calling me akka. And then when my eyes proceeded down to my original message, I was befuddled to read ' Please, why akka, you can call me Sukarno' ! WTH! Just after I had typed the first two letters of my name, the FB angels decided to take over and do their thing! I winced in pain imagining what she might have thought of me after reading this!!!!!
This happened a few months ago. DD exclaimed enthusiastically as I took out her lunch box from her lunch bag, " Amma, I can read my name on my lunch box !" .
I went " Really ?", she responded " yeah, see- P-Y-R-E-X ". Sitting right above those letters is a label spelling out the name we so lovingly gave her!
May be I am the one who's late to this party, but did you know what a Qwerty is? I stumbled upon 'Qwerty keyboard' when I was reading the features list of a mobile phone. Qwerty is the design of a standard keyboard of a typewriter or computer as we are all used to. It comes from the first six letters from left to right on the top row : Q,W,E,R,T,Y!
This happened a few months ago. DD exclaimed enthusiastically as I took out her lunch box from her lunch bag, " Amma, I can read my name on my lunch box !" .
I went " Really ?", she responded " yeah, see- P-Y-R-E-X ". Sitting right above those letters is a label spelling out the name we so lovingly gave her!
May be I am the one who's late to this party, but did you know what a Qwerty is? I stumbled upon 'Qwerty keyboard' when I was reading the features list of a mobile phone. Qwerty is the design of a standard keyboard of a typewriter or computer as we are all used to. It comes from the first six letters from left to right on the top row : Q,W,E,R,T,Y!
The co-incidence story
*** looks long but will take a max of 5 mins to read in entirety ***
Yesterday, as I sat down to fold 3 loads of laundry, I turned on the TV. DD, DH and parents left for a day at an amusement park and I had just put my son down for a nap. Browsing through the channels I found the Jim Carrey starrer 'Bruce Almighty' dubbed in tamil on sun TV. I normally never watch such stuff, but yesterday I was very tickled to catch Jim Carrey shout 'Kadavule', 'Poda loose paiyya' , Jennifer aniston go ' Enna aachu ungalukku?', Morgan Freeman playing God say 'Pinne kaanaam' ( see you later in malayalam) - I figured the original version must have had him say 'Hasta la vista or Ciao'.
In this film the character of Jim Carrey, Bruce is disgruntled, unhappy and blames God for his lacklustre career, for painstakingly having to eke his way out without immediate success and for the quick growth of his clever coworkers. Finally God decides he's had it with this man's complaints and decides to contact him through his pager. Bruce's pager beeps with the number 555 0123. What struck me was the co-incidence with something that happened many years ago - for a second I relived the same 'chill down the spine' feeling.
It was during my II P.U. public exams; The warning bell had just sounded at 12:15 pm to remind us that we had only 15 minutes left of our 3 hr exam, to turn in our mathematics exam answer sheets. I always stay writing till the very end of my every exam - I am very wordy in my answers, never had success with precis writing and I also cannot write very fast . Also my nervousness always made me check and recheck my answers and I could never walk away cool and confident, turning the answer sheet in before time. This time was no different. Just after the warning bell, as is customary, our invigilator told us to tie in all our answer sheets, check our registration numbers were entered right and be ready to hand them over. I did the needful and kept reviewing my answers as one by one most folks turned in their answer sheets and exited. The final bell went off at 12:30 and the examiner said in a clear but strict voice - " Keep your answer sheets on your desk and leave the room" as she collated the ones on her table in the front of the room. I stood up but still kept my head buried in my answer papers. The examiner said a bit agitated to me, " Did you not hear me, your time's up, leave the room". It struck me as a bit too rude (even though I realize now that the mistake was mine), I packed up my geometry box with my compass, protractor, scale, pens etc., clamped my question paper to my clip board ( which we referred to as exam pad) and walked out. At that point only my very good friend and I were present there and we started to discuss the paper animatedly right outside the open doors of the exam hall, as the examiner went from desk to desk collecting answer sheets. After about 5 minutes, the examiner turned toward us and asked me " who was sitting in front of you?", I replied " No one ma'am". She asked " Then whose number is 555 123?", I replied " Mine, ma'am" with growing anxiety in both our voices. She shot "Where is your answer sheet?". Panicked I quickly checked my exam pad- I lifted the question paper to find my entire answer sheet sitting clamped beneath it. The examiner went " How can you be so careless?" as she took the pile from me. She told me that since I was in front of her very eyes the whole time and she believed it was a dangerously foolish inadvertent mistake, she accepted my answer papers a full ten minutes after the time limit. A little hurried and a little miffed I had forgotten to leave my answer sheets on the desk before leaving.
Had I walked with it down the corridor, down those flights of stairs, down the long drive way to the bus stop discussing with my friend, there would have been no way she would have accepted my papers. I would've made a nice newspaper column of someone who studied for an exam, solved trigonometry and calculus problems, drew geometry figures and crunched logarithmic tables for 3 hours and brought her neatly stacked answer papers home with her to a wonderful 'failed' result. I'd have lost a year, turned into a psychological wreck - God knows what! I faltered at the top of a steep cliff and managed to fall on the safer side. All three of us present there - myself, my friend and that examiner were shaken at the enormity of what might have happened. Never before had my buddy and I ever stayed back right in front of the hall talking about our paper.
Almost 20 years later, I experienced the same stoppage of breath, lump in my throat, knot in my stomach for a few seconds as I travelled with no speed limits down memory lane. After I regained my breath I couldn't help but think how diametrically opposite this was to the examination scene in the movie 3 Idiots - in which an unco-
operative examiner refuses to take the answer sheets from 3 students who request for a few minutes extra time since they started the exam late due to an emergency. The students then trick the examiner and mix up their papers with the rest of the lot on the examiner's desk and run away.
The number 555 123 is something I can never forget. Whether the Almighty did anything for Bruce or not, he surely saved me from becoming a Bruise Alrighty! :-)
Yesterday, as I sat down to fold 3 loads of laundry, I turned on the TV. DD, DH and parents left for a day at an amusement park and I had just put my son down for a nap. Browsing through the channels I found the Jim Carrey starrer 'Bruce Almighty' dubbed in tamil on sun TV. I normally never watch such stuff, but yesterday I was very tickled to catch Jim Carrey shout 'Kadavule', 'Poda loose paiyya' , Jennifer aniston go ' Enna aachu ungalukku?', Morgan Freeman playing God say 'Pinne kaanaam' ( see you later in malayalam) - I figured the original version must have had him say 'Hasta la vista or Ciao'.
In this film the character of Jim Carrey, Bruce is disgruntled, unhappy and blames God for his lacklustre career, for painstakingly having to eke his way out without immediate success and for the quick growth of his clever coworkers. Finally God decides he's had it with this man's complaints and decides to contact him through his pager. Bruce's pager beeps with the number 555 0123. What struck me was the co-incidence with something that happened many years ago - for a second I relived the same 'chill down the spine' feeling.
It was during my II P.U. public exams; The warning bell had just sounded at 12:15 pm to remind us that we had only 15 minutes left of our 3 hr exam, to turn in our mathematics exam answer sheets. I always stay writing till the very end of my every exam - I am very wordy in my answers, never had success with precis writing and I also cannot write very fast . Also my nervousness always made me check and recheck my answers and I could never walk away cool and confident, turning the answer sheet in before time. This time was no different. Just after the warning bell, as is customary, our invigilator told us to tie in all our answer sheets, check our registration numbers were entered right and be ready to hand them over. I did the needful and kept reviewing my answers as one by one most folks turned in their answer sheets and exited. The final bell went off at 12:30 and the examiner said in a clear but strict voice - " Keep your answer sheets on your desk and leave the room" as she collated the ones on her table in the front of the room. I stood up but still kept my head buried in my answer papers. The examiner said a bit agitated to me, " Did you not hear me, your time's up, leave the room". It struck me as a bit too rude (even though I realize now that the mistake was mine), I packed up my geometry box with my compass, protractor, scale, pens etc., clamped my question paper to my clip board ( which we referred to as exam pad) and walked out. At that point only my very good friend and I were present there and we started to discuss the paper animatedly right outside the open doors of the exam hall, as the examiner went from desk to desk collecting answer sheets. After about 5 minutes, the examiner turned toward us and asked me " who was sitting in front of you?", I replied " No one ma'am". She asked " Then whose number is 555 123?", I replied " Mine, ma'am" with growing anxiety in both our voices. She shot "Where is your answer sheet?". Panicked I quickly checked my exam pad- I lifted the question paper to find my entire answer sheet sitting clamped beneath it. The examiner went " How can you be so careless?" as she took the pile from me. She told me that since I was in front of her very eyes the whole time and she believed it was a dangerously foolish inadvertent mistake, she accepted my answer papers a full ten minutes after the time limit. A little hurried and a little miffed I had forgotten to leave my answer sheets on the desk before leaving.
Had I walked with it down the corridor, down those flights of stairs, down the long drive way to the bus stop discussing with my friend, there would have been no way she would have accepted my papers. I would've made a nice newspaper column of someone who studied for an exam, solved trigonometry and calculus problems, drew geometry figures and crunched logarithmic tables for 3 hours and brought her neatly stacked answer papers home with her to a wonderful 'failed' result. I'd have lost a year, turned into a psychological wreck - God knows what! I faltered at the top of a steep cliff and managed to fall on the safer side. All three of us present there - myself, my friend and that examiner were shaken at the enormity of what might have happened. Never before had my buddy and I ever stayed back right in front of the hall talking about our paper.
Almost 20 years later, I experienced the same stoppage of breath, lump in my throat, knot in my stomach for a few seconds as I travelled with no speed limits down memory lane. After I regained my breath I couldn't help but think how diametrically opposite this was to the examination scene in the movie 3 Idiots - in which an unco-
operative examiner refuses to take the answer sheets from 3 students who request for a few minutes extra time since they started the exam late due to an emergency. The students then trick the examiner and mix up their papers with the rest of the lot on the examiner's desk and run away.
The number 555 123 is something I can never forget. Whether the Almighty did anything for Bruce or not, he surely saved me from becoming a Bruise Alrighty! :-)
Mother-in-law!
* Patience , perseverance and placidity are her virtues - I am in awe of her ability to remain cool, collected and unruffled in the face of many a turbulence
* Meticulous is her middle name, just watching her get set up for a pooja is a joy.
* The final word in making lip-smacking snacks and savories ; And positively thrilled to see them vanishing
* An iron clad willpower and determination - can make 100 plus obattus in one go, absolutely nobody's pleas to stop has ever worked.
* Impeccable memory - her hard disk never crashes!!!! Remembers every little thing;
if the devil is in the details, that devil is well in her grasp!
* 'R'esourceful - A little spare time in the afternoon and you can find her turning balls of cotton into wicks for oil lamps, making different spicy powders or poring over the panchanga ( almanac) to prepare for the upcoming festivals and special days
* Incorrigible reader - you can find her reading at 7 pm, 4 am or 2 pm -smiles when I catch her feverishly reading away her novels and short stories, and jokingly ask her if she's prepared well and confident about the next day's exam
* ardent fan of cricket matches
* passionate gardener
* Never been to college or had a career but more broad minded and accomodating than many a professional woman
A truly special woman - you are one of the many strking influences in my life -
Happy birthday, athagaru!
* Meticulous is her middle name, just watching her get set up for a pooja is a joy.
* The final word in making lip-smacking snacks and savories ; And positively thrilled to see them vanishing
* An iron clad willpower and determination - can make 100 plus obattus in one go, absolutely nobody's pleas to stop has ever worked.
* Impeccable memory - her hard disk never crashes!!!! Remembers every little thing;
if the devil is in the details, that devil is well in her grasp!
* 'R'esourceful - A little spare time in the afternoon and you can find her turning balls of cotton into wicks for oil lamps, making different spicy powders or poring over the panchanga ( almanac) to prepare for the upcoming festivals and special days
* Incorrigible reader - you can find her reading at 7 pm, 4 am or 2 pm -smiles when I catch her feverishly reading away her novels and short stories, and jokingly ask her if she's prepared well and confident about the next day's exam
* ardent fan of cricket matches
* passionate gardener
* Never been to college or had a career but more broad minded and accomodating than many a professional woman
A truly special woman - you are one of the many strking influences in my life -
Happy birthday, athagaru!
Do actions really speak louder than words?
Sometimes I wonder.
True, words become robbed of their meaning and gravity when not complemented by deed. But aren't words in and of themselves extremely potent ?
Don't words soothe, encourage, motivate, mock, ridicule, singe, sear,scald, uplift, strengthen, enthuse, disparage, taunt, prick, elevate us to the pinnacle of joy or beat us down to a dark abyss? Show love, kindness and warmth or convey bitter resentment, condescension and hatred? Without raising a finger or moving an inch one human can deeply affect another by the choice of a string of words. As much as the right words can transform lives for the better, negative words can unleash havoc.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what about the spoken word that comes with multiple facets like voice, volume, diction, tone and so on ? Factor in body language, facial expressions and the magnitude of what hits you is undeniable.
Choose your words carefully. All things considered, the stimuli we receive and the responses we give out in our immediate environment, all our relationships, our goals, our feelings, our thoughts and dreams, our passions, our insecurities and fears are inextricably entwined with the words that we hear, read and the words that constantly run through our hearts and minds!
True, words become robbed of their meaning and gravity when not complemented by deed. But aren't words in and of themselves extremely potent ?
Don't words soothe, encourage, motivate, mock, ridicule, singe, sear,scald, uplift, strengthen, enthuse, disparage, taunt, prick, elevate us to the pinnacle of joy or beat us down to a dark abyss? Show love, kindness and warmth or convey bitter resentment, condescension and hatred? Without raising a finger or moving an inch one human can deeply affect another by the choice of a string of words. As much as the right words can transform lives for the better, negative words can unleash havoc.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what about the spoken word that comes with multiple facets like voice, volume, diction, tone and so on ? Factor in body language, facial expressions and the magnitude of what hits you is undeniable.
Choose your words carefully. All things considered, the stimuli we receive and the responses we give out in our immediate environment, all our relationships, our goals, our feelings, our thoughts and dreams, our passions, our insecurities and fears are inextricably entwined with the words that we hear, read and the words that constantly run through our hearts and minds!
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