Venice Of The East

In the fast city life, there are times when serenity becomes a much wanted thing in life. For all of us, living a hustle bustle life, a cruise along Alleppey’s backwaters-meandering lakes networked by canals, is a rejuvenating experience, a tryst with tranquility where the land, water and the swaying palm fronts beckon us to the hilt.

 

Hi!!!

This particular incident happened way back in my 11th standard. Given the fact that there was a craze to join State board schools for the 11th and 12th, I moved on to Vidyashram, which was touted to produce marvelous results. Vidyashram, it turned out, was a very strict school with it’s share of eccentric rules! One of them was, gals and guys SHOULD NOT talk to each other. You won’t believe the extent to which the administration went to reinforce this rule, we even had orientation programs held separately for boys and girls during the first week of school, where we were logically lectured on the cons of speaking to the opposite gender and the pleasures of mingling with our own brood.

 

Navarathri Golu @ our place.

The golu - my pride!!

 

The Village and Minnie

The minnie is my creative sister’s creation, a rangoli with colored rock Salt.

The vallampati village has lots to talk about. There’s a family celebrating pongal replete with the cow and pongal cooking. A Kuravan and kurathi are just entering the village selling paasi mani. In the farmers nook you can see a lady weeding the rice fields, with the zamindar surpervising. There is one more returning back after ploughing his feild with the ox. Since It is pongal time, many crops have been harvested, there men are thrashing, winnowing, packing grais in a sack and carrying it to the godown. Oh yes you have the village common well which has the women carying water, washing and busy gossiping. Then there is the arasa marathu adi pillayar which is not visible here.

 

Kaadu

The small forest in our golu! Sis and myself painted the backdrop for it in about 15-20 minutes at 11:30 in the night! Working together in a jiffy was real good fun !

 

The HDFC Fiasco

Any person, who holds an account, receives several calls from banks offering free credit cards and personal loans. Having handled several such calls at home for my parents, my instinctive immediate reply to any such calls is a big curt “NO”.

I hold a HDFC account which I was operating as a student. Lately, there are hardly any transactions with the bank, now that I have a corporate account. One fine day (fine until I got the call- then it was all doom) I get a call “Hello Mam, We are calling from HDFC credit card division. We are offering a free credit blah blah..”. What should I have done? of course give the usual stereotyped answer of “No, I am not interested” How nice it would have been if it had been so.

After my initial refusal the guy persisted, it is absolutely free mam and went ga ga over the benefits of owning a card. I was at the work and this man was going on n on. I thought acha chalo the card is going to come free, lets just have the pleasure of swiping a credit card. After all I am a “working woman” now. I said OK. Dammal the damage was done!!/?!! .

That very same evening after I returned from office, two guys from the credit card division dropped in along with the forms. Talk about promptness. Having got the form filled they left saying the card will be mailed in another two weeks time.

Sanity, like the cops in Indian movies, came after everything was over. Over the weekend I mulled over the whole issue, it seemed totally absurd as to why I had accepted the offer. I carry two Debit cards with me and moreover I spend very little owing to the fact that with my parents around I never get open my purse. In short the credit card is of absolutely no use. (yeai all you guys twitching n saying “Penn budhi pin budhi“, it happens to anyone man).

To be continued…
… Got tired narrating my woeful story BRB!

 

Shalin’ s Treat At Last!

Well, its celebration time at Tenmiles. Lots of treats coming up… just cant wait for it all to get over =P~. This session of freaking out started with a BANG with Shalin Treating us today at The Park, a Five Star Hotel built on the premises of the erstwhile Gemini Film Studios. The interiors are breathtaking. The decor has been done up in a very contemporary manner…. well u gotta see it to actually get a feel of it, the elegantly ultra modern look.

It feels really good to go out together. There was nothing-great bout the grub at Six-O-One. Hey hold on, hang on, we enjoyed the break thoroughly for we had lunch at a table directly opposite to the one where Carlos Moya was having his laid back lunch. Mahesh Bhupathy and Shwetha were having theirs two tables away from ours. Hey I can see priya going green with envy already.. wait ma.. and there was Madhavan to see us off at the portico.

After a super supper, the next destination was Move n Pick, the specialty ice cream parlor. The ice creams down here are too good. I had a scoop each of Macademia Dulce and Sacherritta (guess I got the spellings right!!). They were Heavenly man, yummy and creamy .

And so with a Five Star lunch and deserts imported form Switzerland, the famous five returned to their haven @ 51 Maddox Street.

Thanks a million, Shalin, I enjoyed the treat very much. It was grand and great one, and came as a good break from the Home-Office-Home routine.

PS: For those who are pondering bout the title, this was Shalin’s birthday treat, which he celebrated on September 15.

 

Here I Go

mmm Actually I can’t believe that I m doing this …blogging et all. Many of my friends have thier own blogs and I have always found this concept a bit wierd. To me it then apperared as an online diary kinda stuff. Why on earth would you want unknown people to know what you feel about a certain issue, or share your views with a third person. You can do all this vocally when you meet your friends. You don’t have to jot down feelings on a blog.

But now I feel otherwise. Opinions do change dont they? I consider this blog as a good place to give vent to my fellings on a variety of issues and to bring my creative skills to the fore. Primarily this should serve as a positive distraction from my mundane routine.

I intend to voice my opinions on a variety of common issues. Profound or Trivial, these are going to be my personal perspective at things.