Ninaivugal...Thoughts

Pic: In front of MIT Blogging is a strange thing; there is so much to be written, and it depends on you to pick the right topic to be written about. I thought I was bored of writing travelogues, but then after a rather eventful weekend, I just could not think of writing anything more important. It was planned weeks earlier that Yadu and Karthik would be joining us for the weekend here at Boston . Boston is one of the cities on the east coast which can make you feel absolutely pleasant. There is a feel good factor associated with this city, so famous for education and sports, among many other things; a touch of class that can be experienced by staying in this beautiful city. Truly English! Pic: In front of Harvard The best part about friends visiting you from far off places has more to do with staying together than just touring the city. You look forward to meeting them with a sense of longing to catch up with the good old times. All of us hailing from the same school, we generate tonne...

The dreaded years of English language in school began with short essays, compositions and paragraph writing in your own words. I had to adapt to the language through a series of mind conversions from the local tongue, before it actually took some time to think in English and write in English. When I wrote my first essay in my own words, there was a startling revelation of how hard it is to write something without by-hearting what the teacher enforced upon us. That was class fifth and the beginning of a whole series of problems with grammar and other small nuances. The English text books were fun to read, which gradually got complicated with Shakespeare entering the fray along with a whole lot of Russian writers. As you like it was a brilliant read, and short stories like God sees the truth but waits by Leo Tolstoy , The bet by Anton Chekov , Gateman's gift by RK Narayan , The last l eaf by O' Henry just elevated me to an unexplainable trance by getting me introduced t...

Well, well, well, before I break your head with acronyms, three out of the five refer to the same topic. I am referring to the Harry Potter (HP) series, which had readers hooked all over the world, thanks to JK Rowling . What really pleased me was the fact that there was so much anticipation, that kids and adults alike had lined up stores at midnight to procure the first copy of the book. That really is a good step and it was good to see people give so much importance to literature instead of other trivialities. I read the books after a long time, actually, really long. After the final edition of the series had come out, I took up to Harry Potter reading. I just wanted to know what was there in the book that people were going crazy about. I read the six books in about two or three weeks time, in between office and household chores. I don't know why, but I could never take out time to read it over the weekends. There was a point when I was reading the fourth book that I fel...

I had to check the title twice so that I did not end up adding an 'h' somewhere that could result in a vegetable. The whole meaning of the post would have been lost. But, Google has always helped my cause to verify things instantaneously, and here goes the post to convey the right meaning. Bindi is a symbol anyone from India would be familiar with. In South India, it is referred to as Pottu or Bottu , and since I am from the South, my first reaction would be to associate that tiny dot on a woman's forehead as Pottu . I do not want to write about the religious significance of a bindi since a significant lot has been written about that. I have always wondered how that tiny addition to the forehead of women serves as a nice decorative item. A bindi comes in different sizes and shapes associated with a myriad of decorative features thus answering a big question Why do girls spend hours and hours of their time selecting a bindi? But today it is different. It is no m...

Simplicity is certainly the norm of life, and sometimes, when you look back in time, you just wonder how in the world, the world has changed drastically over a period of time. There are so many people with whom I can easily share this view How I wish I can go back in time . Life was simple, with all the little things having the greatest of significance and extravaganza was limited to just over the top luxuries, luxuries which do not even qualify as basic necessities in today's ever changing world. Life was all about doing the simple things in a simple way to get simple results and more importantly getting satisfied in a simple way. Simple, isn't it? Pratap and I go a long way in sharing some of the good and bad times together. Today, at lunch time, we had a brief conversation over phone, and invariably, the talks centered on Bangalore and the simplicity of the early nineties. He told me Praveen, I want to go back to Bangalore and experience the thrill of life as...