A Breath Of Fresh Air

Remember this? I like most people fantasized about other jobs even as I plodded through my own day job. There are however people that do not stop with fantasies. They do not blog about their thoughts and actually manage to get something done.. Who would have thought it ??!!!

My Sunny Balcony is started by a group of 4 people in Bangalore. The garden city is being eaten up ever growing concrete monstrosities and a city that was once known for idyllic weather and lovely gardens is talked about most for its traffic jams. My Sunny Balcony brings a little bit of green into the ever shrinking homes of Bangalore dwellers. A simple idea with a heart. The group works on setting up a garden in whatever space is available in Bangalore apartments. If you have a little sunshine in any corner of your house it seems they can transform it into a green haven.

Lovely work. These are pictures of their latest work that I found on Facebook.

The folks at My Sunny Balcony have this to say

"MSB is a group of garden enthusiasts dedicated to creating customized landscapes for urban environments. Want a little sunshine, a little green and lots of frEE oxygen & frEE therapy?!call us!:)"

While I was trying to plowing and planting seeds on Farmville it is good to know there are some people hard at work making the world green. And nope I cannot be shamed into quitting Farmville.

Rewarding Rhetoric

I love the man. Love love love.

He is intelligent, well spoken, seems to care, funny and competent but can we please wait for him to serve a term before we start showering him with accolades....

Nobel Peace Prize????

Edited to add-

Points to Ponder

The last date for Nomination was in Feb, Days after the man had been elected to office. For a link to the selection process click here.

My first Karva Chauth

Winter months approach and what makes the dwindling sunshine, the shorter days, the drooping flowers in my garden bearable is festival season. I don't think it is by accident that most of the celebrations are in the winter months. It is to cheer us up and distract us from our house arrest that all the fun festivals line up in these months. From Navarathri, Diwali, Karva Chauth, Halloween, Christmas and New Year as the flowers go away these festivals give us an excuse to put up our own decorations even as nature takes a break. My only grouse with the festival season however is all the fasting.

Each time any of the fasting festivals roll up I consider it half heartedly. With skill equaling that of insurance companies looking for loopholes in my plan I set out to look for loopholes in the fasting rituals. While they scour page after page of legal paperwork, I have it easier and submit my request to the Google God. And as it turns out the rituals are apparently better structured then our health insurance because I failed miserably in trying to find one that would keep me well fed and fasting. Perhaps the common sense laws are more effective for the common people. Anyways I digress.

So Navarathri flew past and I had done nothing apart from eat all the goodies my mil made. To top it off we went golu hopping on Saraswati Pooja day and ended up having three breakfasts all served with a sweet. I had but resigned myself to accepting defeat when along came Karva Chauth. How did I find out about this not celebrated by Tamils festival?? Husband and I relied on long distance phone calls to India for any festival type information before in laws came to visit. And now that in laws are there they multi task by reminding us, doing all the preparations for the festival and then lowering their standards for our part in it so we can meet their expectations. Well facebook of course.

So, despite having felt queasy every time yet another heroine in Hindi cinema decks up in Swarozki crystal studded lehengas, gazes with adoration at husband/ boyfriend, sips her water and then breaks out into a song I decided I would embrace this festival and fast for hubby dearest. Though in all honesty it was done for all of the family. I am not a pati vrata sthri (I like Daniel Craig too much for that) and I will not be standing between anybody and Yama mainly because if I did see Yama I would be rushing off to the nearest emergency centre to get my BP/ brain checked.

Needless to say there was no sargi since the sun rise was long gone by the time I woke up. My brain also did not awaken until I had swallowed my giant cup of tea. After which I finally awoke to realize that it was Karva Chauth and I should be fasting. So I bathed, wore some red and prayed to be forgiven for ingesting large quantities of ginger tea and set off for the vrath.

After all the drama it was relatively easy. What was hard was to be cheerful and hungry but it seemed very non spiritual to be in foul mood while fasting for your loved ones. Husband was sweet and made poori and channa and when they were made demanded I break my fast regardless of moon cos the poori was ready. I made some halwa and tried my best to perform some prayer that would not result in offending my deities.

As luck would have it, it was a cloudy day and husband and I spent a good 40 minutes after scheduled moon rise looking for the damn thing. Since the moon is not visible from our balcony I took to going out every five minutes to check. When the moon was finally visible, I hurried the husband out, sipped the water, gave the other half a hug and rushed home for a table full of food.

So my take, fasting was not bad, the praying was even better, the food was the best and I still think we have these festivals to add drama into our lives.

Aaj kal be bachche.

late 1980's

Ma - If you dont behave I am going to leave you here and go home without you.

Me/my brother (either knee deep in mud, or atop a tree - putting all that inexhaustible energy to good use) - you wont!!!.

Ma - Yes I will. Nobody wants to take home a naughty child.

Us (worried looking around for dad) - Appa won't let you. You will have to take me back.

Ma - Yes he will. See he is annoyed too.

Us (looking up at Appa to see him make his obliging angry face, now very unsure) - But he/she started it.

Reluctantly walking away from whatever lovely mischief we had been upto.

2009

Overheard mother and son at a concert my husband was singing at. I was trying to get the wires taped to the floor so kids would not trip on it.

Kid - I don't want to sit here. Nobody else is sitting here.

Mother - It is right in front. We are members of this organization. We pay an annual fee. These are the best seats. Just sit down.

Kid - But everybody is sitting at the back. I want to sit at the back....

After a few minutes of this.

Mother - If you don't behave I am going to leave you here.

The kid paused and was deep in thought for a while.

Kid - (In a very deliberate voice which might indicate practicing in front of the mirror) - If you did leave me behind here, I am not sure I want to go back with you. This means you are an irresponsible parent. You are supposed to take care of me and I could report you to the authorities and you would be in trouble. They would take me home.

Mother ( deep sigh ) - Bends down to sit next to me. Can I help you with that tape?

Kids born with a sense of entitlement...

Lets watch a movie tonight

After the long strike with the multiplexes ended and the Indian movie industry has gone back to being prolific, husband and I have been lured back to the theatres. We are rather wary theater goers and generally wait for the verdict to be out not only in the media but also among our friends. This despite a Regal theatre right next door and it offers all the new Hindi releases promptly. Completely unlike Oregon where there was one dingy theater that played Indian movies and you had to wait for months for the "latest" Hindi movies to be released. But then Oregon is full of the outdoorsy people who head out to hike or camp at the drop of a hat. Of course, since it rains 5 months in a year it can be argued that they are just suffering from prolonged and delayed claustrophobia. But I am rambling.

Maybe I am soft critic, maybe I just reaallly enjoyed watching the movies with Dolby stereo again - whatever it was but I was rather happy with the past couple of movies I watched. I do seem to be alone in this since I heard a lot of criticism. The movies in question are of course the much discussed Love Aaj Kal and Kaminey. They held my attention; I enjoyed almost all of the performances and what’s more I was introduced to two rather nice soundtracks. Also I had some discussions bordering heated on how gorgeous Deepika is, how silly the climax was and so on and so forth. These two movies, I suspect resulted in lowering our guard.

So last night armed with homemade paneer kati rolls and on a whim a flask full of mandarin vodka and tonic water, we set off to watch “Dil Bole Hadippa" . The movie did not hold my attention, I did not enjoy any of the performances, it was crass, loud, disconnected and unbearable. Also I find Yash Chopra productions ludicrous as a champion of women's rights. Please spare me!!!!

But what surprised me is that my guard has dropped further.

Our careful scrutiny before heading to the movies has of course resulted in us missing a lot of the real lemons. Most of the movies we have watched in the past couple of years have been rather decent. Completely different from our bachelor days when we would watch every stinker on screen. And now I understand why we did it. I had forgotten how much fun it is sometimes to watch a bad movie.

Maybe it was the spicy yet tender paneer, maybe it was the Grey Goose but I think I have not had this much fun watching a movie in a very long time ( apart from Sivaji - but that’s a Rajni movie and so does not count). There was giggling, and prodding and snatching food and no we were not nuisances because the theatre was practically empty (that should have warned us huh?). We are normally polite and refrain from even whispering and so the chattering and laughing was nice change.

So I highly recommend it. Not "Dil Bole Haddipa" but the experience. I may not be able to do this very frequently what with the 20 bucks that we will need to shell out, but I am sure I will do it again.

Stress eating?

It has been a tough few weeks. Everything at work was deemed an emergency and even though I reacted by making my somber face/ grave tongue clicks at all meetings, I have come to understand that everything is always an emergency. So though I need to continue to work the drama associated is wholly unnecessary. But despite said Zen outlook though I am not as stressed as the drama queens in my team, I am seeing my stress quotient go up.

I discovered long ago that the stress ball does nothing apart from exercise your fingers and make your palms sticky. But there are some great ways to beat the stress.

1. Eat - On particularly stressful days when I want a burst of energy to kick in later in the day I eat a salad with a holier than thou look on my face during lunch with colleagues and then tank up on a slice of sinful sugar and butter laden cake during coffee. I have spent too much time in the tech industry and in college for caffeine to rescue me.

2. Clothes - I spend some mindless minutes picking the perfect outfit online that I will wear during a great vacation. I will never buy the outfit since I DO NOT need more clothes but the quality time I spend on Forever 21 sight has seen me through many status meetings.

3. Planning dinner - Food is my one true vise. Work, stress and all things become minor things if I manage to stumble onto the perfect recipe, or the perfect restaurant.

4. Blogging - what is sad is that blogging does not de-stress me at all. My mind is so cluttered with details of work and maybe the recipe that I just found that I have nothing to say really and definitely nothing funny to say.

But since I did have some stressful days so I found some great recipes..

1. Spinach Strawberry Salad

2. Corn and Avocado salad - I added some roasted red bell peppers to it. They are my new favourite thing. Fire roasted bell peppers have the most amazing flavour and texture.

3. Pineapple upside down carrot cake - this was a mix of many recipes. This is why I am a bad baker- I cannot follow instructions. But this cake was a slice of heaven.

4. Mac and cheese with broccoli - I did remove a lot of "fat" part of the recipe. The trick is to get the roux right. Despite navaratri mine was heavily dosed with garlic.

5. Black Olive Spread - Inspired by tapenade but without the capers.

6. Lettuce wraps - Left out the beef of course and sprinkled with peanuts. Also added lentils with rice because I do not stock brown rice.

Stress Eating ?? Still beats squeezing rubber balls and then washing and rewashing my hands with soap to get the smell off.

The Jinx Is Broken

This summer, husband and I finally broke our jinx. It seems plants do not necessarily decide to die when they cross our threshold. Considering my disastrous history with plants which included managing to kill cacti, spiky plants and other mutant hardy plants, I was quite sceptical when my husband suggested a small patio garden. I then convinced myself that all things jinxed was before the wedding and that together we might be different - hopefully we have a different bunch of jinxes...

As it turned out it worked out. We grew some plants from seed including a herb garden and some sunflowers and some Texas blue bonnets. We also got a bunch of other stuff from the nursery and I am happy to report that they are all alive and kicking.

As hurricane Danny approaches these plants still make my patio look lovely. These are the sunflowers from my patio.