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Showing posts from May, 2008

When Destiny Sends Its Helpers

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Keep running. The right people find you on the way. At different stages of life, you’re confronted with different challenges. And each time you cross a hurdle, you feel that familiar sense of accomplishment. It’s tempting to attribute that success to your own skill, tenacity, and willpower — to pat yourself on the back and feel proud of how you handled it. But when you zoom out and look at the moments where you somehow managed to trump the odds, a quieter realization sets in: It’s never just you. There is always an unseen army that shows up at the right time. It was 2005. I had decided to pursue my Master’s in the US. I picked a few schools in the Midwest where the expenses were manageable, and that’s how the University of Missouri–Rolla entered the picture. But funding was still a massive question mark. I hadn’t secured any assistantship, and we didn’t have the means to pay out of pocket. We went from bank to bank, hoping for an education loan. Each manager aske...
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Times Square

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Pic: Times Square As I made yet another bus journey from Boston to New York last week, the feeling of awe had almost disappeared, as it had become a routine to make this trip every few days. Every time I traveled to New York , I was absorbed into a group; the group adding a different dimension to the city. The more I talk about NY, the less it seems, and that can just be attributed to the diverse floating population visiting the city throughout the year. Two of the best cities that I have visited, that have driven me to a feeling of absolute bliss, undoubtedly, have to be Paris and New York . So, as the Memorial Day trip was made, there won't be any fun if I don't introduce the protagonists who had planned to get together for the three day weekend. Three day weekends are special, since it gives an opportunity to go one notch above, and travel that extra bit. Flight prices soar sky high, but when there are talks of meet up, it is too tempting to let go off the opportuni...
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Dishkooo.....Dishkooo......!!!!

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Catch the scene from a typical Hindi movie. The villains have surrounded the heroine, and the inevitable is about to happen, when our wonderful hero walks in like a champion with a pistol, and fires continuously (sheer magic, considering the fact that the magazine can hold only a finite number of bullets). The hero finds the perfect mark, and singlehandedly, destroys the villains. You almost let out a gasp of disbelief; this guy is a killer. What style! Of course, over a period of time, we realize that this is more unbelievable than fiction, but then, it has the desired effect. Last weekend, I had been to a rifle shooting range with Yadu. Thanks to his colleagues, we had a chance to hold a real (yes, real!) rifle with our hands. Initially, I was apprehensive about the whole shooting experience, but Yadu insisted that it would be fun to get a know-how of what it is all about. It was a first time experience, and obviously, we had no clue about guns, rifles and pistols. There was ...
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The rice vault

The last few days, I read quite a few blog posts, each expressing the level of attachment to home made conventional South Indian food - sambar, rasam, mor kuzhambu, poruchcha kuzhambu and the variants, which border a lot on the similarities than the differences! I was tempted to write one too! There are a hundred different varieties of food that use the same paste or the same kind of powder, but our taste buds are so well designed, that it is easy to differentiate the food just based on the whiff of the odor emanating from the kitchen. But in spite of the commonalities, I make it a point to call up home to try out the different kinds. My mother would patiently list out the ingredients, and after a point I had got used to the contents of the mixture. The sambar had to have the pulses cooked from the cooker, the rasam had to have the same pulses, but of lesser quantity and more liquefied, and almost every other paste had the same contents. So, after a point, I had stopped jotting ...
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6:35 AM

6:35 AM? Getting up so early? Had I been living in India, a neighbor aunt would have come running to the house to compliment my mother on having such a wonderful son. Not that it is false, but I'm just making a point!!! This weird habit of getting up in the middle of the night (well, a wake up at 6:30 in the morning is as good as the dead of the night) got imbibed into me sometime over the weekend. The whole of last week, I struggled to get up early, and not before 8:30 did I get a chance to take a peek at the rays that were just forcing their way through the nicely covered shades of the windows. It was as if the Sun God was staring at me in exactly the same way as my mother would have, after I brought the test papers home, when I was a kid. You don't need to be a scientist to guess whether the marks had been good or not! At that time, I was cursing myself for my lethargy. But, I never realized that things can change quickly. On Saturday, I got up at 6:35 AM, felt very ha...
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Oh! Freebies, freebies!

It was a fairly new concept in the mid-nineties to offer giveaways along with the main product. In the nineties? Yeah, I think so, because that was the time when life started making some sense. It's a different matter altogether that I have lost it completely now! It was great to explore new paths, and be awestruck by everything around. Well, this post is not about the new found wisdom of the wonder kids. OK, let's get back to where we started. Knowing me, you can well fathom, how quickly I tend to digress. How many of you remember seeing advertisements on the television promoting an offer along with the main product? Buy a 500 grams packet of Complan , and get a Complan mug free! Buy two refill packs of Boost , and get a bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev absolutely free! But a 250 grams packet of Red Label tea, and get a stainless spoon (who cares!), absolutely free! Buy a refill pack of Maltova , and get a nice cricket cap , free! Buy a refill pack of Bou...
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