Luck: when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Date : Sep 16th 2005.

It all started with a simple sms that I received a couple of days ago.
"I had an accident and almost killed a tatha.Windshield broke into a  million pieces "

Vc: What happened?

Dee: I was thinking of Mr. A (She's been married just over a month and Mr. A packed his bags and went off to Swiss .The minute his flight was in the air, she was throwing a kitty party ... I'm sure she'll make it into the upcoming edition of the local PAGE 3.)

Dee: And suddenly this old tatha came out of nowhere and I had to apply brakes.I think I hit him( it seems she closed her eyes, typical). The windshield shattered (How? that cannot be explained, Ripley's believe it or not have been contacted). I really thought I killed him. A crowd gathered and I was so afraid.

Vc: Is he? I mean did you?

Dee: No he was all right, the people were so understanding they consoled me and told me it was not my fault. The old man was all right but still I took him to the nearest hospital in an auto. I was crying and the old man was screaming " Narayana Narayana " .I thought his hip was fractured. At the Hospital I was advised by the auto driver not to mention that it was an accident. I looked at the old man and he understood what he had to do. You know he told the doctor that he fell down. (Sniff sniff). That &@#** Doctor kept asking if it was an accident .He kept giving me shady glances. You know what he said?

Vc: What??

Dee: Why are you so nervous? Did you run him down? #$%#$ Doctors.
Vc: Uhahahhahaa then what happened?

Dee: Thank God, he just had a bruise and the doctor gave a couple of painkillers. I then took him home and he consoled me (it seems she just couldn't stop crying) and told me that he had a feeling that something was going to go wrong today. He was so nice; you know he is 71 years old. Sniff. He promised me that he wouldn't lodge a case with the police. No complaints no case.( was she smiling ?? )

Vc: What happened to the car?

Dee: Oh my FIL and me went to the police station and the Inspector asked me to get a No Objection Certificate from the Iyer tatha. Did I tell you that he was an Iyer ? You know I wanted to stay back and look after him, it seems his wife was visiting relatives in Chennai and he was all-alone. Later as we( FIL and me) were walking towards the accident spot, this roadside vendor approached us and said " Madam it was not your fault, I saw the whole accident. If required I will come to court as a witness" .That was so touching.

Vc: What was he selling ?

Dee: I think he owned a roadside bhonda bhajji shop.( Similar to Bhaaji of the pav bhaaji fame)

Vc: Wow .. Dee how come you have all the fun ?
Dee: Because I am hip and Happening .
Vc: Yeah right !! and people come running to help you ??? what's the funda there?
Dee: Oh they recognize an Angel when they see one..
Vc: @##@$@#$# Angel … Hmmm Dee.. did the tatha have a charming and beautiful granddaughter ? ( Vc smiles ).

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown

When I was 4 I wanted to be Farmer – well sort of a tractor driver- when I grew up. Maybe I was influenced by the farm  in front of my house . As time went by I dreamed of becoming a pilot.

I remember writing this in reply to one of our essays in school- What is your ambition in life ?  Air force Pilot.

 25 years later am I a pilot, Nope. It was close, especially when I was onboard a KF flight and they had given 2 people the same seat number and I was left stranded. The flustered air hostess asked me to sit in any vacant seat. I was angry and said “Maybe the pilot seat’s vacant”. Grr.

 I knew someone who wanted to be a true hero helping people, he is now head of a Customer Support team – helping real people. As times change, reality sets in and not many have the urge to go where no man has gone before.  

I am sure all  my classmates have done something different , unique and extraordinary in life : An archaeologist , A nun, A detective, An Artist or even a life saving surgeon. 

Hanging by a moment

It was the year when India successfully launched APPLE – not the iphone but- Airline Passenger Payload Experiment ,India's first three-axis stabilized experimental communication satellite, using ARIANE launcher.
The year which saw the release of- Raiders of the Lost Ark and the nomination of M*A*S*H to the Emmy's. It was also the year when MS-DOS was invented.

I on the other hand  was getting ready to be photographed with my LKG classmates.

 I am trying to remember all my classmates who danced, sang and learnt the fundamentals of life with me and also how to make that lollypop last 30 minutes. I call this mission - Memory of Light ( as a tribute to Robert Jordan and the final book of the Wheel of Time series) and hope to touch-base, talk , email or chat with 25 of them before the end of the Mayan Calendar ( Yikes). Its funny that you can recollect all their first names but not the  vital and important last name.Arrrgh.

I will be using Facebook and Linkedin to make this happen.

Maybe I will get a chance to say thank you to Ajith for sharing his egg curry and to Machiah for the guavas, Rahul for teaching me how to play scarbble or even Shaheen for influencing me to change my handwriting, Ruben and Nishad for helping me learn how to ride the bicyle.

Geet ,Nitesh, Anand, Roger,Joseph,Sachin ( he ran like a gazelle) Lokesh,Ceema,Julie,Naresh,Ashok,Gopi,Manjunath,Sara,Malavika,Smitha,Maheshwari,Harish,
Ajay,PraveenP,Yogamani, Rathi,Smitha,Vidya,Sreeja,Gayathri,Mahesh,Padmini.

The impossible - what nobody can do until somebody does.

Don't forget to breathe ...

So I said to the gym instructor: 'Can you teach me to do the splits?' He said: 'How flexible are you?' I said: I can't make Tuesdays.'  Courtesy – Google+some weird site.

Continuing from what was to what is : http://vinodc.blogspot.in/2009/10/blessed-are-flexible-for-they-shall-not.html

New Area New Yoga :

I have joined yet another yoga class to enlighten my mind, body and soul. I read somewhere that yoga is believed to calm our mind and soul, free our body from toxins and reduce the degeneration of cells. Well I am not sure if it is working for me. After 6 classes waking up at 5.45 and looking forward to some back breaking and toe touching exercises, do I see the light ? No not yet.

But I can hear the dogs again , well they are relatively closer these days, maybe because of the BBMP strike. Garbage everywhere.

Some of the new exercises that I am learning is Bhramari. You have to keep our two thumbs on two external auditory canal, index and middle finger together on two closed eyes and ring finger on the two sides of the nose. During exhalation you must chant the word "O-U-Mmmma" with a humming nasal sound mimicking the sound of a humming wasp , so that the laryngeal walls and the inner walls of the nostril mildly vibrate. I believe that this will definitely reduce your Blood Pressure. Now can you use this in a project meeting. Of course you can. Just go into the Bhramari pose and Boom!  Your BP is down and you are out.

The Yoga center that I go to is run by a lady who was recognized for quitting her “high paying IT job’ and is now taking pains to enrich human life by teaching yoga. Ahem ahem..

I am still in the “new joinee” list and soon will be able to do 40 minutes of nonstop sweating exercises . I wonder if I still have that scar on my toe :) or was in on my knee ??

Q: What do yoga meditation and an apple peeler have in common? 

A: They both take you to the core.

My pics from the photowalk

And walking we will GO !

I was fortunate enough to be part of the http://worldwidephotowalk.com/ held in more than 100 countries. I was disappointed that none of my friends and colleagues could make it, not for the lack of interest, but as they were not able to wake up at 6.30 am on a Saturday morning.

The leader , who was a young kid, was fashionably  late .The group consisting of 31 gathered at Town Hall to start our 2 hour walk through the bylanes of Bangalore. I found it interesting that the group was mostly from the other states,like the Bengali currently pursuing his PhD at IISC, a couple of Android programmers from Pune, a lot of them from the IT bigwigs HP, INFY,WIPRO and IBM primarily from Tamil Nadu and AP.The number of Bangaloreans was less than 8 .It was funny when someone approached us and said that he was new in town and found out about our walk and wanted to know if he could tag along so that he could see the sights of the city, for free. Our leader smiled and said no , invitations were based on registrations only. Well out of the 50 only 31 turned up.

When we got the go ahead, I went along with this guy from AP, new in town and so I acted like the local guide telling him about the buildings and culture of Bangalore.Later we formed a smaller group consisting of a Bengali, a person from Andhra ,a Tamilian and a couple of Kannadigas ( including me). Talk about diversity ;).

I was surprised with the “group shot”. For someone who knew so much about camera’s, the dude who shot it completely ignored the photographers and was focusing more on the ‘building’.Sigh.

Taking snaps of unknown people is so much fun, especially if you are in group. I learnt that people tend to pose and smile naturally if prodded. The street was just waking up and it was fun looking for those small things that we usually miss. Most of them went for “portraits” and a few for those obtuse angle shots of people and animals.

The bystanders were caught unawares, but curiosity always wins . They approached us and asked us a lot of “pointed questions” like : Why this road ? What will you do with the photographs ? Are you from the Government? Are you from the Media ? and so on. It always ended up with ‘Take a photo of me” J

One passerby wanted to know the difference between Photo day and Photograph day J .  I still remember a cop coming up and asking what was going on and we had to show our bands ( Thank God) and explain about the World Photowalk.It seems some person actually shouted at a few of the “walkers” and asked them not to take photos of the drainage and filth and that they were showing Bangalore in a “bad light”. Reality Sucks. When we were waiting for others to join in, the owner of a nearby hotel approached us and asked why we were standing there with cameras :) , maybe he was afraid we would take photos and inform the Health department.

We ended our walk – tired and hungry- at the Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan. Yummy Masala Dosa and sweet IdliVada Sambar .

Later that evening I saw the pics that were being uploaded and was shocked. The pics were amazing ! I have decided to take my friends on a walk too J

Change the channel.

 Change is a bunch of coins which sum up to the value of a paper note

Change is what a chameleon does when it sees a dragonfly on a green leaf.

Change is what we do after a hard day’s work.

Change is what differentiates us from the sea.

Change is what happened to Dhoni’s hairstyle.

Change is what happens if you don't keep the milk in the refrigerator,overnight.

Change is what we look for every day.

Change before you have to.

Tales of Battani, the pea

It’s the annual school day and the “play” was Bhaktha Prahlad.

The kids who were supposed to play Hiranyakashyap and  Prahlad had a fight and were not on speaking terms ( it was the scent rubber , Oh!! come-on Strawberry flavor). The scene they were performing had Hiranyakashyap questioning  Prahlad about Lord Hari and his very existence. You do know that Hirnakashyap, wanting eternal power, asked Brahma to grant him with a Vardaan, a boon,that his death not be caused by man or beast, with a weapon or without a weapon, during the day or the night, indoors or outdoors, on earth or in the sky.

The stage is set , with “the Narasimha “ avatar ( naah it’s Battani, the kid, ) hiding in the 3^rd pillar. The script was written in such a way that Hiranyakashyap was supposed to break pillar 1,then pillar 3 and then at last pillar 2. So the play goes on and ….

Hiranyakashyap: Uhahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahhaaaaaaaaaaaa Prahlad come here…you keep harping about your Lord Hari, tell me is he everywhere ..

Prahlad: Yes my Lord!

Hiranyakashyap: Ooooooooho. .is he ..umm. Is he in this pillar ? ( points to pillar 1)

Prahlad: Yes my Lord !

Hiranyakashyap picks up his “mace” and WHAM breaks pillar 1 .. and  roars"Uhahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaa  Oho Now let me see your LORD burst through this pillar”. ( pillar 3)so saying he sits down on the floor glaring at Prahlad and twirling his fake mustache.

 Prahlad is shocked !!  the Drama/PT master is shocked, Narasimha who was supposed to materialize out of pillar 2, panics and wants to go to the loo ……. he runs out of the  backdoor,makes an exit from the stage,takes a wrong turn and finds himself in-between the audience . He smiles and touches a shoulder “psst Raj move move make way “ and approaches the stage and shouts “ Oye demon king, pull me up “.. Hiranyakashyap is bemused but pulls him up..and looks on …Prahlad bows and gives a 60 watt smile and winks at Sheela.

Narasimha roars ” GRRRRRRRRRRRR Oye Hiranyakashyap do you think I’m your house  servant to obey you and come out of the pillar that you point out ? Haaaaaaaaaaak thu……..  I am NARASIMHA I can come out of whatever I want , even from the audience………..Hah!!

The audience is roaring in laughter and applauds Battani for his quick thinking !!

Keep your mouth closed until your mind is in gear.

Yet to comprehend the hidden meaning of the song : Kabhi from the band Josh.

Is haseen samay ki yeh raaht 

Samhaj me aane lagi 
Ban jaayegi yeh kushi
Mil jaayegi yeh kushi 
kitne samay guzar gaye 
bichad gaye samay
ban jaayegi yeh zameen